i went to the demonstrations yesterday, did not blow a fifty amp fuse. the peace people were speaking from a stage and speaking strongly. lots of signs, babies, dogs. hearing the speakers from a distance thru the big speakers reminded me more then anything else of the vietnam days. very peaceful crowd, wondering around with drums and guitars. mostly young or middle aged, with a healthy sprinkling of gray beards "still crazy after all these years". (i include myself in this catagory).

then i walked over to the christian Support Our Soldiers rally. larger crowd, lots of american flags, american vet hats. another stage, but they were talking about how to conduct oneself while engaged in a pie eating contest and travis tritt. i bought a SOS hat, put it on, and wondered back to the peacemongers. nobody said boo. all in all a beautiful day. i think everyone wanted to talk to the other side, and quite a few did.

after the rallies i visited an arts and crafts emporium, nearly deserted, and had a long talk with a lady finishing an oil painting. i learned a lot just watching her and her setup.

today went to Friends Meeting, and then visited molly and bob, ended up going to a movie with them. name of movie was something about "real girls" and it was filmed in asheville and marshall. first movie i've seen in two years and it was a good one. beautiful in fact.

didn't listen to the radio again today. well, a little this morning. local show touting SOS aggrevated because peacemongers will have a drum circle competing with prayer. bad idea if you ask me. i've spent half a day trying to get inkjet printer to print quark postscript files correctly. not quite there yet. more interesting than radio. see you at the picnic.

black frezzing rain sideways in the dark. days to stay inside. personally i plan to visit both the SOS (support our soldiers) and the SOS-BTH (support our soldiers - bring them home) contingents this saturday. if i can get out of bed.

ok, ok, i can't seem sustain one topic for a week. anyway i can't do it today. so here is some feedback i have recieved on am radio gadflies:
-----
"James w." wrote:
>
> more than anyother group in my lifetime, these folks have a lot in common
> with "flower children". wanna know why? next time God willing.

> huh?

it doesn't read like i meant. "next time God willing." is supposed
to mean i'll tell you next time etc.

> oh i forgot: heard on the (fm) radio that the authorities have the legal
> power to redirect a web site to their sight and then do what they have to do
> with your name etc.so that means it won't be long before we can't use words
> like "coup d'etat".

> huh?
> I'm not sure exactly what this means, but my worst imaginings are
> pretty grim

i plead sickness. i was pretty ill when i wrote this. WIM (what i
meant): maybe you want to be careful about the words you use on the net nowadays.
and you do.

> OK, lets see.. the analogy with the "flower children".....could it have
> anything to do with fuzzy, simplistic thinking?
>
no what i'm getting at is an group identity thing. there were about 6
months in the 60s when you could tell who your friends were on sight. we
had sort of like... common memes.

the AM talk radio people have the same phenomona working for them. they
can tell each other instantly, even over the phone. and they share a common language and story line.

make any sense?
--

"James W" wrote:
>
> megadittos, Chris
>
> Actually, I haven't been listening much lately, though I did catch a Ken
> Hamblin session a couple of weeks ago. Remember when the Repubs took over
> Congress in the 1908's? They were treating Limbaugh with great deference,
> as will they should have, as they largely owed their elections to him. Some
> were calling it the "Limbaugh Congress."

yes i remember. friend ludie remarked at the time she thought
they would run amuck and lose the next election. that it would not
stand. she guessed good, huh?

> I believe the listenership has
> declined somewhat since then, though I haven't followed it closely.

i have the opposite impression, mainly because i heard shaun henedy say
that today 25% of americans get their news from am talk shows double
what it was 2 years ago. this is what got me going on the topic.

> By the way, while I think it is important and worthwhile to give "the other
> side" (Christian right, etc.) credit for good faith, and try to understand
> their viewpoint, I feel very little charity toward the right-wing talk show
> hosts.

i'm trying to see what happens when the right-wing talk shows are looked
at with credit for good faith, ie they are expressing something they
truly believe and that is not totally wrong. so far i am not succeeding.
>
> For an amusing look at the notion of the "cultural elite," check out this
> Richard Reeves column:
>
> http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=123&e=1&cid=123&u=/030207/7
> 9/37r0g.html
>
thanks for the tip i'll check it out.
(make sure URL is on one line if you copy and paste)
--

and Dr. J wrote:

> Hey Chris.....
>
> That was Spiro who spoke of the pointy headed intellectuals.
>
i stand corrected. but didn't wallace have a line like "can't park a
bicycle straight"?

you hear a lot of riffs on the AM Talk Radio. these are a form of rhetoric, and they change from day to day.

here are the big topics this a.m.

the president remains focused on freedom�s survival despite the peace demonstrations. the demonstrators are either anti-american or not american.

but they have the right to express their opinions. they would not have this right except for soldiers . a lot of vets phone in.

the amercan society of friends was picked out by name this morning as one of the anti-american groups.

jane fonda�s name comes up often. they pass over her name as quickly as possible, with a tone like she is outside the pale and good folks don�t even mention her name.

the phrase �hollywood left� has been used quite a lot lately, usually with indignation that �they think� they�re so smart, when they�re just celebreties.

a lot of the criticism of the war is characterized by the buzz words �that�s right, blame america and the american people again.�

another reoccuring motif is that the critics think they know so much (remember wallace�s �pointy-headed intellectuals�?) but really bush and condeleeza rice are privy to so much more information that we don�t know about, it�s best to let them decide things. daddy knows best.

more later if i can stomach henedy and savage.

spent a very strange night, not in real good shape, maybe coming down with something. i am just now starting to feel right. seven in the evening.

about am radioland - the social discourse is pretty well standadized, and these folks recognize each other at once. even over the telephone. many of the callers thank the talker for his good work etc. "we" and "they".

these folks are quick and well educated for the most part. it's fascinating how they use rhetorical devices - along with the ability to transform the "dialogue" into a "monologue" - to win the discussion, putting out the word. straw man argument constantly. complaign of ad hominym attacks while doing the ad hominum sniccker.

more than anyother group in my lifetime, these folks have a lot in common with "flower children". wanna know why? next time God willing.

oh i forgot: heard on the (fm) radio that the authorities have the legal power to redirect a web site to their sight and then do what they have to do with your name etc.so that means it won't be long before we can't use words like "coup d'etat".

shakey nite, shakey morning.

i'm going to try something new this week. content is king you know, so i am going to write about only one thing all week.

just kidding about "content is king". i just want to see what happens.

next saturday there will be 2 rallies held in downtown asheville NC: one is a "support our soldiers" group and the other is peace people who have adopted as slogon "support our soldiers - bring them home". the first group has ties to am radio talk show land. i've been listening to these talk shows for about 2-3 months. oh i forgot, the 2 groups will be not far at all from each other. could be enlightening week. in the narrower sense of the word.

nice day. went to friends meeting this morning, and a really nice 109th birthday Meher Baba celebration. in between talked to my friend ira. feel like the first spring morning after a long winter - altho there were snow flurries this AM. internal weather.

the solution to the iraq in the world problem is profoundly simple. everybody helps everbody to wake up.

finished today

it's true, i'm no longer on the old cyberchannel. email address stays the same.

what's next? well if i'm at peak performance mode as my counsler puts it, i'll redesign this site. remove old site files (this is where mp3s might go). make sure archives work. whittle them way down.

the war thing i just can't talk about - because it's clashing worldviews - and it would take a long time to understaand - i know, because i don't.

well i done did it. this is the new home of modernpeasant. i'll be redisigning site, edit archives to eliminate the mundane or somehow reduce it in size. got lots of mp3 to put up, i'll be interested in how they sound to you.over and out.

Pundits are scratching their heads over Saturday's surprise announcement that Google had bought weblog publishing heavyweight Pyra Labs, but a look at the big picture reveals some intriguing scenarios for "Bloggle's" future.
SearchDay - Puzzling Out Google's Blogger Acquisition - 18 February 2003

TestinG

"Big news: Yes folks, it's true. As you may have read, Blogger's parent company, Pyra Labs, was purchased by Google. This should only mean good things for Blogger users."
from
BLOGGER

i have no idea of what it means.

Taking over our election systems? Is that really possible in the USA?
from
"If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"

an example of what i don't like about today's web: when you go to this page, a well done animation loads and plays, probably flash. after a bit it stops and tells you to register if you want to see the whole thing. NOT NICE.

Salon.com Politics | Green alert?

here's an item pointed out to me by a friend who saw it on bill moyer's pbs show. talk radio hates - not too strong a word for those folks - both moyers and pbs so there is probably something to it. you really ought to check it out.

"There's an important story developing tonight at the Justice Department. The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity obtained a closely-guarded document that shows plans for a sweeping expansion of the government's police powers."
from
NOW: Politics & Economy - Breaking News | PBS

sent to me by cousin bob. there are a lot of these floating around on the web, to my mind very reminiscent of the samizdat pieces floating around soviet russia towards it's end. it happens when citizens can't communicate to thier government. (don't know who did it but it is really a work of art. kudos!)

good morning. busy week ahead. i'm aiming to transfer this site to another ISP so get ready for

"http://modernpeasant.com"

as per usual without the commas. since i'm aiming for this week it will probably be the next, but soon anyway.

which brings up the old question, what is this site for anyway?

after dinking around with it for awhile, i still don't know.

but i think i'm going to slant it towards being a little more personal - although i skitter away from the confessioanal mode which has grown so much over the last 25 - 50 years.

it certainly will not be one of those pre-digested web surfing sites (although i think they are great) - because i don't surf the web much anymore.

heavy cultural & political commentary? well maybe a little bit, but along the lines of a thought snatched here and an observation snared there.

the artist as an old geezer? yeah, probably mostly that - since that is what i spend most of my time being.

so expect a few pictures, songs, lyrics, word salads served up with flair, and MP3s. some eccentric links. maybe a running commentary on creativity - some call it self-expression - as a backdoor to the REAL Me and the REAL You. in other words remebering in the platonic sense.

oh yeah, i'm going to edit the archives, preserving only the most cogent, deep, monumental and otherwise significant posts.

but don't expect too much.

one of the misunderstandings of the web in my opinion is that it is "aimed" toeards the whole world. while a site might be accessible to the whole world, i expect the net to evolve into a holding mechanism for sites of interest to a smaller world than all humans. small circle of friends? a la Phil Ochs? maybe.

i watched the TV news last nite... oh boy (winston o'boogie).

1 - Bethlehem steel just revoked health benefits for retired employees. i guess they worked for 30 years or so under the illusion that part of their paycheck was being tucked away for pension & benefits, as part of their agreement with the employer.

according to one commentator, "expect a cascade of pension, benefits revocation this year.

2 - piece about states being broke. Oregon was the example. forget about safety net, it's gone.

3 - you may have seen or heard the NASA spokesman, ron (?) ditmore, after last week's shuttle disaster. it was such a relief to hear somebody in a position of authority speak frankly and openly, kind of like a human being. apparently the govt. told him to shut up. this is not to be confused with the investigation of the tragedy being shifted to outside agency, that is SOP in aviation disasters. but it sure was refreshing to hear straight talk instead of politicalspeak.

another subject: for the last few days (weeks?) a song lyric has been playing in my head; one line:

"look at the sun, sinking like a ship". mr dylan, a song on the album - no i mean cassette - no i mean CD - oops maybe it's a DVD - "desire".

last night i was reading "5 stages of the soul" by moody when i noticed this was playing over and over in the background of what is left of my mind. the next sentence i read was:

"it's like we're all passengers on the same big boat...when i was younger i thought i was steering the ship. you know, captain of my soul, master of my fate...now i know i'm just another passenger. it's even starting to look as if one day the whole crew of us is going to...just quietly sink".

today is my Be Day (born on earth). spent most of day tuning chinese fiddle and constructing a scale (no frets - in fact no fret board).

after a lot of thought, or something that vaguely resembles it, all i have to say is what i already said:

we're living in a time and place where a coup d'etat took place, but nobody knows it. because it's a secret.

and it seems to be the end of the institution. in all my life i have never experienced such a universal disconnect between institutions and us, i.e. humans.

got this in email from friend tucker; signs seen at antiwar gathering a couple of weeks ago:
>
>Who would Jesus bomb?
>
>Bush is proof that empty warheads can be dangerous.
>
>Let's bomb Texas, they have oil too.
>
>How did our oil get under their sand?
>
>If you can't pronounce it, don't bomb it.
>
>1000 points of light and one dim bulb.
>
>Preemptive impeachment.
>
>Look, I'll pay more for gas!.
>
>It's the stupid economy.
>
>Our grief [over 9/11] is not a cry for war.
>
>You don't have to like Bush to love America.
>
>Stop the "excess" of evil [gives figures for the multibillion dollar
>defense budget].
>
>$1 billion a day to kill people -- what a bargain.
>
>What's the difference between me & God?
>He might forgive Bush, but I won't.
>
>Big brother isn't coming -- he's already here.
>
>An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind (Gandhi).
>
>Mainstream white guys for peace.
>(Sign held by three mainstream-looking white guys)
>
>Let Exxon send their own troops.
>
>How many bodies per mile?
>
>War is� so� 20th century!
>
>9-11-01:� 15 Saudis, 0 Iraqis.
>
>Don't waive your rights while waving your flag.
>
>A picture of Bush saying "Why should I care what the American people
>think? They didn't vote for me."
>
>A picture of Bush saying "Ask me about my lobotomy."
>
>Beneath a picture of Osama bin Laden dressed as Uncle Sam: I want
>YOU to bomb Iraq. [my personal favorite because it is absolutely true - maybe i'll explain tomorrow.]
>
>Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its
>government when it deserves it. --Mark Twain

whoopie doopie i'm back online. little glitch popped up last night.

meanwhile try this:

ColorQuiz.com - The free five minute personality test!

interesting test altho you have to wonder about monitors and gamma and color. there are every personality test that you ever want to play with at this site.

here is part of the results i got from the ColorQuiz:

"Unwilling to participate and wishes to avoid all forms of stimulation. Has had to put up with too much of a tiring or exhausting nature and now desires protection and noninvolvement."

well i did it. six days of no computer. turned it off and left it off, with the exception of a minute here and a minute there.

so what happened? i slept a lot, saw some TV that i would not ordinarily see, and didn't paint a lick.

speaking of TV, last night's Frontline was a real eye-opener, showing what we were told during the last gulf war and what was really happening there are two very different stories.

some speech by dubya huh? he looked real good - and it should help him in the next election.

only because the people have the memory of a goldfish and will not hold him to that long list of things he said he was gonna do but won't.

the speech has to be a new high in political mendacity. but he looked real good.

recent watercolor. i am checking out for a few days so no updates for awhile. altho maybe i'll post some of the specifics i've heard on the AM talkshows.

"In my view, art history, the art world, the art market-in other words art with a capital "A"-is less important than the art which is part of all of us, which we participate in by virtue of being human."
from
*spark-online.com >> version 34.0, JULY.2002 >> MAX PODSTOLSKI

sad news today: tommy thompson passed away. he was one of the founder�s of the red clay ramblers and a robust, talented, fun loving presence in a circle of remarkable people many years ago. he suffered for many years with altzheimer�s disease. may he rest in peace.

more about AM talk shows
an interesting thing about the very conservative talk shows on AM is that they refer to the media in general as �mainstream media�. they regard themselves and listeners as an incipient separate nation.

there is a tight-knit quality about this group of people. i am reminded of the 60�s when there was a short period of time when many folks could identify each other as a special segment of the public with values and worldview that was in the minority then, but would prevail in the future. (it didn�t happen).

last night i heard one caller who suggested that the coming war with iraq be postponed until all of the �human shields� - americans going to iraq - you don�t hear much about them in the mainstream press - are in place in iraq. then bomb, ridding the world of pinkos, traitors, and american leftists as a bonus to taking back the oil fields that were developed by the west and then stolen - nationalized - by the people who live there.

more later.

sat morning, white glare outside of the battened down hatches. sun on snow. dunno how cold it got, i was snug as bug in etc.

after such a pleasant and i might say necessary trip, next comes "re-orientation to life", picking up pieces, finding some good ones, throwing a few over right shoulder while facing north for good luck .

am radioten years or so ago i spent a little time listening to the AM talkshows. at that time this was mainly rush L. and art bell at night. i learned a lot. i mean i added dimensions to my feeling of what culture i was unknowingly a part of.

for about the last 8 weeks i�ve started again to check in with the these shows.

there are many more of them than there were 10 years ago. some stations run these shows 24 hours a day. i noticed there are many local talk shows on AM, mini-versions of the coast to coast shows, two guys from hendersonville, for instance, discussing seceding from the union.

they just about all have that irascable, curdled indignance. the big guys ssem to be shaun henedy, bill o�reilly, and micheal savage. they all have one thing in common. they are rational. by that i mean they use rhetoric. cheap tricks thousands of years old (aristotle, quintillian) to hornswoggle the marks.

they pick up the phone, bark a question out, and the person at the other end says his piece (quickly) - shaun or bill then reply by hanging up and ranting about whatever they want to.

i got really interested when i found out that 25% of americans get thier news from these entertainment shows. it ain�t NPR, folks.
more to come

i just got home a little before twilight. great trip, as usual i feel recharged after visiting the Baba Center. new friends, old friends, conversation.

it snowed last night and this morning, but the drive back was fine until around asheville, a little icy. record cold tonight. listened to a lot of local am stations while driving, and i want to talk more about them later.

(to be cont.)

sun nite. at daughter nicole's house, visiting with family. off tomorrow morning to myrtle beach via wilmington.

went out with eli and saw bench in park dedicated to sally. it is in as beautiful spot, hope i got some good photos.

incipient alzheimers got me here without 2 medications, or short on them anyway, so much phoning drugstores and getting scrips shuffled around. slept in the camper fri. nite, temp 13 degrees and it wasn't bad.

blood sugar got away from me saturday so spent a long day bringing it down to reasonable level and i can think again, altho as bobby d. says'"you7 can't come back all the way."saw outlaw jodie wales" on tv, early clint, very good classic western.

this is the first oil painting i've ever done. finished a few weeks ago. it's too much fun to stop now.

but i can't seem to load it.

there's a big snowstorm outside.

if it's over by noon i'm leaving and will be back next wednesday.

sitting here thinkin bout the government. old friend bill O. is visiting. haven't seen each other for let's see...i'm going to say 20 years. always interesting to see what time has done and how life has gone. we're both still kicking, but a little slower i would say.

what a s-l-o-w monday. i must have the aliatory bluz.

below are links to all things blog-related.

my theory: we are born into a collective culture and as humans have an inate tropism, not optional, to communicate with the collective. only now we don't know what it is, or what it is becoming. so blog away.

"The biggest technology story of 2002, in my opinion, was the exponential increase in the number of bits and bitstreams engaged by Net users worldwide. Not just sp-m mail, which got the most attention, but all bitstreams."
from
Good Experience - Review of Bits, 2002/2003

these links contain current information about blogs:
blogdex - the weblog diffusion index
Daypop Top 40 Links
Technorati: Top 100

went to tom's bday celebration last night. what a pleasant gathering! met some nice folks i hope to see again. diana had taken a look at this broke-down palace, and had a lot of questions about the world of blogs.

one of them was the same question that i had - and still have - when i started this weblog: what are they for? online journal? place to gather pointers to information? how about posting new poems? last nite's music?

i really don't know. posting daily - or trying to - has been a good thing for me, maybe it brings some structure to the day.

the worst you can say about blogging is vanity, vanity, vanity. adding to the noise of a very noisy world. but i don't think this is valid. most of the noise is institutional and certainly not self-expression (a self expressing it's self to the community of other self's it is a part of). maybe it's practice for the time when we are able to feel like like ourselves and communicate it.

meanwhile, back in the physio-sphere - the monocular world of location and the measurable - a piece of history concerning apple/microsoft:
I, Cringely | The Pulpit

some quotes from an article about Powerpoint presentation software. if you have not been around institutions (corporations, govt., medical, scientific etc.) for the last 20 years, you might not be aware of the profound and negitive effect it has had on communication and the culture in general.

"Before there were presentations, there were conversations, which were a little like presentations but used fewer bullet points, and no one had to dim the lights."

"It is by definition a social instrument, turning middle managers into bullet-point dandies."

"Because PowerPoint can be an impressive antidote to fear-converting public-speaking dread into moviemaking pleasure-there seems to be no great impulse to fight this influence."

"SpaghettiOs is the great example. The guy came up with the jingle first: 'The neat round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon': And he said, 'Hey! Make spaghetti in the shape of small circles!'"

"America began to go to more meetings."

"This is the most common complaint about PowerPoint. Instead of human contact, we are given human display."

"McNealy's concern is shared by the American military. Enormously elaborate PowerPoint files (generated by presentation-obsessives--so- called PowerPoint Rangers) were said to be clogging up the military's bandwidth."

from
Absolute Powerpoint

1.9.3

thought i would display a portion of my "notes" to myself which might demonstrate some kind of confusion in the organizational realm:

"The take-home message from this research therefore might be that people should get more involved in campaigns, struggles and social movements, not only in the wider interest of social change but also for their own personal good."
Protesting May Be Good for Your Health : TB Indymedia

1.8.3

an interesting cyber-wrinkle:

Slashdot | Prentice Hall To Publish Open Content Licensed Books
"The 'Bruce Perens' Open Source Series' will be available first as hardcopy in bookstores, and the Open Source text will be available electronically a few months later."

what this means to me is that if you're willing to wait, you can print it and read it: print selectively, ie focus on yr interests. also a lot of dead trees i guess.

1.6.3

i painted this watercolor last fall at my father's house in arizona..

met some new friends i hope to see more of at the friend's meeting yesterday.

also tuned 2 string chinese fiddle finally, a project i've been working on for weeks. maybe tuning is not the right word, because i also used tape to mark the first octive D scale. hard task for the tone-deaf.

no fret board. in fact no board of any kind. you change notes by touching the strings. i also gathered all the MP3s i have done the last 12 months and archived onto zip drives. starting from scratch, learning mainly opcode studiovision pro, i've done 21. next step is to do 3-5 minute songs that are actually music of some sort.

today i am going to spend formatting book for jeff w. i've got a good start on first chapter. i hope to go to the Baba center around the 20th for a few days and can give him some page proofs.

also finished "beta" of around 100 poems which i will xerox today and begin handing out to folks for any thoughts or comments.

1.5.3

up early this am, busy busy busy. i'm going to friends meeting - quaker - at 10, missed it last week due to skewed blood sugar situation.

continue to feel that by far the majority of world citizens, and more to the point USA citizens, feel very uncomfortable about gneralissimo bush. at present this is a slow - too slow - swell on the ocean of public opinion. i think it results from the invisible coup-d'etat that has taken place, the corporate oligarchy running things from a teflon bubble. the opposition should sieze the moment to clarify what is happening. recapture the language.

for instance anytime a democrat points out the econmic inequalities running rampant, bush and friends including rush simply reply with one code word:"class warfare". the opposition needs to translate the meaning for us hoi poloi - it means the very wealthy are differant than you and i - me anyway - with proprietary agenda and there are other agendas that need not to be ignored by ivalidating them with that facile phrase.

1.4.3

fixed FTP glitch, picture below is what i painted last fall, yesterday's pic is same image after FTP suddenly lost ability to transfer binary files.

talked to some friends today who thought that their mood swings, random bad days, were the result of the bad vibrations and trouble in the collective mental sphere. i can correlate my varied and seemingly random states of mind with this only on a very general level, ie i felt good the morning of 9/11 - until it hit the fan that is.

1.3.3

the image above was one of those surprises. it wern't supposed to look like this.

1.2.3

sleep is not what it used to be, i either am experiencing advancing age - well of course i am - or the ragged vibrations of time-worlds unraveling - but last night i slept like humans used to and woke up feeling great. may it happen again and often. finished another MP3, working on a watercolor, and various other projects. i don't know if it's good or bad - i just do them.

here is a very long and interesting series of events, evolutions, and dates. it would take me a long time to puzzle over this, but i know i do not agree with all of it.

Timeline of knowledge-representation
imhoFAQ timeline of knowledge-representation

11.1.2

have a

12.31.2

there was more light yesterday than the day before. things are looking up.

of course the darkness has it�s own imperatives, but enough is enough.

i wonder how the first human consciousness felt when he or she realized that it was a �new� (another) year.

i imagine remorse and relief were part of it.

maybe indifference?

for me, what�s different about the new year is what i learned during the old one:

i don�t know anyone who gets a good night�s sleep anymore.

if people have souls, and i think they do, there are twice as many souls on earth today as when i was a teenager. (thanks to mike e. for that encouraging tidbit.)

if they do or don�t, there are still twice as many humans present.

philip k. dick called this age �the iron castle�. i call it, after ken wilber, �the age of the descended grid�. both phrases seem to have the same quality: caged.

if a person becomes more conscious, does he or she become less unconscious? or is the unconscious infinite and therefor endless and therefor never �less�?

tv the other night: rhythm, song and dance preceded language. louis mumford conjectured as much.

the image preceded conceptual thought.

in the human story, what does conceptual thought precede?

does the universe include dead-ends?

if there is a spirit of creation it is prior to and the basis of human experience. does it talk to us? can we talk to it?

is it accurate to refer to this world as �the vale of tears�? or is it a secular sin to think so negatively? (power of positive thinking). or is it that way so we can contribute to �soul-making�? (keats and james hillman).

everyone i run across these days, admittedly a skewed sample, seems to feel the power of �that�s all folks.�

kali yuga indeed.

so the only reason i look forward to the new year is that the old one is over. i hope and pray.

12.29.2

another wierd end to another wierd year. woke up this morning intending to go to friends meeting at 10, but blood sugar was 496. stayed in 400s till around noon when i finaly changed the old infusion set which looked ok. successfully began to lower BG. meanwhile i'm feeling muzzy, fuzzy, nauseous, and sick.

did not quite phone 911, but came close.

later the reitzals and elvins dropped by unexpectedly and i had a short but very pleasant visit. lots to guess about the coming year. i think i'll start a cyber-pool as to when what happens happens during 2003, and when it doesn't.

12.27.5

today the plan is to - again - stay at home. take it easy. be a blur. stress reduction.

started an oil portrait last night that didn't even come close and now looks like the underpainting of the mexican dust bowl. i'm going to add a watercolor today and see what happens if i work on both at once.

with a little luck i'll start loading new site. talk to a bird. finish final edit of poetry book to be. dance. pick up photo prints i took somewhere. the mundane can save us all.

12.26.2

i now have 448 Meg of memory. next a big fast firewire hard drive, for which i'll also need firewire/usb pci card. the usb is to hook up a digital camera.

i woke up today with the best of intentions, but had to finish a complicated audio piece, so i could blow away all of the digital audio parts and reclaim 350 meg memory.

i accomplished this task around 7 tonight.

i don't take this as a good sign. but maybe it is. ordinary life.

if you're interested in looking at or contributing anti-war (don't you just hate that name?) advertising scripts, take a look:

ActionForum

Here's an ad, in RealAudio format (a 178K download), that will be playing in january i think. i don't think it gets to the heart of the matter.

and last:

"It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between the meteoric rise of blogging, the practice of keeping a frequently-updated online journal, and the rise of unemployment in Silicon Valley and other tech corridors."

from www.washingtonpost.com.

12.25.2

well i'm not running and i'm not hiding but it's not christmas anymore. i guess cause it's the day after in 30 minutes.

no resolutions - i already (didn't) do them.

i guess i guess that i will pay more attention to focus in the next year, or maybe focus on attention more.

That's if nothing comes up to distract me, like the world and stuff.

which world? why, all of them. so far.

and while we're on the subject i insist you go to ken nordeen wordjazz site. listen to first archived radio program. in my opinion he's right up there with picasso and dylan.

12.23.2

for those of you not on the mailing list:

12.22.2

here is the solution to the cryptogram my aunt patricia did while i was in arizona:

"just be glad you're not getting the government you're paying for."
-will rogers

a thought for the day. any day.

12.21.2

beautiful light out, brisk. i could live in this weather for the rest of my life - but hope i don't.

and i haven't even been out in it yet.

still straightening out email. i hope i got what you sent.

for those of you wondering how to communicate with the over-world, or if it is even possible, this might be worth a try.

12.19.2

beautiful day visitng my friend sam outside marion. cleared my head a little.

cyber-deck status: changeable. today i cannot reply to email. i did fix blog archive link. also wrestling with stylewriter II problem, will not print justified text from quark. will from word.

gonna step back and taker easy.

12.18.2

still connecting the dots on my cyber-deck, uh, i mean mac. and this site. i started it a year or two ago to see what would happen, or more specifically to see what it might turn into. so far i'm still wondering.

went to friends meeting last sunday. i like the group silence, but it looks like to really be a member you would have to attend endless meetings. and i'm allergic to endless meetings. nonetheless it is somehow comforting to know there is still social activism happening.

years ago i gave neuromancer by william gibson to my son eli. he recently read it and i took it - light weight paperback - on recent journey and reread it.

i remembered 2 things: 1) the girl with the fingernails that extend into razors (how could you forget?); and 2) a sentence about the place where the corporate intersects with the street. something i did not remember is that for a book with such a sprawling canvas, so many scenes and places, the government is not mentioned once. no politics. too much important stuff going on. with the current disconnect between the government and the governed, this might foreshadow the near future. my aunt patricia did a cryptogram in arizona that relates to this which i'll post when i find it.

12.17.2

busy day doing nothing. well, maybe i did somethings necessary to the mundane - in the best sense of the word. still hooking up all the contraptions that make this site work. laundry. editing. library. bank. drug store.

an encouraging note of interest: at recent family reunion in tuscon, there were about 100 family members i think plus friends etc. now without going into particulars i think it would be fair to say that most of these folks are hardcore western republicans. of course we are all older and slower and less fiery in opinions, but i still find it interesting that even though we avoided political discussion, just about all of them were very much bothered by bush and his pet war. nobody liked it. maybe a heavy-weight or two, but the concensus seemed to be "say whaaaat?"

even more wierd is that nobody seemed to know anyone that voted for him. or admitted that they had.

reinforces my theory that there has been a coup d'etat in washington dc but no one knows because it's a secret.

12.17.2

my state of mind. and i think the state of mind of that unholy abstraction, joe public:

12.17.2

progress. just escaped arizona library by techno-wizardry. and i think i can now post to this page. so this is a

test

12.17.2

just got up. still cannot post to this extravaganza. going to bed at 8-9, my rule for waking up is if NPR is on the radio it's 5 AM or after so i'm up. before than the BBC is on and i just roll over. i seem to be in the midst of reconnecting with quite a crew of old old friends but my web site is stuck in prescott az. can't update it - yet.

this is the first year in many years, maybe 15, that i haven't made my own xmas cards.

m,lkj <=== from my kat miss kitty.

1`2.16.2

maaan i'm tired. so tired. i wanna go to bed. but...
to be continued

12.13.2

ok i am back in aville but due to incredibly complicated server migration i cannot FTP to this blog, therefor you cannot see this posting. right now. soon, i'm told.

so i'm just going to keep on posting and someday you'll see this.

within the month most likely i'll have redesigned site somewhere else, will keep you posted.

i figured out this AM that i was home a total of 6 or 9 days - i forget - during nov 12 - dec 12. some hard traveling, esp with 3 fractured ribs. had a nice civil thanksgiving with the aycocks and 3 children, 1 grandchild.

this was the first thanksgiving in many years that we did not gather at sally's, my ex-wife and children's mother. she passed away last january. so it was especially kind for the aycock's to have us over. no fiends like old friends. [typo - i'll leave it in.]

then i spent some time at the Meher Spiritual center in myrtle beach SC. while i was there i found a st christopher medal that i had lost. it was the only piece i have of my mother's, and they were getting ready to take contents of lost and found box to goodwill the same day i started looking. i feel good about wearing this medallion around my neck because i remember it hanging from rear view mirror as a kid, and 6 months at the center comes with some blessing i am sure.

more about trip later, especially as you won't see this until later.

meanwhile a little bit about my latest obsession - one of the few artists of the century who i would put in the same league as picasso, bob dylan, ricci (the director of koyonaskatsi). on the list of links to the left click on ken nordine - wordjazz, and listen to the first 30 minute radioshow. yes, 30 minutes, the same time wheel of jeapordy takes.

12.11.2

Back in Aville

12.4.2

i am in prescott arizona at the public library. totally unable to access email. my ISP, ioa.com must be in terminal stages of tech implosion and i will be changing all this when i return home. so if you are emailing me, i haven't gotten it yet.

i hear big ice storm is hitting western carolina. hope my cat doesn't freeze.

headline on phoenix paper this am:

CIA can kill bad guys
or something like that. and bad guys, as i understand it, are decleared to be bad by prez. can't blame republicans, they are just doing what they've always done, whatever they can get away with. the democrats are clones. blame the public, you and me, for letting this fantasy continue. or don't because we are anesthetised:

just say "numb".

11.27.2

We're Gone for Two WeeksIt's a mean looking gray day, snowing somewhere nearby. i'm entering the Dysfunctional Holiday Zone in a few minutes. the road. won't be back until around dec. 12, so of course Modern Peasant will be hibernating, approximating homeostasis for a short spell.

11.26.2

i dunno if it's the changing seasons, weather or light, my internal biorythms are changing from getting up at 5 or 6 to (lately) 10 or 11.

today i'll pack and load truck. i am going to make an effort to reallytravel light.

and don't forget what's upon us right now: in addition to everything we know wobbling around, there is this: (i wonder if you can get a t shirt from them?)
Wired News: You Better Shop Around -- Not!

11.25.2

Lagoon Boathouse
running around trying to get packed and ready for 2 week trip to chapel hill, warrington NC, and tucson az.

11.24.2

just finished a small volume of paintings and some very interesting commentary by lyn ott, In Quest of the Face of God. i met lyn in the 60's, and am thankful for the conversations i had with him. he died a while back. in some ways his paintings have become part of my universe. he was a painter who lost his sight.

"Man has no real work. He is at best a pilgrim on his way to the beloved. His only task is the quest for the face of god. All real work is done by the father, the creator of all that is. Man makes his work as the imitation of the creator.This imitation becomes the reflection of the creator. Being the reflection, it pleases the creator, and that act of pleasing is called Art."

11.22.2

Nov. 22 - anniversary of kennedy assassination. watched Washington week in review, and the panel members recalled their memories of that day, or ""where were you when...?"

where they were was grade school, grades 3 through 6 I think. once more I was floored by time's time. personally I can hardly remember grades 3 -6, only an image here and there, a few events in a small world.

Nov. 22 '62 I was in Paris, France with a Swedish girlfriend named "Gabrielle", she was 19, and an American acquaintance, jack smith. jack was from Wyoming and his father was a banker who had made him a banker. he was maybe 35. he had taken a sabbatical from the bank biz to "find himself", which involved learning French and how to smoke kif. we all 3 lived in Tours and studied at a small institute there. we were in Paris for the weekend, about 2 1/2 drizzly hours in a deux-chevaux.

we had just been to a concert at a small theater, string quartet. after the concert, walking down the crowded streets - must have been 9 PM or thereabouts, we all noticed a man walking towards us holding an open newspaper in front of him and reading it. the front page appeared to be all white space with a huge centered headline:

KENNEDY
ASSASINE

(imagine a whatchamacallit accent over the final "E").

it was such a strange layout that we managed fairly easily to regard it as one of those joke newspapers where you can roll your own. about 45 minutes later we knew it was real.

stayed up all night wondering around and wondering what was happening. two incidents stand out. one was we were eating soup in les halles when this party of 4 to 6 rich texans were seated nearby. they were loaded and loud and you couldn't help but hear them. they had just arrived from USA that day and were laughing and joking about Kennedy's death. making toasts. honest.

the second was about 5 in the am when we were accosted by a drunk Frenchman who was some kind of communist and wanted to fight. with that exception all the French were stunned and sad. draped notre-dame in black. watched the funeral parade on black and white TV in shop window. crying in cafes and bars.

end of story. now for something totellment differant:

The critical flaw in the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), which provide database access for Windows software platforms, can enable an attacker to run any code, gain control of networked databases and possibly use hijacked machines to launch denial-of-service attacks.
MS Patches Windows Flaw, But IE Hole Still Gapes

11.21.2

here is most of the story of my present condition. last week i drove to chapel hill for my grand daugter lily's 5th birthday. she showed me 3 brand new kittens tucked away with mother kat in the laundry room. it was kind of tight in there, and i lost my balance, fell against the sharp corner of a wooden shelf. thought i might have bruised ribs so i put ice on it.

in the morning i drove to myrtle beach to the Baba center for some rest, relaxation, and contemplation. got lost on the way and had a tough time with the steering wheel. i gave it a few days and it just got worse, to the point of had to sleep in a chair.

so i turned myself in to a walk-in medical clinic where x-rays revealed i had 3 cracked ribs. some pain medication and an extra day or two, then made the long drive back across SC to aville NC - home. barbar k., who also was visiting the center needed a ride because she had her car totaled by 18 wheeler at the gate.

moral of story? still working on that.

11.19.2

painted last week
good to be back home. i'm about halfway through God Speaks by Meher Baba. i promised myself i would read it this year. i guess i'll finish it in time. also promised myself i'd read the bible but - oops - i'm only a couple of books into the old testament. also reading sex ecology and spirituality by ken wilber. 800 pager i think.

the rest of the week will be tech stuff: need to get quadra 650 up and running, install new modem. finish an old watercolor with water-soluable oils. and on and on.

and on.

meanwhile here's a bit of good news for wintel users:
First Virus Unable To Spread Through Microsoft Outlook

11.18.2

ok it's monday, i'm back in town. funny things going on with ISP, will straighten them out tommorrow when i can think straight - i hope. i'll be switching the location of this site, stay tuned.

my trip: fractured 3 ribs looking at grandaughter lily's new kittens. pleasant and productive time at Meher center. it rained so i couldn't do watercolors. discovered camper leaks a little so must get out the old caulk gun.

got a 450 page manuscript from jeff w. which i'll be laying out for pre-press, 100's of photos to scan etc. friend barbara k. totaled her car, she's ok, delayed return a day to give her a ride back to aville.

also got a xerox copy of book, out of print, which old friend dick anthony co-wrote with ken wilber - (thanks heddie).

tommorrow will begin process of transferring site, if i can untangle the switch my ISP has already begun.

meanwhile for those of you who suffer the new universal condition of insomnia, this might help:
insomniacs home page

11.12.2

modern peasant will be out of town
back next monday

11.10.2

it's sunday and i went to church. at least i think it's a church, better known as friend's meeting - quakers. i've been trying to make a sunday sevice for weeks now, attracted by the idea of no preaching, no ranting, no polite protestant homilies.

i really liked it and will be making it part of my weekly routine. the 45-55 minutes of silent contemplation went by in a flash. silence is so quiet.

interesting observation pointed out to me by marsha in myrtle beach. i haven't looked at the rest of the stuff at this site, but this piece is very much influenced by ken wilber, who is well worth checking into:
Paradigms and the Power of Vertical Thinking by Tom Russell

11.7.2

i took the redo of the picture below away. i couldn't see which one was the real one until this am. sometimes artists wobble.

about the 'lection: i was disappointed, had hoped that somehow bush and friends would have failed at fooling the pipple, but noooooo... didn't happen.

what has happened is i believe a sort of "official" stamp on the 50/50 grouping of the pipple. this has been brewing since last election, "the nation is divided down the middle" etc.

divided into what? right-wing conservitive ideologues who have never read calhoun or pitt. conventional. they like a figurehead who reflects their feelings on emotions, image and style - appearence - as litmus test for leadership. they think of the family unit as the basic social building block - and yet their vicious darwinian economics only let's the wealthy easily maintain the family. looked up to are the "movers and shakers". they have very little feel for the marginalized, in fact do not recognize or see them.

the other 50% are "left-wing liberals". for over half the elections i have voted in, this description has been the kiss of death. as it was this week. big government that helps the needy, suspicious that the role of business is to make money for the few. maybe making a fetish out of "diversity" when it only exists in the social realm and is fast disappearing in the mental realm.

personally i think we are lucky that the split is 50-50. it at least means no one will be knocking on my door in the middle of the night. yet.

i have recently instituted a custom in my house which keeps me aware of this split. in the living room NPR plays softly on the radio, reasonable discussions on little known phenomena, a slightly raised level of discourse. in my work room - refuse to call it an "office" - the am radio crackles with a whole host of talk shows lorded over by curdled, indignant, self-styled right-wingers, whose manner is vitriolic and superior.

and to think this division is obsolete, anachronistic, shallow, and has very little to do with the way we experience life today.

11.4.2

i'm inside a booth. a cold sensitive tooth. i think i have to vote. someone left a note.

11.3.2

midterm elections crescendo. the winter of our disconnect. politics = entertainment. public discouse captured by a �circle-the-wagons� mentality.

more and more build-up of the false domain, the place where nobody really lives. ads etc. first election cycle about absolutely nothing, i mean nothing in the absolute sense. all of the "issues" and "white papers" and "polls" and "debates" are patently unreal. or not real enough - (read "the image" by boorstein).

don't get me wrong: i'm going to vote: straight democratic as a protest to the invisible transfer of power - psuedo coup d'etat - taking place right now. we don't know about it because it's a aecret.

we do know madonna's current breast size. we know oj was guilty.

the domain of the conventional public known things is under no one's control right now. anyway not mine.

so the conversation about this world is not an easy or comfortable one, and there is that constant thought: politics isn't worth it - or i'm too busy to vote.

which i am. i only vote as a ritual, an obeiscence towards the time we used to talk.

10.32.2

email fowarded by tucker:

----------------------------------------->

"October 30, 2002

To: Charlton Heston, President, NRA
From: Michael Moore, Winner, NRA Marksman Award
Subject: Your Visit to Tucson Today in the Wake of Another School Shooting

Dear Mr. Heston:

When you showed up in Denver to hold your pro-gun rally just days after the
massacre at nearby Columbine High School, the nation was shocked at your
incredible insensitivity to those who had just lost loved ones.

When you came to Flint to hold another rally in the months after a 6-year
old boy shot a 6-year old girl at a nearby elementary school, the community
was stunned by your desire to rub its face in its grief.

But your announcement that you are on your way to Tucson today, just 48
hours after a student at the University of Arizona shot and killed three
professors and then himself, to hold ANOTHER big pro-gun celebration --
this time to get out the vote for the NRA-backed Republican running for
Congress -- well, sir, I have to ask you: Have you no shame?

I am asking that you not go to Tucson today. Do not cause any more grief,
any more pain. Let the relatives and friends of the deceased mourn. Why
show up to play the role of the bully, kicking these good people when they
are down, just so you can prove that you have a right to your big, bad
guns? These are not the actions of a once brave and decent man. They are
the acts of a coward, as no man of courage would think of picking on his
fellow citizens when they are so consumed with tragedy.

Obviously, you couldn't care less. Because to you, The Gun is supreme --
and wherever it is used to kill multiple people (preferably at a school),
there shall we find you gloating about some misbegotten right you think you
have to own a device that is designed to eliminate human life.

Well, Mr. Heston, this time I think you have crossed the line. I hope that
your efforts as a gun supremacist -- you are now, I understand, in the
middle of a 12-state tour to help elect Republicans -- backfire on you in
the surest way that it can: total rejection of you, the NRA, and the
candidates you back come next Tuesday. The American people have had enough.


To the people of Tucson and the students at the University of Arizona, I am
so sorry for the tragedy you have suffered, and I feel terribly sad that
you will have to endure the sight of Charlton Heston and his gun nuts
today. Take some solace in knowing that your fellow Americans by an
overwhelming margin want tough gun laws -- and that the day of obtaining
them is not far away. There is one small way to make sure Heston and the
NRA are stopped in their tracks -- just check out the website of the man
(http://www.grijalva2002.com/) they have come to Tucson to defeat. Let them
pack their guns -- we will pack the polls!

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mike@michaelmoore.com"

10.30.2

found this in a water color magazine:

"the 20th century is, among other things, the Age of Noise...spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all advertising copy has one purpose - to prevent the will from ever achieving silence. desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illuminatiiion. the condiition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and it's divine ground."

aldous huxley in 1946.

oops gotta go the telephone is ringing.

10.27.2

last watercolor i finished. couple of days ago. begun in prescott az. and no, it doesn't look like the locale.

and now sunday's sermon from brother ken wilber:

"Likewise, looking deep within the mind, in the very most interior part of the self, when the mind becomes very, very quite, and one listens very carefully, in that infinite silence, the soul begins to whisper, and its feather-soft voice takes one far beyond what the mind could ever imagine, beyond anything rationality could possibly tolerate, beyond anything logic can endure. In its gentle whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten how to
pronounce their own names, this secret quiet intersection of time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul. "

-- Integral Psychology , p. 106.

10.26.2

one more saturday night.

the last time i heard the greatful dead, they played the song of the same name. and it was one more sat. nite. at the whatever it's called outdoor pavilion in phoenix, that stale hot sweltering summer night air, the band seemed small, miniature and cramped on the far away stage, and all kinds of young people holding bags of shake and enthusing how good the band was playing.

dunno if you ever saw "mad dogs & englishman" concert film with leon russell and joe cocker but the ambience was the same: trash scattered all over, sleaze running rampant, pressure, crowds, dismal lights winking in the distance: the dream was over, long since cancelled and shredded.

so why write about this now? well, it is one more saturday nite and i have that depleted, enervated and hopeless feeling that i must have made a few wrong turns somewhere. and not just me. all of us.

paul wellstone is dead. the only memeber of congress who seemed to live in the same world as i do. hopefully ben jones might be another one. and not to speculate, but why did that kingair crash on vfr landing? no smoke, no fire, just headed in the wrong direction.

the sniper extravaganza re-introduced me to late-nite AM radio. unbelievable. the o'reilly factor ("no-spin") was bad enough but his schtick seems to be curdled indignance with the media, so he scores some points. course his idea of discourse is yelling at the caller and then cutting him or her off.

but somebody named savage takes the booby prize. this guy went on for hours about how chief moose had an accent (like black accent?) and therefore should not be in a position of authority. "speak the king's english" he ranted and raved over and over. what he was speaking, stylistically speaking, doesn't have a name yet - that i am aware of - but rush limbaugh is the origion of this smug, intolerant, vituprative dialect, subtext violence, that seems to be spreading.

i got a chinese er-hu, 2 string chinese fiddle from friend barbara who spent time in china and has just returned. when i was 10-11 yrs old i lived in the southern part of tainan taiwan and these things were all over. i used to play them just for the hell of it, probably because the us govt couldn't get a school together for american dependants so i wondered around the city and countryside day after day, drinking tea and smoking cigerettes in the red light district which was full of elegant mahogany wood columns, spent a lot of time in huge temple comlex a few miles outside of town, giant statues of wrathful dieties pulling swords, pogodas full of ceramic vases holding cremation ashes, and the occaisional catacomb loaded with guns and ammo, still packed in grease.

and you wonder why i'm crazy? for the same reason you are. for some mysterious reason - to us - the spirit beyond the beyond has put us here to experience this craziness and suffering for the purpose of involution, or as plato put it "remembering" who we really is.

only i don't remember. i don't even remember 4th grade.

the push seems to be towards the state where our thoughts and emotional life are looked on like we look at the sky and trees. effortless attention. naked awareness.

only it is not easy to do this. personally - oops, probably wrong word - i think my thoughts etc are looked on with the same effortless attention with which i might gaze on a river at dusk.

but not by me. i vaguely remeber a japenese story where a monk announces it is like a distant momentary flash of concious light shining on him for a microsecond.

as an old fart chronologically preceeding the boomer bulge, i can feel the pressure of so many who have put in their time in the secular insanity wanting to spend what time they have left dealing with the real, or hyper-real, or supra real if you prefer. this will open up the culture to a last phase of life which is not reading the stock reports and playing golf, but practice practice practice.

i have been suprised by the role that creativity and expression seems to be taking in this regard. who was it, erikson? who posited the last phase of life as choice between creation and dissolution.

ok it's past my bedtime so i'm heading for sleep, but probably will listen to shortwave radio all night, chinese seguing into christian fundimentalism into arabic, little cubano rhythm on the side.

tommorrow i want to make a quaker service whre i understand quitness can leave room for the spirit - which may or may not make an appearance as is it's habit.

meanwhile i got a painting to finish and an electronic instrumental to finish. why? i don't know, i talked to an artist in prescott az last month and mentioned the reason i paint was mental health maintenance. he said "yea we all do."

10.24.2

for those of us still learning this and that, MIT has an interesting idea: free courseware. they hope and so do i that this idea catches on.
MIT OpenCourseWare | Home

10.23.2

back online after several days of server problems. during this time i emailed an old friend who lives outside of richmond va and asked him what was going on. ensuing correspondance is below:

---------------------------------------------->

me:

just got back from marathon trip west, spent time with father who is
doing well and attended wedding of oldest son in las vegas which is
worse this century than last. can you give me the scoop on snipper
action in your parts? whassup?

chris
---------------------------------------------->

him:

whassup??

heads are down. walk in zig zag pattern. schools closed. crouch when you
pump gas. Have to go to Home Depot? send the wife.
Other advice. dont drive a white box truck or white van. if you're an
illegal mex dont stop at a suburban exxon to call home. dont get shot in
stomach for at least an hour after having eaten at steak house.
ignore cnn.
sniper is a lone gunman, is tandem duo freaked out on video games, an AArab
terrorist, an annie oakley wannabe, audie murphy in drag, the ghost of sgt.
york.
montgomery county police chief charlie moose is a UNC grad

if the bushies invade iraq and nuke north korea before the sniper is caught
or killed, no one in virgnia, maryland or dc will notice.

the cops are very close to catching the sniper or dont have a clue.

they should look for a crazy person with a gun; that's what i'd do. Doesn't
narrow the field much does it?

---------------------------------------------->


me:

hey man i've gotta post yr answer on my infamous web boondoggle. do you
mind? no names or ID, just another pilgrim's observations.

and it might help clear people's heads, or maybe they'll just shake them
sadly. "another bright idealistic young man who could have been a lawyer
ranting out in the boonies". well you got a lot of company.

me, i spent a night last week in the luxor pyramid in las vegas, all darth vader
and cheap tin replicas of hieroglyphic fragments. i found that you could
pound the latter and get some pretty spooky polyrhythms going.

we is having coup d'etat but no one knows cause it's secret. corporate
oligharchy had this in place before clinton bumbled along and setem back
8 years.

i saw tv coverage out yr way today. lady lamenting that her schedule was
upset said "i'd rather be shot than stay home".

make a nice epitaph.

---------------------------------------------->

him:

post away. with our very own sniper and with crazy arabs flying planes into
tall and five-sided buildings the corporate coup is not really very scary.
so many of the wall street and main street universe masters were clueless
enough to get caught and will go to jail, that i dont worry about them. in
fact i feel quite comfortable knowing that incompetents run the world; they
are so much less dangerous that west nile bearing birds, killer wood ticks,
mutating AIDS virsues and suicidal deer hell bent on crashing through your
windshield. and dont forget last summer's sharks, eating russian imigrants
at hatteras. life threatening danger is all very random, whether its sadam
gassing kurds (nobody likes kurds anyway including other kurds) or the
"small animal" (state police didnt say what kind of small animal) that, the
other night, caused two 18-year-old falls church girls to swerve and lose
control of their car on i-95 south of here and get whacked by a tractor
trailer. the truck also got the critter. the two girls could have just as
well stayed at home in falls church and gone shopping at home depot.

---------------------------------------------->

me:

maybe i am obsessive - probably am in addition to other mental maladies
- but i can't help thinking that some of these random always with us
problems - like colliding animal populations are another unintended
consequence of the present set of deal makers, power groupies, and
megarich celebratory personae.

life is bad enough - these guys are making it worse for no reason except
to distract themselves.

---------------------------------------------->

him:

well, thank god. our sniper has returned to montgomery county to communicate
with local authorities by killing a bus driver. take that charlie moose.
moose, of course, does not acknowlege that people are being capped on his
watch. he will concede that someone or someones are causing situations.
situations make charlie uncomfortable.

saturday we leave for hatteras for a week. chances are the our sniper wont
follow. as for sharks, i dont plan on going in the water. last saturday we
went to uva/unc football game in charlottesville with friends. the heels
rise to ever higher heights of mediocrity. leaves here are turning; ice the
other day in the dogs' water bowl. soon deer season will be upon us, the
season when i wear a blaze orange cap to walk about my woods and carry a
pistol in my pocket when i go chase off tresspassing hunters.

i hope someone has bagged the sniper by the time i return, tho i suspect we
will miss him when he's gone.

---------------------------------------------->#end of correspondance

10.20.2

painted this at my father's house in arizona. no, the local landscape did not look like this.

i guess i've recovered from trip, bounced back to same old erratic hypomaniacal state. i remain fascinated by the immense distance between we the pipple and the corporate oligarchy.

got email from old friend geoff who opines that what is going on now was planned during first bush's reign, interupted by 8 years of clinton, and is now happening again. maybe this accounts for the hurry. what it does not explain is the numb response to economy, terror, and ragged edge so many of us now live.

10.19.2

took a look at random blogs today - so many people with something to say. everythings been said. but not everyone has got to say it yet.

altho i love words, they seem increasingly...irrevelent. public discourse has more to do with alliteration and proximity of various words (like "political candidate" and "child molester", no kidding, ads in arizona are doing this; not saying one is the other, just making sure that the words appear close together).

personal discourse - ie the spoken word - seems to go like this:

"how is your mother?"

"fine".

"mine is in a wheelchair".

the question is a setup to talk about one's own world, not an inquiry into another's world.

can monads discuss liebnitz? or oprah for that matter?

and maybe blogs are a way to siphen off the human instinct to question and discuss, you know thw way the beatniks did last century instead of working, siphen off the wooly words into the iredescent white blast of beyond the beyond. like a prayer? naaah, more like a spell to keep away the electronic demons.

talk about sliding signifiers: what does rock star, social butterfly, coach potato, village idiot, and mainstream media mean?

ok, now what do they mean?

ok, now what do they mean?

10.18.2

Back Online
Got back from wild west and other stops a few days ago. been hiding under bed, knawing on fingernails, wondering why.

while i was away the sniper saga started. the war didn't. saw lot of political ads in arizona saying the other guy was soft on child molesters. eric & angela's wedding in las vegas was a once in a lifetime event, met lots of nice people, a few from one of my former lives.

don't have enough energy to talk about las vegas except to say i have seen the future and it winks and blinks and you have to stand in line for everything.

later: more.

11.25.2

Modern Peasant Has Gone Fishing
Back online oct. 15
i'm visiting son eli, his wife melissa, grandaughter lily, daughter nicole, husband doug, grandson corbin, and son nathan in chapel hill NC, sister jane, husband fred, nephew jonathan and niece anne in phoenix, my father in prescott AZ, and attending the wedding of my oldest son eric and angela in las vegas.

i've got my gas mask and iodine pills on order, plenty of tape to seal apartment, lots of twinkies and old reader's digests so i am ready for coming extravaganza and hope you are too. see ya.

9..23.2

the question of the day seems to be the nature of the american public. will they buy into the very orchestrated PR swell of war-fever, or surprise the world with a cry for reasonable discourse? chances for the latter seem slim; however the rejection of the clinton impeachment and the rejection of the gingrich revolution are 2 recent instances where the manipulation of public opinion did not work as expected.

let's all stand up and point out the holes and specious logic that can be spotted everyday in the deluge of psuedo-facts bombarding the public.

the mother of all psuedo-facts currently is 9/11 debacle = saddam and even if he was not involved he might be in the future. or maybe it is the confusion between a war against a nation-state and a war against an individual.

on another topic very related: watch out for this one, it will affect your life much more than you might think:

'Doctors also say they fear being hassled by Medicare for billing mistakes from complicated coding procedures. Malpractice insurance doesn't cover Medicare fraud, and Medicare can go after personal assets, Murphy says. "There are almost 30,000 pages of regulations and you are supposed to stay up to date," Murphy says. "It's hard to keep track of them."'
The Daily Camera: Health And Fitness

9.21.2

every since my mother and exwife died early this year my desire and ability to communicate verbally is pretty non-existent. but i thought i�d post some recent email correspondence between my friend tucker and myself as an example of what people are talking about these exciting days:

----------------------->

From Tucker:

Subject:
I just have to comment about today's EIB broadcast
Date:
Thu, 19 Sep 2002 00:54:14 EDT

Dear Rush Limbaugh;
I am writing to you as your soul brother who was also raised in Cape Giraudeau, Missouri and who periodically checks into WABC for your show to see if anything other than the usual right-wing, Clinton bashing, Republican yahoo, conservative Rants might surface.

I have evolved from seething and pure antipathy I might add . I have quite successfully tried implementing what the Dalai Lama, the Course in Miracles, Thich Nhat Hahn, Jesus so often extol- Being Love and not coming from make wrong, anger, hate etc., but sometimes...
well it still just happens.

It happened today...I couldnt believe the drivel over the Clinton/Letterman appearance and your abhorance of what was a pretty sound exchange; the absolutely humorless Katie Couric award crap--gee Representative Solomom Ortez manages to mumble a stupid question about Iraq to Rumsfeld....so you try to mock his website.

As if your 'solutions' in your inimitable fashion to your listeners concerns about America taking on the role of war maker and not peace maker were any better! Try reading Thomas Friedman or Maureen Doud on the OpEd NY Times today to gild your lilly .

And please stop with baiting the fear of sending our children to war as no concern since we dont have a military draft ( your "dear friend" says it takes a village and we sure are all in a big old American village.)

And yes, we do have 'kitchen table issues' about which your screed today was so even more sophmoric than usuual, that it actually sucked the big one.

Almost as much as your positively ludicrous assertion that "there is no social program that goes unfunded because of war." and as if advertising about Food Stamps was some conservative heresy. I can't believe you havent noticed the toileting of our economy, the 1/4 increase in the defense budget and all that increased homeland security hasnt taken a toll, that bombing Iraq would have to increase even more.

There is some sort of government spending pie that does get parceled out, and keeping our eyes on our paper-tiger Wars on terror, drugs, for homeland security, Saddham, Iran, the Axis of Evil; All that stuff sure keeps us preoccupied so that what you call 'kitchen table' issues which dont appeal to you get a kabash , because even the spineless democrats can't go up against these 'patriotic needs.'

But we can sure get excited about you flitting Dick Cheney -like to unknown parts of Texas and the 2 planes it
takes to move you-- Doesn't Imus just hook up a mike and decent phones at the Imus Ranch?
OK. So mega ditto's to you!!

With so many followers and loyal listeners listening to your exhortations no wonder we are fast becoming a nation of political morons, bankrupt crony capitalists, permanently at wars of the many abstract unwinable kind, like in Brave New World, as we go from surplus to deficit, world loved to dispised by most; a leader in absolutely
nothing benefitting the world (as in Environmental Issues, economic solutions, ways of governing and leading to democracy, Peace and UN and World court issues, fighting disease, poverty and ignorance).

But you can still rant on about Monica, and how the Democrats are doing us in.

Feel proud in your uplifting of America and the World.
Tucker Clark
----------------------------------

In a message dated 9/19/2002 8:43:09 AM Eastern Daylight Time, modpeasant@ioa.com writes:

(IN reference to my letter to LImbaugh to which some of you wrote me, tucker as being an ok response---Chris has it even better --a war would be an outmoded response..I like that! TUCKER)
-----------------------------------

Tucker:
i admire your ability to check in from time to time with ... i don't
know what to call it; politics as entertainment? the syntax of clich�s? high drama as western values go down the tube?

i myself have decided to stand up and talk out loud about all
this...stuff. the very idea of war on terrorism being accepted by john
q. public (remember him?) as a coherent meaningful phrase says it all.

[tucker: yea my man Denzel just played him on a kitchen table subject -- no Health care coverage so take the hospital hostage-alright!]

here's a copy of email i sent to "my" senator [edwards]; the next day i
found out he is warming up for presidential run and therefore had to be
"for" the "war".

[later] i don't have it anymore. but...

i am going to concentrate my pontificating to 3 areas:

1 - saddam is a threat to the world, and the situation does have to be
taken care of. so it is a question of strategy. an obsolete response
would be military invasion in the mode of a high-tech d-day.

2 - even if we won the military war in one day and saddam died, our
troubles would just be beginning. big troubles. world troubles. terminal troubles?

3 - this effort has been "hijacked" by the �republicans� - i prefer
"corporate oligarchy" - just as islam has been hijacked by terrorists - and they carry entirely too much ideological baggage to be trusted to evaluate the situation and make decisions that might work.

how is your world otherwise? what's new?

chris
--------------------------------

thanks for asking Chris and responding--I haven't heard from the newly-slimmed down windbag --but should I expect to? Am letting our tight circle of friends reflect on your thoughts, if it's ok
Love Tuc

9.19.2

i don't know what to say. mr. dylan says "high water everywhere" and i think he means it. nobody could possibly keep up with the inbred power plays going on in our capital right now. it strikes me that we are fighting a shadow army, ghosts, with the only way we know how, lots of meetings, whispered voices in the halls of power, and anybody with a lick of sense shut out. it used to work.

islam hijacked by terrorists? how about the defense of our people hijacked by the corporate oligarchy with their eternal agenda?

here and there:

remember area 51? well it's still secret, Bush just extended it's status as secret. course he keeps a lot of things secret.
Area 51, truth seekers 0

Freeh's misplaced priorities.
"The threat level grew so high that by December 1998, the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, issued a "declaration of war" on Al Qaeda, in a memorandum circulated in the intelligence community.[not very widely from what i understand]. Yet, Ms. Hill said, the intelligence agencies failed to adequately follow up on the declaration, and by Sept. 10, 2001, the F.B.I. still had only one analyst assigned full time to Al Qaeda."

[and i bet he was exiled to the desk and not invited to social events because of some faux-pas; maybe the wrong color tie].

Whereas Freeh had 85 agents assigned to the continous microscopic inspection of Clinton's zipper. Politics trumps national security?
Metafilter | Community Weblog

9.19.2

May I suggest that rather than bombing civilians in various Muslim countries, the United States and Britain begin to take a more intelligent approach to the international drugs trade: namely, to legalise it. For by doing this, not only will we help solve one of the major problems facing the world today, the unregulated growth of drugs trafficking, but it would also further isolate the terrorists.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Fight terror: legalise the drugs trade

9.16.2

well i don't know about you all, but the media machine is rolling a bit over the line these days. new phrases manifesting every day. "terrorist state" is one. if you are fighting a war against terrorism, then a terrorist state is fair game. like what? well nicaruaga, the phillipines, guatamala, columbia, argintina, isreal have all fit this catagory at one time or another.

now iraq is said to be a "terrorist state". raises the question is it the nation-state of iraq, or it's ruler that we are fixing to fight. and yes, saddam might succeed in nuclear program, and he might slip WMD (new acronym for me since today: weapons of mass...you know) to "sleeper cells" of akaida and diaster could result.

lots of ways to stop this hypothetical possibility without a replay of d-day.

lots of babble, electronic of course. a new phase for urban letgends:
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Rumors of War

another subject: here's an item that probably should be better known. notice particularly verisign.

"Police would not comment on how the Internet criminals managed to hack into either Spitfire's credit card processor, Online Data Corp., of Chicago, or VeriSign Inc., of Mountain View, which secures and processes about 25 percent of all online transactions in the U.S."
Mercury News | 09/16/2002 | Computer thieves ring up $5.07 each on 140,000 credit cards

9.15.2

Autonomic Carpet
man i feel like i've been away forever. did the war start while i was gone?

it did.

i think we all know what is happening: the republicans (and the democrats) are daily shifting syntax, re-arrainging rhetoric, the languge of political discourse is a meaningless parody of itself.

the war against terrorism is a war not against a nation-state with a flag, and taxes, and armies. it was decleared against individuals, who tom friedman calls "super-empowered individuals".

it looks like the war will be fought like a high-tech d-day repeat, gulf war redux, massive movements of armies etc.

but a gigantic military attack on iraq is a mismatch because the people who have lived and fought there far longer than we have been a country can dissappear into a world we do not understand.

so i think a new kind of response is called for, something light, tricky, quick, subtle, unexpected. one that is to our advantage in every context.

at the very least, talk about it should be linguistically possible.

9.10.2

remember this guy?
well neither do i.

but i did get a quote today:
"memory is imagination pinned down."

imagination, image, flashes from a distant world. where our experience comes from. and goes to.

ps. do not call or visit tommorrow. i will be on a 24 hour media fast. under the bed. no cell phone. maybe some granola.

or i will be eating popcorn in front of the tube, watching the electronic pagentry.

9.9.2

Pik 8

i'm selecting 12 watercolors that i'll do something with. picture above is number 8.

yesterday i was talking to my father on the telephone, and sometime during the conversation, i said "don't worry, be happy".

he said "that's wierd, at the same time you said that "jeopardy" just showed a new catagory, "don't worry be hopi".

9.8.2

"But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of �good vs. evil� that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home."
a good source of news without the "official" stamp of approval:
Welcome to ZNet

9.7.2

regarding president carter"s very lucid and i think correct analysis of our approach to iraq (read yesterday's post), i found a number of comments. it is amazing that most of these seem to treat carter's article as nonsense. if you think the american public is starting to "get it", this may give you pause:
kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches

on the other hand some do get it:

"On this latter point we can turn to Merle Haggard, the bard of blue collar America, the man who saluted the American flag more than a generation ago in songs such as "The Fighting Side of Me" and "Okie from Muskogee." Haggard addressed a concert crowd in Kansas City, Mo., a few days ago in the following terms: "I think we should give John Ashcroft a big hand ... (pause) ... right in the mouth!" He went on to say, "the way things are going, I'll probably be thrown in jail tomorrow for saying that, so I hope ya'll will bail me out."
www.workingforchange.com

keep up with scattered oppisition to the coming techno-drama:
Antiwar.com

9.6.2

put another muzak up. i did it nite before last. today i went to the mall. i'm getting used to it. it didn't even seem strange.

so i'm sitting here at home trying to conjure up a letter to sen. edwards about the war against terrorism when i get the following email:

"This letter should be published in every newspaper in America. If there is a way to bring it to the attention of your media, congresspeople, and other groups, please let them know about it.

washingtonpost.com The Troubling New Face of America By Jimmy Carter

Thursday, September 5, 2002; Page A31

Fundamental changes are taking place in the historical policies of the United States with regard to human rights, our role in the community of nations and the Middle East peace process -- largely without definitive debates (except, at times, within the administration). Some new approaches have understandably evolved from quick and well-advised reactions by President Bush to the tragedy of Sept. 11, but others seem to be developing from a core group of conservatives who are trying to realize long-pent-up ambitions under the cover of the proclaimed war against terrorism.

Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life. We have ignored or condoned abuses in nations that support our anti-terrorism effort, while detaining American citizens as "enemy combatants," incarcerating them secretly and indefinitely without their being charged with any crime or having the right to legal counsel. This policy has been condemned by the federal courts, but the Justice Department seems adamant, and the issue is still in doubt. Several hundred captured Taliban soldiers remain imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay under the same circumstances, with the defense secretary declaring that they would not be released even if they were someday tried and found to be innocent. These actions are similar to those of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by American presidents.

While the president has reserved judgment, the American people are inundated almost daily with claims from the vice president and other top officials that we face a devastating threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and with pledges to remove Saddam Hussein from office, with or without support from any allies. As has been emphasized vigorously by foreign allies and by responsible leaders of former administrations and incumbent officeholders, there is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad. In the face of intense monitoring and overwhelming American military superiority, any belligerent move by Hussein against a neighbor, even the smallest nuclear test (necessary before weapons construction), a tangible threat to use a weapon of mass destruction, or sharing this technology with terrorist organizations would be suicidal. But it is quite possible that such weapons would be used against Israel or our forces in response to an American attack.

We cannot ignore the development of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but a unilateral war with Iraq is not the answer. There is an urgent need for U.N. action to force unrestricted inspections in Iraq. But perhaps deliberately so, this has become less likely as we alienate our necessary allies. Apparently disagreeing with the president and secretary of state, in fact, the vice president has now discounted this goal as a desirable option.

We have thrown down counterproductive gauntlets to the rest of the world, disavowing U.S. commitments to laboriously negotiated international accords. Peremptory rejections of nuclear arms agreements, the biological weapons convention, environmental protection, anti-torture proposals, and punishment of war criminals have sometimes been combined with economic threats against those who might disagree with us. These unilateral acts and assertions increasingly isolate the United States from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism.

Tragically, our government is abandoning any sponsorship of substantive negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Our apparent policy is to support almost every Israeli action in the occupied territories and to condemn and isolate the Palestinians as blanket targets of our war on terrorism, while Israeli settlements expand and Palestinian enclaves shrink.

There still seems to be a struggle within the administration over defining a comprehensible Middle East policy. The president's clear commitments to honor key U.N. resolutions and to support the establishment of a Palestinian state have been substantially negated by statements of the defense secretary that in his lifetime "there will be some sort of an entity that will be established" and his reference to the "so-called occupation." This indicates a radical departure from policies of every administration since 1967, always based on the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories and a genuine peace between Israelis and their neighbors.

Belligerent and divisive voices now seem to be dominant in Washington, but they do not yet reflect final decisions of the president, Congress or the courts. It is crucial that the historical and well-founded American commitments prevail: to peace, justice, human rights, the environment and international cooperation.

Former president Carter is chairman of the Carter Center in Atlanta. � 2002 The Washington Post Company"

AMEN

9.4.2

i finally fixed the box at upper right that links to my latest obsession, digital sound. fooling with blog templates can be dangerous.

i've been otherwise engaged lately, so the verbage of this weblog has slowly been evaporating.

but the iraqi war choreography has become really disturbing, so now i've got a bee in my bonnet and can write away.

is there a problem this war might solve?

i believe there is a problem, pretty much as the current bunch says. i think bush will release some information sept 12 when he talks to the UN.

but i don�t think a traditional war will solve this problem. there are all kinds of other, smarter ways.

why this war is a bad idea:

1 - but even if we won it in one day, the iraqui gov. surrendered, and mr hussein died somehow, our difficulties would just be beginning.

because we are not equiped to deal with arabic-speaking countries. very few arab speakers, people who were born and raised in that part of the world and understand it.

halbersteim�s book �the best and the brightest� outlines a similar situation before we became involved in the vietnam war. the state department had been gutted of people who knew that world. there were many smart people who had been born and raised in china and they all were dismissed during the finger pointing era of �who lost china�. after that our govt. didn�t have a clue.


more tommorrow.

8.30.2

"This is in line with the ideas of the nineteenth-century German idealists such as Schelling and Hegel and the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo in this last century, who felt that spirit or divinity has involved itself in the universe from the very beginning and that it is gradually and sometimes fitfully manifesting itself through a process we call evolution."
from
What Is Enlightenment? Book Reviews
george leonard.