November 2007 archive

Did you know that you may be entitled to THOUSANDS of dollars in FREE MONEY?

That’s right! If you signed up for telephone or Internet service with a major telecommunications carrier any time after September 2001, you may be eligible for an award of more than TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!

THIS IS NOT A SCAM!

This is a bona fide legal claim that over 100 MILLION PEOPLE OR MORE may be entitled to.

But you need to act fast, because this offer may not last if you don’t CALL NOW!

“The conflict dates from the day when one man, flying in the face of appearance, perceived that the forces of nature are no more unalterably fixed in their orbits than the stars themselves, but that their serene arrangement around us depicts the flow of a tremendous tide—the day on which a first voice rang out, crying to mankind quietly slumbering on the raft of Earth, ‘We are moving!  We are going forward!”

“It is a pleasant and dramatic spectacle, that of Mankind divided to its very depths into two irrevocably opposed camps–one looking towards the horizon and proclaiming with all its new-found faith, ‘We are moving’, and the other, without shifting its position, obstinately maintaining, ‘Nothing changes.  We are not moving at all.’  These latter, the ‘immobilists’, …
forbid the earth to move.  Nothing changes, they say, or can change.  The raft must drift purposelessly on a shoreless sea.”

“But the other half of mankind, startled by the look-out’s cry, has left the huddle where the rest of the crew sit with their heads together telling time-honored tales.  Gazing out over the dark sea they study for themselves the lapping of the waters along the hull of the craft that bears them, breathe the scents borne to them on the breeze, gaze at the shadows cast from pole to pole by a changeless eternity.  And for these all things, while remaining separately the same–the ripple of the water, the scent of the air, the lights in the sky–become linked together and aquire a new sense: the fixed and random universe is seen to move.
No one who has seen this vision can be restrained from guarding and protecting it.  To testify to my faith in it, and to show reasons, is my purpose here.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, THE FUTURE OF MAN, 1959

More on Teilhard next time…If anyone wishes to add graphics, I will say thanks.

I date myself by remembering when Halloween wasn’t such a cool holiday.  Instead of trees full of artificial cobwebs we had trees full of toilet paper (it all waits for the next rain to wash it down, sometimes weeks).  Pumpkins were carved by ideas in your head and big sharp knives, not stencils and plastic tools.  Lit with flaming candles and not LED bumps powered by a hearing aid battery.

Used to burn our yard trash too.

I’d tell you a scary story about that but we never had one.  You feed the fire until the brush is gone, you don’t pile it in a huge stack, douse it with kerosene and fire it up (though I’ve been a Boy Scout and we did do things like that).  I’m much more afraid of a wood chipper.

We also used to dump it at the end of the road.  There is a big hill with acres of undeveloped land just down the street and the property owners with road footage were happy enough for the fill.

All yard stuff, no garbage, and you didn’t even have to ask about that.  It was all kind of self organized.

In the Fall it’s leaves, and frankly everyone still kind of dumps them all in the street and lets the wind blow them downhill, though the Town is a little more organized about that now and dusts off the snowplows early and sends them out with huge vacuums.

Yes, we are so damn lazy you don’t even have to bag.

They send out the trucks for old eksmas trees too, and once in the spring for the odd stuff.  Your old washing machine and broken furniture, your 30 year collection of National Geographics with their breathless patriotic coverage of the Vietnam War (I remember a really mint issue featuring the United States Air Force and all the bombs, bullets, and rockets they could carry).  Never could quite decide what made some stuff disposable.

They take it all now to the tipping station where it’s sorted and processed and sent to… wherever.

That’s progress for you.

It’s coming.

The kids are all done with their trick or treat candy hunt. They’ve bounced around the house for the past hour or so trying to come down off of that sugar high. You’ve stashed the remaining candy (removing some of the cooler chocolaty bits for yourself) in the closet…top shelf so they can’t reach it without your help.

It’s dark…but not stormy (hopefully) out tonight…and you can feel the vibe in your nerves…

Imagine there was a beautiful planet.

Imagine it was inhabited by billions of sentient beings.

Imagine the most technologically advanced of those beings was in the process of poisoning that planet for everyone.

Imagine that all life was at risk.

Imagine that those most technologically advanced beings were, as T.S. Eliot once put it, too

distracted from distraction by distraction

to do anything about it.

Imagine those most technologically advanced beings were even putting the survival of their own species at risk.

Imagine time was running out.

Imagine those most technologically advanced beings were actually making things worse, not better.

Imagine.

The horror.

Status quo.

That’s what we’re up against.  Not Repugs, so much, as the need to change the direction of the country.