Tag: Friday Night at 8

I watched Godzilla movies with my dad when I was a little girl and I didn’t know anything about the atomic bomb and World War II, so I drank up the radioactive born monsters and cheered for them because they seemed sort of likable to me.

In sixth grade I mentioned to someone that I didn’t really think people in the Soviet Union walked around with balls and chains on their ankles, they were probably just like us, and the next day when I walked into the classroom everyone yelled out “Commie!” at me … not really in a mean way, just school hijinks, and I laughed, too, I liked the attention and clowned around about it.  I didn’t know much at all about the Soviet Union or the United States, for that matter.

In another class, still in junior high, I commented that maybe the young people who went into the Peace Corps became radical afterwards because they found they had been lied to by our history books and our schools and communities, and that if they had been taught the truth about our role in the world those young people would have done a way better job in all those different countries where instead they ended up seeing a very different America than they had been raised to know.

I got the “love it or leave it” response from some of my classmates, which I met with the utter obnoxious scorn of a typical junior high student.

But I didn’t really know what went on in any of those countries.

So what was it that I did know?

On July 16, 2008, CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) put out a report (warning:  pdf) entitled “Those Who Dared: 30 Officials Who Stood Up for Our Country.

CREW explains:

The actions of those named in this report are as varied as the people themselves and cut across the federal government. Some, like Glenn Fine at the Department of Justice and John Higgins at the Department of Education, are inspectors general who have been the only check on agency-wide corruption, misconduct and undue political influence. Others are included for a single act of courage, such as Army Specialist Joseph Darby who turned over to authorities the now infamous pictures of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who rushed to Attorney General Ashcroft?s hospital bedside to prevent top White House officials from pressuring the Attorney General to approve an illegal surveillance program.

Imagine working in the belly of the beast – in the Bush Administration, imagine the feeling of realization that something is terribly wrong with the way things are working.  And everyone around you seems to be just fine with it all.  Imagine feeling things become more and more wrong, maybe talking with a co-worker about it only to find they think there is something wrong with YOU, imagine how high the stakes suddenly appear — you can lose your job, you can be smeared so badly you will never get another job, or you can even be physically harmed.

And yet these people spoke out anyway.

You can’t pour anything into a vessel that’s already full, so there’s all sorts of fancy words to talk about emptying it first and cleaning it out, purification, purging, catharsis, all that.  Psychological terms, spiritual terms.

I remember once hearing about a spiritual practice that purified a person, emptied them of all the negative feelings and thoughts and attachments, and I remarked “but then there would be nothing left!”  Yeah, scary thought.  Nothing.

New moon tonight, and emptiness is on my mind.  Empty of thoughts and decisions and opinions.  Empty of expectations and desires and demands.  The moon waxes and the moon wanes, eternal cycles of emptiness and fullness.

Fear can fill the human spirit during times of great change and makes action into panic stricken yelling and dashing about, “save me!”  “Save me!”  “Somebody DO something!”

Elton John – “Grey Seal,” 1974 (courtesy of Regdwight23 from YouTube)

Miss Sarah Vaughn (“I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” featuring a young Bob James (Fourplay) on piano with Larry Rockwell, bass and Omar Clay, drums; courtesy of YouTuber pixaninny)

and Miss Sarah Vaughn (“Perdito” circa 1955 musicians unknown, courtesy of YouTuber JazzVideoGuy)

See I like to sing harmony, that’s my favorite, even in choir in school I loved the vibrations I’d feel when singing with a big group of voices and we’re all singing different parts and it comes together as one sound, that’s a rush.

I don’t know how to write about this, but I’m going to try anyway.

I’ve been following the discussion on immigration for over a year, and there are a lot of complexities to it and a lot of back story.

But this story is so terrible that I don’t think you need to know all the details of the law or intricacies of how we got to where we are in the United States as far as our broken immigration policies are concerned.

This story is about an essay written by Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, a certified Spanish interpreter for federal courts, who was present at the ICE raid in Postville, Iowa.

I found out about this essay in a circuitous way.  I first read the entire essay at The Sanctuary where Duke had it up in its entirety.  Immediately after reading it, I rebooted the essay and found he had removed it … turns out Dr. Camayd-Freixas had asked him to refrain from posting it after finding that the New York Times was going to do a front page story on it.  Duke and other pro-migrant bloggers complied.  Now that the story has been published, the essay is once again up at The Sanctuary.

Today I read the story in the New York Times which, of course, was heavily edited due to space concerns and as a result, the true impact of what happened was highly muted, though it was still an incredibly terrible story.

Dr. Camayd-Freixas was called to Postville to interpret but was not initially told why or what was going to happen.  The ICE, now part of the Department of Homeland Security, had planned this raid on Agriprocessors, Inc. for a long time in utter secrecy.

Sam Cooke, A Change is Gonna Come:

We managed to avoid the horrors of the candidate wars, oh weren’t we the wise ones?  This community was an oasis of sanity for many all over the blogosphere, and that’s no lie.

But the primaries are over now and the detrius we find ourselves wading through that calls itself our government is something we cannot avoid.

Folks in the Midwest are losing their homes to floods and there’s fires in California and lord knows what else.  Pick a city, any city.  Our whole country is suffering.

I have read some excellent incendiary rhetoric here at Docudharma this week.  Such fires blazing in our souls!

Burn, baby, burn.

Ben E. King – Stand By Me

Got the idea for this essay from my all time favorite diary by buhdydharma, written on November 20, 2006, which begins.

Gather ye round my Brothers and Sisters, come sit by the fire with the children and the ancestors and the listening spirits and I shall tell to you a tale. Spun by a madman from whole cloth and cast upon the seas of reality to drift where it may through the warps and wefts of space and time. A tale of stunning hope and hope denied, a tale of great victories….and and the same sad tale of tragic defeat. A tale of the impossible realized and the possible left undone, the tale of us and we. All the same story all the same story all the same story. and so, and so, and so,… and here we are. Still and again. Always and now. Now and forever.

I think about the people I know and so many of them are just outstanding human beings.  I don’t have a lot of friends, but I do have a few, and I have many good acquaintances here in New York City.  So I am never lonely.  I also have a gathering of people who share my spiritual practice.  Yes, I am very fortunate.

But there is another kind of gathering together, and the folks I’ve spoken of above are not part of that.  When I invite them to this gathering, they are not interested and some of them think me quite mad to even suggest such a thing, they with their busy lives.

Lou Reed:

Who doesn’t love the thought of transformation?  Pumpkins into a golden coach and all.

Cinderella, oh that’s what they fed me as a girl and I stumbled into many transformations as a result.

Modern culture calls it a “makeover.”  Well, yeah, you can change the surface in so many ways.

But transformation?  Oh that’s another thing entirely.  The surface is the form, the transformation fills that form and makes it breathe, like Galatea, like … well, I can’t think of any other examples.

Midwest city, yearning for real culture and finding none, I go to college and meet a strange group of wild misfits.

We end up renting a flat together and there are many stories I could tell about that, but I’m not going to.

Obligatory YouTube this Friday night — Ray Charles, “Hit the Road Jack” (replacement for “Busted” which got busted off of YouTube)

We got news coming down the pipeline about White House press secretary writing a tell-all and the very media indicted in that tell-all is covering it.  Just when you think things can’t get more surreal … well, I dunno, I think we’re all pretty much aware that surreal is the flavor of the day here in these Disunited States.

The story of the day.  Oh but there are so many stories of the day.

I am all for staying informed.

I’m one of the fortunate ones who can get their news from the blogs and especially here at Docudharma, where our news aggregators and analysts are second to none!

But it is Friday and I’m done with the work week.  I tend to use this day to reflect a bit and check my navigating skills to see that I’m still on the straight course.

The scuttlebut is that the Obama supporters are trying to figure out how to capture the Clinton supporters into joining the Obama supporters.

Those who have supported Clinton have been characterized as (among many other things) a bunch of old ladies who are bitter because their accomplishments as feminists are being belittled, and in the heat of the moment there are claims they won’t vote for Obama if he is the nominee.

And of course there are Obama supporters who vow they would never vote for the racist Clinton who played the race card and race baited, etc., if somehow she manages to steal the nomination.

It’s really quite fascinating to watch the thought processes.  Seems to me that most of the folks blogging about this aren’t really interested in either race or gender but for the purposes of this carnival we call a Presidential campaign, they’re dusting off whatever they may have gleaned from our culture, from teevee shows and magazines and books and have become instant experts on both race and gender issues.  Really quite remarkable.

I wonder why those who wish Clinton supporters to switch over to Obama don’t talk more about how Obama should court them … talk about feminism with respect, give them a bone for heaven’s sake?

But I don’t read much about that suggestion anywhere.  Probably because it’s unrealistic.  But what do I care about being realistic?  I’m just writing an essay and pontificating.  I’m in the mood for that.

Obligatory YouTube — The Harptones “OOH Wee Baby”:

I was reading NLinStPaul’s essay, Full-Blooded Americans and I read the linked article as well as the comments in the article, most of which agreed that heritage and culture and background were very important.

Reminded me of an old Jewish story from A Treasury of Jewish Folklore edited by Nathan Ausubel:

Usually the orthodox rabbis of Europe boasted distinguished rabbinical geneaologies, but Rabbi Yechiel of Ostrowce was an exception.  He was the son of a simple baker and he inherited some of the forthright qualities of a man of the people.

Once, when a number of rabbis had gathered at some festivity, each began to boast of his eminent rabbinical ancestors.  When Rabbi Yechiel’s turn came, he replied gravely, “In my family, I’m the first eminent ancestor.”

His colleagues were shocked by this piece of impudence, but said nothing.  Immediately after, the rabbis began to expound Torah.  Each one was asked to hold forth on a text culled from the sayings of one of his distinguished rabbinical ancestors.

One after another the rabbis delivered their learned dissertations.  At last it came time for Rabbi Yechiel to say something.  He arose and said, “My masters, my father was a baker.  He taught me that only fresh bread was appetizing and that I must avoid the stale.  This can also apply to learning.”

And with that Rabbi Yechiel sat down.

Last week I wrote about smashing idols.

Full-blooded Americans.  Aristocrats.  The Rich.  The Famous.  I guess here I would add “The Familiar.”