Just for Fun!

SUBHEAD: Growing up near NYC I was a fan of 50's doowop music. People actually did this music on the street then.

By Juan Wilson on 4 July 2017 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2017/07/just-for-fun.html)


Image above: Still frame from video below of group singing MMMbop.

Have a great holiday where ever you are. I'm not talking about patriotic fervor of loyalty to American militarism. I mean just have some fun than lightens your step and makes you smile. I stumbled on video below plowing through YouTube last night, and it has made me smile and laugh several times.

These guys are having real fun. My daughter Laura saw it and emailed me:

"I love to see how happy people are sometimes when they sing or play, love that feeling when you can't help dancing and laughing as you perform, then you know it's some good healing medicine!"

MMMbop Doo Wop version is a cover of the song written and performed by Hanson.  The artists are Kenton Chen, Luke Edgemon, Matt Bloyd, and mario Jose (vocals), Conrad Bauer (guitar), Adam Kubota (bass), Andy Sanesi (drums) and Scott Bradlee (piano).


Image above: MMMbop Doo Wop version.\ YouTube logo for full screen.  From (https://youtu.be/iEejfq1KhkU). See also Scott Bradlee's (www.postmodernjukebox.com) for more period music recreated today.

Lyrics to MMbop
Written and performed by Hanson

Oh oh oh oh oh
Yeah
You have so many relationships in this life
Only one or two will last
You go through all the pain and strife
Then you turn your back and they're gone so fast
Oh yeah
And they're gone so fast, yeah
Oh
So hold on the ones who really care
In the end they'll be the only ones there
And when you get old and start losing your hair
Can you tell me who will still care
Can you tell me who will still care?
Oh care
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du, yeah
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du, yeah
Said oh yeah
In an mmmbop they're gone
Yeah yeah
Plant a seed, plant a flower, plant a rose
You can plant any one of those
Keep planting to find out which one grows
It's a secret no one knows
It's a secret no one knows
Oh, no one knows
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du, yeah
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du, yeah
In an mmmbop they're gone
In an mmmbop they're not there
In an mmmbop they're gone
In an mmmbop they're not there
Until you lose your hair
Oh
But you don't care, yeah
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du, yeah
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du, yeah
Can you tell me? oh
No you can't 'cause you don't know
Can you tell me? oh yeah
You say you can but you don't know
Can you tell me? oh (Which flower's going to grow?)
No you can't 'cause you don't know
Can you tell me? (If it's going to be a daisy or a rose?)
You say you can but you don't know
Can you tell me? oh (Which flower's going to grow?)
No you can't 'cause you don't know
Can you tell me?
You say you can but you don't know
You say you can but you don't know
You don't know
You don't know, oh
Mmmbop, duba
Du bop, du
Yeah, yeah
Mmmbop, duba
Du bop, du
Oh yeah
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du, yeah
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du, yeah
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du, yeah
Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du bop, ba du dop
Ba du, yeah
Can u tell me? oh
No you can't 'cause you don't know
Can you tell me?
You say you can but you don't know
Say you can but you don't know

Another video I watched last night was the kind of music heard acapella from young on the tenement streets of the Lower east Side on New York in the 1960s. In the 50's the singers were teenagers. Now they are older. The video below was recorded 8 August 2014 on a New York sidewalk.


Image above: Unidentified doowop artists sing "Wonderful World". See more at source http://www.tinuonline.com).From (https://youtu.be/qW025ccPx5M).

(What a) Wonderful World

Written and performed by Sam Cooke

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about a science book,
Don't know much about the french I took

But I do know that I love you,
And I know that if you love me, too,
What a wonderful world this would be

Don't know much about geography,
Don't know much trigonometry
Don't know much about algebra,
Don't know what a slide rule is for

But I do know that one and one is two,
And if this one could be with you,
What a wonderful world this would be

Now, I don't claim to be an "A" student,
But I'm tryin' to be
For maybe by being an "A" student, baby,
I can win your love for me

Don't know much about history,
Don't know much biology
Don't know…(fade away)

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Private party in New Jersey

SUBHEAD: After closing public parks and beaches Gov. Christie takes his family to state beach park for some fun.

By Abby Zimet on 3 July 2017 for Common Dreams -
(https://www.commondreams.org/further/2017/07/03/thats-just-way-it-goes-these-people-are-grotesque)


Image above: Aerial photo of Island Beach State Park in New Jersey where Governor Chis Christie took wife, family and security detail for some fun in the sun after he closed public and state parks on Monday of this Fourth of July weekend. Photo by Andrew Mills. From original article.

[IB Publisher's note: This is the end of Chris Christie's career. First he was fired by Trump and now this pathetic self inflicted wound.]

Talk about your profanely perfect metaphor: This hot and sunny weekend, big-time New Jersey cretin and governor Chris Christie closed down the state's parks and beaches due to a budget stalemate.

Then he hopped into his State Police helicopter and took his entire family to the 10-mile, now blissfully pristine Island Beach State Park, which thanks to the closing they had to themselves.

All day, meanwhile, police posted at the park's gates turned away the hot and frustrated peasants who pay Christie's salary as a, lest we forget, so-called public servant. Later, the family and their friends hunkered down in the palatial residence provided there by - yes! - also us.

Asked about it at a press conference later in the day, Christie - who boasts a 15% approval rating, or the lowest of any governor in the country - first lied that he hadn't gotten any sun that day. When confronted by photos from an enterprising photojournalist, his spokesman conceded “the governor was on the beach briefly” but "he had a baseball hat on.” 

Because one middle finger to his public wasn't enough, Christie added another when asked if this was fair: “That’s just the way it goes,” he said. “Run for governor and you can have a residence there.”  

Welcome to the class war, where Christie and the big orange creep and their entitled ilk have no more fucks to give as long as they can get away with it. Soon, let them eat sand.

Image above: Video still of NJ Governor Chis Christie with wife watching the press helicopters capturing his "private" beach jaunt. Taken by Andrew Mills. From (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/gov-chris-christie-unapologetic-beach-photos-48431133).

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American Dignity on Fourth of July

SUBHEAD: Frederick Douglass’s 1852 Independence Day address may provide some perspective on today.

By David Remnick on 1 July 2017 for the New Yorker -
(http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/american-dignity-on-the-fourth-of-july)


Image above: Derived from a painting of Frederick Douglass in 1852 when he was a young man. From (https://www.pinterest.com/explore/frederick-douglass-autobiography/).

Frederick Douglass’s Independence Day address from 1852 may provide some perspective on today.

More than three-quarters of a century after the delegates of the Second Continental Congress voted to quit the Kingdom of Great Britain and declared that “all men are created equal,” Frederick Douglass stepped up to the lectern at Corinthian Hall, in Rochester, New York, and, in an Independence Day address to the Ladies of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society, made manifest the darkest ironies embedded in American history and in the national self-regard. “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” Douglass asked:

I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

The dissection of American reality, in all its complexity, is essential to political progress, and yet it rarely goes unpunished. One reason that the Republican right and its attendant media loathed Barack Obama is that his public rhetoric, while far more buoyant with post-civil-rights-era uplift than Douglass’s, was also an affront to reactionary pieties.

Even as Obama tried to win votes, he did not paper over the duality of the American condition: its idealism and its injustices; its heroism in the fight against Fascism and its bloody misadventures before and after.

His idea of a patriotic song was “America the Beautiful”—not in its sentimental ballpark versions but the way that Ray Charles sang it, as a blues, capturing the “fullness of the American experience, the view from the bottom as well as the top.”

Donald Trump, who, in fairness, has noted that “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job,” represents an entirely different tradition. He has no interest in the wholeness of reality.

He descends from the lineage of the Know-Nothings, the doomsayers and the fabulists, the nativists and the hucksters. The thematic shift from Obama to Trump has been from “lifting as we climb” to “raising the drawbridge and bolting the door.”

Trump may operate a twenty-first-century Twitter machine, but he is still a frontier-era drummer peddling snake oil, juniper tar, and Dr. Tabler’s Buckeye Pile Cure for profit from the back of a dusty wagon.

As a candidate, Trump told his followers that he would fulfill “every dream you ever dreamed for your country.” But he is a plutocrat. His loyalty is to the interests of the plutocracy.

Trump’s vows of solidarity with the struggling working class, with the victims of globalization and deindustrialization, are a fraud. He made coal miners a symbol of his campaign, but he has always held them in contempt.

To him, they are luckless schmoes who fail to possess his ineffable talents. “The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son,” Trump once told Playboy. “If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines. But most people don’t have the imagination—or whatever—to leave their mine. They don’t have ‘it.’ ”

Trump is hardly the first bad President in American history—he has not had adequate time to eclipse, in deed, the very worst—but when has any politician done so much, so quickly, to demean his office, his country, and even the language in which he attempts to speak?

Every day, Trump wakes up and erodes the dignity of the Presidency a little more. He tells a lie. He tells another. He trolls Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He trolls the press, bellowing “enemy of the people” and “fake news!” He shoves aside a Balkan head of state. He summons his Cabinet members to have them swear fealty to his awesomeness. He leers at an Irish journalist.

Last Thursday, he tweeted at Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, of MSNBC:

“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came . . . to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

The President’s misogyny and his indecency are well established. When is it time to question his mental stability?

The atmosphere of debasement and indignity in the White House, it appears, is contagious. Trump’s family and the aides who hastened to serve him have learned to imitate his grossest reflexes, and to hell with the contradictions.

Melania Trump, whose “cause” is cyber-bullying, defends the poisoned tweet at Brzezinski. His righteously feminist daughter Ivanka stays mum. After the recent special election in Georgia, Kellyanne Conway, the counsellor to the President, tweeted, “Laughing my #Ossoff.” The wit! The valor! Verily, the return of Camelot!

Trump began his national ascendancy by hoisting the racist banner of birtherism. Since then, as candidate and as President, he has found countless ways to pollute the national atmosphere. If someone suggests a lie that is useful to him, he will happily pass it along or endorse it. This habit is not without purpose or cumulative effect.

Even if Trump fails in his most ambitious policy initiatives, whether it is liberating the wealthy from their tax obligations or liberating the poor from their health care, he has already begun to foster a public sphere in which, as Hannah Arendt put it in her treatise on totalitarian states, millions come to believe that “everything was possible and that nothing was true.”

Frederick Douglass ended his Independence Day jeremiad in Rochester with steadfast optimism (“I do not despair of this country”). Read his closing lines, and what despair you might feel when listening to a President who abets ignorance, isolation, and cynicism is eased, at least somewhat.

The “mental darkness” of earlier times is done, Douglass reminded his audience. “Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe.”

There is yet hope for the “great principles” of the Declaration of Independence and “the genius of American Institutions.” There was reason for optimism then, as there is now. Donald Trump is not forever. Sometimes it just seems that way.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: The American Unraveling 7/29/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Birthday Card 7/4/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Happy Independence Day! 7/4/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Halfway There 7/1/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Rocket's Red Glare? 7/1/09
Island Breath: American patriotism's failure 7/4/08
Island Breath: July 4th Plantation Days 7/4/08
Island Breath: Thinking about July Fourth 7/4/07

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Thirty things for Thanksgiving

SUBHEAD: The bright side of the environment, sustainability, renewable energy, and healthy food.

By Reynard Loki on 26 November 2015 for Alternet -
(http://www.alternet.org/environment/30-reasons-be-thankful-thanksgiving)


Image above: Illustration of visiting the grandparents for Thanksgiving.  From (http://postcardy.blogspot.com/2010/11/vtt-thanksgiving-ideals.html).

t is hard to argue that 2015 has been a good year for the environment. Due to a steady increase in temperature—the year is on track to be the hottest year on record—we have witnessed an increase in the frequency and severity of storms, widespread ocean acidification that is creating marine dead zones around the globe and numerous species that are struggling to survive amid what has been termed the "Sixth Extinction."

Droughts, floods and wildfires are negatively impacting natural ecosystems, crops and local communities. The effects of climate change, in particular a growing lack of resources like water, food and fuel, have also acted as catalysts for conflict, sparking regional violence, terrorism and the civil war in Syria.

Climate change is also exacerbating the refugee crisis, driving people from their homes by destroying their livelihoods.

Rising seas threaten to drown coastal cities and engulf island nations. Scientists have identified dozens of "global warming tipping points" that could trigger natural disasters.

The pernicious climate denialism in the U.S. is not helping: In just three years, secretive donors have given climate denial groups over $125 million to help undermine rules to reduce carbon pollution.

Across the world, consumerism, overpopulation and globalism are also taking a heavy toll on our planet's limited resources. Plastic trash is polluting the seas and killing wildlife. International trade deals are expanding corporate rights and challenging regulations meant to protect the environment and public health. In the U.S., environmentalists and conservationists are fighting battles on many fronts. Environmental racism is rampant. Oregon's wolves lost their endangered species protection. The well-intentioned but ultimately destructive biomass industry in Europe is decimating America's southern forests, home to the endangered Louisiana black bear and more than 600 imperiled, threatened or endangered species.
On the food front, there is also much concern. As of 2014, more than 48 million Americans live in food-insecure households. Almost 15 percent of Americans live in poverty. Over 600,000 Americans are homeless. Against this worrisome background of widespread hunger, big food companies are pushing legislation to prevent consumers from knowing whether or not foods contain GMOs. Pesticides that are killing critical food crop pollinators like bees and butterflies and endangering human health continue to be used worldwide. Coca-Cola has been exposed for funding research that misleads the public about the health effects of its sugary drinks.
Still, amid all the bad news are some striking victories, stories of hope and visions for a better future. The good news is the result of action by people who care, from environmental activists who dangled from a bridge to stop Shell's icebreaker ship from going to the Arctic, to farmers suing agrochemical giants, and even to readers like you who have signed petitions, some of which have helped make things better, one issue at a time. Deeds such as these serve as an important reminder that, while it may be easier to complain than to commit, only action will enact positive change.
If you care about the environment, sustainability, renewable energy, food safety, food security, organic food systems and animal welfare, there is still much work to be done. But if you're looking for things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, you also have many reasons. Here are 30, in no particular order.

1. Shell abandoned Arctic drilling.
   
2. Pope Francis released a powerful encyclical on the environment.
    
3. An Illinois farmer sued the world's largest agrochemical company over GMO corn.
   
4. Taco Bell decided to source only cage-free chickens.
   
5. Colorado established a new GMO-free zone to protect traditional farming.
   
6. Kikkoman, a popular soy sauce brand, decided to end animal testing.
   
7. The Women's Collective of Tamil Nadu in India is restoring traditional foods and farming methods.
   
8. The United States is finally ending invasive experiments on chimpanzees.
   
9. Palau created the world's sixth largest marine sanctuary.
   
10. The $2.6 trillion fossil fuel divestment movement is growing.
    
11. Pop Weaver, the second largest popcorn supplier in U.S., became the first American company to phase out bee-killing seed coatings.
    
12. India is home to the world's first solar-powered airport.
    
13. A group of humpback whales tried to save a baby gray whale from a killer whale attack in a remarkable display of interspecies empathy.
    
14. The World Health Organization classified Monsanto's herbicide as a "probable carcinogen."
    
15. Following the tragic murder of Cecil the lion, several major airlines banned the transportation of animal parts from the trophy hunting industry.
    
16. 1President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.
    
17. SeaWorld decided to put an end to its orca shows in California.
    
18. Morocco is poised to become a solar energy superpower.
    
19. Washington became the first state to crack down on illegal wildlife trafficking by a people's vote.
    
20. Scientists discovered that plastic-eating mealworms can safely digest Styrofoam.
    
21. Across the world, urban agriculture projects are changing the way food is grown.
    
22. Fracktivists crashed Monday Night Football.
    
23. Texas finally put a stop to greyhound racing.
     
24. Poland became the 14th European nation to ban GMOs.
    
25. Jon and Tracey Stewart converted a 12-acre farm into a farm animal sanctuary. 
26. U.S. and Russia have teamed up to save polar bears.
    
27. The Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon in Wales will use ocean tides to power more than 150,000 homes.
    
28. Activists promised the largest climate civil disobedience ever at the Paris summit.
    
29. Prop 2 took effect, banning extreme confinement of hens, pigs and calves in California.
    
30. After years of resistance, Ringling Bros. Circus announced it would retire elephants from its traveling circus acts.

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving? Now is the time to consider.



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Thanksgiving with Trump & ISIS

SUBHEAD: All our traditions are in anaphylactic shock. We chew together in the eye of the storm.

By Reverend Billy Talen on 26 November 2015 for RevBilly -
(http://www.revbilly.com/thanksgiving_with_trump_and_isis)


Image above: In America, from coast to coast, Thanksgiving travelers face heavy security this weekend. From (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/thanksgiving-travelers-face-intense-security-amid-terror-threat-n469056).

Norman Rockwell is dead at the easel, his paintbrush still hanging in the air. All our traditions are in anaphylactic shock. We chew together in the eye of the storm.

This turkey-day we gather around the steaming food to defend ourselves against what is outside. We are seated facing inward, admiring the steaming aroma of the overkill. We pretend for an hour that we don't notice what is behind us, the climate rattling the windows and the families knocking on our door.

We express our gratitude for what? That we have just a little more time; time for this meal. The ritual meal gives us a feeling of false momentum; that we are logically coming from 10,000 meals going back through time. This also suggests that there will be many more such celebrations to follow. This is a lie and we know it.

We all live in a gated community now. We all live within a militarized zone, in the center of which is an extreme form of retail culture which storms our minds with smiling graphics, actors, anti-depressants, fossil-sourced packaging and carbon shipping. This bizarre deathtrap is called our mainstream economy.

Here in 2015, after Beirut and Paris; after extinction sweeping through the natural world; after cops shooting unarmed black men sixteen times and cities hiding the evidence; after the language of candidates out-Hitlering the worst of the past - we take another bite. We use the words of mild-mannered love. We think of our family as a little culture with borders. Well, should we be grateful that we can still harbor this fantasy?

We hear the wind blowing against the side of our dining room. We call it a super storm, hoping to make it as manageable as the super bowl or a super mall. We are watching the geo-political super-storm of ISIS, Putin and Goldman Sachs, but we are belching the gas from the top of our packed stomachs and the problems of the world are on a screen on the wall.

We are not witnesses to the world, we are consumers of it. It comes as information on a screen. It is our most violent border. We have ourselves to thank for corporate media.

Our mature response is to remain in a state of non-protest and keep shopping. Cornel West is right when he says, “Everything is commodified. All things are for sale.” This is a state-sanctioned religion. Extreme shopping is the psychic heart of modern racism.

The shopping drug makes us the kind of idiots that accept violence. The Ferguson young people last year were right to march into Walmart and shout "Hands Up! Don't Shop!"

This year is a hard Thanksgiving. Our thanks must leap from our immediate love all the way over Trump and ISIS and toxin-coated seeds of 200 mile-an-hour wind. Our thanks flies out to Chelsea Manning, the truth-teller alone in her cell. Our thanks go to the families who miss their murdered loved ones, the survivors of state violence from bullets, drone bombs or Monsanto.

Our thanks go to the piano player at the Paris theater; to the all-night campers in the Minnesota cold at Precinct #4, and to the police who are beginning to have, in the midst of their thanks, doubts about their leaders.

The sun is rising in our windows on Thanksgiving Day in the USA. It's getting warmer for the homeless here in New York. My thanks go out to them, and the 60 million homeless who walk hundreds of miles toward militarized horizons. We must escape to all of you, cross the borders from the shopping side, and give thanks to you for our freedom.


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Indigenous Peoples' Day

SUBHEAD: The Seattle City Council is replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day.

By Phuong Le on 6 October 2104 for Huffington Post -
(http://bigbigbigthings.com/2010/10/happy-indigenous-peoples-day/S)


Image above: Indigenous people at market from Chichci area of the Yucatan in Mexico. From (http://bigbigbigthings.com/2010/10/happy-indigenous-peoples-day/).

The Seattle City Council is replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day in the city.
The resolution that passed unanimously Monday celebrates the contributions and culture of Native Americans and the indigenous community in Seattle on the second Monday in October, the same day as the federally recognized Columbus Day.

Tribal members and other supporters say the move recognizes the rich history of people who have inhabited the area for centuries.

"This action will allow us to bring into current present day our valuable and rich history, and it's there for future generations to learn," said Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Nation, a tribe on the Olympic Peninsula, who is also president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.

"Nobody discovered Seattle, Washington," she said to a round of applause.

Several Italian-Americans and others objected to the change, saying Indigenous Peoples' Day honors one group while disregarding the Italian heritage of others.

Columbus Day is a federal holiday that commemorates the arrival of Christopher Columbus, who was Italian, in the Americas on October 12th 1492.

"We don't argue with the idea of Indigenous Peoples' Day. We do have a big problem of it coming at the expense of what essentially is Italian Heritage Day," said Ralph Fascitelli, an Italian-American who lives in Seattle, speaking outside the meeting.

"This is a big insult to those of us of Italian heritage. We feel disrespected," Fascitelli said. He added, "America wouldn't be America without Christopher Columbus."

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray is expected to sign the resolution, his spokesman Jason Kelly said.

The Bellingham City Council also is concerned that Columbus Day offends some Native Americans. It will consider an ordinance October 13th to recognize the second Monday in October as Coast Salish Day.

The Seattle School Board decided last week to have its schools observe Indigenous Peoples' Day on the same day as Columbus Day. Earlier this year, Minneapolis also decided to designate that day as Indigenous Peoples' Day. South Dakota, meanwhile, celebrates "Native Americans Day."

Seattle councilmember Bruce Harrell said he understood the concerns from people in the Italian-American community, but he said, "I make no excuses for this legislation." He said he co-sponsored the resolution because he believes the city won't be successful in its social programs and outreach until "we fully recognize the evils of our past."

Councilmember Nick Licata, who is Italian-American, said he didn't see the legislation as taking something away, but rather allowing everyone to celebrate a new day where everyone's strength is recognized.

David Bean, a member of the Puyallup Tribal Council, told councilmembers the resolution demonstrates that the city values tribal members' history, culture, welfare and contributions to the community.

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Homeless

SUBHEAD: The USA is going nowhere because it doesn’t like the new place where history wants to take it.

By James Kunstler on 26 May 2014 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/homeless-2/)


Image above: We left Carthage on a nice run of route 66 rolling though the Missouri countryside.  The endpoint this time is was Carterville and very little of the area is active. Most buildings are boarded up or derelict. From (http://66in25.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html).

H History is moving the furniture around in the house of mankind just about everywhere but the USA. Things have changed, except here, where people come and go through the rooms of state, and everything looks shabbier by the day, and lethargy eats away at the upholstery like an acid fog, and the walls reverberate with meaningless oratory. The USA is going nowhere because it doesn’t like the new place where history wants to take it.

That is, first of all, a place of far less influence on everybody else, in a new era of desperate struggle to remain modern. That fading modern world is the house that America built, the great post World War Two McMansion stuffed with dubious luxuries in a Las Vegas of the collective mind. History’s bank has foreclosed on it and all the nations and people of the world have been told to make new arrangements for daily life. 

The USA wants everybody to stay put and act as if nothing has changed.

Therefore, change will be forced on the USA. It will take the form of things breaking and not getting fixed. Unfortunately, America furnished its part of the house with stapled-together crap designed to look better than it really was. 

We like to keep the blinds drawn now so as not to see it all coming apart. Barack Obama comes and goes like a pliable butler, doing little more than carrying trays of policy that will be consumed like stale tea cakes — while the wallpaper curls, and the boilers fail down in the basement, and veneers delaminate, and little animals scuttle ominously around in the attic.

Everybody I know is distressed by this toxic languor, this sense of being stuck waiting in a place they want desperately to move on from — like the prison of elder-care where so many find themselves hostage to the futility of staving off a certain ending, while all the family resources drain into various bureaucratic black holes. Do we care that the generations to come will have nothing left, nothing at all?

This Memorial Day the usual pieties are noticeably muted. Few politicians dare to utter sanctimonies about our brave soldiers maimed on far-flung battlefields, when so many of them are stuck waiting alone in dark rooms with only their wounds and phantom limbs for company. If regular civilian medicine is a cruel, hopeless, quasi-criminal racket, imagine what medicine for army veterans must be like — all that plus an overlay of profound government ineptitude and institutionalized ass-covering.

Even the idle chatter about American Dreaming has faded out lately, because too much has happened to families and individuals to demonstrate that people need more than dreams and wishes to make things happen. It’s kind of a relief to not have to listen to those inane exhortations anymore, especially the idiotic shrieking that “We’re number one!”

Others have got our number now. They are going their own way whether we like it or not. The Russians and the Chinese. The voters in Europe. The moiling masses of Arabia and its outlands. The generals in Thailand. Too bad the people of Main Street USA don’t want to do anything but sit on their hands waiting for the rafters to tumble down. My guess is that nothing will bestir us until we wake up one morning surrounded by rubble and dust. By then, America will be a salvage operation.

There’s a long and comprehensive To-Do list that has been waiting for us since at least 2008, when the nation received one forceful blow upside its thick head. We refuse to pay attention. First item on the list: restructure the banks. 

Other items: reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act; disassemble the ridiculous “security” edifice under the NSA; upgrade the US electric grid; close down most of our military bases overseas (and some of our bases in the USA); draw up a constitutional amendment re-defining the alleged “personhood” of corporations; fix the passenger railroad system to prepare for the end of Happy Motoring; rebuild Main Street commerce to prepare for the death of WalMart and things like it; outlaw GMO foods and promote local food production; shut down casino gambling.

That’s just my list. What’s yours? And when will you step out of this rotting house into the sunshine?

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Happy Thanksgiving Day 2013!

SUBHEAD: There is much to be thankful for. Who you share your meal with today is an important part of it, but where the food you share comes from is another.

By Juan Wilson on 28 November 2013 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2013/11/happy-thanksgiving-day-2013.html)


Image above: Kalamazoo wood burning stove, circa 1930, on our lanai in Hanapepe Valley. Photo by Juan wilson.

This has to be brief. Today I'm in charge of cooking the turkey. I have to go chop some wood before ten this morning so I can fire up our wood burning stove. Over a year ago we gave up our place on the mainland that had once been my mother's parents farmhouse. They were not farmers but retired school teachers. When they retired, in 1953, they returned to the small town of Panama, NY, where they had met a half century before.

The wood burning stove had been my grandmother's and was used in the house until about 1980. The last turkey I cooked in it was in 1979. We moved the stove to Kauai when we sold the old farm. It's a 1930 Kalamzoo.

My plan is to cook the 14 pound bird for 6-7 hours at an average of 300ºf. Best of luck with your celebration.  Now on to the chores.

See also:
The Gobbler: Thanksgiving Feasts 11/28/93
The Gobbler: Turkey recipe 11/29/97
Island Breath: R Crumb Thanksgiving  11/204    
Island Breath: Don't Mess with Turkeyday 11/24/05
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