Some time ago

There will be no Christmas poem this year,
appearances not to the contrary.
Friends rebelled against this separatist cheer.
No Jewish joyous nor Muslim merry,
no agnostic ironics such as happy happy.
Careless friends can reside in caring less;
ignorant ones flail in a theological mess.
And I? Well I am looking forward to spring,
wishing you also rebirth and renewal.

Brudda's Day

Father's, Mother's, Sis? That's it. Brother's Day!
Why wouldn't there be such a lovely thing?
To celebrate what we shared, we can play.
Look, here are some things in recall I sing.

Hand-me-down blue jeans that never did fit;
my clean car coat borrowed now dirty back;
the fire cracker you handed me lit;
my underwear you pulled up my young crack!

Movies you took me but didn't wait up.
The brush offs made that you were much older,
like you were The Bro and I a lost pup.
With your friends to me you were way colder.

Now bygones are bygones--I these forgives,
to give you this Day and send such missives.

What is art?

Art provides a direct sense of pleasure.
We see skill and virtue in creation.
Its genetic style is part its treasure.
Its fresh- and newness awake elation.

Art critiques and kudos do generate.
Mimesis we experience as real.
Its highlight not from life we venerate.
Its thingness-maker the two now we seal.

Art can strongly our emotions incite.
We can with heart and head with it noodle.
Its debt to tradition it gets so right.
It's now Experience more than doodle.

But think that art's in my eye, the holder?
I just like or don't as I grow older.
___
* Inspired by a review of Denis Dutton’s 2009 book, "The Art Instinct" http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-caveman.

Unique-self description in 170 characters or less

Left-handed male Chinese-American phenomenologist in Italy with health records in six languages defying doctors' diets and six decades--yes, I eat  cheese and salami.

Impotence

As the great bard said so eloquently . . .

A quiver full of zingers
pressages a quick retreat.
Lest the round missive's return
strike the solid battlement,
the pate who dared fire first.

"Henry IX the Older," Act II, Sc. 3

Letter to a friend

Thanks for the link to Bollyn. It has opened up a number of questions for me which I am not sure I can answer. The key problem for me is that I can't get a balanced overview of all of this. It seems each writer/authority that has gotten into these things has his or her counterpart to rebut what has been asserted.

I will continue to dig further, but in general, what is being talked about is something at a level and complexity that I can do nothing about, except shoot my mouth off once I formulate a well reasoned and informed opinion. But even that is self serving. I am no world changer or idealist any longer, although at one time I thought, egoistically, I was.

All of the issues that Bollyn and others raise require cross-checking to a nit's ass degree before agreeing or disagreeing. Any one of his paragraphs could use a fact checker . . . an endless and in the end fruitless task.

No one changes their beliefs in the face of facts. And no one decides or concludes without emotions.

I am sorry to say this, because I thought differently for so many years, but the world is going to hell conspiracies or not.

Typical of the brouhaha in things like the Jewish Lobby, just to take one subject, here is an example of the endless go-rounds to interpret/understand what someone else has said/wrote that someone has taken issue with.

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/20/the_israel_lobbys_role_in_american_politics

So what's one to do? Here are some conclusions I recently came up with.

+ Give everyone a gun in the US. Age to qualify, per recent experimental evidence, 4.5 years old, sized and juvenilized (sp?) for age-appropriate play. Stand back. Watch what happens. "Teach 'em early 'bout their rites!"

+ Stop with the shock seeing mothers breast-feed--anywhere. Leave mothers and their children out of your Puritan outrage. Go have a tantrum elsewhere.

+ God allowed humans to make up different religions and moral rules because s/he wanted to see how only the chosen ones worked it all out. So far, disappointment or marvelous diversity. Let's err on the positive side and celebrate and travel more.

+ Stop harassing whilstleblowers. Focus on the substance of those whose cover has been blown, and what they actually did or did not do.

+ Different people are different. Love them or leave them alone. At the very least they are as different as you are to them! Want them bothering you, or more? So, get along and get on with life.

One thing that seems to work always is to beat anyone's sorry ass who doesn't agree with you or do what you say.

Depending upon your reaction to my pithy conclusions just above, prepare your sorry ass for this terrorist (I know, this sentence will get picked up and maybe so will I . . . bring 'em on!)

. . . in the wind?

Neil Kornze, Principal Deputy Director, BLM:

Attention: 1004-AE26*

I support the recommendations in the standard NRDC letter to you and your agency re proposed rules for regulating oil and gas fracking on our public lands.  I assume you have received a number of these, and so you don't need another of the same to consider. However . . .

The NRDC letter in part reads as follows. "Those strict safeguards should . . . ensure that oil and gas companies are held accountable for contamination they cause. . . ."

Holding companies accountable has in the past seen decision makers in those companies and the regulatory agents they have worked with walk away from the messes they have had a direct hand in causing.

Consistent with the principle that corporations are people and that our government is made up of people who are conscious actors charged with protecting American land and the American people, the rules and regulations should provide for criminalizing contamination and other wrongdoing at least to the extent that real, named persons are tried in a court of law and if found responsible, they go to jail. If environmental damages are judged to take eons to neutralize or dissipate, prison terms as punishment should last as long.

Again, I support the recommendations in the NRDC letter. But in addition, please put some teeth into the bite of accountability.  Leadership on the side of right and the justified takes us beyond our narrow roles in a daily work routine. Get out there and make something important happen, something that perhaps even goes beyond fracking and business (profit's) interests.

---
* See also http://www2.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing and
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/newsroom/2013/june/nr_06_07_2013.html and  http://www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/wy/pavillion/EPA_ReportOnPavillion_Dec-8-2011.pdf .