Butterball/Jenna On Condoms/Deists

(P1) Poetical

Outsourced

Welcome to the Butterball Turkey Hot Line
What is your name please?
Thank you Edward. How may I help you?
Oh that is a good question.
I will tell you what to do with your turkey before you roast it
First, remove the original plastic wrapper
from the thawed or fresh turkey.
Do you understand?
Good. Now remove the neck and geeblets,
then drain the juices and blot the turkey dry
with paper towels. You may now stuff the turkey
then return it’s legs to the tucked position,
insert an oven-safe meat thermometer into the thigh,
brush with oil to prevent the skin drying
and follow roasting directions that come
with every Butterball turkey.
Have I helped you, Edward?
Good and Happy Thanksgiving
from all of us here at Butterball Turkeys in
Bangalore—I mean Illinoize! Goodbye.

- Ed Coletti © 2007 -

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(P2) Political

Jenna Surprises

I couldn't have been more surprised and gratified to read a daughter of George Bush respond intelligently and apparently counter to her father on the issue of condoms. Brava! Now talk to your daddy. This interview question appeared in Time Magazine.

Q: How do you feel about providing young people with condoms to protect against HIV?

A: There is no doubt Ana (the Latin American subject of Jenna's recent book) and kids like her need to use condoms to keep themselves safe and to stop the spread of HIV. It's a personal choice, and the most important thing is that kids become aware of their choices and make the proper decisions.

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(P3) Philosophical

Our Founders Were Not Christians, Senator

Philosopher William Edelen (right) says, "When Sen. John Mc Cain said recently to an audience the 'America was founded as a Christian nation,' he showed that he is either historically and religiously ignorant and illiterate...or worse, that he knows better and would lie to get the bible belt voes which would reveal a total lack of integrity, honesty and character..." I'll give you Edelen's discussion of Garry Wills book "Heart and Head" on the subject of our founding fathers. After you read these blurbs, I suspect you may want to read Edelen's full article.

"Finally and at last, a Pulitzer prize historian and scholar, Garry Wills, has written a book that is getting rave reviews and highlights the facts that America was not founded by Christians and was not founded as a Christian nation. This is exactly what I have been writing and saying in newspaper columns and lectures for the past 30 years. I am thrilled that a historian and scholar of his stature is putting the facts out there for the truth to be known. The title of the book is "HEART AND HEAD"....

"The book brings out the fact that at the time of the founding very few Americans professed any religious preference. The book strongly makes the point, as I have for 30 years, that the founders were Deist who believed in providence known only thorough reason and experience. In Deism there is no personal God "out there" as a divine window peeker or cosmic bellhop. In Deism the bible is only literature and bad literature at that. Thomas Jefferson called the bible a "dunghill". In Deism Jesus is nothing more that a nomadic teacher. As President John Adams put it: "The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus has made a convenient cover for absurdity" Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli which states that...quote: "The United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." ...

"Wills notes this about the historical and religious illiteracy pouring out of todays White House..."The right wing of America likes to think that the United States government was at its inception highly religious and Christian and also highly biblical. This was not true of that or any other later government...until 2000.

"...When Sen. John McCain said recently to an audience that "America was founded as a Christian nation." He showed that he is either historically and religiously ignorant and illiterate..or worse, that he knows better and would lie to get the bible belt votes which would reveal a total lack of integrity, honesty and character. Senator McCain is not alone in this historical ignorance as other candidates also pander to the religious and political right with equally absurd and idiotic statements about the founding of America.


(Here's the link to the full article.)


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"Howl"/Select Your Candidate/Need for Poetry/

(P1) Philosophical

Cadets Read "Howl"

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(P2) Political

Try This!

A friend sent me the following link whereby you can input your political beliefs and get a clear photo presentation of who should be your candidate. I highly recommend this. It takes seconds. Check it out! Please then comment.

press here for Select a Candidate 2008


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(P3) Poetical

The Need

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

-William Carlos Williams

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Bye Bye Polar Bears/Cool Reading List/Poetry

(P1) Political

LOSS OF POLAR BEARS BY 2050

The U.S. Geological Survey reported in September that two-thirds of the world's polar bears could vanish by 2050 if melting sea ice predictions prove accurate. Worse, sea ice in the Arctic might be disappearing faster than the computer models due to global warming, making the polar bear more imperiled.

It is clear global warming threatens polar bears with extinction and they need to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Click here to add your voice in support of protecting polar bears and their critical habitat.

Click Here for the NY Times story on the report.

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David Beckman &

Ed Coletti

Poems From the Edge

Wednesday October 24, 2007

7:30 PM

Sonoma Coffee Company

521 4th Street

Santa Rosa

A Sonoma Word – Crossing Borders Event

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(P2) Philosophical

A Very Cool Book List

As many of you know, Bill Edelen is a very wise older friend of mine. Check out this list of his favorite books.

Due to many requests here are a few of my "Favorite Books"...Bill Edelen:

• TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE by John Steinbeck
• A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION by Diane K. Osbon
• WHEREVER YOU GO...THERE YOU ARE by Jon Kabat-Zinn
• FEATHER FALL by Laurens van der Post
• LETTERS FROM THE EARTH Mark Twain
• THE TRUE BELIEVER by Eric Hoffer
• THE SPIRITUAL LEGACY OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN Joseph Epes Brown
• THE IMMENSE JOURNEY by Loren Eiseley "FABULOUS BOOK"
• SO HUMAN AN ANIMAL by Rene Dubos "A Pulitzer prize winner"

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(P3) Poetical

An Encounter At Dusk

While looking out the library window
At the dusk of winter,
The shelves suddenly open and a boy enters
Carrying a basket of apples and roses.
And the darkness thickens, thoughts tangle.
Today - he says -
A very strange thing happened to me:
I was walking down the orchard path and found myself
In a gloomy room with shelves,
Filled with rectangular slabs.
A sad man stood there looking out the window
At the dusk of winter.

***

Kornelijus Platelis
Vilnius, Lithuania
translated by Jonas Zdanys
in Lilliput Review #155

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Being Pelosi/Juggling/Language

(P1) Political

This guy, Darin Murphy, captures my view precisely
when he recounts Nancy Pelosi's pathetically revealing
performance on "The View."I feel betrayed by Pelosi
and her Democratic congress we elected to end the carnage.
This week, it further appears they can't even get medical
care for little kids!


Weak Has a Face, And It's Pelosi's

Posted October 3, 2007 01:59 PM (EST) - Huffington Post

---

If there was any doubt before, which there wasn't, it's gone now. Watching Nancy Pelosi on The View yesterday morning provided the final proof that the backbone of the House is only as strong as its speaker. Her body language said it all. There she sat in the center of the table, sandwiched between Elizabeth Hasselbeck and the "Is the world flat? I don't know" lady, looking anxious and devoid of stately confidence. She could barely look in the eyes of America's Favorite True Believer on her left, who immediately smelled fear and pounced on her prey. "If the violence in Iraq had gone up," she started in (I'm paraphrasing), "you would be insisting that the surge was a failure. Now that the reports say it's gone down drastically, aren't you willing to admit that the surge is a success?" So what does Pelosi do? Does she make like Bill Clinton versus Chris Wallace, lean into her face and retort "young lady, don't try that little conservative hit job on me. You obviously don't know fudged numbers when you see them"? No. Instead she looks somewhere in Hasselbeck's general direction and squeaks meekly, "But that's still a lot of deaths." (I'm not paraphrasing). She then quickly changes the subject as she spends the rest of the interview leaning away from Hasselbeck and focusing on the three women on her right, wishing to God they had sat her down beside Whoopi.

But that wouldn't have been any more comforting. Whoopi was on her ass, too, about how she and her fellow Dems had failed to stop President Bush's war effort or at least elevate the level of discourse and control the debate on, uh, anything. Pelosi was a nervous wreck by then, desperately trying to tape together an impression of some sort of goal Congress had reached, and offered nothing that had actually made its way into law.

Watching those uncomfortable minutes tick by, I couldn't help thinking, "Man, if this lady can't hold her own at a table full of gossiping hens who care more about the future of Britney's babies then that of their country, no wonder impeachment is off the goddamn table!"

Barbara Walters mercifully ended the proceedings, tidily wrapping up the interview with something like "Well, Democrat or Republican, it's not important. What matters is that you're the first woman speaker of the House, and that means a lot!"

Um, no it doesn't, sorry. It doesn't mean dick when we're gonna spend a generation cleaning up after a disastrous eight-year siege of our country that no one in power has the guts to end. Madame Speaker is no different than her Senate counterpart. Reid and Pelosi are two distinguished minority leaders promoted to their level of incompetence by a frustrated electorate. Neither of them is yet able to energize their parties into accomplishing anything they were elected to do, hence their dismal poll numbers and an unfazed president who will smirk and coast his way to blissful retirement.

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(P2) Poetical

Juggling

A juggler seeking rest
must never begin
juggling.

A juggler juggling
rests juggling
never seeking.

© Ed Coletti 2007

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(P3) Philosophical

"Everything about our private and collective systems of meaning is bound up with language—and we don't have a clue about its origins. This may mean ultimately that we don't have a clue about ourselves either."-Sven Birkerts in The Electric Life

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Inukshuk/Murtha/Song

(P1) Philosophical

What is true about the Inukshuk is true about people.

Inukshuks in themselves are the product of cooperation. The hands and efforts of an entire group were required to build these massive stone sculptures. They are the result of a consensus of purpose, of focused action by a group united in its goal and labor. The inukshuk reminds us that as good as our individual efforts may be, together we can do even greater things.

Each individual stone in an inukshuk supports, and is supported by, the one above and the one below it. No one piece is any more or less important than another. Its strength lies in its unity. Its significance comes from its meaning as a whole.

Each individual, by themselves, is significant. As part of a team each of us supports, and is supported by, another. We are united by our common goals, and together we are part of a greater whole.

The stones which make up the Inukshuk are secured through balance. They are chosen for how well they fit together. The removal of even one stone would destroy the integrity of the whole. So, too, with a team. Each individual in a team is necessary for the realization of the team's purpose. The removal of even one person will result in the weakening of the structure. What holds the team together is the balance - the complementary nature of the individual skills.

The Inukshuk are a symbol of the human spirit. They recognize our ability to succeed with others, where alone we would fail. Remind us of our need to belong to something greater than ourselves. Prompt us to reconnect with our individual responsibility to invest our efforts today so we may all have a better tomorrow. Ask us to heed the knowledge of our inner knowingness, hear the voice of our intuition and move to the harmonious music in our heart and spirit. Inukshuk convey the importance of personal contribution and reinforce our ability to commit to common goals. They implore us to share the fruits of our learning, our wisdom with one another.

The Inukshuk is a reminder for all of us that our efforts towards the common good of our earth community are appreciated. It is an enduring symbol that invites us to speak with one another on a higher level, from our hearts and spirit, about what really matters in life.

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(P2) Political

Words Of Wisdom re. Iraq

In the end, what the president asks is for our military to be committed to an open-ended Iraqi civil war. Let us not forget that over 35,000 troops died in Vietnam after General Westmoreland stated, "Backed at home by resolve, confidence, patience, determination, and continued support, we will prevail in Vietnam."

Many have threatened that there will be chaos, a bloodbath, when the United States redeploys from Iraq, and this in fact may be the case. But it will not happen as a result of U.S actions, but rather as a result of Iraqi inaction. It is up to the Iraqis to decide. If they continue to choose to spill blood it will not be on the conscience of the U.S. and its heroic military. It will instead be a continuation of decades of its own conflicts, which they and they alone can solve.

This administration has again given the American people a false choice: EITHER we stay in Iraq indefinitely OR, they say we face chaos, genocide, and an Iraq whose biggest export is terror not oil. There are many other choices that haven't been tried, such as concerted regional diplomacy coupled with strategic redeployment of troops. I believe redeployment is the way forward. They say, 'what happens if we leave?' and I say 'what happens if we stay?'

-Rep. John Murtha (9-17-07)

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(P3) Poetical (sort of)

I wrote this ditty a couple of years ago before the Democrats won control of the congress. Since that victory doesn't appear to have made much difference (except perhaps to a few like Murtha), the song seems even more pertinent today:




Where Have All TrueDemos Gone? (sung to the tune of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?")

Where have all true Demos gone?
we must be asking.
Where have all true Demos gone,
since Roosevelt?
Where have all true Demos gone,
conciliating placators?
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where are all the radicals?
we must be asking.
Where are all the radicals?
since days of rage
Where are all the radicals?
Gone suburban every one.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all idealists gone,
Since late Sixties?
Where have all idealists gone?
So long behind
Where have all idealists gone?
Gone believing what they hear
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Still unchanging.
Where have all the soldiers gone?
this time again.
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to greedy oil wars.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

What of all their families?
lost and grieving.
What of all the families?
All deprived of hope.
What of all the families
Are you all still listening?
When will they ever learn?
When will you ever learn?


(Ed Coletti – edcoletti@sbcglobal.net)

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My Man Kucinich/Human Nature?/Pity the Nation

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Mark Twain on War/Poet&Reader/What I Don't Know

(P1) Philosophical

What I Don't Know

Once in awhile, I attempt to formulate for myself where I am at with belief. I thought I'd share this recent "epiphany" with you:

I really don't know or understand anything. When I look at the sky and then push through it to the void or the greater universe where time has no dominion and realize that this might only be the beginning or portal to whatever's beyond that, I realize how fully I don't know. I accept the not knowing. I appreciate the mystery. The nudge that comes from what I, from childhood on, was told is the explanation, intrudes on the mystery. Later I was reminded "Pride goeth before the fall" but "pride" was so often defined in terms of having the temerity to question what we had been given in the way of explanation of the mystery for which no man or woman has the "answer." Primitive cultures attempted to name or put a face on the mystery. All mythology including religion employs story forms for the same purpose. No one knows except the individual lying on a chair swing swinging with the sun playing off the trees and off his ears under a sky too close. Does mystery denote complexity or does mystery simply be? No one I've met or read knows. Many think they know, and I suppose that may also be knowing. I too know what I know which is that I don't know very much other than that I'm content not to know very much, and this lack of knowledge is at odds with everything I've been told by all those who know as much or less than I.

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(P2) Poetical

The Poet and His Reader

"The transaction that we call the experience of poetry always takes place between one being and another. The energy circulates from privacy to privacy. Far flung though they may be in space and time, the poet and his reader are, for the duration of the experience, adjacent souls with permeable boundaries. Language can render the inward experience so persuasively that the space/time axis yields. Poetry has no larger 'public function' — it's limits are set. Poetry readings may be good advertising but they can't alter the monogamous character of the real event. In poetry, as in love, two is company, three is always a crowd."

from Sven Birkerts in his essay "The Poet In An Age Of Distraction"

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(P3) Political

Those Who Always Shout For War

from Mark Twain in The Mysterious Stranger

"The loud littler handful...as usual...will shout for the war. The great...big...dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war...and will say indignantly...it is unjust and dishonorable...there is no necessity for it...

"The the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen...and at first will have a hearing...but it will not last long. The others will outshout them...and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity...Before long...you will see this curious thing...the speakers stoned from the platform...and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men...

"Next...the statesmen will invent cheap lies...putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked...and every man will be glad of these conscience soothing falsities...and will diligently study them...and refuse to examine any refutations of them...and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just...and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

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Being Positive/WHO Health Care Ratings/ More On Mr. Moore/Pledge/Vonnegut

(P1) Political

HOW TO START YOUR DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

1. Open a new folder on your computer.
2. Name it "George W. Bush"
3. Send it to the trash.
4. Empty the trash.
5. Your computer will ask you:
"Do you really want to get rid of "George W. Bush?"
6. Firmly Click "Yes."
7. Feel better.

PS: Tomorrow we'll do Dick Cheney......

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(P2) Philosophical

Model For Health Care: Let's Try France

Much has been made of Michael Moore's trip to Cuba on behalf of NYC 9/11 rescue workers who could not get the medical care they needed in the US. Granted this was "theater," but it does raise some interesting questions. The main issue is just where Cuba stands with regard to health care and why it does. Initially, when I viewed the World Health Organization's rankings (below), I was surprised to note that Cuba is ranked 39th, two places behind 37th rated United States. I dug in and found a scholarly article from the Journal Of the Medical Library Association (April 2002). Several things jumped out at me

1. In 2002, the US ranked #24 while Cuba was #33 in the world. Both have dropped since then.

2. However, considering Cuba's meager economic resource, it has "the highest basic life expectancy among all Latin Americans."

Granted, the following from that Journal article is from 2002, so I invite readers to provide more recent research. When I survey the more recent literature quickly, my sense is that health care statistics from the two countries are not too different from each other with exceptions including infant mortality rates and number of physicians per 1000 patients, both categories in which Cuba appears to have a better record.

Cuba, known widely for its excellent health care system, still functions under poor economic circumstances. The annual per capita gross national product in 1995 for Cuba was $1,522, compared to $26,980 for the United States. Yet, the World Health Organization's (WHO's) healthy life expectancy rankings place Cuba as thirty-third worldwide, not far behind the United States' ranking as twenty-fourth. Furthermore, Cuba is fifth in the western hemisphere behind Canada, the United States, Dominica, and Chile in the WHO disability adjusted life expectancy (DALE) rankings, which summarize expected number of years to be lived in what may be termed the equivalent of “full health.” According to these rankings, Cubans have the highest basic life expectancy among all Latin Americans [1–3].

Simply put, therefore, although few of us may want to live in Cuba (Eldridge Cleaver attempted this, became horrified, and moved back to this country), Cuba appears to put its health care priorities far ahead of where our own "rich" country does.

But let's get this straight...The United States of America need not look to Cuba for its model. That's a distraction that Moore's critics will pound on ad infinitum. Rather, I challenge our "leaders" and citizenry to look toward world heath care leaders France, Italy, and Spain as examples of what can and is being done to guarantee the health and welfare of its citizens. It's not an accident that Bush chose to pick on France (recall "freedom fries).

I am calling on each presidential candidate to pledge to refuse their free government health care until every person in this country also has it. I want every candidate who said they'd work for the minimum wage as president to work uninsured, too, until health care is universal. And I want the other candidates to join them. (Yes, I'm looking at you, too, Republicans. I know you can afford to do it.)

Michael Moore on Huffington Post 7-26-07

The World Health Organization's ranking
of the world's health systems.
Source: WHO World Health Report - See also Spreadsheet Details (731kb)

---

Rank       Country  

1         France
2         Italy
3         San Marino
4         Andorra
5         Malta
6         Singapore
7         Spain
8         Oman
9         Austria
10        Japan
11        Norway
12        Portugal
13        Monaco
14        Greece
15        Iceland
16        Luxembourg
17        Netherlands
18        United  Kingdom
19        Ireland
20        Switzerland
21        Belgium
22        Colombia
23        Sweden
24        Cyprus
25        Germany
26        Saudi Arabia
27        United  Arab  Emirates
28        Israel
29        Morocco
30        Canada
31        Finland
32        Australia
33        Chile
34        Denmark
35        Dominica
36        Costa Rica
37        United  States  of  America
38        Slovenia
39        Cuba
40        Brunei
41        New Zealand
42        Bahrain
43        Croatia
44        Qatar
45        Kuwait
46        Barbados
47        Thailand
48        Czech Republic
49        Malaysia
50        Poland
51        Dominican Republic
52        Tunisia
53        Jamaica
54        Venezuela
55        Albania
56        Seychelles
57        Paraguay
58        South     Korea
59        Senegal
60        Philippines
61        Mexico
62        Slovakia
63        Egypt
64        Kazakhstan
65        Uruguay
66        Hungary
67        Trinidad and Tobago
68        Saint     Lucia
69        Belize
70        Turkey
71        Nicaragua
72        Belarus
73        Lithuania
74        Saint Vincent  and the   Grenadines
75        Argentina
76        Sri  Lanka
77        Estonia
78        Guatemala
79        Ukraine
80        Solomon   Islands

(In the interest of space, I will spare readers the listing from 81 Algeria to 190 Myanmar)

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(P3) Poetical

Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast Of Champions:

"He (Kilgore Trout) wrote a novel, for instance, about an Earthling named Delmore
Skag, a bachelor in a neighborhood where everybody else had enormous families.
And Skag was a scientist, and he found a way to reproduce himself in chicken soup.
He would shave living cells from the palm of his right hand, mix them with the soup,
and expose the soup to cosmic rays.  The cells turned into babies which looked
exactly like Delmore Skag.  "Pretty soon, Delmore was having several babies a day,
and inviting his neighbors to share his pride and happiness.  He had mass baptisms
of as many as a hundred babies at a time.  He became famous as a family man.  

"And so on."  

*****

"Skag hoped to force his country into making laws against excessively large
families, but the legislatures and the courts declined to meet the problem
head-on.  They passed stern laws instead against the possession by
unmarried persons of chicken soup.  

"And so on."

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your name. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

---

Curt Flood/ Stealing/Farming

(P1) Philosophical

FARMERS MAKE A LANDSCAPE MORE BEAUTIFUL

by Jonah Raskin Chairman of the communication studies department at Sonoma State University -- (not to mention "Poet Extraordinaire)

The author Alice Walker, who has lived much of her life in Northern California, and written some of her best work here, has been known to say, ``Horses make a landscape more beautiful.'' I can see her point of view in the fields near my Santa Rosa home where horses lend their beauty to fields where they roam freely. For me, however, it is not so much horses as farmers and farm workers who add an aesthetic dimension to the landscape, though I know that's usually not their main intention. They work on farms, of course, to make money, feed and house themselves, and their children, and not to create a picture pleasing to the eye. Still, whenever I gaze at Valley End Farm, probably the largest certified organic farm in Sonoma County, on Petaluma Hill Road, I see it as an oil painting by a 19th-century French impressionist painter. The soft, gentle mountains rise in the background, a white house nestles under an oak tree, and the furrowed fields unfold on either side of an unpaved driveway that divides them into two nearly equal parts. I have worked in these fields out of a sense of curiosity, and with an appreciation of beauty, too. I know that a sense of beauty infuses the way the farm workers look at the farm, and I have seen that they cannot help but make the rows and rows of tomatoes, squash, onion and garlic into a thing far more attractive to my eye than the sprawling tract houses that threaten its survival, and the survival of farms like it. Recently, I worked with Leno, the Mexican-born foreman who speaks excellent English and who dreams of owning his own farm in California one day. When he's off the farm, I have worked with his wife Malu, as hard a tiller of the soil as he, and her 60-year-old father who has worked on farms nearly his whole life, but who has never owned one, and probably never will. Leno and Malu, and the other farm workers, labor at Valley End because agriculture is what they know how to do, and because they like to work with their hands, in the outdoors, planting and weeding, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. these days, and sometimes until 7 p.m. when crops have to be harvested. ``It's beautiful here, isn't it,'' Malu's father said to me on a June afternoon, as we stood in the hot sun, weeding around the tomato plants -- nearly 75,000 of them -- whose fruit Clint Grossi, who runs the farm with his mother Sharon, will sell at their farm stand along the side of the road at the height of summer. Many local residents, and tourists, too, stop here because they want locally grown, organic vegetables, and because they see the farm as a thing of beauty to which they want a connection. Indeed, increasingly this farm, and others in Northern California, have become locales that provide suburbanites with a sense of roots, and a sense of meaning in a world that feels more and more dislocated and chaotic. They know that the human species cannot live without beauty, and that living farms, where men and women grow beautiful, healthy crops, provide an aesthetic sense that gives them pleasure. So, when I stand in the fields, with a hoe in my hands, I occasionally pause and peer at the traffic on Petaluma Hill Road that looks, in the distance, like toy cars and trucks. Will the speeding drivers gaze appreciatively at the farm as I do? I wonder. Will they see the beauty, here, and will they come to realize that farms must continue to exist here, if we are to maintain our history and our humanity? I take up the hoe again, and, if wishing would make it so, it is so.

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(P2) Political (sort of)

Curt Flood On Issues Related To Slavery

When baseball great Curt Flood challenged baseball's reserve clause in 1970-71 he gave up his expectation of a future as a major league manager. This fight was more important to Flood who regarded challenging the restriction to play for only one team as a civil rights issue. When he won, he became a hero to his peers.

The following is a short excerpt from "Why I Am Challenging Baseball" by Curt Flood in Sport
Magazine 1970)

"Are we right in challenging the legality of the reserve clause? Let me answer you this way. Suppose you are an accountant. One day your boss says to you, 'Joe, we are moving you to the other coast. Now don't worry. We'll pay your expenses, you'll get the same salary you're getting here, and maybe more.'

"'But I don't want to go 3,000 miles away from my family and friends,' you say. 'I don't want to tear up roots.'

"'Of course you can quit and get another job,' your boss says. 'But we've got this reserve clause in your contract, you know. You can't work ever again as an accountant if you quit working for us.'

"'But accounting is the only business I know,' you say.

"'Sorry,' says your boss.

"What would you do? As an accountant and as a man? You know what I am doing. Maybe now you can understand why I feel I have to do it—as a ballplayer and as a man."

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(P3) Poetical

The Base Stealer
by Robert Francis

Poised between going on and back, pulled
Both ways taut like a tightrope-walker,
Fingertips pointing the opposites,
Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ball
Or a kid skipping rope, come on, come on,
Running a scattering of steps sidewise,
How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,
Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,
He's only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,
Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate—now!

The Human Condition/Hombre/Backyard

(P1) Philosophical

Months ago, when I was despairing about the human condition and the dimming prospects for world peace, I wrote Peace Planters and discovered at least some reason to hope in quietness, reflection and families. Then I read James Hillman's quote about there having been something like 15,000 wars in only 5000 years of "civilization."

Today, reading the following quotations in The Sun, I've considered that perhaps war and violence aren't so much the human "condition" as they are the collective human "unconsciousness." If the so-called "primitive savage" has figured it out, what about the rest of us "savages"?

1. "People hurt other people the most when they're trying to kill their own pain, real or imagined." - Frank J. Page

2. "In the Baemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person...has done in his lifetime. All his positive attributes, good deed, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. The tribal ceremony often lasts several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe." - Alice Walker

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(P2) Political

From Paul Begala in the Huffington Post July 3d:

One Tough Hombre

Tough enough to execute Karla Fay Tucker -- and then laugh about it. Tough enough to sign a death warrant for a man whose lawyer slept through the trial -- and then snicker when asked about it in a debate. Even tough enough to execute a great-grandmother who murdered her husband -- after he abused her. A friend of mine at the time asked Bush to commute her sentence, telling him, "Betty Lou ain't a threat to no one she ain't married to." No dice.

Mr. Bush is tough enough to invade a country that was no risk to America, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths and shedding precious American blood in the process. Tough enough to sanction torture. Tough enough to order an American citizen arrested and held without trial.

But if you're rich and right-wing and Republican, George is a real softie. As George W. Bush demonstrated in giving Scooter Libby a Get Out of Jail Free Card, he is only compassionate to conservatives.

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(P3) Poetical

Backyard Appeal

Bluest sky moment,
I paint you as words
spring maple yellow.

Photinia bush
redden my flesh, be my sun,
rain memory has fled.

Mirror of sea,
sky unblemished blue,
sing your song.

Copper fields slip
green to cyan,
oxygen’s funny magic.

Black dog come to me.
Tell me what you fathom
beneath this our common ground.

(Ed Coletti in Blueline vol xxviii)



 

Hillary Killary/Ears/Conductor

(P1) Political

This Made Me Angry and I couldn't just let it go

"The American military has succeeded. It is the Iraqi government
which has failed to make the tough decisions that are important for
their own people.''  -Hillary Clinton (June 2007)

 Thank God, Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) responded for me

Let me get this straight. The Iraq disaster is not the fault of the delusional neo-cons, the greedy oil companies, or the gullible and cowardly Congressional warhawks. (Most senators including Clinton didn't even bother to read the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate). According to Hillary, the real culprit is the Iraqi government that we created virtually overnight and left to govern a fractured, impoverished society. Talk about blaming the victim!

Hillary, as an active supporter of the war, you are one of many Americans who are guilty. And now all Americans are left responsible, regardless of whether we supported or opposed he war. When we pull out, our hands will drip with the blood of the tens of thousands of American casualties and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead. The Iraqi government didn't start this, we did.

Of course we can continue to compartmentalize ourselves from the truth, remove the troops and blame the rubble on the Iraqis. We can feed the collective fantasy that our good intentions and heroic efforts were thwarted by the cowardice and incompetence of others. But if that's what we take from our experience in Iraq, we will never learn the true lessons and we will be condemned to repeat the same mistakes.

The inability to admit a mistake and assume responsibility is not just a morally bankrupt way to walk through life; it is a dangerous and deadly way to lead a nation.

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(P2) Philosophical

Here's some good advice for me and perhaps for you as well:

"Be a good listener.
Your ears will never get you in trouble."

 - Frank Tyger

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(P2) Poetical

Conductor

My chiropractor tells me
my body contains excessive
electromagnetism.

So I must ground myself
to a water pipe frequently
lest I blow out modems and hard drives

like several other patients he has
who have done just that.
My condition is said to be incredibly rare.

-ed coletti 6/07

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Platform For Peace/Bokonon Again

(P1) Poetical


At A Traveling Replica Of The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial
(poem written years ago from point of view of my friend Ed Hagan)

Hell, I'd answered;
yes, there is hell,
to be there is
to know hell,
Nick
whose half head
fell again before me
from the scaled
replicas of vietnam
veterans monumented;
no names fell
only partially-headed Nick
me back in the chow hall
on the Forrestal
(June 6th, 1967)
feet on the table
raising a sandwich
to the t.v. screen
a war accident
smoke curling from an A-7 Corsair
heads and arms responding
extinguishing flash fires
devouring heads
the old illusionist's
disappearing act
secrets freely shared
navy planes firing
rockets and falling
through the deck above
me unable to tear through
that baloney sandwich
bridging teeth and hand
me watching warfare on t.v.
while, an elevator ride above,
flesh was melting
bombs ejecting
heads were falling
hundreds dying
before me
in the chow hall
of the aircraft carrier Forrestal
as I,
peering over my half
eaten baloney sandwich
at the television watched
my friend Nick as he
briefly came to hell. In Gryphon, Fall/Winter 1987

(P2) Political

Save the USS Forrestal As A New Platform For Peace

Friend Ed Hagan, who served aboard the Forrestal (see last photo before the fire) and who is the subject of the foregoing poem, is fostering this admirable and sensible proposal:

"The Navy's USS Forrestal has been decommissioned. It will become scrap or a reef that just a few wealthy sport divers will ever be able to use. Forrestal deserves a better future. I am asking you to help me get the Navy to reconsider the future of Forrestal and all other aircraft carriers in a similar situation. We need to rehabilitate the Forrestal to become a PLATFORM FOR PEACE. Forrestal should become an emergency base that can be moved to any disaster area in the world on the immediate notice of the president. Forrestal should become a FIRST RESPONDER. The cost of rehabilitation to turn it into a combination disaster response platform to supply emergency medical care, water, electricity, communications, food, hot meals, whatever is needed for thousands of victims of disasters like Katrina and the 2004 tsunami. With predictions of potential weather disasters this makes perfect sense politically and diplomatically.

"The Forrestal motto was "FID: First in Defense when I serve aboard in 1968 through 1970. Now it should be First in Disaster Assistance

"I propose we find a city on the Pacific coast like San Francisco serve as it's base when not on call. There is could be an educational facility, sort of an OJT site for health care, fire and emergency responders to environmental disasters.

"What do you say. Can I get your support? Will you help me gather support to do something that will eventually make us feel good about this wonderful workhorse of the NAVY. No money please. Just pass this along to everyone on your list, especially your government leaders."

Ed Hagan #2687 lifetime member

Nice California 95464

707 274-8652


(P3) Philosophical

Kurt Vonnegut's Bokonon has the following wisdom to impart in Vonnegut's final book, the wonderful "memoir" A Man Without a Country

WE DO, DOODLEY DO,
DOODLEY DO, DOODLEY DO,
WHAT WE MUST,
MUDDILY MUST,
MUDDILY MUST,
MUDDILY MUST,
UNTIL WE BUST,
BODILY BUST,
BODILY BUST,
BODILY BUST.

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