... and so this is Christmas...?

Thursday in the mall… Christmas shopping with my other and his son… I often buy lots of small boxes of chocolate for friends and family… small, delicious treats they wouldn’t normally buy for themselves but I know they enjoy… I’m waiting at the kiosk. They have three people working, all young. The young man is helping his friend. They are exchanging tales and the sales person is cajoling his friend into trying a particular piece of candy. It is a slow and lazy exchange. One young lady is waiting on someone on the other side, and the third sales person is in front of me organizing chocolates in the display case. She looks up. My other and his son are standing several feet away. She spots the son, a very attractive young man. She makes a bee-line for him. She has to walk around me to get to them. She asks them if they need help. My other motions toward me. The young lady looks disappointed. She walks back by me and begins again to arrange things in the display case. Someone else walks up and she waits on them. By this time the other young lady is free. She too arranges things in the case. I stalk away, surprisingly angry and strangely hurt. No chocolates this year.

Then we go to a store where they sell videos and dvds. The wait is long. The young lady who finally checks us out looks up after we pay and says with great sarcasm the line I’m sure they’ve been ordered to utter… “Have an enchanted evening…” “You too…” was my sad response.

Looking out over the humanity that fills the mall; the clinging couples, the packs of teens, the floating solitares, friends arm in arm, crying babies and beleaguered parents and grandparents struggling with packages and the transport of their young – all of us consuming as an act of celebration, I’m wondering about the meaning of Christmas.

Friday, the grocery store… We have people coming into town and so we brave the crush of shopping carts and people. For breakfasts and dinners we search for what will make our Christmas like a Rockwell scene. Did you get cream? bread? sugar? What else do we need? More babies and parents, and older people who use their carts as walkers as they move down the aisles alone… how many are far from family?... We stand in line, another line, to check out. $160 is the cost of a small feast for six.

Then home… we walk in the door and his son stands there… reaching out to take bags from us. “They’ve had a wreck… (a heartbeat)… but they’re ok.”

“What?”

“They’ve had a wreck but they’re ok. They flipped the car twice. It’s totaled but they’re ok. A few cuts and bruises, but they’re ok.”

“You’re kidding, you’re lying.” (A response from a childhood Christmas when I awoke and was told our house had burned down. The same incredulousness.)

“No, No… they’ve had a wreck… but they’re ok.”

Phone calls, phone calls… “Go to the hospital.” “No we won’t go.” “Back to Alabama?” “No… we’ll come on to Cleveland…” “Are you sure?” “If we change our minds, we’ll let you know.”

Christmas Eve, another day of shopping, my other and I are trying to find the gaps we need to fill with gifts and to decide which gifts need to fill those gaps. We try to be efficient and thoughtful all at once. I eye with welled up emotions the chocolates. (Still no chocolate for friends. My pride won’t let me.) We finally struggle home. Done or not, we have to get ready. Not completely sure if they’re coming… my other’s two other children; another son and a daughter, his former and now her other too. The day is long and tense. Lots of getting on nerves. Reports from the road confirm that they are in fact heading toward Cleveland, now packed tight into his former’s other’s car. Near midnight they arrive.

All the fears finally fall away as we see them face to face and they are whole. The work that kept hands and minds busy has done its job and suddenly things seem reordered. The girl at the chocolate kiosk doesn’t matter. The money doesn’t matter. The fact that all those gaps weren’t completely filled doesn’t matter. They’re here and they’re whole. A second’s worth of difference and our world would have changed and instead of waiting to open presents we might have waited in the hall of a hospital. (I am glad to see them all including my other’s former and her other too.)

A re-ordering of the universe… a setting into place the value of things…

what remains...

To deny humanity beauty is to deny the human soul...

what remains is a hard and bitter shell,

unfit for habitation.

Peace be with us.

oh my God!

Even Bush admits that 30,000-- yes I said 30,000 civilians have died in Iraq!

We lost approximately 3,000 on 9/11.

30,000.

my best blog award...

There are these blog awards... I'd rather give my own.

I want to give my best blog award to "Words Light Fires" -- you'll find the link under "blogs" -- It is concise, well written and Jeanette and Marie like the Beatles... What could be better? They also maintain great links (including some to videos) that you should check out. Give it a visit if you get a chance...

random things said in dreams...

“It’s not a direct question, ‘Did I love her?’ Looking back on things, remembering things that I said or did, I must have loved her – it’s the only way I would have said or done those things… but the truth is mutable, time and memory changes it… Sitting here now I can’t imagine that I ever loved her.”

“Your parents, like most parents, did the best that they could. They did the only the thing that they knew how. There were no conscious decisions about what was good or bad… there was just doing, reacting. Would they have changed things if they had known what harm they were doing? Certainly, without a doubt… they would never have wanted to cause such harm to their children. It’s the same for me… if I could go back and change things, I would, but I can’t. It is the source of greatest regret for me.
“So try not to blame them, they did the best that they knew how.”

“Let go of grieving. It does no good.”

---

Good night John.

mis-led...

Do I think that the Bush Administration has mis-led the American people? Per Encarta’s World English Dictionary definitions 1 & 3… yes… we’ve been misled. If we grant that number 1 may have occurred without conscious knowledge, nevertheless number 3 still stands unmitigated.


Misled – past participle of mislead; past tense of mislead

mis·lead vt
1. to cause somebody to make a mistake or form a false opinion or belief, either by employing deliberate deception or by supplying incorrect information
2. to be responsible for making somebody, especially somebody younger, do wrong or adopt bad habits
3. to lead somebody in a wrong direction

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

John...

I cannot believe that it's been 25 years... It seems like only yesterday I woke up and I heard the news... We need more people like John today... voices, voices, we need a clarity of voices that remind us of what we truly value.

my position...

No matter who was or was not for the war in Iraq… Democrat or Republican… I never was. I remember the correlations drawn between Iraq and 9/11 in the months leading up to the war. I didn’t buy into them. I didn’t believe that Iraq was a real and imminent threat. I thought that going to war with Iraq was a mistake. I felt that we should finish the war in Afghanistan and then help to rebuild that country with the Christian generosity our leader would seemingly embrace.

And I was not alone. There were others who felt as I did and as I do now. There were others who protested and cried out against the prospect. I remember in the early weeks of March 2003 hoping that something would stop what then seemed inevitable.

I do not support the war. I support the people, soldiers and civilians who are caught up in it. It was a grave error that has wasted lives. Lives American and Iraqi – not numbers, every number is just a place holder for a life, for a person – with family and friends and a future. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Like it’s a car accident rather than ritualized fratricide. It is absolutely an abomination that we participate in killing while we play games of religious rhetoric.

The long and the short of it – I don’t care what Kerry (or anyone else) says unless he moves to LEAD us in some reasonable way out of this morass.

It is not for me a subject of light or academic debate (and there are many other such subjects I feel likewise about.) I do not wish to engage in tit for tat debate. I write to express in the clearest fashion I can manage those matters that concern me most. I undertake this to preserve my friends and vent my frustrations with our failed leadership. I am not interested in defending the comments or actions of others unless I take them on as mine to defend.

I am a liberal – a raging, radical liberal – and it is not an epithet that I am ashamed of…

i ramble sometimes...

If you’re in Cleveland, there’s a pretty nice show up right now. Cool, clean and fairly elegant.

at
spaces
2220 Superior Viaduct
Cleveland, OH 44113

216-621-2314
www.spacesgallery.org

The name of the show is Multiplicity and it’s up through Jan. 6, 2006.

Danielle Julian Norton’s delicately lit rice boats are the nicest, most poignant part of the show. It’s success as a piece is assured by the curling tethers of monofilament that mark the loss of one of its vessels. The missing vessel’s place in the air armada remains unfilled – a void.

It’s strange – I’m an artist and I love art but very little of it really moves me. --- I said this to my students recently and they asked me why, if so much of it leaves me flat, do I dedicate my life to it… I had to tell them that it is a statement of faith. To believe in art is to believe that there is something beyond the grinding practicality of this day to day life. It is an expression of a belief in a reality that consists of something other than hard surfaces, a turned gilder, and an end without remorse.


Fate is an illusion created by history and video tape. When the nineteen screwed their courage to some unknowable sticking place and crashed into those hard surfaces, they exploded into the ashes of an un-accounted number of lives… a rose is a rose is a rose… instant replay… the image of that moment was repeated over and over again… repeating it, like Gertrude’s rose, made it real, somehow comprehensible… It also seemed to make it possible to hold back that moment through the watching… but rather than staying that execution it writes it down as fate.

Fate is created in an instant.

And here we are… our future, and our fate, was written in a response to a response and now we are playing it out…

Was it just yesterday that eleven American soldiers and thousands of “others” were taken…

Who do we grieve for? Our own? And what about those “nameless” others? Those who know their names – how do they grieve? Let us humanize one another…

reading list...

The following makes for interesting reading…

(cut & paste again...)

Iraq disarmament crisis timeline 1997-2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_disarmament_crisis_timeline_1997-2000


Iraq disarmament crisis timeline 2001-2003

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_disarmament_crisis_timeline_2001-2003

MEET THE PRESS - Transcript for Sept. 14
Sunday, September 14, 2003 GUEST: Dick Cheney, vice president
Tim Russert, moderator
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/


For Immediate Release
From the Office of the Vice President
Dated October 10, 2003
“Remarks by the Vice President to the Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.”
9:25 A.M. EDT, March 20, 2003
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/10/20031010-1.html#



Books:

Jimmy Carter
Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
NPR story and interviews relating to Carter’s book:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4984885


Leo Braudy, Ph.D.
From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity
Publisher: Vintage
Excerpt (although not the excerpt I would have chosen) and Amazon link
http://www.enotalone.com/article/4904.html



** If links don’t work, please cut and paste. Thanks.


PS – Dear Senator Kerry, I saw you on "Face the Nation" and it occurred to me that you may not have noticed that many people do not have the depth of knowledge that is required to tease out your various arguments. Most people are not academics or highly trained intellectuals. Most people come from working-class backgrounds and have direct and common sense. Speak accordingly. It is not that the average American is incapable of understanding the complexities of your points, it is that they require a language more like their own.

PS PS – Also, try not to give in to the temptations of adopting that which is not your own in order to accommodate those that you imagine

cut & paste...

If all else fails... cut and paste...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051121/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq
Cheney on Murtha

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13257342.htm
On Cheney

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4400728.stm
BBC story on CIA Prisons

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html
Washington Post story CIA Prisons

the list grows long...

Who are we? The rhetoric of Christianity dominates our national politics yet what values define our national character? What do we value? Our children? All children equally? Is that reflected in the education we provide for our nation’s children regardless of the affluence of their neighborhoods?

Is it life we value? Do we value life? How do we express that? How do we honor the loses of 9/11 and the those soldiers who, in full faith of the rightness of the cause, have gone willing to Iraq and Afghanistan? And how do we honor the innocent?

What values define our national character?

I do believe that we need to examine closely what brought us into this war. Yes, Bush and Cheney misled the American people by continually juxtaposing 9/11 with Iraq and yes, the members of Congress too often cared more for their political lives than the lives that might be lost in such an undertaking.

And we as a people, what did we want or value that we were led this way; that we chose leaders that would take us to this place? How do we move forward now? Let us look more closely at what it is that we should do and consider through that looking what it is that we value and how that should inform the choices that we make. Let us choose our future leaders with a mind to what it is we truly value. Let us hold the leaders we have now and ourselves accountable for our grave mistakes.

The list for grieving grows ever longer… someone tell me,…what would Jesus do?


Let us demand that the media take on the task our founders set for them… Let us examine, closely, where we are and how we got here.

---

Cheney on Murtha

On Cheney

BBC story on CIA Prisons

Washington Post story CIA Prisons

Can we go to the tapes please…

I think Mr. Rove may be back at work. There’s currently spin coming out of the White House that utilizes many of the diversionary tactics of the past. The line being sold is that the current critics of Bush’s rationale leading up to the Iraq War are undertaking revisionist history. The Bush administration asserts that many of his critics also believed that Saddam was attempting to acquire “Weapons of Mass Destruction” or possibly already had such weapons.

This is the White House’s frequently used tactic of juxtaposing seemingly related information to generate a conclusion that seems logical but in fact does not hold up under close scrutiny.

Yes, many world leaders, French, German and even U.S. leaders such as Clinton included, believed that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons… however… that does not mean that they believed that the threat was significant enough to warrant a war. Many felt that Saddam was adequately contained and that the international community’s goals in regard to Iraq could be attained through peaceful means. Also, the fact that many world leaders believed that Saddam possessed such weapons does not mean that they also felt that those weapons were a real threat to the United States or that Iraq was a base for terrorists activities (which now, as a result of Iraqi border breakdown, it is). Additionally this does not change the fact that the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence to support its war agenda. The continued references to 9/11, the use of discredited evidence of Iraq’s nuclear capabilities, and the repeated assurances from administration officials, such as Cheney, that there would be a quick resolution to a war in Iraq, are all instances of manipulation, if not of intelligence then of the American people. The Bush Administration incited fear among the Americans in order to advance its own agenda.

We act as if we have no memory and no record of what led up to the war. We act as if it’s a “they said, we said,” situation that’s all a matter of opinion. We have the video. We have the interviews and the speeches and even a record of the arguments made opposing the war.

What I think we need is a review of the tapes. Let’s look at what was said and how it was said. I think Cheney’s interviews will be particularly interesting. Wouldn’t it be remarkable if all the news organizations stopped feeding us the canned crap they normally feed us and actually undertook such a review… hey maybe even during primetime. (Why should Dateline have all the fun?)

If Clinton was impeached for lying about sex… you get the drill… Of course congress needs to take a hard look at its own fortitude and political will…

Whether you agree with me or not, let the news outlets know what YOU want from them. Email them. You usually have to go their websites but it’s a small thing that we can do. Ask them to review what was said instead of just quoting the current rhetoric.

Email:
CBS
NBC
FOX
CNN
et. al.

(My thoughts on the reasons for the War in Iraq are outlined in the archived post from Friday, August 19, 2005, entitled:
Bush and the Reasons for the War in Iraq)

NPR Larry Wilkerson interview...

Excerpted Nov. 10, 2005

From NPR URL

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4987598

Ex-Powell Staffer Discusses Cheney Role in Iraq War

November 3, 2005 · Steve Inskeep talks with Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, about the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney's office over Iraq war policy. Wilkerson claims the vice president and others bypassed the rest of the government to control key decisions.

Interview with Larry Wilkerson

Martin Luther King, jr - "I've Been to the Mountain Top"

This speech has had more of an effect on me than any other I can remember...


MLK I’ve Been to the Mountain Top, americanrhetoric.com


Excerpted from www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm on Nov. 4, 2005

The last few paragraphs of MLK's last speech:

Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

---

American Rhetoric is a fascinating site. Sometimes my links don't work so if this one doesn't I recommend you past it in manually and check it out.

Parks and Boromir explained...

Andy asked… “What’s the connection between Boromir and Rosa Parks? Can you make that more clear for people?” (paraphrased).

Rosa Parks remained seated, not for fame or glory, not because it was easy, but because it was the right thing to do. There was no real reason for her to believe that anyone would give a damn about what she was fighting for. I have heard it argued, as if to lessen the credit due to her, that she was not an accidental warrior, but an activist well aware of what she was undertaking - as if this somehow means she wasn’t as strong as we thought. On that bus she refused to give her seat to a white man in a city, in a society, in which less resistance on the part of African Americans had resulted in fatal consequences. Without real reasons for hope that things would change… (the ring of power still on the hand of the oppressor…) “she sat down and stood up” for civil rights.

I have the kind of respect for Ms. Parks that I have for Martin Luther King, jr. King continued to struggle for what he believed was right despite threats and in the midst of violence. He knew his life was in danger for the things he espoused. If you listen to his last speech, it is unimaginable that he didn’t know his death was imminent. He was flesh and blood, flawed as we all are, yet he struggled without any assurance that the situation could truly change.

These days, the ends seem to justify the means… and what are the ends that justify these means? Even among high school and college students there is often a wink and a nod to things like cheating. It is the sum of our lives, the moments when we think no one’s looking that the “content of our character” is laid down. We pull for the figures in books and in films that “do the right thing”… Harry is our hero; Aragorn our king… but in the day to day struggle… do we fulfill those virtues we pretend to embrace?

Parks and King were like Boromir… they fought on in the face of hopelessness… yet, unlike Boromir, a construction of the ideal realm, their hearts beat faster with the fear that they faced. The danger was not imagined.

(I wonder for myself what my life will stand for…) A life lived well, with an awake mind and a passionate heart, that is the greatest kind of art. The sum of our lives together make the world that we live in…

What is right is rarely easy. By what standard will we judge what we commit ourselves to?

just wondering...

Someone asked me what the last death toll was for Katrina:

approximately 1,281


How are things in Florida after Wilma?

In the Islamic world community, what would it do for us to really reach out to Pakistan?

Wilma and Ben

To the people in Cancun, in Florida, in Pakistan and in Iraq… may dark times come again no more… (Hang in there Ben… I hope you make it home soon.)

A ring of power & a strange tribute to Ms. Rosa Parks…

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One ring to
bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.”

Tolkien’s most interesting character, whether presented through film or in print, is Boromir. All of his other characters have their place… they have either fallen or they persevere. Of those that have resisted, they are somehow prepared. Aragorn has spent a lifetime, spurred on by fear, proving that his mettle is more than his ancestors. Gandalf is a shaman, a priest, with eyes that see beyond the physical realm. The elves are ethereal creatures, with a perspective made possible by a luxury of time. The hobbits are bred to comfort, not glory or power.

Boromir, however, was born and reared to seek power through brutish force. In a household that distains the high-mindedness of Faramir, Boromir was trained as a man of action, one who understands the world through physicality and not well suited to philosophical musings. He is the least equipped, and perhaps the most likely to succumb to the pull of the ring.

Yet Boromir struggles to maintain his pledge and his allegiance to his traveling companions. Only very slowly does it take hold of him… and then, as we all do, he slips. His fall is what makes him the most human of Tolkien’s characters, yet in the aftermath of that fall, when, as far as he can possibly see, every promise of the future or success is lost, he struggles to regain his footing. As far as he knows they will all die there, unknown in the forest, the ring on the hand of their enemy – everything lost, but even without hope, he continues the struggle…

The best of us fight on, even without hope, simply because the cause is just…

This is what art does for us…it articulates these ideals… our hopes for… our dreams for…

And for myself… I hope I will be able to stand and deliver… to do what is not easy.

Here’s to your courage Ms. Rosa Parks… I wish Alabama had been kinder to you, but I’m glad you weren’t afraid.

---

My favorite artist… one of the greatest artists working today…

Mel Chin

what were we talking about?...

Soooo…. When are we going to see those telethons for earthquake relief? Anybody heard anything? Where’s the big push? What’s the deal?

---

I had an interesting conversation with a young man the other day. Let me begin by saying, he is a sweet beautiful intelligent young man. He had recently engaged in a conversation with an young African American woman. He is white. She was telling him about her local community’s response to racism and how there seemed almost a desire for segregation among her friends and family as an option to dealing with racist whites. (I’m paraphrasing of course).

The point is, he was amazed to find out that racism was still such an issue. He said this quite compassionately… but until she had discussed the issue, he had assumed that we were all moving in a “good” direction. He had assumed that the hard work had been done.

I think often there is this disconnect. If things are fine for me they must be fine for everyone. Our style driven culture cultivates this… It’s all about the surface… We’re not bad people, we’re just too often oblivious.