Conservative columnist Charley Reese posts a piece on how important it is to support John Kerry and unseat George Bush. Vote for a Man, Not a Puppet, he says:
Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush’s re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war
I’m taking a break from literally trying to make order out of chaos and checking out a web site recommended by the friend with whom I went on vacation. She’s interested in how psychic stuff works and so also follows brain research.
The Dana Foundation’s web site on brain, immunology, and arts education (interesting combination, no?) could keep me linking around it for days on end, since it covers three of the subjects in which I’m most intersted.
It’s not bad enough that our personal and private space contnues to be invaded and assaulted by everyone from our government to spammers. The site’s “Brain in the News” section includes this (year-old-but-still-disturbing) piece.
Some Fear Loss of Privacy as Science Pries into Brain. By Carey Goldberg, Boston Globe, May 1, 2003, p. A1
Brain imaging techniques, now able to observe which brain areas may be active when lying, experiencing unconscious racism, or reacting to a consumer product, are raising new concerns about “brain privacy,” part of the rapidly expanding field of neuroethics Ethicists are concerned that current privacy laws may not prevent this kind of information from being requested – or even misused – by courts, government, the military, employers, or insurers – who may draw conclusions, about potential violence or mental illness. Some scientists say that brain-based lie detector tests may also not be far off. While imaging equipment is currently too expensive to be used by nonscientists, and existing human experiementation rules protect subjects from coercion, many scientists hope that new consumer laws, or ethical guidelines for doctors, can be enacted.
Neuroethics. Part of Bioethics. So, there’s a President’s Council on Bioethics. Heh. How about a President’s Advisory Council on Presidential Ethics. Period.
The antibiotic I’m taking makes me nauseous and screws up my stomach. All I want to do is avoid taking care of any kind of business.
How do they do it, those on chemo, those dealing with knowing that they’re going to be feeling a lot worse than I do for the unforeseeable future?
b!X reports on Portland’s Mayor Katz, who is continuing to do her job even while battling some rare form of cancer.
I’m not sure I could do it. I can’t even get up the energy to put my laundry away.
One more day of the antibiotic. In the meanwhile, it’s lots of acidophilus and Tusin cough medicine. Will this coughing never end???
I’m sitting on a bench in the shade with my mother. I can’t sit in the sun because I’m taking Levaquin. This is the first time I’ve been outside since I got back, sick, from vacation. Hell, it’s the first time I’ve taken a shower and changed my clothes since I got back. Bronchitis is exhausting. All that yucky yellow stuff exploding out of your bronchi. Cough. Gag. Spit. Cough. Gag.
I sit far across the bench from my mother and don’t touch anything she’s going to touch. The last thing I need is for her to catch it. I’m crocheting as I’m sitting — a brightly striped afghan for my grandson, at his mother’s request. It should have holes, she says, because he likes to wind his fingers through the holes. I’m making it soft and snuggly –Alexander’s Grammy’s Magic Gypsy Blanket — good to sooth whatever might ail a typically testy toddler. The name was my brainstorm as I lay in bed most of the last week. Coughing. I started writing a story to go along with the afghan. A story about Alexander and his Grammy and a magic gypsy blanket.
My mother’s jabbering away about stuff from the 30s and 40s I’ve heard before. Many times before. I smile, nod, keep crocheting. I can’t even really hear what she’s saying. My ears are stopped up, her voice is weak, and I’m not even sitting that close to her. I make myself listen. Pick up a word or two so that I can respond as though I’m really listening. I think she eventually figures it out.
A friend of mine has tickets to Moore’s F9-11 for tomorrow night and asked if I wanted to go along. Cough. Cough. Guess not.
During our York Beach Solstice gathering, I drew the blank Rune (which didn’t exist in the original system but has been added by modern players), the symbol for “The Unknowable.” I sure didn’t know I was going to get this sick, including raging sore throat and swollen shut sinuses (somewhat better now — which is why I’m sitting outside and trying to breathe in some fresh air).
So, my future is a blank stone, for me to carve, hurl, or bury.
We shall see.
Cough.
And, finally, this Nid’s for you and your crew, my hopefully soon-to-be departing president.
You just can’t make this stuff up. You have to hear it to believe it. This may be the first class war in history where the victims will die laughing.
From a speech by Bill Moyers to the “Inequality Matters Forum” at NYU. Read it and weep.
As the moment of the Solstice approached the beach at York, Maine, the sea turned an irridescent aqua and the sky poured up from it into a haze of that “sky-blue-pink” that no one believes is a real color — but it is. Real. And then the sun slipped behind the houses of the beach town, the sea vista slid into silver and then cerulean, and the stretch of sky above the dimly lit shoreline hung out a perfect slice of moon.
I had forgotton to bring my camera, what with having to remember all that paraphernalia. You know, Tibetan bell, rune stones, words — all that stuff of art and poetry and human hope. But more on that later.
For now, suffice it to say that I’m back from my five days at Long Sands, York Beach, with bronchitis and a low-grade strep infection that’s raging high-grade in my throat. Ya’ can’t win ’em all.
Aside from a one-day trip north to Freeport to the L.L. Bean and The Children’s Place outlets, we spent most of the week reading and walking on the beach. This was usually my view when I was ensconced at the cottage (that’s my bare toe-polished foot sticking out in the middle of the picture):
As usual, I didn’t bring enough books to read, so I picked up a spur-of-the-moment paperback when we stopped at Hannaford. I Love You Like a Tomato — in the voice of a young female Italian immigrant, who keeps trying to make her grandmother’s Old World magic work in her troublesome new world. You don’t have to be Italian to love Chi Chi Maggiordino who, tries, as she says to “put to GOOD use the power of the Evil Eye.”
When I wasn’t reading, I was walking on the beach — usually without my camera. Except for the one really rainy day, when we went poking around the snail-covered rocks at low tide.
As it turned out, we spent the nicest day shopping. And eating lobster. Twice. And looking for toy rockets for my grandson.
There were supposed to be three of us, but it wound up there there were only two. When it came to our plans for the Solstice, however, we included the third in absentia. Three. You have to have three.
Well, I haven’t gone yet, but I will be in another day. And I’m not going fishing, but I am going to hang out on a beach where others do. It’s time for my annual Summer Solstice trip. I’ll be back in a week. I’m not looking forward to all of the email that will be accumulating. But I am looking forward to Boggling instead of blogging and just being somewhere else, somewhere where there’s sea and sand and no one to look after and time to just lie around and read. This time it’s one by Louise Erdrich and a sassy sci-fi saga.
Ah. Looking forward to Maine lobster, Merlot, and magic. Packing up my bell, book, and candle. It is the Solstice on Sunday, after all. And there will be three of us to make it happen.
I guess on one level we can say we’ve come a long way since 1960 when John F. Kennedy had to foreswear that he’d follow the instructions of the Pope in his decisions of governance. Today we have a Protestant born-again who tries to enlist the Pope to intervene in an American election.
The above is from today’s Talking Points Memo that highlights the dark and dirty efforts of our president — not only to further erode our rights as American citizens, but, even more nefarious — to enlist the aid of the Catholic Church to coerce (some) citizen support for that effort.
Well, there’s always Michael Moore, still fighting the good fight. Believing Michael Moore doesn’t require a leap of faith; facts are facts. Unfortunately, I would imagine that many of the people of faith — especially those who have taken the leap onto Bush’s rights-eroding bandwagon — won’t go to see the movie and don’t read Talking Points Memo.
Taking my mother down to my brother’s today for a mini-family reunion with some of the few who are left living south of him.
Meanwhile, here’s something fun to do: the Kali Breath.
1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Inhale, and as you exhale in a loud
black is white is black
we all want our babies back
what’s a little scat
instead of rat
poison
just watch chicken
little as the sky
fades to black
bones and skulls,
bloody tongue
Bronx Cheering
more as more or less
negative capability
*link