Shaye Saint John

If I ever get as bad as her, I'll quit.


TWENTY4SEVEN REDUX

03:15

Venice Beach in January

Here are a few more photos from that nice sunny day at Venice Beach last month. Now I'm off to get another cup of coffee. The second one pretty much captures my mood this morning.

My favorite guy on the beach. What's not to love
about a cute muscle man in a bikini? And that smile!
The scary evil clown could take a lesson or two.

My mood this morning, and many mornings.

Play today. Right.

Lil' Dancing Boy. I wonder what his life will be like.
What the hell?! Perhaps he is following his heart.

Manifesto of the Living

Worlds apart

Shadow on the wall. Strange people haunt Venice Beach.

For more recent LA photos, start here

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dies

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Indian guru

Born around 1918 - died February 5, 2008

It seems Maharishi has been old forever. He was old then but lived all the way up to this last Tuesday. Happy travels, sir.

From the Guardian UK

"In recent years, he became disillusioned that TM had become identified with the counterculture. In 1990 he moved to the former Franciscan monastery in Vlodrop, near the German border, and began speaking only by video even to aides in the same building. Last month, he retreated into silence. "He had been saying he had done what he set out to do."

LA downtown and beyond

4.32 billion human years = 1 day of Brahma

The photos from our January trip to LA are finally up. It took me awhile but then what's three weeks in a day of Brahma? If you'd like to see them, just scroll down and start with January 15th, or view pages individually. It begins with "Notes on the fly".

Downtown LA

Letter from Uncle John

January 3, 1991

Dear Asha,


How goes the girl on the lonesome road? Any lunches these days? I haven’t been out there for quite some time but I’ll bet the traffic’s about the same as usual. Sometimes I think of the days around Seattle where we used to live, and of your mom and dad and your brother and sister and the fun we used to have in doing things. Maybe someday we’ll remember all of it and I’ll send you a copy. How would that be? Nevertheless, one time I bought a very good soup called Minestrone in an Italian place and also a delicious hamburger after hours.

In place of these wishes I could go to school and start an entirely new life. I’m still thinking about the Minn. Vets Home with its facilities and All. I should check on that with the social worker, and put on my prosthesis shoes and overcome this predicament. I could arrive there in time for the cold weather and receive all the benefits from the new year. Jesus. It would be lovely. I just pray I will.

I would go right to the U. of M. and enroll in an English Composition and a Philosophy course right away. This would give me something to hope for. At least a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in some related field – like French or Creative Writing – say Poetry would do. I could go 3 years without any questions, calling up my 15 sophomore units from Seattle U. as good. I think they would give me about 9 semester units for that work. St. John’s would be 30 and 12 Seattle U 12= 42 altogether out of 120 necessary to graduate. Anyhow, I should be glad to go back to Minnesota and stay there at the Veteran’s Home for a mere $175.00 a month if it would give me a new start on everything. I could have a cubicle and purchase new shaving gear and deodorants, bath soaps and colognes and after shaves, plus new socks and underwear plus a shirt or two and a couple pair of new slacks; say gray flannel plus dark brown tweed – HARRIS – SPORT – COAT. THE GOLDEN & BRN – TAN TIES AND REAL MONOGRAMMED LINED HANDKERCHIEFS – PLUS A LOUNGING COAT – ALSO BROWN SHOES AND SLIPPERS. AND A NEW PAIR OR FLORSHEIM BROWN WING – TIP DRESS SHOES. Real style for real money. But, I’d like to go back to my own home. Some girls have guessed at my whereabouts – with statements like – “power of attorney” – etc. That’s what I have over myself that I can give someone in case of change.

I’ll ask the I Ching again. I think the Social Worker would send me there when she found out the cost of staying there would sort of put them in a relatively different position. I’d be responsible to myself once I left, but she would have taken care of all the arrangements ahead of time. I could still have Nick take my things to Greyhound and check them to Mpls. then buy the ticket and leave a few days later. I shall tell Jean again and the doctor about Minneapolis.

I found my cap. It was on the floor next to the bed. I’ll be sure to exchange that hoop decoration for something more conventional tomorrow. The psychiatrist here doesn’t apparently care to know me at all. His comments on my wheelchair are something I should do without and I know is a trap for myself to fall into.

That place back in Minneapolis was located on Minnetonka Blvd. right on the Mississippi River. It was pretty cold there in the winter and when I went downtown on the bus it was very cold too. I don’t go many places when it’s that cold. Still, we had to go outside to the dining hall and to other things. I was just reminded of that cold when I went outdoors a while ago for a smoke. I’m watching the Michigan State U.S.C. Game. I wish I knew where I am going after I leave here. ---KAN – DANGER .63 AFTER COMPLETION


Uncle John

John Chance, June 9, 1934 - February 1, 1992



John Chance North Beach Beat poet

Ashabot

It's been a hard couple of days wrestling with the damn thing but this evening I managed to get a primitive version of my website up and running and the email fixed! One page, four images (my own), and two links all for just two really bad moods and a night of fitful sleep. I'd dance and shout about it in the street but it's dark and cold outside. So I'm telling you.

January wrap

Too many things on my mind. I'm in the middle of moving my website to an new host. I've been with Ehostpros from the beginning but never liked them. Inertia kept me tied in but January is renewal time and I finally switched to a new company, StartLogic. Before figuring out the new software I'll need. You know my motto. Leap before you look. If I don't figure it out in the next few days, my main email account will start bouncing. Lovely. Thanks, me. I already let the Driftwork site go for now. No loss there but I don't want to lose my email. Seems I have at least two main personalities, the devil may care side and then the one who has to fix the mess she leaves in her wake. That would be me.

And, in case you are on pins and needles waiting for those photos from My Trip To LA, I am working on it. Another mess she left me with because she didn't want to bother packing the camera cord and decided I could sort through everything all at once, after we got home. And I did not plan to change blog templates today. Just went down the rabbit hole again.

And finally, sometime during our week in Los Angeles, Little Etude became silent ... pause pause pause... He made it over two weeks though. Tough little fellow, that Etude. Sang his heart out. Roy, you can take down your Christmas tree now.

Weekend upwrap up

In other weekend news. Etude was silent when we got home. He was still singing when we left for our trip so I know he lasted at least two weeks and certainly longer. Goodbye, Little Etude, wherever you are.

Meat-guzzler

(I received these excerpts from DawnWatch, an animal advocacy media site.)
Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler
by Mark Bittman for the NYT

"A sea change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil.

It’s meat.

"The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.

"Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests."

Bittman also explains how factory farms contributes to global warming:

"Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word 'raising' when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

"To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days."

The article covers the impact of our meat eating on world hunger:

"Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States."

He also tells us that in meat production the use "of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people." And he notes the many other health problems caused by high meat consumption, such as "heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes." All this while, "It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources."

He discusses environmentalism and animal welfare:
"Once, these animals were raised locally (even many New Yorkers remember the pigs of Secaucus), reducing transportation costs and allowing their manure to be spread on nearby fields. Now hog production facilities that resemble prisons more than farms are hundreds of miles from major population centers, and their manure 'lagoons' pollute streams and groundwater. (In Iowa alone, hog factories and farms produce more than 50 million tons of excrement annually.)"

And he writes:
"Animal welfare may not yet be a major concern, but as the horrors of raising meat in confinement become known, more animal lovers may start to react. And would the world not be a better place were some of the grain we use to grow meat directed instead to feed our fellow human beings?"

The whole article is superb. I urge you to read it at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html

Those unfamiliar with "the horrors of raising meat in confinement" check out the photo galleries at www.FactoryFarming.com

#29

magpie and i
we are alone on opposite
sides of the glass today
then she flies away