Because it's soothing

Ragged Feather did a nice claymation to the Beatles song, Because. It's a 02:45 massage for the frazzled psyche.

Because

Life without replay

I find the bank of TV monitors in front of the stair steppers at the gym incredibly annoying. We canceled the service and gave our set away a few years ago so I don't have any tolerance for replay after replay after replay, changing only when there's another clip or program to take its place, the endless foie gras for the brain, that is television. The brain drain. Outside the window it was snowing and a couple of cows were standing over a very young calf sheltering it from the storm. It's sad knowing what they don't, that probably by the time summer arrives that calf's loving mother will be hanging by her back legs with a slit throat.

Holy shit!

Not long ago I started getting forwards from a mystery source but they sent the emails properly (Bcc'd) so I checked out one of the links. To date, they are almost always excellent. I did a little polking around and seems the sender lives nearby. Perhaps we've met, but I don't remember. That remains an open question about which you may hear more later. Anyway, here's one of the links I recently received. It's really impressive. Even though you, being very hip, have undoubtedly encountered some of this information before, it's all put together here in really Big Picture. I highly recommend you watch it. Learn a little bit about the world that does not yet exist because that's the world we are living in.

SHIFT HAPPENS.

Foie Gras, you are what you eat

Here's a little good news. The grocery chain Giant Eagle announced today that it will no longer sell foie gras in any of its 230 stores! They join Whole Foods as well as the state of California, the city of Chicago, and 16 nations worldwide that have already banned this barbaric practice.

Sir Roger Moore volunteered to narrate a documentary for PETA revealing the cruel facts of foie gras production. Give it a watch. It's a lesson in compassion and, as we all know, compassion is food for the soul.

The hidden lives of ducks and geese.

FOX propaganda channel

Fox sucks! It doesn't report news. Fox injects wingnut propaganda into the public debate. That's it. The rest is cover. They don't deserve an FCC license. For starters, this channel should be investigated for fraud, criminal lobbying, and intentionally misleading the public. If you haven't been following their attack on Senator Obama, check out this video. It's a sickening mixture of lies, innuendo and slander disguised as news. The people in front of the camera aren't reporters. In fact, it's even flattery to call them actors. They are media whores. Fox my "campaign headquarters?" In your dreams, assholes...

FOX ATTACKS OBAMA

Barack Obama Fox lies and liars

Yesterday's news

All the Democratic presidential candidates but Obama were in Carson City yesterday to kick off rutting season. I didn't even hear about it until this morning when I dropped by for a meeting that didn't happen because of the snow but I found the morning paper lying on the bar with this photo and headline. That's June (the owner) dragging Hillary through the room.


Things were considerably calmer there today but still there were plenty of interesting looking people scattered around. Some were probably lobbyists, then there were the edgy guys in suits with strange badges, slick guys wearing designer glasses, watchers, readers, mellow woolly folk, a man quietly playing his guitar, people on laptops, chatty lunchers, a couple of loners besides myself. Anyone from anywhere might show up at the Comma. The legislature building is right across the street and there are two penitentiaries in town. Politicians, crooks, travelers. People with secrets and money to spend. It's that kind of place. It all revolves around June. Even Hillary knew enough to pay respect.


June has all the poetry books out that we, as Ash Canyon, recently donated. She sawed the bookshelves we gave her in half so that the library lines the walls unobtrusively. Very cool. I got a cup of coffee, grabbed a stack of journals and read and worked on a poem for a few hours. Heaven in a snowstorm.



Today June was back to business busy making sandwiches during the lunch hour rush. Another day at the Comma. As for the carpetbaggers, they did their one night stand and are gone. The big news from the Carson Valley today is that Willy the squirrel made his first appearance of the year at the Bird park yesterday. I'd say he's looking pretty fat and happy for mid-winter.













Hillary Clinton Nevada Carson City presidential candidatesComma Coffee

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I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
I will not waste my afternoon blogging.
Or posting on message boards.

White House Mordor

Patrick Fitzgerald is right.
Cheney and Bush have drawn "a cloud over the White House."
Impeach these bastards!

Dirty Dick Cheney

bushbash.com

Can't Earth host an interplanetary game show and raffle Cheney off to aliens? I suppose not. He could be the booby prize though. This loser would even be the booby prize at a sweetheart box social in Folsom.

Morning

It's morning again in my part of the world. It's a lovely morning although I did miss seeing the new nova in Scorpius at dawn. Here I am again, wondering which way to go. Lots running through my head. So many possibilities. Instead of choosing one, I am circling the event horizon of the day and, as always from the approach point of view, possibilities never appear to cross the horizon. It takes an effort to escape this hypnotic spell. I no longer take freedom for granted.

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” - Jack Kerouac

Tonight

A flame is quietly wavering above the clear pool of melted wax cupped in the top of the stubby green candle on my desk. A new nova was discovered only a few days ago in the constellation Scorpius. It will be visible to the naked eye tomorrow morning just before dawn.

Yesteryear's tombstone art

This photo is of an old tombstone in nearby Carson City. I took it a few summer's ago but polished it up today for your viewing pleasure.

Nora and Paris, music lovers

Nora, the musician

Paris, the fan

Beat Baby #05 - Magic Carpet

Here's the latest in the adventures of Beat Baby and Hep. This episode took a long winding path to the fourth frame but it's finally done.

Open book

Everybody needs someone to hold a little hope for them. Valentine's day in Reno.
Who do you love?

Night without candles

White Owl by asha

_________________________________________________

A STORY
by Czeslaw Milosz

Now I will tell Meader's story; I have a moral in view.
He was pestered by a grizzly so bold and malicious
That he used to snatch caribou meat from the eaves of the cabin.
Not only that. He ignored men and was unafraid of fire.
One night he started battering the door
And broke the window with his paw, so they curled up
With their shotguns beside them, and waited for the dawn.
He came back in the evening, and Meader shot him at close range,
Under the left shoulder blade. Then it was jump and run,
And a real storm of a run: a grizzly, Meader says,
Even when he's been hit in the heart, will keep running
Until he falls down. Later, Meader found him
By following the trail—and then he understood
What lay behind the bear's odd behavior:
Half of the beast's jaw was eaten away by an abscess, and caries.
Toothache, for years. An ache without comprehensible reason,
Which often drives us to senseless action
And gives us blind courage. We have nothing to lose,
We come out of the forest, and not always with the hope
That we will be cured by some dentist from heaven.

Berkeley, 1969

_________________________________________________





Czeslaw Milosz poetry

Bush Republicans

Howdy Doodie contemplates his navel.

This story from Huffingtonpost defines tilt. When asked by C-SPAN this morning how "(George W.) Bush Republicans would be defined, and what images the phrase "Bush Republican" might summon for future generations" Howdy Doodie replied, "Compassionate conservatism. I made a name by being compassionate". This guy is a psychopath. It's that simple. America and now the world is being held hostage by a group of psychopaths, Cheney, Rummy, Gonzalez etc. etc., and Bush is their Howdy Doodie star power who thinks he has a hot line to God when actually that "hot" line is ham head Cheney's fist up his ass.







compassionate conservative Bush Republicans C-SPAN GOP

Invisible Theatre

The Invisible Theatre has new digs. They moved from a shelf onto the new table. It is a tiny island at this point but, with a little luck, will continue to develop. Everyone here is quite excited about it.









Monsieur La Chance and Lucky Pierre have been backstage all afternoon gossiping and watching the goings on. They are quite pleased with these latest developments. All in all, slow as it's been, my office is finally beginning to shape up.

And the rain finally came, days late, but last night it rained the whole night through.

Cheney's 16 words

"The + British + Government + has + learned + that + Saddam + Hussein  + recently + sought + significant + quantities + of +  uranium + from + Africa." = BIG LIE by Dick Cheney as Vice-President of the United States.



Check out this haunting little video by Margo Guryan called 16 Words. These are the 16 words Republican Vice-President Dick Cheney's used to lie us into an unnecessary, unjust, unstabilizing, unending war with the Middle East. My hat is off to Margo Guryan. The creepy melody and disturbing words have an onomatopoetic quality, mimicking the hypnotic repetition of the macabre nature of Cheney's message, personality, high crimes and treason.

16 Words

Given that it just came out in the Libby trial that Cheney ordered the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to the press, this little video is especially timely. Did Dirty Dick hypnotize Dummy Bush? I agree with Dr. Knight on this one. No need.



Dick Cheney 16 words Plame affair Bush Administration leaker treason

The news and weather

We live always among bewildering contradictions; beginnings/endings, love/hate, life/death, pain/joy, evil/compassion. Too many to name. Try as it will to resolve them, the mind is no match. That path is followed best by the heart. Herbie the calf and Perky the duck lucked out. Both were rescued and loved by the very people who, on another day would, more likely, have killed and eaten them both.



I suppose by now just about everyone has heard about Perky. She's the duck who was shot, dragged by a dog, hung upside down and left for dead in a kitchen refrigerator for two days until the hunter's wife noticed Perky look up at her when she opened the door.

Herbie's story is not as well known...

Part 1 - Wild in Newark

Part 2 - Escape and capture

Part 3 - Herbie's happy ending

And now for the weather...
It's two days late but the rain has finally arrived here in Nevada and the air is hung with the smell of wet, sweet sweet sage.

Bathtub bass

There's a bass fiddle in my bathtub...
It used to belong to Lee's old bebop beatnik dad. He gave it to us a couple of years ago, keep or sell, after replacing it with a smaller, Chinese bass, easier to play given his advanced arthritis. We took it to LA and got it appraised. That's it. It's been in the bathtub ever since. I tried to interest Roy in buying it the other day. He just purchased a lovely fender deluxe and thought he might like a mellow, old, hand-made German bass to go along with it but he claims he's "lookin' to start smaller -- maybe a fiddle in a sink. Or castanets in a teacup." I wish someone would buy the damn thing. I want to take a bath. Let me know if you're interested. We'll make you a helluva deal. Otherwise I suppose I could try Craig's List.

As for the rain, the icons lied. Second day, nice steely gray sky but not a drop.

Rain rain and the second-hand queen

Roy has a Word of the Day widget from Free Dictionary on his blog and it included a fantastic image in the usage example for today's word Apiary, second-hand queen. Lovely, innit? And an intriguing subject for a poem.

The weather icons tell me to expect rain for the next few days here in Gardnerville, Nevada. Excellent. We need it. It hasn't rained hard for months and the neighbor's roofs are dotted with bird poop. When I lived in Oregon I came to count on the rain. Spill your coffee on the sidewalk? No problem. Bird poop, vomit, spit. Who cares? The rain will tidy everything up. But not here. Not in the desert. Spit on the sidewalk. Look at it for months. So ... rain, rain come and play / wash the bird poop all away.

Gardnerville, NV

41°F Scattered Clouds Wind: N at 6 mph Humidity: 40%

Today

56° | 30°
Thu

50° | 33°

Fri

49° | 33°

Sat

52° | 33°

Mid week and half way there

In case you're wondering, my office hasn't devoured me ... yet ... if only because I have been too busy elsewhere. One thing or the another has been requiring my attention every since Friday so I am still stalled half way though the Great Office Intervention of 2007 but it's life as usual outside my window. The birds drop by just after seven for breakfast, take off for a while then return to see what new goodies have magically appeared. This week's special has been blobs of potato mushed with peanut butter and veggie shortening served along with the usual sprinkling of peanuts. Yum. The pigeons don't eat it but they love dawdling in the ice cold bird bath.

As far as my office goes, simply by moving the two file cabinets together and switching a couple of tables around things are much improved. According to a quick search on office Feng Shui, I should probably put my computer in the north or west sector of the room in order to "enhance creativity" but then I wouldn't be able to look out at the Bird Park and even the thought makes me feel trapped and desperate. I'll have to struggle along in the south east corner, although I'm happy to report that my smaller poetry desk is still against the west wall. So much the ancient arts. I'm not going to move any more furniture but I still have a lot of stuff to put away. That will take some doing. I've got to finish up though. The whole point is to make a more efficient work space. Projects languish.

Office report

I took a first pass at reorganizing my office today and I must say, it went pretty well. I moved the two file cabinets together. That left the drawing table without a place for the night but tomorrow I'll wedge that in somewhere too.

In this mad effort to reclaim myself from the mess I'm in, I thought the following poem by Gregory Corso especially suitable for the evening. I heard him read it in the winter of 1981 at the Fifth Annual Santa Cruz Poetry Festival not long after I left the Krsna Movement. It was a weekend event. Baraka, Acker, Ferlinghetti, Rothenberg, Kaufman, di Prima, Reed, Corso, William Everson, Micheline, John Chance, Wanda Coleman, Country Joe McDonald were there among many others. It was pretty insane but wonderful. I had been in the movement many years so I was still reeling from having just thrown God and Truth and Hope and all the rest of it out my window. Actually, I didn't throw Them out the window. I jumped. Anyway, I always liked that Corso ran downstairs and caught Beauty before she hit the ground. Then sent her on her way.

The Whole Mess ... Almost

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
"Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!"
"Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide ... OUT!"
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
"It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!" "OUT!"
Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
"You always end up a bummer!"
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
"Without us you'll surely die!"
"With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!"

Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty --
As I led her to the window
I told her: "You I loved best in life
... but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
"You saved me!" she cried
I put her down and told her: "Move on."

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
"I'm not real!" It cried
"I'm just a rumor spread by life ..."
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left --
All I could do with Humor was to say:
"Out the window with the window!"

- Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso poetry

Office space

My office is a train wreck. It has been forever and, at the risk of sounding like a new year resolution, which we all know would automatically be doomed to fail, I am doing an office intervention on myself. But this time it's going to be different. Oh yes. I have a plan. At least I'm starting out with one. Well, not a plan but I have a map and am thinking about it a bit before I lurch into action. That is one of the more underdeveloped aspects of my psyche, planning, looking before I leap. I am usually the fire-ready-aim type, a trait I (romantically) refer to as "spontaneity", "creatively on the wing", but I'm at an impasse here at the Ashabot and it's time to do something differently. As it is, the space is all wrong, impacted, dysfunctional. I've got to break it down, liberate it, streamline it, get the energy moving. Like Roy mentioned, office feng shui.

Threnody for a horse

NJ.com posted the following article today by Jerry Izenberg. I include here in full as newspapers regularly purge their content and if you grew to care about this horse as I did, it's one you won't want to miss.

Izenberg: Derby winner won the heart of America

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

BY JERRY IZENBERG
Star-Ledger Staff


MIAMI -- His name was Barbaro and he touched America, generating a tidal wave of hope and a prayer that far transcended its racetracks, its back-stretch ramblers and its tack rooms from Maine to California. He was a fallen hero, fighting for his life and his battle caught the nation's collective heartbeat and merged it with the cadence of his own.

Barbaro died yesterday at the New Bolton Center's George D. Widener Veterinary Hospital in Kennett Square, Pa., ending an eight-month struggle that dominated the hearts and minds of this country in a way that no other horse ever had...not Secretariat...not Seabiscuit...not Citation. They were providers of magnificent headlines. But Barbaro was the provider of incredible courage.

Technically, the medical reason was incurable laminitis, although Lord knows, the best in the business tried like hell to give him a fighting chance. The initial injuries were a broken cannon bone above the ankle, a broken sesamoid bone behind the ankle, a broken long pastern bone below the ankle. The pastern bone alone had shattered into 20 pieces.

And starting with that day when the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner broke down in the Preakness before a nation-wide television audience, the prayers, the hopes and the story-book ending that never happened became an American story.

Within five months, Michael Matz, his trainer, received a mountain of 43,000 e-mails. A wounded vet from Iraq sent him an American flag. A doctor named Margaret Goodman, once the medical chairman of the Nevada boxing commission found out what his favorite foods were and sent them along to the New Bolton Center. Elementary school kids wrote letters. Two-dollar bettors, who would step over a prostrate heart attack victim so as not to get shut out at the betting windows, greeted each other in simulcast rooms with "waddaya hear?" and for once they weren't asking "whodaya like?"

Battle-hardened racetrackers from touts to grooms will never forget it. Neither will those who never saw a horse race but who rooted for Barbaro to live.

For as long as Edgar Prado sits in the saddle, he will remember the feel of it ... the awful dread it generated ... and the way the rhythm of what rider and horse always share as one on every racetrack on the planet suddenly sent the wrong message, generating a threnody that hung over Pimlico Race Course like a nightmare in progress.

Prado felt the uneven bounce in the stride of the super horse beneath him. He saw the horse twist its head from side to side. He was now running at angle. Prado was dead certain that he had to stop the horse from doing what it was bred to do ... what his equine genes screamed out to do ... what the Derby, just two weeks earlier, mandated him to do.

Without Prado, this profile in courage would have ended that very day.

Look at a horse -- any horse -- see how ridiculously skinny the legs are and how wide the girth is. Ask yourself how in the world those pipe stem legs can support the body and the beating heart of a creature born to run regardless of balance or pain.

The jockey was there when the horse needed someone to intercede between logic and what he was bred to do.

That he lived as long as he did was a tribute to Prado's instincts and skill, a tribute to the medical staff in New Bolton, where he was taken that day of the Preakness, to the care and the financial generosity of the people who owned him.

Barbaro was supposed to be a super horse in waiting ... the heir to what Secretariat and Seattle Slew and Affirmed had left in their historic wakes ... winner of the Derby in ferocious style by more lengths (six and one half) than any other Derby winner since Assault (1946).

Prado won't forget. Neither will Matz, who raced toward the track the second he saw his colt racing almost obliquely. Barbaro began to shake his head and run crookedly toward a goal only he could envision.

In that instant, Prado's every thought and every muscle were directed toward keeping this horse erect and safe.

He stopped him and whispered to him and waiting hands reached out for the horse to stabilize him. On the other side of the track, horses jockeyed for position and the crowd thundered as a long shot named Bernardini took and held the lead.

Now the colt was still shaking, still wanting to run, trying to wobble forward because genetics demand it is what a thoroughbred race horse does. It is what horses do. And I will never, never forget the awesome wall that only the silence of 85,000 throats can generate.

Nor will I forget the same silence in the stable area as the big, white horse ambulance pulled away from Barn 40 with a police escort and swept the through the gate and headed toward the highway.

For the civilians who saw it, there was the silence the unknown triggered.

For the horsemen, there was the fear of what they knew.

And so the marriage between Barbaro's pain and America's hope began. By mid-July the people at New Bolton's greatest fear set in. Laminitis struck and 80 percent of his left hind hoof was removed. It was heartbreaking. Originally, they had pieced the breaks together with 23 screws in his leg and he had, incredibly, responded well.

But the ghosts of similar situations past and the unforgiving risks of equine anatomy were never very far away from this courageous horse. He was fighting a losing battle. America responded to each slice of encouraging news but the vets knew and so did the horsemen.

There are those who will say that Barbaro was just a horse, but the truth is that to so many he was also a symbol of hope ... of courage ... and the selflessness of the man who trained him and rode him and the people who stood beside him in the winner's circle on Derby Day.

But maybe the shared joy of his survival that later turned to shared suffering when he couldn't make it is not really that hard to understand. He was an athlete with an athlete's heart. His courage was self-explanatory in an age when America grows weary of big-money athletes who have exhausted their intelligence with their whining.

Any way you look at it, an American hero died yesterday.


Jerry Izenberg appears regularly in The Star-Ledger

Barbaro threnody

Fun on the run

Well my chickadees, I'm off to Portland for a few days. My daughter and I need to confer about her upcoming summer wedding. Woo-hoo! I'm on the run and am feeling a bit like Tic. This is all just too much fun! Back Sunday. Don't burn down the house.

Tic - Fun on the Run

Lucky duck, I guess

This is not a story that makes me feel fuzzy warm and glad to be human but it touched me deeply and wanted to share it here.

From the BBC News

Duck survives two days in fridge



A duck in the US state of Florida has survived gunshot wounds and a two-day stint in a refrigerator.

A hunter shot the duck, wounding it in the wing and leg. Believing the bird was dead, he left it in his fridge at his home in Tallahassee.

The hunter's wife got a fright when she opened the fridge and the duck lifted its head, a local veterinarian said.

Staff at the Goose Creek Animal Sanctuary who are treating the bird said it has a 75% chance of survival.

The plucky duck was taken first to a local animal hospital, and then to an animal sanctuary for more specialized treatment.

A veterinarian at the sanctuary said he thinks the duck will live, but will probably never be well enough to be released into the wild.

The veterinarian, David Hale, said the duck's low metabolism rate helped it survive its time in the refrigerator, the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper reported.

"This is an extremely tough duck with a lot of spirit to live," he said. "This shows how tough and adaptable wildlife are."

Horse kisses

Legal protection for America's wild horses is one step closer to being a legal reality. Last Friday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declared the slaughter of horses for food illegal in Texas. Considering all the evil spawned in Bushland, this is particularly encouraging.

Previously the bill was passed, only to be undone behind our backs by crooked politicians the second we turned away, but we're onto their dirty tricks and it looks like this appeal just might stick. But there's more work to do. Every voice counts. Please consider speaking up for America's mustangs. Yes, AGAIN. That's the way it works, babee. Victory goes to the last pit bull still swingin' from the Senator's nuts. It just takes a minute. I thank you and the horses thank you.



H.R. 503/S.311 protect wild horses

Rat park

A pro-lifer after my own heart

Kami Mata Rat Temple