Prague streetcar dream

Prague streetcar dream

About 5 days ago I had a very vivid dream set in Prague, in the Czech Republic. It starts out with me riding on a streetcar going north within Prague.The number on the tram was 81.From the beginning the dream did not feel like a dream. It felt like I was indeed riding on a streetcar in Prague.

All the details unfolded just as in waking life; the sound of acceleration, of the doors opening, moving from stop to stop. I was talking to a friend. I had somehow set aside a coat, a wool cap and a dark file folder containing all sorts of papers, like resumes, and transcripts etc. I got off at a stop, in this conversation with a friend, forgetting to grab these items before getting off.

Somehow I begin running up the route , trying to reboard. and thanks to street lights, and scheduled stops, I finally catch up with it , and reboard the same car. I somehow communicated with an attendant what I was looking for and underneath the seats, at the very back of this two segment tram, I find the folder. Then I walk grabbing bars and over head bars , to the front and find my coat, buried under a pile of coats, with the cap tucked in a pocket.

At this point, having no wish to keep going further north I get off at the first chance I can. Upon disembarking I find I am in a far northern part of Prague, I had never been in before. Across the street I note , there is no discernible stop for an 81 tram going south. I begin walking around to try to get some sense of where I am. I walk east on a broad avenue.For a while the south side of this street has multi story buidings lining it. But then there is a gap through which I see a view.

I see that there is a wide valley between this part of Prague, and further south, with a east-west highway and train track running parallel to the street I am on. Meanwhile, as all this is unfolding it is turning from mid-afternoon to late afternoon. The sun is moving across the sky, and the quality of light in the air changes as it does as time goes by, in any sunny day.

On the north side of the street I notice an Art Museum. I go over to it just to check it out. This street is hilly so the yard has a concrete wall, so that at the high part of the block it comes to street level, but at the low part it is higher than ones head. This means, the property the Museum is on is level of course. There is little grass, growing in some of the cracks on the concrete wall. Little details like this have me experiencing this not as a dream, but as really walking around in Prague.

Next I head back up to where I got off, and then head west. I come to a street that has more residential type housing. There is a what looks like a small school or Art institute. I run into a young Czech woman on the walkway entrance and say Good Day, and also Wie Gehts. She doesn't speak English or German, so this sally gets nowhere, but she points to the building so I go inside and meet a young Czech man named Lada who speaks English. He has a 13 year old son who asks me how long I was on 81 before I got off. "Was it 12 or 15 minutes? After further explanation they drop what they are doing, we go out to a square, and they get on a different street car that takes us all to another square, where they point out a stop for #81 going south.I thank them profusely, and then after a time get on a southbound #81. Finally I arrive in a familar part of Prague. I get off, and somehow I have left my coat on the tram again. Yikes!

At this point I began leaving the dream, and found myself in my bed.

What struck me about this dream was its essential undreamlike nature. Colors and details were as precise and as vivid as moving around in Prague in waking life. When I woke up I felt like I had been in Prague for the last few hours, rather than in a dream.

Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

Red Chiles at the Thimphu market

I just finished reading - - Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan by Jamie Zeppa. I stumbled across it at our local library, not really expecting them to have much about Bhutan.

Here is a short review from over at Amazon.com:

"As a teacher of English literature, Jamie Zeppa would understand how the story of her journey into Bhutan could be fit into the convenient box of "coming-of-age romance," a romance with a landscape, a people, a religion, and a dark, irresistible student. An innocent, young Catholic woman from a Canadian mining town who had "never been anywhere," Zeppa signed up for a two-year stint teaching in a remote corner of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Despite the initial shock of material privation and such minor inconveniences as giardia, boils, and leeches, Zeppa felt herself growing into the vast spaces of simplicity that opened up beyond the clutter of modern life. Alongside her burgeoning enchantment, a parallel realization that all was not right in Shangri-La arose, especially after her transfer to a college campus charged with the politics of ethnic division. Still she maintained her center by devouring the library's Buddhist tracts and persevering in an increasingly fruitful meditation practice. When the time came for her to leave, she had undergone a personal transformation and found herself caught between two worlds that were incompatible and mutually incomprehensible. Zeppa's candid, witty account is a spiritual memoir, a travel diary, and, more than anything, a romance that retraces the vicissitudes of ineluctable passion."

I really enjoyed her descriptions of the lansdcapes of Bhutan; the mists, and the way clouds obscure and reveal the mountains and hillsides. She sees aspects of Bhutan with a sweet sensitivity. The book is especially good in her descriptions of life in Eastern Bhutan, the Pemagatshel region down near the southern border with India.

The author was working in Bhutan from 1988 thru to late 1992. Back then World University Service of Canada had Canadians teaching English in Bhutan all throughout the different regions of the country for 2 year stints.
Reading of the different accounts of her co-workers life there in really, really out of the way places in rural Bhutan, reminded me of my Peace Corps experiences, and of my short 21 days in Bhutan. Made me very envious for the experience. Punakha monastery still remains probably the most peaceful place I have ever visited on this earth.

I recommend this book highly for those interested in Bhutan. I notice some of the Amazon customer reviewers gave the author a hard time for falling in love with one of her students. However , the student was in his 'twenties' when their affair began, and love works in mysterious ways. They did end up getting married. They , 'the reviewers', just show off their late 90s political correctness to the max, but it seems inhuman and heartless to me.

The book is well written, and the author is quite honest, though it did run out of steam the last few chapters.

Here is a great quote from the book, though it does not list what Buddhist text she found this in:

And if you hit upon the idea that this or
that country is safe, prosperous, or
fortunate, give it up, my friend. . . for you
ought to know that the world is ablaze with
the fires of some faults or others. There is
certain to be some suffering . . . and a
wholly fortunate country does not exist
anywhere. Whether it be excessive cold or
heat, sickness or danger, something always
afflects people everywhere; no safe refuge
can thus be found in the world.

Ceramic Tile painting by Fernando Andriacci

Magical art from Oaxaca, Mexico

My friend Greg was recently down in Oaxaca, Mexico, and sent me a link to
a whole bunch of photos taken while down there. This photo is of a ceramic tile painting done by Fernando Andriacci. Wild and whimsical stuff.
There is a link for his art at: Oaxaca Mexico Art.

Shine on Syd

It is obvious
may I say, oh baby, that it is found on another plane?

"The poppy birds way swing twigs coffee brands around.
Brandish her wand with a feathery tongue.
My head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand,
please... Please, please lift the hand
I'm only a person with Eskimo chain
I tattooed my brain all the way...

Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all? - - from Dark Globe by Syd Barrett

I heard yesterday that Syd Barrett, who just turned 60, on July 6th had left his mortal coil. Now he belongs to the ages. I , in a certain way was helped by his music; I remember listening to his double album Barrett , and the Madcap Laughs, a lot in the period 1976 thru 1977, as I tried to adjust to Houston after 4 years in Austin.

I mean, I think anyone who has gone to the edge, or tripped out can appreciate some of Syd's songs, and his lyrics were poetry, of the British eccentric sort. Of course anyone who lived through the 1970s must have heard Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. It is one of the longest selling albums of all time. But, A Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Barrett, and ' The Madcaps laughs' were never all that well known, though they attained 'cult' status.

I have noticed there have been tributes to Syd all over the Web, while television, has fairly ignored his passing. I would imagine the BBC in England probably did better. In todays Zeitgest, it is as if it is impossible to talk about LSD, Barretts life, and career, his descent into incoherence on TV. At any rate doing a Google news search I did find a fairly good tribute by Richard Jinman. here are a few excerpts from:

The second death of a boy genius

"There are, or rather were, two Syd Barretts. The first, the one the fans prefer to remember, was a young, handsome, prodigiously gifted musician from an English university town who formed a group called Pink Floyd in 1965 and quickly became the undisputed leader of Britain's nascent psychedelic rock scene. It was a part he seemed born to play. Wearing the silk and velvet robes of London's hippy aristocracy, a Fender Telecaster slung around his slender shoulders, he wrote the Floyd's two early hit singles, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play.

The other Syd Barrett was a balding, slightly corpulent man who lived in the basement of his mother's Cambridge house, devoting himself to gardening and painting. This was the post-Floyd Barrett, the man who was ousted from the band in 1968 after he fried his brain on LSD and became so erratic his bandmates - the former architecture students who would go on to define 1970s rock with albums such as Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here - believed he had slipped beyond their help. This Barrett managed to record two shambolically brilliant solo albums ( The Madcap Laughs and Barrett) full of off-kilter, whimsical and distinctively English songs with titles such as Effervescing Elephant, Baby Lemonade and Terrapin. After that, silence. Barrett turned his back on music, London and the world."

Here are other small statements which I add to this post at this point: Meanwhile, David Gilmour said: "We are very sad to say that Roger Keith Barrett - Syd - has passed away."Do find time today to play some of Syd's songs and to remember him as the madcap genius who made us all smile with his wonderfully eccentric songs about bikes, gnomes and scarecrows. "His career was painfully short, yet he touched more people than he could ever know."

And Roger Waters said," He leaves behind a body of work that is both very touching and very deep. It will shine on forever."
Elsewhere, David Bowie commented: "I can't tell you how sad I feel. The few times I saw him perform in London at UFO and the Marquee clubs during the '60s will forever be etched in my mind. "He was so charismatic and such a startlingly original songwriter. Also, along with Anthony Newley, he was the first guy I'd heard to sing pop or rock with a British accent. "His impact on my thinking was enormous. A major regret is that I never got to know him. A diamond indeed."

"A few weeks ago former bandmate Roger Waters dedicated a song to Barrett at the Hyde Park Calling festival in London, 25,000 people from every conceivable background knew every word to the chorus of 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' - a fitting coda to the life of a flawed but much admired genius.

And this: " Barrett's death makes him a mystery to the end. Unlike the other mad geniuses of the psychedelic era - Brian Wilson, Roky Erickson and Love's Arthur Lee - Barrett never came back from the edge."

One of the things I learn from Mr. Barrett and his poetry, is his courage in showing such human vulnerability, in being so authentic, just before he went silent for good. I sometimes wonder if for the rest of his time on earth,from say 1973 until he died, he lived in a time at right angles to the sense of time our Western world moves along in. Those 2 albums of his were so uncommercial, in a way an antithesis of much that was popular then or now.

I always really liked Golden Hair:
GOLDEN HAIR (These lyrics are originally from "Chamber Music" by James Joyce (1907)

Lean out your window, golden hair
I heard you singing in the midnight air
my book is closed, I read no more
watching the fire dance, on the floor
I've left my book, I've left my room
For I heard you singing through the gloom
singing and singing, a merry air
lean out the window, golden hair...

The corporate media will frame his life in a certain slamdunk, I told you so, tale of artist gone to ruin way. But they will never explore his songs very much, because they are too human, plaintitive, but whimsical, edgy, but not catchy enough to ever be able to push some product. And those who appreciate his music will go on listening to it.

May he rest in peace, a tormented soul, but a poetic soul, who pushed the boundaries , and took on the steel rail for a while. The Crazy Diamond is gone. May he shine on in new realms. Though this post is way long I will add some more lyrics:
SHE TOOK A LONG COLD LOOK

She took a long cold look at me and smiled
and gazed all over my arm she loves to see me get down to ground
she hasn't time just to be with me
her face between all she means to be to be extreme, just to be extreme
a broken pier on the wavy sea
she wonders why for all she wants to see...
But I got up and I stomped around and hid the piece
where the trees touch the ground...

The end of truth that lay out the time
spent lazing here on a painting dream
a mile or more in a foreign clime
to see farther inside of me.
And looking high up into the sky
I breathe as the water streams over me...

Godzilla vs. Megalon

Meeting of Minds

I note with interest that the next Rhino release of Mystery Science Theater 3000, is going to contain - - - Godzilla vs. Megalon.
Here is the announcement at Satellite News:

We now have definitive word about The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Volume 10! Gonna be a good one! Episodes are:
212- GODZILLA VS. MEGALON
503- SWAMP DIAMONDS (plus short: WHAT TO DO ON A DATE)
514- TEEN-AGE STRANGLER (plus short: IS THIS LOVE?)
810- THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION

Well , Godzilla vs. Megalon, at least , the MYST3K version has long been one of my favorites.
Here is an synopsis, for the uninitiated, or those that have missed seeing this cultural artifact:

"In the film, the undersea civilization Seatopia has been heavily affected by nuclear testing conducted by the surface nations of the world. Naturally upset by this, they unleash their civilization's protector, Megalon, to the surface to destroy those who would — unknowingly or not — destroy them. Agents of Seatopia attempt to steal the newly-constructed super-robot Jet Jaguar, which can apparently be used to guide and direct Megalon. They also capture the robot's inventor, Goro Ibuki, his kid brother Rokuro and their friend Hiroshi Jinkawa. After Jet Jaguar is used by the Seatopians to lure Megalon to Tokyo, Goro manages to regain control, and sends Jet Jaguar to Monster Island to bring Godzilla back to fight Megalon. An extended fight scene then takes place, with Godzilla and Jet Jaguar, the latter newly giant-sized and self-directed, fighting Megalon and Gigan in the hills outside Tokyo. The film ends with Megalon and Gigan defeated, Godzilla returning to Monster Island, and Jet Jaguar returning to his previous, human-sized state."

Okay, okay with this post I may have jumped the shark, or the Gigan so to speak, but I continue to collect Mystery Science Theater 3K episodes, and am a die hard fan. The Godzilla vs. Megalon episode is a total hoot, plus you get tag team wrestling of Godzilla and Jet Jaguar versus Megalon and Gigan.

The scene where Megalon is summoned up from the depths of Hades by the High Priest of Seatopia is priceless, priceless! A moment for the ages.
JP sez, check it out.

Chorten in Bhutan, Oct.1992

One of my old friends, Bari, who finished up two years in Peace Corps Mongolia, is now talking about going back, and it sounds like getting married there too.

I thought I would send him via e-mail , this photo of the author of this blog, in front of a small chorten on the path up to Chomolhari, taken in October of 1992. Fourteen years ago, and all those days still seem fresh, to me. It just goes to show how pleasant memories, are remembered more readily.

I miss Bhutan at times, and wonder about Sangjay Khandu, our trek guide.
Guess, I'll have to look up Kuensel on the Web sometime.

Genealogy post- Greenberry Pinkston

GREENBERRY PINKSTON was born 1772 in Union County, SC, and died on July 27, 1852 in Mt. Meigs, AL. He married his first wife : Mary Ann Key Armstrong on December 25, 1796 in Hancock Co., GA.

By 1785 His Father John Pinkston (1744-1803) had moved the family to Wilkes County , Georgia , and by 1793 land records show them as being in Hancock County, Georgia .

I recently found a small amount of information about him in the book-
Recollections of the Early Settlers of Montgomery County and Their Families, by W.G. Robertson,
1892.
Here it is:" Green Pinkston

Green Pinkston , one of the first settlers, was a member of the Baptist church and lived in the vicinity of old
Antioch church, and had his membership there. He was a strong supporter of his church and a man that was
respected by every one who knew him. Mr. Pinkston had a family of four sons and three daughters.

James, one of his sons, married a Miss Mosely. Franklin, a splendid young man, married a Miss Hopper, and
John married a Miss Ray. Ann, the oldest daughter, married John Harper. Dolly, the next, married Frank
Howard, a good citizen and farmer. Evelin, the youngest, married William McClemore. Mr. Pinkston lived to a ripe old age and gently passed from earth."

In 1812, Land Tax Records show him as living still in Hancock Cnty. ,GA.
His eldest daughter, Martha Dolly Pinkston, was born 3 Feb 1813 in Montgomery, County, Alabama, which would indicate in the latter part of 1812, the family moved from Georgia, to Montgomery Cnty., Alabama.
It looks like he spent the remainder of his life in Mt. Meigs, Alabama, living near the Antioch Baptitist Church along the old Line Road.

Greenberry would either be my great, great , great grandfather or great, great, great grand Uncle. It all depends upon who is assigned as being the father of Henry B. Pinkston, (1828 -Jan. 1, 1887) my Great, Great Grandfather.

Which means that I will likely add to, or update this post at some point in the future.

Well, I just added an update to this. I finally found a death date for him in:`Marriage and Death Notices From the "South Western Baptist" Newspaper . Thus: " Died at the residence of his son in Montgomery County, Alabama on the 27th of July last, Deacon Green B. Pinkston, in the eighty first year of his age, having been a member of the Antioch Church thirty years and a deacon twenty eight."

Also I came across this information about him in a book entitled Early Alabama Settlers: " Granted land in Montgomery County, AL. Territory in 1817. He moved to MT. Meigs at that time along with his brother James and Mary Ann's brothers, James W. Armstrong, Mack Armstrong and her sister Miriam A. Vickers".

Two columns that caught my attention

I was struck by the ending of one of George Wills recent column's entitled:
Iraq's Atomization:

"But it did not take three years of Zarqawi and terrorism and sectarian violence to turn Iraqis into difficult raw material for self-government. For that, give another devil his due: Saddam Hussein's truly atomizing tyranny and terror. On June 20, 2003, just 72 days after the fall of Baghdad, The Post reported this from Fallujah:

"Military engineers recently cleared garbage from a field in Fallujah, resurfaced it with dirt and put up goal posts to create an instant soccer field. A day later, the goal posts were stolen and all the dirt had been scraped from the field. Garbage began to pile up again."

An Army captain asked, "What kind of people loot dirt?" There are many answers to that question. Here is one: a kind of people who are hard to help."

Then week after week Sidney Blumenthal disects everything 'W' does, and clarifies what is really going on. Here's the final part of a column entitled: George Bush Sr. asked retired general to replace Rumsfeld :

(At the beginning of the column he recounted behind the scenes efforts of Bush Sr. to ease out Rumsfeld)

"As Bush's approach has stamped failure on the military, he insists ever more intensely on the inevitability of victory if only he stays the course. Ambiguity and flexibility, essential elements of any strategy for counterinsurgency, are his weak points. Bush may imagine a scene in which the insurgency is conclusively defeated, perhaps even a signing ceremony, as on the USS Missouri, or at least an acknowledgment, a scrap of paper, or perhaps the silence of the dead, all of them. But his infatuation with a purely military solution blinds him to how he thwarts his own intentions. Jeffrey Record, a prominent strategist at a U.S. military war college, told me: "Perhaps worse still, conventional wisdom is dangerously narcissistic. It completely ignores the enemy, assuming that what we do determines success or failure. It assumes that only the United States can defeat the United States, an outlook that set the United States up for failure in Vietnam and for surprise in Iraq.


Bush's abrogation of the Geneva Conventions has set an example that in this unique global war on terror, in order to combat those who do not follow the rules of war, we must also abandon those rules. This week a conflict has broken out in the Pentagon over Rumsfeld's proposed revision of the Army Field Manual for interrogation of prisoners, which would excise Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions that forbids "humiliating and degrading treatment." And, this week, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., proposed a bill that would make the administration provide "a full accounting on any clandestine prison or detention facility currently or formerly operated by the United States Government, regardless of location, where detainees in the global war on terrorism are or were being held," the number of detainees, and a "description of the interrogation procedures used or formerly used on detainees at such prison or facility and a determination, in coordination with other appropriate officials, on whether such procedures are or were in compliance with United States obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture." The administration vigorously opposes the bill.

Above all, the Bush way of war violates the fundamental rule of warfare as defined by military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz: War is politics by other means. In other words, it is not the opposite of politics, or its substitute, but its instrument, and by no means its only one. "Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd," wrote Clausewitz, "for it is policy that creates war. Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa."

Rumsfeld's Pentagon, meanwhile, reinforces Bush's rigidity as essential to "transformational" warfare; by now, however, the veneer has been peeled off to reveal sheer self-justification. Rumsfeld is incapable of telling the president that there is no battle, no campaign, that can win the war. Saving Rumsfeld is Bush's way of staying the course. But it also sends a signal of unaccountability from the top down. The degradation of U.S. forces in Iraq is a direct consequence of the derangement of political leadership in Washington. And not even the elder Bush can persuade the president that his way of war is a debacle."

Really an excellent column. I recommend checking out Salon each week, if for nothing else, at least Sidney Blumenthals columns. There are a lot of other excellent articles there too.

Traveling by Book

Well when a Sagittarius can't do much traveling due to circumstances, then they tend to do traveling by book. Thus, I picked up Robert D. Kaplan's The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century .
A travel book, but more than that, Kaplan visits places most travelers aren't going to at the moment. Here's the mini review from Amazon.com, which was originally from Publishers Weekly:


" After his recent travels through troubled southeastern Europe, Kaplan (Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History) has taken on an even more ambitious itinerary-some of the most inhospitable regions of the globe, both geographically and politically. Starting in West Africa, where he finds that border regions are so porous as to make the concept of countries "largely meaningless," he braves the Egyptian desert, then advances through Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, sprawling Turkestan, China and Pakistan and on through Southeast Asia. He advises at the outset that his book "folds international studies into a travelogue." Readers looking for an easy ride had better fasten their seat belts, for the author treats us to all sorts of speculation on the condition of humankind as the century is about to turn, along with generous dollops of history. Intermingled with graphic descriptions of exotic locales are highly personal ruminations, one of the most interesting of which is that in some of these lands, "the village came to the city and . . . vanquished it" by overwhelming modern urban middle-class values. A challenging and engrossing read."

I had been reading Constantine the Great, by Michael Grant, and Faust Theater of the World, and Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot, but once I got Ends of the Earth, it shot to the top of my reading stack so to speak.

Hard to put down. I have read several of Robert Kaplans books and I find them all engrossing and pleasurable reads. He brings valuable insights from his study of history , literature and art, to every country he visits.

One of the chapters which describes his adventures in Sinkiang, is called "Strategic Hippie Routes"; it would seem that back in 1994, when he was trying to get to Kashgar, the only westerners he ran into in the remote areas of Sinkiang were backpacking neo-hippies.

If I haven't been blogging as much, is I get involved in some good summer reading, or as I say traveling by books.

Excerpts from a Gore Vidal Interview

Didn't blog much in May, but now I am adding some excerpts from a Gore Vidal interview I found on the web. Usually each week I try to check what Hendrick Hertzberg at the New Yorker, or Sidney Blumethal at Salon.com are saying. Vidal or course is now an Elder man of letters, and always has his own unique take on these United States, especially considering his deep, and long developed study of U.S. History.

The interviewer is Kam Williams, and it was found over at: http://eurweb.com/story/eur26667.cfm . Here is a sample:

"KW: How would you describe the State of the Union?
GV: This is an Empire gone berserk. You've got a President who had every intention of militarizing the economy and militarizing the society. This had nothing to do with governance. He was mostly smearing people who pointed out his shortcomings. Now we don't have the money anymore… We don't have the will… People are disgusted… Katrina has turned off half a nation… And there's all the nonsense about borders… and so on… This is the worst period that I've ever seen for the United States. And Marcy Winograd, at least, is a good candidate who is intelligent.

KW: What do you think was Bush's agenda for this Presidency he wanted by any means necessary?
GV: To give his corporate friends jobs and tax cuts, from the oil people to General Electric. To make sure Halliburton wouldn't have to bid on its contracts to rebuild a country we first knocked-down with our tax dollars.

KW: By deliberately ruining Iraq so war profiteers could rebuild its infrastructure, he ended up ruining this country in the process, given the record federal deficit, which is why so much of the Gulf Region looks the same as the day after Hurricane Katrina hit. I wonder whether Bush has a sense of the irony about that.
GV: He has no sense at all. That's the problem. I don't think he deliberately set out to wreck the United States, but he has. It'll take two generations to get this country back, if we can ever get it back.

KW: Why aren't the people up in arms?
GV: Acquiescence. What used to be called citizens are now just a bunch of consumers waiting to be told what to do next, and automatically voting, even though they know the machinery is going to reverse their vote. We've lost too much in the way of the Bill of Rights.

KW: How do you think Bush feels about his disastrous Presidency?
GV: I don't think he cares. There are so many different kinds of stupidity. In American politics, you get to meet every kind. But he's a little exceptional. Very few politicians who got to be president are as ignorant as he is. Usually, they knew something about economics, something about the world works. I would say even some of them have a bit of conscience, not much, not much, and talk about impossible dreams. Aside from ambition, they do have an idea that they're going to serve a certain group.

KW: How has this played out with Bush?
GV: So, if there's a really difficult job, like running FEMA, you pick the dumbest person you know, because he's a really good guy. To watch Bush do this time and time again, I sit there and my jaw drops. Each time he does it he's in deeper trouble. He learns nothing.

KW: What will be the Bush legacy?
GV: If you remember, in one of my other books, I prophesied at the time of his election in 2000, "He will leave office the most hated President in our history."

KW: How'd you know?
GV: I put it together just from things he was saying along the way and from what I knew of his career in Texas."

Hinduism, Rebirth, and Time

Was reading a book about Hinduism and came across this little tidbit, which I had never encountered before:

"Don't assume that re-incarnation takes place in linear time. Remember , to the Hindu, time and space are multi-dimensional. According to a Hindu classic called the Yoga Vaisistha, your next incarnation, or your last incarnation for that matter, may be happening right now. Your next life may occur in the past! This is because your innermost spirit exists outside of time and space, and can travel to wherever and to whenever it wants!"

Well, I guess I have always just sort of assumed linear time. Of course this correlates withe the Tibetan idea of the Bardo, which for the Bardo between lives is outside of linearly experienced time and space.

Am not sure I would want to be reborn in the 1800s though. And this raises all sorts of ancestor incest issues. Time travel Sci-Fi writers have tackled some of these issues, but I had not encountered this Hindu idea until now. Mind-boggling in its ramifications though!

Tolkien, Ring-Wraiths and current events

The Wraithing Process

I was recommending to my brother, a book of literary criticism about Tolkien , and the Lord of the Rings. The book is: J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth, by Bradley J. Birzer. It is one of the best books about Tolkien and the LOTR that I have found. Here is a brief review of it over at Amazon, from Publshers Weekly:

"The past year has brought a bumper crop of spirituality-of-Tolkien books, no doubt fueled by the heightened interest generated by the new film series. Birzer's book differs somewhat from recent volumes on the Christian themes to be found in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's spirituality, says Birzer, was not generically Christian but specifically Roman Catholic: the lembas that sustains the company represents the Eucharist; Galadriel and Elbereth exemplify traits of the Virgin Mary; and the company looks to the restoration of a kingdom similar to the Holy Roman Empire. The best chapter of Birzer's study explores how Tolkien's "sanctifying myth" was informed by such Roman Catholic beliefs; Tolkien told a Jesuit friend, for example, that the trilogy was "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." Other chapters place Tolkien more generally within the usual canon of 20th-century Christian humanists, including his on-again, off-again friend, C. S. Lewis. Birzer is a fine writer who does a wonderful job of integrating primary sources such as letters, reminiscences and journals into his text; he also includes glimpses of unpublished materials, such as a scuttled LOTR chapter about Sam, as well as Tolkien's little-known attack on Lewis, "The Ulsterior Motive." This is, overall, a fine tribute to the man who, Birzer suggests, "resuscitated the notion that the fantastic may tell us more about reality than do scientific facts."

Also have been reading J.R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey. In one of his chapters, The Lord of the Rings, Concepts of Evil, Shippey does a detailed look at Ring-Wraiths, also known as the Nazgul. Something he said here, helped me with my own political analysis:

"The Ringwraiths work for the most part not physically but psychologically, paralysing the will, disarming all resistance. This may have something to do with the process of becoming a wraith yourself. That can happen as a result of a force from outside. As Gandalf points out, explaining the Morgul-knife, if the splinter had not been cut out, 'you would have become a wraith under the dominion of the Dark Lord'. But more usually the suspicion is that people make themselves into wraiths.

They accept the gifts of Sauron, quite likely with the intention of using them for some purpose they identify as good. But then they start to cut corners, eliminate opponents, to believe in some 'cause', which justifies everything they do. In the end , the 'cause', or habits they have acquired while working for the cause, destroys any moral sense and even any remaining humanity. The spectacle of the person 'eaten up inside' by devotion to some abstraction has been so familar throughout the twentieth century as to make the idea of the wraith, and the wraithing process, horribly recognizable in a non-fantastic way."

I think we can safely say that Rumsfeld and Cheney have accepted the gifts of Sauron. The wraithing process is, and has been taking place before our eyes. In Rumsfelds case he cuts corners; General Shinseki recommends 200,000 troops. Rumsfeld gets rid of him, cuts the invading force down to more like 147,000, and has been obsessed from the beginning with a lean, light, and swift,military.
Recently, Cheney was obsessed with trying to stop the Senate from banning the use of Torture by the U.S. Meanwhile, after 9/11, they were farming out suspects to be tortured in other countries like Jordan and Egypt, even Syria early on.

Thus,in the ‘good’ cause of bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East, both Cheney and Rumsfeld choose to get someone else to do the torture for them, or make prisoners get naked at Abu Ghraib, and simulate animal acts, and these habits end up destroying any moral sense and even any remaining humanity for the authors, the approvers of such acts themselves.

Bush says he is guided by God, but he stands by everything Rumsfeld does. He protects him from critics. He is, " the decider", ; he gives him continual support.
Cheney and Rumsfeld have done his bidding, the effects are more pronounced in them. But this karma will catch up with ' W'. In effect, it would appear it already has. Mr. 29%.

Well, unless they renounce the gifts of Sauron, they have no where to go except get more Wraith-like. Unfortunate. Horrible to see.

I suppose we all, at this point in time, could use a phial of Galadriel, to help light our way through these times.

Byzantium: The Decline and Fall

Byzantium: The Decline and Fall
by John Julius Norwich

Haven't been posting too much, but am amazed my blog has been around for a year now. It has evolved into sometimes scrapbook, sometimes political posting of current events, and sometimes , well odds and ends. But odds and ends that I find of interest.

Anyway I finally got back to reading Byzantium: The Decline and Fall by John Julius Norwich . Had started it a few years back, but it is the kind of book that requires sustained devoted attention. Managed to find the time now , and it is rewarding. Here is the initial editorial review over at Amazon:

"With this volume, Norwich completes his magisterial narrative history of Byzantium. As in the earlier volumes (Byzantium: The Early Centuries, LJ 3/1/89; and Byzantium: The Apogee, LJ 1/92), he seeks to rectify the negative impressions perpetuated by 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon. Norwich records the history of a brilliant civilization that endured for over 11 centuries. From the founding of Constantinople (capital of Byzantium) by the first Christian Roman emperor and Byzantium's first flowering, to its fatal weakening after the treacherous attack on Constantinople by Western knights in the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and the valiant death of the last Byzantine emperor in 1453 at the hands of the conquering Turks, Norwich has told Byzantium's story in elegant and moving prose. "

I found once I gave sustained attention to this book, it is hard to put down. A tragic story, but it fills end a part of history often neglected in the West. Norwich's narrative largely follows the tales of the various Emperors, and the problems they had to deal with in each reign. It doesn't really cover the art, literature, and culture of the decline. For that better to check out Warren Treadgold.

I think I became interested in Bzyantium from the time I first read Sailing to Bzyantium by Yeats. I was lucky enough to have taken a Classical Civ. course on Rome, at U.T., but that course only took us through the fall of the Western Empire .

Since I started reading about the Eastern Empire I have been hooked. Another 1,100 years of the Romani, and plenty to learn from and reflect upon. Anyway , I would recommend reading the first two volumes of Norwich's trilogy, before getting to this one

History, and the rubble remaining

"History? We don't know. We'll all be dead," Bush remarked in 2003.
"We cannot escape history," said Abraham Lincoln.
The living president has already sealed his reputation in history. --- from Sidney Blumenthal's latest Article, " Revolt of the Generals".

W's remarks show a pretty cavalier attitude towards 'History'. Afterall our grandchildren and great grandchildren will have to live with the consequences of the 'stuff' that happens now. Strategic and tactical errors of an empire tend to have consquences that effect future generations. In "W's shallow analysis, since his generation of Americans will be dead, it doesn't matter.

Just before reading this http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329461895-103677,00.html, I came across an article by Tom Englehardt at the Working for Change website,: http://www.workingforchange.com/index.cfm

This passges tie in with what Blumenthal and others are noting:

"How time flies and how, to quote Donald Rumsfeld's infamous phrase about looters in Baghdad, "stuff happens." Looked at in the light of history, the incipient collapse of the Bush project seems to have occurred in hardly a blink. Its brevity is, in a sense, nearly inexplicable, as unexpected as water running uphill or an alien visitation. We are, after all, talking about the ruling officials of the globe's only "hyperpower" who have faced next to no opposition at home. In these years, the Democratic Party proved itself hardly a party at all, no less an oppositional one, and the active antiwar movement, gigantic before the invasion of Iraq, has remained, at best, modest-sized ever since. At the same time, in Iraq the administration faced not a unified national liberation movement backed by a superpower as in Vietnam, but a ragtag, if fierce, Sunni resistance and recalcitrant Shiite semi-allies, all now at each other's throats.

What makes the last few years so strange is that this administration has essentially been losing its campaigns, at home and abroad, to nobody. What comes to mind is the famous phrase of cartoonist Walt Kelly's character, Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us." Perhaps it's simply the case that -- in Rumsfeldian terms -- it's hard for people with the mentality of looters to create a permanent edifice, even when they set their minds to it.

And yet, it wasn't so long ago that every step the Bush people took on either "front" came up dazzling code orange, brilliantly staving off rising political problems. As a result, it took just short of five miserable years, which seemed a lifetime, to reach this moment -- years which, historically, added up to no time at all. Is there another example of the rulers of a dominant global power -- who fancied themselves the leaders of a New Rome -- crashing and burning quite so quickly? In less than five years, Bush and his top officials ran their project into the ground. In the process, they took a great imperial power over a cliff and down the falls, without safety vests, rubber dinghies, or anyone at the bottom to fish us all out. "

Thank you Tom Englehardt. The title of his article is:
"In the rubble ; History ambushes the Bush administration".
At the risk of quoting four paragraphs here is how the article ends:

"Undoubtedly, the Bush administration is not yet out of ammunition, either figuratively or literally. Even as they stand in the rubble of their world, top Bush officials remain quite capable of making decisions that will export ruins to, say, Iran and create further chaos in the oil heartlands of the planet as well as here at home. I don't sell them short, nor do I see a Democratic Party capable of taking the reins of the globe's last standing imperial power and doing a heck of a lot better. Still, there's something consoling in knowing that history remains filled with surprises and that the short, rubble-filled, disastrous career of the Bush administration looks likely to be one of them."

Mani and Dharma stones at Rigzin Ling in northern California, just adding this as an interesting photo for whoever stumbles across the Time coast. 

October surprise

Well the disenchantment with the 'W' adminstration is fairly obvious now.With 47% of the American public strongly disapproving of Bush.

Meanwhile I was checking out the Mahablog and came across a link to an article by John Dean at http://writ.findlaw.com/dean/20060421.html, which begins : "President George W. Bush's presidency is a disaster - one that's still unfolding."

And then: "Now, in early 2006, Bush has continued to sink lower in his public approval ratings, as the result of a series of events that have sapped the public of confidence in its President, and for which he is directly responsible. This Administration goes through scandals like a compulsive eater does candy bars; the wrapper is barely off one before we've moved on to another. "

What I found intriguing about the article is that Dean concludes that faced with possible widespread defeat for the Republicans in the fall, the Bush Adminstration will likely try perhaps 3 different kinds of a 'October' surprise. I advise reading the whole article but here are the concluding paragraphs:

" What will that surprise be? It's the most closely held secret of the Administration. How risky will it be? Bush is a whatever-it-takes risk-taker, the consequences be damned.

One possibility is that Dick Cheney will resign as Vice President for "health reasons," and become a senior counselor to the president. And Bush will name a new vice president - a choice geared to increase his popularity, as well as someone electable in 2008. It would give his sinking administration a new face, and new life.

Bush's second and more likely, surprise could be in the area of national security: If he could achieve a Great Powers coalition (of Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and so on) presenting a united-front "no nukes" stance to Iran, it would be his first diplomatic coup and a political triumph.
But more likely, Bush may mount a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - hoping to rev up his popularity. (It's a risky strategy: A unilateral hit on Iran may both trigger devastating Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks in Iraq, with high death tolls, and increase international dislike of Bush for his bypass of the U.N. But as an active/negative President, Bush hardly shies away from risk.) Another rabbit-out-of-the-hat possibility: the capture of Osama bin Laden.

If there is no "October Surprise," I would be shocked. And if it is not a high-risk undertaking, it would be a first. Without such a gambit, and the public always falls for them, Bush is going to lose control of Congress. Should that happen, his presidency will have effectively ended, and he will spend the last two years of it defending all the mistakes he has made during the first six, and covering up the errors of his ways."

Thus concludes John Dean who knows a great deal of insider D.C. and the way administrations work, and also unravel.

USA terrain in the 21st century

Our World and welcome to it.

This photo is not exactly contingent with this post. I just thought it was a cool photo to add to my blog. Not sure who reads this blog, but it looks like my profile has been checked out 156 times, so somebody must be giving it a cursory glance. Well, sometimes I get lazy about posting. Sometimes just doing some of the mundane things you do during a day, is plenty enough to fill up one's time.

I was reading up on some Delay commentary , I think at Huffington Post, and came across the article at a gasp' socialist' web site.
Entitled: The resignation of Tom DeLay and the crisis of the US two-party system. By Patrick Martin, --- 7 April 2006.
It gets interesting for me at this paragraph:

"The DeLay resignation was followed by an outpouring of empty moralizing from top Democrats and Republicans, as well as the media, and suggestions that his departure marked the end of an era, bringing a halt to the period when well-heeled corporate lobbyists obtained seats at the legislative table in return for lavish gifts and campaign contributions. In many instances, lobbyists literally wrote the legislation that was then introduced by their congressional front-men."

Then it continues with:

"Corporate money has always called the shots in Washington, but the past quarter-century has seen a qualitative intensification of this process and the rise to power of a political underworld—thuggish operatives who employ vast sums of money and unscrupulous conspiratorial methods, bolstered by a servile and compliant media, to do the bidding of the super-rich.

The social roots of this phenomenon can be discerned by asking the elementary political question: who benefits? The past 25 years have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the vast majority of the American people—those who must work for a living—into the pockets of an already moneyed elite. The figures are by now well-established: in 1979, the top one percent owned about 20 percent of the national wealth; by 2004, that figure had more than doubled. The real incomes of most Americans have stagnated, while the incomes of corporate CEOs and the ruling elite have rocketed upwards.

This process has continued under Republican and Democratic presidents and Republican and Democratic Congresses, in recession and economic upswing, in war and peace. It is the fundamental socio-economic fact of modern America, although it is generally disregarded or mystified in the commentaries of the corporate-controlled media."

Furthermore the writer adds:

"Corruption is not an accidental or external aspect of this process, but rather lies at its very heart. The entire society, including its political institutions, is poisoned by the relentless drive to accumulate ever-greater private wealth in the hands of a narrow, privileged stratum.

Billionaires, of course, do not generally stoop to engage in congressional committee staff-work or legislative vote-counting. For this they employ political operatives, largely drawn from the more unscrupulous and backward sections of the middle class. (DeLay was the proprietor of a small pesticide distribution business before launching his political career.)

It is not surprising that those who choose to make their political career by assisting the wealthiest in society to grow even wealthier do not represent the highest type of human material. The occupation of providing ideological justifications for personal enrichment necessarily encourages the basest desires for profiteering and self-dealing at public expense. DeLay, Abramoff & Co. are not an aberration, but the logical outcome of the increasingly reckless and criminal plundering of the United States by the corporate elite and its two political parties."

I found this at WSWS . I don't necessarily subscribe to everything he says here, but, I think many ordinary Americans sense this is what has been going on. At some point the middle and working classes of this country are going to be hollowed out shells of their former selves, and the poltics of this country will get very strange. Even stranger than they are now.
Selah.

Came across this quote

I came across this quote:

"In some ways, you know, people that don't exist are much nicer than people that do."

---- Lewis Carroll.

Tightening the Noose

There has been a lot of coverage about Tom Delay resigning, but I have been frustrated, in searching, and trying to find out exactly what the Justice Dept. investigations unit is actually doing, i.e. what are they up to in regards to Delay. Here is some of what I have been able to glean.
This is from Media Matters:

" On March 31, former DeLay deputy chief of staff and Abramoff associate Tony C. Rudy pleaded guilty to conspiring with Abramoff to commit fraud. In his plea agreement, Rudy admitted that while working in DeLay's House leadership office, "he received money and other things of value from or at the direction of Abramoff and others, including $86,000 in payments to Liberty Consulting [a firm founded by Rudy and run by his wife, Lisa Rudy], tickets to sporting events, meals, golf and golf trips. During the same period, defendant RUDY routinely performed official acts for or at the behest of Abramoff and others, which were motivated in part by the things of value he received."

Rudy's plea agreement also reportedly implicated former DeLay chief of staff and Abramoff associate Edwin A. Buckham, whom the agreement referred to as "Lobbyist B." According to the plea agreement, while Rudy was working in DeLay's office, "Liberty Consulting received payments for service to be performed by his wife. As Rudy knew, Lobbyist B shared some clients with Abramoff. Rudy made the arrangements for payments through Abramoff and Lobbyist B." In an April 5 article, The New York Times reported that Buckham "was among Mr. DeLay's closest associates, and the Justice Department is seeking to build a conspiracy case against him [Buckham], people involved in the case said."

see also: http://mediamatters.org/items/200604050009

Then we have this from the Washington Post:

" The pending resignation of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), once one of the most powerful lawmakers in Washington, comes amid a federal criminal investigation that already has reached into his inner circle of longtime advisers.

The picture appeared to darken further last week. DeLay's former chief of staff Edwin A. Buckham, the lawmaker's closest political and spiritual adviser, was described in court documents filed by the Justice Department as someone who collaborated with the others -- Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, former DeLay deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy and former DeLay aide Michael Scanlon. They arranged payments, trips and favors that the department's investigators charged were part of an illegal conspiracy, according to the documents.

DeLay himself was formally designated as "Representative #2" in the documents, a title that cannot be considered a good omen. The lawmaker designated in the same documents as Representative #1 -- Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) -- has been cited by the Justice Department as having received "things of value" for performing official acts.

DeLay and Buckham also have not been accused of wrongdoing by federal prosecutors, and they have both asserted their innocence. But some of DeLay's official actions in Congress clearly fall within the scope of the continuing investigation: Last week's guilty plea by Rudy cites as part of the evidence of conspiracy a letter that DeLay wrote on behalf of an Abramoff client and legislation that DeLay supported on behalf of a client of Abramoff's firm.

The central legal challenge for DeLay is more likely to arise from the work of the federal task force, made up of FBI and tax agents, Interior Department investigators, and prosecutors from the Justice Department's public integrity unit. A grand jury subpoena issued by the FBI in February for records of the U.S. Family Network, a nonprofit group formed by Buckham, specifically asked for any documents related to DeLay; his wife, Christine; Buckham's lobbying firm; Rudy; and a variety of contributors to the group from among Abramoff's client list."

Ah, well, here we get at some of the kernal of a possible case they are building against Delay. But, in Sugarland this is hardly mentioned at all.
Delay prefers to portray all his problems as the liberal medias fault, and as due to what he refers to as, a ' War on Christianity'.

Actually what he has to worry about are - - " the federal task force, made up of FBI and tax agents, Interior Department investigators, and prosecutors from the Justice Department's public integrity unit."

One can only suppose he jumped ship early, to 1) avoid another indictment while in office, and 2) start assembling a larger legal team.

Meanwhile like the Dark tower of Sauron in Morder, a lot of his power has come crashing to the ground. Sic transit Mundus.

The quoted paragraphs are from a larger article by- R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer, at the Washington Post.

The Beatles: The Biography -- by Bob Spitz

Well, I realize I haven't posted for a while. Have been doing a lot of genealogical research, and I get carried away with this.

Meanwhile at the local library, I picked up The Beatles: The Biography -- by Bob Spitz. Here is the capsule review from Library Journal:

"Surprisingly, relatively few of the hundreds of Beatles books over the years comprehensively document the band's story. Spitz (Dylan: A Biography) claims to have written the definitive work, and it is certainly far more detailed than Philip Norman's Shout!, the last serious attempt by an outsider to tell the Beatles' tale. Spitz spent several years cobbling together the story from new interviews with old Beatle friends and hundreds of existing sources (including discredited John Lennon biographer Albert Goldman's archives, which may raise eyebrows). The band's family histories and early years are told with flair and fairness in unprecedented depth-this is the book's biggest contribution to Beatles scholarship. But once Beatlemania hits, Spitz loses steam: the group doesn't even invade America until well over halfway through the narrative. As familiar stories of the Beatles' prime years take over, sloppy, head-scratching errors start to creep in; certain stories ingrained in Beatles legend, such as how they arrived at the finished recording for "Strawberry Fields Forever," are ignored. With the band sinking into dysfunction, Spitz relies more heavily on sources that take a negative tone, and the book sputters to an abrupt end, ignoring the lawsuit that Paul McCartney filed against the others to dissolve their partnership formally. Despite these flaws, The Beatles emerges as the most complete chronicle of the Fab Four to date, at least until Mark Lewisohn finishes his massive three-volume Beatles biography in 2016."

I haven't finished it, but tend to agree with this review. It is hard to put down when it is describing the childhood of the Beatles, the Quarrymen, and the Hamburg era, but it does seem to run out of steam as it gets towards 1966 thru 1969. Still, the first part of the book is fascinating, and it does explore the Beatles, as a phenomena, pretty thoroughly.