Too Brilliant Not to Share

This is just too brilliant not to share.... and probably closer to the truth than is comfortable to think about.


Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Inner Voices

A while back, when the Simpson movie first came out, my niece Cindy sent me a picture of herself "Simpsonized," Well, of course I had to go play too and I made the Simpsonized me that I'd like to think I am (sweet face, penguin shirt on the left) and the me that I fear and try to keep hidden ( I named her Griselda) who can be seen on the right. Griselda, I guess, is my "inner bitch." If you had ever heard (and you probably will at some point) the way my inner bitch talks to me, you'd know that this is a pretty flattering picture of her. She is one nasty, nasty, nasty creature, the Hitler of my inner landscape. Fortunately for the rest of the world, she is totally inner directed. Not so lucky for me.

Speaking of inner voices, about twenty years ago, I studied something called Voice Dialogue. Voice Dialogue was the invention of two psychologists named Hal and Sidra Stone. The basic concept (as I understand it) is that we are all, on some level, multiple personalities merged into one master ego, but that our lives are often run by inner personalities whose voices we don't even really hear speaking. The most powerful of those voices is often, as it was for me, The Inner Critic. The idea behind voice dialogue is that through the process of talking with those inner selves and becoming consciously aware of what they are telling us, we are able to take more control of our lives. The idea, by the way, isn't to change the voices - though by virtue of being heard, they usually change on their own - the idea is let them speak so that become aware of what's going on inside your own head without you even knowing about it.

The voice dialogue process was a revelation for me. My inner critic, aka The Dragon Lady, was quite something. While most inner critics operate from a desire to protect, the Dragon Lady actually hated me and wished me dead. The fact that she would die with me was irrelevant to her. It was worth it. She hated me that much. I also met a number of wounded children in this process, one of whom - she named herself Pisser for some reason - had been raped quite young. It was that aspect of me, I think, that the Dragon Lady hated the most. I did this course with a wonderful group of people over the course of 4 months. It was a profound experience. Devastating in many ways. Fodder for a lot of therapy, though it drove my therapist crazy for a while because I tended to regard/relate to Pisser and the Dragon Lady as though they were real and separate entities and not so much aspects of myself. (Ever heard of denial? I'm too nice to have a killer demon critic running around inside me... or a molested child.)

I think this is a brilliant techinque. The Stones have a number of excellent books out on the subject, including one for couples and parents that helps you become aware of those days when there are two or more inner children roaming the house all looking for a parent.

When I started writing my agoraphobia column, I coined a name for the not-so-little collective of brutal monsters that inhabit my inner mindscape. I call them the Demonalians. They are as wicked and sadistic a crowd of inner voices as ever cohabited inside one head. To kind of counter-act them, and because I just love playing with Paint Shop Pro even though I have no artistic talent, I made a bunch of inner goddesses. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to still the din of the Demonalians enough to hear the voices of these divine ones (in fact I quite forgot about them until this morning), but I think maybe that's a good project to work on over the next few weeks. Hmmm. Maybe I'll introduce them here today and see if I can get them to speak in future posts. Can't hurt to think about it. So, without further explanation, I intoduce my four inner goddesses:

Kwanatherine Yin, Inner Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion.
Green Katherine - drawn from the Green Tara who is a mix of benign and harsh as I recall, Gaia Katherine, and Kali. I made the Kali-me during the nine months it took me to find my house. She hung on the wall by my desk and I called on her when my drunken landlady felt particularly scary. I'm not sure where I'm going with all this. I have kind of scared myself by posting these goddesses and saying that I'll talk with them. But even though I've scared myself, I think it's probably (I hope) a good challenge.

Guess that's it for today. The Demonalians are all stirred up on a number of subjects, including how stupid this post is and how if people didn't think I was nuts before, surely the whole inner goddess nonsense will have proved it for good and all. Demonalia is a happy place this morning. Maybe I'll see if my inner Kali can keep them in line.
An afterthought that has nothing to do with anything. My other magnificent niece Diana, has posted a video thing on one of her blogs. If you watch it (or even just let it run without watching it), she gets money. On her Vegangirl blog she posted a brilliant lecture that doesn't earn her any money about the paradox of choice.

Poem(s) of the Week

Well, it seems to me like a day for something silly. The two poems below are vaguely connected. The first one was written for the newsletter of a particularly odious job I had in the early 1980s. They were manufacturers of "fine wallpapers," and there was some kind of apple theme going on at the time, I think, that inspired the topic. Like many jobs over the course of my "career," it was hard for them to keep me busy and I ended up doing parts of everyone else's job, not getting paid for it and being bored and unhappy.

AN APPLE POMME

The snake said, "Please, just have a taste."

"If you don't eat, it will go to waste."

And Eve - only wanting to be polite

Consented to have just one small bite

And Adam, too, thought it couldn't hurt

To try such a very light dessert.

It wasn't even an apple pie

Which caused such fury in Heaven high

And sent that poor unhappy pair

Away from Eden in dark despair

But though they suffered, and so do we,

For eating the fruit of the apple tree

I can't entirely regret their act

Since it alone, in point of fact,

Introduced the two to carnal sin

Which causes babies to begin

And one baby leading to another

Eventually arrived my mother

Who, I am glad, gave birth to me

So, let's hear it for the apple tree

And before we at Eve too smugly jeer

Remember, without her we wouldn't be here.

- Katherine E. Rabenau


Shortly after "The Apple Pomme" was published, I took a bad fall that resulted in a severe green-stick fracture that nearly broke my small toe OFF my foot, broke two other toes, sprained an ankle, bruised my shoulder and just missed cracking my skull open. How did I manage this? Running away from a pair of cockroaches while standing on top of one of those step ladder/chair things. Hence the second poem in today's double silly poem presentation. I returned from my disability leave to find that the company had been "reorganized" and both of my bosses "phased out." I don't remember if they laid me off or if I quit. I do remember that they told me I was too qualified and too good at my job. The laid off boss called and offered me a big raise and a cool new job which it turned out he couldn't deliver. At the time it all seemed like the end of the world to me instead of the blessing in disguise that it turned out to be. But that's a story for another day. The short version is. I lived. I went into therapy and a tiny ray of sanity broke through a life-time of pure, unadulterated denial about how very insane my family was and how utterly unhappy and troubled I myself was. But this is Poem of the week day. SILLY poem of the week day.... enough serious talk.

QUIT BUGGING ME!


Out, out, damned roach, you wicked beast

How dare you in my kitchen feast

You creeping Fiend! You wretched foe!

I beg you from my kitchen go

And lodge with those who wish you well

Or, better yet, go strait to Hell

For you will find no welcome here

But me, all doubled up with fear

A rolled newspaper in one hand

And lots of bug spray - jarred or canned -

Fear's far more dangerous than hate

And death will be your awful fate

If you persist in bugging me

So I advise you now to flee

And find some other place to live

For pity I have none to give

To such unsavory types as you

And so I say to you, "Shoo! Shoo!"

Go somewhere else if you must poach

And hear again, "Out, out, damned roach."


- Katherine E. Rabenau

It's All Relative

I woke up very early this morning with a million (ok, a half dozen) ideas swirling in my head for things to write about today and for days to come. A frustrating - and failed - attempt to put a ONE MILLION BLOGS FOR PEACE logo up, a broken tree branch, some emails and a cup of coffee later, I have misplaced all those lovely ideas that were passionately writing themselves while I was trying to sleep. Now that I need them again, where are they? Argh.

Luckily, I do remember a key word for one of them: Relative. I am cranky about this, though, because it was all written in my head and now I have to start over and it won't be nearly as good as what I think I already wrote while half asleep.

What I was thinking about is how much of life is about perspective and how our relationship and reaction changes depending on our circumstances.

One of the most interesting pieces of trivia I ever heard was that there's a "scientific" (mathematical?) reason why time seems to go faster as you get older. It's got something to do with the relative length of a year in comparison to your whole life span. When you are 1, a year is 100% of your life. When you are 60, it is 1/60th of your life, so it seems much shorter. This is a very badly written explanation. I am writing frustrated and that's never good. I think the idea makes a lot of sense. Whatever the reason, the years seem to be flying by, though, I can't always say the same for my days. That is probably a factor of solitude and boredom.

Another psychological oddity that I have become aware of over the past couple of years is our relative relationship to temperature. Trying to save money these days, I keep my thermostat at 60 for as much of the day as I can (until the icicles start forming on my nose). I'm kind of proud of how tough and brave I am for doing this, but then I was thinking one afternoon how odd it is that in Spring and Summer, 60 degrees seems like a wonderful gift in comparison to 80 or 90 degrees. How odd, that in winter 60 feels like a hardship and in summer a blessing. I'm sure there's some logical explanation, like the earth holds summer warmth, so 60 in summer is warmer than 60 in winter when the world is frozen. Still, 60 degrees is 60 degrees isn't it?

Of course speaking of relativity, I guess 60 degrees is "winter" weather for my family and friends in Arizona. Years ago when I lived in New York City, a friend of mine returned from volunteering in Somalia where she had become accustomed to living at 120 in the shade. August in New York is vile, humid and compares quite nicely with my idea of Hell, but there was Zandi, on a hot, humid 90 degree nightmare New York summer day, wearing a sweater!

Then there's age. I have a very keen memory of the first time I felt conscious of age. I was standing at a bus stop on the corner of First Avenue and 14th Street in NYC looking at the high school kids... and suddenly seeing them as "children." I was all of 23 or something. But suddenly I was really and truly and "adult." Now, of course, 30 year olds seem like children to me and anyone under 50 is "young." Thing is, I don't feel sixty. Well, not emotionally anyway. Emotionally I feel about six, maybe nine or ten on a good day. Physically, well, let's not talk about physically. When your legs don't work right, it can make you feel old even if you aren't.

But then relatively speaking, even though my legs don't work as I might wish them to, they still do let me hobble around, so even if they hurt a bit and move oddly, they get me from room to room and that's very nice of them. Compared to being in a wheel chair or bed ridden, my legs are pretty damned fine.

Which for some reason made me think about relative ideas of poverty. Technically, by American standards, I'm poor. I squeeze all my needs out of $14,000 in SSD money. I won't say that I don't really, really, really want to win $10,000,000 from Publisher's Clearinghouse because I really, really, really do (actually I would quite happily take even $100,000 or $10,0000 ) BUT.... my poverty is pretty darn genteel. The bank is slowly selling me my house. I have heat in winter, water to drink, enough food to eat, a comfortable bed and two kitty companions. I have a TV (old but still functioning), A VCR and DVD player, a subscription to Netflix, books to read, and a computer. In much of the world, I'm incredibly wealthy. I don't even have to work for my money (topic for another day), I just have to suffer and be crazy and pay a price in shame to the government and the internalized voice of my mother (another topic for another day). Relative to most of the world's population, I'm rich. It's good to remind myself of that on days when I'm feeling sorry for myself because it's a squeaker to pay all my bills.

So much of life (everything?) is what our minds make of it, what we decide it will be. Relative to what this article was in my head at 6:30 this morning, it's a failure, but relative to writing nothing at all, I guess it's a success.

Relatively speaking, this is not my best day. But it's not my worst either. May we all live our lives seeking and finding the up side of of life's relative offerings.

Fable of the Month: The Hermit of Angelwood Mountain

Well, laziness and lack of new ideas is settling in. After all, I've posted every day for three weeks now and twice yesterday. This is one of a bunch of tiny stories I wrote many years ago. It has come to my attention that I'm 60 and no publisher is going to magically show up at my door promising me fame, glory, and a fabulous fortune, so I might as well share these just to make myself happy. This month's story is called

THE HERMIT OF ANGELWOOD MOUNTAIN
by Katherine E. Rabenau

Frank Osborne could not remember how long he had been living on Anglewood Mountain, but he knew it had been a long time. In his youth, Frank had not been very good with people. Shy and blunt, he had seemed remote and snide and people had not liked him. He hadn't liked himself either. Suffocating behind the glass wall of his loneliness, his efforts to reach out had landed like hammers on the toes of prospective acquaintances. Their hostility had cut through him like a sword.

Until, that is, he met and loved and lived with Amanda. Frank never knew why or how she had felt his pain and his gentleness. She had simply walked up to him one day as he sat alone in the park, taken his hand, looked directly into his eyes and said, "It's OK. I see you." He had cried -- not long or loud -- but his heart had fluttered and three large tears had escaped before he could stop them. Catching one of them on her finger, Amanda had put it to her lips and said, "Such tears quench the thirst of God," and had leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Take me home, sweet prince, for I have drunk your heart and I am yours." And despite thinking that she must be crazy, he thought also that she was beautiful like an angel and that he had waited his whole life for someone to touch his tears. Her beauty was mythical. At first, certain that she was an illusion, he had been afraid to touch her, afraid she would dissolve if he dared to reach for her. But she had been no illusion. She had been so real. Although she had been dead now for many years, Frank could taste her mouth, feel the solid softness of her, the silky warmth of her skin as though he had held her that morning. He could still smell the spicy sweetness of her.

She had moved into his life and heart with the direct, natural flow of a river heading to sea. They had made sweet, tender, wild love and he savored the memory of it, but he savored more the memory of her presence and what it had done for him. She had moved so easily into his world that in some ways he hardly noticed it, yet to say only that she had changed his life was like saying that the sun was merely important to life on earth. Amanda was a mirror in which he had seen a new reflection of himself. She was unconditional in her love. There was nothing simpy or vapid in this; she did not overlook his flaws, his moods. She simply loved him anyway, without sacrificing her own integrity.

Frank still believed that God had sent him an angel to soothe his isolation and after a time had taken her away. At first his grief had been so deep he had thought he would die of it. He had been unable to believe that she was really gone, had felt like a lost child waiting for rescue. He had tried to hate God, had waited for bitterness, for the return of his former emptiness. But when time passed and it did not come, he realized that he had been changed forever. Amanda was part of him. It was not just that he had beautiful memories, it was that he was alive inside. She had shown him his soul by sharing her own.

And then he had known that he had to move to the mountain. It was not, as some thought, to escape or be alone. He had gone to the mountain to touch the stars and feel the heartbeat of the earth. He had gone to the mountain to make himself available to the people he knew would come. And they did. Somehow they found him. Some stayed for an hour, some for weeks. Sometimes he would converse with them, tell them about Amanda and his former life, about living on the mountain. Sometimes Wolf, his four-legged companion, would minister to them. But mostly, he would simply hold their hands and look into their eyes, and something in his shining, tender look would show them the beauty of their own souls. And when they cried, as they so often did, he would catch a single drop on his finger and whisper, "Such tears quench the thirst of God."

THE END

Humane Society's Spay Day USA 2008

The Humane Society of the USA is having a photo contest for Spay Day USA 2008.

I thought many of you with cats and dogs and rabbits of your own might like to enter them and of course I am making a shameless appeal for votes for both Angel and Tara Grace. (You can only once for any animal but you can vote for as many pets as you like).

Angel and Tara Grace are both entered and would LOVE to have you vote for them. (Please...)

I hope you'll add your pets too. There are some pretty nifty prizes and it's a good cause to advertise.

For cat loves among you, a Alley Cat Allies is a great organization dedicated to the neuter and release of feral cats.

Somewhat local to me here in upstate New York is an organization called AWAN. When Tara Grace almost died last year, AWAN (Animal Welfare Adoption Network) helped me with some of the astronomical vet bills that went towards keeping her alive.

In any case, I hope you'll spay your pets, support spay neuter programs in your area, wherever you live - and vote for my girls in this contest.

Thanks.

Resume for a Brain Dead Bully

Running out of original thoughts, it seems, so it's time to steal from my email again. I have never understood how George W. Bush got elected for anything. Maybe it's the empath in me, but he has made my skin crawl since my very first sighting of him. Above and beyond the "smart-ass" factor, there's a total lack of true human emotion when he speaks and his face (even when he's saying the right words) actually (to me) reflects an almost complete absence of feelings/compassion. He seems to be a one emotion guy - and that emotion is (well it's not quite an emotion, but it's the best I can come up with): "I'm in the catbird seat and nothing anybody does can touch me so screw everybody."

This resume that came in my mail this morning sums up most of the quantifiable damage he has done to the nation and the world, but it does leave some things out... or at least not stress them enough to suit me. There's the erosion of our constitution and our ethics. There's the perpetuation of a state of fear that has encouraged people to lock their brains in boxes under the kitchen sink for safe keeping. There's the loss of our sense of honor, integrity and compassion as a nation. There are the thousands of young men and women whose wounds of body and spirit are going untended. There's a military worn down in physically, emotionally and financially, engaged in a "war" (military occupation) that most of them know is wrong. There's the violence that has been done to our electoral system. There's the issue of torture. There's the issue of ignoring the law.... aggggh... stop me before I explode.

One thing that stood out to me in this resume that I don't remember seeing before or hearing about is this one:
I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US election).

Why was there no news coverage of this information? For that matter, why were there no major investigations of the irregularities in both Bush elections? I know I've mentioned Hacking Democracy before, but it's worth repeating. The video is available in nine parts on You Tube, but it's worth the time to hear the whole story. I don't understand why Kerry didn't challenge the second Bush "election." I keep thinking (paranoid? or ....? ) that Bush and Cheney must have something on almost every member of Congress except Kucinich and Paul or that there are family members under death threat or tied up in a bunker somewhere. What else explains the insanity of what's happening to my country? What else explains the lock-step obedience? Politics doesn't seem like a good enough answer, especially since the country is getting more and more angry at the members of Congress. But I can't prove anything. I just have a creepy feeling that my country has experienced a bloodless coup and we have slept through it and even now are only tossing and turning in a half-awake effort to escape the nightmare. But enough ranting. I'll let the "resume" speak for itself.

Again, my apologies to whoever created this. It arrived in my email without attribution.

RESUME

GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20520

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

Law Enforcement:
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.

Military:
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.

College:
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

I ran for U.S. Congress and lost.

I began my career in the oil business in Midland,Texas in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money.

With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:

I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.

I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.

With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida , and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President of the United States, after losing by over 500,000 votes.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:

I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.

I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.

I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.

I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues.

I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire," Condoleezza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.

I am the all- time U.S. and world record -holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.

My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. history, Enron.

My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.

I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history. I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.

I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.

I changed the U.S. policy to allow convict ed criminals to be awarded government contracts.

I appointed more convicted criminals to my administration than any President in U.S. history.

I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States Government.

I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.

I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.

I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.

I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US election).

I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.

I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.

I garnered the most sympathy ever for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.

I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. Citizens and the world community.

I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in wartime.

In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.

I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.

I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.

I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review. I specified that my sealed documents will not be available for 50 years.

Winter Beauty

Well, I don't have a thought in my head this morning and not much to say and the sun is out and the snow looks kind of pretty. Dianne wrote a nice piece about the coming of summer with a slide show to go with it, so I thought I'd counter with some winter pictures from various locations of my past 5 years here in upstate New York.

My first stop on my return to New York State was a short lived stay in a house with an exquisite view and a truly insane landlord in a tiny place called Lake Huntington.


















































After I quite literally fled Lake Huntington and "crazy Jim," the landlord, I ended up in a sweet little town called Narrowsburg.

Renting in upstate New York is not fun, at least it wasn't for me. Narrowsburg is a sweet little town, though, famous for it's nesting eagles. I was very isolated there, living in the back of a duplex the with only exit from the yard through a parking lot for the local art gallery. I actually had to have the yard plowed... an interesting story for another day. We had two big record breaking blizzards in a row when I lived there. Talk about snow! Just to give you an idea of how deep this snow was, that thing on the left was my car. I think we had over 20 inches of snow in two days.



For some reason I don't have many pictures from Callicoon. I know there are some but I can't find them, so I'll just skip to my current home and the views from my little house here in Hancock. The first picture is the view out my back door. The picture on the right (with the hideous curtains and before I got my new windows) is the snow curling off my roof. Mostly it comes off bit by bit or in big scary landslides. I thought this big long curl was pretty amazing. The last photo was the view from my desk taken on New Year's morning this year.
































That's it for my tribute to winter. I think I need to learn how to do slide shows, especially since the preview feature doesn't actually show you what's going to come up when you post. My apologies for the haphazard look of this post. I just can't make it any better without losing what's left of my mind. I know these aren't great photos but I thought it might be fun to see some snow, especially for some of you desert folks. I'm still REALLY looking forward to Spring.

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 1

Years ago when the world and I were still young, I took a course in NYC from called "The Slightly Amazing Writer's Therapy Group." It really was slightly (perhaps more than slightly) amazing. One of the things the Jane Allison, the woman who led it did was to give us a bunch of random words and phrases to make into a SHORT paragraph. It's great fun and a good challenge for your creativity.

I thought what I'd do here is post a couple of samples of the exercises I did all those years back - and then paste some new words. Anyone who wants to do so can work on them and share their results if they wish. I'll have to figure out the logistics for offering up one of these shared things and am open to advice from anyone of my three or four readers who wants to give it. Meanwhile, here's the sample exercise. This was one of my favorites.

WORDS: Napoleon, Zeus, underpants, Madonna, cellulite, 47 flavors, Arnold Schwartzennager, Barbara Walters, "Don't come near me or I'll call the police," power

Strange dream. Being interviewed by Barbara Walters, dressed only in a bra and underpants, the cellulite rippling over my whole body in hideous, rolling waves of flesh, shame and humiliation numbing, but I had to be brave, to not show my embarrassment. That would be worse. She was interviewing three of us at once: Me, Napoleon Bonepart, and Zeus. Why I had to be with them, I don't know. Just to make my insecurity even deeper, I guess. Anyway, Barbara asks each of us to name someone we admire and tell why. Napoleon picks Arnold Schwartzenagger because he's strong, relentless and determined. Zeus says Madonna because she reminds him of Artemis only she's really sexy. I pick (I don't want to be predictable) LynnAndrews because she consistently manages to be simultaneously dim-witted and profound. Then she got personal and we each had a tearful catharsis just before the commercial break. The sponsor was Baskin Robbins so we each had to name our favorite of the 47 flavors. I picked Chocolate Chip, Zeus liked peach, Napoleon said Rocky Road, and Barbara said Strawberries 'N Cream. It was all so odd. Outside, a woman's voice shouted, "Don't come near me or I'll call the police," but we were taping, so instead of checking on her, they just closed the window. I started to protest but Barbara had asked her next question, her voice redolent with its profundity: "I'm curious, given your respective lives, how would each of you define power?" Zeus said it was control and authority and manipulating events. Napoleon thought it was military superiority. I said I thought those were illusions of power, that real power came from trusting and loving yourself, because then no one could threaten your inner peace. Needing to control others was just a response to the belief that otherwise they would control you. Power wasn't about control, it was about being. Napoleon just snorted when I said that and said I was a jerk. Zeus threw a thunderbolt and left the room. Barbara Walters said, "How interesting," in a nervous voice which made it clear that she felt she had lost control and didn't know how to get it back. Then inspiration struck: "Tell me, do you always do interviews on national TV in just your underwear?" Outside, the woman's screams grew louder.

Years after I took the course from Jane Allison, I introduced this technique to another writer's group. We did them on the spot in about 15- 2o minutes time. I was really good at it and it used to annoy my friend Paul, who one week challenged me to make a paragraph using the following words. It's a good example of what to do if you don't know what a word means. You can always use a stumper word to name a pet or something like that. Or just say that you don't know what it means like I did here.

Don't take the exercise too seriously. It's a game for exercising your writing muscles. That's all.

WORDS: Brawn, bratwurst, kishke, beret, chutzpah, sweat lodge, bikini-wax, bangles, zoot suit, Zen, caterpillar, Cajun

"Kishke? What the hell is kishke? Would you please speak English for a change, Louie? I mean, I wouldn't mind the Yiddish so much if a) I understood it and b) you were Jewish, but Louie, you're not. You're not ethnic, dear and you just look and sound foolish when you try. You weren't black during your zoot-suit, honkey motha-f*cka phase. You weren't Cajun no matter how much Creole food you ate. The sweat lodge and totem pole in the back yard do not make you one of "the People," anymore than the beret and calling everyone "Cherie," made you French. You're ordinary, Louie. Wonderful, but ordinary. You don't need a gimmick. It just detracts from your natural sweetness and charm. I didn't fall in love with you for your brawn or your machismo. You see yourself as bratwurst, but I see you as caviar. You see yourself as a caterpillar in need of transformation, but to me you are already a magnificent butterfly. I know, to use your current idiom, that I've got plenty of chutzpah giving you this particular lecture, since I've spent so much of my life and your money trying to change myself into something "more," with plastic surgery and bikini waxes and bangles and jewels and fancy clothes - all that frantic effort to keep you from discovering just what a loser I thought I really was. But I was wrong, Louie, and so are you. I wish you'd come to my meditation class with me. The Zen masters create such a sense of peace and love. They've helped me start to like myself, Louie. Really. And I think they could help you, too. You know, I think you're wonderful, even when you're pretending to be whatever phase you're in, but I think you're most wonderful when you're just plain old glorious you. So mazeltov, you big jerk. And Namaste. That means "the god in me greets the god in you." I love you.

SO... for anyone who wants to take the challenge, here are words for next Saturday. Have fun.

Ostrich, conga line, lucite, garish, pumpkin seeds, persimmon, autograph, naked truth, false teeth and merry-go-round.

Toxic Cynicism & the US Media

I've long had a theory that the road to our current political/social Hell began being paved as part of the aftermath of the Nixon Watergate debacle.

First, I know that there are a lot of people like me (I don't think I was the only one) who's sense of innocence was shattered by the events around Watergate. I couldn't stand Nixon, but it had still never entirely occurred to me that Presidents could be criminals, that the level of cynicism which those men operated with could even exist. One of the worst things that happens when innocence is shattered is that it can turn to bitterness and cynicism. But I think we all would have gotten over that if something else hadn't happed at the same time. And that's what happened in the media.

Unhealthy as a cynical public can be, a cynical media is profoundly dangerous to a nation's intellectual and psychological health. After Watergate, the media's approach to news underwent a profound sea change. Every reporter wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, and instead of searching for truth, the media began searching for lies. A hunt for lies is a very different pursuit than a quest for truth and it bears different results. First off, a hunt for lies leads away from the truth as often as not. Second, a hunt for lies is much more subjective than a hunt for truth and as a result it taints whatever truth it happens to trip over. The third - and perhaps worst - aspect of a cynical media is that the energy of cynicism (especially in a media saturated society like ours) permeates our consciousness. It seeps into our way of looking at the world, into our thinking.

I first became aware of this years ago when I began hearing a nasty little voice in my head. There would be some report in the news about someone donating money or doing something good and the little voice would mutter "hah, I wonder what's in it for him." Now that voice is NOT me - or at least it didn't used to be. And when I heard it muttering and looked for where it came from, I was led right back to the way news was being presented to me.

Added to this is that somewhere along the road, in subtle stages, reporters stopped reporting and began opining. Except for PBS, very little of what is presented to us as news is factual reporting any more. I like to use the following as an example because it pissed me off at the time and because I think it makes the point relatively clearly: After the whole Monica Lewinsky story broke, there was a trivial piece about Clinton attending a prayer breakfast and saying he repented. If we had a healthy news media, THAT would have been the story. He attended the meeting and he said x, y,z. A healthy media would have let us draw our own conclusions. Our media instead, talked at length about whether his advisors had told him to repent, whether he was sincere. Most of our news these days is covered this way. It's so pervasive that I don't think we even notice it. It's cynicism presented as facts. It's skewed truth or flat-out untruth.

This isn't a trivial problem. It's corroding us from the inside out. Cynicism sees no hope. Cynicism says that everyone is a crook, everyone is lying, everyone has an ulterior motive. Angels could descend from the heavens bringing good tidings and our media - and we along with them - would spurn the gift or question it's authenticity. (What's God's angle?) And in the populace, this translates into things like: "Why vote, they're all a bunch of crooks anyway." Alas, that may have become true to some extent, but I wonder which came first, the crookedness or the cynicism that feeds it.

This pervasive semi-conscious cynicism among the public, paves the road for professional, criminal cynics like Bush and Cheney to do their worst. They even use it to their advantage. It's an aspect of the Rove - a true cynic's cynic - strategy. You no longer have to prove scandal, you just have to whisper things into the wind and they stick to the web of half, distorted and un-truth in which citizens of our society are trapped like flies, while criminals like the current administration feed on the corpse of our hope, our prosperity - and the spirit of our nation.

I don't know how we can escape this net, but we had better do something because the spiders that spun the web are eating us and our way of life alive. Maybe it's part of why Obama's voice is resonating so strongly with people right now. I don't know that he's the best choice for president - I think Dennis Kucinich would have been - but perhaps his optimistic passion is waking us out of the torpor of the crippling cynicism in which we have been slumbering for too long. I hope so.

Here's what I know. I want a return to a media that covers all the candidates, that reports news and not opinion. I want a media that is peopled with idealists who are hunting for truth, not lies. And I want my own idealism back. I want my hope back. I want my country back. Hopefully, if we become aware of how cynicism has poisoned our media and our own consciousness, we can begin to take the country back. I hope so.

Poem of the Week

Boy, posting these is really unnerving. I don't know why poetry is so much scarier to post than prose, but it is. This poem is an old one.

CRY

Cry against the dark night of shining tears
Whose source you do not know
Joy and sorrow
Blending in rivers of no source, no end
The restless stillness of life's passing

Cry against the dark night of dreamless sleep
And sleepless dreams
All levels blending into something else
Can rainbow colors see themselves or know their hues?
Where is the light I seek (too bright to bear)
The light whose music sings a soul to joy
Unlocks some caged and cowering power within
The light that is my soul and more
The light toward which I am perpetually turning,
Turning,
And turning too away
My blindness frightened at the prospect of such vision

Cry against the dark pain of all this loneliness
Our frail forms groping forth and falling back
Almost, but not quite, touching on the hand of God
Almost, but not quite, hearing the voice within

Cry for the unanswered prayers
The ones we do not know we make
Which the Universe, therefore, cannot answer
Cry for what we think we seek
Mistaking our own shadows for the face of God

Cry for the dark night of shining tears
For that imperfect strife which is mortality
Cry for the vision that remains unseen and out of reach
Within us.

- Katherine E. Rabenau

Tara Grace: My Furry Family, Part Two

Tara Grace is my virtuous kitty. Both because of her personality and her coloring, it's much harder to photograph her and these pictures don't do her justice. My friend Nate Tyson took the picture above and I really love it. I think it captures her sweetness... and her eyes aren't glowing like they are in most of my photos. The thing I admire most about Tara is that despite a very hard start in life, she has never lost her gentle sweetness.

The same "E" who brought Angel into my world, also introduced Tara Grace to Angel and me. Tara Grace - who loves to eat - still weighs in at only 5 pounds. "E" and another friend cared for her outside for a while. She was initially very skittish of people. They got an igloo and set it up and "E" took her food every day and told her to have faith, that she would have a home soon. It seems that Tara, who I think is VERY smart, listened. At Thanksgiving about a month after I moved into my apartment in Callicoon, the weather got bitterly cold, even for upstate New York. Temperatures went well below zero and it seemed clear that Tara Grace (who was named Isis at the time - totally wrong for her) would not survive those kinds of temperatures, even with her igloo. "E" brought her inside and with the landlady's permission set her up on the stairway between her upstairs apartment and my first floor place. I had agreed to adopt her but since she had lived outside for so long, it seemed prudent to take her to the vet and make sure she had no contagious diseases before putting her in proximity to Angel. Angel, of course, had other ideas. She would escape up the stairs every time "E" came into my place and lavish poor bewildered Tara with enthusiastic affection. At that point, it seemed pointless to wait, so I left my door open and let Tara find her way in. She spent some time under the bed trying to escape Angel's enthusiasm, but slowly she explored and settled in.

She was the sweetest and saddest little kitty. It was clear that besides malnourishment, she had been abused in other ways. She was profoundly shy of touch, though you could see that she palpably, achingly longed for it. She didn't seem to really know how to play either. It became clear to me that although she could see, she couldn't see very well - another side-effect of being half starved for much of her early life. When she did get to a vet, they said they couldn't really guess her age. Her teeth were very bad, her growth too stunted.... Vets have tended to put her age at about 8. I think she's much younger. I think she's probably 5 now, a little older than Angel.

I thought and think that Tara is very smart. That's probably how her frail little being survived out on the tough, cold streets and woods of Callicoon. "E" and my other friend had named her Isis but I didn't think that really fit. She didn't seem like an Isis, though she does have something of the Egyptian cat statuette that I associate with Nefertitti about her. I briefly tried Kwan Yin, but that was all wrong too. Anyway, when I came up with Tara Grace, she took to it instantly, kind of like, "well, finally, somebody's calling me by my real name." It was really clear that she knew that was her name - and she responded to it. But I digress. Tara's idea of play - I think that's what it was - was to bat at my cane if I moved it. She would sit and stare at it. I would move it and she would reach out and bat at it. Very odd. String toys got no reaction. She had some other odd thing - a coat hanger maybe... I forget now, that she "played" with. Very odd. Very sad. Balls thrown got no reaction. If she came across one, she would push it around a bit, but she didn't seek out play very much. She was like a little gray shadow.

I have to admit that in the beginning, it made me kind of sad to have Tara around. I felt like she was never going to really trust me. I'm glad to say that I was wrong. She's never going to be a lap cat, but slowly, slowly, she has found ways to receive touch. Tara apparently owns me at night. She sleeps on me... mostly right on my shoulder up next to my head and Angel - who has possession in the day time, had better not try to take that spot. It was when we got to our little house that Tara really began to blossom. The second she got here she seemed to know that this was truly "home" and safe.

Then last spring one of those bad things happened that brings with it lots of good. As I was getting ready for bed, I found Tara Grace, semi-conscious, lying in the litter box, barely breathing. She had always had chronic sneezing and congestion and I thought that was because of her rough life on the streets. It was, indirectly. It turns out that her teeth had gotten so bad that she had a profound systemic infection. This was a turning point in a lot of ways. Tara had been getting more comfortable with touch, but it was still mostly sort of push-pull. She'd approach me at my desk, I'd reach out, and she'd run away. Now, as she lay close to death, I spent almost the whole night lying next to her on the bed with my hands on her tiny, frail little body, giving her reiki and talking to her. At first she was anxious about my touch, but over the course of seven or eight hours, she realized that it was not lethal and that it was making her feel better.

Several visits to the vet, a dental surgery and a small fortune I didn't have later, Tara Grace is a new cat. I feel guilty that I didn't realize how sick she was all along. But the surgery has given her a new lease on life. She is much friskier. All the human contact seems to have helped her relax a bit more about touch too. Interesting story that says a lot about Tara and what I most admire about her. After her first crisis, the vet agreed to come to the house to take some blood since it was simpler than having Dan come get her and bring her back.... or so we thought. As I told you. Tara weighs 5 skinny little pounds. She is TINY. You would think getting blood from her would be a piece of cake for two six foot men and a large short woman. Three against one, Tara wrapped in a towel to help restrain her. Not such a piece of cake. She would have none of it. What was even more amazing to me about her brave and determined resistance was that it was non violent. She didn't try to claw anyone or hiss. She just squirmed and struggled and refused to let us hold her still long enough to get one small vial of blood. That's my Tara. Stubborn but gentle.

When I got my new windows, I knew it would make Angel happy, but since Tara doesn't see so well, I wasn't sure how she'd react. As you can see from the pictures, she loves the windows at least as much as Angel and I do. She loves to sit up there and watch the world inside and outside the house. That makes me happy too. And now that she is feeling better, Tara is more active across the board. She doesn't play all the time, but when she does, it's a joy to watch. Where Angel plays like a line backer tackling the ball, Tara dances with it in little delicate leaps and jumps. She really is a kitty ballerina. I've tried to catch it in a photo but no luck yet. I love it when Tara plays, though. It's proof that anything is possible and that even the darkest life can be turned around.

What else do I want to say about sweet Tara Grace? She is complex. She looks and moves like a dancer, delicate and genteel. Her voice, however, could sink a ship. She talks like a gangster. And she talks a lot. Tara Grace has strong opinions. I sometimes think she is channeling my mother. She's very critical. Partly, I suppose, because bed time is when she allows herself the most physical intimacy, she is highly disapproving of how late I usually stay up. On nights when I'm particularly foolish, Tara begins her muttering rounds (she really does mutter too). She circles the house grumbling, jumps up on my desk, stomps on the key board, circles again, all the time grumbling away. She's very funny. Dinner time is Tara's other crusading time. She will usually come out from the bedroom about an hour beforehand and start making the rounds or just sit on my desk and stare at me, maybe making a trek or two across the keyboard to make sure I'm paying attention. The joy she brings me is different than the joy I get from Angel. Tara's love has been more hard won, but she has graced me with her trust and her head-butting affection. I've been slowly working on getting her comfortable with being touched all over her body and she is making great progress.

Some of her new tricks. She has added jumping on my back to part of her room circling. Since clipping her nails is probably never going to be something that happens while she's conscious, this is not always enjoyable. She also has a new wake-up technique to replace poking me in the head. She dances on my back. She's so light weight that it's not painful, just very funny and hard to sleep through.

There's probably so much more that I could say about sweet Tara Grace. I feel honored by her love. She doesn't make me sad any more. She makes me happy.

Angel: My Furry Family, Part One

I live with the two sweetest kitties in the world. I know others of you out there think that YOUR cats are the sweetest and the cutest and you are also right. I think I could probably win the naughtiest kitty category, though.

Angel Joy and Tara Grace are my family. They are my children and my friends. They enrich my life with laughter and tenderness and furry hugs. I thought I'd give each of them her own introduction and since I met Angel first, I thought I'd introduce her first.

Angel came into my life a week after Abigail (aka the Antique Kitty) passed ever so gently from this life at almost 22 years of age. I had planned to live empty for a bit but life had other plans. A friend of mine "E", who is a magnet for abandoned and wounded animals, was walking her dog when Angel - who was covered in cow manure and very sick with giardia - quite literally insisted on being rescued. At the time she was still very weak and all sugar. Who would have known the heart of creative mischief that burned under that sweet little face? Given the area where I lived at the time, we just assumed that Angel was yet another throw-away - something painfully common in an area where most people can't afford to spay their animals and the local vets did their best to prevent a spay-neuter van from operating. There were a horrifying number of stray and feral cats. Over time, though, it became clear to me that Angel was probably not one of them. She probably let her curiosity, which, alas, is not mixed with good sense, get her into trouble that almost killed her.

Angel is curiosity on four legs. She wants to know and see and do everything. She is the most creatively naughty kitty you can imagine. A friend of mine who is an artist hung some of the paintings in my house. She did it the "artists's way - not on a nail but on a long wire. Yesterday as I looked over from my desk, I saw one of them swinging wildly as Angel sat totally absorbed in her new game. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture. When we first moved into my little house, I woke up to an odd noise one morning only to find Angel proudly rolling the stopper from the kitchen sink around the bedroom floor. Another morning she had managed to bring her food bowl (which has a rubber bottom) over the kitchen jamb, across the living room and up onto a small throw rug outside my bedroom door. She's very fond of knocking things down from high places. I collect rocks and I have had three of them on top of my TV. Mini-monkey's newest game is pushing them off.

Angel loves to play and considers pretty much anything to be a toy. She will come whimpering out of the kitchen from time to time with anything from a piece of plastic from some package that I have torn open and foolishly left on the counter, to a plastic spoon, to.... pretty much anything. She carries them out like another kitty would bring a mouse and presents them to me for play. Her favorite toys are little felt balls that mostly end up under the refrigerator. My friend Dan now retrieves them every week. This week - and again I was too slow with the camera to get a picture - she came to me proudly dragging a little dust brush that's almost as big as she is. Angel loves people and would LOVE to go outside. People coming into my front door have to climb over a little gate I had to put up to keep her from getting out. She absolutely adores the man who brings my groceries. I think she would run away with him if I'd let her. She is an adventurer and since I'm cruel and don't let her go outside, she has to create her own adventures. I guess I can't blame her. I just wish sometimes that she was a little less gifted at thinking up naughty, destructive, maddening things to do... but then she wouldn't be the enchanting spirit that she is, so I guess I will just enjoy her as she is. As I type this she is about to swing the paintings again and is not at all happy that I am screaming "NOOOOO!" at her. I'm such a kill joy.

"E" ( the person who rescued Angel and brought her into my life) took care of her and Tara Grace when I was briefly without a home before I moved into my little house. "E" has 12 rescued animals of her own. When she returned my girls to me, she said she finally understood what I was saying about Angel. She said having Angel around was like having another eleven cats to care for. Angel is always into something that's there to get into or inventing something new to get into. She surely keeps me on my toes.

The other side of Angel (the part that makes her name fit) is her consummate sweetness. Angel gives the very best hugs there are. She will come curl up in my arms for ten or twenty minutes at a time, purring as loud as can be, kneading and rumbling. For all her antics and creative mischief, Angel is really pure love. She makes everybody laugh. I wouldn't trade her for a dozen well behaved cats. Well, not most days, anyway.



Tomorrow, I'll introduce you to Tara Grace...

President's Day Rant

Well, I know that I already wrote a big rant about impeachment so I won't say anything more about that here (don't hold me to that, please) , but just in case anybody with a few bucks to spare should happen by and read this....

The man who has first and consistently called for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney is Dennis Kucinich, Congressman from the 10th District in Ohio. In my 60 years I have never cared with such passion about a candidate. Most people probably don't know that he ran a campaign for president because the media and the Democratic Party made sure that his voice was virtually completely silenced. So much for free elections and Democracy. God forbid that Americans should actually hear some of the things that Dennis stands/stood for. God forbid that we should hear that in non-media polls and blind polls, Kucinich usually beat the so-called "front runners" (ie. corporate media pre-selected choices) by sizeable margins. I am disgusted that the other candidates allowed and cooperated with silencing his voice in the debates. That does not speak well of them. To me it says that they were afraid of having an honest substantive voice be heard alongside their own sound bites. It doesn't bother me as much that Dennis K won't be president as it bothers me that what he stands for has been effectively kept from the ears of the American people and that this has been done with the cooperation of the other candidates.

Personally, I don't understand why we are afraid of universal health coverage in this country. Where is the downside medical care for every citizen of our country instead of the current lop-sided mess which bankrupts even those who are insured and leaves the poor in a position where the only way they can get health care is to become so ill that society winds up paying for their care and their funeral both. Anybody who hasn't watched the movie SICKO really should make it a point to do so.

But I digress. It seems that the Democratic party and corporate interests (I know I sound paranoid, but it isn't paranoia if it's true) are doing their level best to finish off the job on Kucinich. They are trying to get him out of Congress with the same determination with which they silenced his voice in the run for the presidency. He needs help. And this country needs his voice. Now more than at any time in our history, the country needs a voice that stands against the tide. Kucinich was one of the few who always voted against the war. Kucinich is one of the few who has worked for truly improving the lives of citizens. He has good sense and a kind of decency, honesty and courage which is rare and refreshing. We will be a poorer country if we lose his voice from Congress, a place which is currently quite destitute of such voices.

Anyway. I hope that anyone who can, will send a dollar, a nickle, twenty, a hundred to Kucinich's campaign in Ohio. Maybe the best thing to do, though, is let Dennis speak to you in his own words at Progressive Democrats of America's website.

I want my country back. Keeping men like Dennis Kucinich in office is one way to keep that hope alive.

The Inkspot Society

About eight months ago, I guess, my kitty Tara Grace had a serious brush with death. Since I'm homebound, there was an extra level of angst to the crisis. Lucky for me, there's a vet's office about 2 minutes (probably not even) from me. I called them and asked if they ever made house calls. They don't, but their receptionist, a very kind young man, heard my panic and asked them if they'd mind if he walked up the hill and got her and brought her down. They agreed. Dan came, carrier and all and carried my frail little baby down the hill. With antibiotics she rallied but that was just the beginning of a month of health adventures for Tara (she is GREAT now) . It was also the beginning of a wonderful friendship and the planting of the seed for The Inkspot Society. Right now there are 5 of us (all wonderful people brought into my life by Dan's big heart) who meet every other Sunday (in about 2 hours, in fact t0day), and share our own writing or word of others that have touched us. We have a homework assignment each time. Sometimes it's a words exercise, sometimes we take a picture and all have to write a paragraph inspired by it. It's fun and it has given my creative juices something to salivate over.

The Inkspot Society has been more than just a creative gift, though. Dan, Nate, Sue and Mary are kind and loving people. My life, which had been very lonely before is now as rich as a life lived inside the small space of 4 rooms can be. For Christmas, the Inkspot gang gave me a house cleaning party. We had a good time. The stopped up drain in my bathroom sink was miraculously fixed, my shelves were dusted. All the things that are very difficult because of my health were done with laughter and fun. Nate cleared all the gunk out of my computer, fixed my DVD drive so I can watch movies here and generally made it work much better. Then we all had a gala meal. On Thanksgiving, even though I was perfectly fine, they came over with plates full of wonderful food from their Thanksgiving meal. They came for New Year's Eve and we did a wonderful "letting go of the old" ritual, shared a meal and watched a movie.

Nate, Dan, Sue and Mary are a miraculous gift in my life. They have enriched it in ways I can't begin to express. I am grateful for the chance to spend time with people who love writing, but even more than that, I am grateful that God has brought so much love and goodness into my little world.

A National Disgrace

Well, I was going to wait until tomorrow when the Sunday talking heads had got me good and raving mad, but I don't feel like talking about anything else... so many ideas, so little enthusiasm... so I thought I'd just rant for a few minutes.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their cohorts are a bunch of criminals. It is a national disgrace that they were allowed to steal two (yes two... do some research - Hacking Democracy ) elections and it is a national disgrace that they are not being impeached by the members of both parties in Congress. They have committed so many impeachable crimes that it is mind boggling that they continue to brazenly commit more and thumb their noses at the country while Congress stands by in a drooling stupor. Aggggh!

I wish we would all raise our voices and push for impeachment. There are a number of ways to do this. Dennis Kucinich put impeachment back on the table but it has lain dormant in the Judiciary Committe for months and months now. Wexler, a Rep. from Florida and member of the Judiciary Committee is trying to push it forward. You can add your voice by signing on at the following sites:

Wexler Wants Hearings

Impeach Bush

AfterDowning Street

Impeach Now

Democrats.com

Ask Nadler to Impeach

Besides this, you could call your own Representative and also the members of the Judiciary Committee and telling them you support HR333 - Kucinich's articles of impeachment.

Chairman John Conyers, Michigan, 14th (202) 225-5126
Howard Berman California, 28th (202) 225-4695
Rick Boucher Virginia, 9th (202) 225-3861
Jerrold Nadler New York, 8th
Robert C. Scott Virginia, 3rd (202) 225-8351
Melvin L. Watt North Carolina, 12th (202) 225-1510
Zoe Lofgren California, 16th (202) 225-3072
Sheila Jackson Lee Texas, 18th (202) 225-3816
William D. Delahunt Massachusetts, 10th (202) 225-3111
Robert Wexler Florida, 19th (202) 225-3001
Linda T. Sánchez California, 39th (202) 225-6676
Steve T. Cohen Tennessee, 9th (202) 225-3265 a co-sponsor of H.Res 333
Hank Johnson Georgia, 4th (202) 225-1605 a co-sponsor
Luis Gutierrez Illinois, 4th (202) 225-8203
Brad Sherman California, 27 (202) 225-5911
Anthony D. Weiner New York, 9th (202) 225-6616
Adam B. Schiff California, 29th (202) 225-4176
Artur Davis Alabama , 7th (202) 225-2665
Debbie Wasserman Schultz Florida, 20th 202-225-7931
Tammy Baldwin Wisconsin, 2nd (202) 225-2906
Keith Ellison Minnesota, 5th (612) 522-1212 a supporter
Maxine Waters California, 35th (202) 225-2201
Betty Sutton Ohio, 13th (202) 225-3401

The Republicans:

Lamar S. Smith Ranking Member (TX-21) (202) 225-4236
Jim Sensenbrenner (WI-5) (202) 225-5101
Howard Coble (NC-6) (202) 225-3065
Elton Gallegly (CA-24) (202) 225-5811
Bob Goodlatte (VA-6) (202) 225-5431
Steve Chabot (OH-1) (202) 225-2216
Dan Lungren (CA-3) 202-225-5716
Chris Cannon (UT-3) (202) 225-7751
Ric Keller (FL-8) (202) 225-2176
Darrell Issa (CA-49) (202) 225-3906
Mike Pence (IN-6) (202) 225-3021
Randy Forbes (VA-4) (202) 225-6365
Steve King (IA-5) (202) 225-4426
Tom Feeney (FL-24) (202) 225-2706
Trent Franks (AZ-2) (202) 225-4576
Louie Gohmert (TX-1) (202) 225-3035
Jim Jordan (OH-4) (202) 225-2676

I can't find the site for emailing everyone. Mostly you can't email anyone who isn't from your state anyway.

Ok. Now I feel a little better. I will probably rant on this subject again, because I think our country will never recover from the shame of it if we don't hold these men accountable for the crimes they have committed and the hundreds of thousands of deaths they caused in our name. We impeached a man for being evasive about cheating on his wife. Surely we can impeach men who have violated the Constitution, invaded another country under false pretenses, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, condoned and committed torture... agh, the list is so long...

Thanks for listening.

Daily Things

I'm a creature of habit. Most of my habits tend to be "bad" habits, but I do have a few that aren't so bad and I thought I'd share them today.

For the past 10 years (maybe even 12), since I discovered cyberspace, I have become devoted to what I think of as "the one click sites." The first one I discovered was the Hunger Site and encompasses five other categories besides hunger, each accessible through this same link. A daily click at The Hunger site donates 1.1 cups of food for hungry people around the world. A click at The Breast Cancer site goes towards giving women free mammograms. Next you can click for Children's Health and this goes towards offering free health care for children in need. That's followed by the Literacy site, which buys books for children. The next click - the Rainforest - helps protect 11.4 square feet of rainforest and the last on the list at the Hunger site is Animal Rescue site where your click provides six tenths of a bowl of food for rescued animals. It only takes a couple of minutes to do all this good and over time, if you do it every day, you wind up contributing quite a bit.... for example if you click on the animal rescue link daily, you end up giving 219 bowls of food over the course of a year. Daily clicks on the hunger link add up to 401.5 bowls of food. Not bad for two minutes effort every day.

But you don't have to stop there. Next is Care2.com where with another few minutes of your time you can:

* Stop Global Warming,

* Save some more rain forest (or Prairie or marine wetlands - they give you a choice),

* Save baby seals,

* Help protect dolphins, sea turtles and other ocean life,

* Click for the Big Cats (I favor the jaguar, but you can also click for tigers or snow leopards),

* Support the Jane Goodall Institute for chips and primates,

* Help Children International provide food and medical care to needy children

* Help the Humane Society of the USA protect pets and homeless animals in need

* Support work to prevent violence against women world wide and

* Contribute to breast cancer prevention

Care2 is very well designed, so all those clicks only take about 3- 5 minutes (I haven't timed it, but it's very fast).


But us fanatics don't stop there. Some wonderful person who is as enamored of one-clicks as I am, created a site where he gathered all the one-click sites he could find from all over the world and sorted them into categories. I won't bother to list them all here. The two sites above are included in his lists along with sites from the Netherlands, Japan, Poland, Mexico, Brazil... It's pretty nifty. His site is called One Click at a Time subtitled You Too Can Save the World. This one takes a little more time as there's quite a lot to sort through and there are a lot of them. Still, with maybe another 10 minutes from your day, you can build homes, plant trees, feed children, build hospitals.... It's quite wonderful. One of my favorite links at One Click at a Time is something called Land Care Niagara. I don't know why I'm so fond of it... Maybe because every every 5 clicks plants a tree and that gives me a feeling of great accomplishment.

I've mentioned it before but Linda alerted me to something called What Kind of World Do You Want where by clicking on videos you contribute to organizations working to cure autism.

Free Rice is kind of fun. You can work on your vocabulary and donate cups of rice at the same time. I don't do that one daily but it is fun.

Not all my daily visits are noble, though. I was really hooked on Huffington Post for a while - especially when Dennis Kucinich was still running for president and I worked at putting his name into the conversation as often as I could since even the so-called liberal HuffPo participated in the almost total blackout on letting his voice be heard. (Can you tell I'm still really ticked off about that?) Chris Weigant is pretty much the only column I bother to read these days, though I like Bob Cesca and Deepak Chopra posts some good things too. One of the things I like about Weigant - besides his intelligence and his sense of humor - is that he reads the responses to his posts and replies to them.

Then there's Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. I'm determined to win. Despite the fact that they keep giving my money to other people, I will persevere.

Last, but not least among my very favorites is site my niece Cindy alerted me to: The Daily Puppy. Hard to believe there are so many "awwww" producing puppies on the planet, but every day there's another cute one.

Oh, and I almost forgot... Blogs. The list is still relatively small. My niece Cindy's two blogs. Team Wines to see what she and my great niece and great nephew have been up to and then Life in My Noggin to see what Cindy herself is thinking. Then my other niece Diana who has two great blogs and an incredible new website: Hightech Survivor, Vegan Girl, and FoodScout. Then there's Cindy's wonderful friend Linda who pushed me to start (well restart) this blog. And through Linda, I discovered a wonderful witty woman named Dianne, who's blog is called Forks Off the Moment.

Guess that's enough for the moment. Today's picture is my naughty Angel (you'll hear about her in future blogs) at work. Her message (well, Eleanor Roosevelt's message) seemed to fit today's theme. There really IS a lot we can do to change the world in very small ways, not just big dramatic ones.

Happy Clicking. Together we CAN save the world... or at least make it a lot better.

Poem of the Week

THE CALL

I too am called by inner voices
But don't know how to answer
Having grown apart from earth and sea
Yet still there is a longing with the seasons
To move
To be released again
And go unerring
Like geese against the sky
Toward some unknown
Stronger than dreams
Though woven of them
It is a primal call
But not a wild one
Heavy with the scent of fading flowers
And after rain
An empty silence
That longs to be filled
With wind-songs and greenness
And something lost

- Katherine E. Rabenau

The Kitten and the Parakeet

Seems to be a theme this week in my email and since I don't have enough ambition after my recent bout with compulsive game playing to write something thoughtful, I thought I'd go for cute pictures. These just arrived in my email and I thought the were pretty darn cute... and since the little video with the crow was such a hit, I figured I'd try cats and birds again.

These arrived unattibuted in an email, so I can't give anyone credit for photographing all this cuteness. My thanks to whoever took these photos and my apologies for not being able to give you credit.

Compulsive Behavior

Well, I almost broke my promise to myself to post something every day. Why? Because I am being compulsive. I mean desperately, tragically, soul-suckingly compulsive.

I discovered a while back that Onespirit.com offers free trial downloads for games. What makes this particularly wonderful is that the timers don't work, so you can play for as long as you don't turn the computer off. Right now I am obsessed with Aveyond I: Rhen's Quest. I am fighting monsters and exploring and having an irritatingly hard time making progress. I have rescued one out of 8 (yes 8!) Druids, from demons who have frozen them. It feels like very slow going, but how can I leave 7 stranded Druids and a world in peril? I must persevere until the benevolent (or perhaps not so benevolent) gods who have given me this free game, decide to take it back.

Meanwhile, I have to keep this short. There are Druids and elves and fairies to be saved. And of course there is also me to be saved. I have to finish so that I, too, can be set free. Wish me luck.

The Kitten and the Crow

I thought this was a beautiful story. Just one more proof that love has no limits and that the world is full of miracles.

Six Unimportant Things

Linda at These Are The Days tagged me for this meme.

Here are the Rules

1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up

Six non-important things/habits/quirks about myself...

1. I made caterpillar (yes that's what it is) at the top of this post using Paint Shop Pro. I don't have much talent but I have enthusiasm.

2. I collect rocks.

3. I love Cold Stone Ice cream (pretty much any ice cream, actually).

4. For some reason I almost always win when I play CLUE.

5. I enter Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes every day

6. Not a big fan of shoes, but I love Crocs.


I'm new to this blogging thing and I don't have a lot of blogging friends as yet. Linda has used one of them up so... I can probably only tag one person... but at least I don't have to think of something to write about on my own this morning. The only person I can think of to tag is my niece Diana at High Tech Survivor

By the way, I have no idea why the type size/color keeps changing throughout this post. I tried to fix it and couldn't do it.

Since I first posted this, my niece Cindy tagged me again. I failing my nieces but I didn't want to do it twice and then I thought.... "edit the one that's posted... so here are six more unimportant quirks...

1. Because my niece Diana said it's good for your skin, I have been experimenting with rubbing coconut oil on my face and other skin areas.
2. I really, really, really wanted Dennis Kucinich to be president.
3. I love Dr. Bronner's liquid hemp soaps
4. I have started having Nutiva hemp shakes which I over blend so I can eat them like pudding. My friends claim it's a sneaky way to take dope.
5. I like snow but only when it is what I call "tasteful" snow, ie. , enough to look pretty but not enough to mess up traffic or inconvenience anyone
6. I used to play the clarinet

Ok, Cindy. I hope this satisfied the tag. I love you.

Sunday Quotes - Thoughts on Gratitude

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful. ~ Buddah

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Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. ~ Denis Waitely

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If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice. ~ Meister Eckhardt

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Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~Melody Beattie

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Gratitude takes you out of your head and judgment.

… and when you give thanks, it takes you out of that mental place of right and wrong, good and bad, and puts you into your heart. When you get out of your mind level, even for a short time, it is possible for the Universe to work more directly with you.

Orin & DaBen through Sanaya Roman, from the book, Living With Joy
www.orindaben.com

Thank You for Everything

Over the years I have developed a deep respect for the concept of gratitude. Oprah has talked about it, just about all spiritual writing talks about it. It lies at the core of THE SECRET... It's such an easy skill to develop and it can have a powerful impact on your life. About six years ago I read an article - http://www.inlightimes.com/archives/2002/11/alan-cohen.htm - by a man named Alan Cohen, that talked about a mantra which goes: "Thank you for everything. I have no complaints whatsoever."

I started practicing that mantra at a very difficult time in my life. I won't go into details, but pretty much everything was wrong and there didn't seem to be much hope that my life would get better. I began religiously reciting those words - "Thank you for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever." Amazingly, I started to feel better. I think somehow giving thanks for even your troubles changes your relationship to them and opens the door for the Universe to transform them into something else. That is how it has worked for me, anyway.

Gratitude in general is a wonderful practice. I start and end every day by giving thanks for all my blessings. It feels good. There's a Hawaiian saying that goes: "Energy flows where attention goes." In other words, what we focus on, we draw to ourselves. Not to mention that focusing on that which is good and beautiful enriches each moment and helps us be more consciously aware of all the beauty and blessings that surround us. The more you look for beauty and blessings the more you see.

There is so much to be thankful for - from the mundane to the sublime and back again. Just a few of my favorite in no particular order.... the warm hug of a purring kitty, food in my refrigerator, friends and family, beauty, running water, flowers, colors, indoor plumbing, heat and hot water, the sounds of music, butterflies, the ability to hear and see, laughter, books, poetry, birds, imagination, children, rocks, windows on the world, netfix.... I could go on and on, but you get the idea....

From some perspectives, I have a hard life. I have difficulty walking, I live with a fair amount of pain, my brain is convinced that I'll die if I step out my front door and I can't persuade it otherwise. I live on very limited income from disability. By American standards, I'm poor. From a gratitude perspective, though, I have a very good life. I have my own little house, kind neighbors, enough money to pay my bills (though I haven't been able to get rid of my debt yet), food to eat, a computer, a TV, books to read, two sweet, if naughty, kitties, good friends, a smart, talented nephew, two amazing nieces, and a great niece and nephew... My life is pretty darned good. And relative to most people in the world, I'm rich. Would I like to win Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes? Absolutely. I'm determined to do so. But in the meanwhile, I'm very grateful for all my blessings and the for all the beauty around me.

Thank you for everything. I have no complaints whatsoever.

What Kind of World Do I Want

My niece and her friend Linda have been doing these things called Friday Feasts... Linda sent me the link to the source a while back (I forgot to say thank you so I'll do that now) and yesterday I finally went to check it out. There was a heading and a thing that said you could post if you registered but nothing else. I tried refreshing. I tried searching around. I felt stupider and stupider. Why couldn't I find the feasts? Eventually I gave up and resisted the temptation to share my stupidity and ask the girls for help. This morning I gave it another try and was relieved to see that they are having technical difficulties. There is no feast this week, but I'm not useless and stupid... at least not for failing to find the feast questions.

So then I had to think... What will I do instead? Linda had a post a few days back about a wonderful website that raises awareness and money for autism: What Kind of World Do You Want . I recommend that you check it out.

But the question stuck with me. What kind of world DO I want? I thought maybe I'd try to answer that question.

Since I've been very wrapped up in politics of late, some of my first thoughts go there. I want a world at peace, where people don't use violence to prove their points or take out their frustrations. I want a world in which nobody ever thinks there is anything at all - nothing - that could justify torturing another human being or an animal.

I want a world where people happily - joyfully, even - tend to one another's needs. I want a world where nobody goes uninsured, where nobody goes hungry and where we help people without feeling the need to shame them for their troubles, where we don't even worry if they are trying to bilk us out of breadcrumbs but where we just allow them to eat because they have asked for help. I want a world in which the rich don't feel a need to amass piles of money at the expense of the poor. I have no trouble with people being rich. I do have trouble with people being selfish.

What else do I want? I want a world in which George Bush and Dick Cheney are impeached, convicted and sent to jail for their crimes, a world in which my country takes her honor back.

I also want a world in which coal and oil and other companies put profits AFTER the well-being of the planet. I want a world in which we invest our creative energy in solar power.

I want a world in which people believe in magic and miracles. I don't mean this in a frivolous way, either. Years ago when I was still going to church I took part in a discussion about whether there were still miracles. I was the only person who thought there were. Unbelievable. Life is a miracle. Breathing is a miracle. Thinking, dreaming, flowers blooming are miracles. Children are miracles. The seasons are miraculous. There are so many miracles out there that it's unfathomable to me that anyone could doubt their existence.

Then there are things like reiki - the healing art that I practice. I don't know how or why it works, but it does. I want a world where people's hearts are open to such possiblities. I want a world where those who don't believe delight in the fact that others do.

I want a world in which people are allowed to have their feelings, a world in which it's just as ok to be sad or angry as it is to be happy. Not that I want people to be sad or angry, just that I want a world in which we understand that having a feeling isn't a crime, it's just part of being human. I want a world in which because we are allowed to feel our anger, it would flow right through us and be gone in no time without harming us or anyone else.

I want a world in which we all have healthy relationships to our bodies and our sexuality. I'd like a world in which women were respected as much for their intelligence and creativity as for their bodies. I'd like a world in which women weren't sold into sexual slavery, burned alive, or raped and molested. I'd like a world in which we cared less about who (male or female) somebody sleeps with than who they are and how they treat each other.

Most of all, I want a world in which we look at each other and ourselves with the eyes of love. I want a world in which every child is taught to think well of him or herself and every adult looks in the mirror and sees the beauty inside and out. In that kind of world, we'd reflect that beauty onto those around us as well; it would be a "namaste" world, in which each of us would see the God (the good) in the other. It would be a world in which we would all feel loved because we would all BE loved. That's the kind of world I want.

Poem of the Week

Ok... I have the beginners bug, I guess, so I can't wait to post something else and I thought... maybe I'll post one of my poems every week and maybe if I do that, I'll even start writing some new ones, so here goes...

The poem I've chosen to start with is possibly/probably the best poem I've written. I wrote it in response to a particularly intense therapy session centuries ago when I was still a real person who lived out in the world.

THE ROCK AND THE DEAD CHILD

In my throat is a rock with a dead child inside
Like the petrified fist of some giant god
It wraps around her small corpse
Her legs stick out, limp and dead
And the rock wonders what she is doing there
And why she died
It does not mean her any harm
It does not understand, even,
How she came to lie dormant and frail in it’s grasp
It does not understand, even
Who IT is
It remembers vaguely as though from some dim dream
That she needed to keep quiet
And stop struggling
But struggling against who or what
It cannot say
And it is frightened
By a vague sense of somehow having done wrong
It wishes she was gone
And then wonders who IT is without her
Maybe they are one being and not two
And it did not exist first
But slowly grew around her
Day after day after day
And year after year after year
Never noticing
Until in this moment
Suddenly awakening
It finds her long dead
It keeps thinking of the Wicked Witch of the East
And wishes some Dorothy would come along
And make those legs
So limp and dead,
So small
Shrivel up and go away.
But this is not Oz
Or Kansas either
But some no man’s land
And this body is not some evil witch
But a small child
She can’t be more than four
Silenced in a tomb of oblivious stone
That wishes
With whatever dim heart a stone can hold
That it could let her go,
Could bring her back to vibrant life
Wishes too somewhere in it’s confusion
That it knew how to cry
And wash itself clean
Of this child who holds it as captive
As it holds her.

Katherine E. Rabenau
October 5, 1999

Laying Another Egg

Well, the nest has been vacant for over a year. I've thought about posting again but not quite gotten myself to do so, although I have gone through a brief obsession with political rants at Huffington Post. Now that my favorite candidate, Dennis Kucinich is no longer in the race, my passion for HuffPo has waned. So... encouraged by a number of people, I'm going to try again... to (oh what a bad pun) lay another egg into my little nest and see if this time I can nurse it and grow it into a real thing.

I've been inspired during my fallow time by the blogs of my nieces and their friends. Wonderful blogs all. Such wonderful young women who deal with the ups and downs of life with grace and wisdom and humor and love. They awe me and give me joy. They give me hope for the future too as do Cindy's two magical children. (Just in case that isn't clear, they are real, honest-to-goodness children who are smart and cute and beautiful and funny.... like their mother and their aunt and uncle.)

Anyway, I feel kind of like I lost my voice when I lost my agoraphobia column... at least my public voice.... however public this ends up being. I have backslid agoraphobia-wise... no car makes it easier than ever to hide in the house so I haven't left in over two years. I'm not unhappy, though. My "new" windows (see posts from 2006) give me a lovely view on the outside world. I have kind neighbors who clear my snow away in winter. I get my food delivered from Schwann's. I guess this is as good (or bad) a place as any to confess the guilty secret to my beautiful niece Diana that I'm not a vegetarian any more. The security of knowing that I have a safe, reliable food source and don't have to burden my friends won out over virtue, I'm afraid.

One of the best things that happened since I last posted is a "gift in ugly wrapping paper" that came to me when Tara Grace had a brush with death last Spring. There's a vet about two minutes from my house, just down two big hills. When I called to ask if they make house calls (no car and I can't walk), they said "no," but their receptionist is a kind young man and said he would walk up the hill and carry her down for me. That was the beginning of what has become a wonderful friendship not only with Dan but with his boyfriend Nate, Nate's mother Sue and another friend, Mary. Turns out we had common interests in writing and spirituality. We have created something called The Inkspot Society and we meet every other week to write and share our own work or words of others that have moved us. And we eat and laugh. Recently Nate and Dan have started coming over on Wednesdays for "Games and Garbage" night. Most of my yuckiest and most challenging chores get taken care of by their young, kind energy. I feel like royalty.

And then there's netflix. The guy who thought that up deserves some kind of reward above and beyond the fortune he is undoubtedly raking in.

Well, that's probably (probably?!!) enough boring trivia about what I've been up to for a first post.