Right now my guide dog Nira is talking in her sleep. How ancient dog dreams must be! They do not I think dream of squirrels, but instead, like us, experience flight.
In a few short minutes Nira and I will have to go somewhere in this high gravity world. I won’t wake her until it’s time…
SK
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Almost blew up lawn mower.
Was just thinking of Spinoza, really.
Iowa summer, already hot…
Note: two stroke engines need oil…
Poof! Big cloud!
Good bye abstract clouds!
Eureka!
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From The New York Times:
Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dies at 83; Backed Assisted Suicide
A medical pathologist, Dr. Kevorkian challenged social taboos about disease and dying and helped dozens of terminally ill patients end their lives.
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Strange man in hotel elevator, a non English speaker, points at guide dog, says: "Why dog?" I said: "The dog helps me see." He looked terrified, not so much of the dog's "dogness" but because of the proposition. Inside his head were worlds of diagrammspatic doggy darknesses, wild, twisting alleys, unseen strangers staring from high windows. Poor fella. I wouldn't trade for his world, not today…
It’s axiomatic that writers are scribbling with such perseverance that they make the insects seem dull. (And if you’ve ever taken a course in entomology you know that the bugs are the most caffeinated creatures going).
BTW I once took a course in entomology when I was a callow freshman and looking for what I hoped would be an easy science course. I loved the class! And the professor looked a great deal like Jeff Goldblum in “The Fly” though that remake wouldn’t come along for years.
Writing is like digging a hole at the beach. If you stop it gets harder.
Writing is like the beach itself. You never know what will wash up.
Writing is unlike all other human activities. Writing has no analogy.
Writing is entirely analogy.
Writing is the nose you would have if you had a choice in the matter.
It’s the shadow of the grape harvester’s knife.
If nothing else it’s a daily practice. More important than the weather report. Ezra Pound paid no attention to the weather report. Walt Whitman was his own weather.
S.K.
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HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA– Excerpt from Inclusion Daily [Excerpt] A small group of activists, most in wheelchairs, found locked doors and a cordon of police and security officers blocking the way Wednesday as they tried to deliver a message to Gov. Tom Corbett about cuts to programs for disabled people.
Activists say they are angry that the governor has proposed cutting funding to services they need, such as a program that provides home health aides whose help allows them to remain in their homes.
Mr. Corbett wants to spend $103 million on that program, a decrease of $17 million from current funding.
Protester Cassie Holdsworth, who has spina bifida, said that program provides aides who help her prepare meals, handle household chores and dress for her job as policy director of Liberty Resources Center for Independent Living in Philadelphia. “Without the services, I couldn’t work and I couldn’t live in my home,” she said.
Entire article:
Protesters see ‘bind’ in urged state cuts
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11146/1149269-178.stm
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The sun came out yesterday for much of the day. I suggested that our Syracuse realtor was practicing witch craft. BTW I'm in favor of witch craft. But only when realtors who represent my interests employ it. I wouldn't support it for air traffic controllers or candidates for public office. I'm just sayin'
In Syracuse house hunting on a holiday weekend. The hotel desk clerk gave me free coffee because I was wearing a Mets hat. One must mine ones disadvantages, eh Mr. Wilpon?
I like this website for Liberation Theology
I find most mornings that it’s necessary to refresh whatever passes for my soul with thoughts about justice and human rights. I wish I could de-commercialize the giddy, collective buying and selling of dignity. I wish this while walking my dog. I recognize my essential simplicity.
Lately I’ve seen aggressive commercials on MSNBC advertising “clean coal”. But what about the collapse of mine safety standards in West Virginia? I recognize my essential simplicity.
I must live with my simplicity if I’m to live at all. I must live with the “simplicities”. There are many.
Most of them can be found in the “Sermon on the Mount” though you can find variants and extensions of the simplicities almost anyplace. “Blessed are the cheese makers” and “the love you take is equal to the love you make” are fine examples.
I was in mind of simplicity this morning because, when lived properly, simplicity is the antidote to hypocrisies of all kinds.
Mike Huckabee playing bass behind Ted Nugent is a good example of shameless hypocrisy–Nugent screaming about making people suck on his machine gun, while the Rev. Huckabee is smiling happily. I’m not, apparently simple enough for that.
The simplicities require an admission of discomfort and a willingness to walk away.
S.K.
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Some months ago after a round of eye surgery I bought an IPad which magnifies print and “speaks” and then I joined Facebook. (Twitter too.)
When I open Facebook I’m always, always gratified to read what the poet Sam Hamill has to say. His posts and forwarded articles are “spot on” about the cruelties of imperial culture. Sam’s posts remind me that authentic outrage about the state of human rights can still abide in a land of self-amusements and idle chatter. Thank you, Sam.
In the age of “collateral damage” Sam tells us that there are children, men, women, all innocent, all sacrificed for the sake of imperial procedure. I no longer know the number–the official number–of civilians killed in the latest Iraq war but I know it’s well over 100,000.
And thank you Robert Bly for these lines from your poem “The Teeth Mother Naked at Last”–they are as true today as they were when you wrote them some forty years ago when the U.S. was slaughtering civilians in Viet Nam:
“Helicopters flutter overhead. The death-
bee is coming. Super Sabres
like knots of neurotic energy sweep
around and return.
This is Hamilton’s triumph.
This is the advantage of a centralized bank.
B-52s come from Guam. All the teachers
die in flames. The hopes of Tolstoy fall asleep in the ant heap.
Do not ask for mercy.”
**
The House of Representatives voted yesterday for a massive military budget. Has there ever been a greater need or a more pressing time for the United States to turn its swords into plowshares?
Robert Bly again:
“I know that books are tired of us.
I know they are chaining the Bible to chairs.
Books don’t want to remain in the same room with us anymore.”
S.K.
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Planet of the Blind 