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 22 Aug 2006 @ 09:00
Waves recede.
Not even the wind ties up a small abandoned boat.
The moon is a clear mark of midnight.
---Dogen
You have a saying, "to kill two birds with one stone." But our way is to kill just one bird with one stone.
---Suzuki Roshi
After the ecstasy, the laundry.
---Zen saying
Once Upon a Time by Henry Maynell Rheam
British Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1859-1920
Having worked with children and young people most of my career, I noticed almost immediately a major gap in attempts to communicate with these generations. My childhood took place before television and before suitability ratings became recommended at the movies. Nearly every day I marveled at the wonders created in my mind by books. These were children's books and they were directed to a special world kids were allowed to live in then. When I would mention children's tales from which I had learned important things, I've usually found students in class have no idea what I'm talking about. My childhood was a controlled and protected world and I realize there were disadvantages to being in it. Nevertheless as I become an old man, I treasure the memories, the stories, and the traditions of that abandoned world.
I've preserved, not always carefully, many of those books to share---especially the fascinating illustrations---with my own children. But the timing and the choices available to contemporary youth are very different from the 1940s. My daughter, almost 15, can get back as far as the 1950s with her interests...but she pretty much comes skidding to a stop there. Letting loose of a televised perception is something like coming to the edge of an earth that's flat. Falling off would be madness and a nightmare of monsters. Besides, there are so many "adult" problems kids have to solve, like families falling apart, teachers too "stressed" to take interest, murder and mayhem in the news, being marked by capitalism as major consumers, whether our species will survive on the planet. And so I was interested this morning to learn Norton Anthology series---those huge thick books with tissue-thin pages you may have had to read in school somewhere---has added a children's literature volume. What follows is a keen review of the thing. Despite its reservations, I'm going to see if I can find one today, become lost in that world again, and look for the magic key to get out. More >
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 3 Aug 2006 @ 11:06
In my hut this summer,
there is nothing---
there is everything!
---Sodo
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
---Andre Gide
Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
---Miles Davis
Still Life with Fruit and Shellfish (and insects), 1653
Jan van Kessel
My mother was a country girl, born and raised on a working farm in the dairy country around Frewsburg, New York. That is, she was until her father died suddenly just as she entered her teenage years. Then her mother had to sell the place and move her and her 2 sisters into a house in town. It was a difficult time, but through it all that family and the relatives were strengthened and maintained by a religion of strict fundamentalism. No dancing, no music that wasn't church, no theater, no card games (except one called rook, for some reason), lots of Bible and hours and hours at services. These were the United Brethren, a sect related to Amish and Mennonite, which communities also flourished in that part of New York. They still do, although I understand the United Brethren have disbanded. The radio humorist and writer Garrison Keillor was raised United Brethren and he talks about it sometimes---but not often.
My mother became a registered nurse and met my father at a hospital in the nearby city, where he was working as an orderly. He was not a churchgoer particularly, and some family history showed unrepented troubles. The more successful of the Carlsons were politicians and lawyers. His uncle Samuel was mayor of the town, eventually earning the honor of Mayor Emeritus of Jamestown, New York. All of this did not impress my mother's family one bit. The Johnsons opposed the relationship in spades---er, rooks. Dad had great interest and experience in drama, eventually getting a job with the fledgling radio station there. He also took leading parts in plays at the active community theater. When they married, the Johnsons saw it as my mom's seduction into sin by my father. Mom no longer went to church. When I was born a few years later I suppose I was viewed as some kind of bastard at best.
It was very strange growing up and being viewed by my mother's side this way. We didn't see much of them, but of course some family events were unavoidable. My father was well known in the area and he did his best to be cheerful and at least entertaining, but mostly it all was extremely uncomfortable. I had a cousin on that side who was a boy and about my age. We got along pretty well, but playing together was a bit strange since there was so much he couldn't do---and I had been coached not to mention those kinds of things. By the time he was a teenager he was one of the wildest boys in town, with fast cars and fast girls. His family moved quickly to repair that situation by sending him to a rigid bible college. He came back into the fold and remains there still. His 2 brothers-in-law are fundamentalist ministers. More >
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 27 Jul 2006 @ 07:56
The practice of meditation takes us on a fabulous journey into the gap between our thoughts, where all the advantages of a peaceful, stress-free, healthier, fatigue-free life are available, but are simply side benefits. The paramount reason for doing this soul-nourishing meditation practice is to get in the gap between our thoughts and make conscious contact with the creative energy of life itself.
---Wayne Dyer
Better not to begin. Once you begin, better to finish it.
---Buddhist saying
Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm's length. It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you.
The thing to do when you're impatient is...to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just catch the feeling that your companion is there watching you.
---Carlos Castaneda
This week I caught up with an issue of Rolling Stone from December. It's the HipHop issue, and I sort of put it away as not immediately essential to my particular musical addictions. But inside, it turns out, was lurking an article that slowly has emerged as absolutely required reading. In fact, Google this morning is showing a few university courses this fall will be studying it. Military bloggers reference it too. It's about Khalid (not his real name) who spent the last 15 years fighting as a mujahideen in the name of Islam. A volunteer from his native Yemen to help drive the Russians out of Afghanistan (why? what were they doing there? guess who paid him...and what could their interest be?) Khalid recounts his story of how things changed with 9/11 and what it was like to fight Americans in Iraq. His mission, as a paid soldier, has been to help Arab countries drive foreign invaders from their soil...as he sees it. What did you say the difference is between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? And within a dozen years can these labels describe the same man? The same nation?
The author of the article is Tom Downey...and it's his first for Rolling Stone. An interesting guy, with apparently no political ax to grind, he made a name for himself with a book about firemen in New York a year before 9/11. Mostly he writes travel articles. There's a photo and bio here~~~
[link] The picture illustrating this piece is of Khalid, with ceremonial dagger. More >
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 24 Jul 2006 @ 12:23
What you see with your eyes closed is what counts.
---Lame Deer, Lakota sage
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest human battle ever and to never stop fighting.
---E.E. Cummings
What do you want to get enlightened for? You may not like it.
---Shunryu Suzuki
Once upon a time four guys decided to start a singing group, just for the fun of it, as any four folks have done since time began. Creation likes to sing and harmony is one of those things humans stumbled on. It's a gift from God. This story starts in Milwaukee where 2 fellows found themselves singing in the same choir and became buddies. It was the 1940s. Bob Strasen went off to Japan with the Army and led a male chorus there, but Gene Puerling got a job as a disc jockey back home and formed a couple singing groups on the side. In 1951 he moved to Los Angeles, as did lots of musicians from all over the place. There was work there: TV now, as well as movies and record companies. He needed to share an apartment with somebody, and along came Clark Burroughs, a guy with a sky-high voice, impeccable intonation, and a knack for hilarity that got him a few acting jobs too. Clark was from LA, was schooled and even had sung with the Roger Wagner Chorale. Now he was in a sort of novelty quartet called the Encores that sang on Billy May records. Billy was from Pittsburgh, had been in the bands of and arranged the jazz tunes for Glenn Miller and Charlie Barnet, but now had been doing children's records at Capitol and only lately had been convinced to start a dance band and take it on the road. In the Encores was Bob Morse from Pasadena, who came from a wildly musical family, with brothers who played and arranged for Stan Kenton and Johnny Richards. Morse sang baritone in the Bob Eberle crooner style and could solo well. In 1952 Clark and Puerling, who'd been working in a record store, got the idea to start their own group with Bob Morse. Gene would sing bass and he called Milwaukee, since Strasen was back, and talked him into coming to LA to sing tenor. Clark would handle all the notes above that, which was not yet a sound you'd hear out of a man who wasn't in the Ink Spots. Vocal quartets everywhere have a tradition of choosing catchy silly names for themselves and our guys were no different. These were The Hi-Lo's. More >
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 17 Jul 2006 @ 10:48
Do not arouse disdainful mind when you prepare a broth of wild grasses; do not arouse joyful mind when you prepare a fine cream soup.
---Dogen
Only our own searching for happiness prevents us from seeing it. It is like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever catching it, or a dog chasing its own tail. Although peace and happiness do not exist as an actual thing or place, they are always available, and accompany you every instant.
---Gendun Rinpoche
Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
---Steven Leacock
Photo for AP DAVID J. PHILLIP
SAYING GOODBYE Former President George H. Bush pays his respects Wednesday to Enron founder Kenneth Lay, who died of heart disease July 5 while vacationing in Aspen, Colo. Lay faced sentencing this fall on his fraud and conspiracy convictions which led to the collapse of Enron in 2001. Bush did not speak at the service at the Houston church.
[link]
Special Reports
Bring me the head of “Kenny Boy” Lay: Another convenient death invites new investigations of Enron-Bush crimes
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
Jul 10, 2006, 00:38
Kenneth Lay, world-class Enron criminal, long-time Bush family friend and crime ally, was pronounced dead on July 5, allegedly of a heart-related condition.
Lay’s name can now be added to the list of dubious Enron-related deaths, which include the alleged 2002 shotgun suicide of Enron Vice Chairman Clifford Baxter [link] (also see analysis here [link] , and here [link] ).
Lay’s hasty exit, which comes as he faced 45 years of prison for conspiracy and fraud charges (the barest tip of the iceberg of his true crimes), has sparked rampant speculation. Initial mainstream reports on the cause of death have been confusing at best: “heart attack," “heart failure," and “heart disease” are distinct and different conditions.
Lay, who was reportedly depressed and embittered, has now been conveniently removed before receiving punishment (elite criminals rarely get what they deserve). Charges against Lay and his estate may be conveniently tossed (leaving his squirreled assets available for new uses). The Bush administration, and Congress, is conveniently protected from any possibility of a damning testimony or revelation.
Lay’s supposed demise, however interesting, is ultimately irrelevant. Far more important is the fact that Enron is still an open criminal case: the true crimes of Enron remain unaddressed.
More importantly, the apparatus that Ken Lay and Enron set into motion is alive and well. It still shapes the fabric of daily geopolitical life. More >
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