Previous Ruminations

What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. 

Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. 

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.

Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. 

The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father could never have imagined.

Milton Mayer, "They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45" (University of Chicago Press, 1955)

Opposite Day
by
Dawn Baldwin

We're entering year five of opposite day in America.

You know the drill: More mercury emissions means cleaner water. More sulfur and carbon dioxide in the air means clearer skies. Cutting old growth trees means creating healthier forests. Less money for expensive education programs means better education for every child. Abolishing initiatives for equal pay and restricting reproductive freedom is pro-family. Waging pre- emptive war is defending the "culture of life." Imprisoning suspects indefinitely without due process is protecting our democracy. Being pro-war, pro-gun, and pro-death penalty is being not only Christian, but pro-life.

Millennium Jesus is a pumped-up warrior brandishing the Bible as a weapon with which to beat folks into submission, or more succinctly, damn them to hell. (Not to be confused with the Historical Jesus, a pacifist who taught his followers to love their neighbors as they loved themselves.)

Unlike their historical predecessors, the new conservatives are hyper-consumers who deplete the world's resources with impunity, ravage the environment without concern, and wage war without either provocation or planning. The new morality defines non-marital and homosexual sex as sin, uttering a four-letter word as a crime, and torture of "detainees" as a necessary tactic. The Geneva Conventions are dismissed as quaint and civil liberties an indulgence we can ill-afford if we are to defend our way of life.

Making the same assertions over and over again, regardless of empirical evidence, is praised as resolute leadership while pointing out the facts is scorned and dismissed as "reality-based thinking."

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the opposite of reality-based thinking was considered delusional thinking, certainly not something to take pride and comfort in when displayed by civic and military leaders. Magical thinking belonged in the realm of children.

Children are masters at magical thinking; they can suspend disbelief and argue quite convincingly that it is nighttime in the middle of the morning or that they are SpongeBob and you are Patrick or that their good friend Gwendolyn is living in the closet, which is actually a portal to Shirt World. In fact, my son introduced the concept of "opposite day" to our household when he was five. On opposite day, I would be him and he would be me and everything we said would be the opposite of what we actually meant. It was magical thinking at its hilarious best.

My son is nine now. He pays attention to the news. He asks questions. Four years later, opposite day has a new and uncomfortable resonance in our household. And I must say the hilarity is much diminished.

When my fourth grader, immersed in the very reality-based world of decimals and Harriet Tubman, long division and the Space Station, starts noticing inconsistencies and asking questions, what do I say? Do I tell him that the President is just a magical thinker, kind of like he himself was back when he was five? Do I answer his blank stare with the reassurance that reality-based thinking is just out of style right now, but it's sure to come back in vogue eventually?

We've been "at war" for a third of his life, nearly all of his memory. Magical thinking isn't much of a consolation. Not when he hears a radio report of another car bombing, or asks how many Iraqis have been killed. Nor does it answer the burning questions, exploding like popcorn in his growing mind: Why? Why? Why?

In a bracing intersection of schoolwork and current events, my son was recently required to read "The Emperor's New Clothes" as part of a Worldly Wise vocabulary lesson.

In the fable by Hans Christian Anderson the Emperor is duped by a tailor who appeals to his vanity, telling him that the suit of clothes he will make will be the finest in all the world. The Emperor's desire to have the finest suit of clothes in all the world is so great that he does not let reality stand in the way of fulfilling this desire. When the tailor presents him with invisible clothes, he wears them proudly, demanding that his ministers admire their beauty and applaud their craftsmanship. For their part, the ministers are afraid to disagree with the emperor not only because they want to keep their jobs, but also because to deny the beauty of the emperor's invisible clothes would be tantamount to admitting they have bad taste. So they tell the Emperor only what he wants to hear-that his clothes are the most exquisite they have ever seen.

Before the Emperor presents himself to the townspeople, officers of the palace go from house to house making sure everyone will turn out to cheer the Emperor and applaud his new outfit. No mention must be made of the fact that the Emperor is dressed only in his underwear. As the Emperor makes his way through the streets, the townspeople cheer and applaud as instructed. All goes well until a small child not reached by the palace officers calls out the truth: "Look!" he cries. "The Emperor has no clothes!"

And with that the spell is broken. The townspeople, able to sustain the lie no longer, take up the child's cry. Ultimately even the Emperor is forced to look down at himself and acknowledge the reality of his condition.

My son reserved his harshest judgment for the ministers, who lied to the Emperor just to save their own necks. But he considered the Emperor unbelievably stupid. He couldn't imagine a leader wanting his closest advisors to lie to him.

"At least the little kid was willing to speak up and tell the guy the truth." He giggled. To my fourth grader, the idea of walking around town in your skivvies was over-the-top in its hilarious and terrifying particularities.

In 2005, let's not be content to take shelter in the coward's way. Let's resolve not to be tailors, or ministers, or palace officers, or even townspeople. Let's follow the lead of the little kid. Let's honor reality-based thinking by speaking truth to power. Whether we want to believe it or not, every moment the truth is silent, the lie grows stronger. And thus through our silence we participate in our own undoing.

My nine-year-old deserves better. Don't we all?

Dawn Baldwin (dawn@wimmerbaldwin.com) is a safety and environmental consultant and writer living in Memphis, TN.

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Goering, April 18, 1946, while awaiting the Nuremberg trials.

On EGO

   I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination. What we really are is, first of all, the whole of our body. And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment. Obviously a body requires air, and the air must within a certain temperature range. The body also requires certain kinds of nutrition. So in order to occur the body must be on a mild and nutriative planet with just enough oxygen in the atmosphere spinning regularly around in a harmonious and rythmical way near a certain kind of warm star.

   That arrangement is just as essential to the existence of my body as my heart, my lungs, and my brain. So to describe myself in a scientific way, I must also describe my surroundings, which is a clumsy way getting around to the realization that you are the entire universe. However we do not normally feel that way because we have constructed in throught an abstract idea of our self. 

Alan Watts

KURT VONNEGUT AT 80

quotes from a David Hoppe interview

I don't want to belong to a country that attacks little countries. I don't want to belong to that kind of a country.  I wrote a piece for 7 Stories Press in New York. They're about to publish a book of anti-war posters by a guy nobody's heard of before -- he's a pretty good artist and so I was asked to write a piece for it. 

(reading)
"These anti-war posters by Micah Ian  are reminiscent in spirit of works by artists like Kathe Kollwitz and Georg Grosz and on and on during the 1920's, when it was becoming ever more evident that the infant German democracy was about to be murdered by psychopathic personalities -- hereinafter P.Ps -- the medical term for smart, personable people who have no conscience. P.P.s are fully aware of how much suffering their actions will inflict on others but do not care. They cannot care.

"The classic medical text about how such attractive leaders bring us into unspeakable calamities is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. An American P.P. at the head of a corporation, for example, could enrich himself by ruining his employees and investors and still feel as pure as the driven snow. A P.P., should he attain a post hear the top of our federal government, might feel that taking the country into an endless war with casualties in the millions was simply something decisive to do today. So to bed.

"With a P.P., decisivenesss is all. Or, to put it another way, we now have a Reichstag fire of our own. These people are around and do rise. Women are attracted to them. I mean, this is a defect, but women are attracted to them because they are so confident. They really don't give a fuck what happens -- not even to themselves. But this is a serious defect and, no, we haven't been invaded and conquered by Martians. We have been conquered by psychopathic personalities who are attractive.

"Technology has fucked us up in many ways. (The computer revolution) has allowed white collar criminals to do what the Mob would have loved to do -- put a pawn shop and a loan shark in every home! 

"Life asks us for this and asks us for that: Go get yourself some food. You have tasks, it turns out, in order to get satisfied. But you don't have to do them now. You can sit at home and it's simply done to you. So we're not terribly interesting animals anymore."

[You've talked about how the Bush Administration seems driven by revenge.] 
"He's telling stories. It turns out this is the simplest of all stories to tell. I mean, I want to hold attention when I write something. What he wants to be is interesting. And revenge is interesting. I've said there are two radical ideas that have been introduced into human thought. One of them is that energy and matter are pretty much the same sort of stuff. That's Einstein. The other is that revenge is a bad idea. It's an enormously popular idea but, of course, Jesus came along with the radical idea of forgiveness. That was radical. If you're insulted, you have to square accounts. So this invention by Jesus is as radical as Einstein's."

[You've placed a high premium on what you call decency.]
"One kid said he had the key to all my books and he put it in a sentence. He said, 'Love may fail but courtesy will prevail.' Love does fail all the time, you know, and it makes people vicious."

"Psychopathic personalities tend to give courtesy a bad rap. They find it weak.
They are decisive. They are gonna do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid."

[You've used satire as a tool to defend against the world's insanity. Can it also work to change things?]
"I guess it works some. Just telling people, 'You are not alone. There are a lot of others who feel as you do.' We're a terribly lonesome society. For all I know, all societies are. You can make a few new friends, that's all. You can't change history. History is happening to us now. George Bush has hydrogen bombs if he needs them. It really matters who's around and who's holding attention. I don't think television will let anybody else hold attention. During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in -- and which we lost -- every respectable artist in the country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high."

"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed  by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

    -----Frederick Douglass

WHAT WILL YOU BE DRINKING TODAY....??       WATER VS. COKE!

WATER:  75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.
In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is often mistaken for hunger.

Even MILD dehydration will slow down one's metabolism as much as 3%.
One glass of water shut down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a U-Washington study.

Lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.
Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could
significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers.

A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble
with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a
printed page.

Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%,
plus it can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79%, and one is 50% less
likely to develop bladder cancer.

  =====================================================================

COKE:

  In many states the highway patrol carries two gallons of Coke in their vehicles to remove blood from the highway after a car accident.

You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of coke and it (the steak) will be gone in two
days.

To clean a toilet: Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl and let the "real thing" sit for one hour, then flush clean. The citric acid in Coke removes stains from vitreous china.

To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers: Rub the bumper with a
crumpled-up piece of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola.

To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour a can of Coca-Cola
over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion.

To loosen a rusted bolt: Applying a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola to the rusted bolt for several minutes.

To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of  Coca-Cola into the baking pan, wrap  the ham in aluminum foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is  finished, Remove the foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown gravy.

To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of coke into a load of greasy clothes, add detergent, and run through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola will help loosen grease stains.   It will also clean road haze from your windshield.

  The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. Its Ph is 2.8. It will
dissolve a nail in about 4 days.

To carry Coca-Cola syrup (the concentrate) a commercial truck must use Hazardous material place cards reserved for highly corrosive materials.

The distributors of coke have been using it to clean the engines of
their trucks for about 20 years!

"The Pause that Corrodes!"

Researcher Doug McVay from Common Sense for Drug Policy culled these tapes from Richard Nixon's Oval Office rants about drugs.

From the Weed Screed, May 26, 1971:

"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."

In a previously released rant, Nixon and Billy Graham gnash and froth over how Jews control the media. How can most Jews be psychiatrists and still control the media? Nixon does not explain.

But he does explain many other things in these drug tapes, including the insidious nexus between drugs, homosexuality, communism and, of course, Jews.

The excerpts begin with the Nixon doctrine on why marijuana is much worse than alcohol: It is because people drink "to have fun" but they smoke marijuana "to get high." This distinction was evidently enormously significant to Nixon, because he repeats it twice.

In an excruciating sequence from Sept. 9, 1971, Nixon is meeting with former Pennsylvania governor Raymond P. Shafer. Shafer heads a presidential commission on drug policy that Nixon has heard might be flirting with the notion of recommending the decriminalization of marijuana.

"You're enough of a pro," Nixon tells Shafer, "to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we're planning to do, would make your commission just look bad as hell."

Shafer begins to stammer. Nixon appears to be telling his commission, in advance, what to conclude.

If there is any doubt about this, Nixon erases it instantly. He instructs Shafer not to seek input from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which he seems to think is soft on drugs, apparently because it is filled with, you know, psychiatrists:

"As an old prosecutor, I don't mind somebody putting it in J. Edgar Hoover's hands, but I come down very hard on the side of putting it in, uh, hardheaded doctors, rather than a bunch of muddle-headed psychiatrists."

Shafer can barely get a word in edgewise.

"They're all muddle-headed," Nixon says. "You know what I mean?"

The governor's discomfort is palpable. You can almost hear him hooking a finger in his collar.

Nixon continues, making things perfectly clear: "But anyway, the thing to do now is to alert the country to the problem and say now, this far, no farther, and I think that's what you want to do, take a strong line."

Suddenly, people start getting up. The meeting is over. Before Shafer knows what hits him, the president is pushing him out the door, with a gift of golf balls and cuff links.

Eventually, Shafer's commission would recommend decriminalization. The Nixon White House was appalled, understandably: Nixon saw drugs as a threat to the vitals of the republic -- right up there, hand in hand, with the scourge of homosexuality.

Nixon expounds on this in a lengthy monologue on May 13, 1971. On this day, he makes it clear that he does not like gay people. Northern California, he says, has gotten so "faggy" that "I won't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco."

Nixon loves this subject. He is nearly unstoppable on it. His top aides H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are in the room, but they barely speak beyond monosyllabic sycophancies. It takes the president a while to get to the point, which begins with his review of a popular TV sitcom he has just watched, apparently for the first time:

"Archie is sitting here with his hippie son-in-law, married to the screwball daughter. . . . The son-in-law apparently goes both ways."

Nixon seems to have concluded, against all evidence, that Meathead is bisexual. Possibly it is the length of his hair. Another character in the show, Nixon reports, is "obviously queer. He wears an ascot, and so forth."

The president is outraged that this filth should appear on TV:

"The point that I make is that, goddamn it, I do not think that you glorify on public television homosexuality. You don't glorify it, John, anymore than you glorify, uh, whores."

The president asserts that America is in jeopardy from this Archie Bunker gay thing:

"I don't want to see this country to go that way. You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates."

Ehrlichman interrupts to reassure his boss. Socrates, he says, "never had the influence that television had."

Precisely, precisely. Nixon is on a roll, lecturing like a history professor:

"Do you know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. . . . You know what happened to the popes? It's all right that popes were laying the nuns."

Someone laughs nervously. Nixon bulls on, not a hint of humor in his voice.

"That's been going on for years, centuries, but when the popes, when the Catholic Church went to hell in, I don't know, three or four centuries ago, it was homosexual. . . . Now, that's what happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France. And let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn it, they root them out, they don't let 'em hang around at all. You know what I mean? I don't know what they do with them."

"Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. Not if they can catch it, they send them up. You see, homosexuality, dope, uh, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing it. They're trying to destroy us."

Well, that was 31 years ago, and  the   Jew-homo-doper-Commie-shrink-lefty-pope cabal has not, to date, destroyed us. Nixon seems to have been wrong on this one.

Of course, it's not the first time he was wrong. Yes, he was a crook. No, it wasn't a third-rate burglary. And yes -- we do still have Dick Nixon to kick around. Apparently, thanks to his tapes, forever and ever and ever.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

. . . in these troubled times, we need to recall the wisdom of the past.

The Wisdom of Will Rogers

Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier'n puttin' it back in.

If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure its still there.

If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try ordering someone else's dog around.

Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.

There's two theories to arguing with a woman.
Neither one works.

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

Never slap a man who's chewing tobacco.

The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back in your pocket.

Don't squat with spurs on.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Always drink upstream from the herd.

When you're throwing your weight around, be ready to have it thrown around by somebody else.

Outraged by American military intervention in the Philippines, Mark Twain wrote this and sent it to Harper's Bazaar. This women's magazine rejected it for being too radical, and it wasn't published until after Mark Twain's death, when World War I made it even more timely. It appeared in Harper's Monthly, November 1916.


THE WAR PRAYER

by Mark Twain

        It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun.

        Daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by.

        Nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while.

        In the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

        It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

        Sunday morning came-next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreams-visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!-then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory!

        With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths.

        The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation -- "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!"

        Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was that an ever--merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory.

        An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting.

          With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

        The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said 

        "I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention.

        "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import-that is to say, its full import.

        For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of-except he pause and think.

        "God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer.
        Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer?
        No, it is two--one uttered, the other not.
        Both have reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications,
        the spoken and the unspoken.

        Ponder this-keep it in mind, If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

        "You have heard your servant's prayer-the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it-that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly?

        God grant that it was so!
        You heard these words:
        'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!'

        That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary.  When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory-must follow it, cannot help but follow it.

         Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer.

         He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

        "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.

        O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord.

        Blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

        We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause)

        "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."

        It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

submitted by Stefan Ponek

THE QUEST

A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt. He said, "I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one." The grandson asked him, "Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?" The grandfather answered, "The one I feed."

An Open Letter to the American People
by Ron Kovic

September 14, 2001

Dear Friends,

My heart and soul weeps with everyone in America right now. I was deeply saddened by the terrible tragedy that occurred on Sept 11. I didn't sleep much again last night, as it's been for me, and I'm sure so many others since Tuesday. I wonder if we will ever sleep "normally" again?

I have thought about it a lot and I am deeply disheartened by the blind patriotism, hatred and desire for revenge that I see growing more and more in this country each day. Resorting to violence and warfare is a great mistake. The painful anguish resulting from this senseless act of violence stirs in all of us a desire for swift retribution. I strongly believe that to move in this direction will lead usinto a terrible and disastrous war which we as a people and a nation, may never recover from.

It is a dark and dangerous time in America, and I, in good conscience, will never support such an act of madness! We seem to have learned nothing from Vietnam, and those of us who have come to understand through great suffering the awful waste and deep immorality of war, are not being listened to. Those of us who have found that love and forgiveness are more powerful than hatred are not being heard. We remain invisible, isolated and alone, voices in the wilderness in a country that has truly gone mad.

I encourage all of you to raise your voices on behalf of peace and non-violence everywhere. I love this country so much that I don't want to see it go through the senselessness and agony of war ever again.

With love and a sincere hope for peace!

Ron Kovic

recommended web sites:

http://www.moveon.org
http://www.indymedia.org
http://www.internationalanswer.org

MAKING MUSIC WITH WHAT YOU HAVE LEFT

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches.

To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an unforgettable sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play. By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap -it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do. People who were there that night thought to themselves: "We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another violin or else find another string for this one."

But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get
new sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done. He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the way of life-not just for artists but for all of us. So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

contributed by Stefan Ponek

Radio

by R. Taylor

We have driven through the long city, speaking of how the country grows apart and may not hold together. It's said there is nothing to be lived up to. And we are in my driveway.

The trees are heavy with darkness as also our breathing is, and the death-sweat of late August is on the land. Therefore, we smoke and listen.

My fingers on the knob, working to crack a public safe, move through thousands of miles, many lives: lightning strikes in Kansas and we hear it. We know the prairie is flashing and see a dog run under a farmhouse there.

There is lightning also over the Gulf as we listen to a quartet in Mexico. Their voices are mustached and come from a hundred years back, slowly, through the hot night: Ramon, I feel the sheets stick to the sweat of your back as you turn, frightening a mouse, in your room above the cantina.

We sweep the country many times, can see the poses they take in the filling stations and bedrooms of Memphis when they hear what we are hearing, can see the foggy lakes and desert places lightly tremble with vibrations looking for any receiver.

And we feel good believing that when the continent is outlined in the red lights that burn from radio towers, there are ones in their cars at the crossroads and in night-lighted rooms, who see us in my driveway, dreaming toward the sky.