Political Correctness

The problem with the idiocy of political correctness is that it gives a voice and a venue to people who deserve neither.  Accordingly, the country is astounded by the bad behavior and offensive speech of a second-rate celebrity who chases ducks for a living, or some such crap.   By way of advocacy the Right keeps screaming about a 14,000,000 person television audience.  There are 350,000,000 people in this country.  Do the math.  The idiot has a 4% approval rating.  That is lower than Congress. 

In a sane world the grunting of this knuckle dragging anachronism would go unnoticed.  This protoplasmic irrelevancy would be denied access to the Zeitgeist by a general sense of boredom.  Who gives a shit what he thinks, if he thinks about anything.  It will not change the future or stop the progress of the species.  It is wholly immaterial and stench-like should be allowed to dissipate through the passing of a very short period of time.

The Dog of War

It is no secret that I have not always been a great fan of President Obama’s policies.  In point of fact I carry water for no politician, and anyone who doesn’t like that can bite me.  However, I stand foursquare behind him with regard to Iran.  As John Lennon once said, “Give peace a chance.”  How goddamned hard is that to understand in Washington?

A group of Democratic Senators are flexing their pens and preparing to draft legislation that calls for new sanctions on Iran.  Swell, that will be the end to negotiations and diplomacy.  We will be headed toward yet another bloody war in the Middle East.

Following Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, like slime behind a slug these Democratic Senators appear to be so intimidated by Sheldon Adelson and his Republican Jewish Coalition that they have forgotten - if they ever knew or cared - that the vast majority of the American people are opposed to another war. 

So that there is no misunderstanding about what I think here, let me just say that this is obscene on so many levels not the least of which is that this bloated malignancy from Las Vegas will sit on his ass at the gambling tables while the poor and working class pay for his defense of Israel with their blood and treasure.  Sanctions or no sanctions, Adelson will undoubtedly never see a drop of his blood shed on foreign soil and will continue to evade taxes behind loopholes.

I have made sure that neither of my Senators from Colorado is engaged in this particular circle jerk.  I suggest that you do the same.  Should you find that one of your employees is serving Sheldon Adelson's interests rather that yours, I suggest that you remind them on no uncertain terms of two things.  First, they work for you.  Secondly, Adelson dropped a lot of money on the Rmney campaign and it didn't buy him a thing.  They might want to consider what that could mean to their next election cycle.

Group Led By Billionaire Sheldon Adelson Pushes Congress To Undermine Iran Talks

Politician Thy Name is Oblivious

The arrogance of the political class in this country today is unrivaled by any single group in my memory.  Perhaps the only thing I can compare it to is the French Court of Louie XVI, and we all know what happened to those sponges. 

I thought that I had seen it all until this afternoon when Michael Steele, former head of the RNC, was talking to Chris Matthews about the Christie debacle around the world’s busiest bridge being brought to a standstill.  When Matthews tried to bring up the fact that the mess could have resulted in real harm to real people, Steele blew it off.  In his estimation the whole thing concerned no one but Christie and nothing but his upcoming and much anticipated lumbering toward the White House.  During the course of the conversation it was even suggested that this was nothing more than a New Jersey style act of revenge against a mayor who refused to support his Majesty Balloon Boy, King of the Republican Hopefuls, and that it was perpetrated without his knowledge by two of his courtiers. 

Are these people raving, stark staring, bat-crap crazy?  First responders were paralyzed.  Whenever a large group of people are impeded they are imperiled. Someone could have had a heart attack or a stroke.  A child could have had a critical asthma attack or a seizure.  None of this happened, so the potential for any of it happening is irrelevant.  The only issue involved is the political agendas of the various players and their impact on Christie’s future.

Michael Steele is an egotistical, pompous ass and political hack in my estimation.  He is so busy pushing the Republican brand, what is left of it, and fantasizing about regaining the White House that he can’t even pretend to understand the impact of these political stunts on the people of this country.  Matthews should have forced him to answer the question.  Christie has as much chance of being president as I do of jumping up Tuesday a tall blonde with big tits who has just won the Miss America Pageant.

Having said all of this and getting to the bottom line, it becomes clearer everyday that We the People, far from being the bedrock and proprietors of this great Republic, have become irrelevant, superfluous, valued only on election day and tax day.  We are expected to vote as directed by either of two useless parties and to support the brothel in Washington that services the rich by running a kind of escort service to peddle the law and other forms of influence without shame or apology.   What I would like to know because our leaders are useless and the media is less than useless, who the hell do we see about this?

Let Them Be Stupid

At 64 I have gained the wisdom to know that people are often foolish, more often lazy and very often have exactly what they deserve. Put another way, you can't stop people from being stupid, as my husband says. Ergo, if people want to carry substandard insurance, let them as long as it doesn't mean a penny of increase in insured people's premiums. If they want to eat transfats let them. Hell, insert an IV and let them mainline the stuff. The world is over populated and with any luck they will die of their stupidity before they can procreate. After all, Christians keep telling us that it is a far, far better place they go. Well, let the stupid prepare to get on the bus.

Purely a Matter of Commerce

 

The other night Bill Maher interviewed Ann Coulter – can’t imagine why he bothers with the creature.  In my opinion to say that she is a liar is to do grievous injury to liars all over the world.  The woman is nothing more or less than an assassin whose preferred weapons are tongue and pen. 

Maher kept asking if she truly believes the things she says.  He misses the point.  Of course she believes what she says; she believes it will make money and that is the only point on her moral compass.  Coulter demonstrated as much when she made reference to her huge audience and the enormous earnings gleaned from her books as proof of her moral commitment to her version of Conservatism and, may Goddess help the Christians, Christianity.

She confirmed her biased view of the Constitution – the woman is supposedly a Constitutional lawyer – when she asserted that there are no grounds in the Constitution for the right to a safe, legal abortion.  This is utter flummery.  The right of choice is grounded in the implied right to privacy of the 14^th Amendment.  Maher did not counter with the obvious comeback that if Roe can be viewed as tenuous with regard to Constitutional authority it is no more so than assuming that every gun owner qualifies as “well armed militia” under the 2^nd Amendment.  

I have long held that Coulter, Limbaugh, Alex Jones and all the other bile spewing maggots on the Right given an extra $10,000,000 a year without a penny on their income tax would cross dress, run around the Hill singing the national anthem in Farsi and end their performance by taking a leak in unison in Sarah Palin’s mobile makeup kit. 

They are dangerous.  They are cruel.  They are provocateurs and parasites praying on the paranoid, the weak-minded and the gullible like fly larvae on a rotted corpse.  What they are not are true believers.  Anymore than the gun lobby and manufactures can be seen as true believers in the rights of gun owners.  It is purely a matter of commerce.  It is the very definition of cynicism.    

Musings of an Angry Feminist

 

 

The Constitutional test known as the “undue burden” standard dates back to the 19th Century.  In one of its most recent iteration Sandra Day O’Connor gave voice to the standard - City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 462 US 416 (1983) - when she wrote: "If the particular regulation does not 'unduly burden' the fundamental right, then our evaluation of that regulation is limited to our determination that the regulation rationally relates to a legitimate state purpose." 

In plain English, when the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans upheld Texas’ monstrous abortion law they may have upheld Texas’ unconstitutional and accordingly unlawful overreach in placing an undue burden upon Texas women with regard to exercising their reproductive freedom under Roe v. Wade.  While this bloody tyranny is hashed out over the coming months by people safely removed from reality in their long black robes, flesh and blood women may well die. They will not die easy.  I have seen death by back alley butcher and death by coat hanger.

I am of the opinion that we should begin to keep morbidity and mortality statistics starting as of this date to record those deaths.  We should think about the legislators who crafted and passed the legislation, not to mention that pathetic excuse for a governor who signed it into law, as legally and morally responsible for those deaths resulting from their premeditated, unconstitutional and illegal abuse of power.  To wit: when someone dies in the commission of a crime that death can be viewed as murder.  Now I realize that these sidewinders enjoy some measure of immunity while holding office.  However, I doubt that it extends to homicide.  Let us redefine the argument women.

Dodging the Question

 

 

I am growing increasingly sick of vote whoring, influence peddling politicians lecturing the American people on morality and decency.  Our system of politics is riddled with corruption; indeed, legalized corruption is the favorite occupation of politicians from Washington, D.C. to Puget Sound and from the Great Lakes to the Texas-Mexican border.  Since Antonin Scalia and his band of Rightwing clowns on the Supreme Court, that would be Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy, decided that corporations are people and have the First Amendment Right to express political opinions with money, the Founders’ idea of a government of the people, by the people and for the people has been eroded to the point of near meaninglessness.  Thus we have a veritable hothouse of money eating plants serving in the United States Congress.

By way of example, I give you Marsha Blackburn of the Tennessee 7^th.  In hearing her incessant chatter – as one often does on cable news programs – I am continually struck by her limited brainpower and her apparent dependence upon repeating Republican talking points in a chant like fashion to forestall any objection to her prefabricated ideas.  To wit:  Ms. Blackburn appeared on CNN with Carol Costello and insisted that one impetus for Darryl Issa’s trumpeted up and expensive hearings on the Affordable Care Act rollout is based upon a suspected violation of HIPAA.  The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 or HIPAA is designed to protect patient medical information under a guarantee of privacy or confidentiality.  Ethical medical practitioners have always respected confidentiality in dealing with patient information; not so some insurance companies, unethical doctors and nurses and some hospitals.  The only question, only I say, on the ACA application that can be considered medical or medically related is, “Do you smoke?”  That question will be found on any insurance application no matter who is offering the insurance or what is being insured.

To spite Ms. Costello’s repeated attempts to get Blackburn to specify what medical information is at risk and where the ACA computer signup can be seen to be violating HIPAA, the Congresswoman just kept repeating her talking points.  Once in a while she would throw in a pseudo professional sounding computer term by way of making herself appear knowledgeable only to prove that she was simply coached by a moderately skilled techie. 

Ms. Blackburn’s concern for privacy is belied by her rabid prolife stance.  She appears to be unaware of or insensate to the fact that her sisters’ right to reproductive freedom under Roe v. Wade is grounded in the implied right to privacy inherent in the 14^th and in part the 9^th Amendments. She also is willing to set privacy aside, indeed HIPAA regulations, while advocating that employers should have the right to deny female employees access to birth control.  Marsha Blackburn appears to be in lockstep with her Republican and Tea Party colleagues in picking and choosing the parts of the law and the Constitution they will honor.  Much the same way as they select the parts of the Bible that will work best for their political advancement.  Thus, as they scream about being Christians they ignore Christ’s central tenets of love, peace and charity so they might wallowing in the fear, threat and retribution of the Old Testament.

Marsha Blackburn is but one rightwing hypocrite and misogynist who women must put on their “Time to Go” list in ’14.  This amounts to a crusade for all forward thinking people who would have their children, male and female, live healthy and free.

Buffoons and the People Who Control Them

 

 

Yesterday, I saw a video of some pompous ass calling a group of people employed by the federal government parasites.  I saw the same thing in videos from Wisconsin when angry citizens stood and called teachers parasites.  It breaks my heart now, as it did then.  My husband spent forty odd years working for the Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service.  Neither he nor his friends and colleagues, Debby, Paula or Michelle to name a few, were or are parasites. 

Anyone of them could have gone out into the private sector and earned a hell of lot more money than ever they did working for the Feds or this ungrateful nation.  However, they all shared the idea that their work was valuable and that in this most Christian of countries feeding those in need was a trust which they were proud to accept.  So while the hawks in the Pentagon and in Congress went screech along starting wars to shove our moral vision of human dignity down the world’s throat and chiseling politicians on both sides of the aisle wrote promissory notes in their campaigns to honor and protect the social contract with the most vulnerable, my husband and his colleagues did the work that brought the vision to life and made good on the promise.  

I looked at the buffoon yesterday disrespecting the government employees in front of him as if he had a right to and thought, what do you do for a living?  Can it be that you are so stupid that you don’t realize that once the public sector workers have been discredited and invalidated by that cabal of the superior rich, the Heritage Foundation, Jim DeMint, their stooges in the Tea Party and whores in Congress that they will need someone else to use as a foil in their war against anyone who isn’t one of them.  Will it be construction workers, cab drivers, food service workers, nurses; how many people before they get to you?  If you are one of those small business owners who think that you will get a seat at the table when labor is finally put in its place – do the world a favor and evolve.  You too will be swallowed up by big money, forced to go along to get along or be kicked to the curb just like your employees.

This is not about Capitalism or the Free Market.  This isn’t about freedom of any kind.  There never was a tyrant who rose to power threatening to enslave people.  They all promise freedom to the one group they have selected to play against the others. 

This is about destroying the Middle Class, breaking the back of the Working Class.  This is about a society where the rich rule and the poor serve.  So go ahead, bend your knee and kiss the master’s ring.  Follow the God of the ruling class, believe and say what you are told to, have more children than you can afford to feed and don’t expect them to have a better world than the one you have created.  Know most of all that eventually you will take your place in front of some other buffoon who will call you a parasite.  That is how it works, man.  Karma is a bitch.

When I was Young

It was 1966, and Dr. King and Bobby were still alive. My generation was becoming prematurely and politically astute. Our beloved President Kennedy was dead three years and innocence died with him. I look around me today at the filth that passes for leadership, at clowns who think public service ends at the tip of their dicks and buffoons who think a Free Press means they are free to sell their services to the highest bidder and piss the public trust down the shitter and I grow nostalgic - not for my youth but for my nation's lost soul. I wouldn't have been young at any other time.

When the Loons Run the Assylum

 

In the past government shutdowns, seventeen in all, have been done as a matter of fiscal policy.  That is to say, the two parties in the Legislative Branch would argue over proposed spending.  Obamacare, as it is ridiculously called, is not a proposition.  It is bloody black and white, settled law.

The Affordable Care Act was voted on and passed by both Houses of Congress.  The Republicans are doing a good deal of whining about the Act being passed in a partisan way.  Anyone who is tempted to consider this relevant might want to go back through the last four years and see how many GOP partisan votes have been taken in the House and the Senate to obstruct this president.  The Republicans would assert that this is the right of the opposition party.  Fair enough.  However, it is also their responsibility.  They have obstructed the creation of the very jobs they were sent to Washington to facilitate because of a need to paralysis President Obama’s agenda at every turn on ideological grounds.  It is rank hypocrisy for them accuse the other party of doing exactly what they have done to protect themselves from primary challenges on the Right; not to mention to the detriment of the Working Class in this country.

Following passage of the Affordable Care Act it was signed by President Obama.  I don’t always agree with the man, but he is President of these United States just as sure as Bush, Clinton or Reagan was president.  When the president signs a bill it is no longer a bill, but the law. 

The Affordable Care Act was then challenged in the Supreme Court; yes we still have one – sort of.  It was upheld on a straight party line vote save one.  The Chief Justice, John Roberts a Conservative and a Bush appointee, voted to uphold the law.

The law was ratified in effect by the American people in a general election.  Mr. Obama ran on his signature law.  Mr. Romney ran against it.  Mr. Obama won that contest, and not by a small majority.  What is going on today is not a legitimate debate over fiscal policy; it is legislative blackmail and should be viewed as felonious like any other form of extortion.

This foolishness about demanding that the President or members of his staff or Democrats in general give up their healthcare and sign on to the Affordable Care Act is moronic on its face.  The Affordable Care Act was designed and implemented to offer coverage to the uninsured.  People with insurance do not – I repeat do not – need to sign up for coverage under the Act.  That would be like establishing affordable, low-income housing for every homeless person in this country, then demanding that Steven Spielberg move out of his palatial home in L.A. and into that housing.  The effect of this healthcare act on the insured will be to help stop the cost shifting that often results in higher premiums when the uninsured use the Emergency Room for primary care and can’t afford to pay. Hence, the name “The Affordable Care Act.”  I realize that the Tea Party and the Republicans who are terrified of and enslaved to them aren’t the brightest bulbs on the tree, but how goddamned difficult can it be?

Finally, the polls that show most Americans disapprove of the Affordable Care Act are in the words of the legal profession, incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial in the presence of the propaganda and lies perpetrated by the Right and passively disseminated by the media.  Ask Mr. Chuck Todd about the lack of responsibility his profession has with regard to informing the American people of the truth.

The Cause

It is the great Liberal Cause to see to the most vulnerable among us; to promote social and economic justice. It is the great Liberal Charge to facilitate the Working Class; to aid the Middle Class in maintaining its strength and to help the Poor enter the Middle Class via fair wages, the right to organize and the right to fully participate in the franchise and all other rights of a free people in a free society. Liberals do not hold the aforementioned to be contingent upon race, religion, creed, gender, sexual orientation or economic standing. I have no goddamned idea what a Progressive does because I am a Liberal.

It is time for the Democratic Party to stop hiding behind catchy names and phrases. It is time to step out from behind the shadow of Clinton and Obama; to step into the legacy of FDR, JFK, LBJ, MLK, and Bobby. Enough simpering, whining, and trying to shapeshift into something the Conservative Right might approve of or accept. As my old man used to say, "Put up your dukes. I want a fight, and I'll win it."

I grow sick of moderates. The only thing sitting on the fence gets you is a sore ass.

Alienation

I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to be the President of the United States; to travel about in a secure parameter and to look at life largely from behind the backs of armed Secret Service agents.  I think that President Obama may have given us some insight into the reality faced by the leader of the free world when he quoted Abraham Lincoln in his acceptance speech last year.  “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”

By the same token, I doubt that the president can truly understand what it is like to be one of us out here watching each president, no matter who we thought he was, morph into the same man over and over again.  I believe, as my father did, that since FDR people rarely vote for a president.  We vote against the worst of two evils because they all look alike, and because we are driven to our decision by fear of the alternative and the hope that enough difference will prevail to save us – at least for a while. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a different kind of man, an unashamed Liberal who never hid from or knuckled under to the other side.  He fought and won a war, but he didn’t start it.  I have always believed that Robert Kennedy would have been such a president.  He has been dead nearly half a century now, and I still grieve for him.  I was sure then and am still convinced that on a beautiful June night in L.A. a light went out in the American people’s collective consciousness and has never been turned on again.

As we all do with age I have often noticed in reevaluating my memories that as Lillian Hellman alluded to in “Pentimento,” the original sketch, faded with time, of a person or incident is often altered by the aged oil of experience.  Not so with Bobby.  I remember him clearly and sadly, just the way I believed him to be before my idealism turned to cynicism and my faith in government turned to disgust.  Perhaps in his case my sentiment overrules my wisdom, but I think not.

It is an obsessively reoccurring question in my mind, would Bobby or anybody have made enough of a difference to avert the time warp we all seem to have entered where every day is the same day, every leader is the same leader, and every question has the same answer?  Like rats we seem to be running in place on little wheels.  We are on the old military treadmill again.  The familiar drum beat of war is hammering its message home, different but the same.  Surgical strikes, no boots on the ground, got to stop a monster from killing his own people, but it can wait until next Monday. 

The predictable and self serving distortions abound.  Ted Cruz thinks we should save the children in Assad’s Syria, but only after we disenfranchise the children who need healthcare here by defunding Obamacare.  Rand Paul seems to be confused about the relationship between the Russians and Assad’s government.  He seems to think that if Obama had been nicer to Putin, Assad might be out of power by now and the Christians would be safe from the rebels.  It is the Egyptian Christians that are having their churches burned and neither Assad nor the rebels have any presence there. John Kerry sounds a lot like Colin Powel these days with absolute certainties and irrefutable intelligence.  Same shit, different day, and around and around we go.

The mind numbing tedium of a world that sees nothing that can be done except what has always been done, is the mother of alienation.   The alienation of the American people from the government that was designed to serve us is palpable.  Yet it is a vicious cycle in that the system flourishes because we are alienated, therefore indifferent and we are indifferent because the system flourishes.

Unlike modern presidents, I think Lincoln would have understood our alienation.  That is what he was talking about; a man alienated from his reason, his power and his wisdom with no one to turn to because he is alienated from his fellows as well.  In some ways we are driven to indifference as Lincoln was driven to his knees.  He because he was trying to do a job that was nearly impossible to do.  We because we are inundated with politicians all stamped out of the same cookie press with varying degrees of intellect and eloquence. We are saturated with disinformation that reinforces a sliding scale for truth and morality based upon political or economic gain and partisan advantage.  Our options have dried up.  We live in a monochromatic wasteland where originality and imagination have been banished. 

So, I will go to my rose garden and listen for the voice of the Goddess there.  I will look for truth in the changing of the seasons; the yielding of the South Wind to the power of the North; rain’s end and snow’s beginning.  In the sameness and routine of Earth one can find subtle differences by way of reward for simply looking.  The seeking always leads to one implacable truth.  We belong to this planet and this planet belongs to us, we grow and evolve together – we are the same and there can be no alienation, no limiting of options and no artificial boundaries within which we languish in the wasteland.

 

Masterpiece

The photo just below is Mount Sopris.  She is one of the most beautiful and often photographed peaks in the world.  South of Carbondale at the northwestern end of the Elk Mountain Range she is the pride of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, the jewel in the crown of the White Mountain National Forrest.   Majestically looking down upon the confluence of the Crystal and Roaring Fork Rivers she can be hiked or climbed, but no one no matter how rich or foolish will ever go sliding down her slopes on two sticks.

As one can see from looking at Mount Sopris drenched with afternoon light, dressed in ethereal indigo and faded, watercolor silver, the Mighty Rockies have a soul.  It was this soul that we Coloradoans protected years ago when we told the Olympic Committee to go to hell – the sight of children playing games in perpetuity was not justification for inflicting, as John Denver said, “More scars upon the land.”

In the dramatic granite canyons falling away sharply from the peaks one hears the Colorado River roaring through rapids and murmuring in placid meditation as she reflects the ruddy rocks that inspired the Spaniards to give my home the name Colorado or color red.  This is the voice of the High Country; a voice I hear often calling me out of the city to realize a new truth that can only come from the Earth.

The slopes and valleys glowing gold, green and terra cotta, splashed with every blush of wildflower in the light spectrum the human eye can perceive, are the heart of the immense boulder and clay barrier dividing the high planes from the high desert.  Such a heart with the nobility and graciousness that great artists, a Mozart or Monet, can only hope to approximate with note or brush beats inside of every pine and aspen. 

One cannot be in the bosom of the Colorado Mountains, listening to the voice of rivers and touching the soul of great summits without knowing the meaning of masterpiece.  We can appreciate it; under the influence of our darker angels we can destroy it, but for all our wretched arrogance and puerile greed we can never duplicate or achieve the magnificence that is my home – the Rocky Mountains.

 

 

 

 

 

In the Presence of History

 

On my first night in Glenwood my friend who was suppose to come from Grand Junction couldn’t make it owing to a sustained cloud burst in the High Country that resulted in a mudslide along her route.  So, I found myself alone in the hotel that night. 

Hotel Colorado was built in 1893.  Constructed in the Italianate style around a lovely courtyard, many gardens and several elegant entrances, the Colorado sits adjacent to one of Glenwood’s famous hot springs.  Over the decades she has had a number of famous visitors; Presidents Taft and Hoover, Tom Mix, the Mayo Brothers and the man whose many visits the staff seems most proud of, President Theodore Roosevelt.  Indeed scatter throughout the halls and filling the coffee shop are dozens of Teddy bears which, of course, were named for our 26^th President.  His busts and pictures proliferate on almost every floor. 

Glenwood Spring’s most picturesque hotel is also said to be haunted.  Some of you who have read my earlier posts might find it interesting to know that a man is often seen on the fifth floor, near the penthouse.  A little Victorian girl, playing with a ball; a lady who looks in on male guests; the frequently reported haunting of the two suites in the bell towers; an elevator that moves up and down on its own; strange smells and sounds often reported by guests and staff, all conspired to bring CCPI Paranormal Investigations out of Grand Junctions to the Colorado in 2006.  They found highly suspicious areas of electromagnetic energy outside of rooms 551 and 325.  My friend and I stayed in 321.

I fear very little in this world or the next.  I believe that all things are part of the Goddess, and being one with Her I have no reason to fear myself.  Thus, even if I had known these things at the beginning of my trip it wouldn’t have stopped me from roaming the halls, courtyard and entrances of the old hotel throughout most of the night that I spent alone. 

I didn’t see anything.  That isn’t my gift.  I am an intuitive and an empath.  I felt things, and I heard them – not with my ear but with my intuition.  All Witches have this ability. 

I can only surmise because a Witch was on the premises a fireplace in the lobby whispered, “He stood there.”  In the courtyard the fountain murmured, “They kissed here.”  A chair on the second floor wanted me to know that the doctors had been in the room down the hall, and that, “she would have bleed to death without them.”  In the near darkness a beautiful desk just outside of the elevator on the 5^th floor furtively said, “Many strange and frightening things have happened just around the corner in 551.”  The wall leading to room 325 was shouting, “They walked past here.  You can catch them before they do it.  Look closely and perhaps you might see their shadows – but that isn’t your gift is it?”

Do our dead return to us?  Do they come to warn us of our folly or to teach about the world in which they lived years, decades, centuries before?  Is it just that they want us to know that the world is different, but still the same?  That reality is like energy, it can neither be created nor destroy.  It just changes form within predictable parameters.   Is that why we speak of a swinging pendulum gliding between polar opposites like peace and war; moral and immoral; good and bad; civil rights and disenfranchisement?  Can it all be like alive or dead – you’re either one or the other, there is no third option and the time in-between is just the swinging of the pendulum?  If that is true is there anything any of us can do about anything with the force of the pendulum, like that of life and death, out of our control?

I left Glenwood ill, not physically, but psychically.  I felt the way I had years before in circle with Crones who where Drawing Down the Moon, bringing the full force of the Goddess’ energy too close for a novice to handle.  I was overwhelmed; anxiety ridden and tormented by the idea that I hadn’t tried hard enough.  While I had learned some of it, I hadn’t learned it all and had missed something important.  I realized then that the only way to truly see the pendulum is to learn the lessons that inform its movement faster than it can move.  If we understand it, might we find a way to repeatedly send it back toward the things that promote life and not death?  Is that what the dead could be trying to tell us?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Have Never Been a Romantic

There seem to be, on any given day, a least ten thousand images of Johnny Depp staring out of elegantly made photographs looking sensual, virile and some say beautiful.  Whole news cycles are devoted to the royal uterus of the Duchess of Cambridge who seemingly produced the only live birth in the history of the human race.  Some antiquity in Rome waxes poetic about the plight of the poor – which is no more than he should do as the leader of a gigantic Christian sect – and the entire press establishment collapses in wide-eyed adoration, all crocodile tears and dewy morning; as if we don’t know that most of them are cynical corporate shills pimping for one partisan agenda or another under cover of sensationalized trivia and pseudo expertise.

Well, I have never been a romantic.  I have always been a cantankerous old curmudgeon who cannot understand value without meaning.  Accordingly, the cult of celebrity and the practice of religion born of cheap sentimentality leave me cold.  A firefighter walking out of a protest in support of his union handcuffed and in the custody of a cop who belongs to the same union, now that is beautiful.  A group of citizens showing up at a town hall meeting to raise hell with the buffoon, Ted Cruz,  as he attempts to the sell the gullible the idea that his vested interests in serving his corporate masters also serves the common good, now that is a display of regal authority.  A belief that the American People will sooner or later stand up under their flag, in true respect for their Constitution, and insist that the screamers, the wackjobs, the sleazy politicians engaged in legalize corruption, the mean spirited and the just plain stupid – both sides of the aisle – sit down and shut the hell up, now that is a faith worthy of devotion. 

The drivel, marzipan and tripe that is daily shoved our way via the media and other sources of “information” has the same affect on my consciousness as carbon monoxide would have on my respiratory system – suffocation.  In order to breathe again, I am taking a vacation at the end of this week – a welcome change of scene and a little rest.  It won’t be long.  It won’t be expensive or exotic.  I will be back soon enough – more is the pity I can hear some of you thinking.  Still this short respite is worth as much as my sanity. 

I will roll west on the California Zephyr heading into the Colorado High Country at 8:05 Friday morning.  The sun will climb the Hogback behind me dribbling lemon light into the indigo ravines of the mighty Gore Range.  In and out of lush valleys, over rocky passes, through the Moffat Tunnel and across the Great Divide we will go.  If I am very lucky somewhere between the tunnel's western mouth and the red canyon spilling into Glenwood Springs I will once again see a magnificent Mountain Lion, tawny and stealth, sitting high above the tracks on a craggy ledge.  Full of all the disgust and distain our species has earned from Nature, her green eyes will watch the silver serpent winding along its metal track.  Suddenly and smoothly stretching long in the warmth of a Rocky Mountain summer and closing her eyes, she will dismiss us from her reality without much effort.  This is beauty.  This is majesty.  This is a living liturgy, a life worthy of our deepest reverence.

Photo from https://www.google.com/search?q=mountain+lion+images+free&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=NNsWUqrgDaTr2wWu3oGwBQ&ved=0CCoQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=562