blessy again

here she is recently in the window-her sense of fun and ability to enjoy simple things keeps me going in a world right now that just seems painful for everyone I know and myself....life is beautiful and sad in the same breath...

feet in sunlight

Blessing was sitting with her feet in a sunray this day I took a photo of her and it came out like...she is so funny-keeping just her feet warm-i find her utterly fascinating.

still softly searching

A loss of something ever felt I-
.... a session wiser, And fainter too,
as Wiseness is-
...I find myself still softly searching

black is the color

There is a beautiful version of Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair by Judy Collins-it is mournful and it is moving and it reminds me how much I love her voice. Always a beautiful sadness there...it is never upbeat or falsely feminine and I think there is a genius to that.

Addiction

I did it to myself. It wasn't society, it wasn't a pusher, it wasn't being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing.


Ray Charles

but not my optimism

He (Patrick McDonnell) has the most beautiful cartoons.....Eddie-Do is such a little wounded sweetheart...

when she's here with me

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.


from My November Guest, Robert Frost, 1915.

Bruce at 3 years

My brother Bruce in 1956.

Emily's tombstone top

I was working over in Amherst all day yesterday and went to go see Emily Dickinson's grave as I sometimes do. Oftentimes people will leave pennies, little rocks etc. Usually i don't like that they do that-it just seems junky, but yesterday i found someone had left some fall leaves with little polished stones on top of them. They were really quaint and interesting and Emily probably would have like this sort of gift, I imagine. here are a few photos...

Mary Wollstonecraft quote

Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.




Mary Wollstonecraft was the mother of Mary Shelley, who wrote the great novel of man's arrogant attempt to create life from death, Frankenstein.

Paul Tibbets, war criminal

There is an excellent article on Paul Tibbets by Pierre Tristam detailing how he "peddled WMD memorabilia" in his old age and had no humility whatsoever for the direct part he played in war atrocities of WWII. Paul Tibbets made a small fortune selling "Little Boy (note the sexual reference-Oppenheimer also referred the a-bomb in ejaculation metaphors) Bomb Replicas" at $350.00 each.
His socipathic (ie, someone lacking a conscience) attitude regarding the bombing of Hiroshima remained, "Their tough luck for being there" .
Among other things I have found:
In 1976, the US government appologized to Japan for a re-enactment , created by Tibbets, of the bombing of Hiroshima at an air show (heh, its entertainment!) . The show included a mock mushroom cloud.
When the Smithsonian Institute attempted to be sensitive to the the human cost of the bombings, Tibbets organized veterans to protest the exhibit and called such sensitivity " a big damn insult".
Tibbets is the worst our country has to offer in hysteria and paranoia about 'others'. As a film student I wrote a paper on the hatred for Asians represented in films in the 1930's-present day (such as Flash Gordon, Blond Adonis, versus the evil Ming the Merciless in the 30's; Invaders from Mars in the 1950's showing that little Asian in a lotus position in a bubble with the big intellectual head-Asians always seemed to be feared for being 'smart' versus US macho physical power. Invaders from Mars feed the anti-communist hysteria similar to the present Bush administration paranoia about terrorism. Tibbets was a proponent of fear and hysteria, which mass killing or extermination always represents. His life was a waste of self congradulatory evil.

a walk in late Fall

This is a beautiful time of the year to take a walk where there are trees and quiet....I walked over to the Pine Hill Cemetary again and they had a gate open that is usually not opened and I found myself in a beautiful section of 19th century tombstones. I noticed on a few pillared tombstones from that time period that there was a metaphor of the overcoat hanging over an urn (see photo). I imagine it denoted a well spent life of service in whatever profession that individual had....

Transamerica

This is one of those exceptional films I missed seeing somehow when it first hit the movies. Felicity Huffman gives an unbelivably perceptive and subtle performance in the role of a man in the process of getting a sex change operation and suddenly discovering he/she has a son she has never known about and her journey to build a relationship with him. The interview between Huffman and the director is also fascinating as you can see how deeply they let this character form and be into someone in process to understand what love and self love is.

Carol Burnett, American Masters tonight

I read Carol Burnett's autobiography years ago in the late 1980's and was particularly struck by how resilient a person she was considering her father and mother's alcoholism. She is the focus of the American Masters program tonight on PBS, 9pm. Youtube has many of the Carol Burnett Show clips that will remind you how brilliantly funny and generous she is. Like Seinfeld, her show worked because the entire cast were all given a chance to express their own unique talents and work as a ensemble rather than a single star focus. Like Charles Schulz last week, part of her brilliance was to make people laugh while astutely critiquing the shallow aspects of our culture and the harmful qualities of people-that takes insight and skill.

What difference does it make.....

My good friend Laura, who is a brilliant WWII historian-particularly regarding American POWS in Germany (her exceptional father being one), reminds me of the atrocities the Japanese inflicted during WWII-and you can read her response in detail at the end of the Paul Tibbet obit. My concern is for innocent persons, non military from any country, who die simply because they were a military strategy or collateral. Here is a
quote from Gandhi:

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

photo taken of Gandhi in 1946 by photographer Margaret Bourne-White

Paul Tibbets, welcome to Hell

Paul Tibbets has finally died at age 92. He was the piece of human waste product who commanded the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 9. 1945. The bomb killed at least 140,00 people, most instantly and left other with unbearable burns , blindness and multitudes of future generations with grotesque birth defects. Like a true sociopath, he once said"What they needed was someone who could do this and not flinch-and that was me".