Truth is under siege in this nation, dear friend, and it is being attacked by such loathsome persons as the conservative members of the Texas board of education. Just this week I was reading about the actions of these dangerous individuals, and of their attempt to keep nearly 5 millions of school-children in the dark about one of the most important figures in the history of our American republic, Thomas Jefferson. I did not attend the sittings at which these religious fanatics attempted to spread their hatred, and, thus, I did not personally witness their evil ways, but anyone who tries to keep from the eyes of our young people information about the man who wrote our most important of documents, the Declaration of Independence, should be stripped of his or her power and pilloried.
The actions of these confused, sad little people were likely taken to obscure from view some of Jefferson's other writings, such as his version of the Christian bible, one from which he removed any mention of such foolish nonsense as virgin births, talking snakes, burning and talking bushes, and people flying magically up to or down from the heavens, keeping however the core of its teaching intact, that being the Golden Rule, which states that you should do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. (Christianity is but one of many religions that teaches the Golden Rule, since nearly every other major world religion builds upon this exact same teaching, among them Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and Pastafarianism.) Things would not be nearly so bad if the Texans kept things to themselves and taught their children whatever lunacy they decided were best (such as their lionization of McCarthyism and their efforts to replace mentions of democracy and freedom with the word republic), but many other boards of education in our Union follow the Texans' lead, buying such textbooks as they design, preferring to let the Lone Star folks go through the hassle of deciding what should and should not be taught instead of doing their own fucking jobs and figuring things out for themselves. Of course, it is not the Texans' fault that other boards of education copy their efforts, but these their most recent offenses against the standards of historical preservation and common sense highlight the recent efforts by the more fanatical religious organizations in this land to hijack our founding documents and to try and justify their religious zealotry and their plans to overthrow our secular government on grounds that ours was somehow founded as a Christian nation.
In the words of George Washington and John Adams, writing as they did to those present at the signing of the Treaty of Tripoli, words ratified unanimously by the contemporary Congress: “the Government of the United States was not, in any sense, founded upon the Christian religion.” There we have it, plain as day, simple and unequivocal, that the persons who risked Life, Liberty, and sacred Honor to found this nation did not do so in order to create upon these lands some sort of shining New Jerusalem where everyone would pray at the alter of a white-skinned, straight-haired Jesus. (If he existed at all, Jesus of Nazareth, an Aramaic-speaking Jew, would have stood under five-foot six-inches tall, having a light-brown complexion and nearly black, wiry hair). How do we stop these religious fanatics and their war against everything that America stands for, and how do we protect our history from those who would seek to destroy it, from people such as the conservatives who sit on the Texas state board of education? We start, dear reader, by critically analyzing everything we see and hear, by keeping the head on a swivel, and by fighting the threat of theocracy wherever it should arise. Stay frosty, and mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
11 July 2012
09 July 2012
one small thing
It was but one small thing, one simple step not taken, that caused the big battery to drain. It started with d-cell batteries, themselves a few decades old, that I was trying to charge for the first time in their lives, so as to use them in a lamp, for reading; the d-cells, even after sitting in the charger for nine hours, had not retained any charge, providing not even trace illumination. Conceding defeat, I had dutifully unplugged the charger from the extension cord that runs to the 750-watt inverter in the basement, which is connected via alligator clamps to the big battery, a 12 volt deep-cycle marine type.
The reason that the marine deep-cycle exhibited a diminished charge compared to if it had simply sat there not providing power to anything was that I had forgotten to turn off the inverter when done using it; therefore, the little green LED light that burns when the inverter is turned on had slowly whittled away at the big battery's charge, over twelve hours chewing up a couple of amperes. One small thing overlooked, one simple step not taken, had impacted demonstrably, using up less electricity than I had originally feared, however, for after turning off the DC-to-AC inverter, the big battery's charge jumped back up almost all the way back to where it would have been had I not been such a fool. Had it not been for the post-booze haze which moved in Saturday morning and hung on tenaciously all day, I might have remembered to depress that one small button, thus saving myself a bit of consternation, but, ah well, the past cannot be changed, while the future is pregnant with smarter decisions, better made. Huzzah.
And so, I shall hazard to declare, it goes with many things in life – the small and easily-overlooked, if they are indeed viewed as small, if indeed they are overlooked, quickly turn into things of tremendous import, wreaking havoc if allowed to grow from tiny saplings into towering trees. It is for me, then, to remember to attend to the small beginnings of things, and to stay with them, patiently, until they have reached their natural end. In this fashion, then, I might actually make something of this pathetic life of mine. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
The reason that the marine deep-cycle exhibited a diminished charge compared to if it had simply sat there not providing power to anything was that I had forgotten to turn off the inverter when done using it; therefore, the little green LED light that burns when the inverter is turned on had slowly whittled away at the big battery's charge, over twelve hours chewing up a couple of amperes. One small thing overlooked, one simple step not taken, had impacted demonstrably, using up less electricity than I had originally feared, however, for after turning off the DC-to-AC inverter, the big battery's charge jumped back up almost all the way back to where it would have been had I not been such a fool. Had it not been for the post-booze haze which moved in Saturday morning and hung on tenaciously all day, I might have remembered to depress that one small button, thus saving myself a bit of consternation, but, ah well, the past cannot be changed, while the future is pregnant with smarter decisions, better made. Huzzah.
And so, I shall hazard to declare, it goes with many things in life – the small and easily-overlooked, if they are indeed viewed as small, if indeed they are overlooked, quickly turn into things of tremendous import, wreaking havoc if allowed to grow from tiny saplings into towering trees. It is for me, then, to remember to attend to the small beginnings of things, and to stay with them, patiently, until they have reached their natural end. In this fashion, then, I might actually make something of this pathetic life of mine. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
06 July 2012
on hoarding
For many years – nay, for the entire time I knew him – I considered my father to be a hoarder of goods, not necessarily clinically-obsessive, but more along the lines of a pack-rat. Born in New York City in 1934, his childhood was likely shaped by the shortages and scarcity that so greatly plagued America while she was fighting the German and Japanese Empires; he learned from an early age the need to pick up and store all items of even the slightest utilitarian or financial value, that eleven dimes had to be squeezed out of every dollar, and that such things as could be, would be reused, reworked, and recycled.
And so it was throughout my childhood that I grew up in a household in which broken things were often jury-rigged until they once again worked, in which random nuts and loose bolts were stored in plastic containers just in case they might be needed someday, in which all options were exhausted before one fired up the car and drove to the hardware store. And, so, I am not surprised when I catch myself retrieving stray things-of-worth from busy roadways, waiting for traffic to subside before dashing out to retrieve a somewhat rusty pair of wire-snips or a ½-inch metal hose clamp, items that I refurbish, reuse, or store away.
Until recently, I did not however act in this fashion, preferring the now-standard path that many Americans seem to take of throwing out most everything – even items in perfectly good working condition – certain that, tomorrow, when they actually do need them, they will have enough money to buy brand-new, Chinese-made replacement items (which, especially with specialty items, may be available only when the shop opens in the morning). Until my eyes were re-opened recently to the enormous value of such things as with which my deceased father filled this dacha's basement and out-buildings, I too thought of those things as trash, as superfluous goods, as six decades worth of proof that hoarding was a bad thing. Now, however, after mowing this property's acres with a muscle-powered, cast-iron push-mower, and after spending the last eight months moving my body through space-time on a bicycle (and, incidentally, after hewing more closely to the teachings of Lao Tzu), I find that my estimation of what I once thought of as clutter has changed dramatically.
For example, the pile of old magazines that has sat on a shelf in the barn for the last twenty years turned out to be a few dozen, successive copies of Organic Gardening magazine; since starting to read them, my appreciation for and knowledge of Nature-friendly, low-impact methods for growing edible and pretty things has grown substantially, much as have the crops in my gardens. Also, the various medium-scale farming and landscaping devices that have been hanging around collecting dust all these years turned out to be exactly the types of things one would need to turn this property's best south-facing slope into a productive field, whereupon might grow fuel to run engines, fibers to clothe bodies, and food to fill stomachs. Furthermore, the bamboo that has grown here in abundance after my dad shoved a single shoot of it into the ground in the late 1970s is a plant whose utility knows few bounds; add to these blessings the many fruit and firewood trees that have been allowed to grow as tall as they wanted to grow, and this oddly-shaped little chunk of land fast resembles a perfect place for self-sufficient living. Perfect, that is, for an able-bodied yet otherwise worthless individual looking to make use of piles of heaped-up clutter, such as myself. So, if there is any moral lesson to this article, it is that viewing things from within different frames of mind can often reveal their hidden, secret worth. So open those peepers, elasticize the mind, and keep that head on a swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
And so it was throughout my childhood that I grew up in a household in which broken things were often jury-rigged until they once again worked, in which random nuts and loose bolts were stored in plastic containers just in case they might be needed someday, in which all options were exhausted before one fired up the car and drove to the hardware store. And, so, I am not surprised when I catch myself retrieving stray things-of-worth from busy roadways, waiting for traffic to subside before dashing out to retrieve a somewhat rusty pair of wire-snips or a ½-inch metal hose clamp, items that I refurbish, reuse, or store away.
Until recently, I did not however act in this fashion, preferring the now-standard path that many Americans seem to take of throwing out most everything – even items in perfectly good working condition – certain that, tomorrow, when they actually do need them, they will have enough money to buy brand-new, Chinese-made replacement items (which, especially with specialty items, may be available only when the shop opens in the morning). Until my eyes were re-opened recently to the enormous value of such things as with which my deceased father filled this dacha's basement and out-buildings, I too thought of those things as trash, as superfluous goods, as six decades worth of proof that hoarding was a bad thing. Now, however, after mowing this property's acres with a muscle-powered, cast-iron push-mower, and after spending the last eight months moving my body through space-time on a bicycle (and, incidentally, after hewing more closely to the teachings of Lao Tzu), I find that my estimation of what I once thought of as clutter has changed dramatically.
For example, the pile of old magazines that has sat on a shelf in the barn for the last twenty years turned out to be a few dozen, successive copies of Organic Gardening magazine; since starting to read them, my appreciation for and knowledge of Nature-friendly, low-impact methods for growing edible and pretty things has grown substantially, much as have the crops in my gardens. Also, the various medium-scale farming and landscaping devices that have been hanging around collecting dust all these years turned out to be exactly the types of things one would need to turn this property's best south-facing slope into a productive field, whereupon might grow fuel to run engines, fibers to clothe bodies, and food to fill stomachs. Furthermore, the bamboo that has grown here in abundance after my dad shoved a single shoot of it into the ground in the late 1970s is a plant whose utility knows few bounds; add to these blessings the many fruit and firewood trees that have been allowed to grow as tall as they wanted to grow, and this oddly-shaped little chunk of land fast resembles a perfect place for self-sufficient living. Perfect, that is, for an able-bodied yet otherwise worthless individual looking to make use of piles of heaped-up clutter, such as myself. So, if there is any moral lesson to this article, it is that viewing things from within different frames of mind can often reveal their hidden, secret worth. So open those peepers, elasticize the mind, and keep that head on a swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
04 July 2012
declaring independence from...
This year, my proud fellow Americans, our goal is to turn ourselves into persons who live without want for things, who accept all adverse situations as gifts from the Universe, and who have learned to conquer such needs and desires as so often tend to hijack our lives. Among such negative influences as are working upon our lives are materialism as exhibited by our constant tendency to go shopping; sloth as exhibited by our insistence on driving cars everywhere we go; avarice as exhibited by the fact that money has become our One True god, the only thing for which we strive each and every day; dependence as exhibited by our nearly universal refusal to grow or raise our own foodstuffs; ignorance as exhibited by our watching of only one television channel or reading of only one newspaper or blog, which causes our minds to narrow and calcify; foolhardiness as exhibited by our having bought into the convenience culture and its tendency to trick us into thinking that life is or should be somehow easy, and that we deserve to be constantly treating ourselves to nice things; and stupidity as exhibited by our lack of proper flag etiquette, especially on such days upon which we seek to honor and celebrate the founding of our nation by displaying the flag for which it stands, under nothing but Liberty and Justice for all.
The negative realities listed above can be surmounted and counter-acted by ceasing to purchase anything but basic necessities (until such time as such necessities can be made at home or bartered for), by moving one's body around on foot or bicycle, by cultivating one's own person spiritual and emotional worth rather than grubbing after external worth such as cash, by making our communities and households food-independent, by getting our news from sources different from one another and unrelated, by making our own entertainment instead of watching television, by buying back out of the hollow culture of convenience, and by treating the flag of the United States of America as it should be treated, as if it were a human member of the family. To live in the manner that we live today is to go about our daily lives as dumb beasts tied to the yoke of distant corporate overlords, circumstances nearly identical to those of Americans living in the 18th century who toiled under the yoke of distant societal overlords. It appears that we in America have come full circle, changing from sheep to eagles, from eagles to swine, from swine to wolves, and from wolves back into sheep, soiling ourselves mightily along the way. There is another path, oh fellow patriots, a path, however, that does not involve merely stockpiling firearms, lying around watching TV, eating processed foods high in fat and sugar, and living under a perpetual Fear Of The Unknown.
Please, dear reader, cherished friend, declare independence from avaricious self-interest and small-minded laziness by throwing off the last, clinging vestiges of foul consumption-oriented capitalism; free your mind, excite your soul, and become a new Guard for our future Security, today.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
The negative realities listed above can be surmounted and counter-acted by ceasing to purchase anything but basic necessities (until such time as such necessities can be made at home or bartered for), by moving one's body around on foot or bicycle, by cultivating one's own person spiritual and emotional worth rather than grubbing after external worth such as cash, by making our communities and households food-independent, by getting our news from sources different from one another and unrelated, by making our own entertainment instead of watching television, by buying back out of the hollow culture of convenience, and by treating the flag of the United States of America as it should be treated, as if it were a human member of the family. To live in the manner that we live today is to go about our daily lives as dumb beasts tied to the yoke of distant corporate overlords, circumstances nearly identical to those of Americans living in the 18th century who toiled under the yoke of distant societal overlords. It appears that we in America have come full circle, changing from sheep to eagles, from eagles to swine, from swine to wolves, and from wolves back into sheep, soiling ourselves mightily along the way. There is another path, oh fellow patriots, a path, however, that does not involve merely stockpiling firearms, lying around watching TV, eating processed foods high in fat and sugar, and living under a perpetual Fear Of The Unknown.
Please, dear reader, cherished friend, declare independence from avaricious self-interest and small-minded laziness by throwing off the last, clinging vestiges of foul consumption-oriented capitalism; free your mind, excite your soul, and become a new Guard for our future Security, today.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
02 July 2012
on nature's nightly light-show
During these muggy days of summer, when the sun has set and the bats have emerged to hunt, thousands of bioluminescent insects put on a fascinating and free light-show. I do not really see it unless I stand for a while in the bowl of the valley and let my eyes adjust to the darkness; then, however, I realize that nearly every available surface – from the low grasses to the tops of the highest trees – has been taken over by lightning bugs.
Granted, the bugs do not produce the lung-thumping boom of fireworks, their lights are less bright than, say, roman candles, and they generate hardly any unnecessary light or air pollution, but for all of their apparent shortcomings these tiny insects, when occupying a stand of trees in sufficient number, are far more impressive than even the most magnificent and expensive Fourth of July fireworks display. The show they put on is so dazzling, so mesmerizing, that I must often force myself out of my trance-like state and continue on to the small tent by the creek in which I sleep most hot nights. To my knowledge, there is no rhyme or reason to these insects' flashings, no clear-cut code as far as I have been able to see, only thousands of randomly-timed pinpricks of white light winking on and off in the dark and shadowy gloom of the trees in which they sit. Concert-goers in a blacked-out sports stadium will all try to take a picture of the headlining band when it finally mounts the stage; the efforts of these little bugs have a similar visual effect, but to my knowledge their luminescent signaling is a means to the end of getting laid, while a concert-goer's flashings are little more than proof of his foolish exuberance and having forgotten to properly adjust his camera.
So, this week during which we Americans celebrate the date upon which our nation issued the most important document in the history of mankind, don't waste your money on Chinese-made fireworks – wait until it is dark and then go stare at a tree.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
Granted, the bugs do not produce the lung-thumping boom of fireworks, their lights are less bright than, say, roman candles, and they generate hardly any unnecessary light or air pollution, but for all of their apparent shortcomings these tiny insects, when occupying a stand of trees in sufficient number, are far more impressive than even the most magnificent and expensive Fourth of July fireworks display. The show they put on is so dazzling, so mesmerizing, that I must often force myself out of my trance-like state and continue on to the small tent by the creek in which I sleep most hot nights. To my knowledge, there is no rhyme or reason to these insects' flashings, no clear-cut code as far as I have been able to see, only thousands of randomly-timed pinpricks of white light winking on and off in the dark and shadowy gloom of the trees in which they sit. Concert-goers in a blacked-out sports stadium will all try to take a picture of the headlining band when it finally mounts the stage; the efforts of these little bugs have a similar visual effect, but to my knowledge their luminescent signaling is a means to the end of getting laid, while a concert-goer's flashings are little more than proof of his foolish exuberance and having forgotten to properly adjust his camera.
So, this week during which we Americans celebrate the date upon which our nation issued the most important document in the history of mankind, don't waste your money on Chinese-made fireworks – wait until it is dark and then go stare at a tree.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
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