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Avid reader, jazz musician, philosopher, chef, stone mason, carpenter, writer, painter, poet,humanist, teacher, holistic ethicist who believes consciousness and love pervade the universe, except among self-obsessed humans. I perceive the philosophical unified field to be consciousness and joy. The entire universe is composed of waves, which we surf by understanding. Worked and marched for CORE in the 60's. Built 100-ft., 80-ton sculpture on Pratt Beach, Chicago. Planted trees in Oregon. Solo canoed Illinois, Mississippi, Chicago, Rock, Missouri and Wisconsin Rivers. My big thrill as a kid was building small rockets, archery, cruising my woods and going to the Birdhouse on weekends to see the Miles Davis Quintet and many other Jazz Greats.
I was in San Francisco in '65, '66, '67, and '68. Built Burr Tillstrom's puppet theater for Kukla, Fran, and Ollie at WTTW, Channel 11, Chicago. Briefly taught stage carpentry at De Paul Univ. Technical Director one season at Oak Park Shakespeare Festival.
Played trumpet in many small jazz bands, Sextessence, Nova Express. Played on road tour with rock band and many union and studio gigs. Lived with the Rasta in Blue Mountains, Jamaica.
Drove millions of accident-free miles Over the Road in big trucks, 48 states and Canada.
Currently living alone, caring for four rescued animals, one of which a kitten I recently found 'helpless as a kitten up a tree', abandoned in a city park. He came down to my call, so we folded him into the family. Without someone to care for life makes little sense. All reason is born of the heart. As Maya Angelou wrote, "Love holds the stars in their courses."
Monday, January 16, 2012 Letter from Birmingham Jail, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
Sunday, January 15, 2012 The Chinese Sail (1 comments)
Compares and contrasts the ancient Chinese Junk with the modern Bermuda Rig.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011 FBI Says Activists Who Investigate Factory Farms Can Be Prosecuted as Terrorists by Will Potter (1 comments)
The FBI makes clear that the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is not about protecting public safety; it is about protecting corporate profits. Corporations and the politicians who represent them have repeatedly lied to the American public about the scope of this legislation, and claimed that the law only targets underground groups like the Animal Liberation Front. The truth is that this terrorism law has been slowly, methodically expanded to include the tactics of national organizations like the Humane Society of the United States.
Sunday, December 4, 2011 china syndrome in progress at fukushima (2 comments)
Architect of reactor 3 warns of massive hydrovolcanic explosion-- radioactive debris forecast worldwide, northwest Pacific threatened with contamination, Marshall Islands already receiving tons of radioactive debris...
Sunday, December 4, 2011 This Year, Send A Care Package to 40,000 Sioux at Pine Ridge Reservation (1 comments)
Your contribution, sent directly to a reservation organization--even if only a single pair of socks for a child who has none--makes a huge impact when combined with many others. The reservation organizations' needs are many and change constantly so your donations can take many forms, from school, sewing, crafts, sporting, baby, and office supplies, to toiletries, clothing, Christmas gifts, holiday items, bed, bath and kitchen linens, cold weather gear, crayons and more.
Sunday, December 4, 2011 Gifts That Say You Care, by Kristof, NYTimes
"For starters, the Web sites of the major humanitarian organizations offer alluring holiday gifts. Through the International Rescue Committee, $30 buys a flock of chickens for a needy family. At CARE, $29 gets a girl a school uniform. Through Heifer International, you can stock a fish pond for $300. With Mercy Corps, $69 can start a female entrepreneur in the sewing business." --Mr. Kristof has many links to respected organizations worldwide. Help somebody who's worse off than you this year.
Thursday, September 29, 2011 Onion's Twitter Posts Draw Scrutiny, by Jennifer Preston, NY Times (1 comments)
Starting at 10:33 a.m., The Onion's Twitter account began spewing the fake messages that began with this post: "BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building."
Ten minutes later, the Twitter account posted: "BREAKING: Capitol building being evacuated. 12 children held hostage by group of armed congressmen. #CongressHostage."
Saturday, August 27, 2011 A Letter to the Editor, by Regan McCarthy (3 comments)
Lady shines light on dark corners of the mind and body, in a humble letter to the NY Times.
"To the Editor:
Metaphorically, secrecy and privacy meet at a door: on one side is dignity, and on the other, fear. Secrets always live in fear. More practically, the body never lies: if one holds a significant personal secret, the body will experience tension wherever we somatize our fears.
We need only pay attention to our bodies when contemplating the withheld material: if we have a "cramp," a tightening of the breath, a churning of the stomach, a headache, for example, we are likely motivated by fear. We may have to hold secrets, since our fears may be realistic, but we are better served knowing why we do it in case they are not."
REGAN McCARTHY
Truro, Mass., Aug. 21, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011 Strange Death of American Revolution, by Jada Thacker
Most Americans know Jack London as the author of The Call of the Wild. Few have ever read his 1908 novel, The Iron Heel, which pits what London calls "the Oligarchy" (aka The Iron Heel) against the American working class, resulting in armed revolution.
The Oligarchy, London explains, is the ruling elite whose immense concentration of capital has empowered it to transcend capitalism itself. The Iron Heel is thus an allegorical tale of a fascist state whose hydra-headed business monopolies have seized control of all facets of production, consumption and national security.
Sunday, August 21, 2011 Copper Kettle, sung by Joan Baez
The working class Americans who moved west had no way to ship their corn to market, so they distilled it into whiskey. But the big distillers in the east, including George Washington eventually, sent in the army to tax them out of existence and competition. This song voices their sly and determined defiance.
Friday, August 5, 2011 Jesus and the moneychangers, by J. R. Hyland
Resonating through history-- Not just driving the moneylenders from the temple, but the taking of innocent life.
Saturday, July 23, 2011 This Is My Beloved, by Walter Benton (2 comments)
"April 28:
Because hate is legislated
written into the primer and the testament
shot into
our blood and brain like vaccine or vitamins
because our day is of time, of
hours and the clock-hand turns, closes the circle upon us
and black timeless night sucks us in like quicksand, receives us totally without a raincheck or
a parachute, a key to heaven or the last long look..."
"May 18:
Your words are born not spoken. Dimensional soft-vowelled words palpable to the eye or to the fingertip.
Exquisitely curved as the young that flowers conceive.
Often I have watched your lips shape words... and your tongue nudge them out
like small birds not wholly certain of their wings. Your sweetest words are those shaped ovally like plums or wild birds' eggs. And the long bright ribbons you laugh, the multitudes of hyacinth and bluebells."
--It gets much steamier.
Saturday, May 7, 2011 Wisconsin Republicans Rush Agenda Before Recalls By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republicans, in a rapid sequence of votes over the next eight weeks, plan to legalize concealed weapons, deregulate the telephone industry, require voters to show photo identification at the polls, expand school vouchers and undo an early release for prisoners.
Monday, April 25, 2011 Freeway pollution causes brain damage in mice-- Reuters
Exposure to the particles, which are too small to be captured by car filtering systems, were shown to significantly damage neurons used in learning and memory, as well as cause signs of inflammation associated with premature aging and Alzheimer's disease.
Friday, March 25, 2011 Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels, by Debora MacKenzie
Japan's damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. From NewScientist.com
Sunday, February 20, 2011 Recall Scott Walker/ Change.org
Let our representatives know we won't tolerate a Governor who is going to send Wisconsin back into the stone age. Let our representatives know that we will not tolerate a dictator as governor.
Monday, February 7, 2011 Sea Nomads
The Coral Triangle - stretching from the Solomon Islands to the waters around Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines - is the global centre of marine biodiversity, according to the environmental group WWF.
But times are changing for the nomadic people who live there and harvest the sea.
Photojournalist James Morgan is working with WWF, and spent eight months getting to know the Bajau Laut community - who for centuries have lived at sea, but are now being encouraged to settle on land and join the monetary economy.
Friday, January 14, 2011 Eco-ruin 'felled early society' , BBC
Data suggests the early civilisation exhausted precious natural resources, helping bring about its own ruin.
The study provides early evidence for cultural collapse caused - at least in part - by humans meddling with the environment, say researchers.
Monday, December 27, 2010 Of luxury cars and lowly tractors, by P. Sainath, The Hindu News
It means over a quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995. It means the largest wave of recorded suicides in human history has occurred in this country in the past 16 years.
Sunday, December 19, 2010 High levels of chromium found in Chicago-area tap water, By Michael Hawthorne, Tribune reporter (1 comments)
The cancer-causing metal made infamous by the movie "Erin Brockovich" is turning up in tap water from Chicago and more than two dozen other cities. Last year alone, records show, the U.S. Steel and Arcelor Mittal mills dumped a combined 3,100 pounds of chromium into Lake Michigan and tributaries, less than 9 miles away from Chicago's water-intake crib off 68th St.
Thursday, November 25, 2010 Shooting An Elephant, by George Orwell (1 comments)
I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 An American Thanksgiving, Skewered and Roasted, by Adam Goodheart
Winslow Homer's editors asked him for an illustration to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday that week. They may have gotten more than they'd bargained for.
"THANKSGIVING DAY, 1860 â€" THE TWO GREAT CLASSES OF SOCIETY," Homer titled the engraving. The spread is divided into two halves: on the left, "Those who have more Dinners than appetite," and on the right, "Those who have more appetite than Dinners."
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 Peace, Love and Puritanism, by David D. Hall
Why does it matter whether we get the Puritans right or not? The simple answer is that it matters because our civil society depends, as theirs did, on linking an ethics of the common good with the uses of power. In our society, liberty has become deeply problematic: more a matter of entitlement than of obligation to the whole. Everywhere, we see power abused, the common good scanted.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 Earth's Most Stunning Natural Fractal Patterns, By Jess McNally (6 comments)
trees, feathers, leaves, rivers, canyons, clouds, nautilus shells and lightning reveal a structure to matter. Cauliflower isn't just a vegetable anymore. Seeing the brachiate patterns of existence enables us to harness the lightning.
Monday, September 20, 2010 A 10 Year Checkup on Global Goals, by Andrew Revkin
A concise, thoughtful, authoritative look at the way we might still have a future.
"Here's a very rough first cut of what eight such goals for the world's top billion for the coming 20 years could look like."
Friday, August 20, 2010 Sorting out lies and misremembering, by Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (2 comments)
Yes, Rob, serendipity is fun. While a group is discussing justice on another article, McClellan writes on prosecutorial discretion, aka lies, in the Blagoevitch case and Senate races. Reminds me of the great Royko.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 People Before Profits, the Hindu Newspaper of India
It is natural that in a populous country such as India, alienation of land is bound to be contentious as people are sought to be displaced in favour of profit-oriented extractive industries with no long-term stakes in the environment.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 When Ideas Have Sex, Matt Ridley on TED
Accelerating innovation through exchange of ideas and technologies:
trade is older than farming.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 Sowing Traditional Knowledge, by Evaggelos Vallianatos, Truthout/OpEd (6 comments)
Our organic farmers are the means by which we expand the frontiers of our biological diversity and variety of our foods, making the unambiguous connection between democracy, health, farming and food.
Saturday, June 26, 2010 The Truth About Vegetarianism, by Lierre Keith (1 comments)
The Mayan concept of "kas-limaal", mutual indebtedness, may present a solution to the ethical dilemma of food.
Sunday, May 23, 2010 Court won't review uranium-mining permit, by Sue Major Holmes
A federal appeals court has refused to review a ruling upholding a federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision that will allow a company to leach uranium at an aquifer that supplies drinking water for 15,000 Navajos in northwestern New Mexico.
Monday, April 26, 2010 Chimps 'feel death like humans', BBC (2 comments)
Research documents similar rituals and emotions shared by chimps and humans. Some suggest human rights for chimps.
Friday, April 23, 2010 John Dominick Crossan, by wikipedia (1 comments)
An authoritative view of Christianity by a critic of imperial empires.
John Dominic Crossan (b. Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, 1934) is an Irish-American religious scholar known for co-founding the controversial Jesus Seminar and a former Catholic priest. Crossan is a major figure in the fields of biblical archaeology, anthropology and New Testament textual and higher criticism.
Friday, April 9, 2010 Somali Islamists Ban BBC, by Peter Greste
China censors the net, the Pope doesn't like the NY Times and Somalia bans the BBC. They're all showing their weakness.
Friday, April 9, 2010 Confederate History...West Virginia formed 1863 anti-slavery, by Allen C. Guelzo
And why is Virginia's governor celebrating secession, when 31 of Virginia's westernmost counties in 1861 balked at joining the Confederacy and formed, first, a pro-Union government-in-exile, and then a completely new state of West Virginia in 1863?
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 Haiku of Matsuo Basho
On Buddha's birthday
a spotted fawn is born
just like that.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 Haiku of Matsuo Basho
On Buddha's birthday
a spotted fawn is born
just like that.
Saturday, April 3, 2010 letter from birmingham jail
Dr. Martin Luther King, writing from a jail cell about ideals and their achievement.
Sunday, March 21, 2010 Perils of Plastic--- by Richard Harth, Science Daily
Risks to Health and Environment
Now Rolf Halden warns, "We are at a critical juncture and cannot continue under the modus that has been established. If we're smart, we'll look for replacement materials, so that we don't have this mismatch -- good for a minute and contaminating for 10,000 years."
Thursday, March 4, 2010 Adm. Mullen urges more 'Soft Power' (2 comments)
Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen urges more soft power in Afghanistan.
Sunday, March 8, 2009 Private Prison Corp. Profits Soar
Despite Recession or because of it, Profits are up at private prison corp. The only union GOP likes: prison guards' union.
Saturday, March 7, 2009 mercury toxicity (2 comments)
Increased incidence of anti-social, disoriented, hostile, paranoid psychotic behavior widespread in US due to Bush legalizing increased mercury in environment.
Monday, December 10, 2007 Gang-Rape in Green Zone, Halliburton Cover-Up
US girl is gang-raped in Green Zone, left in shipping container 24 hours.
What would you do if this was your daughter?
