Windings: October 2011

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Mowing

Wow. It’s already been way past the amount of time I’d planned for there to be between posts. That seems to be pretty standard for me. Anything that isn’t an emergency will be handled according to my schedule. That seems to work fine as long as it isn’t a project I’m making that I manage to lose parts of while I’m trying to figure out the priorities of whatever I’m trying to schedule. There seems to be a direct tie-in to time and loss.I think it’s largely a matter of not getting the priorities right. And an enormous talent for losing things. This is one of the things I was thinking about this morning while I was mowing. Mowing is a wonderful job. I’m very unlikely to get fired is the first reason that comes to mind. Another is that it’s something I can see I’ve done. Most of what I do consists of what seems like 96 steps. Of these 96 steps, I’m usually lucky to get through the first six. Frustration mounts. Mowing is so different. I pull the cord and ignore the environmental havoc I’m creating. I like to let the grass get deeper than most people probably like it. It’s not laziness; it’s a desire to do something that’s obviously done for awhile without all the steps.

Best of all, mowing encourages thinking. It’s so freeing not to be able to hear a lot of the reality going on around me. That way it can’t get in the way of imagination. Here (in no particular order) is a list of some of the things that kept me mentally occupied while pushing a mower through deep, thick, wet grass yesterday morning. The plan as of now is to develop each of these ideas for further posts. We’ll see how that goes.

Dear friends and how blessed I am in that field

What seems like a major difference between love and like but probably isn’t the one most people think of

Snark snarking snarkiness

How I love it that Facebook gives me the opportunity that I speak fluent sarcasm

How rarely I get to use really good sarcasm

How incredibly beautiful this autumn is

The difference between “good people” and saints

Okay. Now it’s time for me to sleep on it.

Favorite Quotes

"I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, culture and education for their minds and freedom and dignity for their spirits." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on receiving the Nobel Peace prize.
“The truly powerful feed ideology to the masses like fast food while they dine on the most rarified delicacy of all: impunity.” Naomi Klein
"To ask serious questions about the nature and behavior of one’s own society is often difficult and unpleasant. Difficult because the answers are generally concealed, and unpleasant because the answers are often not only ugly…but also painful. To understand the truth about these matters is to be led to action that may not be easy to undertake and that may even carry significant personal cost.” Noam Chomsky
"The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead." --William Lloyd Garrison
"You don't need a totalitarian dictatorship like Hitler's to get by with murder ... you can do it in a democracy as long as the Congress and the people Congress is supposed to represent don't give a damn." William Schirer
For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand what there is in the American character... that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them." William Schirer
No people can be both ignorant and free." Thomas Jefferson “From time to time, the tree of liberty must be replenished with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. -Eleanor Roosevelt First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance FDR.
"The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself." Saul Allinsky "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." Saul Allinsky
"Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict." Saul Allisnky "Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life." Saul Allinsky
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture, just get the people to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury
“In general, men judge more by sight than by touch. Everyone sees what is happening but not everyone feels its consequences.” Niccolo Machiavelli
“Wars against nations are fought to change maps; wars against poverty are fought to map change.” Mohammed Ali
Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.” Anonymous
“Following a smaller herd doesn’t make you any less of a sheep.” Joe Bentley
"In dictatorships we are more fortunate than you in the West in one respect. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and nothing of what we watch on television, because we know it's propaganda and lies. Unlike you in the West, we've learned to look behind the propaganda and to read between the lines, and unlike you, we know that the real truth is always subversive. " dissident Czech novelist Zdener Urbanek
"You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead." Dalton Trumbo, author of the book "Johnny Got His Gun"
"Why of course the people don't want war... That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Hermann Goering
"Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people..." Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice
"If fascism ever came to the United States, it would be wrapped in an American flag." Huey Long
"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." Edward Abbey
"Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of so-cialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of so-cialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike." William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"The United States has only one party - the property party. It's the party of big corpora-tions, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican." Gore Vidal
"To criticize one's country is to do it a service .... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism - a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation." U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright
Free and responsible government by popular consent just can't exist without an informed public." Bill Moyers
Always fights, battles, and blood. And the mad girl who should be hanged. Remem-bering the dead is like grinding water with a mortar and pestle-useless. Griselda Gambaro in “Antigona”
In Violent Acts, Severino João Albuquerque on the nature of violence: When the op-pressed . . . rebel against oppressors . . . it is the former that are deemed the violent ones . . . For, in addition to the countless rights that the dominating conscience grants itself, there is one more: that of defining violence . . . Besides being a mere attempt to recover one’s humanity, the violence of the oppressed is in fact a lesson that has been learned from the oppressor” (Albu-querque 1991 14).
“We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.” Subcomandante Marcos
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. C. S. Lewis
“Man endures pain as an undeserved punishment; woman accepts it as a natural herit-age”. ~Author Unknown
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” Voltaire
Sherman Alexis: Survival = Anger X imagination. Imagination is the politics of dreams Imagine a song stronger than penicillin.
“Make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.” Wendell Barry
Either we have hope within us or we don't. It is a dimension of the soul and it is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. It is hope above all which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things. --Vaclav Havel
"Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out." --Karl A. Menninger
"Violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world." Hannah Arendt
“You could be accused of being possessed,” says Salinger. Is there a baseball devil?” “Anything taken too seriously becomes a devil. Do I take baseball too seriously? But I don’t want to hear his answer, or anyone’s answer. What could be done to exorcise me? Would the ghost of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, whitemaned, actually named for a mountain, appear with crossed baseball bats, and stand over me as I lay pinioned to the pitcher’s mound? Would he swat away baseballs that circled about my head like bumblees?”I raise my arms over the moon-silvered park like an Aztec priest. Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella page 162
“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowner triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land. And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. I still believe that we shall overcome.” Martin Luther King, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who are we to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? . . . You playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won’t feel insecure around you . . . And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Nelson Mandela
“. . . Values which had loomed larger than life scuttled back into line like naughty children. There they stood, health, success, fame, achievement, in a silent row, reduced to their proper place among all the other things on the face of the earth, to be used or discarded in the measure in which they assisted or impeded the pursuit of the will of Christ.” from Audacity to Believe by Dr. Sheila Cassidy
“September History cannot be stopped by repression or violence . . . You must know that, sooner rather than later, the grand avenues a free people walk will open and a better society will be at hand . . .” Salvador Allende 11 1973
“I believe that man is free only when he distances himself from alienation. Man is free when economic conditions can guarantee him work, nourishment, housing, health, rest, and recreation.” Salvador Allende
Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. Gandhi
“There is no space wider than that of grief. There is no universe like that which bleeds.” from Neruda’s Point
“I found a drop of my people’s blood and each drop burned like fire.” from Neruda’s The Corpses in the Plaza`
“Sometimes you just have to look reality in the eye and deny it. That’s all.” Garrison Keillor
“You want to be a writer you don’t know how or when You find yourself a quiet place Use a humble pen.” Paul Simon
“You want to keep your sanity, You teach yourself to write.” Paul Simon in The Cape Man
“If might is right, then love has no place in the world.” Father Gabriel to Rodrigo in The Mission
“The problem with life, Birdy concluded, was that it did not feel obligated to play by the rules of literature.” Antonya Nelson
“In Lounds was the lunging (italics mine) need to be noticed that is often called ego. Lounds was lumpy and ugly and small. He had buck teeth and his rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt.” Thomas Harris on Freddie Lounds in Red Dragon
“Then she was alone on the parking lot, with the unsteady feeling that she understood nothing at all in the world.” Thomas Harris on Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs
In war, truth is the first casualty.” Aeschylus
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. Albert Einstein
What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or of liberty or democracy? --Mahatma Gandhi
“The artist in ancient times inspired, entertained, and educated his fellow citizens. Modern artists have an additional responsibility - to encourage others to be artists. Because technology is going to destroy the human soul unless we realize that each of us must be the creator as well as a spectator or consumer.” Pete Seeger
"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about." Noam Chomsky
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Nietzsche
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela
From POETRY AS INSURGENT ART by Lawrence Ferlinghetti “Through art, create order out of the chaos of living.” “Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident.” “Read between the lives and write between the lines.” “Pursue the White Whale but don’t harpoon it. Catch its song instead.”
"We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness - embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television." "No form of government, once in power, can be trusted to limit its own ambition, to extend freedom and to wither away. This means that it is up to the citizenry, those outside of power, to engage in permanent combat with the state, short of violent, escalatory revolution, but beyond the gentility of the ballot-box, to insure justice, freedom and well being." "We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had -- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism." "From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country - not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society - cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian." -Howard Zinn, from his 1994 memoir, "You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train"
"Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all ... we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn't true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn't true of the United States." Harold Pinter
“Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.” George Orwell
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” George Orwell
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” George Orwell
“Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers." George Orwekk
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” George Orwell
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” George Orwell
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” George Orwell
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. “ George Orwell
“Big Brother is watching you.” GeorgeOrwell
“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” George Orwell
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary." George Orwell
“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” George Orwell
“Nacer mujer es el mejor castigo.” ("To be born a woman is the greatest punishment.") Federico Garcia Lorca
Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others." Emma Goldman
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss
" Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. " Dr. Seuss
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. " The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. Douglas Adams
“Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.” The Dalai Lama
“As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.” Clarence Darrow
"No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed."
Before Santa and presents and shopping and all the attendant Christmas (stuff) got involved, this holiday was enshrined to commemorate a guy who got nailed to a tree for daring to tell people to be kind to one another. If you have two cloaks, He said, give one away. Remember those who have less than you, be charitable, be good, be merciful. William Rivers Pitt
“I do not believe in death without resurrection." Archbishop Oscar Romero
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. Albert Einstein
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. ~ Albert Einstein Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. ~ Philip K Dick Reality... what a concept. ~ Robin Williams
"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. " Albert Einstein
"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities." – Dr. Seuss
"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." Mark Twain
"Anarchy is order; government is civil war." Proudhon
"A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having." V for Vendetta '
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." -Dom Helder Camara
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. Douglas Adams
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. Douglas Adams
"You don't need a totalitarian dictatorship like Hitler's to get by with murder ... you can do it in a democracy as long as the Congress and the people Congress is supposed to represent don't give a damn." William Schirer For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand what there is in the American character... that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them." William Schirer
No people can be both ignorant and free." Thomas Jefferson “From time to time, the tree of liberty must be replenished with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. -Eleanor Roosevelt First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance FDR.
"The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself." Saul Allinsky "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." Saul Allinsky
"Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict." Saul Allisnky "Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life." Saul Allinsky
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture, just get the people to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury
“In general, men judge more by sight than by touch. Everyone sees what is happening but not everyone feels its consequences.” Niccolo Machiavelli
“Wars against nations are fought to change maps; wars against poverty are fought to map change.” Mohammed Ali
Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.” Anonymous
“Following a smaller herd doesn’t make you any less of a sheep.” Joe Bentley
"In dictatorships we are more fortunate than you in the West in one respect. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and nothing of what we watch on television, because we know it's propaganda and lies. Unlike you in the West, we've learned to look behind the propaganda and to read between the lines, and unlike you, we know that the real truth is always subversive. " dissident Czech novelist Zdener Urbanek
"You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead." Dalton Trumbo, author of the book "Johnny Got His Gun"
"Why of course the people don't want war... That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Hermann Goering
"Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people..." Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice
"If fascism ever came to the United States, it would be wrapped in an American flag." Huey Long
"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." Edward Abbey
"Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of so-cialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of so-cialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike." William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"The United States has only one party - the property party. It's the party of big corpora-tions, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican." Gore Vidal
"To criticize one's country is to do it a service .... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism - a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation." U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright
Free and responsible government by popular consent just can't exist without an informed public." Bill Moyers
Always fights, battles, and blood. And the mad girl who should be hanged. Remem-bering the dead is like grinding water with a mortar and pestle-useless. Griselda Gambaro in “Antigona”
In Violent Acts, Severino João Albuquerque on the nature of violence: When the op-pressed . . . rebel against oppressors . . . it is the former that are deemed the violent ones . . . For, in addition to the countless rights that the dominating conscience grants itself, there is one more: that of defining violence . . . Besides being a mere attempt to recover one’s humanity, the violence of the oppressed is in fact a lesson that has been learned from the oppressor” (Albu-querque 1991 14).
“We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.” Subcomandante Marcos
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. C. S. Lewis
“Man endures pain as an undeserved punishment; woman accepts it as a natural herit-age”. ~Author Unknown
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” Voltaire
Sherman Alexis: Survival = Anger X imagination. Imagination is the politics of dreams Imagine a song stronger than penicillin.
“Make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.” Wendell Barry
Either we have hope within us or we don't. It is a dimension of the soul and it is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. It is hope above all which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things. --Vaclav Havel
"Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out." --Karl A. Menninger
"Violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world." Hannah Arendt
“You could be accused of being possessed,” says Salinger. Is there a baseball devil?” “Anything taken too seriously becomes a devil. Do I take baseball too seriously? But I don’t want to hear his answer, or anyone’s answer. What could be done to exorcise me? Would the ghost of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, whitemaned, actually named for a mountain, appear with crossed baseball bats, and stand over me as I lay pinioned to the pitcher’s mound? Would he swat away baseballs that circled about my head like bumblees?”I raise my arms over the moon-silvered park like an Aztec priest. Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella page 162
“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowner triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land. And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. I still believe that we shall overcome.” Martin Luther King, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who are we to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? . . . You playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won’t feel insecure around you . . . And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Nelson Mandela
“. . . Values which had loomed larger than life scuttled back into line like naughty children. There they stood, health, success, fame, achievement, in a silent row, reduced to their proper place among all the other things on the face of the earth, to be used or discarded in the measure in which they assisted or impeded the pursuit of the will of Christ.” from Audacity to Believe by Dr. Sheila Cassidy
“September History cannot be stopped by repression or violence . . . You must know that, sooner rather than later, the grand avenues a free people walk will open and a better society will be at hand . . .” Salvador Allende 11 1973
“I believe that man is free only when he distances himself from alienation. Man is free when economic conditions can guarantee him work, nourishment, housing, health, rest, and recreation.” Salvador Allende
Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. Gandhi
“There is no space wider than that of grief. There is no universe like that which bleeds.” from Neruda’s Point
“I found a drop of my people’s blood and each drop burned like fire.” from Neruda’s The Corpses in the Plaza`
“Sometimes you just have to look reality in the eye and deny it. That’s all.” Garrison Keillor
“You want to be a writer you don’t know how or when You find yourself a quiet place Use a humble pen.” Paul Simon
“You want to keep your sanity, You teach yourself to write.” Paul Simon in The Cape Man
“If might is right, then love has no place in the world.” Father Gabriel to Rodrigo in The Mission
“The problem with life, Birdy concluded, was that it did not feel obligated to play by the rules of literature.” Antonya Nelson
“In Lounds was the lunging (italics mine) need to be noticed that is often called ego. Lounds was lumpy and ugly and small. He had buck teeth and his rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt.” Thomas Harris on Freddie Lounds in Red Dragon
“Then she was alone on the parking lot, with the unsteady feeling that she understood nothing at all in the world.” Thomas Harris on Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs
In war, truth is the first casualty.” Aeschylus
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. Albert Einstein
What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or of liberty or democracy? --Mahatma Gandhi
“The artist in ancient times inspired, entertained, and educated his fellow citizens. Modern artists have an additional responsibility - to encourage others to be artists. Because technology is going to destroy the human soul unless we realize that each of us must be the creator as well as a spectator or consumer.” Pete Seeger
"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about." Noam Chomsky
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Nietzsche
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela
From POETRY AS INSURGENT ART by Lawrence Ferlinghetti “Through art, create order out of the chaos of living.” “Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident.” “Read between the lives and write between the lines.” “Pursue the White Whale but don’t harpoon it. Catch its song instead.”
"We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness - embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television." "No form of government, once in power, can be trusted to limit its own ambition, to extend freedom and to wither away. This means that it is up to the citizenry, those outside of power, to engage in permanent combat with the state, short of violent, escalatory revolution, but beyond the gentility of the ballot-box, to insure justice, freedom and well being." "We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had -- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism." "From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country - not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society - cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian." -Howard Zinn, from his 1994 memoir, "You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train"
"Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all ... we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn't true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn't true of the United States." Harold Pinter
“Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.” George Orwell
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” George Orwell
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” George Orwell
“Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers." George Orwekk
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” George Orwell
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” George Orwell
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” George Orwell
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. “ George Orwell
“Big Brother is watching you.” GeorgeOrwell
“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” George Orwell
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary." George Orwell
“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” George Orwell
“Nacer mujer es el mejor castigo.” ("To be born a woman is the greatest punishment.") Federico Garcia Lorca
Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others." Emma Goldman
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss
" Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. " Dr. Seuss
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. " The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. Douglas Adams
“Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.” The Dalai Lama
“As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.” Clarence Darrow
"No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed."
Before Santa and presents and shopping and all the attendant Christmas (stuff) got involved, this holiday was enshrined to commemorate a guy who got nailed to a tree for daring to tell people to be kind to one another. If you have two cloaks, He said, give one away. Remember those who have less than you, be charitable, be good, be merciful. William Rivers Pitt
“I do not believe in death without resurrection." Archbishop Oscar Romero
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. Albert Einstein
"You don't need a totalitarian dictatorship like Hitler's to get by with murder ... you can do it in a democracy as long as the Congress and the people Congress is supposed to represent don't give a damn." William Schirer For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand what there is in the American character... that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them." William Schirer
No people can be both ignorant and free." Thomas Jefferson “From time to time, the tree of liberty must be replenished with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. -Eleanor Roosevelt First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance FDR.
"The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself." Saul Allinsky "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." Saul Allinsky
"Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict." Saul Allisnky "Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life." Saul Allinsky
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture, just get the people to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury
“In general, men judge more by sight than by touch. Everyone sees what is happening but not everyone feels its consequences.” Niccolo Machiavelli
“Wars against nations are fought to change maps; wars against poverty are fought to map change.” Mohammed Ali
Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.” Anonymous
“Following a smaller herd doesn’t make you any less of a sheep.” Joe Bentley
"In dictatorships we are more fortunate than you in the West in one respect. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and nothing of what we watch on television, because we know it's propaganda and lies. Unlike you in the West, we've learned to look behind the propaganda and to read between the lines, and unlike you, we know that the real truth is always subversive. " dissident Czech novelist Zdener Urbanek
"You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead." Dalton Trumbo, author of the book "Johnny Got His Gun"
"Why of course the people don't want war... That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Hermann Goering
"Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people..." Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice
"If fascism ever came to the United States, it would be wrapped in an American flag." Huey Long
"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." Edward Abbey
"Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of so-cialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of so-cialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike." William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"The United States has only one party - the property party. It's the party of big corpora-tions, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican." Gore Vidal
"To criticize one's country is to do it a service .... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism - a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation." U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright
Free and responsible government by popular consent just can't exist without an informed public." Bill Moyers
Always fights, battles, and blood. And the mad girl who should be hanged. Remem-bering the dead is like grinding water with a mortar and pestle-useless. Griselda Gambaro in “Antigona”
In Violent Acts, Severino João Albuquerque on the nature of violence: When the op-pressed . . . rebel against oppressors . . . it is the former that are deemed the violent ones . . . For, in addition to the countless rights that the dominating conscience grants itself, there is one more: that of defining violence . . . Besides being a mere attempt to recover one’s humanity, the violence of the oppressed is in fact a lesson that has been learned from the oppressor” (Albu-querque 1991 14).
“We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.” Subcomandante Marcos
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. C. S. Lewis
“Man endures pain as an undeserved punishment; woman accepts it as a natural herit-age”. ~Author Unknown
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” Voltaire
Sherman Alexis: Survival = Anger X imagination. Imagination is the politics of dreams Imagine a song stronger than penicillin.
“Make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.” Wendell Barry
Either we have hope within us or we don't. It is a dimension of the soul and it is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. It is hope above all which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things. --Vaclav Havel
"Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out." --Karl A. Menninger
"Violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world." Hannah Arendt
“You could be accused of being possessed,” says Salinger. Is there a baseball devil?” “Anything taken too seriously becomes a devil. Do I take baseball too seriously? But I don’t want to hear his answer, or anyone’s answer. What could be done to exorcise me? Would the ghost of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, whitemaned, actually named for a mountain, appear with crossed baseball bats, and stand over me as I lay pinioned to the pitcher’s mound? Would he swat away baseballs that circled about my head like bumblees?”I raise my arms over the moon-silvered park like an Aztec priest. Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella page 162
“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowner triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land. And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. I still believe that we shall overcome.” Martin Luther King, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who are we to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? . . . You playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won’t feel insecure around you . . . And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Nelson Mandela
“. . . Values which had loomed larger than life scuttled back into line like naughty children. There they stood, health, success, fame, achievement, in a silent row, reduced to their proper place among all the other things on the face of the earth, to be used or discarded in the measure in which they assisted or impeded the pursuit of the will of Christ.” from Audacity to Believe by Dr. Sheila Cassidy
“September History cannot be stopped by repression or violence . . . You must know that, sooner rather than later, the grand avenues a free people walk will open and a better society will be at hand . . .” Salvador Allende 11 1973
“I believe that man is free only when he distances himself from alienation. Man is free when economic conditions can guarantee him work, nourishment, housing, health, rest, and recreation.” Salvador Allende
Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. Gandhi
“There is no space wider than that of grief. There is no universe like that which bleeds.” from Neruda’s Point
“I found a drop of my people’s blood and each drop burned like fire.” from Neruda’s The Corpses in the Plaza`
“Sometimes you just have to look reality in the eye and deny it. That’s all.” Garrison Keillor
“You want to be a writer you don’t know how or when You find yourself a quiet place Use a humble pen.” Paul Simon
“You want to keep your sanity, You teach yourself to write.” Paul Simon in The Cape Man
“If might is right, then love has no place in the world.” Father Gabriel to Rodrigo in The Mission
“The problem with life, Birdy concluded, was that it did not feel obligated to play by the rules of literature.” Antonya Nelson
“In Lounds was the lunging (italics mine) need to be noticed that is often called ego. Lounds was lumpy and ugly and small. He had buck teeth and his rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt.” Thomas Harris on Freddie Lounds in Red Dragon
“Then she was alone on the parking lot, with the unsteady feeling that she understood nothing at all in the world.” Thomas Harris on Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs
In war, truth is the first casualty.” Aeschylus
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. Albert Einstein
What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or of liberty or democracy? --Mahatma Gandhi
“The artist in ancient times inspired, entertained, and educated his fellow citizens. Modern artists have an additional responsibility - to encourage others to be artists. Because technology is going to destroy the human soul unless we realize that each of us must be the creator as well as a spectator or consumer.” Pete Seeger
"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about." Noam Chomsky
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Nietzsche
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela
From POETRY AS INSURGENT ART by Lawrence Ferlinghetti “Through art, create order out of the chaos of living.” “Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident.” “Read between the lives and write between the lines.” “Pursue the White Whale but don’t harpoon it. Catch its song instead.”
"We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness - embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television." "No form of government, once in power, can be trusted to limit its own ambition, to extend freedom and to wither away. This means that it is up to the citizenry, those outside of power, to engage in permanent combat with the state, short of violent, escalatory revolution, but beyond the gentility of the ballot-box, to insure justice, freedom and well being." "We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had -- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism." "From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country - not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society - cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian." -Howard Zinn, from his 1994 memoir, "You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train"
"Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all ... we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn't true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn't true of the United States." Harold Pinter
“Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.” George Orwell
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” George Orwell
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” George Orwell
“Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers." George Orwekk
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” George Orwell
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” George Orwell
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” George Orwell
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. “ George Orwell
“Big Brother is watching you.” GeorgeOrwell
“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” George Orwell
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary." George Orwell
“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” George Orwell
“Nacer mujer es el mejor castigo.” ("To be born a woman is the greatest punishment.") Federico Garcia Lorca
Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others." Emma Goldman
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss
" Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. " Dr. Seuss
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. " The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. Douglas Adams
“Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.” The Dalai Lama
“As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.” Clarence Darrow
"No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed."
Before Santa and presents and shopping and all the attendant Christmas (stuff) got involved, this holiday was enshrined to commemorate a guy who got nailed to a tree for daring to tell people to be kind to one another. If you have two cloaks, He said, give one away. Remember those who have less than you, be charitable, be good, be merciful. William Rivers Pitt
“I do not believe in death without resurrection." Archbishop Oscar Romero
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. Albert Einstein

About Me

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Mowing