Who is your touchstone, fellow blogmates? The bravest man I personally know is 82. He just got out of the hospital on the 4th of July. He set his goal and he made it home. I have loved him for 33 years.  It is an unusual relationship, he is more than a dad, really. Wherever he happens to be, that is where I always feel fully at home. It's a long story, but he's my family. I don't know the world without him.

He was a medic in World War II, and then went on to serve in medicine for five decades. He's a painter, an athlete, a musician -- and a total trip to be around.  These days, I change his urostomy bag sometimes. He calls it a treat. I put clean sheets on his bed, he calls it a bit of heaven. Over the years, he's taught me more by example than by precept. Whatever lessons people seem to gather from his life, they somehow realize that he came by them honestly. He's got so much try in him. (Man, what's my excuse?)

At times like this, I think we need to be intensely competent, and deeply tender toward each other. We need to never give up on ourselves, or on each other.  It is an ongoing process, experienced profoundly at times of adversity,  I suppose, a process of becoming fully ourselves.  At times like this, we re-define what it is to be -- and to become -- a complete human being.  For each American generation to whom the baton of individual freedom has been passed, with luck, with the help of providence, with gifted human strategies for coordinated adaptation, life again backs our act.

Americans who have gone before us, that great cloud of witnesses like my favorite 82 year old, fought hard to live, and to be home to celebrate Independence Days.  They say to us, again and now: Help where you can, receive help when you must. Be that as it may, on whatever terms we may be given to live, they whisper silently: Live, my loves.

Let us pause to think about our touchstones today, and to remember the big try they planted way down deep.

According to a study reported last Friday in National Geographic, if we want to live longer, we need to stop worrying. As I read that, fellow blogmates,  I wonder if death-blows to longevity might include the various stress-cases in our lives which  press us into serving neuroses, rather than pursuing our own healthier strategies for nurturing physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. 

      

In these heavy duty times, it seems scientifically correct to take a peace break -- one in which nothing -- not even the news -- can deter us from investing dedicated time to daily manage stressors, and to plan for some happiness, too.  I'm going to do Pilates today, meditate, and eat salads.  How about you, what strategies can you share? What gifts will you give to yourself today to lighten your load, and lengthen your life?

 

            Best, as ever,

            Tish

 

We may be second rate

(to him)

he's such a big timer

but it took me a lifetime to get here.

Then he calls us probably a mistake

it was my heart

he played catch with.

 

I should break off for that

so he can choose me

Monday he suddenly found

 my love and faith are bound

(he said)

but me break up? nooo!

he apologized, so

I just got drunk

 Friday night

drove myself home

(my voice had died)

watermelon watermelon

 pineapple pineapple

(but not my feet, so I laughed)
 a jig's not a reel

he don't get it, fuggeit

my true love always will

(once)

when he feels me broken

(he called me a well-trained horse)

in the Great Unspoken

(but he explained it eight months later).

 

We'll never have a child

or perform an Irish reel onstage

nor have me dad walk down the aisle

or kiss above that leafy glade

(they cut it down).

 

But damn it, friend,

if we can't talk

of everything under the sun

and the sun,

I want us surely to break up

so one day we can meet again

and start our love

brand clean and new

(it's me heart you hold there

in your hands)

but would you choose

to dance again,

begin again, Finnegan?

 

In place of another recursive exchange over a woman's right to choose, I am wondering how you might weigh in on this set of questions, fellow blog mates:

       To what extent is our right to choose being responsibly exercised by the generation of American women born after the seminal Roe v. Wade decision? 

        Is a woman's choice entirely, forever, or unimpeachably private?  Are there not individual, familial, or societal factors to be included in an intelligent matrix  for defining a socially responsible choice to abort? Put differently, what constitutes a responsible exercise of choice?  Have you or someone you know chosen to abort?  Knowing what you know now, would you/they still have done so?  What resources would you offer  to those considering abortion to better inform their decisions?

       To what degree is it a woman's responsibility to take conscious care that she does not conceive, given that she and her partner already know that they will not choose to raise a child at the present time -- or carry a baby to term?  Is adoption made viable when patients are counseled about their options? Should it be? What do men feel when abortion happens in their lives?

       I wonder if we might create a wise forum around  such questions, pooling our insights, research, and experience. Looking forward to your thoughts and feelings.

 

       Best, as ever,

       Tish

      

Barak's cool. Aura of mystery. Not bad on the eyes. We've been there, done that, and gotten the t-shirt. So? Does that mean that we the People play the dupes for four years while he plays king? The People (not the Spectators) in a recently touted recovering democracy need to cast off eight Busholini years of learned helplessness and begin to growl big. Grrrrrr.

 

Off to clean closets, fellow blogmates, how about you?

 

Happy Sunday,

Tish

He called the sun a great musical instrument.

Using around-the-clock daylight in the Antarctic summer to make relatively impossible high altitude solar studies, he gathered data confirming that our very sun oscillates every five minutes, rather like a bell.  Once a Syracuse journalism student, he changed his major to science after taking a "physics for poets" class.  He passed away last month at age 91, leaving behind a research facility at the South Pole. 

Following are a few favorite lines of mine, fellow blogmates, in celebration of a life that fostered inquiry: astronomy in Antarctica.  

Wishing heaven's endless embrace upon the dear soul of astrophysicist Dr. Martin Pomerantz.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Cloths of Heaven

William Butler Yeats

 

Greetings, fellow blogmates,

      I received an email from impeachment guru David Swanson today, and have info to pass on.  On November 19, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance is planning a protest at the U.S. Justice Department. Its members are willing to risk going to jail to urge the indictment of Bush and Cheney for war crimes.  David is appealing to all of us to contact the Justice Department to urge Attorney General Mukasey to meet with the NCRC.

 

Actionist reminder: November 10: phone the DOJ at 202-514-2000 and 202-353-1555.

 

Best impeachment wishes,

Tish

 

Greetings, Fellow Blogmates,
     We just returned stateside from a month in San Miguel de Allende to be greeted with the news that DK may be, at last, receiving  some encouragement from Pelosi this time. Having written on the impeachment trail in this blog from September, 2006, to September, 2007, I feel simultaneously encouraged yet wary of this latest MSM report. What have you learned? How goes  your summer?
     Best impeachment wishes, as ever, looking forward,
     Tish

Sunday greets, fellow blogmates,
     Just an open thread to gather in any stray peeps. Stop by and share your experiences when you get your reset.
     (signed)
     Still Here
     
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first."

[On retiring young in San Miguel de Allende]

Let's live before we die, fellow blogmates. And make love in second languages.

Béseme.

Abráceme.

Kisses. Embraces.  Long-favored gifts interchanged among the poor. No wrapping papers needed: they wrap around each other. Passion rewards a boy with a dance, a salsa.  They turn, his soul turned sweet in her arms.  Ponga las manos en la cintura.

He's going to live before he dies. He puts his hands up and down her waist, finds the place he wants, one where he's always belonged.  They're beginning to move through space again now, another dance inventing.  

Ponga las manos en la cintura.

I guess I must be devolving into a romance writer, fellow blogmates.  I suppose I'll have to try to make the best use whatever I've got left -- as some of you may know, I lost my wits and can't seem to find them.  Actually, I'm down to one wit and I'm offering it to you now because it is all I have to give. (In the immortal words of Yeats, tread lightly, for you tread on my dreams). 

You know you're smitten  . . .when it feels like the end of the world when The Person doesn't telephone you.  Your inner Wise Guy reminds you that you just spoke to them a few hours ago. You blush privately, feeling sheepish, but still loving how warm all the embarrassment feels inside your body. 

You know you're smitten when, pretending to be a grown up, you try to approach your monthly stack of bills and paperwork at your desk at home. You cling to your coffee mug with both hands for support, and for a goodly while, and, finally, you manage to clear your throat and sit up a little straighter.  Breathing deeply, you drop the first paper ceremoniously into a file, suddenly retrieving it. You realize that you have forgotten whether you are supposed to pay that bill, file it, or dispute it.  Your inner Wise Guy reminds you that you paid it twice, because you were smitten last month also. You swoon at your own idiocy, unable to recover from the latest lapse into reverie.

You know you're smitten when you wake up every single morning thinking about The Person.  Feeling adolescent at midlife, you vow to begin your day more maturely. Next morning, when They fail to appear before you in a vision at dawn, you feel betrayed, unworthy, un-ready to face the day without them.  Your inner Wise Guy reminds you that it was your idea to start your day without The Person in mind -- that you purposely and forcibly drove them off the front and center of your mental stage. You well up with tears at the truth of that revelation, begging The Person interiorly to forgive you, to come back, to never leave you again.

You know you're smitten when you forgive your worst nemesis at work.  At the meeting, when you usually challenge his boxers off, you say, "You know, that's a great point, Don -- I'll sign off on it.  BTW, I would love to attend your daughter's ballet recital."  Your colleagues explode with laughter, thinking you must be joking -- at the very least in "Christmas/holiday" mode.  

You know you're smitten when you converse aloud to The Person in your car, pretending that They are in the passenger's seat of your vehicle (placing your handbag in the back, to make room for them next to you).  It gets so bad that this morning you find yourself getting into the passenger seat yourself.  It becomes apparent after a few minutes of the car not moving a single millimeter that you had dreamily assumed that they would be driving today.

You know you're smitten when you write a blog post on the State of Your Heart-- a self mocking cry for help or commiseration. Your fellow blog mates hopefully sense that you're very sorry that you can't seem to write much politically these days -- your head seems to have turned to marshmallow.

Bowing your head, you hope that they will please kindly forgive you when they become aware -- when they come to realize -- at last, when they fully know . . . that you are smitten.   

It  can be a spiritual time of year for some of us, fellow blogmates -- for me the birth of Jesus. It can also be a time of union and reunion, getting home (flying standby), going home (hitchhiking the PA turnpike)-- being at home (cooking up a storm, wining and dining the inlaws, the inmates and the in-towners and, yes, our itinerant grandmothers and eternal kids).

 Then also, it can be a sensual and sexy season for loving our intimates -- for me, a special person -- and for you, whoever it may be, remember, friends, love unexpressed dies, so love them.

Let them know, don't hold back. Phone them, flower them, hug and kiss them til the cows come home, apologize, propose, set the date, make it right, hold them tight.  You don't want to be lonely ... tonight. 

Love, Tish xo

Bansky

Big Lies that You Must Believe

Michael Collins
Washington, D.C.

Because if you don't, the whole scam may fall apart.

In the first two parts of this ongoing series on The Money Party, we discussed the fact that there is only one political party in the United States, The Money Party. It has two wings, Republican and Democratic. That party represents excessive concentrations of wealth in the hands of corporations, other organizations, and individuals. They put up the money and get what they pay for every time.

They make sure that the election system is rigged to rely on money like a junkie relies on heroin. The system takes care of them. They don't have to obey the same rules that we do. Why? Because they're above the law.

The Money Party owns the mainstream media entirely. NBC is really General Electric, ABC is Disney, CBS was Viacom but now it's just the name for a mega-corporation, and Fox is News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch financial empire. That's why it's called the corporate media. They're publicity shops, "corporate communications divisions," owned and controlled by Money Party members.

Their job is to emulate George Orwell's "1984" by generating meaningless concepts that bind us to false choices.

It's a series of interconnected lies. Let's look at some of the key lies that we must believe to keep them in power.

Big lie 1: "We're the world's leading democracy." Not since Bush-Cheney took over. We're dropping fast. Maybe it has something to do with the Patriot Act and all that illegal wire tapping of U.S. citizens? Maybe it has something to do with a Congress that does nothing to stop an out of control president. Ratings on democracy show us behind 14 other countries.

Big lie 2: "Just let the markets handle it. The free enterprise system will work it out." This is supposed to appeal to our love of capitalism. Well, we don't have capitalism in the United States.

We have socialism for the rich and survival of the fittest for the rest of us.

When you hear about the wisdom of "the markets," you know that The Money Party is attacking some new law or regulation that might give us an equal footing and create real competition. The party can't stand free enterprise because it won't play any game that it might lose. Count on it. NAFTA - just let the markets handle it. Health care – it's the market at your service. Pollution – you guessed correctly, it's a "market thing. "We wouldn't understand." Dumping mercury in the Great Lakes, it all makes sense to the party.

Big lie 3: "There are two sides to every issue." Does that have anything to do with two parties? Where in the world did this come from? Who knows? But the corporate media rides this one into the ground.

Take climate change for example. Two sides, really? Well just about every respectable scientist in the world, at least those who get published in real science journals, says climate change is real, it's man made, and it's dangerous. The explanations are varied (many sided) but there's only one side of the larger issue if you want your children to survive. Climate change is a very real, scary deal. We're all threatened. But a correction might hurt their short term profits. As a result, the dangerous lies persist brought to you by The Money Party "communications divisions."

Big lie 4: "The federal government just screws everything up." Oh, like going to the moon, developing the internet, and providing health insurance (Medicare) for many times less overhead than private health insurance companies. The Money Party hates the government with a passion when it serves the general public. But when the federal government fixes competition so that only big money wins, when it ignores problems that might require some sacrifice, and when it prolongs a war for profits, the federal government is their best friend.

It's not a conspiracy. It's just what they do, what they've always done…further their own interests at our expense. There used to be some restraint to maintain appearances but the Money Party is now on steroids.

When you see some corporate news reader cock his or her head to deliver a "gem of wisdom," count on it to be a big fat lie, one that's essential to justify the theft of our well being for the interests of a very few, their bosses. They don't care because they don't have to. We're the ultimate donors to The Money Party through our hard work, time, and taxes.

The Money Party thinks that they own the country, they know that they own most of the politicians, and they're 100% sure that they know what we need to believe. These are just a few of the big lies that we hear all the time from the usual suspects. It's time to wake up, call their bluff, and take the country back.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

George Orwell

ENDS

Previously:
The Money Party – The Essence of Our Political Troubles
The Money Party (2) – Why We Get Such Lousy Leaders and How to Get Rid of Them

Permission to reproduce in whole or part with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

Here's a tiny slice of my life for you, fellow blogmates, with thankful wishes for all of your kindness during my first year as a blogger. Wishing you were here with me in California ...

Especially charming in the stillness of early evening are the sounds of sweet strings traveling from the stereo and drifting out my screen door, filling the trees and the airs around me with song. And in the air song mixes with jasmine. I have become an especially mindless breed of aquatic creature now, after swimming two miles to make up for the mile I missed yesterday. And my pleasure is simply to sink --and to sink deeply-- into the hottest hot water I can bear without burning up or dying young. 

Incapable of speech or motion, except the sinking, the slow lowering down now of the entire body and being into the water: 103 sensuously perfect and glorious degrees of bubbling hot spa waters envelop me ...I am completely submerged, except my face and one hand.  Yes, one hand. The hand that supports a stem glass of an ice cold blended -- on and over rocks -- tropical admixture of my own design ... secret: cherry grenadine, fruit juices, freshly squeezed, and one tequila ice cube, a flotilla of frozen grapes and more secrets ...Taking a small sip and then another, I  feel a lightness and a sweetness flood over me. It's a primordial sweetness, older than words.