Mental Produce

Farm Pictures

2009-06-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

I've spent now a couple of weeks here and had ample time and opportunity to snap some photos of the farm as it awakes from spring into summer. Here they are, without much commentary.

Zeek, with his summer shave.

We've had a small bird hanging around near the gardens. Here it is with Zeek.

Willow...

Here's a few shots of the Great Blue Heron that's been fishing the upper pond.

An Egret, shoreline (look closely).

Taking flight.

The Geese and our lone Duck.

The Geese have been planted on this nest for at least two weeks. I think someone needs to break the news to them that these eggs aren't going to hatch.

The Hawks have two babies this year, again. Here's one of the parents staring me down as I wander around below their nest.

Bee on a chive flower.

I'll post more as the summer progresses. Miss you all.

-reese

[update]
I notice the photo's didn't size very well with the formatting of the blog. To see the full sized ones just click on them, or go to my flicker page for some of the others I didn't post.

Haiku 2.0

2009-05-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

Final instruction.

Six years - can you believe that?

Me, graduating.

(breaking the rules)

Thanks for all of your encouragement over the years, as this hasn't been an entirely enjoyable process. But, here I am. Your support has meant a lot to me.

The Rite of Spring

2009-04-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (Le sacre du printemps) stands as one of the most provocative and emotional pieces of symphonic literature of the 20th century. It's subtitled Scenes from Pagan Russia and was originally performed as a ballet depicting a pastoral landscape of dancers dressed in traditional attire, and choreographed within a ritualistic and nativistic series of scenes that tell the story of the sacrifice to the God of spring. The piece dates from the eve of WWI, 1913. Stravinsky was living in Paris and working for Serge Diaghilev, who had commissioned him to compose a series of ballets (The Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring). Soon after the war broke out, Stravinsky fled to Switzerland, and then to America.

The story goes that on the opening night in Paris, a riot broke out in the historic Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The music was so shocking and provocative that the patrons of the theater revolted against it - securing Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring to this day with a kind of honor only shared previously by Beethoven's Eroica. Part of the listeners reaction though was caused by the musical dissonance Stravinsky used, and the use of polyrhythms and polytonality; the music itself is viscerally shocking. He also wrote for certain instruments like the bassoon and french horn in an unfamiliar way, stretching them to perform at the extremes of their ability.

The whole composition is worth watching. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

I think Stravinsky could have as easily named the piece A Winters Lament, because of that very dissonance. He orchestrates the fight between geological forces of darkness and light, of winter and spring, in a way that makes you feel it in your gut. Pagan ritual was designed to aid on the side of spring, in order to help shepherd the world out of dormancy, but that struggle is something that even we in the modern world can understand. We don't sacrifice anymore, which is a good thing, but we can still resonate with the seasonal dissonance that Stravinsky was attempting to express in music, the pain and joy we all feel when the world experiences another rebirth. It is the struggle that makes us human, vulnerable, and interdependent.
---

Toture Memos

2009-04-16T23:21:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration today released a series of four torture memos (dating from August 1, 2002 through May 30, 2005). The FOIA and ACLU brought a lawsuit against the administration to press their being made public, which the administration complied with today. The memos are authored by Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC (Office of Legal Council), and Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, in communication with General Council of the CIA.

This move by President Obama to respect the rule of law is encouraging - though I think the Democrats generally are dragging their feet in regards to legal action. AG Eric Holder and Congress each have the power to investigate the illegal activity of the previous administration, but out of some sense of comity or bygones they have chosen a path of wait and see; they want to know that the public will is behind them. Of course, public will is a morphing leprechaun that promises gold but can never be pinned down. So good luck following the rainbow - better really that on this issue the administration sticks with black and white, law and the breaking of it.

In the late 90s the Republicans impeached a democratically elected president for playing around in the oval office. Republicans have nothing if not temerity - that they could impeach for an affair and let GWB get away with war crimes is staggering. But our respect for the rule of law (legal, not parochial) is why this victory by the FOIA and ACLU in forcing the memo's public is important, because those that authorized the unlawful torture of detainees need to be investigated and brought to justice. We are a country of laws, not a country of men.

The Daily Dish provides a roundup of some of the initial reaction. Glen Greenwald is as always, an essential read.

These memos are now becoming available, and do appear to be almost entirely unredacted. They are unbelievably ugly and grotesque and conclusively demonstrate the sadistic criminality that consumed our government.

And this snip highlighted by TPM:

Sleep deprivation may be used. You have indicated that your purpose in using this technique is to reduce the individual's ability to think on his feet and, through the discomfort associated with lack of sleep, to motivate him to cooperate. The effect of such sleep deprivation will generally remit after one or two nights of uninterrupted sleep. You have informed us that your research has revealed that, in rare instances, some individuals who are already predisposed to psychological problems may experience abnormal reactions to sleep deprivation. Even in those cases, however, reactions abate after the individual is permitted to sleep. Moreover, personnel with medical training are available to and will intervene in the unlikely event of an abnormal reaction. You have orally informed us that you would not deprive Zubaydah of sleep for more than eleven days at a time and that you have previously kept him awake for 72 hours, from which no mental or physical harm resulted. (our itals)

(My Bold)

11 days.

The Obama administration has been fiercely pragmatic in their approach to governance - though they are willing to capitulate at necessary moments, this being one of them. They hold all the cards right now; they're in a position of great strength when it comes to repairing the damage of the last 40 years. Inch by inch, I guess. Glaciers are not receded in a single day, nor societies moved in one election cycle.

Do yourself a favor and read through some of the links. We all need to be reminded what happens when we elect bad leaders.

(Cross posted at CUP)

Convergence

2009-03-24T21:34:00.000-07:00

Matter: Energy: Time

Book Review

2009-03-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

Timothy Egan: The Worst Hard Time

Behold, I have smitten my hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made…
- Ezekiel 22:13

Timothy Egan’s dramatic telling of the rise and fall of the high plains farmer is a tremendous historical narrative, a cautionary tale encouraging us to guard against speculation and greed; unchecked growth can destroy more than just peoples lives, it can ruin whole ecosystems. Egan’s masterful work follows the rapid settling of the Great Plains grassland (Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, western Kansas and parts of Colorado and New Mexico) following the slaughtering of its natural inhabitants, the Bison, and the forced relocation of the Comanche. Encouraged by the government through the Homesteading Act, farmers flocked to the region to grab a section of the vast prairie. As Egan notes, “in 1914, the peak year for homesteads in the twentieth century – 53,000 claims [were] made throughout the Great Plains.”(1)

Egan follows the stories of a few of these homesteaders over the course of the following decades, and slowly paints a picture of how the infamous “dusters” came to be. Motivated by the price of wheat and the invention of the tractor, a farmer could make a handsome fortune cropping hard red winter wheat during the wet decade of the twenties. A price-fixed commodities market during and shortly after WWI fueled “sod busters” with plows to churn up the native grasses that had held the soil down on that wind swept plateau for millennia. “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses,”(2) the Federal Bureau of Soils proclaimed, and it was treated as such. Millions of acres were turned upside down in a frenzy of farming unlike anything the country had yet seen. All parties were complicit in breathing more air into the massive bubble. The government motivated the rampant speculation while the farmer was all too happy to plant when he was looking forward to four-dollar wheat prices. Technology greased the wheels of progress, literally. By providing the farmer with a tractor, the burgeoning prairie yeoman was able to convert a few hundred acres, with much less work, into a viable and cost effective business venture. What was missing in the equation were the rain records of the previous hundred years. “If the farmers of the High Plains were laying the foundation for a time bomb that would shatter the natural world, any voices that implied such a thing were muted.”(3) Any except the Native Americans who were deprived of their land, and the cowboys who were forced to watch the spectacle that slowly robbed them of the best grass feed range in the world. A few voices spoke up, but none were loud enough to get the attention of the free-marketers and government interests.

The wheat dream wouldn’t last, and the bubble was primed to pop. “On the giddy ride up, there had been no cop, no regulator to enforce basic rules of an American economy that had become the world’s biggest casino.”(4) Indeed, the depression that arrived in the early thirties was now global, and wheat prices fell to historic lows. Farmers on the High Plains responded by churning over even more grassland in an attempt to boost profit by raising production. It didn’t work; “every five bushels of wheat brought in from the fields was another dollar taken out of the farmer’s pocket.”(5) The situation, as related by Egan, was just beginning to get desperate. The suitcase farmers were the first to leave, abandoning their sections fallowed and naked beneath the harsh sun and wicked wind. Adding insult to injury, the moisture that fed the speculators of the previous decade, vanished; “the rains left and did not come back for nearly eight years.”(6)

The “dirty thirties” was a time of immense desperation for the farmer of the Great Plains. Egan relates how some were so impoverished during that decade that they subsisted on pickled tumbleweed and canned rabbit, a truly depressing thought. But, it was a bed that they had made, and the staunchest among them insisted they stay and sleep in it. But, none were prepared for the dusters that awaited them. During the dry years of the thirties, they hunkered down in their dugouts and rickety shacks, waiting out the furry that nature was pelting them with. From North Dakota south to the Texas panhandle, a vast swath of exposed soil lay helpless against the torrential winds. The drought meant the farmers couldn’t sustain a crop, so there was nothing to be done to remedy the situation. As the turned soil tumbled away before their eyes, they could only wait and pray for rain.

Rarely does nature exact so immediate a payment for having wronged her. Rarely do we see the karmic effects of our behavior toward the land manifest years later, instead of decades or centuries later. “Of all the countries of the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of the land of any race of people barbaric or civilized,” Bennett, Roosevelt's new Soil Czar, said in a speech at the start of the dust storms. What was happening, he said, was ‘sinister,’ a symptom of ‘our stupendous ignorance.’”(7) Indeed, that sentiment characterized the attitude of the new Roosevelt administration toward righting the wrong Americans had committed against the land. But, again, there was only so much that could be done while the drought and dusters fought tooth and nail against every living thing on the High Plains.

Egan concludes his unquenchable narrative of the dust bowl years with Roosevelt’s visit to the southern plains. On July 11, 1938 the president’s train arrived in Amarillo. On the same day, remarkably enough, it rained. The new Democratic administration had established the beginning of a new policy toward the plains, and at the time of Roosevelt’s visit, operation dust bowl was in full effect. The area would be restored to grasslands, as nature intended, with small strips of farms sandwiched between bands of trees. It would work to mitigate the damage, but as Egan points out the land has never fully recovered. Government oversight, it was realized, is necessary to curb our more ignorant intentions. Soil conservation districts replaced the majority of private farms, and the grasslands slowly returned, and some questionably sustainable dry farming continues. The buffalo are gone, the Comanche reservationed and still denied their rightful land by treaty; some hard lessons were learned, and are still in need of learning. As evidenced by the events of the past few months, I'd say that is most likely the case.

If your going to read one book this month, make it this one. The parallels between our present financial crisis and the events that led to the great depression are worth considering. Though I have neglected to include it in my review, Egan's work deals furtively with the 1930s financial crisis that surrounded all these events. History shows traditional democratic reaction to social crisis, i.e. Roosevelt's response to crisis following Hoover's non-response. And Obama's response, following the Bush era of irresponsibility. Funny how history repeats itself.

___________________

Footnotes

(1) Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time (New York: Mariner Books, 2006), 36.
(2) Ibid, 51.
(3) Ibid, 43.
(4) Ibid, 84.
(5) Ibid, 102.
(6) Ibid.
(7) Ibid, 125.

Haiku thread

2009-02-13T18:31:00.000-08:00

Here's my bit for the day.

WTF! Really?
Triskaidekaphobia?
Fear of one and three?

Offer your 5-7-5 brevity in the comment section; I'm sure we would all like to hear each others poetic short stories.

2009-01-09T11:05:00.000-08:00

Tiko and i both really appreciate this beautiful quilt that tam made for us. i thought maybe some of you didn't get a chance to see it since she mailed it off before christmas. thanks tam. i love you.

a few bits from christmas on the farm.

2009-01-03T21:18:00.000-08:00

Here are some farm Christmas moments. Missed you Reese and Myo.

Arnold Toynbee

2009-01-02T14:12:00.000-08:00

Few modern historians enjoy similar levels of praise and scrutiny toward their work as the late Arnold Toynbee (1888-1975). Born in London to an affluent, well-educated family, Toynbee took at a young age to the study of classical culture and history. He was smart, diligent and above all embodied that function of all great thinkers which allows them to see a bit deeper and further than most. Toynbee’s main contribution to historiography is his magnum opus, a three-and-a-half-million-word A Study of History (1934-1961) wherein he lays out a philosophical justification and almost parochial reasoning for the rise and fall of civilizations. Agree with Toynbee or not, his History was perhaps the single most important piece of historical narrative to come out of the twentieth century.

Toynbee attended Balliol College, Oxford, “where he pursued ‘an old-fashioned education in Greek and Latin classics.’”(1) Shortly after graduating (1911), Toynbee took employment with the British Archaeological School in Athens. For the next 13 years Toynbee’s successes landed him numerous chairs and appointments, even attending a British delegation to the Paris Peace conference following WWI. His accomplishments led to connections, and in 1924 Toynbee “began 33 years as Director of Studies at Chatham House and produced the voluminous Survey of International Affairs…”(2) The position was well suited to Toynbee’s style and current interests, allowing him to research a wide variety of political and cultural trends, which he no doubt applied toward his History. His annual reports were in themselves extraordinary feats of erudition.

As a historian, Toynbee’s ideas grew naturally out the earlier work of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West. However, unlike Spengler, Toynbee “did not regard the death of civilization as inevitable…[and] unlike Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces”(3) Toynbee rejected the idea that history is simply one damn thing after another, and in his History set out to prove a Universal thesis of parallel progress across “twenty-one distinct civilizations…genesis, growth, breakdown, disintegration, [and] reconstruction in [a] new synthesis...”(4) In a profession of pragmatists, he had faith - in a world of increasing secularism, he saw deeper religious themes and overarching narratives. His History is both praised and challenged precisely because that, again, almost parochial feel. Indeed, Toynbee has been characterized as the “most attacked historian in history.”(5)

Toynbee diverged from the growing academic consensus toward the secularization of history. His History is the antithesis to Marx’s thesis, Capital; God, not labor markets and economics, directed human affairs. But his ideas of God were neither theologically nor ideologically entrenched; his concept of God would be more like that of Spinoza’s (pantheist), as opposed to Augustine’s (personal and revelatory). Still, his approach was parochial, eclectic, and unusual in the current climate of historiography, and indeed would be wielded as the singular weapon by many his detractors.

Marguerite Howe’s article in The Nation (Oct. 1973) challenges Toynbee’s overarching theme of memesis/nemesis; “the choice of words betrays the Christian and classical biases that deal a coup de grace to Toynbee’s already overtaxed empiricism, indeed, to his very reasoning powers. Cause and effect begin to look suspiciously like sin and retribution…most readers will have parted company with Toynbee long before he concludes that some miraculous spiritual improvement will yet ‘reprieve’ our failing Western civilization.”(6)

Although his detractors were numerous, they by and large “agreed on the sweep of his vision and the earnestness of his convictions.”(7) He wanted to find meaning and purpose to this long parade of events called human history, and he succeeded in that. “In a curious way Toynbee seemed to recapitulate almost all the phases of Western historiography. He was a positivist seeking scientific laws; he was a historicist finding a plan and pattern in the past…[and] he was also an exemplarist finding in history lessons that might be applied” to the present. But, as Conkin points out, his masterpiece was “as much a dead end as Finnegans Wake.”(8) There was nowhere to go from the house Toynbee had built; it was a stranded island of faith in a sea of skeptics.

Toynbee was forced to edit his opus later in life, and published a shortened version for the casual reader. Though particulars of the work changed, and the edges softened a bit, it remained very much the same in its fundamental conclusions. He believed, and believed strongly that “we are now moving into a chapter in human history in which our choice is going to be, not between a whole world and a shredded-up world, but between one world and no world. I believe that the human race is going to choose life and good, not death and evil.”(9) Bold conclusions for a modern historian - a profession that treats belief in God more like fable than scripture. Toynbee will continue to stir controversy, as his life and work are very much a manifestation of that long tradition which aims to make sense of history, as opposed to just recording it.

Footnotes

(1) Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, vo. 36, s.v. Toynbee, Arnold, 430.
(2) Kenneth Winetrout, Arnold Toynbee: The Ecumenical Vision (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975), 14.
(3) The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed., s.v. “Toynbee, Arnold.”
(4) Contemporary Authors, Arnold Toynbee, 430.
(5) Paul K. Conkin and Roland N. Stromberg, The History and Theory of History (Wheeling: Forum Press, 1989), 101.
(6) Marguerite Howe, “Two Prophets of the Absent God,” The Nation, 315.
(7) Alden Whitman, “Arnold Toynbee, Who Charted Civilizations’ Rise and Fall, Dies,” New York Times, 23 October 1975, p. 1.
(8) Conkin, Heritage and Challenge, 102.
(9) Whitman, “Arnold Toynbee,” New York Times.

© 2009 D. Reese Zollinger

The idea behind this essay was to write a bio in three pages double spaced. Brevity is a bitch, I must admit. How does one sum up the life of anyone in three pages? The point being that encyclopedia articles do it all the time, so that is part of the lesson. Toynbee is an interesting case study in modern historians enamored with the impact of "God" on human affairs - and his Study is brilliant albeit long-winded attempt to prove that phenomenon.

I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions, but you have to respect the brilliance.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T10:56:00.001-08:00

Good morning, welcome to '09. Here's a hope that dreams conjured over the last year come to fruition this one. Cheers.

-reese

I've put up one of my essay's from this past semester over at EO. Here's a link if your feeling in the reading mood.

Mars Rover!

2008-12-18T16:29:00.000-08:00

Mars Rover Christmas Message.

The occult world of commerce: maxwell and whitney

2008-10-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

Bruce and I were talking about the economy and I tried to remember the information provided here. The first fifteen minutes is a good summary of what I was trying to explain to him. -rr

The Occult World of Commerce - Jordan Maxwell and Whitney @ Yahoo! Video

quote from the campaign... (its a gem)

2008-09-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

Obama "and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process," McCain said, adding: "Now is not the time to fix the blame; it's time to fix the problem."

the president speaks to the nation 9/24/08

2008-09-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

hillary has to be deferential to obama.
the clintons have to walk the high road.
all the other roads have been destroyed
by the lies and deceptions of the bush
and the richard cheney;
there is only one road they did not destroy,
one road to a future of any consequence;
the high road.

we,
with our ignorance,
don't deserve the right
to walk down a road a certain one would take us down.
but,
we can borrow against our good credit on the moral market -
and allow ourselves, like the great heroes of old,
and the fly wheel to gain momentum on our foes -
who is our foe?

the market yells an artistic scream when it loses from itself the monies of its providential experiments. there is only one real question here.

the president and his secretary want seven hundred billion dollars.
granted, the dollar isn't what it used to be,
but they want it for a reason we either will or will not accept.
regardless of this fact, congress, will or will not pass the monies to the interested parties.
the burning bush spoke to me,
and the others on the screens we were watching,
he said, and i would quote but i don't remember his words exactly, so drastically did they hit me when they where so desperately hurled across the country, seemingly directly toward me...?!
the bush with his chain-ee,
asked for his monies
and said we would make it back in profits.
(as though his cry of wolf was a business opportunity he wanted to present to the american people.)

afterword....

the good gwb looked good with his red tie,
he had that "presidential look", people are always so apt to talk about,
there were his fingernails, so groomed and pintailed to his remarks.
like a good father to a nation, he was king of his video shot.
he had the sincerity of a finished letter,
already written.

final thoughts:

one third of the nation wants to borrow seven hundred billion dollars to rescue corporate businesses who had not the ability or hiring power to save themselves from their present predicament.

one third of the nation does not see it in their interests to borrow seven hundred billion dollars from the chinese and other foreign investors, so that they can turn around and lend those monies to corporate interests who should have know better.

one third of the nation is either undecided or uninformed as to the seven hundred billion dollars the congress is asking the american people to borrow from what ever lender out there will take that bet.

babushka

2008-09-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

hey everyone...just wanted to let you all know that we are back in california. right now renzo is squealing at the top of his lungs...so this picture is a good visual for you to imagine. we are still sorting through the many pictures taken over the summer, there are many cute ones to post for the next year.
trying to get back into the rhythym of my life...baby, art, house, baby, walk, eat, baby, poop. i will try to stay current for y'all and let you know our daily musings.

the impassant result of thinking

2008-09-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

the impassant result of thinking

sometimes i have a thought which doesn't come to me in a formal sentence contained with words.
it comes to me in a form which begins in a place before words, then is continued by words when the words are abandoned.
they are formed from a pulse which begins then ends before it begins,
then after it ends the rest of it comes, as one would see it as the seconds pass.
it is as if i know it before it is remembered;

the thought is at once a beacon, then the absence of all light,
as though it takes an infinite abandon to know the simplest truth.
the light is not light, it is only light as it dragged across the canvas of that which is completely abandoned.
i would sail across the sea of that distenuation, as a ship which has no compass;
as a ship sailing i would wait for a beacon.
when the beacon shines, then i would know: then also i would not know.

below the stars the wind sings and is not alone in that singing.
the other singing comes simply from belowness;
it is not a shallow hymn.
the words hear themselves then are spoken;
and the spoken words are like a veil to that which is meant.
the sea swells and envelopes the words;
the sand is the spongy form,
that is imprinted by the swelling.

i wish it weren't so blatantly revealed in the stark absence from meaning present in the lone horizon of abundance.
the course grit hurtles absence and uncomfort toward an opening letter,
then a gushing froth and full some quaint resilience.
there is no meaning, only resistance then the abandonment of resistance.
when there is complete abandon,
the absence of meaning is clear, like a lake where there is no water;
there is no ripple: time passes without knowing.

as the memory of it ceases to linger i also cease to remember.
like water over present rocks, the dream passes and leaves me impressed,
like the sand which passes under ocean.
there is something which remains, like that which lingers after fear,
i am here waiting to see the full thing which is revealed.
while i wait the ocean passes over the sand.

wedding duds

2008-06-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

we were wondering what ren would wear for the upcoming wedding day...and decided to go formal. this is a preview of what he will look like (minus the top hat of course). check out his glamour shot here

Reunion Shots

2008-06-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

The News: in the form of a poem (6/22/08)

2008-06-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

I
casualties are so casual
as they are so taken.
as they are taken from us,
those souls with casual ties;
as for those souls,
we weep; are not casually.

II
the captured soldier
re sides to an enemy island;
must be there.
'i have the body'
said he, to the court.'and
i have a right to show the body'
.

III
that old swamp
drains today through a cheap white funnel
into the engine chamber.
liquid carbon is uploaded
to a video screen, a teleprompter.
the silky white words drift
upward toward the heaven.

IV
at last the green backs
are at last barack's.
red states seethe in purple malaise
blue states are not so blue
as they once were blue,
when horror filled there days.

rrzollinger

flight of the conchords

2008-05-30T10:20:00.001-07:00

if you havent already, you have to check out this new show from HBO...Flight of the Conchords.
its the office meets napolean dynamite meets seinfeld. its hilarious.
www.hbo.com/conchords/about/index.html

reunion

2008-05-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

ren is waiting for his peeps

2008-05-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

keith and crew have been working countless hours in the last few weeks to get ready for the upcoming events here on the site...(including ours). just wanted to show pictures of the progress and for those who havent been here...a preview. cant wait to see you all.
ren waving
party lanterns
the fire pit area
general splendor...

swmming hole and beach
mulched paths for tents
pinic area and tiki torches

the new shed...concession stand and future bathrooms

why shouldn't i vote for _______?

2008-05-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

if i were to predict something,
it would be something obvious.
it would be something you might predict.

senator clinton will suspend her campaign in the near future.
barack obama, the imminent nominee, will be the democratic candidate, for now.
mr. mccain might win the election.

and then there were three.
i would ask myself to give one good reason why i would not vote for any one of the three.
one good reason why not.

why wouldn't you vote for one of three?

i will give you mine.

i wouldn't vote for hillary because of the obvious reasons, as mccain.
i wouldn't vote for barack also because of the obvious reasons.

ha ha

seriously, i wouldn't vote for obama because he summarily denounced some things that the reverend wright said, which he shouldn't have denounced without exploring exactly what it was that the reverend said which offended him, and saying what it was about said things, which couldn't be true. bla bla

i wouldn't vote for hillary for the same reason i wouldn't vote for john. they both cannot share their allegiance both with me and that other thing they are aligned with.

what is the best reason you could give me why i shouldn't vote for your candidate?

2008-05-11T21:22:00.000-07:00

Sent this to Mom for Mothers Day.

Suffrage (my first sonnet)

2008-05-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

The meadowlark inside her throat, so long
She offers yellow to a morning wind
A jester-warble while the sun begins
Its rise above the sound of barking dogs

Her beak drawn back, irreverent grin she’ll stalk
The smallest chuckle hidden in the grass
Like insects wet from sprinklers’ morning laps
She’ll gargle dawn, go shameless in her walk

Why does she laugh when mourning dove will cry?
A milk-toned coo released from slender flute
Toward epiphany such bruises held
No golden bellow here, their pantomime

Like one and one make something out of two
This morning’s songs will mingle in the field

good yellow, pale

2008-05-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

good yellow, pale

there is much of she
in that yellow rhododendron bloom.
look down into the garden bed,
see how every bloom
lays upon the twilight air.
every time i see that shade of yellow,
i see the soft pedal;
you would wish to see it,
wish to see how every flower,
co-insides with her aesthetic meaning.
each is subtle soft white skin,
each holds the shade;
the golden light of middle spring butterfly wing,
tucks and seals the hue
as it is made.

the stolen light, sifts
this time on the rippled fingers of her touch.
a tender mouth,
has electric softeners,
it molds and preys, at times.
the courtyard greyii, senicio
two toned, a kiss
waits upon its own,
has a two level lift.
with the hybrid sunshine,
the four oceans at my feet.
wait upon you,
with your soul, my hand upon your cheek,
eyes meet, soul hardens,
as the humid air unsweats
the precious pod to perfect ripeness.

the river water makes down the cress,
lush, whole, seeded with the spicy avolander.
the heart of darkness, shed a light on.
the whole system in the breast
the sweet smell of breath,
and the way she would writhe, and moan;
how would angels sing of god
or men at any less a loan.

the good native snowberries,
with their flat and hovering leaves,
flatter the wind,
hold their shape in that refined logic
which holds together simple to immaculate.
the whole course of she to he
is causeway, byway,
the shoulder on the road would grow a certain grass,
or her subtle pass.
how wholesome and how intricate.

the soft subtle rhododendron flower,
yellow, full of hope.
the course slow,
day upon night,
it slumbers, nourished;
it knows that admiration,
the seer would entreat.
the chickadee or finch,
has a certain liker,
as she continues with her kind;
knows a certain nest,
a good yellow, pale.
he has been there with his mate.
they circulate and chatter,
then fly their bodies close, sail
as that which makes the fire hot,
in the sorrow of that scented mourning dove.
you or that sweet flower,
she or the woman that you love.

how are the pine needles situated?
do they fall with the wind's harbored holdouts?
as the tea leaves linger on the bottom of your bowl,
the angels of your destiny would
say the obvious first:
oh, she is beauty.
and truth.
and also love.
the seven stars of that large ladel
shine, have upon their rim,
the beginning light form, brimming of,
as good, yellow, pale, dim,.
your watership is loft in time,
and hailing railroad lights are shining.
the soft trail moon, wanes,
and is aloft upon the light
of that yellow rhododendron,
with her flowers,
and their shade.

rrzollinger
C 2008

blackbeard's blackbird

2008-05-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

first image represents my corny nature...second is from a sketch and painting i am working on...i thought to style it graphically. it turned out nice...and once i have a printer i can add it to the list of things to print. both were colored in photoshop...yeah i think i am getting better.

Some Old Ones

2008-05-06T21:06:00.001-07:00

Birthday and Colt

2008-05-05T15:02:00.000-07:00

Dad's birthday was Sunday and we celebrated with the infamous trifle. We also have two new colts, but just one picture right now.

As a Word (redux)

2008-04-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

As a word.
(a love poem)

Words do not well describe sorrow.
but words are the only,
the sole seed yet to sow.
The circumference belayed in inset, is
hollowed out,
as devastated
as though a via:
you is gone,
i has been made.

The charm smells to lilac,
and soft sponge is turf
at certain forest pansy;
Like the finch and lute in rhyme.
They do not hear, nor
do not see once the timid jester, wane.
They foreshadow self,
and uncertain do not sit,
nor do they learn to play.
As one self proclaimed,
the called bird would 'lieve,
and would be 'lieved.

But the dense grass, is hopeful,
as burden on life,
as the constant up turn
as baton wing:
the singing of fall song bird,
collapses as that sound to 'lance.
No interruption nor continuous animus;
a la viva sinco royale':
oh, the five regal exclamations!

The dense snow mound spirea,
as all the lush things of summer
in their floral bloom,
like the certain one in love,
unsteady to remain,
radiates again.

I hear the sound.
It is a quiet and not without hearing:
The crisp morning fog
rises o'er olympics,
then glides down to puget sound;
the distant silent quarter,
the icy mid march snow
makes glide the stiff glass.
wretched,
in debt, i is beholden to a dream.
It swirls,
down by blueberry bog,
and strawberry field.

There is woman,
is vision,
is most true friend.
She can hold in her heart the whole love.
She rises out of life.
There is figurine, and mirror,
as she is multiplied.

Imagine a star rock.

There are mountain passes where the aspen quake
where the plates tectonic,
shift and leave things different.

But some things stay the same.
where is i sorrow?
where is i pain.
something i took,
something you granted.
the rainbow gathers algebraically
toned to pastoral brilliance.
i would say the truth outright;
i would languish.

i would say in she,
perfect, like a rainbow, half;
A circle of complete inflection.
though one could wrap a sound, or scent,
in tones of she to modes which quiver lips,
and whole bodies writhe in agonies,
as fog which veils nothing.
the truth bare and revealed, is
the solid azalea row,
two diagonal, three straight a cross.

Hips on rose and alium seed,
the stiff smell of garlic and the sound,
butterfly bushes blowing in the breeze,
toast with fried egg,
a good stiff coffee been as roast.

i falters.

An audacity can not hope.
one cannot recompense to that which is not seen.
such sits and waits,
having hung my head.
again the stiff mountain wind wails.
wait by the creek for water to pass;
while the water passes,
meditates,
it discovers she, as though she were for i,
and even water cannot falter,
as tragedy were here beheld first.

the humans marvel in there able ties.
the cryptic modes,
and the ways of corn fields rowed;
when i was young and she was young,
i wondered where she was,
and now i knows.

rrzollinger
c. 2008

2008-04-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

sad news follows;

Paul Bruce
husband to Julie Goodman
father to Kanisha Goodman-Bruce
Ashanti Goodman- Bruce
Imani Goodman-Bruce

Died in a motorcycle accident Monday April 14, 2008 at 4:00am in Boise, Idaho.
He was hit at twilight on the 13th by a driver who couldn't see him because of the glare.
500 people showed up to his funeral on Friday April 25, 2008 at 11:00pm.
40 or more from out of state.

Paul was a good friend to me.
he was a good husband,
an excellent father.
he was 41 years old.
i spent some of my time in Boise thinking about Ryan,
another friend, brother, son we lost too early.
it reminded me to hold dear those who i still am graced with to love.
you.
see you all in June.
safe travels.

Frank Herbert: Arrakis and Oil

2008-04-11T18:16:00.000-07:00

In this rare interview, Herbert spells out the metaphor of water as oil (which also parallels the greater metaphor in Dune - the scarcity of resource, melange specifically). Having read the series twice, and remembering specifically the connection Herbert states as..."he who controls the spice, controls the universe," I find it compelling and prescient that he placed so much emphasis on Arrakis - and in that light it reads similar to Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard.

He who controls Arrakis controls the spice. He who controls the spice, controls the universe. Sounds a bit like the Neocon attempt at global hegemony, eh? Arrakis as Iraq - and the spice as Oil...and the Padishah Emperor as the tragic ignorance of empire. Perhaps Herbert was only imagining possible futures, but it seems in hindsight that he imagined very well.

-reese

salt lake city

2008-03-24T20:05:00.000-07:00

Pompous Mormon symmetry. Everywhere marble: flawless, funereal (the Capitol, the organ in the Visitor Center.) Yet a Los-Angelic modernity, too - all the requisite gadgetry for a minimalist, extraterrestrial comfort. The Christ-topped dome (all the Christs here are copied from Thorwaldsen's and look like Bjorn Borg) straight out of Close Encounters: religion and special effects. In fact the whole city has the transparency and supernatural, otherworldly cleanness of a thing from outer space. A symmetrical, luminous, overpowering abstraction. at every intersection in the Tabernacle area - all mabel and roses, and evangelical marketing - and electronic cuckoo-clock sings out: such Puritan obsessiveness is astonishing in this heat, in the heart of the desert, alongside this leaden lake, its waters also hyperreal from sheer density of salt. and, beyond the lake, the Great Salt Lake Desert, where they had to invent the speed of prototype cars to cope with the absolute horizontality . . . But the city itself is like a jewel, with its purity of air and its plunging urban vistas more breathtaking even than those of Los Angeles. What stunning brilliance, what modern veracity these Mormons show, these rich bankers, musicians, international genealogists, polygamists ( the Empire State in New York has something of this same funeral Puritanism raised to the nth power). It is the capitalist, transsexual pride of a people of mutants that gives the city its magic, equal and opposite to that of Las Vegas, that great Whore on the other side of the desert.

- bu [n]n Y

sailing the rum

2008-03-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

some photo's for yarr!

KO on Hillary

2008-03-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

Seems KO backs up my previous post. Good to see someone in the MSM sees the madness gripping the Clinton campaign.

And then this from Hillary. I dare anyone to untangle the twisted logic riddling these words...

"If Barack Obama cannot reverse his downward spiral with a big win in Pennsylvania, he cannot possibly be competitive against John McCain in November."

Downward spiral? Pot, meet kettle.

-reese

Demo c rats

2008-03-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

From the first uttered word humans have been communicating via language, developing that perfect combination between sound, pitch and idea. Think of any word. What images flash through your mind? How many ideas shoot like branches off that first idea? How many words build themselves off of the first word, like a mind game of evolutionary scrabble?

Language conveys nearly everything, we communicate with words and sounds and are equally understood. We learn to love through words, but we also learn to hate through words. We probe the fringes of society through language, but do any of us fully understand it?

If you look at the title of the post, you'll find demo, and you'll find rats. The C in the middle is like a greater-than sign, which suggests that rats are greater than demo. It's language, and we manipulate it as we like (though the above example can be rejected as being entirely fallacious). The alphabet can be manipulated for the betterment of the individual, or used to their detriment. Not all language is equal, and some language is decisively detrimental.

Now, politics circa 2008. Language - be it republican or democratic - is so guarded and calculated that the lines between manufacturing results and campaigning for votes becomes blurred. Manufacturing language through scientific algorithms tested with focus groups and then leaked to drudge does not equate a dialog with the American people. Language is being manipulated before our very eyes; on CNN and FAUX, and to a lesser extent MSNBC, language is being abused. Notice the commentator vs journalist coup on cable television. Language - on right wing radio, left wing radio (yea, I'm talking to you Air America), is divisive and partisan. Truth is spoken occasionally, but not often does an individual bridge the exclusive caverns of both camps.

Language. It is Hillary's crutch. She can't say anything that will encourage republicans to join her, and the more she talks the less democrats want to vote for her. She has said recently that McCain is more qualified to be president than Obama, handing the opposition live fuel and then laughing it off as silly and reinforcing the necessity to stick to the issues. Ferraro, a supporter of Clinton, said recently that the only reason Obama is where he is is because of his skin color (yea, Geraldine, everyone understands the overwhelming advantage African Americans have in the US). Wow, the power of words. The Clinton camp seem to be using the sub-genius strategy of ninja wordsmiths. Words are important - and when you use words which represent the opposite of what you say, your either deceiving us or yourself - so which is it?

Words matter. Clinton cannot continuously shout 'wolf' with impunity. Her surrogates can't decry his advantage because of race and at the same time expect to remain above the fray of racism. For Clinton to repeatedly maintain that she and McCain were qualified to be president because of their outstanding service to this country, but Barack only offered a speech in 2003 and thus has yet to cross the threshold of commander in chief, is patently absurd. Words matter. We are all judged by them, given grace or pardon by them. Perhaps we forgot words are actions, that our words preview our actions.

Language matters most when it remains consistent, a thing nearly forgotten in politics. Barack is consistent in his argument, and doesn't descend beneath the fray except to defend himself. Watch the exchange, watch when they say one thing but exhibit another. McCain was vehemently against torture but has now acquiesced to the administration, and seems to think no one remembers his previous position.

Language is an action. Remember that, and judge the candidates upon the entirety of their character. None of them are perfect, but then we aren't electing a savior or messiah. We can only know them by their actions and words (and even then can be deceived - you have to be shrewd), and the most trustworthy now appears to be Barack Obama. His language and action appear positive and consistent. Words do that, they convey hope or fear depending upon their users intention. In the Clinton campaign, fear has surpassed hope, and she is betting that America will be convinced.

Fear is a 3am phone call. Fear is Barack's middle name - Hussein. Fear is loosing. Fear manifests into strategy, and strategy into words. Clinton's words are bowing like serfs beneath her anxiety. Words are our barometer to truth or falsehood. When they are misused, purposely or not, it is found out. Clinton has repeatedly misused words in order to gain momentum - a kind of audacity of fear.

Yes, words matter. People declare their intentions by their words, and then set out in an effort to accomplish those intentions. Remember we are trapped in a war of aggression upon another nation, unprovoked, which is costing us 12 Billion dollars a month to sustain, and remember that words and actions brought Hillary Clinton to vote for that war, and to not since reject it, and to pronounce words that suggest Obama had only those poor judgments (actions) and speeches (words) to oppose the inevitable debacle. Yes, words and actions matter.

By a raise of hands, how many of us support the war in Iraq? Exactly. Words matter, votes matter, actions matter. How can we allow those who contributed to the problem to be in charge of the solution? Really, I wonder. Even Einstein wondered...

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Lets be honest. Words lead to actions. Hillary voted for the K-L bill, for the Iraqi war, supported NAFTA and accepted millions of dollars in exchange for killing her universal healthcare plan during Bill's administration. She has been on the boards of both Walmart and Monsanto (two ethically challenged corporations), been involved in shady dealings in Arkansas, been husband to the man who oversaw the demoralization of the modern democratic party (sorry, guilt by association is a weak argument); and who will do nearly anything to attain power, even if it means imploding the party she is running to lead.

My analysis isn't based on race or gender, but on actions and words. Because of that, the rational choice is Obama. Can you make a more convincing argument?

-reese

Feeling blue in a red state

2008-03-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

I came across this post on dailykos. It is the vote-confession of a Mormon conservative living in Salt Lake City who has decided to vote for Barack Obama.

"I may have grown up thinking conservativism was grand and Democrats were evil, but now I know better, and that is mainly due to Barack. That is why he is so important."

Of all the red states in the US, Utah has got to be the reddest. Despite the emergence of the neoconservative movement, Utah has consistently voted Republican in recent decades, tending it seems to give the pro-war wing of the Republican party justification even in light of such monumental failures as the Iraqi war and, perhaps more troubling, the housing-economic meltdown manifesting exponentially.

Has political affiliation become the equivalent of religious identity? Is it written in stone or otherwise canonized that we should respect one political party? Why are political ideas synonymous with theological beliefs, and why do red states remain red, and blue states blue? It makes you question, reading the above account - that someone could reconcile belief with something his community has suggested is against their belief...but is it really? Is having a country insured with proper health care against anyones belief system?

A couple of years ago I took a class on the history of Christianity. I learned a few lessons, small tokens of gold that now allow me to spend my way through this argument. Christians were for the first 200-300 years practicing communists. They shared everything, and if you wanted to join their esoteric movement, their community, you would have to give everything to the community, including you financial net worth (or most of it). That is why Marcion became such a pivotal figure in early Christian history, because he was able to buy a voice for his important ideas by giving his inherited fortune of 200,000 sesterces (to the credit of Marcion, though he was not allowed to stay within the community, many of his ideas were incorporated into later Christian theology. His insistence on a limited canon encouraged the church to set limits on what could, and perhaps more importantly, what could not be included within the official canon, what has today become known as the New Testament). Certainly the church changed after that, after Constantine. They became less a share-based movement and more an individual-based movement.

Christianity has had a long and politically bizarre history, especially seeing its effects on the politics in Utah circa 2008. It was at various times an agent of the state, the king, the emperor, the pope, the revolutionary, the conservative. Take your pick, Christianity has been politically used to justify an enormous swath of belief, and is being presently used to justify a war of aggression on another nation, in spite of its ill effects on the aggressor and aggressed. Tree, meet fruit.

Obama and Clinton represent a more egalitarian approach to society - democrats in general today carry the torch for the poor, the needy, the sick and hungry. The democrats are fighting for universal health care, and tax cuts for the poor, not the rich. This approach seems to more represent the early days of christianity - where all people were taken care of, and treated equal - than to the neoconservative approach that suggests capitalism is the answer to everything, that the free hand of the market will keep all above the rising waters of political and economic disparity. An early Christian would say when my friend and neighbor is hungry, I share my food. Wouldn't Christ himself, the benefactor of Christianity, tell his followers to give before you get, to make certain that all are treated with a modicum of decency.

Most western democracies have embraced some form of universal health care as a societal necessity. Here in America, the place of the discovery of general anesthesia - perhaps the greatest discovery in the history of science and medicine - we still are in the dark ages of social progress. A rising tide raises all ships. Responsible social democracies, like Norway and Sweden, should be our example in how to proceed. Yes, they are taxed more than us, but in exchange the decency of every individual is preserved. Isn't that more important than personal success?

So back to the story of the Mormon in SLC who is voting for Obama. I have to ask, why aren't more Mormons voting for a better life for everyone, instead of better life for only a few. The Limbaugh's and Hannity's of the world are trying to make you think that conservatism-republicanism is the skin on a bleached skeleton, that theres meat where there is only bone. They sell war as conservative, spending as saving. It is Orwell's nightmare revived, and animated. Doublespeaking people toward their own financial and political ruin. Let me ask a few questions:

Does spending 10+ Billion in Iraq per month equate financial conservatism.?

Does nation building seem politically conservative?

Does enacting the biggest spying operation ever know in the US appear conservative?

Does lying US toward war follow a conservative philosophy?

Does torture now equate Christian conservatism?

Christians in America are being robbed by a two-bit thief. I really wonder what the title conservative has come to mean. I think I know what Christian means, and it is not the evangelical preachers who have enlightened me, it is the words of their great savior. I've read the New Testament; I don't remember any wars of aggression. I don't remember a footnote accompanying the old testament commandment thou shalt not kill (even though, paradoxically, there was plenty of killing to be had in the OT). I think, according to the very beginnings of Christianity, that early Christianity represented community and responsibility, a philosophy that emphasized the needs of everyone other than yourself.

But we are a needy culture, and an individualistic country. It is one of our memes, our social proclivities. America, the land of the free. But as we are learning, nobody is free unless we all are free. You can't have a country that flat out denies health care to its poorest while with the other cheek claims to be free. You can't justify agricultural slaves and claim to be a nation of free people. You can't justify paying CEO's 20 Million dollars a year and continually reject raising the minimum wage beyond 5.5 dollars (as the republicans have done). It is not healthy, nor is it Christian, it is not free.

So I understand this one Mormon's journey toward the Democratic party. It is simple. It is an understanding that community is as important as individual, politics and religion aside. Simple. It is a Christian/rational idea, it is humanitarian, it is reasonable and well-meaning. My question to all Utah Mormons is this. What theology allows you to continually justify your subservience to the Republican party? Is it healthy? Have you looked at the long term consequences of supporting war and aggression? Difficult questions, all of which the diarist considered in making his choice. My hope is we will all make this choice for our own self-interest, which, interestingly I think, is nothing more than the needs of the community at large, be they rich or poor. Again, a rising tide raises all boats. Investment in society is our one way out of the dark room Bush has lured us in to. It is the humanitarian approach, I hope everyone sees that.

There is nothing wrong with states rights, or personal property rights (juices in the spinal fluid of modern conservatism), as long as they contribute to the betterment of everyone. Perhaps that is the lesson. A kind of do unto others for the 21st century. Heres hoping we do just that - reject war and useless military spending in exchange for better social programs. Isn't it time we surpass political differences and finally elect a candidate who will take care of the poor- the health needs of all in the US? I think that is the fundamental question.

-reese

Afterthought by Emerson:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

I'm amazed

2008-03-07T05:59:00.000-08:00

I am always amazed at the mental Produce that comes from each of you...I don't know where in our genes that comes from...maybe just a spark and then you blow and that spark becomes a fire...mom

A History of Evil

2008-03-06T19:55:00.000-08:00

Animated...

-reese

Week in History (March 2 - 8)

2008-03-02T13:17:00.000-08:00

March 2, 1863: Congress authorizes standardization of RR tracks at 4 feet 8.5 inches. Why did congress allocate the dimensions at that particular width? Some speculation culled off the internets (as to the veracity of the following claims, it may be said that they originate from the web and are thus by there very nature prone to academic skepticism, but the reading is too much fun to leave out in this post. As well, when the answer has anything to do with the booster rockets at Thiokol, it immediately becomes interesting....for reasons only a few of us understand.)

"The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads. Whydid the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did “they”' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? Roman war chariots first made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels and wagons. Since the chariots were made for, or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder which horse's rear came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war-horses. And now, the twist to the story. There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. Thiokol makes the SRBs at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horse’s behinds. So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a horse's ass!”

March 2, 1931: Mikhail Gorbachev was born. An hour with Gorbachev and Charlie Rose produced a few interesting moments, though it's hard to find anything much in Mikhail that equates the Reganesque revolutions here in the US.. Perhaps he was nothing more than a doppleganger, a sinsiter form of bilocation parodying the Regan administration. Umm, yea. But this might further elucidate my point....Regan's Evil Empire speech addressed to the 41st annual convention to the National Association of Evangelicals, on March 8, 1983.

March 3, 1934: John Dillinger escaped from the county jail in Crown Point, Indiana.

On March 3, 1934, Dillinger cowed the guards with what he claimed later was a wooden gun he had whittled. He forced them to open the door to his cell, then grabbed two machine guns, locked up the guards and several trustees, and fled.

A documentary on Snake Eyes, the illusive bandit, can be found here.

March 3, 1959: Ira Glass is born. In this thread-bare interview, he confesses his vegetarianism as caused by a chicken stalker, or more precisely, a poultry advocate. Or find him here, as an advocate for the art of storytelling.

March 4, 1925: Inaugural Address of Calvin Coolidge. Here is the text, and here, for the first time on radio, is the Presidential Inauguration. Per the verse...

These results have not occurred by mere chance. They have been secured by a constant and enlightened effort marked by many sacrifices and extending over many generations. We can not continue these brilliant successes in the future, unless we continue to learn from the past. It is necessary to keep the former experiences of our country both at home and abroad continually before us, if we are to have any science of government. If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations. We must realize that human nature is about the most constant thing in the universe and that the essentials of human relationship do not change. We must frequently take our bearings from these fixed stars of our political firmament if we expect to hold a true course. If we examine carefully what we have done, we can determine the more accurately what we can do.

March 5, 1897: Soong May-ling is born, and a year later, Zhou Enlai. Two hero's of the Chinese revolution, though one ended up in Taiwan, while the other stayed on the mainland. Madame Chiang is represented here (without sound), while Zhou is shown announcing the four modernizations.

March 6, 1926: The boy behind the global economy is born, leading to the knighting of post-modern madness. This piece is pro bono for the likes of him.

March 7, 321: Constantine decreed (March 7, 321) dies Solis — day of the sun, "Sunday" — as the Roman day of rest.

March 8, 1917: Senate agrees on rules of cloture:

On March 8, 1917, in a specially called session of the 65th Congress, the Senate agreed to a rule that essentially preserved its tradition of unlimited debate. The rule required a two-thirds majority to end debate and permitted each member to speak for an additional hour after that before voting on final passage. Over the next 46 years, the Senate managed to invoke cloture on only five occasions.

March 8, 1817. Constitution drafted by an organization that chose to call themselves "New York Stock & Exchange Board," later shortening the name to the New York Stock Exchange.

The first central location of the NYSE was a room rented for $200 a month in 1817 located at 40 Wall Street. But the volume of stocks traded had increased sixfold in the years between 1896 and 1901 and a larger space was required to conduct business in the expanding marketplace.[1] Eight New York City architects were invited to participate in a design competition for a new building and the Exchange selected the neoclassic design from architect George B. Post. Demolition of the existing building at 10 Broad Street and the adjacent lots started on 10 May 1901.

If only they had some prescience to foresee the balloon-housing market of 2008. But alas, 2008 will exceed anyones guess, I presume....

-reese

A Question For The Candidates

2008-02-24T12:27:00.000-08:00

I Have A Question For The Candidates

Mrs. Clinton, you have your credentials laid out before you, as though your life were a red carpet on which you have always walked. I do not mean to say you have not laboriously worked to put yourself in a position to have the substantial credentials you bring to the table. I do not doubt that you would preside over America with confidence and beneficence; what I do doubt however is the ultimate commitment you have to yourself, and, your commitment to the people who support your self; the people who's needs you'll pursue and meet before you engage to lead America forward in what you deem to be a positive direction. The reason I doubt this is simple: you are the Clinton Presidency Revised. There is no way politically, to separate you from your husband, just as, like it or not, there is no way to separate Bush Jr. from Bush Sr.
I also think that your approach is to repair the unfixable and trashable part of America, whereas Barack's is to make the best of (to idealize) the America which we have left from the Presidential Plunderers of the Past. I can't not think of you and your husband as plunderers, if for no other reason than this: you had political capital to fight Bush Jr. in 2002-2003 and your sorry ass went along: this says more about your judgement than anything else you have done: you are committed to the perpetuity of the American government more than you are committed to the real needs of the American People.
I can't say whether Barack has or doesn't have this commitment, because I am bewildered as his message rises out from himself idealistic enough to make up for his lack of experience: i mention this because we can't know what Obama will bring: we know what he wants to bring and by all accounts it seems he knows the dangers of "just wanting to do good, in a world which wants to be mostly bad."
You say you are committed to the American People, but your record, from my perspective, shows otherwise. Maybe, despite this, you still have good intentions. If you could put yourself in my place for a moment and see how I doubt you and your husband's sincerity, and then return to your place, and then think about what I am asking of you, (for only one vote out of 100,000,000),... I don't really have a question for you, because I know there is nothing you could say at this point to win over my trust.
You do have one thing going for you: you have the added responsibility of the First Female Presidency.

My question for Mr. Obama: You too have capitalized on your credentials: you put forward your vote against the War in Iraq as the quintessential vote you have made in the Senate. You also play to the American people's need for change in the wake of the sea of plunderers in fleet around Washington D.C., as they have not ceased to continue taking untoward advantage of the American people. You claim the slogan as your own: "Change we can believe in." I doubt little your intent, as you seek the office of the Presidency: you have even said over and over again that the change we need is beyond your power to complete: you need the Congress, the Courts and the People at your back.
"First, do no harm" is the slogan I can't help but consciously stream, as I think about the many times in Human History when some one or some group have gone out to help someone or some group, only to leave those people worse off in the end despite an attempt to help them.
You admit your organizational skills are wanting when it comes to "keeping your desk clean." The American Presidency is more than ideas and more than slogans, more than even your desire to do good. How well are you insulated from the D.C. scum? Are you going to go to Washington and rely on D.C. types to keep you organized? How do we know your Iraq war vote wasn't a political calculation just in the way we we know Mrs. Clinton's vote was a political calculation? If you cannot even keep your desk clean and your life organized without help from others, how can you convince enough Americans that you both know what is good for them, and, know that your attempts to provide it for them are going to work in the way you want them to? I am painfully aware that your advisers and helpers carry more power with you than I am comfortable with. Bill Clinton's thoughts seemed to be generated from himself, and yours more so than the other candidates and even the current occupant for that matter. Are you smart enough to know when the advice of your advisers has risen above your advisers' self interest? Also, who needs you to survive and flourish, and will go to every length to make sure you survive and flourish? (Mr. Bush's survival is made and realized by those corporate, international and secret interests, who have more at stake in Bush surviving, than even Mr. Bush himself).
I don't really have a question for you Mr. Obama either, because your words bewilder me with hope, as I venture to make a rational decision on the present matter.

Mr. McCain, the most true thing I can say about you is: you are a mirage. I look at your face and I see George Bush and a hundred more years of war. You stand there audaciously like a statue and co invent yourself as though you were authentic. It is clear to me that that is the last thing you are: authentic. Ironically, this is what you are most known for. Who are you so mad at John? Why do I get the feeling someone has done you wrong?
I know you are a military man. You endured pains for what you would deem service to our country. Perhaps you are scowling at me as I detest the way in which you went to Viet Nam and militarized your ideal upon another country. I can respect someone who defends his family on his own soil. I cannot respect a man who would aggress another person's family and soil, on behalf of his own occupation and ideal. You continually play the sympathy card as the only red carpet you could find leading to the American Presidency. I am sorry you were tortured by your captors. But you dropped bombs on their children...
I agree, there is no room for torture in a civilized society. But what is worse, being tortured and living to tell about it, or being collateral damage from a war of aggression and being dead? You claim there is a threat to America by radical islamic extremists. You claim we went to war in Iraq to protect Americans from this threat. You claim it may take one hundred more years of the occupation of the sovereign state of Iraq. War is such a blunt instrument. You will claim to use this instrument as one of the tools of your Presidency. I will say what I see: I see a mad man running for president. How do you ride the sympathy train all the way to the White house? especially when as far as I can tell, your being tortured pales in comparison to the torture you have already doled out? Be careful of the beam in your own eye before you start pointing out motes in other people's eyes. The sympathy you would have from me is no red carpet...
Please, now, tell me how naive I am again.

Oh, Mr. Nader, How deep is your concern? Your argument is laid out before you as profound as a bed of red coals is hot. Like nature's rush to fill a vacuum, the sound of your footfalls seem to echo every four years. The elephant and the donkey fill the room you want to enter because they built the room only big enough for two. So Ralph, as you wrap your head around the problems which America faces, are you smart enough to know whether you are smart enough to build an argument assailable to citizens, democratic and republican, which will do more than just convince partisans to adopt that argument, but will also motivate them and arm them with the power to rise out of their need to vote their own interests? Will your penumbra reward them with enough of a dialectic to convince those they know how your argument against the parties brings their long term interests to bear?

baby magus

2008-02-19T13:39:00.000-08:00

we just hurdled past most of the concerns for lorenzo...jaundice...(he really enjoyed all of those sun baths) and has by now gained a full pound. i thought to post a few more pics and direct you all to www.hzlinger.smugmug.com for the rest.
holli

The Gift of the Magi

2008-02-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

Increases of pure animal
Soft hips expanding by grace
You bore down
In a sieve
Toward stop
And you stayed at stop
For such a long time
Your groans grist
Your moaning lush

We waited the length
Of your pain
Not without blood
In our palms
How you died
Between contractions
Our continent
On all fours in the tub
Gurgling water
Pushing twilight
Trolling the underworld
Like a crustacean
As we stood upright
Against your mirror
And you gave us frankincense
As the vernix-white baby
Rushed our cavern
Like crows
Into hindsight
Leaving us changed

Lorenzo Mage Ayala-Zollinger

2008-02-11T14:31:00.000-08:00

Born at 1:45 am on February 9 2008 @ 4.5 pounds. Holli bore him 100% natural. She is our hero.

Mental Production #112

2008-02-04T20:47:00.001-08:00

who would you vote for?

the principle is simple: vote.

cast your ballet to the box and hope the box remembers your cast.

this is my question:

am I to vote for the candidate who represents my interests?

or

should I vote for the candidate who represents the best interests of the group?

only a fool would assume that his interests and the interests of the group are always the same, so....

does it ever happen that the my personal interests are best served by disregarding my own personal interests and voting in favor of the best interests of the group?

i would argue: every time.

rr

p.s. the argument only works if your grandchildren are "your personal interests." (the group will have more say toward their interests than you ever will).

afterword: vote for the best interests of the group even if your personal interests aren't always served. this is how you can vote for a democrat or john mccain if you are opposed to a woman's right to choose if she would have her child aborted.

(who would i vote for? i will comment in the appropriate arena.)

The Most Insulated Wins

2008-02-01T19:01:00.000-08:00

John McCain wants to lose.
He has no intention of winning.
His only intention is to ensure a Democratic President;
as was John Kerry's intention in 2004, for Rebublicans.

We are being played.
You wanted to know what I thought.
I said the Republican nominee would be John McCain.
I knew this because I could see that he was Insulated,
as Bush was insulated by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz.

Hillary Clinton is also Insulated.

Is Barack Obama Insulated?

Why was not the twenty year curse on American Presidents enabled on the Presidency of GWB?

Whose interests are so wrapped up in Hillary Clinton's Presidency that they will see to it that she lives to see those interests manifested?

I worry about Barack Obama.
Who out there will risk everything up to their own life to maintain Barack Obama?
Who's interests require: President Barack Obama?
Are the American People's Interests worth anything in this matter?
How naiive are you?

It will be Hillary v. McCain.

Or,:

McCain will win the Presidency.
Will his V.P. be Insulated?

Be Seeing You.

P.S. Willard Mittt Romney Is Insulated.

The next CEO of USA,

2008-01-30T18:26:00.000-08:00

Who is Willard Mitt Romney?
Who is he really?
Who was supposed to rescue the constitution as it was foretold to be hanging from a thread and much in need of rescuing?
What is a prophecy?
"In 2012 the world will end and Willard Mitt Romney will be President of the United States," some have thought, or, "someone else will be President", some have thought.

Oh' John McCain, "how do you blast an asteroid from its trajectory?"
How is it that stiff conservatives and liberals alike are tainted by you and Mr. Lieberman?

Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton has experience.

If Barack Obama had a son, where would he live?
Little Barack Arkansas.
What is Barack Obama's favorite vegetable?
Barackolli.
What is Barack Obama's favorite genre of music?
Either Baroque or Barock and Roll.

How many Presidential candidates does it take to screw in a light bulb?

lookin at ya from the bungalow

2008-01-29T19:15:00.000-08:00

how do you write a whistle?

mexico fever

2008-01-29T18:24:00.000-08:00

the cuban cigars/tequila reprimands my all-confusing-head-basket

skin turned minority to majority in less time then an oil change

i embraced the lugubrious none doing, while accounting all my measures and expenditures

the veracious sun gives too much! so i sacrifice melatonin and consume 3 mouth fulls of sea water (which cleans out my odoriferous chasm),

next time you see the sun look straight at it until you see the violent silence.

-m

Beauty of Big Fields

2008-01-27T11:14:00.000-08:00

These shots are of the Big Field farm. I find it interesting how perfect some of the tracks are, whoever was driving was paying close attention, or it was the GPS doing the work. You'll notice the small spring in the lower part of the shot, and the road just below that. The area pictured here is of the land to the northwest of the small canyon as your just arriving at the farm.

-Reese

No Comment

2008-01-13T16:35:00.001-08:00

From Bizarro, h/t to c&l.

Reese

micros_copy

2008-01-09T19:49:00.000-08:00

this specimen was found in a mushroom with two weeks of decomposition.

the music extends well beyond the clip, but please try to watch/listen.

mitchell

When What Should Appear

2008-01-08T21:09:00.001-08:00

A carol
Dickens
Not even elves
Could have timed
December homeless
Between pine

No miniature
No reindeer
Just flash of rind
Through Sistine fingers
Longhand-yellow
In snow

Then obvious
Pull of blue jeans’
Slow
Re-arranged
Relief

President Bush

2008-01-07T15:18:00.000-08:00

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

2008-01-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

This is a better close up of the last commissioned piece I did. I thought to add a little more information about the man Vitruvius...I detailed the work to fit his life rather than the very famous Leonardo Da Vinci image.
Holli

Here is some more information about him from wikipedia...

Vitruvius is most famous for asserting in his book De architectura that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of firmitas, utilitas, venustas — that is, it must be strong or durable, useful, and beautiful. According to Vitruvius, architecture is an imitation of nature. As birds and bees built their nests, so humans constructed housing from natural materials, that gave them shelter against the elements. When perfecting this art of building, the ancient Greek invented the architectural orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. It gave them a sense of proportion, culminating in understanding the proportions of the greatest work of art: the human body. This led Vitruvius in defining his Vitruvian Man, as drawn magnificently by Leonardo da Vinci: the human body inscribed in the circle and the square (the fundamental geometric patterns of the cosmic order).

Vitruvius is sometimes loosely referred to as the first architect, but it is more accurate to describe him as the first Roman architect to have written surviving records of his field. He himself cites older but less complete works. He was less an original thinker or creative intellect than a codifier of existing architectural practice. It should also be noted that Vitruvius had a much wider scope than modern architects. Roman architects practised a wide variety of disciplines; in modern terms, they could be described as being engineers, architects, landscape architects, artists, and craftsmen combined. Etymologically the word architect derives from Greek words meaning 'master' and 'builder'. The first of the Ten Books deals with many subjects which now come within the scope of landscape architecture.

The Four Horsemen - Hour 1

2007-12-16T14:13:00.000-08:00

"On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion."

Hour 1 of the discussion between the four great proponents of rationalism/atheism is brilliant and illuminating, mental candy indeed. Link to Dawkins site here, where you can find hour two of the discussion.

Enjoy!

Reese

Neil deGrasse...beware

2007-12-10T19:45:00.000-08:00

Partial video of the 2006 Beyond Belief conference presented by the Science Network. Neil deGrasse's entire speech can be found by following the link above, or by simply clicking here. The most recent conference (dubbed enlightenment 2.0), held just a couple of weeks ago, is now online, and after having subjected myself to the numerous and dense hours of lectures I am compelled to suggest you do the same. As a theme for the 2007 conference, it was suggested this quote from Ibn al-Haytham, an 11th century Muslim mathematician, be used...

Truth is sought for itself—Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency...

Reese

Big Brother Checking In

2007-12-03T12:38:00.000-08:00

Jenna Bush

2007-11-30T19:56:00.000-08:00

What is in a name and a family. A girl whose dad happens to be a president. Not a great one at that. But there I was, in the green room, talking to Bush's daughter and setting her up for her presentation. She had spiked heels and looked, although dressed well, a little disheveled and harried. But kind and warm. Young. Politic. Greased.

So, I hugged the body whose dad spins tricks with the world. What does it feel like? One touch of me to her is not romantic, or special--it is something closer to historical. When one human being here, physically hugs the moving world, well, something changes.

I think her message is over simplistic, but she had light and warmth. It is always something, whether to the left or to the right, to exchange body-talk with history.

New Mexico tourism ad

2007-11-30T10:47:00.000-08:00

Another reason why I live in the Land of Enchantment (which other state in the US would run an ad like this). Though I'm not sure it encourages tourism, the brain-sucking aliens and all.

Reese

Maimonides and Western Medicine

2007-11-27T22:01:00.000-08:00

Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) was born in Cordova, Spain, the heart of the intellectual and economic Umayyad state known as Andalusia. In the twelfth-century, Cordova was dramatically different than the rest of Europe; religion was less a reason for intolerance than an inspiration for craft and art, leading to a kind of renaissance unseen elsewhere in Europe for another century. It was in this environment that Maimonides was educated and trained, not only in the Torah (as precursor to becoming a Rabbi), but also in the art of medicine. The reason behind this training was purely practical, as “until rather late in the Middle Ages, rabbis were not paid for their services…for that reason, Maimonides like any other rabbi had to adopt a profession in the world, and like many intellectually gifted medieval rabbis he became a physician.” (1)

The state of western medicine in the late 12th century was one of stasis. “In an age when the voice of authority was the most significant influence in determining belief, philosophy, and the understanding of nature, the persisting ghost of a single man loomed over medical thought like an overpowering colossus. That man was the second-century C.E. Greek physician Galen of Pergamon.” (2) To a large extent Galen’s death left medicine in a 1500-year state of perpetual doldrums. The great Arab thinker Avicenna (980-1037) changed that somewhat; his work The Canon was perhaps the most important medical writing to come out of the Arab medical system in the middle ages, and became the standard textual work in medical schools of Europe until the 18th century. But despite even his towering achievements, Galenic medicine was persistent juggernaut that stymied even the most brilliant minds.

Did Maimonides change this? Did he challenge the supremacy of Galen? To a certain extent yes, but even Moses was unwilling to completely tap the empirical keg when confronted with the sheer volume and historical march of Galen’s work. Sherwin B. Nuland’s biography Maimonides looks at this very question, of whether the Rabbi deserves membership in the pantheon of western physicians…"What was the contemporary state of “the theory and practice of medicine” in the twelfth century, and how was it affected by Moses’s teachings and his daily round of patient care? Did he add to the general sum of knowledge? Did he make any new discoveries? At his death, were the “theory and practice” of medicine of “the time” significantly different than they might have been had he never lived? And most important for posterity, did he leave a heritage that succeeding generations of physicians could look to as a model of the grand tradition of their art and science?" (3)

To be succinct, the purpose of this short essay is to bring some clarity to those questions. I intend to explore three areas in which Maimonides could be considered to have contributed greatly to the continuance and evolution of the western medical tradition. This essay will explore those three contributions, and make a case for their relevance and importance to the present state of the Great Art. Those three areas of influence are: First, a challenge and clarification of the work of Galen; second, an insistence to the separation of religion and medicine; and third, a prescient understanding of the necessity of preventative medicine. It is for the last that he is considered truly brilliant, and deserving of the title The Prince of Physicians.

Though Maimonides is less known for his work as a physician than he is for his commentary on the Torah and his Guide to the Perplexed, he remains a highly respected author and thinker even into the modern age, and it could be said that his work “Mishneh Torah, the fourteen volume systematization of all Jewish law from Scripture to his own day” remains unsurpassed. It has been suggested that to get Judaism right, one must first get Maimonides translation right, because it was he who honed and clarified the disparate parts of his faith. Though that was separate from his work in the field of medicine, I begin with it for the reason that it was the same brilliance that found him a leader in Judaic thought that underlies his work in medicine.

Maimonides challenged Galen generally through most of his medical work, but specifically in his Medical Aphorisms, a collection of 25 treatises on healing and medicine within which were approximately “1,500 passages culled mainly from Galen, with critical comments, providing the physician with a handy desk manual, reducing Galen’s 129 books to one.” (4) The heading under the 25th Treatise (last in the book) suggests an alternate title for the last chapter, “which may be called ‘The Holy War for Independent Scientific Investigation Against Galen.” (5) It is an ominous way to begin a chapter, and precludes any thought that the content will spill praises toward Galenic thinking. Indeed, “in medicine, as in other fields, Maimonides strived to reduce complexity to system and order. He chafed under Galen’s prolixity and reduced the Roman physician’s massive literary output to a single book of extracts that a physician could carry around in his pocket.”(6) Thus a clear picture arises of Maimonides challenging the status quo. Part of his influence on the western medical tradition derives from this simplification and clarification, and his bold challenges against the supremacy of Galenic thought. Maimonides contests the “arrogant presumption” of Galen, writing that he “considers himself more important than he really is.” (7) The following passage perhaps elucidates the point at hand, written by Maimonides himself.

"If anyone declares to you that he has actual proof from his own experiences, of something which he requires for the confirmation of his theory, even though he be considered a man of great authority, truthfulness, earnest words and morality, yet just because he is anxious for you to believe his theory, you should hesitate. Do not allow your mind to be swayed by the “novelties” which he tells you, but look well into his theory and his belief, just as you should do concerning the things which he declares that he has seen; look into the matter without letting yourself be easily persuaded. And this is true whether the person is notable or one of the people. For a strong will may lead a man to speak erringly—especially in disputation. I offer this in order to awaken your interest in the statements of that wise men, that prince, Galen." (8)

It is this challenge of Galen, the juggernaut of western medicine, which sets apart Maimonides as truly unique. This uniqueness sprang from an independence of thought, and an insistence on rational inquiry and historical skepticism. “Maimonides was among the first to point to the feet of clay that would eventually crumble sufficiently to bring down the entire icon.” (9) Maimonides challenged Galen, and got away with it.

Though Maimonides was a Talmudic Rabbi, better known for his religious contributions than his scientific ones, his “medical writings contain no references to Talmudic medicine, nor is there a hint of magic, superstition, or astrology, widespread at the time in medical practice.” (10) The rabbi was a natural scientist when it came to the understanding and treatment of disease. It could be said, in a sense, that he was Aristotelian, that he implicitly understood the process of scientific rationality. “In principle, Maimonides divorced medicine and science from religion,” (11) which brings me to my second point.

Certainly there was much need for this in the medieval age, a time when the monks were the practitioners of medicine (though this was the case primarily in Europe). There is a story of Maimonides, when, after becoming a physician at the court of Sultan az-Sahir Ghazi (son of the great Saladin), he prescribed a medical treatment (wine and music) that went against Islamic law. When asked why he would recommend this, his answer falls in line with his rigid insistence on maintaining the independence of medical authority: “The physician, qua physician, must advocate a beneficial regime regardless of the religious law, and the patient has the option to accept or decline. If the physician does not prescribe what is medically beneficial, he deceives by not offering his true counsel.” (12)

At a time when the lines of demarcation between scientific inquiry and religion were at best obscured, Maimonides provided the physician with ammunition to defend his profession. In contrast, St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a famous Christian cleric and near contemporary of Maimonides, “asserted that ‘to consult physicians and take medicines befits not religion and is contrary to purity’ – and it was a popular gibe that ubi tre physici, dui athei (where there are three doctors, there are two atheists).” (13) Of course this was hyperbole from the most dogmatic of churchmen, but it gives an understanding of the confused nature of medical thought at the time, and the necessity of the separation Maimonides insisted on. To be fair, Maimonides (being first and foremost a man of god) argued that the reason for good health was ultimately desired not for an end in and of itself, but for the great praise of the almighty. One cannot praise God in a state of disease and sickness. He commented in the Mishneh Torah that “since, when the body is healthy and sound one directs oneself toward the ways of the Lord—it being impossible to understand or know anything of the knowledge of the Creator when one is sick—it is obligatory on man to avoid things which are detrimental to the body and seek out things which fortify it.” (14) This though is not a negation of separation or an affront to the authority of medical practitioners, but a conclusion as to why one would want to maintain optimal health. As such, it does not discount his original insistence on the independent authority of physicians. This then is the second great offering of Maimonides to the history and evolution of western medicine, manifested through his insistence on the supremacy of physicians in all things medical.

The third contribution of Maimonides to western medical tradition is perhaps the most important, and certainly is what he is most remembered for (within medical history). It is a cogent and surprisingly modern idea, though in his time perhaps not so much. It is a simple concept, lacking in his day, of the necessity of preventive medicine. One needs look no further than his Aphorisms for support of this revolutionary idea. In the seventeenth treatise, titled Aphorisms Pertaining to General Rules of Health, he lays out the argument. “Immobility is as great a detriment to the maintenance of health as activity is of benefit.” (15) He continues by adding “one’s attention should first focus on the maintenance of natural [body] warmth, before anything else. That which best insures this is [the performance of] moderate physical exercise, which is good both for the body and soul (soma and psyche)”. (16) He prescribes for the elderly a daily regimen of walking, something that has an uncannily modern ring to it. Likewise, Maimonides posits the benefits of massage and touch as a means of stimulating the innate ‘heat’ of the body, insofar as it rejuvenates the body naturally.

As part of his preventive medical techniques, Maimonides also intuited modern medical procedure by noting the beneficial effects of positive thinking, leading to an early form of psychosomatic medicine. Whether certain amulets or trinkets were anathema to his practice was often overlooked when the needs of the patient were at hand. He was “committed to the thesis of the mind’s effect on the body, [and] it was permissible to discard even the most cherished of medical convictions in the interest of a patient’s psychological needs.” (17) Case in point was the mental stability of the person during medical treatment, in which case amulets and other such pagan paraphernalia were permissible “lest the mind of the patient be to greatly disturbed.” (18) It was this flexibility that served Maimonides in his work as a physician, and gained him the trust and respect of his peers.

Though it may be said that Maimonides didn’t necessarily advance any of these three points to a degree that they were ultimately reality changing for western culture, he represents a marker in the road to modern medical techniques. Perhaps none of his work was truly original, but he, and to a lesser extent his Arabic counterparts al-Rhazi and Avicenna, represented a slow chipping away at the immense façade that had come to be understood as Humoral Theory. Each in their own way advanced the art, each chiseled another chip from the concrete theories of Hippocrates and Galen. As for Maimonides it may be said, “of the several aspects of the Ramban’s genius, the one that was surely most appreciated by readers in his time and later was his extraordinary ability to separate wheat from chaff and to collect, classify, and correlate needed information into a helpful, compact, and easily remembered whole.” (19) This perhaps more than any other thing made Moses a genius, a polymath not unlike Galen.

In considering the above conclusion, it can also be stated that it wasn’t Maimonides’ original intent to advance the art of medical practitioners. Certainly his most profound work was in the area of Judaic law and Talmudic revision, and even to a certain extent the formation and dissemination of what is known today as the Kabbalah. Nevertheless, his work in the court of Saladin, and of course his few medical writings, earned him a hallowed place in the annals of the western medical profession. He exhibited a prescient mind; his work at separating religious and medical law, his challenging Galen, and finally his work in the field of preventative medicine, all combined exhibit an intuition of the direction and future of western medicine. As suggested above, he is more a beacon in the road than an individual who diverted the traffic, but that fact doesn’t make his work less special. He is remembered today primarily for his Guide to the Perplexed, but that is perhaps only because he is less studied as a pioneer in medicine than as a giant in Judaism.

**********

Footnotes:

Neuhaus, Richard John, ed., The Second One Thousand Years. Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001. p. 16.
Nuland, Sherwin B., Maimonides. New York: Random House, 2005. p. 155.
Ibid.
Seeskin, Kennith. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 39
Rosner, Fred. Muntner, Suessman. Eds. The Medical Aphorisms of Moses Maimonides. New York: Bloch Publishing Company. p. 171
Seeskin, Kennith. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 39
Nuland, Sherwin B., Maimonides. New York: Random House, 2005. p. 167
Id. at 168
Id. at 169
Seeskin, Kennith. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 39
Id. at 40
Ibid.
Porter, Roy. The Greatest Benefit To Mankind. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1997. p. 110
Nuland, Sherwin B., Maimonides. New York: Random House, 2005. p. 176
Rosner, Fred. Muntner, Suessman. Eds. The Medical Aphorisms of Moses Maimonides. New York: Bloch Publishing Company. p 41, Volume II
Id. at 42
Nuland, Sherwin B., Maimonides. New York: Random House, 2005. p. 179
Ibid.
Id. at 173

D. Reese Zollinger, 2007
(fair use of above material)

Happy slogging!

Revolution in Modern China

2007-11-27T21:08:00.000-08:00

Unlike the French, American, or Bolshevik revolutions, the Chinese Communist Revolution spanned nearly 3 generations. It is difficult to pin an exact date on the movement’s beginnings, but it is often considered to be with the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1920s. Yet, although the party had been formally established, it developed very little inertia until Mao Zedong led the “Long March” to Yen’an in 1934-35. A formal ending to the revolution is also hard to exact, yet may be placed in the 1970s with the death of Mao and the arrest of the “Gang of Four.” But these dates, it must be understood, act as bookends to a series of revolutions rather than points of origin and termination to a single one. In that light, it cannot be argued that this was a single event, nor did it involve a single approach. It is this variance, the series of revolutions, which came to define modern China, and it is also because of this episodic recurrence that rifts were driven between the varying generations experiencing them.

As mentioned above, the CCP found its initial power in Yen’an. It is also here that we see the making of Mao Zedong and the formation of his revolutionary philosophy, the so-called Yen’an Way that became the ethos of Revolution until the 1980s. Mark Selden defined its principles in his book The Yen’an Way in Revolutionary China as: First, reliance on the innate creativity of people; second, rejection of domination of a technical elite; third, conception of human nature as able to transcend social and environmental obstacles; and finally, cooperation and community approach. Decentralization and self-reliance.

These principles represent in many ways the idealistic education of the first generation of the CCP. They were a colorful bunch, an amalgamation of individuals of varying age and level in the traditional society. In his book Red Star Over China, Edgar Snow wrote of that early cross-cultural cooperation, giving the greater world their first look at the Chinese Communist. His portrayal of Mao and his followers is largely positive, and of the youth involvement he wrote: “Altogether, the ‘little devils’ were one thing in Red China with which it was hard to find anything seriously wrong…I suspected that more than once an older man, looking at them, forgot his pessimism and was heartened to think that he was fighting for the future of lads like those.” (1)

Snow’s work in Yen’an gives a rare glimpse into how the CCP was molded into the party of the people, and how party loyalty began to trump traditional Confucian ideals which placed family allegiance at the heart of society. But this transformation of duty would have very powerful repercussions after liberation (specifically 1949-1976), and would make the early “idealism” expressed by Snow appear a superlative adventure, a once pipe dream.

The CCP succeeded in political unification of China, but that was only the beginning of their task of building a society, of gaining the trust of the hearts and minds of everyone. Indeed, most of the country post-unification was not communist. What was needed was social and economic change, a shift in allegiance, to bring true unification.

The original impetus for this was found in Yen’an, when Mao and the Party leaders demanded a forced re-education for those joining the cause. They forced on new comrades a shift of consciousness, a kind of mild brainwashing to a new way of thinking. As illustrated in the above quote, the focus was not on the future of ones progeny, but the revolution, the party. The Yen’an Way may have appeared eager and enlightened in the beginning, but post 1949 it destroyed millions of family’s through an escalating need for party commitment. One of the few critical first hand descriptions of this post liberation period would come to be expressed brilliantly in Liang Heng’s account of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), titled Son of the Revolution.

At an early age, Liang’s family was fractured by an anti-rightist sweep disguised as the Hundred Flowers Movement. In Liang’s own words, “its official purpose was to give the Party a chance to correct its shortcomings by listening to the masses’ criticisms…but then, with confusing rapidity, the “Hundred Flowers Movement” changed into the “Anti-Rightist Movement.” (2) Liang expresses what many more must have been thinking, that the original movement was disguised to trap the Rightists (supposed economic and intellectual liberals, capitalists, entrenched bourgeoisie, etc) throughout the Party. Many came forward and expressed their opinions, and many of those were caught and sent away into the countryside to live among the peasants in forced re-education programs. Liang’s mother was one of them. Liang describes his father’s reaction: “Father’s traditional Confucian sense of family obligation told him to support Mother while his political allegiance told him to condemn her. He believed that [to condemn her] was the only course that could save the family from ruin.” (3)

For young Liang, being raised “in the shade of the revolution” presented a confusing set of circumstances. His was a new, unproven generation, schooled in the history and propaganda but as yet unable to assist. They were overzealous to help and make something of themselves, to prove their worth to those who came before them. The fuel for the Cultural Revolution came, in a sense, from these kids, from various student factions who were following commands from head leaders of the People’s Liberation Army, determined to make the “PLA a centerpiece of cultural change. These factional fires were fueled by the anger of students frustrated over policies that kept them off the paths of political advancement because the students had the ill fortune to be born to parents who had had connections with the Guomindang, the landlords, or the capitalist “exploiters” of the old regime and were therefore classified as “bad” elements by the CCP…there were as well millions of disgruntled urban youths who had been relocated to the countryside during the party campaigns of earlier years…there were those, within the largest cities, who were denied access to the tiny number of elite schools that had become, in effect, “prep schools” for the children of influential party cadres." (4)

These students were the outcome of years of revolution, of social upheaval and a vast reworking of class and norms. They were the logical conclusion to their preceding generation, simply adopting the prevailing ethos. But in their case, where revolution and war was the dominant paradigm, the absence of an external enemy would force war upon itself. In the course of only a few decades, thousands of years of Chinese culture was challenged, with its terminal point being the PLA’s attempt to erase that history in the Cultural Revolution. It was an attempt to turn siblings into comrades and Party leaders into parents, to erase any memory of Confucian morality or cultural proclivity, to destroy the native instinct of the Chinese heart.

The forced re-education programs, often bordering on religious conversion, took Liang’s family, especially his father, through recurring bouts of self-doubt and self-flagellation. Intellectuals, represented in Son of the Revolution by Liang Shan (the father), the consummate writer and thinker, were forced into the countryside because terror of judgment within the party became too great. Others throughout traditional society, monks especially (5), were brought into a parallel world with the party line by much the same method; during the Cultural Revolution, none were free from the Little Red Book. An account by Liang during a bus ride through the countryside illustrates the point emphatically. Upon stopping for a moment in the town of Xiangxiang, they encounter a monk who is being harassed by a gang of kids. “He was kneeling and beating a gong before a broken stone tablet on which I guessed was inscribed the history of the temple or some Buddhist scripture…as he beat the gong, he chanted, “I have tricked the people, I should be punished,” and Buddhism is a lie, only Marxism-Leninism-Chairman Mao Thought is the truth.” (6)

This, it can be surmised, is a far cry from the original positive idealism of the Yen’an Way. Revolution had devolved into an inquisition under the guise of controlled criticism, where exile led to redemption and paranoia to stronger party loyalty. Snow’s account of revolution in the 1930s and Liang’s in the '60s presents a stark contrast to the ways and means employed to achieve intellectual and cultural unity. The countryside and peasantry, the great savior of the CCP and modern China, was used to bring equilibrium to a class-based society, but ended up becoming an instrument rather than an ideal. “’How could Chairman Mao say that the countryside was a great land where we Educated Youths would have glorious successes?’ Liang Wei-ping wondered. “I’m only afraid that when I go back I’ll be sucked into that terrifying whirlpool once again.” (7) The three decades following the establishment of the PRC brought unity and nationalism to China, but one has to wonder at what cost.

**********

Footnotes:

Snow, Edgar. Red Star Over China. New York: Grove Press, 1961. p 327
Heng, Liang. Shapiro, Judith, Son of the Revolution. New York: First Vintage, 1984. p. 8
Ibid, p 9
Spence, Jonathan D., The Search For Modern China. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990. p 604
While attending a retreat at a Chinese Buddhist monastery, I had a chance to speak with a senior monk who had escaped the Cultural Revolution and fled to Taiwan, and then on to America. He shared with me a story of watching his uncle (also a monk) be torn apart by four kids (presumably Red Guards) on horses. They tied ropes to each of his appendages, with the other sides of the rope to their horses. It remained his most vivid memory of the revolution.
Heng, Liang. Shapiro, Judith, Son of the Revolution. New York: First Vintage, 1984. p
91
Ibid, p 200

D. Reese Zollinger, 2007
(fair use of above material)

Gervais and the Serpent

2007-11-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

I posted this on EO some months ago, but I think it derserves another shake.

Reese

the certainly fictional dream of the late charles darwin, as fortold by the late jesus of nazereth

2007-11-12T20:22:00.000-08:00

there is a beetle on the mantle

the state i am in.
is the slate and the dream.
clean and white and unshuttered.
for positing, the command of language,
the real way of looking at your hands,
with apprehension and a frog pond,
a cascading ivy,
clean, with hope.
a tall pot with cordyline.
fragmented spiced bacopa,
with a phrase in a scent,
laden with wisdom,
with beauty,
with enough grit,
to live another century.

cornflower on the horizon,
and nothing but the bread cornflower makes,
like manna, and honey and
not the sense of taste.
a cool night in the desert as the mid winter approaches,
like a cake upon the pan,
condensing,
and waiting for some one,
some thing,
some mind,
some soul,
to reverse it's polarity,
as though upon the horizon,
there were nothing,
and there was only one 'as though'.

the whisper of our reach,
as though i could speak for more than just myself,
also introduces for you,
the pretext and context.
(the edicts are certain circles you would circumscribe).
underline a word,
pardon the meaning for moment,
and punctuate the thing you say,
as though it were you saying it,
as though there were molecules on a ribbon of sugar cane,
which, having been rejected for molasses,
become raw,
unheralded,
rimbauden*,
as a federal system of integrated states:

*("...like a morbid fog
and greyer cloud,
as those stately gloomy airs,
and those able shrouds,
for those stately hidden truths.
while
those buried very real,
are only what those dead conceal,
those from beast,
from tired crowd,
those blackened silhouetted shrill,
for toward eyes,
and crying limbs,
the shocked fence avails portent hymns,
for those unable ears.
and mind, is sane,
it twines its hand around electric pane,
for wailing; taunting whims,
in under-creaking-floor-boards wane,
scornful bows,
the sinner sees,
and frozen,
burns:
bitten, frosted miseries for toes.
while to those forted, binding
rings, though not the true or real,
there clings,
as ever glued branch to tree,
a man to a fence. that falling brings
"hopeless" cleverly subdued, awry,
concealed, vain:
those true to spy for a glimpse.
their fingers hold there own,
awaiting hours
when flesh and bone,
and scabbing skin will fry,
the brainy grey to monotone,
the holy way a man would dye.
alas, years.
and dying times.
the burning scent,
the masked rhymes.
for ears,
but simply wretched holes
to air the reddened brainy coals,
with ecstasy's brittle crimes,
and strength exhausted shriveled souls
falling where those,...
where that child climbs.
but hesitation,
rear, or gleam,
the only choice before a dream
softens churning eyelid veins
and deadens dreary burning brains
to silence.
"should i warn the child?"
"or embrace the tangled wild below?"
"or free the truth beguiled...."
by a morbid fog
or greyer cloud,
a gloomy air or able shroud,
for hiding truth.
it is buried, real,
what alone those dead conceal,
not from beast,
or very tired crowd,
the blackened silhouetted shrill....

as those,... and those nailed to a cross,
have an understanding. sideways.
laterally they blink to a forlorn state...."(,)

said the secretary of that state,
for the queen of kolob,
and what was her fate.)

......................................

the stiff november wind is a state,
and the way it whistles,
and tosses the pseudo tsuga,
has its way,
along the mountain shore of whidbey.
homo sapiens on an island,
and perception,
capable,
as the train of the incalculable;
"i suffer for the sins of the world,
when I draw the world,
like a good tide sways."
isaac said with an apple in his mouth.
"i have a juncture,
a mountain as a table top." said j.
"hence forth god is a misnomer." r said,
as though he were d-.
"alfalfa grew inside the belly of the cow," said
our illustrious hostess, the queen of kolob,
"i saw the idea before i thought it." said i.

the white shrill of snow,
whipping like a hot cross bun,
and the forward thinking messenger;
placed us deep in the petrie dish,
the orange flower, a distant thought,
the plain gas,
the sharp glow,
the ego less,
face of a planet's moon,
a far;
"keep going back." said j-
"find a way, like paul, leto."
j continued,
"blessed are those
who are the kwisatz haderach,
blessed are those who hang in the balance.
blessed are those who,
after inheriting the world, give it back;
as the musk ox and the capable cornish hen.
blessed are those who see god,
for they are the fish who can breath water.
blessed are those who need blessings,
for they shall realize the good fortune of being blessed.
blessed are the meek, the pliable, and the malleable,
for they shall evolve too."

as though he could not help himself,
j added truly, "not an iota, not a dot,
will pass from the law until all is accomplished."

like a law which is the berry of juniper,
tinctured with the yeast of a sun,
and burning like a flag, or flagellum whipping,
the judgement awaited its hopeless telling;
as william would have with isaac's apple.
the scarlet smell of jasmine,
the lure of sex,
as a loyal economist:
"all things are paid for, c.o.d."
the yellow belly of a chicken hawk,
notwithstanding,
this:
hunger and thirst.
heaven, and the castle
of william randolph hearst.
the whippoorwill chimed in:
"all souls, a fortnight and change."
"lonesome cattle range." said 'win.

the echo in a canyon,
bounced off the canyon walls
reverberating, and constantly becoming.
the horse on a draw with a plow,
the husk on a cob of corn,
the still small voice,
like an echo in a non-canyon,
placed a long hold,
like a good notary,
or bail bondsman upon his bailiwick,
a bet; listen and feel the sway of the wind,
as it tickles their ears with their hair.
do not listen, so say,
listen as a lunch woman slopping minted spinach,
as a jack hammerer.
"call upon a nostalgia
if it helps you see it better." said j, as though
he were not i.

clip the top of this picture and you will see,
the bottom, the submerged pier.
hang a kite,
hoist a video camera.
get a wireless transceiver.
listen:

"like a sand of beach particles.
or the capable fleeting thought."

..........................................

i am lying here.
the rock upon which i lay
is beholden to a certain lay,
who stand for what i represent,
and practice it upon the day,
for which i recommended
they rest.

do not come to me on your day of rest,
with your beautiful bread and water,
as though the day were spring,
and the water were refreshing.
please.
do not come to me when you are tired,
as the november asters,
and their transmogrify,
and their lubricated casters,
please, though an orange rock rose,
is always a sabbath,
come with me on a day of my choosing,
when i know we both
are in good spirits,
and social,
as equilateral hosts.
"i will declare to you on that day,"
i said,
"blessed are the ones who,
as a fleeting thought, are remembered.":
"there is only one multi verse." said the queen of kolob.

as transparent feet on a treadmill
the four of us walked,
walking backward, while pointed forward.
the vast pacific sea,
herald and lee,
the pointer sisters,
and ho chi min,
with frank sinatra pleaded,
as they pleased us with their version
of your grandmothers biscuits,
with your grandfathers gravy.
"you ate it as you thought it," said h.
the sky was always dark now.
there were no hankerings.
no unremembered visions.
there was no fox racing through the underbrush.
other things there was none of:

back in the petrie dish,
holding like a mayonnaise to a country salad,
a string of popcorn balls to a tree.
like december kernels in november,
a stiff breeze wisps it all away with
a man in a tomb with a shroud.
with, a certain "waking up"
from a state of certain "deadness."
day two:
"still no one has peeked there head in." said j.
said you, as the crackles are made in a late blue grass,
"as a grass upon a prairie,
a hold upon a dairy.
a certain cow and its propensity to produce milk.
with the yogurt and the cinnamon granola,
and a hint of mint;
like you were printing money,
as though a goat was milked?"
"a hail mary mid november pass,
of good old fashioned american gas."

it is a stretch
to catch.
i love a good haiku as much as you.

there is a beetle on the mantle.

C2007 rrzollinger

none

2007-11-12T19:28:00.000-08:00

the pages of my life i mark with used toothpicks
the plaque-detritus inks me to write half thoughts
the pages crumble like saltines
earthquake
unknown memory comes when it will
not when I WILL
-M

A travel home

2007-11-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

my ancestor's home... Iskeia an island tucked in the Mediterranean sea.

back in the day they were farmers and fisherman...

Now the town of Forio and the other towns on Iskeia are full of thermal baths and shopping

being on Iskeia,

i understood better my pull to ocean and earth.

but England came as a familiar relief...

so i ask myself am i an Italian or the prodigy of NYC

Escape

2007-11-07T20:19:00.000-08:00

Had the opportunity to meet Carolyn Jessop last night. I had invited her to the store to do a reading and signing. She escaped from the FLDS Colorado City/Hildale group of polygamists four years ago and has just come out with a book about her experience living among that group of people. She was married to Merril Jessop as his fourth wife. This was/is the group that claims Warren Jeffs as their prophet.

This is a very good and fast read. The event last night was sobering. Carolyn escaped from Colorado City in the middle of the night with all eight of her children with $20 in her pocket. In four years she has succeeded in winning full custody of all eight of her children and writing the most vivid portrayal of FLDS polygamy that I have seen.

Jessop calls this group a cult. She was a fourth or fifth generation member of this society and it seems her childhood was good. But she was married to a very powerful and manipulative man who saw her as his property. She said that when Warren Jeffs became prophet things really spiraled downward in Colorado City. Now, the core members of the group are hiding out in closed compounds like YFZ in Texas.

Strangely, Jessop's oldest daughter always wanted to go back to Colorado City. When she turned eighteen just this July 2nd, she left on July 4th to return.

I have thought alot about polygamy this week. And, about our own upbringing. How we spent our formative years on a farm with a very large family, who wanted to live their own higher order. How far were we away from fundamentalism? I look fondly upon those times on the farm out in Thatcher, where I was until I was eight. But, talk to someone like Marjean about her experience living in the basement underneath Bob and Fawn in the same house in Canada and you might find surprising similarities.

Branding

2007-11-05T12:28:00.000-08:00

We live in the age of the image. Never before in history has such a barrage of unconnected ideas moved through our lives. From iPod to YouTube our culture has become a streaming channel of endless icons, branding with thought tattoos each individual who dares to tune in.

From the early days of western corporatism advertisers have been rubbing the bottled genie in hopes of magically increasing corporate revenue. What they soon realized was that the attention of consumers was easily bought by employing controlled symbolism to market their products, drawing the customers loyalty more through attachment to the symbol than the item being offered. When deconstructing this morbid state of affair- something that I'll attempt in this short essay - it should first be understood that it is not the image (icon, brand, or logo) that is important, but what that image solicits as an emotional response.

The fact that we can find historical precedent for modern advertising doesn’t make it easier to understand. Symbols litter our minds; from the golden arches to bitten apples our world has become a crowded arena of patented images. The consumer’s attention is battled for on the front lines of supermarket isles, in the halls of malls, or even driving down the interstate. We are told we can become members by simply buying products, as if this act was itself the sacrament. So deep has this symbolism penetrated that in Kalle Lasn’s words (Culture Jam, 2000), “advertisements are the most prevalent and toxic of the mental pollutants.”

This toxicity, rising as it has through the need to sell products, has left an indelible mark upon the human mind. Lasn continues by noting that, “Corporate advertising…is the largest single psychological project ever undertaken by the human race.” Strong words, but not altogether unreasonable when you see as Lasn does that the symbol has gone from simple iconography to complex and multidimensional abstraction. In that symbolism is historically one of the most powerful tools for uniting people, we must recognize that its nature is two-fold; first, the symbol is itself inherently benign, and second, any meaning applied to a particular image is what becomes important.

There is an old iconographic precedent that justifies modern advertising. In the year 312, while preparing to battle for control of the Roman Empire, Constantine received a vision telling him to unite his men under the banner of the Cross. “In hoc signo vinces,” the angel told him, “In this sign you shall win.” This symbol, already having ancient ties to Egyptian and Phoenician cultures, was easily accepted, and eventually became the most complex and powerful banner of western civilization.

Beyond the West we find other cultures using similar means to achieve similar ends. Chinese thought manifested as the symbolic duality of yin/yang, Judaic representation would be expressed by the Star-of David, Native American as Totem; all of these symbols being expressed in glyphs designed to establish instant connection between image and idea.

The consumer provides the fresh skin for the hot iron, so without cultivating critical minds, our bodies will continue to be treated as perfect receptors for the corporate logo. More than our wares, but our whole selves, our thoughts and deeds, should define what makes us different. By seeing necessities as more than iconographic trophies, we displace ourselves from the corporate battle. We begin to make informed decisions based not upon form, but upon function.

It was realized in the mid-eighties that (Naomi Klein, 2002) “successful companies must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products.” (No Logo) That we have allowed the Corporation to move from production of goods to the manufacturing of Icons is our mistake, one that we must claim and work to remedy. Does it really satisfy, does it bring us happiness? We should ask these questions and others as we confront the barrage of commercials from day to day, because the symbol has turned from representing deeper, universal ideas, to selling materialism. We can imagine a young man saying: “Under the shadow of the sears tower I found myself,” because it was that symbol that his city presented as most important. This experience is common. As the sacred retreats from the Vegas Strip, cowers beneath the overwhelming magnitude of the “stars and stripes,” or huddles away to avoid contamination from ethanol or elmer’s glue, we begin to understand her reticence.

Advertisers long and systematic policy of targeting the ego has produced a morally inept culture, dependant not upon deeper meanings but on colorful veneers. Once again, it is the emotional reaction to the said media that is in question, because, (William Bernbach, 1989) “you can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.” There are numerous examples of advertisers soliciting emotional responses to commercial products. Ads such as, “Drive = Love,” or “Bigger is Better,” show that the aim is our emotional insecurity. We are reminded again and again about the body’s endless needs and infinite wants, that we must have a certain thing to be up-to-date, or fashionable. What was natural and sustainable has become demonized by the consumptive majority; our new prophets are corporate leaders and tycoons.

The tendency today is to see life in monetary terms, because that is our world; that is capitalism and democracy in action; that is free-market economics, the newest revelation from the bible of modern affairs. We are looking through the glass darkly, not because we don’t own it, but because we're only leasing it. Some argue that the corporation has brought us what we love most, entertainment and material goods. They have given us a world where we may theoretically take more time to enjoy the finer things, the subtler things, but in the end we pay for it.

The corporation has hijacked the icon. Our deepest fears are played against us in hopeless tugs-of-war. Should I buy Coke or Pepsi, Nike or Converse, Gucci or Gap? The Icon rules, we are the first generations to have brand names as kings, to be raised on cartoons and commercials. It is a life we have been given and must somehow sort out. As each generation has its challenges, so this is one of ours. In a world where one watches the Super Bowl not for the game but for the advertising, we should be concerned that the wool keeps inching down.

It is ours to reclaim for ourselves what it means to be human, to redefine our approach to society. In this postmodern hyper-technical culture of competing interests we may choose or we may not. Whatever we do, the concept of marketing symbolism will surely survive, because our need of image and icon date to the very beginnings of humanity. Again, the conclusion is to not see the symbol as destructive, but to question what the symbol solicits as an emotional response. As we realize this, we can cultivate symbols with deeper meanings, ones that illicit a beneficent reaction, ones like the mythic Shiva that remind us of our mortality, that we must live well for tomorrow there may be no more living.

Reese Zollinger
cross posted from EO.

the unwritten fiction of charles darwin. chapter two. (as told by albert einstein)

2007-10-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

(courage is a coriander)

"i wonder about things sometimes,"
good king george told me once
while climbing the rocky mountains.
i exploded then, and found a paradigm,
something to which i could attach a
stumbling forward;
it was like the fracture of earth and air:
there was an uttering stated,
a forward overstatement, an overtruth,
an overstanding, an opus as a dove.

there is a belief.
and, there is a mule.
and there is the long walk up to the surface,
as the whole affrontation;
with stirrups, boot straps.

as once the cat tails, wagged,
it is like the last extinction,
between the last ice age,
encumbered with force and determination,
as the fist of a whirlwind,
and fire and water are combined.
the two words rhyme
but cannot be spoken together.
we knew this only:
a dog is under something.

i wished sometimes when the night was grey,
and we were walking,
and a bird force was above us,
and the simple choreography of structure
implicit in a latter day saint baptism presented itself, ...though,
we found ourselves in an algerian cafe,
you, me, isaac and H-,
all were there. "i wish, ...
we are so lucky to behold the twenty second century,
like the space between the tick of a clock,
and a century of doubt,
the path we would walk is folden,
ridden with clout.
uncertain with forscision.
as the dunking of a doughnut in a mug.
the once king of a fallen nation." you said.

"i think" einstein thought to himself, as a response,
(the narrator chose to acknowledge):
"that the cause of the universe has as its potential,
the purport of a pulse,
as if the around focusing,
had to relinquish a scent."
"i had the distinct impression the other day that god defies occam's razor;
though he walks the razor's edge," you said.
i could have said: "it is harder to explain "god"
than "the universe" god created."
(as though one were not required by the other.)

imagine she, me and you with him,
drinking moroccan chai,
as though the wall beside us were clay,
as though we had a moon to drink by.
and significance could not be defined.
and thwarted as we were to see it,
we defied odds,
and saw as nods of a series of heads,
the immersion and the crisp, blue,
earth enclosed chamber,
the wholesome place of requirement.

the wholesome woman dressed in orange
stepped, like a catholic bible,
downward into the font, ready to baptize.
the blue water cast a glow.
"i had a becoming once with a beetle,
and walked away from it overplaced.
the blue water was like this,
or the scent of a cup of coffee
being poured into a glass bead cup;" said H-.
we had a good laugh.
there were hard lines in the bifurcated room,
the split was between us and them,
though we were baptized that day too;
like the whisper of an equestrian to his horse,
we lauded our honoree with this exclamation:
"if we could,
we would baptize ourselves
in amino acids."
(or, R- reminded us
in these woods which were
as though we thought we knew them, said:
"like a small dragonfly not knowing,
we glowed with amazement, knowing."

....................................................................

too, locked into our story, was forthcoming.
as it would have been.
the light in the room was perfect,
and we launched into the debate.
there were four winds blowing
when the innocent rose from the liquid water;
four winds blowing also,
the moment before.
H- said,
"incongruous as a warped board,
and squiggly as a rummy worm,
though firm as a foundation and pressed on firm,
like a buttermilk bread upon its spatulaed side,
with a sprig of lettuce and the
praise a man would give to the man;
a million metaphors, also."
"i said,"
said i,
"this is as it would be naturally,
'elected as the before point'."
(i had the distinct impression a couple of days later,
that the autobiography of herman hesse,
had a stitch of the super natural,
and i reckoned this with light.

i thought later that i knew then what god was).
you said then something i will always remember,
"the apple is only a seed."
as eating an oatmeal salad, i underate what you meant.
remembering later,
i see,
and would add as a caveat,
(as if i had the ability):
" i am lactose intolerant,
and as such am in at least one form of intolerant."
quick as the brown fox,
isaac interjected then,
"imagine an apple on an ox."
we laughed and put on our shoes and socks.
and the four of us went on as one person walks.
we walked backward from where we were
to the orange rose and wafts;
we sat and smoked and laughed.
the orange rose spoke,
we were uplifted,
as though the bench
on which we sat,
had always been above us.

light and matter and god and
the understory of chatter
in this late night cafe and
a certain mad hatter;
this is the welcome for which we were warned,
he came, he spoke and uttered
in the name of a certain father,
of a certain son,
and of a certain holy spirit:
a spirit of comfort,
of place.
"this is where you are,"
it said,
"before this what where you?" it asked.
"nothing." it said.
(it said this to teach you something.
(you learned it of course.))

................................................................

the dining cafe and the baptism emerged
as a fox racing through the brush,
and a dry farmer noticing;
the drive home from the farm,
a few miles west from where your mind is.
a friday night in october,
baseball, football, soccer, an eagle scout
and a duck pond with
mahaunryemoureancummere;
the brother of jared.
"i am the brother of jared," you said.
(we were all in awe, of course
for the orbs of light you manifested.)
"i know the orb is true," you said.
"you are human," we said.
we laughed, we had been here before.

light shone in to the baptismal font,
and then reversed itself.
we walked backward then and i said to you,
"albert, remember the way the light travels through water?"
(i said to you as though i were i,):
"charles, the light of god is
a light only i can see;".

the sound of the scene perished.
and somewhere a sound was made
of a carpenter exposing from a drift of ash,
a fine abacus.
we counted backwards from zero and found
the urn,
where we had stored ourselves.
(i remembered the irony.)
(each time we walked backward,
we came to nothing.)
(like a man walking a way from his sins).

as a pendulum ever returning,
we forever arrived at the moment before.
the candlelight of the table
overriding the saucers and kin,
perched like a head of lettuce,
in a land,
where there are seas and seas
of heads of lettuce;
miles and miles;
on and on as if lettuce where nothing,
and that was all there is,
or isn't.
(not to put too fine a point on it.)
the apple, perched
like a pelican on a pond,
fell;
like an aspen having lived a long and quaking life,
heading backwards always to that moment
when life was breathed,
perspicacity and thunder rolled and breaded,
non yeast fried.
we saw then that this could not be and retreated
from our retreat.

we walked forward again,
heading backward to our destination.
i said, "H-, when we get there,
will you tell me?"
H- said, " of course, but by then,
you will already know."
the turnips in the field,
just then,
like an apple cobbler,
baked in the earth, as an oven.
we waited to eat.
while we waited,
the carrots and the tomatoes counseled.
we waited to eat, and for the verdict.
while we waited,
the moon spun in perfect synchronicity with the very earth on which we stood.
by then we knew there was no soup,
no amino goulash;
only the verdict:
like a walk through a rain forest
on the sunniest day of the year,
we rolled in the grass
like oats, or late twentieth century diamonds, rocks.

there was a sense that morning was approaching
when i said, "we are the evidence we need."
"we do not have to walk backward."
"zero cannot reverse itself."
"courage is a coriander."

c2007 rrzollinger

The History of Oil - Robert Newman

2007-10-28T19:20:00.000-07:00

It is sad, nay tragic, when truth is spoken best by comedians. In this 45 minute stand-up routine, Newman explores the complex and often overlooked history of our perverse love affair with oil. But, rather than boring his patrons with academic drivel, he speaks the truth through humor and irony. An astounding performance. If you have an hour to spare, give it a watch. (caution: the truth can be a bit racy)

Enjoy, and don't forget the popcorn.

Reese

Dalai Llama and Mandalas

2007-10-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

A connection was just made between me and the Tibetan Holy Man. A woman whom I met in Park City, visiting from somewhere in the south, bought some of my originals and a few cards from me this summer. We have since maintained a connection by phone. She just informed me that while visiting a workshop in Florida where the Dalai Llama was speaking...she placed the tulip mandala card in his hands.
In one instant, the sphere in which I live and create has grown large enough to encounter his circle of life and beauty.
It is a both big and small...for art touches multitudes of people we dont know...who treasure it no less.
But it is a sign, bright and bold, that marks a post along this path...that says it is enough to keep going.

Holli

Solanum Tuberosum

2007-10-18T20:23:00.002-07:00

A Short History of the Potato.

Though there existed a time of dispute as to the origins of the potato, it is today certain this unique and potent agricultural crop came from the new world. The ethno-botanical evidence narrows the point of origin to the great north-south Andes spine of South America. It appears to have been a staple food of the peasants before the European conquests.

When the Spanish first encountered the crop, they were only mildly impressed. Some specimens were transported back to Europe during the 16th century for study, but as it was considered a bland food, it failed to gain immediate appeal. There exists a kind of natural conservatism in peoples diet, and it takes some shaking up to introduce new foods to foreign lands. Nevertheless, there is some evidence from the diaries of the late 16th century which show a growing appreciation of this exotic species. Carolus Clusius, a Flemish Monk and botanist, did studies on the plant, and in Ireland, it established its famous foothold.

It is curious to consider what the ancient diet might have looked like before beans, maize, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkin and pineapple. Bland certainly, with lots of ale or wine to promote forgetfulness. I can scarcely imagine what the Italian diet consisted of before tomatoes...and I would guess the Irish were asking themselves in the late 1800's what exactly their diet was previous to the full scale assault of the potato...

Some of the early skepticism concerning this tuber was justified, but some was obviously not. As it belongs to the family of plants which include nightshades and the great modern killer tobacco, it was considered poisonous. Other considered it to be an aphrodisiac, still others thought it was a plant that produced an exorbitant amount of flatulence, and was therefore to windy. Of course, none of these amounted to a successful campaign against the potato, as we can see by looking at the modern global diet.

There are reasons why this particular crop gained universal popularity, primary being its toleration of extreme environments, and that it is anything but delicate, though that would be sorely disproven by the Irish potato famine of of the 1840's. It is not often that a single plant can cause bio-regional shifts in human population, but that was the case for Ireland. The Irish were the first to grab the potato in Europe, cultivating it only 100 years after the first Europeans arrived in the new world. For centuries the Irish peasant farmers developed a symbiotic relationship with the potato. One farmer could cultivate 1 acre of potatoes which would in turn feed 12 for a year. 1 lb of potatoes per day would offer a daily dose of vitamin C, Vitamin B, trace minerals, and easily digestible starch. What it lacked in Vitamins A and D was made up by the milk cow. It was a copasetic relationship, leading to a population growth in Ireland of several million.

By the 1840's, Ireland was vastly unprepared to deal with any interruption in its hand-to-mouth economy.In 1846, a fungus swept through the countryside, through 2/3 of all potato fields, and devastated them. The following year, Ireland had a 100% crop failure, leading to wide starvation and immense amounts of suffering. Between 1846-1849, 1.5 million people died. The population of the country fell from 9 to 6 million, either from forced immigration or starvation. The consequence of the wedding between the potato and Ireland was brutal, expatriation became for some the only option. America was one of the obvious destinations in the aftermath of the Irish potato famine, and for any American worth their ilk, they can immediately understand the importance Irish-Americans have played in the unfolding history of our country.

It is amazing what one plant can do, can cause. The potato, the Idaho Spud, French Fries (or, freedom fries if you are republican) (/snark), the Au Gratin revolution. It is a world cuisine, a staple of the poor, a food which we all love whether in chip or the much preferred smothered in pot roast gravy (you know what I mean). We are dependent on our food, and it in turn uses us as a means of its own evolution. Copasetic, symbiotic, beautiful, and at times devistating. The potato.

Reese

Balloon Fiesta Pictures

2007-10-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

In a post below, I mentioned my run in with the unfortunate during balloon fiesta. It wasn't all terrible though (other than I was sick the whole time, and had midterms that week). Here are a few pictures of Albuquerque's premier event, the International Balloon Fiesta.

Reese

The Balloonists Prayer:

The winds have welcomed you with softness, the sun has blessed you with its warm hands. You have flown so high and so well that god has joined you in your laughter, and set you gently back into the loving arms of mother earth. Cheers (after which we feel justified drinking champagne at 9:30 am).

As yet, untitled

2007-10-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

He who pulled paragraph like espresso
died of old age with a thousand
boxes of bound alphabet in his shed.

Periods are enemies he would tell us
and semi-colons, a constipation.

Believe in exclamation!
Personalize, comma.

Guard the little swatch
of fabric you find in grasses,
imagining it as scarf or chemise.

Read it like a basket.

Invite grasshoppers and crickets to the critique.
And, if they sing you will know it is good.

Trust the line.
Trust the hem.
Trust the wind-step whisking.
Trust the song of thyself.

Stand on your shaky metaphors
until bullfrog leaps from lotus—
generosity burning wellspring in your cheeks.

the unwritten letters of charles darwin

2007-10-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

("please: read only at your leisure, if you please." Charles Darwin)

chapter one

there is writing on a wall,
and there is a certain non verbal language,
attending to a certain nuance,
giving a particular meaning,
and allowing a comprehension,
to and of an immaculate truth;
as the late leaves fall,
and express toward an imprint in a clay,
in the wind which breaks toward its fall
(though the imprint is unnoticed).
as the quick golden sun, progresses
to an olympic peak, we are invoked by these and other
portentous things.

remember last year when the writing was on a wall.
i remember the hope,
though, like the crescent sound of the airplanes,
flying like october baseballs overhead,
i have been stunned, been whirl-winded,
been enveloped
and have forgotten though,
as those anteloped
on a certain rock, calling sure
what the point was called for.
"i would forget again if i had to,"
i said as though i were myself:
"it is difficult, like evolution."

there is a cactus in the desert.
and like the husk on a cob of corn,
there is a scar on my skin.
as the rough and tumble world
breaks through the crust and shell,
i hang in the balance, weathered and forlorn.
i am not sorry that i myself feel this way.
i am sorry that i had to put things this way
to bring you up to speed; as though the waves on the shore
of the olympics had not spread their wings,
but were hung.
like drapes from the curtain rod, which passed for the wind
i held on in a most curious state.

i woke up later walking.
there was a stiff surreality to the scene before me.
i walked stiffly as a reaction.

.......................

the silhouette of the skyline, was dark grey.
and there was a mood in the air,
there was noise, but it was quiet.
einstein said, "the whole universe is but a thought."
and i thought, but did not respond.
we walked for a while as though he or i were laying on a couch.
the sun set and we walked.
the dirt beneath our feet,
the grass and dirt,
shone a sheen,
described the setting as we walked.
enstein pondered and did not speak.
i thought about the big bang.

there, beneath the horizon,
i watched the setting sun rise.
i could hear the sound of our footfalls,
and then i knew about the big bang.
einstein presently spoke,
"i was speaking with my friend, mr. nietzsche,
we were discussing the big bang,
and he said, "imagine the moment zero.""
einstein stopped walking,
turned to me and i fell into a trance.

the blackness and darkness crept in,
there was no silhouette in the sky.
like a tarantula on a photograph of the universe,
al and i walked as though we were in a trance.
i felt enormously unsettled,
like the moment before the big bang.
in that moment the world broke through,
the frosted ground in winter was a sign.
we walked on the dirt road,
we knew there were ten miles of "canopy of birch"
lining this road on earth.

the hope we walked toward
was like carrot tomato soup and toast,
after a long journey.
maybe a good pint of your famous lager.
i remember when you used to walk with us
when we walked in the dark on the dirt road lined with kentucky blue grass.
the tire marks from the pickups
were illusions and transformations when we walked.
"remember the orange rose?" einstein spoke.
"i do remember that there is an orange rose," you said.
i sensed an impasse, and said,
"i think i can posit the need not for god."
you both turned and looked at me.
you did not walk with us again,
yet you are walking with us now in your dream.

a dream is a place. in the universe
there are places deep within a dreamer,
where the universe plays out
possibilities which could not become actual,
possibilities which could only remain possible;
the universe needed this place in order to be.

..................................

when we reached the orange rose,
as we walked upon our path,
the silent smell prompted the sounds of our footfalls to cease.
oh, the reverie.
it was as though a cowboy had rolled
the first perfectly hand rolled cigarette.
we sat on the bench beside the orange flower
and rolled cigarettes; smoked them.
"charles," einstein spoke,
"light is energy, and thought is energy; energy is mass, and mass is in a couple of hours."
"the number two," i evoked, "is a brilliant notion."
like the ocean and its sound,
the two knew that it was true. (like the color blue)

"i think the breakthrough is in the thought,"
you say, as though we were there in your dream,
"the deepest and most unreachable place you know is,
that you know of this most deep and unreachable place."
"do be careful when you speak of places so deep,
that they reach an unreachable state,"
einstein breaks in to lighten the mood, like
the opposite of a bolt of lightning.
if i were speaking about it as though it hadn't happened yet,
i would have noted the brilliance of your jocularity,
when you said, "unreachable is beyond reach, is like saying,
there is a certain cow in a certain meyer."
a dark plume of smoke became then,
the pluribus unum of our dream.
and the orange flower spoke with reluctance,
"there is an history of evidence."

beneath the overtones of scent,
cast off by the october rose,
the three of us found ourselves walking,
again upon the footpath.
"you said," i said, "that nietzshce spoke of the moment zero, mr einstein.
evolution of species, and back to the moment of just after the moment zero,
there was zero, then there was zero point one. before there was zero point one,
there was zero and then,
there was zero point one, or
zero point zero, zero, zero, (ad infinitum), one.
there was zero, then, not the originally complete zero.
which equals two states the zero was in."
"light on the other hand," moves at a certain fixed number of distances per second." enstein smirked,
"remember the pendulum," i said,
"there is a place for zeros in our universe," you cordially reminded us.
i invoked the first article of faith. then elaborated on the distinctions of quanta.
like a branch upon a fire, the fifth desert wheel of our desiring,
preyed upon our digital mind scape,
we walked on as though we had had enough to think about.
we heralded this event, once.

..........................................................................................................................

in the combination light of winter morning,
the stiff smell of coffee presented itself in the context
of desert effervescences.
wholly uncertain of their landing, the three had context to begin again.
the circle of time,
like an asymptote upon a graph,
approached infinity and the three
immortalized the taste of coffee on their lips.

a stark uncertain new mexican sky,
and the smell of the chaparral;
a certain few remaining butterflies, and a flock of geese.
a halloween.
all souls eve.
the hunter becomes hunted.
"i hunt there,
for, i am hungry and there is food there"
enstien says in a remote state.
the state of kentucky is renown for its blue grass,
like its whisky and rye, its blue grass is sly.
the mountain goat on the swiss mountain rock,
sometimes dreams of listless days of frolicsome realities
skipping through a days worth of kentucky blue grass;
like whippoorwill,
or a thin mountain crane on the horizon.
i had to say something,
"which takes more energy?" i said,
"to go from zero to one,
or from one to two?"
the clocked ticked,
and the firelight from the place in this library,
lit up the library we three found ourselves in;
as those literacists say, presently,
we laughed.

sipping on a cognac as though it were evening,
and as time had passed, you said,
"there is a graph where an asymptote begins from infinity,
and forever approaches the smallest approximation of something."
the firelight and the shadow
spoke then upon al's face,
like a certain orange flower quivering in the wind.
"i know what it is you are saying"
you said after that long moment when there was no sound.
we all had transcended back to a start in that moment,
and were left facing the wrong way on our walk upon the path.
we knew this to be true immediately,
and turned around and walked the other way in what was then and had been all night,
an absence of moonlight.
like a ship with the ocean on her belly,
we circumscribed our perfect understanding,
found ourselves choked up,
became children, and sages at once;
saw the faintest whisper that there was night sky.
einstein happened to find himself singing, "micheal row your boat ashore, hallelujah,.....""

we each knew we were not at an impasse.
and knew there were four or us speaking.

..........................................................

a certain microphone,
with its capabilities and its ability to contort,
was given to the creator.
and with this creator's abilities,
this creator was given a certain microphone;
that is to say,
a really small phone,
that is to say,
the remote ability to transfer a certain truth:
like the underwriter,
and that noble soul who would stand under it,
(pause),
the universe is a multiverse and is as such,
as though it were as much as said such.

the absence of fog undertook us on our night path,
and we found ourselves
walking still in the blackness,
like shadows falling in love with the law of gravity.
sir isaac knew the importance of nostalgia

resonant footfalls in the key of e
and pardoned thoughts and a canopy of birch
and we walked on in the whippoorwill's echo.
it had a starkness to its sound and created for us a resonance,
as we walked,
at peace,
and troubled,
all at once saying goodnight to irene.
"there are perfect things," i said.
"there are perfect things," you said.
"i am in love with the speed of light," enstein said.
(the narrator): as their footfalls echoed
in simultaneous resonance,
the three had not realized their feet were not walking on kentucky blue grass nor earthly soil,
they like the infinite ability for light,
to travel however far it must,
to record,
like a microphone plugged into a recorder,
whatever happened there.

c 2007 rrzollinger

Blog Update

2007-10-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

I amended the site to only include the last 10 posts, as it was getting digitally taxing to include the bulk of it. Also thought it prudent to include Google Analytics to the blog, which allows us to track our traffic. If your interested, I'll send you a link with directions on how to access the site.

Reese

A 700 Year Old Vindication

2007-10-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

Today commemorates the 700 year anniversary of the downfall of the famed organization known now as the Knights Templar. It was Friday, October 13, 1307 that the Vatican conspired with King Philip IV of France to draw the Templars into a noose, leading eventually to the burning at the stake of Jacque de Molay and the retreat of remaining Templars and their secrets to Scotland and the greater British Isles.

The level of speculation surrounding this band of medieval warrior monks has become a kind of budgie-jumping historical sport, the rock-climbers version of academic fun. We have the Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail to convince us of its continued and presently heightened popularity. But nothing reaches the justifiable ground wire like the news coming out of the Vatican these past few days...

From Thursday's edition of the Guardian Unlimited:

A couple of years ago, one wintry morning in Hertford, I met a mysterious man who claimed to belong to the Knights Templar. As readers of The Da Vinci Code will know, this secretive Catholic organization had been officially disbanded in 1307 by Pope Clement V, who had accused them of being heretics and devil-worshipers; their leader, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. This Saturday, October 13, marks the 700th anniversary of the day their persecution began: Friday October 13, 1307, which may be the origin of the idea that Friday 13 is unlucky. But the Templars didn't go away. Instead, they went underground - taking with them, it was whispered, the Holy Grail itself, the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper. Then, in late 2004, they resurfaced. A letter arrived at the Vatican, purportedly from the Templars' grand master, insisting on the knights' innocence, and demanding an apology. The Vatican said it would give the matter "serious consideration" - but for Templar-hunters, the exciting aspect was that the letter bore a Hertford address.

A reporter at the Hertfordshire Mercury tracked down a local Templar, who explained that treasures of "immense importance" were hidden in a secret network of tunnels beneath the city, extending from the council offices, via Threshers, to Monsoon and Accessorize. Which was how I came to visit. Was the most fabled relic of Christ hidden underneath two boutiques on Market Place in Hertford?

I never found out, despite the best efforts of Gemma, the manager. But the other part of the tale has a happy ending: later this month, the Vatican will publish a book based on the Chinon parchment, a rediscovered fragment of the trial proceedings against the Templars. According to Professor Barbara Frale - who found it in the Vatican's secret archive, where it had been misfiled - it absolves the Knights Templar.

Just after the 700th anniversary of the day their troubles began, the Templars will get their apology. "We pray that, at the end of seven centuries, the soul of Jacques de Molay may now rest in peace for ever," says Ben Acheson, who describes himself as a Templar. "The Temple now considers the matter closed."

Now all that remains is to find the Holy Grail. If you need me, I'll be underneath Accessorize.

So, after 700 years of supposed Templar heresy, they will finally be absolved. Fascinating how justice works inside the halls of the faithful.

Reese

Update: (From the Times Online)

VATICAN CITY The Knights Templar, the medieval Christian military order accused of heresy and sexual misconduct, will soon be partly rehabilitated when the Vatican publishes trial documents it has closely guarded for 700 years.

It is publishing only 799 copies of the minutes of trials against the Templars, Processus Contra Templarios - Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars, which will sell for €5,900 (£4,115).

The giant work will come in a soft leather case, with detailed reproductions of original Latin parchments and the wax seals used by the 14th-century inquisitors.

“Nothing before this offered scholars original documents of the trials of the Templars,” said Professor Barbara Frale, a medievalist at the Vatican’s Secret Archives.

The Templars were founded in 1119 by knights sworn to protect Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. Legends of their hidden treasures and secret rituals and power have featured in films and bestsellers such as The Da Vinci Code. (Reuters)

The Seattle Times: A Smooth Move

2007-10-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Times: A Smooth Move

(Pacific NW 10/07/2007 | A Smooth Move | )

2007-10-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting things about this article in the Seattle Times, Sunday Magazine, "Pacific Northwest", is a small clip in the article about the two hundred rhododendrons and plants, transplanted from their old residence. The new property was on a steep hillside where each and all had to be securely fastened to the ground. I am happy to say that though we did have some casualties along the way, the garden has achieved in the five years from its inception, (having been improved by many hands), has achieved that classic state, where the plants, the house and the architecture combine to what I would call a masterpiece, if we were talking about a work of art:

Pacific NW 10/07/2007 | A Smooth Move | Seattle Times Newspaper

...and of course the non sequitor:

like the donkey approaching the last few stumbling blocks,
to the lowest part of the road,
having stretched its legs upon the long journey,
like a summit to the bottom of the canyon.

the grand canyon.
and the colorado river, like everests
stretching their tendrils upon the earth,
like overarching theories.

i wish that mr. bush wouldn't torture people
or torture people by making them torture other people.
the central intelligence agency, like a rock upon the earth,
cannot redefine itself; or its country.

the impulse to desire a fleeting thought:
like the rapture of noah's dove,
is a peace;
the purpose of which is peace.

the elephant in the room,
is the elephant in the room.
and the donkey is still going south,
like the geese this time of year.

Mass Ascension

2007-10-08T12:48:00.001-07:00

Fiesta is the harbinger of fall, of lanterns and pumpkins. It is a smooth transition into the season of the fallen. Usually.

This morning was cold. We launched around 7 am, and immediately drove south for the chase. Upon stopping at a traffic light a few miles from the launch site, I commented to Adam (the other crew on our balloon) that the balloon flying directly in front of us was too close to the power lines. Moments after I said that a line lodged into the side of the balloon's gondola.

For fifteen minutes I watched as the tragedy unfolded, powerless to help in the face of it all. The tension on the wire was so great that it was literally tearing away at the basket. The pilot tried to negotiate a drop line hitched to a truck to pull him out of it, but the line snapped and sent the balloon careening away from both the drop and power lines, dumping a passenger in the process. She died upon impact, from 60 feet up.

Powerlessness in the face of tragedy is at best humbling. Death came today, as it does, creeping in from the corners of our lives, the places we least often look. Death came today, and its questions remained unanswered.

Reese

Rapunzel

2007-10-01T12:20:00.001-07:00

Along hairline
Gargoyle

Gypsum vertebrae
Basalt backbone
Cobble belly

Heels of pumice
Breast marble
Neck flint

Even blue bells between
Turn schist

No more fragility of aspens
Or golden staircases

I sprout baleen
To make ribbing
Stay corsets

I am Jaw line finally
Translated to jet—

Yet still you come
Begging hair

Still I purge
Heavy confluence

And you swim up
Swollen-whaled breathy

Pulling the roots of my home

Letter of the law, or spirit?

2007-09-28T16:06:00.000-07:00

Is really just the difference between a copy editor and a conceptual one. I am currently in Denver at the Mountains and Plains regional trade show. Today there was a panel with Morrow and Houghton Mifflin. Editors from both publishers were there. Both conceptual editors. They are responsible for taking that little bundle of raw material, keeping it absolutely true to the voice of the author, and making sure the ideas and character developments align. They do not edit line for line--they leave that to the copy editors: the folks who rake the whole thing with a fine tooth comb, in the name of one consistent template, namely the Chicago Manual of Style.

And really, if I were to choose I would be probaly go conceptual. Yet, copy editing is absolutely essential to the precision and finesse of a manuscript.

In my own sermon on the mount near the Bodhi tree, I would perhaps call both necessary. And, if I wanted my sermon published, well, I couldn't say one was more important than the other.

Why are so many against Iran?

2007-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

I am perplexed. I listened to the president of Iran when he spoke to the students at Columbia University in New York. He made some really adroit points.
We are taxing the Iranians with our contempt, and they are not represented in our parliament.
The president of Iran wants sovereignty. He wants the holy land to also have sovereignty. The people who live there should have the right to govern themselves. Why can we not get our fingers out of the middle east?
Our president, Mr. Bush has plans to make a library when he retires. oh the irony. It is to be called something like the Freedom library, to advance freedom and democracy in non freedom and democracy loving nations. But for now he wages war with Iraq; Iran. When he does not have the power to shove it down their throats, he will build a library to accomplish his purposes.

"My dear friends and scholars, distinguished participants, science and wisdom can also be misused, a misuse caused by selfishness, corruption, material desires and material interests, as well as individual and group interests. Material desires place humans against the realities of the world. Corrupted independent human beings resist acceptance of reality and even if they do accept it, they do not obey it.

There are many scholars who are aware of the realities but do not accept them. Their selfishness does not allow them to accept those realities. Did those who in the course of human history wage wars not understand the reality that lives, properties, dignity, territories and the rights of all human beings should be respected? Or did they understand it but neither have faith in nor abide by it?

My dear friends, as long as the human heart is not free from hatred, envy and selfishness, it does not abide by the truth, by the illumination of science and science itself. Science is the light and scientists must be pure and pious. If humanity achieves the highest level of physical and spiritual knowledge, but its scholars and scientists are not pure, then this knowledge cannot serve the interest of humanity, and several events can ensue." Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Barack Obama said in the democratic debate tonight not to be afraid of people who are different. Because I am different, I liked it when he said this.

....be seeing you.

Return With Dust on Your Shoes

2007-09-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

Because that is where you were born—
next to the old milk barn, the one with the red roof.
You were given to believe from a young age,
that the farm didn’t wash off. That you’d always smell
like the cow you milked that morning
or the hay you baled over the weekend.
That the dust on your shoes exposed your class—
each under-bellied embarrassment from the social strata
that molded you. And, that farm–free people always
looked shinier than you, in their farm-free clothes.

But, there will come a time when you wear alfalfa,
like essential oil on your skin and walk into the wetlands
where the cows graze. You will reach toward the arbor
of grapes in the fall and pick them, willingly;
and make grape juice with mom. You will return to the farm
in winter with Great Horned Owl or in the spring
with the Canadian Geese. And when you get a little dust on your feet
you will look down and smile. You will carry the dust
back to the sterilized world, where cleanliness,
next to godliness, gratefully, becomes its own dead maxim.

And so, dreams.

2007-09-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

They have been epic and long of late. Sometimes I live someones lifetime from birth to death. I awake in review every morning. I arise from another living, to concrete awareness--awakeness. Fragments of each nights episodes stick to my day. At work, the fragments hum those other awarenesses and cause smile.

Last night there was a scaffolded structure called the Unago. It was either 4200 or 7200 feet tall. It was built in the desert on Indian Land. There was an audience who stood in back of the structure awaiting a show. My friend Jessica jumped from the platform at the top, with the help of bungie ropes, down into a small hole in the ground that was filled with water. The hole was small but the water was deep. She went all the way down the depth of the water, and was then pulled out with the bungies and swung into the air, like a trapeze artist. The crowd was awed. Later, the tribal elders provided a meal for everyone. Jessica sat down, and composed an essay about her experience jumping. I awoke with the essay, like a mantra, repeating in my mind.

And so, dreams.

Lucid Dreaming

2007-09-18T20:11:00.001-07:00

I came across this article in the New York Times a few days ago that has me thinking. Whether it is by some psychosomatic reflection or pure coincidence, the idea has been in my head recently. Do you ever fly in your dreams? Do wield a sword and fight the good fight? Some new studies in the area of dream theory might give us all a moment of pause.

Established sleep researchers say lucid dreaming is occasionally reported by subjects, though it is difficult to validate scientifically. “Yes, lucid dreaming exists,” said Dr. Rodney Radtke, the medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Duke University. “Yes, people certainly can, within their dream, realize ‘this is just a dream’ and continue to participate.”

The article in the Times goes beyond this, suggesting we have ultimate power over dreaming, that it is a universe of pure will...

Do I believe that someone could potentially alter or interact with their dreams in such a way that they could change the dream? Yes,” he said. “Do I think that you could essentially design a dream — ‘Oh, I want to go to Honolulu and have this big hunk hit on me’? It’s a bit of a stretch. But I can’t say it can’t happen.”

The article also suggests some lucidity aids, provided by institutes dedicated to lucid dreaming. But, there is no better aid than being conscious of this potential. Point in case, I've been willing flight in my dreams lately, and its been happening at a lot more frequently than ever before. Will is important, consciousness is key.

So, happy dreaming.....

Pa Chin's "Family"

2007-09-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto

Modernity brought in its wake a series of civilization changing events. Social tradition, family life, government, nothing was safe from its long lumbering march over the corpses of outdated societies. Like some Darwinian experiment, whole civilizations were forced to upheave their past and redefine themselves, or face crushing colonization from countries that had already undertaken the great change. Modernity brought technology, and technology brought power. To exist in the modern world, to survive, a country needed both.

China’s modernization came later than most. By the beginning of the twentieth-century, Japan had instituted the Meiji reforms, albeit under considerable duress, and stood as the principal power in Asia. China, suffering under their ancient history and a somewhat complacent Qing Dynasty, had stalled. Reforms, mostly in the form of political capitulations and contained rebellions, had little consequence. The structure of society itself would have to change, but that would mean total revolution, and those in power had little interest in that. It was in this environment, the year 1931, that Pa Chin published his celebrated novel Family. The novel presents its reader with a clear window into the “struggle for the liberation of youth and women from the fetters of the old patriarchal family system.” It exposes the birthing pains of modern China.

The novels principal characters are three brothers, Chueh-hsin, Chueh-min and Chueh-hui, each of which faces rising challenges squaring life at home, with all its antiquated morality and hierarchical dependency, with nationalization and liberation movements issuing out of Beijing and Shanghai. The brothers are like souls caught on the threshold between heaven and hell; conflicted, they juggle between their responsibility to the old system and their desire for the new.

Set in Chengtu, a large city in the province of Szechuan, Pa Chin’s Family illustrates beautifully (and at times tragically) the social tension created by China’s move toward modernity. The eldest brother, Chueh-hsin, perhaps the meeker of the three, is given responsibility over his younger brothers following the death of their father. The three live in their family estate with uncles and aunts, cousins and concubines, and of course, the Venerable Master Kao, their grandfather. Though Chueh-hsin is nominally responsible for his brothers, we find out in the novel how little he is actually able to exert this charge.

Owing to the delicacy of his position, he adopts the “compliant bow” philosophy promoted by Liu Pan-nung (1889-1934), which suggests not wasting “time and effort on discussion, but rather outwardly agree with one’s adversary and greet his statements with a bow.” This position at first appears possible, but as we see through the course of the story, it adds great misery to not only his life, but also the lives of those he loves most. He repeatedly sacrifices himself on the alter of filial piety, only to lose the treasures he holds most dear.

Chueh-hsin is met at every step of his adult life by tragedy, and under the immense pressure, he folds. He is conflicted in that he agrees with his younger brothers that the system that holds them captive is dying, but can’t seem to muster up the courage to do anything about it. His grandfather (yeh-yeh), the symbol of dead Confucian values is simply too powerful to oppose. In a sense, Chueh-hsin’s relationship with yeh-yeh represents the early revolutions relationship with the Qing Dynasty. The eldest brother wants to believe that the Confucian system can be fixed, that the values represented within it can be transmuted and, like some philosophers stone, remade into something remarkable and relevant, but only realizes the impossibility of it too late.

The youngest son, Chueh-hui (the so-called humanitarian because of his refusal to ride in a sedan-chair) represents perhaps everything his elder brother wanted, but was too timid to fight for. Chueh-hui is a true revolutionary character, and one supposes him to be a young Pa Chin. Full of zeal and intelligence, he follows the lead of his contemporaries in Beijing by publishing a weekly magazine (Dawn) to give voice to the new ideas of his peers in Chengtu. Chueh-hui’s attitude toward traditional Confucian society is best described in Pa Chin’s words:

That book Yeh-yeh gave me—“On Filial Piety and the Shunning of Lewdness”—was still on the table. I picked it up and skimmed through a few of the pages. The whole thing is nothing but a lesson on how to behave like a slave. It’s full of phrases like “The minister who is unwilling to die at his sovereign’s command is not loyal; of all virtues, filial piety is the best.” The more I read, the angrier I became, until I got so mad I ripped the book to pieces. With one less copy of that book in the world, a few less people will be harmed by it.

Chueh-hui considers the values of western civilization triumphant without completely understanding them. What he does see clearly is the dead system inside which he is caged, and without which he would soar. He embraces modernity not for its own sake, but as a means to release him and those he loves from the crushing weight of a broken system. He was a slave to his dead ancestors, to bureaucracy, to tradition.

But modernity, as understood by bright-eyed revolutionaries, is certainly not its reality. Chueh-hui and his older brother Chueh-min understood that, at least as much as they were able to glean from the writings of foreign authors and thinkers. This awareness is represented vividly in Pa Chin’s account of the civil war that spilled over into Chengtu during the warlord period (1917-1927). The Kao family averted becoming victimized by the spreading violence, and for some time remained holed up in their complex, afraid of the advancing armies and their impending death. This glimpse into the brutal reality of revolution and modernization tempered the brothers understanding, one can only suspect, of what sacrifice actually meant, and how much sacrifice it would require to move the country as a whole toward modernization.

Historically, China assumed an ethnocentric view of their place in the geopolitical system. As xenophobes, it is understandable that it took so long for them as a nation to accept the realities of a modernizing world. Their political and social system was proved and prided, and had accompanied them across that millennial march of time. It is patently understandable that they would then drag their heels at any prospect of change, at any hint that their system was somehow inferior or in need of reform. But what was required didn’t necessarily demand originality, only improvement. This was evidenced in Sun Yat-Sen and his three principles of change, namely Nationalism, Democracy, and Socialism.

The struggle of Chueh-hui and his brothers broadly represented millions of Chinese in the early twentieth-century. It was against this backdrop that China embraced the external principles of modernization. Even though they had yet to formulate a national identity, or even what their particular brand of modernity would look like, the work of revolutionaries of previous centuries, and contemporaries, gave them hope against their seemingly Herculean struggle.

Modernity has exacted a fair price from each society willing to undertake reform. WWI and II are perfectly adequate examples of that. Modernizing China though, with its billion people and unreasonable self-pride, is a different affair entirely. China had to choose its own way, on its own terms. Like Pa Chin’s protagonist Chueh-hui, China would embrace modernization or face certain death. There was no choice for Chueh-hui, only various options which seemed to lead to less tragic conclusions. So while the brothers (symbolizing China) didn’t necessarily agree on the way forward, as each ends up going in separate directions, each understood the unassailable need for change.

*****************

This is a review of the classic novel Family by the author Pa Chin. I highly recommend reading it, as it offers an intimate look into the early days of the Chinese revolution.

Reese

The madness of it all...

2007-09-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

With all the craziness out there, Bin et all, it is nice to interject some humor into such religious absurdities.

the bin laden video, and what we might know about the power players because of it

2007-09-11T19:15:00.001-07:00

it is obvious to me at this point. the united states has already captured osama bin laden. they have probably always had him. but even if not:

having taken my clues from the facts on the ground, i drew a direct route to this conclusion: bin laden is doing karl rove's bidding.

it would require a tremendous amount of disbelief for the average person to conclude Mr. Rove, politico extraordinaire, would not use bin laden's capture to win in the 2006 election.

re enactment of rove's thought process in 2006: "so we'll hit them with a bin laden video on the sunday before the election of 2006, then we'll hit them with a bin laden video on september 11, 2007 when general petraeus gives his report to the Congress: three huge news items occur on the same day as 9/11. then before the election of 2008 we will announce that we finally caught bin laden. bush with that "history's teacher" he'll keep talking about will be vindicated."

i remember somewhere in the folklore of mormon theology a professed time of secret combinations, and conspiracies against men. what is it when a conspiracy theorist theorizes an actual conspiracy?

why is petraeus giving his report on iraq to the senate on 9/11/07?

there are a few required things for my conspiracy theory to be true:

-karl rove has patience.
-bin laden knows he is caught.

two things remain undecided:

-has karl rove been really working for dick cheney all along?
-if so, does bush know or not know.

tell me why i am wrong.

unleavened toast and sunday morning coffee

2007-09-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I have the distinct impression that I have been in some other place while I slept. This morning I thought that this particular incarnation of myself is a steam engine providing unused energy to those other incarnations of myself, energy to use up for free-er movement in those other places. Sometime I presume, the reverse of this is also true.
If you are instanced in belief which provides for yourself a heaven, you must take into account the particular quality of time which presences you, (a version of time which betrays the fundamental quality of any and all versions of time), that quality of perpetual universality: if you are alive now on earth, you are alive now in heaven, (perhaps dreaming and remembering your present experience).
If you do not have heaven as an option, like bread without leaven, you are flat: two dimensional.
I have an idea of heaven as: the sum total of all your incarnations, equally as you play them out in the eternal present of your perpetuity: thus, you are God of heaven and earth: just as God intended it.
When I wake up on the Sunday morning, I drink a cup of coffee and reflect on as many of the real problems in the world I can get my head around. Every week I cannot underestimate the problem of Iraq, when I prioritize the problems for myself: in this, I hope that some other incarnation of myself may have more power or presence to solve the Iraq problem in the place of that other present: the problems of the world will not be solved until the solutions have been determined; by artificial or natural means, whichever has more presence: they must be thought about first, and enough people have to do the thinking before a transcendent state of mind may come into being.
The New York Times sums up President Bush's solution quite succinctly:

"President Bush, however, seems to be aiming for maximum political advantage — not maximum clarity on Iraq’s military and political crises, which cannot be separated from each other. Mr. Bush, we fear, isn’t looking for the truth, only for ways to confound the public, scare Democrats into dropping their demands for a sound exit strategy, and prolong the war until he leaves office. At times, General Petraeus gives the disturbing impression that he, too, is more focused on the political game in Washington than the unfolding disaster in Iraq. That serves neither American nor Iraqi interests."

Be seeing you.

Allow Me To Introduce You To (Meet) The Press

2007-09-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

Allow me to introduce you to (meet) the Press:

The media moguls, those who pontificate for the major information distribution centers in the United States, play a dangerous game. Robert Novak, the Scaremonger of early 2003 says he is worried about Hillary Clinton. Other Republicans are scrambling around looking for Hillary Clinton's double in their party. Mary Matalain, Cheney's aide, looks over her eyebrows and defends Fred Thomspon while failing to sound sympathetic to even one of the 1800 humans in Iraq defeated, killed in August by her master, the dishonorable Vice President's dangerous policies.
General Petraeus' "September report" will be filtered by the White House as it is disseminated to the citizens of the US of A. He has already said that stability in Iraq requires ten more years of American occupation. How much money will that cost?
I think that I am beginning to see a trend. Perhaps I am the last to recognize that we are stuck in Iraq; the last to recognize the consequential quality in the human condition. But, when you plug the tragedy in Iraq into the equation which sums up my personal philosophy, the result presents itself as a quandary: act such that you can deem the maxim of your action a universal law: we can never give back to Iraq what we have taken from it.
We used the blunt instrument of war, to undermine millions of people's lives to protect our oil, and remove one dictator. How can we turn the tide of 200 years of American aggression: firstly to the Native Americans and lastly to the Iraqi innocents. We owe every innocent Iraqi, more than ten years of American Military occupation. We owe them a hundred years of humanitarian aid.
Larry Craig, poor guy; he was caught with his pants down. (One cannot speak of his strife, without punning.)
Alberto Gonzales is gone, he resigned last Monday, less than a week ago. His name didn't come up once in my requisition of this mornings news.

....It is a dangerous game they are playing us in;

September 2, 2007

Ultrasound

2007-08-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Amazing technology to use sonar waves to create a picture. This was taken a few days ago by the nurse midwife. I outlined the image in white to show better definition. You can faintly see the spine, arms and legs. I laughed because the little thing would'nt hold still long enough to get its measurements...but the midwife said I might be further along than I thought. Anyway, what a profound moment to view an alive being within my own. Quite emotional and beautiful. Thought to send the picture along to you all.

2007-08-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

Cicada

Cumulus male

at work in the cottonwood

calling a lover;

his circadian belly

primed to awaken

one sleeping female.

Oven-breath from Coho

is temperature of his sex call:

one hundred and ten

ecstatic frizz-songs

underscore broad-headed yearning

in a chain letter

where buzz begets buzz.

Where all males sing at once

in a dream of electric coitus:

the old tale

of consummation’s wonder

that end’s in raspy death

on a red desert floor.

ode to the bean

2007-08-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

the grace of the bean.
simple lines wavy body
true green,
cousin flat long and pale yellow
snap clean watery crunch
flavor mellow
and then there is green in purple’s glory
thin in it’s color
casting a flurry

lavender

2007-08-15T18:08:00.001-07:00

Lavender sui gras

Seattle

2007-08-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

Sitting in RR's apartment, with Myo, Mitchell, Becca, RR, Mark, Stacey, Kaia, Sophi, and myself--Reese. Free association thinking, here goes.

Burger full belly, flower laden allergies, sunkist and tired, adidas in blue and tai-chi too. No more carne, thinking about converting to Judaism. Chasing my tail in circles and finding nowhere to square myself. Hello Utah, hello Bee(f), do you know my name.

come visit (please stay home). m.
the weather is lugubrious.

On November first nineteen fifty two she opened to a full house. Incubate at zero degrees to ten degrees Celsius for ten minutes to three days. but if you include your refutation for the final piece of support remember that it may linger in your reader's mind for some time. so make it as strong and convincing as possible. Now bring to mind all the people you know....

He walks into suggestiveity into spaces, into the illumination and I walk with him.

Stacey said:
I don't know, don't say that, stop.
Withdrawal.

Sophi:
Hi!

Mark:
Trigonometry is the study of triangles in planes, specifically right-angle triangles with planes.

Kaia:
A quote:
"Be the change you want to see in the world." -Mahatma Ghandi

RR:
Why?

Myo:
I breathe you in, if I could breathe.

Mitchell:
The bite of conscience, is like the bite of a dog upon a rock. It does no good whatsoever.

I didn't do that, said my pride. Never mind, I didn't do that one.

Mark:
(a riddle) Man hears a bell, man wakes up, man hears a bell again, man dies.

Reese:
So long and thanks for all the fish............

A dios

Postscript:

As for his feet, sometimes he wore on each a sock, or on the one a sock and on the other a stocking, or a boot, or a shoe, or a slipper, or a sock and a boot, or a sock and a shoe, or a sock and a slipper, or a stocking and boot, or a stocking and shoe, or a stocking and slipper, or nothing at all. And sometimes he wore on each a stocking, or on the one a stocking and on the other a boot, or a shoe, or a slipper, or a sock and a boot, or a sock and shoe, or a sock and slipper, or a stocking and boot, or a stocking and shoe, or a stocking and slipper, or nothing at all. And sometimes he wore on each a boot, or on the one a boot and on the other a shoe, or a slipper, or a sock and boot, or a sock and shoe, or a sock and slipper, or a stocking and boot, or a stocking and shoe, or a stocking and slipper, or nothing at all. And sometime he wore on each a shoe, or on the one a shoe and on the other a slipper, or a sock and boot, or a sock and shoe, or a sock and slipper, or a stocking and boot, or a stocking and shoe, or a stocking and slipper or nothing at all. And sometimes he wore on each a slipper, or on the one a slipper and on the other a sock and boot, or a sock and shoe, or a sock and slipper, or a stocking and boot, or a stocking and shoe, or a stocking and slipper, or nothing at all. And sometime he wore on each a sock and boot, or on the one a sock and boot and on the other a sock and shoe, or a sock and slipper, or a stocking and boot, or a stocking and shoe, or a stocking and slipper, or nothing at all. And sometimes he wore on each a sock and shoe, or on the one a sock and shoe and on the other a sock and slipper, or a stocking and boot, or a stocking and shoe, or a stocking and slipper, or nothing at all. And sometimes he wore on each a sock and slipper, or on the one a sock and slipper and on the other a stocking and boot, or a stocking and shoe, or a stocking and slipper, or nothing at all. And sometimes he wore on each a stocking and boot, or on the one a stocking and boot and on the other a stocking and shoe, or a stocking and slipper, or nothing at all. And sometime he wore on each a stocking and shoe, or on the one a stocking and shoe and on the other a stocking and slipper, or nothing at all. And sometimes he wore on each a stocking and slipper, or on the one a stocking and slipper and on the other nothing at all. And sometimes he went barefoot.

[...]

Here he stood. Here he sat. Here he knelt. Here he lay. Here he moved, to and fro, from the door to the window, from the window to the door; from the window to the door, from the door to the window; from the fire to the bed, from the bed to the fire; from the bed to the fire, from the fire to the bed; from the door to the fire, from the fire to the door; from the fire to the door, from the door to the fire; from the window to the bed, from the bed to the window; from the bed to the window, from the window to the bed; from the fire to the window, from the window to the fire; from the window to the fire, from the fire to the window; from the bed to the door, from the door to the bed; from the door to the bed, from the bed to the door; from the door to the window, from the window to the fire; from the fire to the window, from the window to the door; from the window to the door, from the door to the bed; from the bed to the door, from the door to the window; from the fire to the bed, from the bed to the window; from the window to the bed, from the bed to the fire; from the bed to the fire, from the fire to the door; from the door to the fire, from the fire to the bed; from the door to the window, from the window to the bed; from the bed to the window, from the window to the door; from the window to the door, from the door to the fire; from the fire to the door, from the door to the window; from the fire to the bed, from the bed to the door; from the door to the bed, from the bed to the fire; from the bed to the fire, from the fire to the window; from the window to the fire, from the fire to the bed; from the door to the fire, from the fire to the window; from the window to the fire, from the fire to the door; from the window to the bed, from the bed to the door; from the door to the bed, from the bed to the window; from the fire to the window, from the window to the bed; from the bed to the window, from the window to the fire; from the bed to the door, from the door to the fire; from the fire to the door, from the door to the bed.

The room was furnished solidly and with taste.

This solid and tasteful furniture was subjected by Mr. Knott to frequent changes of position, both absolute and relative. Thus it was not rare to find, on the Sunday, the tallboy on its feet by the fire, and the dressing-table on its head by the bed, and the night-stool on its face by the door, and the wash-hand-stand on its back by the window; and, on the Monday, the tallboy on its back by the bed, and the dressing-table on its face by the door, and the night-stool on its back by the window, and the wash-hand-stand on its feet by the fire; and, on the Tuesday, the tallboy on its face by the door, and the dressing-table on its back by the window, and the night-stool on its feet by the fire, and the wash-hand-stand on its head by the bed; and, on the Wednesday, the tallboy on its back by the window, and the dressing-table on its feet by the fire, and the night-stool on its head by the bed, and the wash-hand-stand on its face by the door; and on the Thursday, the tallboy on its side by the fire, and the dressing-table on its feet by the bed, and the night-stool on its head by the door, and the wash-hand-stand on its face by the window; and, on the Friday, the tallboy on its feet by the bed, and the dressing-table on its head by the door, and the night-stool on its face by the window, and the wash-hand-stand on its side by the fire; and, on the Saturday, the tallboy on its head by the door, and the dressing-table on its face by the window, and the night-stool on its side by the fire, and the wash-hand-stand on its feet by the bed; and, on the Sunday week, the tallboy on its face by the window, and the dressing-table on its side by the fire, and the night-stool on its feet by the bed and the wash-hand-stand on its head by the door; and, on the Monday week, the tallboy on its back by the fire, and the dressing-table on its side by the bed, and the night-stool on its feet by the door, and the wash-hand-stand on its head by the window; and, on the Tuesday week, the tallboy on its side by the bed, and the dressing-table on its feet by the door, and the night-stool on its head by the window, and the wash-hand-stand on its back by the fire; and, on the Wednesday week, the tallboy on its feet by the door, and the dressing-table on its head by the window, and the night-stool on its back by the fire, and the wash-hand-stand on its side by the bed; and, on the Thursday week, the tallboy on its head by the window, and the dressing-table on its back by the fire, and the night-stool on its side by the bed, and the wash-hand-stand on its feet by the door; and, on the Friday week, the tallboy on its face by the fire, and the dressing-table on its back by the bed, and the night-stool on its side by the door, and the wash-hand-stand on its feet by the window; and, on the Saturday week, the tallboy on its back by the bed, and the dressing-table on its side by the door, and the night-stool on its feet by the window, and the wash-hand-stand on its face by the fire; and on the Sunday fortnight, the tallboy on its side by the door, and the dressing-table on its feet by the window, and the night-stool on its face by the fire, and the wash-hand-stand on its back by the bed; and on the Monday fortnight, the tallboy on its feet by the window, and the dressing-table on its face by the fire, and the night-stool on its back by the bed, and the wash-hand-stand on its side by the door; and, on the Tuesday fortnight, the tallboy on its head by the fire, and the dressing-table on its face by the bed, and the night-stool on its back by the door, and the wash-hand-stand on its side by the window; and, on the Wednesday fortnight, the tallboy on its face by the bed, and the dressing-table on its back by the door, and the night-stool on its side by the window, and the wash-hand-stand on its head by the fire; and, on the Thursday fortnight, the tallboy on its back by the door, and the dressing-table on its side by the window, and the night-stool on its head by the fire, and the wash-hand-stand on its face by the bed; and, on the Friday fortnight, the tallboy on its side by the window, and the dressing-table on its head by the fire, and the night-stool on its face by the bed, and the wash-hand-stand on its back by the door, for example, not at all rare, to consider only, over a period of nineteen days only, the tallboy, the dressing-table, the night-stool and the wash-hand-stand, and their feet, and heads, and faces, and backs and unspecified sides, and the fire, and the bed, and the door, and the window, not at all rare.

For the chairs, also, to mention only the chairs also, were never still.

(mitchell) -Samuel Beckett

7 Deadly Sins (Project P.A.S.S.G.A.S.)

2007-07-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

So, here's the deal. The "Duke City Shootout" happened this week. Tor was involved in it as key grip for one of the submitted projects. On Wednesday night, I went with he and Maryse to a party put together by the festival for all the talent and help. That night we found out about the 3 minute short competition called the 'Mini Cini', in which film makers had to film and edit a piece addressing the '7 Deadly Sins' (finished project had to be 3 min. or less). So, Tor and I decided to get involved, even though we had only about 36 hours to complete the project (the deadline was this morning at 10:00 am).

We started at 2:30 Thursday morning, when we drove to Taos to pick up a camera. We spent the day shooting between Taos and Santa Fe, arriving back in Albuquerque about 5:00 in the afternoon. That gave us the night to edit the three hours of footage into something resembling a story. We were up until 6:00 am Friday morning trying to finesse the thing into something submittable, and what you see here is the final product.

We'll find out tomorrow how we did, though since everyone else had the whole week, I doubt we'll win. But hey, it was fun.

What was truly amazing was that we failed to find anyone (including a catholic priest, and the mayor of Taos) who could name for us the 7 deadly sins (until our last shot of the day, on the Santa Fe plaza). We spent 30 minutes in the Espanola WalMart filming before getting booted out, and about an hour in the Catholic church in Santa Fe with no success. Anyhow, let me know what you think of the piece. Hopefully its as fun to watch as it was to make.

Enjoy,

Reese

UPDATE: We didn't win, though since we didn't expect to we're not a bit sad. But, we did get some great laughs out of the judges, and some positive feedback as to how it could be edited into a winning piece. Tor and I are going to try to get a longer version mixed which I'll post on my blog...look out for it.

mammoth fallen tree and big mama

2007-07-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

To be happy...

2007-07-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

Just a tidbit... "If you want to be happy for a year - win the lottery.
"If you want to be happy for a lifetime - do what you love!