Nature

Last week I discussed Earth Day and made some suggestions for how people can get involved locally. Here is a chance to get involved on a national level. Last month National Geographic did an article on this and I am ashamed to say in the furry of Bush administration, it’s folly, it’s frauds and it’s fuck-ups, I forgot to mention it until now.

This is a tragedy not merely for wildlife, but for the people living all around the mountains of West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky. This isn’t just about the survival of some rare species of nuthatch folks, this is about human beings who’s homes and lives are being destroyed by obscenely bad mining practices. As both Robin Williams and George Carlin have observed, given enough time Nature can recover from whatever we dish out, we have to stop these things to save ourselves.

In West Virginia, citizens battle against the mining companies carving off their mountaintops

If you can, I also recommend going to the library and reading the March 2006 National Geographic. They talk to more of the local residents, not just the activists.

Like Strip mining times ten, Mountaintopping is exactly that, removing coal from a mountain by blasting the entire mountain top to pieces and removing coal directly from the exposed seems. The coal is separated from the rock using a hydrological process. Extra material, the rubble left of the mountain top, fills in valleys and makes developable land for things like golf courses and shopping malls. The wastewater, filled with crushed rock and coal dust called slurry, is stored in abandoned mine shafts and manmade ponds made of dirt embankments called impoundments.

Proponents say that it is safer, cheaper, quicker and the leveled areas provide much land for development.

Well, I think the slurry spills of Buffalo Creek, Miller Cove, Buchannan and Quecreek kind proves that to be a lie. Add to that the affected ground water from slurry seeping into the water table, the disruption in the air quality, and noise pollution and areas around these mines are becoming dead zones fit only for shopping malls.

Given the safety issues of old fashioned deep mining, I’d say that alternative energy research is desperately needed. Even if one doesn’t believe in the effect of pollution on Global Warming, isn’t the immediate environmental impact on people, plus freeing ourselves from the apron strings of the Middle East, reason enough to find something other than fossil fuels to power this nation?

Write your representatives, demand a bill be passed to fund alternative energy research!

And in the meantime, tell them to either shut these mines down or demand much stricter guidelines and monitoring.

Some More Reading To Get You Outraged

Crimes Against Nature : How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.


The book speaks for itself. I don’t care if the author is a Kennedy, it’s very well researched and documented. A must read.

Gee Whiz Golly...

This sound familiar to anyone?

On to More Pleasant Topics.

Go Elliott! Sadler takes the pole at Talladega once again! He went in saying that that they wanted to improve their qualifying efforts and they did. Good Job!

Tomorrow’s race promises to be interesting. Because of the number or wrecks at the Superspeedways (Daytona and Talladega) last year due to bump drafting, NASCAR has mandated that the CC put a lighter bumper on the car to discourage the practice.

My first reaction was, well my typical first reaction:

“What! Why do they have to punish everyone just because JJ get’s twitchy in traffic at Tallageda! That’s Bullshit! Just put the #48 on a rail and let everyone navigate around him.”

However, having seen how they are going about it….I’m good.

See, at the front and rear ends, superspeedway cars had basically become tanks. The reinforcing that went into the bumpers was starting to verge on the ridiculous, but that was the only way to survive such an aerodynamically dependant race with your aerodynamics intact. Not only would cars suck up under one another draft in order to gain momentum just through lengthening the profile, they would bump into the car in front of them to move the line along faster. At 190+ mph this works fine if the car in front of you is directly in front of you, however if they are going into a turn, well it’s a big mess. And because there are two to three freight trains of cars all going into said turn at 170+ mph side by side, it’s a HUUUUGE mess. That why whenever there are races at Talladega or Daytona, you keep hearing the phrase "The Big One". That's because wrecks at these tracks usually involve three to twelve more cars than they would elsewhere. I think the record was set a couple years ago at 23 cars involved in a single accident.

NASCAR has mandated that the front bumper be lighter to discourage people from bump drafting period. Some drivers (DJ) are happy about this, but some drivers (Dale Jr., Matt Kennseth) said they were going to spend practice finding out just how hard they could hit people without damaging their front ends so as I said, interesting times ahead tomorrow.

Speaking of Elliott, Happy Birthday! Mr. Sadler turns 31 today. Best of luck to him and the Chocolate Thunder. Whip Dega once and for all guys!!!

Dale Sr. was inducted to the International Racing Hall of Fame this last Thursday and all the cars of DEI are running Dale Sr.’s old black with silver accents paint scheme for the race. Congratulations to the Earnhardt family and Best of luck to Dale Jr. and the Bud Crew.

And Mark Martin, good luck on his drive for the Championship! Have a great race!

Be safe all and Godspeed!

A Long Time Ago I Promised…

To explain why Elliott would be very popular at Pagan parties. That’s because his Birthday falls on one our major Holidays, one that is particularly looked forward to by adults.

Now, I’m going to talk a bit about my faith here, so if this kind of thing makes you uncomfortable you can stop reading. It’s the last section of this blog entry anyway. :)

April 30th is Beltane with the following day being Mayday. (Some people say the names are interchangeable for the entire celebration, but I was taught this way.)

First of all to explain: Paganism, or Neo-Paganism as it is practiced now, is very much a one-to-one analogy. Nature is the way the divine expresses itself. As almost everything in the plant and animal kingdoms (this was before microscopes folks) maintains the continuity of it’s species through the joining of two sexes, so the divine created and maintains the continuity of the universe through the joining of Male and Female aspects of itself: The God and the Goddess. Or Lord and Lady as many call them.

Pagans view the cycle of the seasons as an expression of, or representing (and/or they represent it, all depends on your view) the lifecycle of the God and Goddess. The Goddess is constant, she is the Earth after all, though she does go through phases of Maiden (spring), Mother (summer and fall) and Crone (winter) as the year progresses.

The God goes through life and death. He is both the hunter and the hunted, the priest and the sacrifice. He is born at Yule, the Winter Solstice, grows older as spring and summer come on. He gains the height of his power coupled with growing wisdom in August at Lughnasadh when, as an analogy, we would consider him to be in his 40’s. Then he wanes as the harvests go on and dies an old, albeit wise, man at Samhain, or Halloween.

Now for the Beltane celebration.

To begin, The ancient Celts did not consider the day to begin as we do, at midnight, or at dawn. (For really freaky division of time, the Royal Navy used to believe the day began at noon, which is when the reckoning for latitude was taken. Meaning until 12:00pm tomorrow, to them it’s would still be Saturday. The odd things we just don’t think about.) The Celts believed that the day began at sundown (for example at 8:00pm on Tuesday, it becomes Wednesday). So at Sundown on April 30th the first part of celebrations begin.

Like the Vernal Equinox, this is a spring fertility holiday. But the…flavor is…different. Whereas the Vernal Equinox is the God and Goddess just discovering virility and fertility, the teenage phase if you will, Beltane and Mayday have much more…powerful and primal connotations. It is the marriage of the Goddess and God and when many sects consider the Goddess becomes pregnant with the God who will be reborn on the Winter Solstice. It’s the Union of the Goddess and the God….

Please people, my Dad reads this blog. Don’t make me spell it out for you.

Fire is a major part of the Beltane night rituals. The cleansing act of leaping over a campfire and making a wish is a tradtional part of the Beltane celebration. Cattle would be driven between two fires for luck, though one could also say the smuging from the smoke killed insects that might have carried diseases which could wipe out a families herd.

As we study old lore, we often find there is something scientifically sound in the practice.

And as Mr. Nicols accounts in is his series of essays on the Pagan Holidays, young men and women would go out into the woods and stay out there all Beltane night in order to “greet the Dawn” and collect wild flowers and boughs for the Mayday celebration.

It takes how long to collect branches?

Yeah.

As Kipling put it in A Tree Song:

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin;
But we have been out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring Summer in!

Now before anyone jumps to any wild media-driven conclusions, I have been a Pagan for jeez…6 years now, in Los Angeles no less, and I have even never heard of the actual Great Rite (ie. Sex for ritual purposes) being performed in public by anyone, let alone an orgy. A. Sorry to disappoint people like Pat Robertson, we’re not that weird and B. Sorry to disappoint the salaciously inclined, but this isn’t about swinging or free love or any of that. This isn’t about Krishna seducing dozens of milk maids or Zues having his way all around the Agean, though there is that aspect to the God as well. This is about THE Union, not random screwing. This is more of a “go home, grab your S.O. and get it ON” kind of thing.

Anyway, the next day are the Mayday rituals, which tend to represent the formal marriage of Goddess and God and are more Springy and flowery (though there is the Maypole *chuckle*) in feel. Needless to say, a lot of Pagans chose this Holiday to be married or handfasted on as well.

Then there's usually a BBQ.

A football or volleyball may get tossed around.

Kids run around making a lot of noise while older folks sit in the shade and chat...

The usual. :)

Thank you letting me pontificate. This, with Lughnasadh and Candlemass, is one of my favorite holidays and I just wanted to share. :) Happy Beltane/Mayday to any other Pagans out there.

To bring full circle: National Geographic did a spread on the modern Celtic population a couple months ago and they put up a scrolling photo gallery up on their website here. The second section, A Bit of the Wild, contains pictures from the yearly Beltane Fire festival/ritual in Edinburgh. I’ve never been to anything that large or elaborate, but it does give you a sense of the Holiday. The entire Flash presentation is worth sitting through BTW, great presentation.

Anyway, I have one more final on Thursday. Things have been going quite well so far, but I don’t want to jinx anything by publicly celebrating too soon. Wish me luck and have a great week all!

The Lighter Side Of...(EDITED)

Today is Earth Day!

I’m sorry I did not post sooner, but hopefully you have checked with your local environmental groups to find out what clean ups or other activities are happening in your neighborhood. Perhaps today you can just take a look at the Earth Day website and find out what ongoing programs you might give a Saturday to sometime this month or sometime this year even.

Nature Conservancy also has a page for volunteer opportunities

Or you can Adopt an Acre of Rainforest.

Or “adopt” a wolf, sea otter or tiger, amoung others…

I’m also going to give Ward Burton’s group a plug because they do interesting work.

You can also plant a tree.

Or go back into the woods or a park near your home and pick up trash.

And of course, RECYCLE!

(And if you happen to be at a track this weekend, look and see if they have a recycling program and if they don’t, ask them why the hell not. I’ve been up in those stands after a race is over. Between that and the parking lot, the number of recyclable cans and bottles would take up an obscene amount in a landfill.)

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,
I keep it staying at Home -
With a bobolink for a Chorister,
And an Orchard, for a Dome. ~ Emily Dickenson

*O.K. one of my cats in playing in the hall. It is cheering to see an otherwise stately species leaping at shadows and intensely hunting a rattle. Espcially when they are fluffy...*

“To pay homage to beauty is to admire Nature; to admire Nature is to worship God” ~ Unknown

EDIT:

Storm in North Carolina

I love this place. I love watching the storm come on. After living in a desert for 20 years, a common east coast summer thunderstorm is quite a treat. I love the way the light changes and the wind blows randomly. I love the distant rumbling and the gentle rain that precedes the deluge and wild cracks of thunder and lightening overhead as if the sky were ripping itself apart. I love watching the gusts blow sheets of rain across the parking lot and the torrent pouring through the leaves of the trees. I love going out in them. A summer shower feels great, I remember playing in them as a child. Hell, if I lived in house as opposed to an apartment complex, I might run out there in my skivvies.

Don't ask what it is about women and rainstorms, I don't know.

My Neighbors

I finally broke down and bought a guide to figure out the demographics of the clientele at my birdfeeder.

The most regular customers are House Finches. Juncos used to come by all the time, but they’ve moved north for the summer. We also get Chipping Sparrows and Chickadees (though come to think of it I haven't seen any in a while, they might have migrated too). We have a small flock (around a dozen) of Boat Tailed Grackles and two pairs of Mourning Doves that come by everyday. Our celebrity guests include a mated pair of Cardinals and a pair of Blue Jays. I've also seen Mockingbrids, Robins and Brown Thrashers about, but not at my feeder. I know there are probably more, such as the mysterious visitor that stops by occasionally around 6 am and makes a noise I can only describe as being analogous to a sonar ping, but those are the only ones I have seen clearly enough to identify.

Before the storm blew in I was out in the woods behind my building this morning picking up trash (yes, I do put my money where my mouth is) and I found we had a dogwood back there, quite lovely. We also have a blooming set of briar along the forest edge. I think it may be blackberries. I hope so. Yum!

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.” ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Hunting Again

As is usual when I shoot my mouth off, I started thinking about it later. :D

Now, I know there are women who enjoy hunting and are quite good at it, I’m not knocking them in anyway. Nor am I trying to romanticize hunting for those that drag their ass out of bed at an ungodly hour to wear camouflage jumpsuits and bright orange vests to go shoot at things. I’m speaking in terms of archetypal behaviors and concepts here.

Human beings have walked this earth for 200,000 years. We’ve only been farming for the last 7,000 or so of them and only living in cities for the last 5,000. This means we spent about 192,0000 years as H/G. Hunter - Gatherers. That's a lot of time/genetic programming. Men hunted and women gathered. There are some examples in the anthropological record of women being more involved in animal food procurement, but most of that is concentrated in fishing peoples such as Indians of North Western America. The fact is you can’t go running after bison and mastodons with a baby. Gathering is a safe food procurement activity for someone who is lugging kids around. So it’s kind of no wonder when we read of the old Gods, the divine masculine is a hunter. That’s the way men provided.

(Of course, anthropologists have found the majority of food a H/G society eats is gathered as opposed to the more sporadically successful hunting...)

;)

:D

Yes, there are Goddess, like Diana and Artemis, who cross over and represent the masculine aspect all women have inside them, just as Dionysius represents the feminine aspect all men have inside of them, but when you get down in the really primal Gods, the really old ones, the Hunters are male. In fact one of the prevailing theories is that some of the paintings in the great caves of such places as Lascaux and Chauvet were used as sympathetic magik for men before the hunt.

So perhaps people, like myself, who don’t participate in hunting need to view it in terms of a ritualized behavior reenacting hundreds of millennia of human history. Getting in touch with their Paleolithic roots, as it were. :)

Yes, I know I think too much.

Yes, I know I'm wierd.

That of course is responsible hunting, which is the majority of hunters. I still think people who engage in canned hunts need the cage, random cattle prods, y’know…and Bubba drankin’ and shootin’ needs a swift kick in the groin. You wouldn't get drunk to use a chain saw, why the hell would you get drunk to use a gun.

The Kip Report

Well, I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat and a cough (someone tell me again how quitting smoking was supposed to be a big boon for my health?), nothing major but it's just no fun running around sounding like Kathleeen Turner when you have no one to sound like Kathleeen Turner to.


Fortunately since there was no class Friday I could stay in. Unfortunately, that means I probably will be home tonight listening to the race on MRN.

Actually, this season has been in interesting experience in what being a sports fan back in the 1930’s and 1940’s must have been like. You get more background info on a radio program, but you have to really engage the imagination to visualize what happened. This is especially difficult in auto racing because A. so much is happening at once and B. often what happens on the track is up to interpretation (except perhaps to the drivers…perhaps). If you can’t actually see what happened, it’s hard to have an opinion about any of the “he ran over me” arguments so I am really, really ready for NBC to take over broadcast duties. :D

I see NASCAR was thinking of penalizing Nicole the Biffette for being an attention whore. Well, given that Jeffy Pop got fined 10K for shoving Kenseth after a race and no one said boo about it, why not?

I’m being sarcastic. Jeffy-pops fine is as ridiculous as Nicole’s fine would have been. Yes, both of them were being weenies, but Jeez Brian, it’s a sport, not “1984”.

I see Elliott has been tapped to test tires at Indy. With the limited testing this year it sounds good to me! Hey, every little bit helps. I’m also voting to get him into the All Star. Vote early, vote often!

Dale, nice interview on Nextel Wake-Up Call. :)

Best of luck to Dale, Elliott and Mark and their crews tonight!

I have finals all though next week, so everyone wish me luck!

The Darker Side Of...

I wish I could say something light a funny right now. I wish I could be witty and acerbic, using words like rapiers, but I’ll just have to be outraged, saddened and use them like blunt objects.

CIA fires agent who might have leaked information about the secret prison network.

Now the agent did violate “Company” policy and they were perfectly within their rights firing him or her. However, thank the God that person did come forward.

When you combine this with Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and SCOTUS recent ruling on Jose Padilla (ie. ignoring the writ of Habeas Corpus, which is one of the things states held out signing the Constitution for), we are living in some pretty freakin’ scary times people.



As I have said before, when I was growing up, I was taught only “Bad Guys” like the USSR, China and Nazi Germany did these things. Now we’re doing them, what does this say about us? What does this say about what America has become?

Do we let “America” come to mean “hypocritical capitalist tyranny”, or do we fight to maintain it’s definition of “freedom, democracy, equal rights for all”?

It just makes me sick...

Bush Continues to Prove He is Insane

"I hear the voices…”

Oh, I’m sure you do George, I am sure you do…

“…and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."

One of the popular definitions of insanity is: “Doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results.”

Bush fits this definition.

There is also the Megalomaniacal tendencies, as well as bad grammar, revealed in the “I am the decider…” He is not the person who makes sweeping decision based off his own personal agenda, he is an elected representative of the people of the United States and as such, owes it to them to make sure his staff fulfills their duties.

You're not a king George, you're just a president.

This is also where those of us who have argued over whether Bush is an astute manipulative demagogue over a stupid true-believer demagogue gain some insight.

Iraq is a mess. It’s a huge mess. Even if you think we should have gone in there, no sane person can say that our efforts there have been successful. The Iraqis are not being trained fast enough to replace us, the new government is in disarray, our troops are under attack from insurgents, terrorists and getting caught in the cross fire of a civil war, the “rebuilding” has been an overall failure, Iraq people are actually more at risk and live in worse conditions than they did under Saddam and they can’t stand us.

An astute manipulator would have fed Rumsfeld to the wolves ages ago, he is the perfect sacrificial lamb because he was in on ignoring all those recommendations before the war. But Bush is a true believer, a zealot who is absolutely certain that what he has chosen in the right path and he refuses to be swayed no matter how much evidence mounts that shows him he is wrong. As I observed a while back: It’s “faith based governing”, nothing to do with reality.

Meanwhile Rumsfeld blamed his troubles on terrorists.

“For one thing, Rumsfeld said it was important to "recognize that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees. They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it. They're much better at (laughing) managing those kinds of things than we are."

Yes, I am sure that bin Laden has paid off the “liberal media’ types, like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Riley, Rush Limbaugh and Brit Hume Don. I’m sure that the fact that you forced the retirement of any experienced military commander that didn’t agree with you had nothing to do with it. I’m sure the utter failure that Iraq is has nothing to do with it.

And my (old) senator, Dianne Feinstien has joined the chorus.

In the meantime, not only has the war cost over 2300 American military personnel and 35,000 Iraqi’s lives, it will probably cost the American tax payers over a trillion dollars, thanks in part to people like this.

Meanwhile, Haliburton posts record profits.

It's called war profiteering folks, people used to be shot for it.

I think everyone who still thinks Bush is “doing a great job” needs to read the issue of the Rolling Stone that came out today. For all those that have claimed in recent weeks that “History will vindicate him”*, they have posted their cover story here.

And here is a sample:

"By contrast, the Bush administration -- in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called "the legitimate authority of the presidency" -- threatens to overturn the Framers' healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious "signing statements," which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. Earlier presidents, including Jackson, raised hackles by offering their own view of the Constitution in order to justify vetoing congressional acts. Bush doesn't bother with that: He signs the legislation (eliminating any risk that Congress will overturn a veto), and then governs how he pleases -- using the signing statements as if they were line-item vetoes. In those instances when Bush's violations of federal law have come to light, as over domestic surveillance, the White House has devised a novel solution: Stonewall any investigation into the violations and bid a compliant Congress simply to rewrite the laws.

Bush's alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. "I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president," Sen. Bill Frist declared of Bill Clinton's efforts to conceal an illicit sexual liaison. "No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country," Rep. Tom DeLay asserted. "The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door," warned Rep. Henry Hyde, one of Clinton's chief accusers. In the face of Bush's more definitive dismissal of federal law, the silence from these quarters is deafening.

The president's defenders stoutly contend that war-time conditions fully justify Bush's actions. And as Lincoln showed during the Civil War, there may be times of military emergency where the executive believes it imperative to take immediate, highly irregular, even unconstitutional steps. "I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful," Lincoln wrote in 1864, "by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation." Bush seems to think that, since 9/11, he has been placed, by the grace of God, in the same kind of situation Lincoln faced. But Lincoln, under pressure of daily combat on American soil against fellow Americans, did not operate in secret, as Bush has. He did not claim, as Bush has, that his emergency actions were wholly regular and constitutional as well as necessary; Lincoln sought and received Congressional authorization for his suspension of habeas corpus in 1863. Nor did Lincoln act under the amorphous cover of a "war on terror" -- a war against a tactic, not a specific nation or political entity, which could last as long as any president deems the tactic a threat to national security. Lincoln's exceptional measures were intended to survive only as long as the Confederacy was in rebellion. Bush's could be extended indefinitely, as the president sees fit, permanently endangering rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution to the citizenry


Stop voting for people just because they belong to your political party! This isn't about "us vs. them", it's about all of us together. Pay attention and find out who you are voting for. Find out what they have done and where they stand on issues by looking at their records, then cast your ballot for the person you believe would do the best job.

*Aside: Whenever someone is reduced to saying “History will vindicate him”, you know they haven’t a rational leg to stand on in their position.

Adventures in Academia

I ran out of 3x5 note cards and the student bookstore is closed, so my evening’s research stalled out. I realized I hadn’t updated folks in the World o’ Kip in a while so I figured I would take some time while I had it and let folks know what was happening.

Yes, I am still volunteering in the archeology lab, still taking stuff out of bags, washing stuff, drying stuff, labeling stuff and putting stuff back into bags. It’s sounds like a thrill o’minute, but I have actually learned a great deal. We also had another test dig outside of town, in which I got more experience in the glamorous world of ditch digging, experience I can hopefully parlay into a job working with a contract archeology firm over the summer. My Anthro professor said that fieldwork is very important to getting into grad school and since I can't afford to go to summer session on out-of-state tuition (and I really need the money) I’m trying to rent my soul out to the highest bidder.

I’m still working on the Blockade of Wilmington, which is the research that stalled out. I have however finished going through all the original sources up in Special Collections.

Special Collections is the area of a library with original manuscripts, old documents, records and letters that historians mine for information. If you ever come across a trunk full of old letters from your grandparents day and don’t feel like keeping it, contact your local library, university or historical society and see if they would be interested in having them. Most letters are personal in nature, but often people talk about what is happening around them because of world events and that’s the kind of stuff we like to know about. We know there was a Civil War, but how did it affect people’s daily lives? That’s what the stuff in special collections helps us understand.

You take a service elevator up to a well appointed room of dark paneling and leather chairs. You leave all your things in a wood paneled locker, taking only notebooks and pencils (no pens) into to collection room itself. You hand the clerk at the desk a slip of paper with a number on it and he or she brings out a box. You take the box over to a table, sit yourself down and enter living history.

“Furloughs will not be granted for any length of time including seven days except in extreme cases…”

“You wrote to me that Grandma told you that I spent fity dollars on my visit to you at Wilmington. Grandma was mistaken. I know Uncle that I have been very extravagant, but I didn’t spend that much…”

“Dear Col, I arrived here yesterday to find Col. N. as fat and crazy as ever…”

“Dear May, We are “sand fiddling” upon Sullivan’s Island again…”

“My Darling, I reached home yesterday from Roanoke Island. The Yanks released me on parole, that is on our signing a written promise not to take up arms again until we were duly exchanged. This we did very cheerfully, because we knew we could be of service at home with our friends…”

“It gives me pain to think of bidding adieu to so noble and generous a band of officers. I can’t hope to find others to whom I shall become so strongly attached…”

“Mother, I know you did not think so but I love him, I do and when I think of how I shall never see or hear him again I feel as though my head and my heart will burst. I wish so much to come home. Please send for me...”

“The reports in the newspaper are so conflicting I do not know whether they passed through my neighborhood or not. It is rumored that they passed through Livingston and other reports say that they went most from Carlton…”

“Dear Mother, You must excuse bad spelling and writing for it is impossible to do is well where there is so much noise…”

“Give my Love to the family and to little Fred and Cary and to all the girls, just tell them I don’t think so much of them because I can’t hear from them and don’t get any prettys at all. Tell them I don’t like them at all if they can’t write a solider….”

These last two were taken from a rather substantial series of letters from Private stationed at Camp Heath on the North Carolina Coast. I spent three hours going through letters assuring (and reassuring) his mother that there was no liquor in camp, asking for flannel shirts, promising to write to his sister, complaining that his sister never tells him about the girls he wants to hear about, talking about his friends, describing trips to Wilmington, nights spent out on the beach with lights to help guide the blockade runners in and days of bombardment. As you get deeper in the box a deep homesickness sets into his letters and then you come across a sheet in a different hand:

“1st Resolved, whereas our late friend and fellow soldier John C. Fennel, has fallen victim to the great destroyer, that which we bow with meekness to the flow, yet his amiability and sweet disposition, his youth and flower good spirits, his manliness and those soldierly qualities doubly endeared him to his companions and rendered keen the pangs of sorrow for his loss.
2nd Resolved, that his loss and to the service is great, but to his parents and kindred it is irrepairable and we extend to them our heartfelt condolence in this their hour of grief; but it must be some consolation to them that mourn not as they would without hope, but have some assurance that his quiet and blameless life secured him a resting place where war and sorrow are not known.”

And you are several lifetimes’ away mourning for a young man you have never met.

........

Of course, that is the more maudlin aspect of history. Part of plowing through people’s correspondence means plowing through people’s handwriting. So you often end up reading things like this:

“My Dear Sir, I am afraid thoul you think I am sexy flav in a unevening your letter inclaring use a hraven…”

I didn’t stop giggling at that one for ten minutes, very annoying to other researchers I am sure.

It looked like he wrote “sexy flav”, I swear!

So that is life in Kipville. I will spend this weekend putting my paper together and hoping that somehow I will pull this all off. Finals actually start next week for me, so wish me luck and have a great weekend!

Pack Your Bags, We’re Going on an Ego Trip!

Last week Seymour Hersh published an overview of the discussion between the military and politicians about the tactical measures being considered for Iran.

What is the most disturbing in the prevalence of the words “Nuclear Option” present in all these discussions. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Bush wants to nuke Iran.

Now, Congress has been showing it’s backbone lately and as the article points out, there are members of the Joint Chiefs who are ready to resign over this. Apparently Great Britain, Gods bless the lovely Isles, has also denied such a possibility in such derisive terms as to make the U.K. stance on the matter very clear: “You go into Iran with nukes, you’re going in alone you freakazoid nutcase.” So, it’s not like Bush has a clear path to this option. Most likely, given the way thing are trending this will not occur.

However, the picture this paints of the Bush administration is a very frightening one.

“Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”
A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy…. “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

We survived over 50 years of Cold War because we never had a President nor a Premier crazy enough to actually push the button…and now this. Lil’ Bushie is tired of playing with his toy soldiers and wants to play with the bomb now.

What is really frightening in the “messianic” part because the estimate is dead on. Remember what Bush said to Harry Taylor? “I’m not going to apologize because it was justified!” Bush doesn’t care what anyone thinks. It’s all justified, no matter how many laws he breaks, how many people die, how many freedoms he takes away from American citizens, how much he tortures people and imprisons them without due process of law, how much he destroys everything America has ever stood for, it’s all “justified”.

Because God agrees with everything Bush does.

Of course, we all know that's Cheney talking to him through an implant in his teeth.

Bush is a true believer. A zealot. He doesn’t goven by intellect, wisdom, compassion and rationality, he governs by emotions and ego. He doesn't care what evidence shows is good for the country, he believes what is good for the country and what he believes is fact and if it isn't, he will make it so.

“Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term, told me, “I think Iran has a secret nuclear-weapons program—I believe it, but I don’t know it.”

You can’t make life and death decisions that will affect millions on what you believe about another nation. You need to know that thing about another nation. I can believe Mr. Armitage rapes children in his basement, but I have no moral or ethical right to shoot him unless I know he rapes children in his basement.

(And even then I really should be calling the cops, but you get my point.)

I have spoken with many people who last rationalization of their support of the Bush administration is this:

““This is much more than a nuclear issue,” one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. “That’s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”

Folks, for all of you that missed that session in Sunday School: #7 THOU SHALT NOT STEAL

Just because you have run out of food at your house, you do not have the right to invade you neighbor’s kitchen and take possession of his or her ‘fridge. The oil belongs to them. It’s on their land. They sell it to us. That is what is morally and ethically right. It's not their fault we have been so shortsighted as to continue to depend on fossil fuels and tightened the apron strings to the Middle East. Invading the country to control it is stealing, period.

And let me tell you something people, a nuclear strike will affect us. A LOT. This isn’t the orderly 80’s where it's just the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (with China quietly hovering in the background). Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, Israel (their denial is a cute formality at this stage) and let's not forget (since the administration likes to…a lot) North Korea.

(Gee we have one country that is developing weapon capability and one that already has the capability to strike our West Coast, ruled by a meglomanincal madman who really doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself, who is in fact starving his own population...and who do we go after?

You guessed it: The Islamic one, with the oil.)

Not to mention all the nuclear material floating around the black market.

Then there is what happens if we piss off the world, and trust me, by going nuclear we will have pissed them off royaly. They did not sit powerless in the middle of our 50 year stare down with the CCCP just to get nuked by some village idiot with a God complex. They will be pissed and we have sent all our manufacturing overseas! We no longer have the ability to sustain our economy if the world starts sanctioning us. Granted, we are the world’s consumers, but Asia, China (the one with the nukes, remember), could seriously have us by the short hairs.

Not to mention nuking the country is *not* going to incite the disaffected Iranian youth to rebel. What it will do is encourage them to close ranks with their theocratic government to protect their homeland. You see, Iran is not Iraq. That little hard for the President to understand so let me spell it out: Iraq’s government was a dictatorship. Iran’s government is a parliamentary theocracy. Iraq is made up of three very disparate cultural and religious groups that really don’t like one another all that much. Iran is a culturally unified nation: Persian Shia.

Trying to incite regime change in Iran is insane, especially when we are barely holding on in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iranians want to deal with the matter of their theocracy internally, they have no interest in having an occupying army in their midst. Zip.

“Hossein, like many Iranians who served in the war, resents America for supporting Iraq in the conflict: Washington provided Saddam Hussein’s regime with satellite images of Iranian troop movements and cities, looked the other way as Iraq used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and, in 1983, sent thenbusinessman Donald Rumsfeld as a presidential envoy to Iraq, where he greeted Saddam Hussein with a handshake. But Hossein, who served as a frontline soldier, said he’s willing to forgive and forget “as long as America does not attack Iran.”

(This is a great article by the way, if you would like to see an internal picture of what the people of Iran are like rather than the government.)

That Iran is an issue that needs to be dealt with, I do not question. That we might have to not merely rattle the sabers but draw them is a distinct possibility, though one I would hope is not needed. But it looks like Bush is lining all his ducks up in the exact same fashion that he did with Iraq. He has his shady, openly discredited intelligence source (Khan), he has his “Think Tank” filled with cronies to back up his wishes with “findings”, the same lying BS to scare the country into letting him declare war.

The question is will we let him?

Harry Taylor showed us the way: I am going to attend at least one meet & greet event for each of the candidates running in my state and ask them: “The greatest threat to America’s safety, well-being and freedom is sitting in the Oval Office, what are you going to so to stop the Bush administration?” And I going to get booed? Yeah I will. But it’s time we stood up, got in our representatives faces and reminded them who they work for: Us. And that we are very angry that they allowed Bush to run this far and we’re not going to take it anymore.

I encourage people to find out who is running for their Congressional seats this November and ask them, every candidate: "What are you going to stop the Bush administration?”

Speaking of Hitler…

Is it just me or is Chavez getting scary?

I’ll Never Do It Again, Honest!

After posting a comment questioning to purpose of, o.k. mocking, sport hunting, Nextel Cup’s biggest sport hunter (well, next to Childress), Elliott had an engine fail on him toward the end of today’s race. Yes, I’m superstitious. Yes, I’m sorry. No, I’ll never make fun of sport hunting deer again.

;) :D

Mark stayed the top ten all day to finish 9th and Dale Jr. was all over the place but came back to finish 12th.

You can say one thing about Dale: He’s never boring. :)

P.S. Dear Nicole, Eva can’t do anything about the way her Fiancé drives. You need to have a “heated discussion” with someone who does: Kurt.

Speaking of Hunting

I am going to post some of what I posted to Jade’s blog (edited so it's cohesive) so you folks get an idea where I’m coming from. I've been thinking about how to approach this topic because I do believe that hunting groups and environmental groups can and should work together.

I began my political activism with environmental causes, what drew me away was the more immediate issues of the Iraq war (and man, I would love to go back to worrying about wetlands again) but I can honestly say the Environmental movement has problems. The first of which are media whores like PETA who do far less work than they do drawing attention to themselves. They're an embarrassment to animal and environmental causes. The Sierra Cub also went thought a long period of completely losing it's mind: protesting the construction of more wind farms because it might alter the migratory path of a particular swallow and other such idiocies. But at least people do more now than just focus on the cute and fuzzy creatures. The outrage over shark finning, for example, has been steady growing over the last five years. 10 to 15 year ago most people wouldn’t have understood why wetlands were vital not only to an ecosystem but to human settlement nearby (so we have to thank Katrina for something). However, there is an elitist refusal of environmental groups to work with hunting organizations, which have the exact same goal: Preservation of natural habit.

I grew up in the backwoods of New England, and I mean the BACK back woods so I grew up in a hunting society. The recession hit the state pretty hard, we needed the protein, so when October 31st rolled around everyone was out in the woods. Hell, we found out later my mom had to feed us horse meat at points so if anyone in the neighborhood got a deer or a moose (though mostly it was partridge), hosanah! No oatmeal meatloaf tonight. I suppose there was more to it than simple food procurement, but it was governed by common sense: no drinking, no pulling the trigger just because you haven’t had a chance to all day (I swear, 75% of hunting accident are the result of machismo "shootus interruptus": "I ain't had a chance to shoot nuthin'. I'm gotta blast the first thing that moves ‘cause if I don't, I have not fulfilled my manly duty!"). So I am on the only vegetarian I know who has taken part in dressing a deer.

However, the sport aspect of it I do not get.…but at least deer aren’t endangered and its licensed & regulated and having been raised in such a culture, I respect it as a cultural institution. It is certainly less of an impact on the environment than development and it does keep the herds in homeostasis with their surroundings. I hope they use all the deer at least. That if they don’t eat it all, they send it to a local homeless shelter, old folks home or someone who could use it. Send the hide to a tanner or something. A lot of guys that come back from fishing on off Baja do that in L.A.: keep maybe ten or twenty pounds of the catch for a BBQ and then send the rest off to old folk's homes.

I do believe there is an opportunity here. Hunters have the right idea, the same idea the Nature Conservancy does: If you don't want property developed, buy it. Hunting groups have parcels of land all over the country. And while they hunt, I don’t know of any decent hunter that wants to see the species they hunt go extinct. Remember the first conservationist this nation ever saw was also a big game hunter: Teddy Roosevelt. Why can’t the two groups come back together to where they started from? Makes sense to me.

(I still think people who take part in canned hunts need to be locked naked in a cage and randomly jabbed with cattle prods by by-passers for all eternity, though. That's not sport, that's cruelty and slaughter.)

You all have a good week!

My semester is winding down so I am going to be busy as heck. :)

The Good, The Bad and the Big Question...

Not in that order...

Well, I decided I had been so busy the week prior to take a little time over the following week and catch up on my class reading.

Still have to do that damn term paper tho’.

Anyway, It’s been busy.

First Of All...

I would like to point up an update to my link on the side. Most notably Archren’s Book Review, a site that reviews Sci-Fi, Fantasy and other works of fiction and non-fiction as well as provides a wealth of links for the bibliophile, from publications to on-line stores.

Now, onto the fun...

Who's Supporting the Troops?

If you didn't think there was another way for them to be jacked over by the government, think again:

"In the latest broadside against Halliburton and its performance in Iraq, Senate Democrats produced an e-mail Friday from Capt. A. Michelle Callahan, a family physician serving at Qayyarah Airfield West, recounting how she treated six infections over a two-week period in January, at the same time she was noticing the water in base showers was cloudy and foul-smelling.

Follow-up testing of the water soldiers were using to bathe, shave and even brush their teeth revealed evidence of coliform and E. coli bacteria...Further investigation revealed that the water the troops were using was actually wastewater from a purification unit, she wrote."

Gotta love those no-bid contracts.

Toady Scooter Speaks

Scooter Libby testified this week that President Bush authorized him to leak sensitive classified data in order to discredit Wilson's report from Niger. While this was not the final ax-fall of disclosing who authorized the leak of Valerie Plame’s name to the press, it does reveal the glaring hypocrisy of an administration who “cares so much about homeland security” as to leak classified information to the press, the personal hypocrisy of Bush who has been yelling about going after the leak in government and prosecuting those responsible for years, as well as highlighting Bush’s obsessive drive to invade Iraq.

How the legal wrangling of how this unfolds is going to be very illuminating because at question here is the limit of presidential power. Right now they say the president has the authority to release classified information, but this release was obviously was not made with the best interests of the United States at heart. Though we still don’t know who leaked Plame’s name, the article says that “Disclosing the identity of an undercover CIA officer can be a felony in certain circumstances.” Really? I should think such a release of information would be directly detrimental to national security and as such, treasonous.

*Props to TotalFarker Wise-Guy

So does the Bush administration have to right to do as they please regardless of the law, or not? Yes, there are loop holes they can manipulate, but are they going to be allowed to? Congress and SCOTUS have the power in this case to decide the limits of power for an ever dictatorial Executive Branch.

Checks and balances were created for just this reason.

Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Mercenary Troops Raised in North Carolina.

Apparently this is nothing new to America, (it’s so cute, they have their own website)just the first one to be openly originated on American soil.

For those of you that don’t know, this is one of the things that helped Rome down it’s long road to demise. It’s also shows America’s glaring hypocrisy, since we get all huffy about Great Britain using Hessian mercenaries during the Revolutionary war. More proof that a great many Americans have no clue of their own history, no respect for the ideals that created it. One of which was the refusal to use paid thugs loyal to no one but the almighty dollar/pound/yen/rubble/shekel/whatever-currency-is-valued-highest to enforce Federal policy, but instead to use an army of the people to protect the United States.

I know this is nothing new, but to read abut it in such blatant terms…I guess I am just naïve. *shake head*

I think I am going to be sick.

However, There Are Some Very Good Things About North Carolina

Thank You Harry Taylor

"You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that, but while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food….What I want to say to you, is that I, in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by, my leadership in Washington. I feel like, despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration. In my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of my leadership in Washington and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and grace to be ashamed of yourself."

I really think folks need to watch the video and see how Bush simply does not listen to what this guy is saying.

It’s been a long time since I have been proud of my country, 3 years or so, and I would like to thank Harry Taylor for voicing the criticisms and concerns that much of America has for this current administration.

As the situtions of American Freedoms, and the wel-being of our service personell and the Iraqui people swiftly deteriorate, it time to take the electronic activism of the internet into the real world, to challenge the warped and inherently un-American ideologies of the Bush administration head on in pubic debate. Thank you Harry Taylor for showing us the way.

Though Electronic Activism is a very good thing too. Someone get that kid a Scholarship.

Another Good Thing

Delay Departs

The article is right in saying that more Republicans will now be free to go their own way, but I think the only way they are going to maintain control of the congress come this November is by disassociating themselves with the Bush administration.

They either lose the power in the Executive Office or they lose it in the House. Were I the coach of that team (because you know, it's just a sport to these people), I would sacrifice the Bush administration for more long term gains.

Debating...

I don't know what to say about the U.S. withdrawal of aid from Palestine. That's just such a freakin' mess. Should Hamas recognize Israel? Yes. Should Israel stop bombing the country just because Hamas is in charge? Yes. Should we be interfering in duly elected governments? No, but it's really not fair for us to be giving aid to Israel and not to Palestine either.

It's just a mess. And old mess. I don't know what to think.

And Another: A CEO...TAKES A PAY CUT!

*heart attack!*

CEO of FORD refuses Salary and Bonuses Until Company is Profitable.

Good Lord could the Corporate Culture actually be changing from “Rape and Pillage” to into “Personal Responsibility”?

Please Lord and Lady, let it be so!

Belated Congratulations!

To Dale Jr. for driving that beat-up "battlewagon" to forth place last week. That was impressive! As well as to Elliott, for his 6 place finish (that was cool how you tried for the win!) and pulling the #38 to 9th, and Mark Martin for getting to 2nd place in the standings! Whooo! Go Mark!

Everyone is in Texas this weekend, so best of Luck to the #8, the #38 and the #6!

Now then, off to study...

We Interrupt This Blog-cast for...

...Picture Hosting

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Braggin’ on My Pets

I keep forgetting to put this up. One of the fun things about sitting down and sorting through papers is the little things you come across.

Back when I was around 25, lo so many moons ago, the story of the Chupacrabra crossed the border. This actually merited a little attention from the LA Times.

Now, at the time, my dog looked pretty much like this:


That’s Rutger at a little under a year. He has filled out, but he's still small. We went to the vet yesterday and he weighed in at a whopping 7lbs and that’s overweight. One of my friends once said of the R-Dawg, “You go to Jenny’s house and you see Rutger and you say “Wow, Jenny’s got a small dog.” and you go away and you tell people “Jenny’s got a small dog” and then you come back and you realize he’s even smaller than you thought he was.”

And he predates the “teacup” model.

Anyway, this is the pic the LA Times ran with the story of the Chupacabra.






Needless to say, the jokes about “Rutger’s night job” lasted for sometime.






Anyway, given I do not wear tons of make up and jewelry, nor am a diva, I am often asked “How did you end up with…” I’m not a toy dog person. I will never own another given the choice. My other dogs were Kuluk...









And Gerry (below)....

(Both of whom have passed on in old age, Lord and Lady keep their dear mischievous souls. Blessed be. Chihuahuas are notoriously long lived, so Rutger hanging out at age 15 (he’ll be 16 in August) isn’t that surprising.)

Rutger was Fate, Kismet. Instant Karma. I was working at a petshop and a batch of dogs came in (Not puppy mill dogs, but a consolidation from private breeders.) I pulled this tiny thing with these huge ears out of the kennel. He looked at me. I looked at him. He sneezed and fell over and I heart squelched out of my chest and down my arm into his little paw. (And I instantly knew his name, that's always a bad sign.*chuckle*) Rutger stayed at the shop for three months. He kept getting sick (pet shops are really not the best place to get dogs, honestly), and I would stay overnight and nurse him back to health. He would go back up for sale. One dog down at the other end of the kennels would sneeze and Rutger would sneeze and fall over again. He only came close to being sold once, but the look of incipient panic on my face pretty much squirreled that deal. He came home with me and, with Kuluk and Gerry, grew up like an honest to Gawd Dog.

Not an accessory.

Rutger is remarkably mellow for his breed. Always has been. Ask anyone. Even vet techs bring him back saying “Wow, I’ve never worked with a Chihuahua this cool.” Now I have bragged that was because I made sure Rutger was well socialized and used to people, other dogs and various situations…like grocery shopping or going to the movies (the trick is to hide them down a large jacket). But the truth is that a large part of his disposition is simply Rutger’s nature. He’s a mellow dog. I’ve seen 3 years old manhandle him at the dog park and he’s kickin’ back. “Whatever. I’m getting attention so it’s all good.” At this late stage, about the only thing he has a limited tolerance for is young hyper dogs that get in his face repeatedly. A couple times, “Yes. You can check me out. Yes, I know look like a cat, but I am in fact a dog.” But after while he’ll give ‘em what for. He’s more of a people dog anyway. I once watched him at the dog park being passed from hand to hand by cooing dog owners of various ilks. He didn’t touch ground for 45 minutes and that was just fine by him.


“Ah…me public.”


He has loved moving to the NC. Loves going out in the field behind my place and running around. He’s actually gotten more “doggy” since he got here.

Anyway, that’s my pal.




Saturday Evening

The weather is beautiful. Warm with a touch of wind to take the edge off the humidity off. Perfect BBQ weather. Hang out in the backyard talking in the dark. Spring is springing all over the place. Trees blooming in entire clouds of white, pink, purple and red. We had a run of daffodils all over town last month and this last week the purple wisteria sprays started to appear all over, sometimes in the most unusual of places, like where I cut over the train tracks and climb the hill to go to class. I had a dig last weekend, spent today transplanting all the flowers and shrubs on my balcony that I smuggled into the state from CA, and I have to go to the library to run a research blitz tomorrow, so I’m enjoying a quiet night in, listening to the crickets (I assume they are crickets) and reading a good book (again). I really need to pick up a biography of Teddy Roosevelt sometime. I confess that modern history is not usually my thing, too much red tape, but the more I learn about that particular president, the more remarkable he seems. If anyone has a good recommendation for a good biography, let me know!

Have a great evening all!