According to a piece in the Belfast Telegraph
— …This year has seen a succession of ferocious natural disasters, destroying cities and killing tens of thousands of people
–…Across the planet, the violence of the world’s wind and rain caused unprecedented economic damage, new figures reveal – adding to fears that the disastrous consequences of climate change are beginning to take effect
–….. the rate of natural catastrophes has taken a step change upwards in the 1990s, which is also the decade when rising global temperatures have become clearly apparent. The 10 hottest years in the global temperature record have all now occurred since 1990.

and
Stephen Tindale, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “No one can ignore the relentless increase in extreme weather events and so-called natural disasters, which in reality are no more natural than a plastic Christmas tree.
“The World Health Organisation tells us that already 150,000 people die each year as a result of climate change. Sadly that hasn’t been enough to make world leaders sit up and take notice, but maybe this $100bn bill will. And since it comes with a dollar sign attached, it’s the type of language even George Bush might understand.”
Yet, there are still conservatives-in-denial, who keep insisting that global warming is no big deal and we need to keep capitalist economic issues at the forefront.
And still Bush and his ilk do their patterned praying to keep god on their side, and people like the one during the last horrific tsunami say things like “I’m grateful that God was watching over her and she got to a hospital.” (You mean that the other 59,999 people were not worthy of God watching over them???)
I’ve become more convinced that, if there is any kind of “god” out there, it is irrelevant to us here on Earth. We make our own destiny, our own fate individually; and we affect the destiny and fate of our fellow humans by what we collectively do and don’t do.
Will our Mother Earth smack us even harder in 2005? It’s not nice to screw with Mother Nature.

I often leave a comment on a post that’s worth making into a post of it’s own. As a matter of fact, this post of mine has a bunch of pretty interesting comments accumulating, as we explore the value of the Net effort to get people to stay away from spending any money in retail stores on Inauguration Day as a way to send a message to the Bush administration that we have not changed our minds about how we feel about his policies and procedures.
It turns out there is are two special websites devoted to this effort, where you can sign a petition and leave a comment. WWW.NOTONEDAMNDIME.COM and WWW.NOTONEREDCENT.COM Please spread the word.
Over on my other post (linked to above), I received a comment from someone named H Boroni, who tried to list the reasons why the Not One DamnDime boycott effort won’t work. This is what I replied:
Well, H Boroni, I guess it all depends on where you’re coming from and what you’ve learned along the way.
1. The NODD Day is a protest statement, meant to call attention to the fact that there are still many, many of us who are enraged by all that the Bush adminstration stands for and has failed to accomplish. Of course not all Americans will join the effort. Not all Americans marched in Washington at various times regarding the Gulf War or the Vietnam war of a woman’s right to choose. But the point was made by those of us who did. You’re missing the point.
2. The protest is as much to remind people like you as it is to remind the Bushies that half of America does not agree with you all. It is as much to remind the press and the rest of the world. We know that Bush knows. You’re missing the point.
3. It’s not meant to hurt or help the economy. It’s meant to be a visible and newsworthy protest. You’re missing the point.
4. Notice that I edited out the statement found in other versions of this call to dissent about “supporting the troops.” My support of the troops begins and ends with “bring them home so they don’t get killed.” That’s a whole other issue and doesn’t belong, I don’t think, in the rationale for this dissenting act. That’s my personal point of view.
5. The troops in Iraq are not fighting to protect America. The Iraqis were not the ones who orchestrated and carried out 9/11. The people there hate us and our troops about as much as they hated Saddam. America is more in danger from the actions of Bush than from any actions of the Iraqis.
From my point of view, supporting the current neocon administration is being part of the problem. Urging major governmental overhaul, through protest, dissent, sending emails, writing letters, being intelligently and vocally opposed to the current administration, is being part of the solution, part of the impetus for change. You’re missing the point.
To summarize, living in a state of denial, remaining uninformed about the reasons why America is in the mess it’s in, is what is stupid. You’re missing all the points.
One of my commenters suggested doing an organized spending boycott once a month, on some kind of irregular basis so that the stores can’t prepare for the slowdown by telling their hourly workers not to come in.
However it all falls out, on the day the Bush gets inaugurated –Thursday, January 20, stay out of the stores.
OPEN YOUR MOUTH BY CLOSING YOUR WALLET.

My mother didn’t remember. Neither did my brother. But I’ve been thinking about it all day.
Twenty years ago today, my father died of pancreatic cancer. He died at home, with my mother and I sleeping in a bed next to him. I was the one who awoke, in the early hours of the day after Christmas, to the silence in the room, the absence of that rasping, labored breathing. Before I woke up my mother and brother, I went over and sat by the edge of my father’s death bed and watched his face, finally relaxed into what looked like a smile.
My father never asked me to take care of my mother after he was gone. I don’t think he wanted to put that burden on me. But as he lay dying, fighting the inevitable despite the pain, I told him not to worry. I would take care of her. And by the next morning, he had finally let go.
I’ve told this story before, on my old weblog. I’m remembering it today, again.
And so now I take care of my mother. And I’m thinking that I do it more for him than for any other reason. This is a photo of him and my mother less than 6 months before he died.

Graveside Testament
On the day that they folded him
barefoot and grim
into that final silence,
there was no space left to tuck a cry.
We fed him to winter,
to the honest needs of roots.
“There were signs,” she says
words muffled by the upturned collar
of the coat I have outgrown
and she has shrunken to fit.
Above her breath, four crows
defy the lacework
of a snowy sycamore.
“One day I saw three small doves
flying above his car.
And then there were the crows.”
A nervous rustle. A shift of feathers.
“They gathered in the trees behind our house
on the day he came home the first time.
Thousands, like charred leaves.
like black snow.
He had gone alone to the back porch
to face the sun.
Suddenly, he was in the doorway,
his face dark with anger.
He said the noise was killing him.”
From below the snow, a frozen sigh.
And so I bury a sprouting tuber
near the stone of my father’s grave
so that hairs of the tuber
will twine with his hair,
beckon the rain
and dance with the worm;
so that the tuber eyes
will watch in his place
for the message of the great crows
who keep vigil in all seasons
from the crotch of a crooked bough.
And I will lie on my father’s grave
and listen.
© Elaine Frankonis 1990

Over on Blog Sisters (where I can feel comfortable posting and commenting now because I resigned from the job of Registrar that I was doing badly and feeling guilty about), Betsy Devine calls attention to a post on Seth Godin’s blog asking what are the thousand things that every third grader should start learning and know before she graduates high school. The discussion is carried on over at Joi Ito’s blog as well.
Before I retired from the NY State Education Department, I worked as part of groups that developed a variety of the state’s “Learning Standards” (pdf document) — what kids should learn, know, and be able to do in various subject areas by the time they graduate high school. [Seth, these kinds of standards exist in just about every state education department. You should find out what your state has as theirs.]
In all of that jargon, no where does it say that the funamental thing that kids should learn is to love to learn, to find it interesting and fun and exciting to discover and track down facts they didn’t know before. Kids who learn the pleasures of investigating, discussing, analyzing, theorizing, creating, and sharing can’t be stopped from learning. (b!X is a fine example of this; he had little use for the regimentation of the public school system, but learning to him was and is the same as breathing.) Kids who have never had the mentoring and encouragement and example necessary to develop a love of learning often refuse to learn despite the best efforts of teachers who keep their noses to the learning standards grindstone. Kids who are excited by learning naturally want to communcate what they learned and so they also are more interested in developing communication skills.
One of the things that always bothered me (as a teacher of junior high kids and later as a not-always-successful “change-agent” on the state level in education) is that kids never really are given the “big picture.” What they get in school are the bits and pieces of history, literature, technologies etc. — the specific skills they need to function — without enough of an understanding of how humanity got to the point we’re at today where those skills are important.
For example, with all of the computer technology we have today, why doesn’t some educational-tools company come up with animated maps of the world that show each of the various theories of where the early homo sapiens began to establish communities some 2.5 million years ago and how they migrated to other parts of the world. Something like this or this or this gives some of the facts, but to today’s visually sophisticated kids, it’s boring and doesn’t easily give a sense of the scope and interrelated movement of the planet and its people.
I can imagine animated maps of the land and water masses of the planet evolving through time and the theories about the location and migration of homo sapiens groups superimposed on those maps. You’d need an animated map for for each designated time period as it relates to each theory. And even — not that I subscribe to the benefit of doing this — there can even be an animated map reflecting the “Adam and Eve” biblical theory.
Being able to visualize the migration across the planet of the human species over all of those millennia would be a giant step in giving young children a true understanding of how we all have common roots.
It would help them understand how slowly but clearly nations and cultures began to branch away from the early human communities, to understand that we have more in common with each other as humans than we have differences.
These kinds of animated and layered maps could be created to show how climate influenced culture, economics, and national identity; how the borders of countries changed over time as a result of wars and oppression.
Kids today understand just what a small world it is. The Internet makes it all small and immediate. Kids need a place to get the big picture, a sense of their place in the geological, geographical, and historical saga of our planetary evolution.
The little picture provides immediate, close satisfaction. The big picture offers wonder and expanded horizons.
Now, does anyone know how I can go about copyrighting my idea for this kind of educational software CD so that I can sell it to an educational software developer??? Since I blogged the concept here on December 25, 2004, does it become my intellectual property??

I’ve been trying to think up something clever to post for Christmas, but Rob Brezsny, in his Free Will Astrology Newsletter — to which I subscribe because he’s so wonderfully far-out-there — put it perfectly. So why try to top this:
Fundamentalist Christians send me hate mail. Religious zealots have banned my last book. Along with meditation, yoga, and sex for fun, the powers-that-be at the Vatican has declared astrology to be dangerous to your spiritual health.
All of these people would no doubt be shocked if they learned that Jesus Christ is one of the Main High Dudes in my pantheon of gods. They seem to believe that people like me — goddess-worshiping tantric sufi Qabalist Buddhist pagans who hang around with zen trickster witches and espouse a socialist libertarian political philosophy — couldn’t possibly have an intimate relationship with the cosmic hero they claim to own. They must think they have commandeered the trademark to one of the sweetest avatars in history!
But I do have an intimate relationship with Jesus. How could I not? He was a champion of women’s rights, a threat to the established political order, and a radical spiritual activist who worked outside religious institutions. The dude owned nothing and was a passionate advocate for the poor and underprivileged. He was uncompromisingly opposed to violence and war. Besides that, he was a master of love and he devoted his life to serving the Divine Intelligence. I want to be like him when I grow up!
“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle,” he allegedly said, “than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” That’s a pretty clear statement of his position towards plutocratic accumulators of property and wealth.
“Love your enemies,” he said, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” How any militarist promoting global arms sales and pre-emptive war could claim an affinity with Jesus is incomprehensible.
Happy Birthday, Jesus!
On the other hand, I also like this dissident visual Christmas statement from one of the cards I got.

Whatever you inclinations are this winter holiday season, I hope that you will join me in wishes for an America and a Planet Earth that both the historical and the mythical Jesus would think was worth living in.

That’s in their revenue accounts, of course.
This suggestion is being passed around via email, and it sure sounds good to me:
How about if we make Inauguration Day, Thursday, January 20th, 2005 “Not One Damn Dime Day” in America.
On “Not One Damn Dime Day” those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending.
During “Not One Damn Dime Day” let’s not spend money. Not one damn dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse purchases. Not one damn dime for 24 hours. On “Not One Damn Dime Day,” boycott Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target…
Don’t go to the mall or the local convenience store. Don’t buy any fast food (or any groceries at all for that matter). For 24 hours, let’s do what we can to keep our money where our mouths are. If the slump in spending is big enough to notice, maybe we can get their attention.
“Not One Damn Dime Day” is to remind those in power that they work for the people of the United States of America, not for the international corporations and K Street lobbyists and richer-than-god neocons who represent the corporations that funnel cash into corrupting our American political system.
There’s no rally to attend. No marching to do. No left or right wing agenda to rant about. On “Not One Damn Dime Day” you take action by doing nothing.
You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed.
For 24 hours, nothing gets spent, not one damn dime, to remind our religious leaders and our politicians of their moral responsibility to end the war in Iraq and give America back to the people.
NOT ONE DAMN DIME on Inaguration Day. Pass the word.

I’m not trying to be coy, but I wish that I had the stamina to sit here and write about all of the things I think I’m going to write about as I haul myself out of bed every morning — not the least of which is some sort of personally perverse take on a popular Christmas count-down melody, that, for me, would include “one partial denture, two hearing aids, trifocals glasses….” You get the picture.
I picked up my hearing aids today. It’s not that I can’t hear; it’s rather that I don’t hear well enough to catch what people are saying (especially if they’re whispering) in certain circumstances. I have the little digital buggers in right now. They’re so tiny that you can’t really notice them in my ears. Of the parts that go down into my ear canals, the right one is red and the left is blue. Heh.
(Now if I could only get my almost 89-year-old mother to get a pair, I could be heard as well as hear.)
Speaking of the Red Right, I wonder if all those who voted for Bush are listening to this proof of yet another of Dumbya’s immoral, sinful, and unpartriotic acts (taken from the ACLU web site):
…The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.” The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from “On Scene Commander–Baghdad” to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized…
Speaking of those who voted for Bush, as I was driving out to visit my grandson a week or so ago, I caught part of an essay on the public radio station (WAMC) delivered by Libby Post, who is a gay activist in my local region. I’ve known about her for years because we have a mutual colleague/friend. I love her essay on bumper stickers, which is posted here if you’re inclined to read the whole thing. It begins with:
I pulled up behind a car at a toll plaza the other night. As a fan of bumper stickers myself, I always read what’s ahead of me.
A smile crossed my face as I saw the familiar purple, “The Goddess is Alive and Magick (spelled M A G I C K) is Afoot” bumper sticker. For a moment, I harkened back to my early feminist years in Albany, when a group of women, who called themselves Crones, recognized the Goddess as their spiritual leader and would revel around a raging fire, some with shirts off, while a full moon shone in the black sky above.
My misty memories came to a screeching halt as I scanned another bumper sticker — Bush/Cheney 2004. It was like someone scraped a needle across the mental recording in my brain-you know that sound.
It’s obvious why the beginning of Post’s little story caught my attention. Crones aren’t a lesbian invention, you know.
For the rest of her essay, Post speculates on how it might come to pass that someone might have two such philosophically opposed bumper stickers on the same car.
I have never put bumper stickers on any of my cars, but maybe I need to rethink attitude about that:
Our cars are a way for us to make statements about who we are-not only the models we choose but the bumper stickers we use to adorn our four-wheeled friends. A close compatriot could never really understand why anyone would deface a car’s design with a bumper sticker. She’s come around. I explain it this way . . . there’s nothing better than looking in my rear-view mirror and watching someone read my bumper stickers and digest my politics. At the very least, it’s a literacy lesson, at the most, it’s an opportunity change someone’s mind.
And, god and goddess know, there are plenty of minds that need to be changed.
It’s helpful to know where certain minds stand on certain issues — like Social Security, for example. (I just got my Medicare card in the mail!)
A new weblog has been created to compile data on how members of Congress stand on Bush’s hope to privatize Social Security. The Save Social Security weblog is looking for input from anyone who has information that needs to be added to their database.
Well, if I had “world enough” I would give it to b!X so that he wouldn’t have to give up his community-empowering weblog. Of course, if the people of Portland can’t figure out a way to put their money where their mouths are……
And, if I had time enough, I’d blog some long and many-linked piece that would start with hearing aids and end with genetic engineering, since I heard something on the radio about a couple, who already have two girls, finding a doctor who will ensure that their next child is a boy.
And then, in contrast to that story of ultimate consumerism, is the story on Dateline the other night about the American surgeon who loves poetry.
As a specialist in corrective surgery for children with neuro-muscular disorders, Dr. Roy Nuzzo had seen many images of children who find it difficult to walk, to stand, even to sit up comfortably. He’s often asked to view tapes and make recommendations on difficult cases. But receiving this tape, he says, was a miracle.
One tape had been sent to his New Jersey practice from a small mountain village in Mexico of three children with cerebral palsy. Dr. Nuzzo evaluatedthem, prescribing small measures to improve mobility — until he saw the last child on the tape. Dr. Nuzzo believed that major surgery was required to straighten that child’s body and save his life. So he sent off a request for X-rays. A few weeks later, a package arrived from Mexico. The X-rays inside confirmed his diagnosis of a life-threatening deformity, but the envelope contained something life-affirming as well — books of poetry, written in both Spanish and English.
The poems, one of which I’ve posted below, were written by Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez…the son of an American father and a Mexican mother. In a native dialect, “Ekiwah” means “warrior.” He’s been battling cerebral palsy ever since he was born in 1987, 10 weeks early, weighing less than two pounds.
POETRY II
Why do poets die of hunger
more than once a day?
I watch your naked body
as I watch the flames;
everything you were before
has been stripped away.
Why do poets walk the weary road
and lie drunk in a dark corner on the floor?
You are silence, my lady;
from your womb words are born.
Restless lovers play among the stars;
they seek you,
know every line of your face unknown.
They want to take refuge
in the silent folds of your heart;
yet their lips ache to draw words
as you paint the skies.
And to all, a good night.

I just got back from visiting my grandson and discovered that
1. b!X was interviewed by the Blog Herald — “Death in the Blogosphere: Christopher Frankonis of the Portland Communique,” which says
…..this is a blog with many friends. It has been listed by the local press in the Willamette Week Give Guide as worthy of donation, and has drawn attention from diverse sources including New Media Musings and the UK based dot Journalism.
The Blog Herald asked Christopher Frankonis a few questions in relation to the imminent death of the Portland Communique and whether there may be a last minute reprieve, with a series of answers that demonstrate one man’s commitment to blogging and the art of online journalism……
2. And, on top of that, tomorrow, the “Oregon Territory” program on Oregon’s public radio station will air a conversation about blogging that features b!X and two other Oregon bloggers. You can hear the discussion via Streaming Audio.
B!X hasn’t given up trying to find a funder for the Portland Communique. Maybe these exposures will help.

December 21 is the Winter Solstice — the shortest day and the longest night of the year. According to this resource, the Gammadion, composed of four Greek “gammas” — probably represented the solstices and equinoxes, or the four directions, four elements, and four divine guardians of the world.

You might notice that this symbol looks like a swastika. Actually, there are dozens of kinds of swastikas because the form of the symbol is an ancient symbol that has been used for over 3,000 years. (That even predates the ancient Egyptian symbol, the Ankh!) Artifacts such as pottery and coins from ancient Troy show that the swastika was a commonly used symbol as far back as 1000 BCE. (from here)
Some swastikas face clockwise and some counterclockwise.
A swastika with arms pointing clockwise was generally regarded as a solar emblem. A counterclockwise one represented the moon, night, and the feminine principle. (from Barbara Walker’s book
Here, for example, is a Native American Sunbird Swastika.

Also, from Barbara Walker’s book,
Named from the Sanskrit “so be it,” or “amen,” the swastika has been a reigious emblem of worldwie occurrence since at least 10,000 B.C. It appeared on the oldest coinage in India, on images of Buddha in Japan, and on Greek and Roman figures of the Great Goddess. On artifacts dating from the thirteenth century B.C. onward, the swastika has been found in Asia Minor, Greece, China, Persia, Libya, Scandinavia, Britain, and Iceland. It was still used as a magic sign in Europe up to the beginning of the twentieth century.
And then what happened to the swastika became part of the worst of human history.
The pentagram/pentacle has also been maligned by history.
The word pentagram comes from the Greek: “Pente means 5 (as in Pentagon). Gamma means a letter. Thus, pentagram refers to a five pointed star, or “any figure of five lines.” It is most often used to refer to a symmetrical, five pointed star, with equal sides, drawn either with a single line or with two closely spaced parallel lines. Their overall shape is like the decoration on the top of many Christmas trees, and the stars on the American flag.
— An upright pentagram is a 5 pointed star with one point aligned upwards.
— An inverted pentagram is a 5 pointed star with one point aligned downwards.
— An upright pentacle is generally defined as an upright pentagram surrounded by a circle, as is shown in the following icon. It often takes the form of a pentagram printed on (or cut into) a flat disk.

— The five points of the pentagram have been interpreted as representing the five wounds of Christ (2 wrist, 2 ankle and 1 side).
— The Roman Emperor Constantine used the pentagram in his seal and amulet.
— It has been referred to as the Star of Bethlehem
— It was used to symbolize the star which allegedly led three Zoroastrian astrologers to the baby Jesus; it was called the Three Kings’ star.
— The English warrior Sir Gawain, a nephew of King Arthur, adopted the pentagram as his personal symbol and placed it on his shield. It appeared in gold on a red background. The five points symbolized “the five knightly virtues – generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry and piety.”
— Tarot cards originally had a suit of coins or discs. These were changed in the 19th century to pentacles when the Tarot became associated with the Kabbalah. They eventually became the suit of diamonds in modern playing cards.
— It has been widely used by past Christians as a protective amulet.
— During the burning times when the Christian church burned alive hundreds of thousands of innocent people, the meaning of the pentagram changed. It began to symbolize a goat’s head or the devil in the form of Baphomet. “The folk-symbol of security – for the first time in history – was equated with evil and was called the Witch’s Foot.
It’s interesting how, over time, people forget the origins of various symbols and celebrations. Different peoples and cultures and groups often reconstruct these things to suit their own purposes.
Which brings me back to the Winter Solstice.
In pre-historic times, winter was a very difficult time for Aboriginal people in the northern latitudes. The growing season had ended and the tribe had to live off of stored food and whatever animals they could catch. The people would be troubled as the life-giving sun sank lower in the sky each noon. They feared that it would eventually disappear and leave them in permanent darkness and extreme cold. After the winter solstice, they would have reason to celebrate as they saw the sun rising and strengthening once more. Although many months of cold weather remained before spring, they took heart that the return of the warm season was inevitable. The concept of birth and or death/rebirth became associated with the winter solstice. The Aboriginal people had no elaborate instruments to detect the solstice. But they were able to notice a slight elevation of the sun’s path within a few days after the solstice — perhaps by DEC-25. Celebrations were often timed for about the 25th.
And so we have the celebration of Christmas on that date, even though that’s not the actual date of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
I can’t help wondering if today’s intolerances among peoples would be lessened if, in school, kids were made aware of the common origins of so many of our symbols and celebrations that now divide us.