Tag: death

There are many gifts to be given and received this holiday season; some that you can wrap and put under a tree, and some so intangible and ethereal that they cannot be held within the boundaries of paper and ribbon.

Instead, they exist within the boundaries of our hearts.

Among those intangible presents, few matter more than the chance to be with those we love-and at the time of our death, it’s the most important thing of all.

We have a chance to bring all of this to a dying woman and her family-but the only way it can happen is if we convince the Florida Department of Corrections not to kill her first.

It’s not a tale of light and joy-but if we get lucky, there could still be a happy ending.

I just listened to this interview and can now say what many, me included, have thought all along, not only about him but as to our own previous administration, he’s certifiably crazy! I mean that in the so called World View, especially of righteousness, he just spoke. What’s going on has Nothing to do with any religious ideology but does for those who want to use that as their excuse, boy do they got some splanin to do at the pearly gates. He seems to Not Understand that humans going into others countries and Destroying Them as that Kills and Maims Tens of Thousands plus and Millions of Refugees is Not going to create Rage and Hatred, not only in those countries but from others on the planet. He and like are beyond nuts, Way Beyond!!

I sighed uneasy relief with everyone else when BP finally stopped Deepwater Horizon from emptying itself in the Gulf.  Yes, I knew it was temporary.  Yes, I knew it could blow up again any minute.  But there was, nevertheless, a relief.  For a short time anyway, BP would stop turning the Gulf of Mexico into a disgusting oil gumbo garnished with oil soaked pelicans and dead dolphins.

But then I read this article in the New York Times:

A wellhead in southeastern Louisiana was spewing a mist of oil and gas up to 100 feet into the air after being hit by a tug boat early Tuesday morning, officials said. It is at least the third unrelated oil leak in the area since the Deepwater Horizon spill began 99 days earlier.

The well is about 65 miles south of New Orleans in Barataria Bay, which is surrounded by wildlife-rich wetlands and was a fertile area for fishermen, shrimpers and oystermen before the BP spill. By Tuesday afternoon, a reddish brown sheen 50 yards by one mile long was spotted near the well, according to a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard said the well was owned by Cedyco, a company based in Houston.

The wellhead burst at 1 a.m. local time Tuesday after being hit by a tug boat, the Pere Ana C, that was pushing a dredge barge, Captain Buford Berry, though details were still being investigated.

So, not to put too fine a point on it, there is more oil and gas being deposited in the Gulf as you read this.  And they haven’t started stopping it yet, and are booming.  Booming.  Booming with 6000 feet of boom.  Pardon me, but didn’t we all decide in the past 3 months that that is worthless.  Oh, but excuse me again, this is a new day.  And a new leak.  And so we get to try stuff that didn’t work before all over again.  Because we’re crazy and think it’ll be different this time.

And then we have this gem:

No specific flow rate has been determined, officials said.

Mama mia.  Oy gevalt.

And this, dear reader, is why I find myself shrieking.  And uttering strings of profanity.  Join me.

simulposted at The Dream Antilles and The Stars Hollow Gazette and dailyKos

This is deeply troubling.  And beyond sickening.  AP reports:

GULF SHORES, Ala. – Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange – and troubling – phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say.

The animals’ presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators.

“A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable,” said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

Dear Pachamama, Mother Earth, Santa Madre Tierra, Gaia, Sweet Mother, I am so sorry for what we have done and are doing to you and your creatures, our brothers and sisters, the creatures who live in and near the sea.  We don’t know how to stop the oil, and we don’t know how to save all of these beings. Please understand our remorse, our regret, our shame and accept out deepest apologies for destroying this part of this wondrous, blue pearl planet.  Please forgive us.

———————-

simulposted at The Dream Antilles

Thirty years ago, I completed a book of poetry:

                      PSALMS BEYOND THE SPEED OF LIGHT

                  VARIATIONS ON THE MYTH OF ZEUS AND SEMELE

                         POETRY FOR THE ATOMIC AGE

As usual,  I have an excess of words.  The poetry was an expression of my belief in evolution as seen through the metaphor of Zeus and Semele, and based in human acquisition of power over life and death, the atomic power which is capable of destroying life on earth.

But the attainment of this power demands a commensurate growth in consciousness (morality & awareness)to become more equal to the newly begotten physical powers.  As Einstein said, “With the splitting of the atom, everything has changed save man’s way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

Although atomic energy remains the most dramatic symbol and manifestation of man’s new found powers, we have learned that many of our scientific and physical advances can have a equally devastating effects on life on earth.

Like all life forms, humans are engaged in the process of evolution.  And today, the primary thrust of evolution is the evolution of consciousness.

The evolution of consciousness, of necessity, requires an increasing awareness of one’s position in life.  The most profound awareness is the recognition of one’s own mortality, of death.  A cat or a dog does not wake up in the morning thinking, “Gee, I’m going to die some day!”  But we do; this is required by our evolutionary growth.  

And therein lies both the rub and the salvation, or, more accurately, the key to evolution.

I hope you’ll follow me below the fold~~~

In that parallel world from the reality around them and elsewhere, you’ll get some as you go down but the kicker is the last report.

This type of thought process by the hawkish must end, unless the rest of the world communities want perpetual war and criminal terrorism as we’ve experienced over the last decades and now the chances of even more have been greatly enhanced with the death and destruction wrought by the so called mighty who followed same thought process into the creation of greater hatreds and enemies!

Just had a gold star couple come in the shop looking for a flagpole on which they want to fly a USMC flag along with the US flag.  Their son was killed two weeks ago in Afghanistan two months into his fifth tour.  

Man, what do ya say, what can ya say.  I offered our condolences professionally and personally but whats that really mean.  Sometimes even in a simple job like this, selling flags, reality strikes home.

There are many for if there is an end it doesn’t come for decades later for those invaded and occupied by others. The innocent are the ones who suffer the most and in greater numbers by the destruction and death from the moment of invasion and decades later with what’s left behind by those who are ordered to invade and then occupy in these Wars of Choice based on lies or for reasons of material worth a small country can add to a power that wants to control.

This is just one of many of the long running destructive remnants of our generations War of Choice, an extremely destructive Weapon of Mass Destruction, Dioxin, Agent Orange and the others used as we occupied a small country Vietnam for over a decade. Destructive not only to the Vietnamese Civilians, then and now, but also to many soldiers who served in country and elsewhere, where it was stored and packaged for shipment to Vietnam and stored at bases to be sprayed over the country at the whim of the commanders of war.