Solstice in Las Vegas

We're leaving tomorrow for Las Vegas. It just seemed like the appropriately jaded place to be this year during the Christmas holidays including the Winter Solstice, my favorite day of the season. The exact moment of the solstice this year will be on Tuesday, December 21, at 7:42 A.M. EST (12:42 UT) but, for me, it defines the season. So, wherever you are and whatever you do during these last days of the year, may you do it with people you love.

Tao of the day

I am restless tonight. Going in circles. So I did an I Ching. My question, what is the Tao of the moment? I got #9 (Taming Power of the Small) "Dense clouds, no rain" changing to #61 (Inner Truth) "a bird's foot over a fledgling; the idea of brooding". That pretty much covers it.

I've had photos of a tiny bamboo garden on my website for the last few years. Occasionally someone writes for permission to use them but last week, a guy emailed from Belgium and asked if I have any high resolution images of the bamboo. I didn't but, I just happened to be going to Oregon in a few days, so I offered to take some when I was there. Naturally it was raining in Oregon. Naturally, I didn't bring my tripod. Bummer. Balancing an umbrella in slow light resulted in a lot of blurry photos. Naturally, I took about 600 pictures so there's a few I can send, in spite of everything. I love bamboo so I may eventually add a Bamboo Garden page to my photofiles. In the meantime...

Wrapping gifts in the presence of a cat

Cat in a box
Here's a little holiday tip you'll want to file away and pass along. It's the definitive step-by-step guide to one of the more demanding tasks faced by cat lovers the world over. Good luck.

Animal Rights Day

Sorry for the graphic nature of the photos. I know they're disturbing. It has taken me a long time to be able to face them myself. I don't generally force them on people like this but I'm posting them today in conjunction with Animal Rights Day to underscore the seriousness of the problem. Tomorrow, things will be back to normal (whatever that is.)

Today is International Animal Rights Day. Light a candle or two. Write a letter. Do something nice for a friend. Read the declaration then, please, sign it. 





Slaughterhouses are also torture chambers. Here's an excerpt of a slaughterhouse employee published by the Washington Post:

"The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren't.

They blink. They make noises, he said softly. The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around. Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. They die, said Moreno, piece by piece..."

International Day for Animal Rights

Friday, December 10th, is the 7th annual International Animal Rights Day (IARD). People all over the world will be gathering in candlelight vigils calling for the recognition of the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights. Count me in. I'm lighting a candle or three in my little room.

UDAR excerpt:
"Ultimately, the rights of animals threaten the freedom of some human beings to use them as they see fit, or to further their own particular ends. The arguments against the rights of animals withstand neither logical nor ethical scrutiny because they are the rearguard action of a defeated, specious philosophy.

The rights of human beings have been won at the expense of the privileges of the rich and the powerful, and in the face of their resistance. The source of resistance to this emancipation of animals is not reason or justice, but a false notion of human self-interest."

So? A candle. Big whoop. What difference can it possible make? But, in spite of this mocking inner voice, I'm doing it anyway, joining in spirit with others who believe that in an ethical and humane society animals need and deserve rights as well.

UDAR excerpt:
"Science, as much as experience, teaches us that it is no longer possible to assume that animals are mere machines, or bundles of instinct and reflex: they may flourish in freedom or languish under oppression just as we do. We may no longer seek refuge in ignorance."

"There will come a day when such men as myself will view the slaughter of innocent creatures as horrible a crime as the murder of his fellow man. Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and
its beauty". ~ Albert Einstein

Vote switching software

I keep wondering how many years will it take for the dirty truth about the Bush Administration to finally reach the street. Anyone with half a brain already knows he's a wingnut fraud, but the juicy details about stuff like this usually take generations to work free of suppression and make it to the surface. By then, of course, it's seen merely as "history" and who gives a shit about history? Only smart people.

I'm encouraged by some recent mumblings about a signed affidavit from a NASA programmer regarding vote switching software he was commissioned to write supposedly for a Republican Florida politician and long time member of the Bush family mob. Is it too much to pray for a long shot miracle that would expose the neocon dirty dealings, void the election and kick Bush and the rest of the neocons to the curb and directly to jail? Yeah....probably, but it's a cold and windy night and the house is creeking like an old boat. It's a perfect time for dreaming.

Little red notebook

I've choked on my intention to post unedited notebook entries, at least from the little red, psychotic notebook. Maybe I'll try another one later but that's it for this one. There are limits, even if only ones imposed by the ego. Now I can just go back to worrying someone will find it after I'm dead or when I'm in the bathroom, brushing my teeth.

I read from After Hours at an open mike last night and afterwards a guy asked to buy it from me. I almost said no because, it's really a beta version. I'm in the process of adding more material. It was progress for me, just to say yes. After all, more pages or not, it was a fair deal. He liked the poems and offered the cover price for the zine, three dollars. Hell, it's a deal at ten times that. It's a hand-made, limited edition filled with excellent, original poetry and interesting images. We were both happy.

Two birds on a snowy fence

What is a good beginning?

Excerpts from the little red notebook, circa 199?.
Note: As soon as I committed myself to this project I found I had many important things to do; spray fixative on some photos I'm turning into refrigerator magnets, re-feed the birds. They have already consumed large quantities of seed this morning, but hey, it's cold out. Prepare a new, bigger and better incense bowl. Light more incense. Eat some nuts. Drink more coffee. Throw left over Thanksgiving salad away. It's garbage day. Eat some tofu. Write this note.

"I'm sitting in the Deli at Rick's grocery store in Talent as the woman I'm working for shops. It's 6am. She's a nice, eccentric old lady who likes to have the store to herself and pays me $10 an hour to drive her there. I forgot my book, too groggy, so I bought this notebook and these words are the outcome.

What is a good beginning? Who is it for? Do I want to tell a story or do I care about that? I want to create an other. I need to see the myth of my life.

I've been reading Moore's Care of the Soul lately. He suggests welcoming one's questions and problems as messages from the soul; a tapping on the shoulder, a calling to notice, embrace, enter the mystery of imperfection. I've been trying that lately and it's (of course) REALLY uncomfortable. I have been feeling enormous anger, like a hand inside a glove, as though it were a body within my body, with a life of its own. It seems this anger is the primary feeling I used to, unconsciously, consider the native me. This books traffic in answers but they are merely seeds, quick planting but slow growing. I feel embarrassed for expecting so much from the obvious. One thing is certain. I am touching my limits. Feeling my limits. I have become a peculiar, hydra-headed bird, confused by looking in too many directions at once, but there is an end to everything. There's a last time for everything.

Life turning under, into memories, as though it is my only purpose
to create and distill stories.

Right now Barbara is at the cash register, so I've got to go and get the truck."

What keeps you up nights?

Asia Kennen posted an interesting comment on her blog yesterday. "What keeps you up nights? The fear that someone may read all the random scribbles in my notebook when I am not looking." Ain't that the truth! I am surrounded, haunted, by scraps and rumpled piles of notebooks harboring embarrassing notes to self, unedited bits and starts, some going back years, that will probably never receive a finishing touch; mental space junk; dark matter perpetually orbiting me as I wobble through life.

That said, this morning, inspired by her question, I picked up an old red 4x6 Mead Memo Book that had fallen yesterday from the overstuffed bookshelf defining the alcove where I sit and work on poems, when I manage to pull myself out of bed in the pre-dawn chill, and commune with my muses, as the ancients were so fond of saying. I say "muses" because I either have several or one who is a shape shifter. "Learning my Limits" is penned on the cover in grade school style print. I must have several personalities because my handwriting changes with my mood. At any rate, Kennen's question inspired me this morning to leap before I look and post the first two entries. I will do my damnedest not edit anything but no guarantees. I must do it now, before I lose sight of the fact that it is these things that stand in the way of me and highway.

This is a promise and challenge to myself. The first, As Is entry will soon follow.

Kosher Law, animal holocaust

"There will come a day when such men as myself will view the slaughter of innocent creatures as horrible a crime as the murder of his fellow man. Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. " ~ Albert Einstein

I'm still shaking. If you've got the guts, watch this just-released undercover footage taken at the Agriprocessors Inc. slaughter house in Postville, Iowa. Here's the five minute version. Or, if you're up to a larger dose of reality, watch the full length version (one half hour). There's also a New York Times article on it. Talk about hell on earth. In one scene, a slaughter house worker even kicks blood in the face of a struggling cow after he rips out her trachea and esophagus. This is all under the supervision and approval of the attendending Rabbi, who claims the cows "feel nothing"! Incredible. What ignorance. It is deeply ironic and horrifying when religious law overrules empathy. What is God if not love? And compassion?

As newspaper articles tend to disappear pretty quickly, I'm including the entire text of NYTs article below.

Videotapes Show Grisly Scenes at Kosher Slaughterhouse
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Published: November 30, 2004

An animal-rights group released grisly undercover videotapes today showing cows in a major kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa staggering and bellowing in seeming agony long after their throats were cut.

The plant, run by Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa, is being denounced as inhumane by the group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and by several experts on animal science and kosher practice.

But the plant's supervising rabbi said the tapes were "testimony that this is being done right." And representatives of the Orthodox Union, the leading organization that certifies kosher products, said that while the pictures were not pretty, they did not make the case that the slaughterhouse is violating kosher law.

The plant is the country's largest producer of meat certified as glatt kosher, the highest standard for cleanliness under kosher law. (Glatt means smooth, or free of the lung blemishes that might indicate disease.) Employing 600 people and selling under the popular Aaron's Best brand, it is the only American plant allowed to export to Israel.

On the 30-minute tape, each animal is placed in a rotating drum so it can be killed while upside down, as required by Orthodox rabbis in Israel. Immediately after the shochet, or ritual slaughterer, has slit the throat, another worker tears open each steer's neck with a hook and pulls out the trachea and esophagus. The drum rotates, and the steer is dumped on the floor. One after another, animals with dangling windpipes stand up or try to; in one case, death takes three minutes.

In most kosher plants, animals are tightly penned while their throats are slashed, and the organs are not torn; tearing by the shochet is forbidden under Jewish law. In nonkosher plants, animals by law must be made unconscious before they are killed.

Virtually all defenders of kosher slaughter, called shechita, insist that the prescribed rapid cut with a razor-sharp two-foot blade is humane because it causes instant and painless death. Jewish law also forbids killing injured or sick animals, so they may not be stunned first, either with clubs as in ancient times or with air hammers, pistols or electricity today.

Federal law considers properly conducted religious slaughter to be humane, and so allows Jewish as well as Muslim slaughterhouses to forgo stunning. But federal rules outlaw leaving animals killed that way conscious "for an extended period of time."

Rabbi Chaim Kohn, of the Agriprocessors plant, says the cows feel nothing, even as they struggle on the floor and slamm their heads into walls. "Unconsciousness and the external behavior of the animal have nothing to do with shechita," he said. Because the throat-tearing happens after the shochet's cut, he said, it does not render the animal nonkosher.

Other experts in kosher law were divided on the issue.

Rabbis Menachem Genack and Yisroel Belsky, the chief experts for the Orthodox Union, which certifies over 600,000 products as kosher - including Aaron's Best meats - said the killings on the tape, while "gruesome," appeared kosher because the shochet checked to make sure he had severed both the trachea and esophagus.

Scientific studies, Rabbi Belsky said, found that an animal whose brain had lost blood pressure when its throat was slit felt nothing and any motions it made were involuntary.

"The perfect model is the headless chicken running around," said Rabbi Genack.

Both rabbis said they were willing to revisit the plant and study whether tearing the throat or letting steers thrash on the ground violated Talmudic proscriptions against cruelty to animals.

The union, they said, prefers a type of pen designed by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in which steers are killed standing up with their weight supported. They were designed in the 1950's so American kosher plants could stop killing live animals suspended on chains, which was seen as both cruel and dangerous to the slaughterer.

But a spokesman for Shechita UK, a British lobbying group that defends ritual slaughter against the protests of animal-rights activists, said after watching the tape with a rabbi and a British shochet that he "felt queasy," and added,"I don't know what that is, but it's not shechita."

The spokesman, Shimon Cohen, said that in Britain an animal must be restrained for 30 seconds to bleed, and no second cut is allowed. Done correctly, he said, a shochet's cut must produce instantaneous unconsciousness, so Agriprocessors' meat could not be considered kosher.

Asked how prominent authorities could disagree over such a fundamental issue, he replied: "Well, we don't have a pope. You do find rabbis who interpret things in different ways."

Dr. Temple Grandin, a veterinarian at Colorado State University who designs humane slaughter plants, viewed the tape last week without knowing the location. She called it "an atrocious abomination, nothing like I've seen in 30 kosher plants I've visited here and in England, France, Ireland and Canada."

She said the throat-tearing violated federal anti-cruelty law. "Nothing in the Humane Slaughter Act says you can start dismembering an animal while it's still conscious," she said.

A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, which also certifies the plant, said it had not received the tapes yet and had no comment.

Rabbi Kohn, of Agriprocessors, said the throat-tearing was done only to speed bleeding. Recent Federal rules for slaughterhouse inspectors do recognize "the ritual cut and any additional cut to facilitate bleeding" as different from skinning or butchering, which is forbidden "until the animal is insensible."

The plant is at the center of a 2000 book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America," by Stephen G. Bloom, which described the tensions in the tiny farming town between residents and Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn who took over its defunct slaughterhouse in 1987.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known as PETA, posted the tapes at GoVeg.com today and demanded that the plant be prosecuted for animal cruelty and decertified by kosher authorities. While the group advocates vegetarianism, it accepts that shechita can be relatively painless, said Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman.

Mr. Friedrich said that after two fruitless years of pressing Agriprocessors to improve conditions, PETA sent a volunteer to the plant with a hidden camera for seven weeks last summer.

The cameraman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had no trouble being hired (he was assigned to the sausage department) or filming during his lunch hours and on days he called in sick.

"I'm glad I did it," said the young man, who became a vegetarian and volunteered for undercover work two years ago after seeing a PETA videotape. "I wish people who eat meat could stand where I did and see the things I saw."

Meat from the Agriprocessors plant can end up in any market or restaurant. Because Jewish law requires that the sciatic nerves and certain fats be cut out, which tears up the meat until it can only be sold as hamburger, the hindquarters of virtually all kosher-killed steers are sold as conventional meat.

First snow

Here's some photos of the snow which is still hanging around by the way. In fact, the other night the temperature was below zero. Lee and I have been walking to the park the last three or four days and feeding the ducks and geese. We thought they might appreciate a little extra. Seems like we're not the only ones thinking that way. There was lots of food scattered near the trees and birds just laying around nibbling at it. Sorry. No photos of the ducks. Maybe tomorrow. They swarm and eat out of my hand but here's some nice photos of the park.

Reflections of a cockroach

I've finally updated the Cockroach Diary A lot's gone on in their little world since Ha'penny died. They even have a pet now, Edgar Beetle.

Snow

It snowed today. Good thing my daughter left yesterday. Sixty-nine flights were cancelled at the Reno airport due to equipment failure and poor visibility. Some people may be stranded here until Tuesday. On the up side, flights have been going on as usual around here.

Grackles

Sagebrush

Ghosttown Holiday

If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a nice day. My daughter came home for the holiday. She wasn't feeling well when she arrived but cheerfully took all the herbal tea, vitamin C and aspirin I put before her. She's a great sport. On Tuesday, feeling a bit better, the three of us loaded into the Jeep for a little adventure. We visited Bodie, a ghosttown a few hours south of here.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Under the weather but ready to go.
Bodie is an eerie intersection with the past. Take, for example, the school house.

Within its one dusty classroom, desks, books, papers and belongings still sit as though the children stepped outside for recess one day and just never returned.

At the undertaker's, coffins still wait for people who have long since died.


Bodie's streets, hotel, general store,




saloons,


homes,


and firehouse,


all await people and events that faded away long ago.

Lee doesn't like taking the same road both ways so we went home the back way, following a creek through the mountains and desert. It's a risky thing to do in November, but we live to tell the tale. It was great fun. On Thursday, we had a scrumptious, vegetarian feast and she left today. :(

But in three weeks we'll get together again for Christmas in Las Vegas! Woo-hoo!

Happy Thanksgiving
How about Tofurkey instead?

Photos from Mexico

Church on the beach

I took thousands of photographs in Mexico and have been planning to post some but haven't gotten around to it yet but here's one of a village church near the beach.

Thanksgiving transmogrified

Bird and Piano Wire Compass
Thanksgiving is a hellish time for the turkeys so I'm dedicating this drawing I did recently to them. I don't know about you, but we're having a yummy Tofurky for our family feast.


We're just not into supporting slaughter house food. This turkey, for example, may still be alive. By law, they are supposed to be stunned so that they feel no pain before their throats are cut; but very often the stun only paralyzes their muscles, leaving them fully conscious and filled with great fear and pain. "You are what you eat." And it is not uncommon for these poor creatures to still be alive when they are dropped into the vat of boiling water, meant to remove their feathers.

If you're like most people, this is an unwelcome subject but ignorance is not bliss. If you've got the stomach and the heart to see what happens to that bird before it reaches the table, there's a pretty good photo journal at all-creatures.org. The sit's a bit too religious for me, but I certainly agree in spirit. For instance, they believe the breeder's practice of masturbating male turkeys is wrong because it's a sin. But that's an obtuse argument, especially if you don't believe in god. It's simpler than that. The practice is inhumane and therefore a violation of animal rights. Why drag god into the argument, especially as some people think their god wants them to torture and kill. Take Bush for example. But back to my Thanksgiving rant. The turkey report is accurate and timely for the upcoming Christian holidays. Some moral majority. Didn't Falwell's Jesus tell them, "What you do unto the least of them, you do unto me."

I'm all for liberating the turkeys and feeding them pumpkin pie.

Egg goes home

~asha

Attila the Attorney General Torture Memos

Attila the Hun
Since Texas, Alberto R. Gonzales (ARG) has been Bush's moral ghost writer. There, ARG penned minute memos for then Governor Bush knowing that Bush has a serious distaste for facts. To speed things up, ARG brushed aside bothersome trifles like "crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." As a result, innocent people died, murders stayed free to kill again and Bush, Praise Jesus!, had more time for golf. No wonder ARG remains part of Bush's born again, good old boy network.


Bush / Gonzales, good old boys on a roll.
Now, Mr. Mission Accomplished wants to appoint Gonzales our new Attorney General. Lovely. Gonzales, like Bush, is on the beginning rungs on the ladder of moral evolution. Perhaps he is a reincarnation of Attila the Hun. After all, he wrote the Torture Memos. ARG considers the compassion required by the Geneva Convention “quaint”. Too much to take in? Too bad. The rule of the day is either get informed or bend over and kiss your ass good-bye. Here in the Reality-Based Community, Gonzales rubberstamped torture. Why? Because the Bush Administration is a corrupt, arrogant maverick group who make it clear though their actions and mouth pieces like Gonzales, that they prefer to be law unto themselves. And, in case you’re confused by the administration's shell game, torture is NOT condoned by a moral society.

Which brings us back to another known fact, born again Bush and his born again cronies, are not moral men. They are racist, sexist bigots. They are priests in the fat cat corporate religion, GodCo. It’s not skin color that gets you into the club these days. It’s how low you go and how many people you’re willing to fuck on the way down. Roll over Hitler and tell Stalin the news.

Spin

Right wing Christians call it "Right to Life". Sounds good. What beast could possibly be against it? But look beyond the spin. What they actually mean by "Right to Life" is that they want to outlaw abortions even in cases of rape; even when carrying the child to term threatens the mother's life. Forget about the inevitable return of the coat hanger abortions, Right to Life means these zealots even want to force a woman to bear her rapist's child even if it means she will die during the birth.

Richard Thompson Ford, a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School wrote a good article on the power of the Republican spin machine. Check it out.
Nice guys finish last.

But as always, the extremist Right Wing Christian Army is on the move. Here's the latest from one of their leaders, Jerry Falwell:

"Falwell announces new coalition to build on evangelical momentum

By HANK KURZ Jr. / Associated Press 11/09/2004

Trying to seize on the momentum of a presidential election in which moral values proved important to voters, the Rev. Jerry Falwell announced Monday that he has formed The Faith and Values Coalition to guide an "evangelical revolution."

Falwell, a religious broacaster based in Lynchburg, Va., founded and led The Moral Majority from 1979-89, which was credited with boosting conservatism nationwide.

He said the new coalition will have a three-pronged mission that includes ensuring that pro-life conservatives are chosen to fill any vacancies that emerge on the U.S. Supreme Court, a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and the election of another conservative president in 2008.

"The group's central premise is to utilize the momentum of the November 2 elections to maintain an evangelical revolution of voters who will continue to go to the polls to `vote Christian,'" the 71-year-old Falwell said in a statement released Monday night.

He called the organization a "21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority," and said he is committing himself to a four-year stint as its national chairman."

Seeing as how the evangelicals are a political organization, I say they should have their tax-exempt status revoked. After all, why should taxpayers be forced to contribute to their Vote Christian campaign?

Circus Games

It's really a shame that the Gay Marriage Revolt was the deciding factor in the election. However, I wouldn't blame the surge of lovers who made national headlines sharing nuptials and rebellion. Dollars to day-old doughnuts, Karl Rove masterminded that one, with a little help from some gay Republican field ops. I hand it to them; they played the hell out of the gay scene. Their unwitting accomplices fell in line like lambs frolicking to the slaughterhouse...or Wedding Tent. Now they can amuse themselves watching the Bushwacker perform slight of hand tricks in the Domestic Issues Tent, making things like Lawrence vs. Texas (which overturned state sodomy laws) and Roe vs. Wade (granting abortion rights) disappear.


Republican hand puppets

There is a fine economy to this blood-letting, again compliments of Karl, who keeps Bush on a need-to-know basis. Karl is a bright guy. He understands his road blocks to civil rights will be challenged sometime in the future. It's the old hop-scotch game of democracy, but for now it pays off the tunnel vision voters who kept Bush in office and keeps all the kiddies focused elsewhere as the Iraq civil war and the terrorist jihad reach boiling point; something the rest of the world is already acutely aware of. Certainly they are gnashing their teeth over how stupid and dangerous we Americans are but, here at home, there's a bright side to it all. The newlyweds could be spared the cost of a divorce.

Nameless Writers

Cowee and I are going to Reno this morning to attend the monthly Unnamed Writer's Group speaker event. They have a pretty good tshirt. Otherwise, I'm not so sure. Cowee and Ellen Hopkins recently became officers there and have plans to bump it up a bit; offer monthly publishing information, that kind of thing. They will definitely make things more interesting. I attended one of the UW meetings a couple of years ago and wasn't much impressed. They definitely could use a kick in the ass. The guest speaker didn't even know her magazine had an online edition and that all the back issues were available there.

Day Two

Okay, the stun guy effect of Bush's re-election is yesterday's news. It's another sunny day, somewhere, even if only here in Nevada or the future. For now, Bush will lurch onward, waving his so-called mandate and half the people will press on with him, waving their little flags.

The way I see now, just about every other person on the street is someone who thinks and feels like me; that Bush is very, very wrong and by following him, American is falling behind. And there is some dark humor about it all. Bush spent his first term loading the fan with shit. Now let him face it.

Dawn of an old day

Okay. Kerry has to make a show of wanting every vote counted. That's his job after Gore stiffed us in the last election. The upside is that we know we're not alone in our view. But no surprise really that George won this time. He is the straw Americans grabbed in the moral aftermath of 9-11, their panic over the gay marriage revolt, the continuing rise for people of color, developments in technology and science, and as always, more and more women empowering themselves. But his fusing of politics and evangelicalism is a mere place holder, a stand-in for the eclectic moral compass we seek. It is a shallow pond in a time of deep thirst.