Japan is just one tsunami-wave away from San Francisco. The grand, brutal drama of world events go past largely in the backdrop of our daily lives. We’re too caught up in what are often trivial concerns that loom large in our shortened perspective of the world around us.
Then something happens half a world away. Speeding through the night, a wave washes onshore the next morning – on my shore – slapping boats and harbors, sunk and broken, into the water.
This gets me thinking about how, whether it is luck or divine providence, it is usually not by extraordinary skill that I have made it thus far. Left alone to my own devices, I am afforded the opportunity to stress over my own trivial concerns and extemporize on why I think they are important.
I walk between the raindrops – mindfully oblivious to the dangers all around.
And for that I am grateful.
Help the victims of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami
Filed under Mumbling to Myself, News by 
To the west lay the ocean and food, to the east the colony.
Separated from a group walking – waddling really – to the sea, a lone individual stopped and considered which direction to go from where it now stood.
Turning north, away from both the colony and the feeding grounds of the frigid Antarctic Sea, the penguin set out resolutely toward the mountains.
Once decided on its path the flightless bird was unhesitant, walking, sometimes falling forward on the ice and propelling itself forward with its wings, but never ceasing.
Past a baffled scientific team surprised to see the animal so far from its group, normal habitat, and continued survival, it remained focused on an internal and solitary goal, unheeding of the strange and odd-looking humans.
Marching away from food and its own kind toward certain death in the towering, unmerciful mountains at the End of the World, it nonetheless continued on its chosen course.
Death is at the end of every path. Best to walk that path purposefully.
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself by
Christmas is our redemption.
On this Christmas Eve, two examples come to mind.
- In 1914, in the trenches of World War 1 during the dark night of winter, the spirit of Christmas rose from the mud-soaked earth.
Battered by a war of mechanized killing the likes of which the world had never seen, English and German soldiers and officers came out into “no man’s land” and celebrated Christmas. All together there in the miserable trenches of Europe, at some points only a few dozen yards from each other, they shared Christmas carols, shook hands, and exchnaged cigarettes. For a brief time the reason for the killing and slaughter vanished.
Christmas is our redemption.
- At the end of 1968 the United States had just endured a year ravaged by an escalating war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Marin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.
On Christmas Eve of that year I remember looking up in the cold Colorado night on our way to Christmas Eve services and marveling to myself how at that very moment three men were circling the full moon high above. I looked closer to see if I could spot the spacemen in their capsule, which, by the ripe old age of 10, I realized wasn’t likely.
The images back from the moon looking back on ourselves were profound. All we really knew, fought and died for, possessed, coveted, loved, hated – all of it – was just a lonely, beautiful, blue ball hanging in the endless blackness of space.
So there’s your proof. We’re all in this together, despite appearances here on the ground. We’ll just have to keep working at it.
Christmas is our redemption.
-Merry Christmas from Chastise Man!
Albert Einstein said: “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
Christmas is the idea that everything is a miracle.
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, Something Nice to Say by
So, you wanna be in show business…
5:10:30:00 – Stage Manger calls and tells me the “orange” mic hasn’t been handed backstage prior to its hand-off to Albert for the Barak Obama bit in the political number. We’ll have to use the backup mic.
5:10:32:12 – I acknowledge and patch in the backup into HHO’s channel 11. WHOO-A!! Am I on top of this or what?
5:10:33:00 – During the start of the Paris Hilton bit I see Val (onstage) finally realize she needs to hand back the orange mic.
5:10:33:45 – Being the “brilliant idiot” I am I think I will circumvent disaster, since HHO is now backstage, by going back into the patch menu on the board and patching the orange mic back into its regular channel.
Stay with me here – as we watch disaster unfold in mere milliseconds
5:10:40:00 – Moments before Albert’s cue the call light on clear-com comes on. I assume (ass-u-me) that John is just trying to tell me that the orange mic has made it backstage and to Albert as well. “HA!” I think, “I’m on this puppy!” I ignore the call. (There was no time to answer it anyway before…)
5:10:40:30 – Albert’s entrance. No sound from the orange! What could be wrong? I KNOW HE HAS THE ORANGE MIC!! I go to the patch screen and once again re-patch HO into Ch. 11. The problem must be with the board because I KNOW THAT ALBERT HAS THE ORANGE MIC!!
5:10:40:40 – Continuing to assume (ass-u-me) that a) ALBERT HAS THE GODAM ORANGE *%@#&!! MIC and b) the board is being awfully slow re-patching (remember, it’s a computer too, and can be slow at times… right?) I decide to reset all patches to finally get the orange mic patched.
5:11:01:00 – I do what any freaked-out, muddle-headed soundman would do. I hit “scene one” recall on the board to reset all board functions into a “preset” state. Which it does.
5:11:01:02 – No sound. At least no amplified sound. I seem to remember the tinkling of the piano in the background. Someone in the audience gives off a plaintive “hey!” sounding a bit hurt, as if the soundman has just left and gone home. In fact, there is evidence that the soundman never showed up.
5:11:01:30 – With the blinding speed of a 1980’s vintage Atari computer, my mind realizes the havoc I have just unleashed and I get the band and mic faders back up in what seems like slow motion. This is becoming a roller-coaster ride and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
5:11:02:00 – Tim comes out as John Edwards on cue, his mic works, the band works, sound is back (sans efx – I get the efx returns patched back in after I reset my brain and make sure I am still a part of the show – whole minutes later)
5:12:03:00 – The dialog with Val after the political number is off-mic because at this point only God knows which mic she is holding (and he’s not telling ‘cause he’s rolling on the floor laughing). Actually it was the backup mic she had which, as we know by now, wasn’t patched in because I KNEW THAT ALBERT HAD THE ORANGE MIC!!
So, it’s like this: Val started the snowball by not handing back the orange mic in a timely manner. I took the snowball and made a snowman. A nice, big, ugly snowman.
If I had just stayed with John the Stage Manager’s initial advisement that Albert would be on the backup, we may have made it through with only a bump instead of a train wreck.
For that I take full responsibility. Take a look at that picture up there. Train wrecks hurt.
Now, I’m sure there’s a lesson in here somewhere….
Hmmm…
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, The Soundman Chronicles by
“Pearls Before Swine” by Stephen Pastis 
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m waiting for a call from Oprah…
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself by
“The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice–and always has been.”
-Mark Twain
The Red Friday emails aren’t new. It’s been going around for awhile. The idea is that all God-fearing (preferably a protestant God, even better if there’s some of that evangelical fire-in-the-belly fervor added to it), patriotic, real Americans that love this country and support our troops show that patriotism and support for troops through fashion. Specifically by wearing the color red on Fridays, like some sort of badge that identifies yourself as part of the group.
The choice presented in the Red on Fridays idea is simple. Either do it or admit you aren’t patriotic, you don’t support the troops, and you hate America.
So did you wear red last Friday? (Which ironically enough, was “black Friday” the day that people wait for hours in a line for admission into a store that opens at 4AM to allow all real Americans adequate opportunity to consume as much as they possibly can; even while they have yet to fully digest the enormous turkey dinner from the day before. Gobble, gobble.)
But I digress.
Couched in the simple-minded, emotionally charged rhetoric of what I am to think and how I am to act in order to properly display my patriotism and “support for the troops” denies me my own facility to think and feel for myself. What better way to separate the saved from the damned, the believers from the non-believers, the patriots from the traitors, the conservatives from the liberals?
A variation on this particular email sent to me recently by a well-meaning yet misguided acquaintance added a tear-jerker of a story. Complete with selfless young soldiers, lonely wives, and little girls that missed their fathers. I will take whomever originally wrote the touching story of Courtney and the sobbing masses at the Atlanta airport on their word that this chain of events actually happened.
It is, indeed, a touching human story. One that has been repeated, in one form or another, as long as war has ravaged society. To paint this particular act of humanity as uniquely American is to not only misunderstand what it means to be uniquely American, but what it is to be simply human.
Nationalistic fervor is not new. It is the domain of monarchs, despots, communists and fascists. It knows no idealogical affiliation and takes no moral high ground.
To blindly subscribe to it is the worst way to support our troops, it is the worst way to “love America”, and it forsakes what men throughout the nation’s history have fought and died for: Freedom of thought, the pursuit of ideas, and the nurturing of the creative human spirit.
It is fine to demonstrate support for our troops serving all over the world, and especially those in the line of fire. All too often, as in the case of the “Wear Red on Friday” phenomenon, it seems to me as a bit of a ruse. Maybe some are well meaning in the gesture, perhaps many. But it is too easily manipulated into something else. Instilling fear where there should be courage, division where there should be community, and intolerance where there should be acceptance.
For those not directly involved in the conflict, that do not have a friend or relative serving in the military, there are better ways to actually support the troops. Here’s one, and another, and one more.
So go ahead and wear red next Friday. It’s a free country. For now.
But don’t fool yourself that you’re really doing anything that supports the troops, is particularly patriotic, or shows an extraordinary love, or even knowledge of, the principles of America. It takes more than a red shirt, is all I’m sayin’.
Yeah sure, I probably sound mighty smug and sanctimonious to all you folks laying out your red shirts for next Friday.
Get over it.
At the very least, let’s consider that the idea of a “Sea of red across America” as a gesture in support of troops in a war zone as just a little bit off.
Better to have a Sea of Blue. Blue was the color of Lincoln’s army that held the nation together in a war that literally almost tore the country in two. It’s the color of the two great oceans that touch our shores. It’s the color of progress, and the color that binds the fifty stars together as one nation.
Now that’s what this country really needs.
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, News, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky, War, War in Iraq by
That’s right, you heard me.
Go to the Global Rich List and you’ll discover, I’m willing to bet some of my fabulous wealth, that your annual income is closer to Bill Gate’s that it is to, well, most of the rest of the people in the world.
So I know you’re rich and you’ve got some money burning a hole in your pocket that’s bound to come to no good – put that down, you don’t need it anyway – and that’s why I’m here to help alleviate you of the burden of guilt for your mispent wealth.
You’re welcome.
When I realized how stinking rich I am compared to most everyone else in the world you can imagine my surprise. It certainly doesn’t seem like it most of the time, but sometimes you look around and go – “heck yeah”.
Of course, if you’re living in a mud hut, your cable bill is a lot less, so you don’t need all that money. Maybe you’re just too busy surviving to watch much reality TV. But then I doubt if you’re reading this you’ve ever even been inside a mud hut, let alone live in one.
And the only reason I’m not living in a mud hut right now is as much a matter of good genes, two loving parents, and the good fortune to be born in America – which is, despite our huge credit card bill to China, filthy rich – than to any extraordinary effort or “rightness” on my part. (God must just belly-laugh when he sees all these different people trying to kill each other because they are his “chosen ones”)
So, at the risk of sounding like a bleeding-heart, liberal, heathen (guilty, guilty, and define “heathen”), I took it upon myself to sign up at a site called Kiva.org, of which I discovered through the – oh, gosh, here it comes, the height of it – Clinton Global Initiative. That’s right. Give your money away to a poor person. Bill Clinton sez so.
Don’t be ridiculous. You know it’s the right thing to do, don’t blame me if it takes Bill Clinton to remind you.
I wonder what George Bush is going to do in retirement? Never mind.
Incidentally, I’ve heard that some folks actually believe that Clinton is the anti-Christ. I suppose his current activities provide a pretty good cover now don’t they? Come on, everybody knows who the anti-Christ is. Dick Cheney
But I digress.
A poor person trying to run a business, who probably is just as smart as you, and works harder than you, is every bit as deserving at a chance to succeed and provide for their family as you’ve had since the day you were born.
Or maybe it’s just me.
But whatever it is that has forced you to allow Chastise Man to go on like this, get over it.
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, People, Something Nice to Say by
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I recently heard Robert Kennedy speak these words, part of a speech given at the City Club in Cleveland Ohio. A recording, of course, of when he first delivered them in that fateful, terrible year of 1968.
In the spring of that year, Dr. Martin Luther King was killed by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis. Vietnam raged, taking with it the young lives of thousands of Americans, while racial tensions and civil unrest left many parts of American cities in flames.
Desperate to make sense of it and find hope for an uncertain future, people gravitated toward Senator Kennedy’s vision and expression of purpose; of what he believed this nation can and should be.
I was ten years old then, my whole cognizant experience of the outside world up to then had begun with the assassination of Robert’s brother, followed by the menacing fear of nuclear annihilation , a war in a far-off and unknown place called Vietnam, and riots in the streets of America, all playing out on a black and white TV in our living room.
The world seemed to be falling apart, and Robert Kennedy helped many to believe that, despite all this, there was still reason to believe in America, that we could collectively live up to her founding ideals.
Bobby never made it to the presidency, of course, and nobody will ever know what might have been. If the hope and faith placed in him and his vision would have translated into a new and transformed America shall forever remain unknown.
But that there was hope on that hot June night there is no doubt; tenuous, unsure, but there it was. And just as suddenly, in that terrible year of 1968, to the horror, once again, of a nation that looked on in disbelief, it was gone. Another sucker-punch that left the world reeling. Taken by the specter of violence, the act of one fear-addled individual translating into a symptom of the sickness of the soul of which Kennedy spoke. A sickness that strikes back at any expression of its own undoing. Fear fueling violence against a message of “hope”.
I was young then, but looking back on it from today’s perspective and alleged maturity, I’m not sure if America has ever really recovered from those assassinations: JFK, MLK, and then RFK.
In these three individuals, Americans – indeed people from all over the world – dared the innocence of hope, of a belief in the potential of the human spirit, and each time it was suddenly, violently and publicly cut down.
And instead of the world Bobby believed in coming to fruition, leading us along with him, violence lingered and grew, and we withdrew into self-concern, suspicion, and cynicism.
Since then we have had very little in the way of leaders that can inspire the best in us. Certainly enough people to take control, but few, if any, to truly lead.
We have cartoonish leaders that rely solely on “swagger and bluster”, all too eager to “wield force” in the name of nothing more than their firm belief that, whatever they do, it is in the name of what is Good and Right, and so therefore they can do no wrong. Which isn’t leadership at all, really. Intransigence and arrogance is perhaps a method to maintain some control, but is not a basis for wise leadership. Fear is a poor motivator for bringing out the best in people, or giving them much hope.
Hope denotes something unfulfilled, and a promise that one day that something may be realized. And “hope” is also a word that is bandied about with seeming impunity from overuse; nonetheless diminishing its meaning, making it little more than a marketing buzzword.
There are no grand themes today. I feel uninspired by anyone that professes the audacity of thinking he or she should be president (though admittedly, the bar is currently at a remarkably low ebb).
I’m waiting for something or someone to come along that can counter what then becomes “hopelessness”, but if it is there, it remains quiet. There are no clear voices that I can hear that inspires much else but fear and division; at best confusion and well-packaged rhetoric.
It is too easy, however, to give in. If there are none to offer us hope and inspire us, then we have no choice but to do it ourselves.
And how do we do that? By reflecting on the words of people that at least had the vision of a better world, the eloquence to express it, and the courage to truly believe in it.
To destroy the individual is not to destroy the idea they expressed. We can build on that.
Those were desperate times back then, even a pointy-headed, half-blind kid of ten could tell that.
These are pretty desperate times now, even though it seems that many choose to ignore it. And it is the nature of how things sometimes shift balance that a voice will appear on the horizon. One with a vision of a better world. Not one the “offers a desert and calls it peace”, but that inspires a next, halting step to a better world, a sustainable and just society, and a chance to find a “Once and Future King”.
That’s what I’m hoping anyway.
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, People, Politics by
We’ve still got a year and a half to survive of it, but I came up with these potential little ditties as possible legacies for the principal players:
Dick Cheney:
He came, he saw, he conquered. And what he didn’t conquer, he shot in the face.
Donald Rumsfeld:
Sometimes you go to war with the Secretary of Defense you have, not with the one you wish you had (in which case, you wouldn’t have gone to war in the first place).
Paul Wolfowitz:
Only got the cost of the Iraq war to the American taxpayer off by half a trillion or so.
Condi Rice:
Should have stayed home the day George Bush was conducting job interviews.
George W. Bush
He led the nation in difficult times, he made the times in which he led more difficult.
Georgie, we knew ye much too well…
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, News, People, Politics, War in Iraq by
I’m currently in the process of writing a short biography of Albert Einstein in preparation of launching my next “history blog”. 
The beauty of the internet is the ability to sit in your chair at home and do fairly extensive research. Obviously there is no shortage of material on Einstein online, some of it contradictory, sometimes poorly written, and then suddenly it becomes hateful.
I noticed in Wikipedia that access to editing the open source had been locked out due to “vandalism”. I pondered that for a moment then moved on, not really thinking too much about what sort of vandalism it might be.
Then today, while looking for a little more information about the length of Einstein’s employment at the patent office in Bern, I stumbled on a website called “The Christian Nation”. The specific page included my search text but the gist of the article was that Einstein stole all his ideas and was really an incompetent idiot (after all, he started at the patent office as an inspector third class. Failing to mention, of course, that most people just starting at the patent office likely start on the bottom rung of the hierarchy).
Then seeing links to pages describing the holocaust as a very clever hoax, things went from bad to worse.
Einstein wasn’t perfect. He was human. He didn’t treat his first wife very well, he cheated on both his wives. But he was certainly one of the great people that tower above the vast sea of humanity, upon whose shoulders the rest of us view the world.
The problem of course, in regard to the authors of this website, is that Einstein was a Jew.
I was about to list all the subgroups of humans that are hated by these people. It’s better to do it the other way: unless you’re a white, American, “Christian” (in this case a perversion of the term), male; well, then you’re out. God is against you.
I know that everything under the sun that people have thought of is expressed somewhere out there in the web. I know the world is a troubled place; but it is still disturbing to read this crap. It makes you feel like you need to take a bath and that you’re someplace you shouldn’t be.
But I was just trying to learn about Albert Einstein. I wasn’t prepared to stumble into this venomous philosophy of hate.
That makes me real cranky.
So was Einstein an idiot?
Perhaps; and maybe George Bush is a genius.
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, People, Things That Make Me Cranky by
