Tidbits

I had a nice quiet weekend. I went to the hospital both days to visit with Lori. We haven’t had time to hang out for hours just chatting or being together for years now. There are usually other people around or we just meet at a restaurant or her house for lunch during our work week. While I would have preferred to spend time in a place other than a hospital, I was glad I was able to spend time with her as long as she had to be there. Hopefully, she will be released today.

A funny thing happened the other day. I was getting ready in the morning, showered, washed my hair, cleaned my ears with Q-tips, put on deodorant, installed teeth, went through my usual ritual. Before leaving the bathroom I tidied up, putting the towel to dry, wiping the sink, securing the toothpaste, tossing the q-tip into the trash, lighting a match. My usual routine. I thought I had used 2 q-tips but only one was consciously trashed, the other, I assumed, had been ‘unconsciously’ tossed in the trash.

I went into the bedroom and gathered my clothes. I sat on the bed and put my socks on and then my underwear. As I stood up to pull up my underwear, low and behold, a Q-tip head was peaking out of my navel. “Hmmmm,” I said to myself, “so that’s where it went!” It was then, like the previous Q-tip, consciously trashed.

I’ve been keeping up with the Dick Cheney “I-do/I-do-not-have” Executive Privilege regarding documents in the Vice President’s office and his assertion that the Office of the Vice-President “is/is-not-part” of the Executive Branch. This man is the most obnoxious, corrupt person that has ever been a heart-beat away from being called Mr. President. Why hasn't he been indicted for something? He has, in the past, claimed executive privilege when he didn’t want to turn over documents of activity in his office as relates to the Valerie Plane exposure, and also claims he is not part of the executive branch and therefore exempt from the order governing the handling of classified information. Make up your mind dip shit!

There is something bothering me. It is a partial deja vu experience I've been having. let me explain.

In the summer of 2001 the BIG news story of the day was the disappearance of Chandra Levy and her affair with Congressman Gary Condit. The media hammered this story during the summer of "no other pressing news" to death. Every news program had the latest news (which was nothing) about the case and every cable news channel had program after program of talking heads specualating on whether Gary Condit killed her, hid her, impregnated her, etc. This was like an incessant drum beat throughout the summer, through to September 11, 2001. It wasn't spoken about again after the terrorist attacks. When Chandra Levy's body was found a year after she disappeared, it did not receive front page headlines.

There was plenty of horror to report on for months and months after 9/11. Then came the wars, Afghanistan first and then Iraq. Then came the devastating tsunami in southern asia, killing hundreds of thousands in a moment. Then came Hurricane Katrina, the devastation, and the absolute apathy and ineptitude of FEMA. Then came the lull.

The news media thinks that Americans aren't interested in war talk so they rarely explore that reality extensively. The Bush administration is betting that without the visuals of flag-draped coffins returning to America, words alone aren't graphic enough to rile Americans to pay attention to the details of the war. So we have a small percentage of our TV news coverage devoted to the wars.

The deja vu eperience comes from the inordinate amount of time and media coverage given to the absolute bullshit life of Paris Hilton. If I was Osama bin Laden, I'd be thinking that America was not paying attention. Our president and vice-president are so absorbed in keeping their inadequate and illegal activities from becoming the new scandal. Paris Hilton is being treated as if she were an important part of our culture and we are held in rapt attention to her trials and tribulations. 20 people are running for an election that isn't even happening for another 17 months. What a great time to knock down another building or drop a dirty bomb on a Washington street. Will it take another terrorist attack on American soil to stun the media out of their tabloid mentally?

Nature Watch

The wild life around the house often fascinates and amuses me.

Despite the current news that common birds are dying off at alarming rates in America, there seems to be an abundance of birds living around Little Pottsburg Creek.

I recently cleaned and refilled the bird feeder on the side yard. I can watch from my seat in the den as birds approach, land and nibble. Last Saturday I did some pruning there and left the half full contractor's bag in the yard. This morning I realized I left the bag too close to the bird feeder. I watched with amusement as an industrious squirrel used the half filled bag as a springboard to land on the bird feeder. When he first landed the birds nibbling on the feeder flew off, but in less than a minute they returned, munching seeds side by side with the squirrel. There's something so sweet about watching birds eat from a seed feeder. It's engrossing too. It's like watching a fire in the fire place.

In another part of the yard I put out dried corn on cobs in a special feeder for the squirrels. Last time, I put two cobs in the feeder that usually holds one cob, because the cobs were small and I was able to fit two in. The squirrels love these treats and go through them pretty rapidly.

This morning as I was holding the door open for a very slow Ally B. to jump up into the house a cleanly stripped corn cob fell out of the tree right in front of the door. One of the little squirrels must have pulled out that extra cob and brought it up into the tree. I looked from the kitchen window to see that there was only one cob left in the holder, and that too had been stripped.

I enjoyed a nice quiet evening last night. I watched some TV, retired at 10:30 and read until 11:10. Except for a 2 a.m. wake-up by Allie B. to be released from the bedroom for a sip of water, I slept well. We all arose at 6:15, fresh as daisies. Even Yeshe who has been nursing a bad back of late had a little more zip to his exit from bed this morning.

Hopefully, I will find out today if I will get a new assignment at work. Either way, I just want the decision to be made so I can move on. Not that I've been sitting around idly waiting for them to decide. It's just that having something out there and waiting beyond the date I was told a decision will be made is a little nerve wracking.

Wednesday. Hump day. Almost ready to head off to work. Maybe I'll write more later.

2:00 P.M.
I was informed this morning that I wouldn't be getting the new assignment. And it is ok. Not without disappointment, but ok. So now I am busily preparing my goals for this coming year, in this position. They're due soon.

Fryday

That is a play on words, but it is how I usually feel at the end of my work week. Fried. It's not that my job is so hard. It's that my job is a lot of work, and I care about getting it done. But I dont fight this job, my co-workers or management. That would be too much. And I wouldn't have lasted here for 10 years if I did.

This has been a week. A milestone yesterday, a push to write more in this blog and in my journal. A commitment to myself to explore my feelings more. A commitment to read another novel. Getting household chores done. Getting and sending a Father's Day gift. Yeshe being injured and slowly recovering. My mother changing her mind 3 times in a week about when she was going to come by to visit. F not being able to decide if she is actually going to go away next week or not. Trying to turn vegetarian while slowly becoming anemic and craving rare beef. Fighting fatigue that comes with middle age.

Last week I applied for a new position here. Today I had the interview. It went well. I think I'm very qualified for it and probably won't get it. It could be a paycut although I asked that I not be offered the job if it were going to be a pay cut. I should know by Monday. But I enjoyed the interview process so much that it almost doesn't matter if I get the job or not. I would like to but if I don't, it'll be ok. I did good.

I'm gonna go home now. The little cub is having dinner sent to the house. No cooking. No clean-up. I want to do yard work, rest, read, sleep, and hang out this weekend. Not sure what F has after work tomorrow but a movie would be in good order. I want to see "Ocean's 13" because it looks like fun and I can look at handsome men.

33 Years Ago

33 years ago today I graduated from Aurora. I remember the day clearly. I was nervous all day and ecstatic after it was announced at the annual dinner dance fund raising event. All graduates during the past year were announced and one surprise graduate was announced. I was the surprise graduate on June 14, 1974.

Looking back now it feels like it was a different lifetime and the world was a different place. It makes me pause and wonder if I have reached my full potential as a person. I wonder if I am even near my potential. I wonder if I have spent my time well, expanding the potential I was thought to have 33 years ago. I wonder what risks I have taken since then that have had the impact on me that completing the course of treatment at Aurora had. It was nearly the first thing in my life I had ever completed. I started Aurora on August 17, 1971, and with several stops and starts finally graduated 34 months later. That's a long time. A long time to be in boot camp.

There are days, maybe today is one of them, when I can't see progress or fulfillment of potential. There are days when I still walk around saying, "how the fuck did I get myself into this mess?" There are days when I still don't know who I am, why I am, or how I got here. But those are only occassional days. Most days I feel settled within myself, comfortable in my own skin, content to live peacefully with myself. Sometimes I think it is a by-product of aging and an indication that the fight has gone out of me. Sometimes, most times, I know it is because I have come pretty damn close to being the person I wanted to be way back in 1974.

Not Settled Yet

I can't seem to get settled on a new look for this blog. This is a bit closer I think. It feels more open and less cluttered. it's lighter, and brighter.

I wonder if being so into the "look" of it is a way to distract from the fact that I have nothing to say.

I only have snippets of thoughts and comments today.

My mother just called and said she and my father were visiting me from June 29 - July 2. I thought they were coming on June 21st. I had planned to have the weekend to myself on June 29th. I had planned to have time alone and time to do work around the house. I guess I will have to do it the previous weekend.

I read the following quote today:

"The terrorists know what they want and they will stop at nothing to get it.... Their ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian empire, a caliphate, with Baghdad as its capital. They view the world as a battlefield and they yearn to hit us again. And now they have chosen to make Iraq the central front in their war against civilization.... They are surging their capabilities, attacking Iraqi and American forces, and killing innocent civilians. America is fighting this enemy in Iraq because that is where they have gathered. We are there because, after 9/11, we decided to deny terrorists any safe haven." ~Vice President Dick Cheney, Speech at West Point Graduation, 2007

What is this man thinking? I am so sick to death of President George W. Cheney that I want to scream, or laugh hysterically until my sides hurt and my lungs stop working.

Here's more hysteria from the powers that be:

(CBS 5) BERKELEY A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

At least that happened in 1994, before the enlightenment of the new millenium. If you could see me now I'd be rolling my eyes.

It is the absolute insanity of the leadership of this country that makes me want to fall out of the main stream of society. Yes, there are lots of stupid people in America. Everyone knows it. Even most of the stupid people know it. It's the stupid ones who don't know it that run for elected office in America. And it's the stupid ones who know they are stupid that elect them.

I was speaking to a neighbor this morning and he was telling me he is moving to a little rural town in Arkansas at the end of this month. He bought 10 acres of land with a 3 bedroom cabin on it. He won't have a full time job. He'll do odd jobs using his various talents and live simple. He said he can build a work studio on his property. He can build whatever he wants or do anything he wants with his property without concern for zoning laws and permits.

It sounded so good to me. I immediately had visions of about 5 acres of quietness somewhere in America with just a water pump and sewage drainage pipe and electricity hook-up. Kind of like a trailer park with 5 acres per trailer. Hook up a trailer to the car and drive away. Come back and hook up the trailer to the utilities and stay a while. Live freely. Why continue the rat race? The leaders of this country are going to get us all killed. It's just a matter of time.

Everytime I hear President George Cheney talk about protecting "U.S. interests" I wonder who's interests they are really talking about. Could it be Exxon-Mobil's interests? or Walmarts? Chevron's? General Motors? Who's interests are they fighting for? Not mine. Not any American I know. What interests do we have? Health care for all. Safe neighborhoods. Freedom of movement. Good, free education for all citizens regardless of age. Support for working people. A healthy environment.

I'm ranting and hadn't meant to. It was probably the phone call with my mother that set me off. Yeah, that's it. Don't get me started. Don't EVEN get me started!

Reflection

The American Heritage Dictionary gives the following as the 4th definition of the word Reflect:

4. To think seriously.

I'm prompted to ask if there is a difference between "think seriously" and "seriously think." I'll have to seriously think seriously about that before I can answer that question.

“There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.” ~ Thomas Paine

Oh my, if that were a contest I'm not sure which would win in my mind. I spend time reflecting on my life and thinking seriously about things. I rarely do it in writing, however.

Sometimes when I'm thinking about something I get the urge to write it down. The writing process seems so slow and tedious, and becomes what is happening, rather than the thinking happening.

My thought process moves rapidly and roams hither and yon in the course of exploring something. Writing reins in that energy and establishes parameters that I try to think beyond.

Some thoughts can't be expressed in words. They can only be experienced or visualized.

Other thoughts only occur in the context of a long, imagined dialogue or monologue.

A New Face

I've been visually bored with my blog of late and so I have changed it. This is not the final version. I will fine tune and spruce it up in the next few weeks. I'm hoping the face-lift will revitalize my interest in blogging more frequently.

I've changed the description of the blog to read: "Exploring ways to have a more fulfilling life through art, writing and reflection." What I didn't add but have found to be true is that my life and relationships are greatly enhanced by sharing my art, writing, and reflections, regardless of how disinclined I am to do that.

I had a revelation recently about the not too distant future. I have for the last 5 - 10 years been gearing myself up to work well into my 70's. The other day I read an article on CNNMoney.com about how more and more baby boomers will be taking social security benefits before the maximum benefit age. My maximum benefit age is 66, at this point. But I am eligible to retire and begin receiving benefits at age 62. That is 6 1/2 years from now. My break even age is 80+ if I waited until 66 to retire. It just doesn't make sense to work to 66 or beyond. How fast did the last 6 1/2 years ago? Very fast.

I can't begin to describe the utter joy this revelation has filled me with. I know I will work after retirement. And that's ok. But it won't be fulltime. It will not be a career. Maybe it will be in an artstore, or a library, or bookstore, or even part-time bookkeeping for a small business. It doesn't matter, it won't matter. It will be the big wind down. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and I am refreshed by it.

I have 6 1/2 years to scale down and get my ducks in a row to retire. I don't plan on having a big life in retirement. I don't want to be in this home. Too costly, too big, too much work. I want to live smaller, with less maintenance in all areas. I'd like to travel, preferably in a trailer. I'd like to settle somewhere else as a home base. I know F shares these goals and perhaps if the 2 of us could move this closer to the front burner we can accomplish it.

Bobby

Last night F and I watched the film "Bobby." It was very good. Brought back many menories, not the least of which was memories of my own idealism and ultimate and destruction of same. One of the parts of the movie I found the most engrossing was the voice over of a speech on violence that RFK had delivered 2 months before his murder. It's worth reading, as it holds as true today as it was in April 1968.

On the Mindless Menace of Violence
Robert F. Kennedy
City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio
April 5, 1968

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an ncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire. Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul. For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.