Or… not. A big part of the trick is to determine who is, and is not, The Enemy.

Warning… this is not going to be an altogether serious essay, and it’s pretty much off the cuff. It is Sunday after all. And I’m in a quotey mood.

Ministry o’ Truth recently posted a good essay titled Why I Fight. Many in the leftosphere discuss all this stuff daily. Why. Who. What. Where. And quite often, there is at least an undercurrent of How. As if there’s only One Way.

Sigh.

The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can’t do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can’t. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you’ll have to square with that some day. And me, for example, I can let you drown, but I can’t bring this ship into Tortuga all by me onesies, savvy? So, can you sail under the command of a pirate, or can you not? ~CJS

1975. Vietnam. Laos. Cambodia. (China). USA

2010. Iraq. Iran. Afghanistan. Pakistan. Yemen?. (Russia). USA

What tangled webs.

I want to ask / urge you dharma bums to go read this 2007 piece I came cross the other day and help me get a handle on this thing that has been lurking and teasing in my mind. This stuff is really out of my league and terribly complex, but … shudder… somebody needs to connect the dots. Are there parallels to be drawn?  This is really bugging me. I’m sorry I can’t explain better, it’s shadows and light still.

EDIT: Consider this an open invitation to venture in to comments below and help me learn and understand.

Gawd I hate cold! Hate it hate it hate hate it. I am a tropical girl.

I’ll proceed with my Winter Whine is a minute, but for penance, I am also going to link you to one little useful essay over at FDL re dry skin issues/remedies. It’s one of the best I’ve ever seen (and Ive read a lot of ’em!)

There. Okay, now… listen. These are several words that are just not in my vocabulary, or else they have a different definition than you might have:

Garage.

Basement.

Furnace.

Series 2010 …

May 13: “This Could Ruin Our Summer”

May 6: Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

April 29: The Island Who Decides

April 22 (Earth Day): Mother Honor

April 14: Meta Nina

OFF THE WALL: Im willing to make a commitment to a weekly Essay every Thursday, however I can’t promise I’ll stay “on topic”, so it’ll be open-ended. I have a definite tendency to wander off and go on tangents (in case you haven’t noticed!). Sometimes, my thinking, and subsequent remarks, leapfrog and may seem like they are just Off The Wall. I’ll try to leave a trail in here. If I can stay on track for a while, my hope is to broaden, enlighten, and embrace my own, and yours, world view through review of world cultures and crises. (and maybe Ill learn to text wrap too. lol)

So. Here we go. heh.

My spark this week was from a great phone conversation with Diane G and we somehow got onto a topic of diversity, multi-cultural, etc. I forget how we even got started on that. But it made me realize that my life experiences have been anything but homogenious or culturally boring.

This subject, world cultures, is something that you could write about every week for a year and still not cover it. It’s …. complicated.  Even just with a normal-ish approach. However, you will not get a normal-ish approach to it from me!

For some inexplicable reason, I’ve always had a fascination with world cultures and variations of the human theme. It hits me from several angles. It’s fascinating, really. Then it morphs and extends into areas of human rights & justice, then global stuff, then ya know enlightenment and One Love and all that! (lol Pinky & the Brain: “And Tomorrow, Conquer the Worrrrrld!”) So, I’ll just see how this takes shape.

Aside from my B.A. in Cultural Anthropology, I mostly tap in to my personal experiences when I get into this arena. The degree thing, well, I’m not much of an academic and my poor Advisor had to constantly nudge me to take more on Theory. Poor guy.

I grew up in the 60’s & 70’s in neo-Miami, alongside a sizeable population* of Cuban refugees. (*approx 400,000 from 1960-1974) Strange city to grow up in. In some ways, a suburb of New York, but truly quite unique. Tourist town.  From there, a whole life’s worth of experiences. limited geographically but broad in other ways. Most notably, a year or so working in a refugee services agency (RSA) in 1992, grant-funded, unbelieveably challenging and an incredibly enriching time for me. Humbling. Profoundly humbling.

Most definitely not the first, but certainly the most profound “cross-cultural” experience was my interactions and friendships with a particular few Cambodian-Americans back in ’92. They stole won my heart. In my recent google-hunt, I came across this post which makes a statement that I’ve felt … in my bones …  for some years, but was never able to articulate as well as this woman does here. She cuts to the quick. This goes to the core of my activism.

Docudharma! This 8 year anniversary snuck up on me.  Shall we, DD, join and endorse this effort?

Witness Against Torture

CALL TO ACTION:

Join Witness Against Torture January 11-22, 2010 in a Fast and Vigil to Shut Down Guantanamo, End Torture and Build Justice

Okay well, there ya go, I’ve already given away the punchline! lol, but here goes.

I’ve always liked this song.

If God had a name what would it be?

And would you call it to his face?

If you were faced with Him in all His glory

What would you ask if you had just one question?

And yeah, yeah, God is great

Yeah, yeah, God is good

yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

What if God was one of us?

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Tryin’ to make his way home?

(psssst… Cassiodorus read my mind!)

I’m not sure if anyone in my little political junkie clique here comprehends how much I hate hate HATE electoral politics. But I gotta tell ya. My Bullshit Detector has been polished and fine tuned in the past year. I watched only a clip snip of Axelrod on the shows this morning and then I went a-reading / scanning the blogs, and … if these guys spin this HCR POS Reform any harder …. they’re gonna land themselves on the frikkin moon.

Man, I am really all over the place this morning, worse than usual (heh). My apologies.

Goodbye Lady Libertine (the usual me). Hello Sally Panic (the other me).

Oh man… bring it on.

In the midst of the hullabaloo around Lieberman et al, I’ve succeeded, so far, in not tearing my hair out although I am kind of sick to my stomach.

While driving my kid to School this morning, an hour early for Band Sectionals, I listened to her telling me some silly story about her Band chums that she found rather funny. In the telling of her tale, she found she had to explain to me (since I don’t read music or speak theory) the concept of Grace Notes. They are merely extra little notes thrown in for… no reason, just extra, you don’t have to play them, but you can if you want to… [according to my kid]. They’re there for the taking, and they embellish the tune. Not to be confused, apparently, with Ghost Notes.

Ghost notes, however, are not simply the unaccented notes in a pattern. The unaccented notes in such a pattern as a clave are considered to represent the mean level of emphasis–they are neither absolutely emphasized nor unemphasized. If one further deemphasizes one of these unaccented notes to the same or a similar extent to which the accented notes in the pattern are emphasized, then one has ‘ghosted’ that note. In a case in which a ghost note is deemphasized to the point of silence, that note then represents a rhythmic placeholder in much the same way as does a rest. This can be a very fine distinction, and the ability of an instrumentalist to differentiate between what is a ghost note and what is a rest is governed largely by the acoustic nature of the instrument.

There’s metaphor to be had here, I just know it! Give me a minute. heh.

It becomes more and more obvious, on a daily basis, that Justice and Rule of Law in our country has been ghost noted.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

~  Groucho Marx

Breaking News… I missed the teevee versions, but its all the buzz… mcjoan has it on teh GOS front page …

Over 700 comments, very interesting commentary, at the orange rec list: Breaking News: Senate Dems Drop Public Option .

And a brief report at FDL.

Is it true? we dont know yet. go read mcjoan, she has most info.

NYT: Senate Leaders in Tentative Deal to Alter Public Option

But Democratic aides said that the group had tentatively agreed on a proposal that would replace a government-run health care plan with a menu of new national, privately-run insurance plans modeled after the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, which covers more than eight million federal workers, including members of Congress, and their dependents. (See this earlier Prescriptions article about how the group of 10 has been thinking about this approach.)

A government-run plan would be retained as a fall-back option, the aides said, and would be triggered only if the new proposal failed to meet targets for providing affordable insurance coverage to a specified number of people.

The agreement would also allow Americans between age 55 and 64 to buy coverage through Medicare, beginning in 2011.

EDIT: Check out the essay by Jamess on what this loss means.

UPDATE 10:45PM: TPM has ‘White House health care team sends over a brief statement:’.

“Senators are making great progress and we’re pleased that they’re working together to find common ground toward options that increase choice and competition.”

Reading between the lines here in a statement from a team who knows President Obama has been accused of not standing firm enough for a public option, they think what happened in the meeting may strike the right political balance.

Yeah, good luck with that.

I’ve had many thoughts and reactions that I never got around to articulating. Yesterday,  I left off one in particular in mid – thought: “What if…?”

Im posting this Essay to provide a space for brainstorming … ideas, strategies, tactics…