The Peddlers Donkey

Religion & Spirituality

2010-10-07T01:27:00.002-04:00

One popular idea is that there exists a distinction between two different modes of relating with the divine or the sacred: religion and spirituality. Religion describes the social, the public, and the organized means by which people relate the the sacred and the divine while spirituality describes such relations when they occur in private, personally, and even in eclectic ways.

Is such a distinction valid? In answering such a question, it is important to keep in mind that it presumes to describe two fundamentally different types of things. Even though I describe them as different ways of “relating to the divine or the sacred,” that is already introducing my own prejudices into the discussion. Many (if not most) of those who attempt to draw such a distinction do not describe them as two aspects of the same thing; instead, they are supposed to be two completely different animals.

Religion vs. Spirituality

One clue that there may be something problematic in this distinction comes when we look at the radically different ways in which people actually try to define and describe that distinction. Consider these three definitions drawn from the internet:
Religion is an institution established by man for various reasons. Exert control, instill morality, stroke egos, or whatever it does. Organized, structured religions all but remove god from the equation. You confess your sins to a clergy member, go to elaborate churches to worship, told what to pray and when to pray it. All those factors remove you from god. Spirituality is born in a person and develops in the person. It may be kick started by a religion, or it may be kick started by a revelation. Spirituality extends to all facets of a person’s life. Spirituality is chosen while religion is often times forced. Being spiritual to me is more important and better than being religious.
Religion can be anything that the person practicing it desires. Spirituality, on the other hand, is defined by God. Since religion is man defined, Religion is a manifestation of the flesh. But Spirituality, as defined by God, is a manifestation of His nature.
True spirituality is something that is found deep within oneself. It is your way of loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around you. It cannot be found in a church or by believing in a certain way.

These definitions aren’t just different, they are incompatible! Two define spirituality in a way which makes it dependent upon the individual — it is something that “develops in the person” or is “found deep within oneself.” The other, however, defines spirituality as something which comes from God and is defined by God while religion is “anything that the person desires.” Is spirituality from God and religion from Man, or is it the other way around? Why such divergent views?

We can better understand why such incompatible definitions (each representative of how many, many others define the terms) appear by observing what unites them: the denigration of religion. Religion is bad. Religion is all about people controlling other people. Religion distances you from God and from the sacred. Spirituality, whatever it really is, is good. Spirituality is the “true” way to reach God and the sacred. Spirituality is the right thing to center your life on.

t’s popular, especially in America, to distinguish between spirituality and religion. It’s true that there are valid distinctions between the two, but there are also a number of problematic distinctions which people try to make. In particular, supporters of spirituality tend to try to argue that everything bad lies with religion while everything good can be found in spirituality. This is a self-serving distinction which only masks the nature of religion and spirituality.

Problematic Distinctions Between Religion & Spirituality

One principal problem with attempts to separate religion from spirituality is that the former is saddled with everything negative while the latter is exalted with everything positive. This is a totally self-serving way of approaching the issue and something you only hear from those who describe themselves as “spiritual.” You never hear a self-professed religious person offer such definitions and it's disrespectful to religious people to suggest that they would remain in a system with no positive characteristics whatsoever.

Another problem with attempts to separate religion from spirituality is the curious fact that we don’t see it outside America. Why are people in Europe either religious or irreligious but Americans have this third category called “spiritual”? Are Americans special? Or is it rather that “distinction” is really just a product of American culture?

In fact, that is exactly the case. The term itself came to be used frequently only after the 1960s when there were widespread revolts against every form of organized authority, including “organized religion.” Every establishment and every system of authority was thought to be corrupt and evil, including those which were religious — but of course, Americans weren’t prepared to abandon religion entirely. So, they created a new category which was still religious, but which no longer included the same traditional authority figures.

They called it Spirituality. Indeed, the creation of the category “spiritual” can be seen as just one more step in the long American process of privatizing and personalizing religion, something which has occurred constantly throughout American history.

It's no wonder that courts in the America have refused to acknowledge any substantive difference between “religion” and “spirituality,” concluding that “spiritual” programs are so much like religions that it would violate the separation of church and state to force people to attend them (as with Alcoholics Anonymous, for example). The religious beliefs of these “spiritual” groups do not necessarily lead people to the same conclusions as organized religions, but that doesn’t make them less religious.

Valid Distinctions Between Religion & Spirituality

This is not to say that there is nothing at all valid in the concept of spirituality — just that the distinction between spirituality and religion in general is not valid. Spirituality is a form of religion, but a private and personal form of religion. Thus, the valid distinction is between spirituality and organized religion.

We can see this in how there is little (if anything) that people describe as characterizing spirituality but which has not also characterized aspects of traditional religion. Personal quests for God? Organized religions have made a great deal of room for such quests. Personal understandings of God? Organized religions have relied heavily upon the insights of mystics, although they have also sought to circumscribe their influence so as not to “rock the boat” too much and too quickly.

Moreover, some of the negative features commonly attributed to religion can also be found in so-called “spiritual” systems. Is religion dependent upon a book of rules? Alcoholic’s Anonymous describes itself as spiritual rather than religious and has such a book. Is religion dependent upon a set of written revelations from God rather than a personal communication? A Course in Miracles is a book of such revelations which people are expected to study and learn from.

It is important to note the fact that many of the negative things which people attribute to religions are, at best, features of some forms of some religions (usually Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), but not of other religions (like Taoism or Buddhism). This is perhaps why so much of spirituality remains attached to traditional religions, like attempts to soften their harder edges. Thus, we have Jewish spirituality, Christian spirituality, and Muslim spirituality.

Religion is spiritual and spirituality is religious. One tends to be more personal and private while the other tends to incorporate public rituals and organized doctrines. The lines between one and the other are not clear and distinct — they are all points on the spectrum of belief systems known as religion. Neither religion nor spirituality is better or worse than the other; people who try to pretend that such a difference does exist are only fooling themselves.

Religion & Spirituality
Is Religion Organized Spirituality? Is Spirituality Personalized Religion?

By Austin Cline

Gathering Leaves by Robert Frost

2010-09-19T17:41:00.002-04:00

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

by Robert Frost

Choir of New College, Oxford - Fauré

2010-09-10T02:42:00.000-04:00

1-'Pie Jesu', from Requiem 2-'Ave verum corpus' From the Album: 'Agnus Dei...

In September

2010-08-31T23:33:00.001-04:00

"Spring scarce had greener fields to show than these
Of mid September; through the still warm noon
The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune
Than ever in the summer; from the trees
Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,
No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon
In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon
Finds motionless white mists out on the leas."
- Edward Dowden, In September

The Sad fight in NY

2010-08-25T03:23:00.000-04:00

Keith Olbermann Special Comment

PLEASE WATCH THIS!?

Religion is not the problem. Genuine religion is subverted by opportunists who use it as a weapon. Hunger can be used as a weapon, greed, nationalism, race, class etc. It is very naive to suggest religion is the problem. It is being made a scapegoat. Let's not forget Karl Marx was all about doing away with religion and the Russians tried it. So did the Chinese and the Cubans. When you take away peoples faith you take away their hope. I do not want to live in a world without hope. All the worlds great religions advocate peace and brotherhood. What you see with zealots and religious extremists has nothing to do with God. All of this fighting is about oil and empire not about religion. The worlds religions are being pitted against each other in the war for wealth and empire.

My handsome Ass

2010-08-22T02:39:00.001-04:00

Sam getting a drink

2010-08-22T02:37:00.003-04:00

New atheists embody the very things they hate

2010-06-13T03:31:00.003-04:00

by Paul Prather

Atheists have gone on the offensive.

We've seen a spate of popular books demeaning any form of belief in God, from Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion to Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great.

In 2008, comedian Bill Maher got a ton of attention for his anti-faith film Religulous.

I'm equally intrigued by the online comments that follow every news story online about religion; the responses seem to come disproportionately from readers who jeer at all references to God or piety.

There's an increase in the number of atheists and of open doubters in the United States. A study of religious identification by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., found that 15 percent of us now claim no religion, almost twice the percentage found in 1990.

Most of these "nones," as they're called in the Trinity report, aren't atheists per se, but rather agnostics, deists and others of similar views.

Only 2 percent of U.S. adults are atheists, the Trinity study found. Still, by another estimate I saw, that's three times the percentage of avowed atheists 20 years ago.

Atheists remain a tiny minority, but they're far more vocal and combative than they used to be, an approach advocated by Dawkins and others. They have every right to state their views.

The irony is that this current brand of aggressive atheism is just another form of fundamentalism. These particular atheists are zealots on the subject of faith who see no shadings of gray, only black and white. They're dead-set against religion but weirdly obsessed with it.

The "new atheism," as it's called by its adherents, is itself a kind of church. An anti-church church, granted, but a form of lockstep belief nonetheless. It reminds me of Hazel Motes' Church Without Christ in Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood.

This might surprise you, but I have nothing against atheists. And I have a great deal of empathy with agnostics, those who say they just don't know whether there is a God.

If you weigh the circumstantial evidence for and against the existence of God, there's about as much evidence on one side as the other. Ultimately, people can find reasons to believe and reasons not to, and various people will arrive at varying conclusions.

Even as a longtime Christian minister, I still have days when I wonder whether this whole God thing is a figment of my imagination. I can't denigrate those who don't believe at all. That's between them and their maker — or, if they might prefer, them and their rational senses or their artistic sensibilities.

My objection to the new atheists isn't that they're atheists.

It's that they strike me as hypocrites, which is the charge they unfailingly level, with mixed justification, against the religious. In opposing religion in the manner they do, they betray themselves as possessing the traits they profess to loathe.

They're smug, dogmatic and mean-spirited. They trot out tired, half-truthful stereotypes, and they cherry-pick historical examples of religious wrongdoing while ignoring the innumerable instances in which the faithful have performed great acts of decency and charity.

They pretend that all Christians are bigots prone to violence. They claim that Christians are by definition illogical bumpkins who mindlessly accept fairy tales.

They act as if Thomas Merton and Bob Jones were of one cloth.

It's absurd, and it's especially grating because it comes from people who flaunt what they consider to be their own relentless logic, superior intellect and brave candor.

Dawkins, for instance, is a retired Oxford University science professor. Hitchens, a prominent journalist, attended Oxford.

No one who presumes to possess grandiose mental gifts should stoop to lumping all believers of all faiths, or for that matter all Christians, or even all Baptists or Catholics, into a single mindless blob.

I wish these atheists would venture, say, into a seminary library. They'd find tens of thousands of volumes written by thinkers great and obscure across two millennia.

They'd find works by scholars who take every word of the Bible literally and works by others who argue that most of the Scripture is made up and that Jesus said almost nothing attributed to him. They'd find every gradation between those extremes.

They'd find the musings of Christians who are pompous, exclusionary and delusional. They'd find Christians who are tolerant and humble and pillars of common sense.

They'd learn that Christians were the driving force behind the establishment of public schools and the abolition of slavery, just as, regrettably, other Christians launched the Crusades.

Christianity is a big, organic, complex system of beliefs with a long, diverse history. It's not just one thing.

I haven't even mentioned the varying theologies, contradictions and contributions of Judaism, Islam or Hinduism.

If the new atheists are as bright as they claim, they ought not imitate the worst traits of the very people they consider their inferiors.

Paul Prather, pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, has a new book, A Memory of Firelight: Selected Columns From the Lexington Herald-Leader. E-mail him at pratpd@yahoo.com.

A Prayer for Love

2010-06-10T14:23:00.000-04:00

God of grace, help us to love you and to love our neighbors more fully. Open our eyes to the needs of those around us; open our ears to the cries of the poor and the hurting; open our hearts to share and show the love of Christ. In his name we pray, amen.

Copper Toxicity in Sheep

2010-06-04T03:11:00.002-04:00

NEVER feed pig, cow or horse feed to sheep it can result in sudden death or liver failure. Today feed companies formulate feeds very specifically for the species. Sheep are unique in that they cannot excrete accumulated copper and poisoning or death will be the result of a high intake of copper. Horse feed has killed many sheep because the owners mistakenly feed sweet feed or a grain mixture designed for equines to their sheep. Often the ram or the dominant ewe will be the first to show signs of poisoning from being fed too much copper as they dominate the feed trough and eat the lions share of grain. Sun sensitivity and sun burn is one of the signs your sheep may have liver damage from too much copper. Often people are not aware until one of their strongest sheep becomes listless that they have a problem. In some cases it can result in a sudden death of an otherwise very robust ram or ewe.

Copper toxicity in sheep is more often a problem of nutritional management than it is excess copper intake. The purpose of this paper is to look at such factors as nutrient interactions, animal management, and environmental conditions that may increase the risk of copper toxicity and how the sheep producer can minimize these risks.

The importance of copper as an essential nutrient has been known since the 1920's. Copper is required for normal iron metabolism, elastin and collagen synthesis, melanin production and integrity of the central nervous system. There are numerous metalloprotein enzymes, metalloporphyrin enzymes and non-enzyme metalloproteins in animals that require copper to be biologically active. More recently it has been shown that copper is one of the key trace minerals required for an effective immune response. The bottom line is that copper is essential for life. Consequently, most trace mineralized salt products contain 0.03 to 0.04% (300 to 400 ppm) of copper to prevent copper deficiency.

Sensitivity of Sheep

Like most nutrients, excessive concentrations can cause toxicity. However, sheep tend to be much more sensitive than other farm animals. For example, growing swine are often fed copper concentrations as high as 250 ppm in the diet to improve performance. Cattle can consume diets containing 100 ppm copper with no problem, while toxicities have occurred in sheep with concentrations as low as 10 ppm (Church and Pond 1988).

Copper toxicity in sheep usually results from the accumulation of copper in the liver over a period of a few weeks to more than a year with no clinical signs followed by a sudden release of liver copper stores to cause toxicity. In these situations, chronic copper poisoning may result from excessive copper intakes or from low intakes of molybdenum, sulfur, zinc, calcium or following liver damage (Kimberling, 1988). Sheep accumulate copper in the liver more readily than other farm animals and over a period of time, 1000 - 3000 ppm on a dry weight basis may be achieved. During the accumulation phase, blood copper levels are normal in the 0.10 to 0.20 mg/dl. Toxicity results when stress conditions cause the liver cells to die and release the stored copper into the blood. Plasma copper levels then increase 10 to 20 fold. These elevated blood copper levels (500-2000 mg/dl) usually precede clinical signs by 24 to 48 hours (Kimberling 1988). The most common symptoms are anorexia, excessive thirst and depression. These are accompanied by severe hemoglobinemia, anemia, icterus and methemoglobinemia. Most sheep will die within 1 to 2 days of the onset of these signs (Merck Veterinary Manual 1979).

Molybdenum Ratio

The ratio of copper to molybdenum is the most important dietary factor affecting copper toxicity in sheep. Ratios of 10:1 or less will prevent toxicity in most cases. The exact mechanism by which molybdenum prevents copper toxicity is poorly understood. However, it is known that an insoluble complex, CuMo04, can be formed in the gastrointestinal tract thus reducing copper absorption. This theory is substantiated by the fact that increasing dietary copper is an effective treatment of molybdenum toxicity.

Molybdenum concentrations in most feeds are in the range of 1 to 3 ppm in the total diet. If molybdenum concentrations are low (less than 1 ppm), diets containing copper in the range of the normal requirement (8 - 11 ppm) have been known to produce toxicity (NRC 1975). Sheep producers who live in or buy feed from molybdenum deficient areas should pay close attention to dietary copper levels. Such feeds as distillers dried grains and soybean meal which are normally high in copper should be limited in the diet. Trace mineralized salt should not be removed from the diet because it contains zinc which also reduces copper absorption. Diets containing high concentrations (100 ppm) of zinc have been shown to reduce liver copper stores. In addition, eliminating all trace mineral supplementation may actually worsen the situation by creating an even greater mineral imbalance.

Although prevention is much preferred, there are times when mass treatment is indicated. The most common treatment is to give a drench daily containing 50 to 100 mg of ammonium molybdate and 0.5 to 1.0g of sodium sulfate per animal for three weeks. To reduce labor, an aqueous solution of the two salts can be sprayed onto the feed. This approach is recommended as a treatment procedure only if all animals are eating regularly.

Animal Management and Environment

Besides nutrition, animal management factors can affect the incidence of copper toxicity in sheep. For example, although this disease can occur in both sexes of all breeds, mature ewes of British breeds seem to be the most susceptible. In the United States this disease is most common in the western states of the intermountain region. Although the disease can occur anytime, peak incidence usually is in the fall and winter.

Environmental factors and stress can also affect the susceptibility of sheep to this disease. For example, grazing sheep in areas containing certain potentially toxic plants may predispose them to copper toxicity. Plants such as lupines, which contain toxic alkaloids, produce copper toxicity by impairing the liver's ability to metabolize ingested copper. Chronic toxicity is also common in sheep grazing subterranean clover and is associated with normal levels of copper, low levels of molybdenum and no apparent liver damage. The stress associated with shipping ewes from mountain ranges to pastures some distance away appears to make ewes more susceptible.

Summary

In summary, sheep producers should become familiar with copper and molybdenum levels of feeds grown in their area. If the area is deficient in molybdenum or high in copper, feed samples should be analyzed routinely to monitor the copper: molybdenum ratio in the diet. Supplemental feeds which are known to be low in copper should be used whenever possible. Feeding a properly fortified trace mineralized salt is essential to the health and production of the sheep flock.

Literature Cited

Church, D.C. and W.G. Pond, 1988. Basic Animal Nutrition and Feeding, 3rd Edition. Published by John Wiley and Sons, New York. pp. 196-199.
Kimberling, C.V. 1988., Jensen and Swift's Disease of Sheep, 3rd Edition. Published by Lea and Febiger, Philadelphia, PA. pp. 372-374.
Merck Veterinary Manual, 1979. 5th Edition. Published by Merck and Company. Rahway NJ. pp. 977-978.
NRC., 1975. Nutrient Requirements of Sheep. 5th Edition, National Academy Press. Washington DC.

Forget-me-nots

2010-05-30T14:23:00.001-04:00

By Lee Bain

Forget-me-nots I’d press on your mind’s eye;
Bright silent messengers of sky’s wild blue…
That from your thoughts my name would never die,
I’d bid them haunt you with their heavenly hue.
Bold blooms would border every path you bent
In blue profusion, like a blossomed lea;
My fragrance would enhance their subtle scent
To blend their perfume with the breath of me.
And when, at end of day, you’d sip and sup
Or finely dine in stately pomp and grace,
You’d find forget-me-nots twined ‘round your cup
Or gaily patterned in the table’s lace.
Through such sweet sorcerers’ spell would I secure
Some memory of me that may endure.

A prayer for Memorial Day

2010-05-30T13:40:00.002-04:00

Oh Creater our one God and Father,
your love is stronger than death,
and your life-giving power has no end.
We commend to your eternal care
all who have died in the service of others,
even as we lament the violence of war.
Comfort and sustain all those who mourn.
Heal the wounded body, mind, and spirit.
Bring justice, freedom, and dignity to all people
and bring an end to war throughout the earth
so that all may know your promised peace;
through Christ, the resurrection and the life.

a plentiful land

2010-05-27T15:20:00.000-04:00

I brought you into a plentiful land
to eat its fruits and its good things.
But when you entered you defiled my land,
and made my heritage an abomination.

- Jeremiah 2:7

Pentecost: the birth of the church

2010-05-24T02:37:00.003-04:00

Pentecost: the birth of the church

After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and instructed them for 40 days, after which he ascended to heaven. While with them, he said: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1:4-5). That first baptism of the Spirit would be the birthday of the church.

Jesus’ words were fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. The disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4), and the apostle Peter preached his first sermon, urging the crowds to repent, to believe in Jesus Christ as their Messiah and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (verse 38). That very day of Pentecost some 3,000 people were baptized and became the people of God (verse 41). The church had been born.

The day called Pentecost is named after the Greek word pentekostos, which means 50th. It is the Mosaic festival observed by Jews, Shavuoth, sometimes called in the Old Testament the Feast of Weeks (Exodus 34:22; Leviticus 23:15; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:9-12). Other names for the day are the Feast of the Harvest and Day of First Fruits (Exodus 23:16; Numbers 28:26). Pentecost was to be observed in ancient Israel on the 50th day after the priest waved a selected sheaf of the first grain that had been harvested in the spring (Leviticus 23:15-21). That meant that seven weeks elapsed between the day of the wave sheaf offering and the beginning of Pentecost, thus the name of the festival—the Feast of Weeks. This festival had come to signify for Jews the commemoration of the giving of the Law of Moses (the Torah) at Mount Sinai 50 days after the Exodus Passover (Exodus 20–24).

Pentecost or Whitsunday

Many Christians celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit in worship activities on Pentecost, or as it is sometimes called, Whitsunday. This name is said to arise from the traditional ancient practice of newly baptized individuals wearing white robes during this time. In the Christian liturgical year, Pentecost is the seventh Sunday after Easter and closes the Easter season.

Perhaps the Holy Spirit first came specifically on the Jewish day of Shavuoth, or Pentecost, to signal that God had now moved to write the Law not on tables of stone, but in the hearts of his people through the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3). The indwelling Spirit, the Comforter or Advocate Jesus had sent, was replacing the external "schoolmaster" Law of Moses that had supervised ancient Israel’s worship under the old covenant (Galatians 3:23-25).

"And I, if I am lifted up," Jesus said, "I will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32). God had moved once and for all through his Son to rescue humanity from sin and death. The coming of the Spirit into human hearts and minds on that Day of Pentecost in the early 30s was God’s sign that in Christ he was creating a new people—a new Israel—an Israel of the Spirit (Galatians 6:16) that included Jews and Gentiles alike.

http://www.christianodyssey.com/history/birth50.htm

Come Holy Spirit!

2010-05-24T00:23:00.003-04:00

by Annie Karto

My Adopted Daughter Graduated on Sat!

2010-05-11T20:56:00.001-04:00

This is a video slide show with bagpipe music of Danielle Lynn Matthews' Graduation from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, May 8, 2010 . Photos were taken on campus and at the Riverside Inn in Cambridge Springs. PA. The Field House was packed with 949 graduates and their families for the commencement ceremony. Dani recieved her Bachelor of Science in Education-
Special Education/Elementary Education

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord

2010-05-01T22:47:00.000-04:00

Hallelujah from the heavens
Hallelujah in the heights above the earth
Hallelujah all His angels
Hallelujah for the last will be first
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord

Hallelujah in the morning
Hallelujah for the beauty of His scars
Hallelujah in the twilight
Hallelujah sun and moon and shining stars
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord

When the night seems so long (throw your hands to the sky)
You can sing a new song (wipe the tears from your eyes)
When you're weak, He is strong
He can heal your wounded soul
And calm the storm inside

For all your times of laughter
In every hopeful prayer
When the world weighs on your shoulders
Through sorrow and your despair
With everything, with every breath, praise the Lord
Let everything, let every breath praise the Lord
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord
Let everything, let every breath praise the Lord

When the night seems so long (throw your hands to the sky)
You can sing a new song (wipe the tears from your eyes)
When you're weak, He is strong
He can heal your wounded soul
And calm the storm inside

MAY IN BLOOM

2010-04-29T22:10:00.001-04:00

MAY IN BLOOM

May is so beautiful:
Orchards are fair;
Branches of fruit trees
Make gardens of air.

Flowers of fragrance
Bloom in the light;
Fall like the snowflakes
Showering white.

Orchards of heaven
Grow with a grace,
And like a blessing
Perfume the place.

Each tree in blossom,
Each lovely spray,
In this month of Our Lady,
Bring glory to May.

Helen Maring
The Magnificat. Volume LXVIII. Number 1. May 1941.

Theft'? Loss of cheap power at issue

2010-04-29T15:18:00.002-04:00

Theft'? Loss of cheap power at issue
Low-cost electricity that benefits WNY may shift to statewide program for businesses
By David Robinson

A chunk of cheap electricity that now helps hold down the monthly power bills of Western New Yorkers and other upstate residents could be snatched away and used as the cornerstone of a plan to expand a program that provides inexpensive electricity to businesses statewide.

Supporters say the proposed shift would make better use of a valuable resource that currently saves upstate residents just a few dollars a month, when it could be turned into a powerful tool to create jobs.

But critics say the proposal is another power grab by downstate interests that will prevent businesses from Buffalo Niagara to Albany from reaping all of the benefits from one of upstate's most valuable economic resources.

"To me, it's really just a theft of a regional asset," said Assemblyman William L. Parment, D-North Harmony.

At issue is the future of the state's Power for Jobs program that provides low-cost electricity to 440 businesses and nonprofit groups across the state.

While four competing proposals — one from Gov. David A. Paterson and three from state legislators — are being discussed, the existing program is set to expire May 15.

Each of the proposals would expand the availability of low-cost power to businesses by taking the 455 megawatts of low-cost hydropower that now is used to reduce upstate utility bills by an average of $2 to $4 a month and shifting that electricity to businesses.

That move would more than double the amount of reduced-cost power available to businesses under a program that currently supports 440 companies that provide nearly 240,000 jobs statewide. A total of 72 companies with nearly 14,400 employees in Erie and Niagara counties receive more than 36 megawatts of low-cost power through the program, which typically costs 5 percent to 20 percent less than market rates.

Supporters of the shift contend that using the power to encourage business growth will provide a much greater economic boost to the state by creating or retaining jobs, rather than providing upstate consumers with a small savings on their electric bills.

Critics, however, say the reallocation will shift electricity that currently benefits only upstate consumers and put it into an economic-development program that operates statewide.

One of the bills, from State Sen. George D. Maziarz, R-Newfane, would allow companies statewide to participate in the expanded program, but upstate recipients would reap far greater cost savings than firms downstate.

"I think upstate has to be given preference," said Maziarz, the chairman of the Senate's Energy Committee.

Parment, for instance, said he would support a plan that moved the residential electricity into the economic-development program if it limited its use to businesses located within the areas served by National Grid, New York State Electric & Gas and Rochester Gas & Electric — the only utilities that now benefit from the low-cost "rural and domestic" power.

But Andrew J. Rudnick, president of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, said he doubts such an approach would win approval in the State Legislature.

That puts upstate business interests in a sticky position. On the one hand, they can go along with an enlarged statewide Power for Jobs program that will benefit more businesses upstate and also includes new guidelines that would help prevent past abuses, which in the past has seen cheap electricity flow to downstate nonprofits, including a Boys & Girls Club in the Bronx.

Or they can fight an uphill battle politically to keep the power exclusively upstate, and risk a stalemate that could jeopardize the entire Power for Jobs program, said Rudnick, whose group has long advocated converting the residential power into an economic-development tool.

Paterson administration officials defended taking what is now a benefit for upstate residential customers and spreading it around to industrial and commercial users across the state. They said upstate manufacturers will be heavy beneficiaries of the additional power allotment.

"It's a statewide asset. Why should only one area be able to take advantage of that asset?" said Thomas Congdon, Paterson's deputy secretary for energy.

Each of the proposals would try to offset the impact of the shift in varying ways. The Paterson proposal would offset the costs entirely for one year by providing a $70 million subsidy funded by the Power Authority that then would phase out in equal increments over the following five years. The Paterson proposal also would provide a $5 monthly credit to low-income customers and create a $10 million program to fund energy-efficiency improvements by consumers, a 38 percent increase from current funding levels.

Paterson vowed Wednesday that he will not settle for anything less than a long-term extension of the program after five years of stopgap, one-year extensions that the governor and business leaders have said makes long-term planning difficult.

Richard M. Kessel, the Power Authority's president and chief executive officer, said the Paterson plan would remove a legislative roadblock that has prevented new companies from enrolling in the program in recent years. He also noted that the Power Authority must walk a fine line as it reviews the qualifications of existing recipients at a time when jobs are scarce and the economy is sputtering.

Meanwhile, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y, wrote a letter to Kessel, urging him to craft a longer-term energy agreement with Steuben Foods of Elma.

The food company is planning a major expansion, but the Power Authority only offered Steuben a seven-year contract for low-cost hydropower — even though the agency also offers 10- and 15-year contracts. A longer contract would help the company with its expansion plans, Schumer said.

Tom Precious of The News Albany Bureau and News Washington Bureau Chief Jerry Zremski contributed to this report.

drobinson@buffnews.com

John Deere Tractor

2010-04-25T20:02:00.000-04:00

John Deere Tractor

Hey momma here's a letter from your son
well I think my city days are done Ma
and it ain't been three weeks since I came

Hey momma
I do remember what you said
say your prayers before you go to bed son
and remember city women ain't the same

I'm like a John Deere tractor in a half acre field
trying to plow a furrow where the soil is made of steel
Oh I wish I was home Ma where the bluegrass is growin'
and the sweet country girls don't complain

Hey momma
so much perfume I thought I'd drown
and the Lord didn't seem to be nowhere around
hey I fell like a flower from the vine

Ah she was pretty lord knows
I thought she would bring me joy
she laughed she called me country boy ma
and after she had been so kind

I'm like a John Deere tractor in a half acre field
trying to plow a furrow where the soil is made of steel
oh I wish I was home ma where the bluegrass is growin'
and the fire light shimmers and shines.

My Cardigan Welsh Corgi Bitch

2010-04-20T01:55:00.003-04:00

Cati my dear little companion dog.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

2010-04-17T21:14:00.000-04:00

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)

From the poem “Atalanta in Calydon” as published at the Swinburne Archive

LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING

2010-04-17T16:00:00.003-04:00

I HEARD a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

by William Wordsworth

SOME keep the Sabbath going to church

2010-04-17T03:44:00.002-04:00

SOME keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.

God preaches,—a noted clergyman,—
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I ’m going all along!

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

IT ’S like the light,—

2010-04-17T03:40:00.003-04:00

IT ’S like the light,—
A fashionless delight,
It’s like the bee,—
A dateless melody.

It ’s like the woods,
Private like breeze,
Phraseless, yet it stirs
The proudest trees.

It ’s like the morning,—
Best when it’s done,—
The everlasting clocks
Chime noon.

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

2010-04-15T23:59:00.003-04:00

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886)

Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.

Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.

Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.

Each-Life-Converges by Emily Dickinson

2010-04-15T23:31:00.003-04:00

Each life converges to some centre
Expressed or still;
Exists in every human nature
A goal,

Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,
Too fair
For credibility's temerity
To dare.

Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven,
To reach
Were hopeless as the rainbow's raiment
To touch,

Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance;
How high
Unto the saints' slow diligence
The sky!

Ungained, it may be, by a life's low venture,
But then,
Eternity enables the endeavoring
Again.

by Emily Dickinson

THE ROBIN

2010-04-15T13:14:00.003-04:00

THE ROBIN is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.

The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.

The robin is the one
That speechless from her nest
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

The Lamb

2010-04-08T23:53:00.004-04:00

Little Lamb, who make thee
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee;
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!

William Blake

Nymphs

2010-04-07T15:32:00.006-04:00

"Nymphs and a Satyr" by William Bouguereau, 1873.

Nymphs
by Katharine Tynan

‘Where are ye now, O beautiful girls of the mountain,
Oreads all ?
Nothing at all stirs here save the drip of the fountain;
Answer our call
Only the heart-glad thrush, in the vale of Thrushes;
Stirs in the brake
But the dew-bright ear of the hare in his couch of rushes
Listening, awake.’

New Lamb born today

2010-04-06T22:49:00.002-04:00

The End of the Day

2010-04-06T14:47:00.001-04:00

The night darkens fast & the shadows darken,
Clouds & the rain gather about mine house,
Only the wood-dove moans, hearken, O hearken!
The moan of the wood-dove in the rain-wet boughs.

Loneliness & the night! The night is lonely
Star-covered the night takes to a tender breast
Wrapping them in her veil these dark hours only
The weary, the bereaved, the dispossessed.

When will it lighten? Once the night was kindly
Nor all her hours went by leaden & long.
Now in mine house the hours go groping blindly.
After the shiver of dawn, the first bird's song.

Sleep now! The night with wings of splendour swept
Hides heavy eyes from light that they may sleep
Soft & secure, under her gaze so tender
Lest they should wake to weep, should wake to weep.

by Katharine Tynan

KATHARINE TYNAN, A Favorite Irish Poet of Mine

2010-04-06T14:21:00.005-04:00

Katharine Tynan was an Irish-born writer, known mainly for her novels and poetry. After her marriage in 1898 to the writer and barrister Henry Albert Hinkson (1865–1919) she usually wrote under the name Katharine Tynan Hinkson (or Katharine Tynan-Hinkson or Katharine Hinkson-Tynan). Of their three children, Pamela Hinkson (1900-1982) was also known as a writer.

Tynan was born into a large farming family in Clondalkin, County Dublin, and educated at a convent school in Drogheda. Her poems were first published in 1878. She met and became friendly with the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1886. Tynan went on to play a major part in Dublin literary circles, until she married and moved to England; later she lived at Claremorris, County Mayo when her husband was a magistrate there from 1914 until 1919.

For a while, Tynan was a close associate of William Butler Yeats (who may have proposed marriage and been rejected, around 1885), and later a correspondent of Francis Ledwidge. She is said to have written over 100 novels. Her Collected Poems appeared in 1930. She also wrote five autobiographical volumes.

Tynan produced a great deal of writing during her career. It is reported that she was capable of delivering one novel per month! Apart from two anthologies, sixteen other collections of poetry, five plays, seven books of devotion, and one book about her dogs, she wrote over 105 popular novels, twelve collections of short stories, and innumerable newspaper articles. Her work was marked by an unusual blend of Catholicism and feminism, but was always drawn from real life.

Tynan suffered from bouts of depression throughout her life, but particularly after the sudden death of her husband in 1919. However, she kept writing, especially poetry, up until her death in London in 1931.

Tynan died in Wimbledon, London, in 1931 at the age of 70.

THE FLYING WHEEL

2010-04-06T14:19:00.001-04:00

by: Katharine Tynan Hinkson (1861-1931)

When I was young the days were long,
Oh, long the days when I was young:
So long from morn to evenfall
As they would never end at all.

Now I grow old Time flies, alas!
I watch the years and seasons pass.
Time turns him with his fingers thin
A wheel that whirls while it doth spin.

There is no time to take one’s ease,
For to sit still and be at peace:
Oh, whirling wheel of Time, be still,
Let me be quiet if you will!

Yet still it turns so giddily,
So fast the years and seasons fly,
Dazed with the noise and speed I run
And stay me on the Changeless One.

I stay myself on Him who stays
Ever the same through nights and days:
The One Unchangeable for aye,
That was and will be: the one Stay,

O’er whom Eternity will pass
But as an image in a glass;
To whom a million years are nought,--
I stay myself on a great Thought.

I stay myself on the great Quiet
After the noises and the riot;
As in a garnished chamber sit
Far from the tumult of the street.

Oh, wheel of Time, turn round apace!
But I have found a resting-place.
You will not trouble me again
In the great peace where I attain.

OF ST. FRANCIS AND THE ASS

2010-04-06T02:22:00.003-04:00

OF ST. FRANCIS AND THE ASS

Our father, ere he went
Out with his brother, Death,
Smiling and well-content
As a bridegroom goeth,
Sweetly forgiveness prayed
From man or beast whom he
Had ever injured
Or burdened needlessly.

'Verily,' then said he,
'I crave before I pass
Forgiveness full and free
Of my little brother, the ass.
Many a time and oft,
When winds and ways were hot,
He hath borne me cool and soft
And service grudged me not.

'And once did it betide
There was, unseen of me,
A gall upon his side
That suffered grievously.
And once his manger was
Empty and bare, and brown.
(Praise God for sweet, dry grass
That Bethlehem folk shook down! )

'Consider, brethern,' said he,
'Our little brother; how mild,
How patient, he will be,
Though men are fierce and wild.
His coat is gray and fine,
His eyes are kind with love;
This little brother of mine
Is gentle as the dove.

'Consider how such an one
Beheld our Saviour born,
And carried him, full-grown,
Through Eastern streets one morn.
For this the Cross is laid
Upon him for a sign.
Greatly is honourèd
This little brother of mine.'

And even while he spake,
Down in his stable stall
His little ass 'gan shake
And turned its face to the wall.
Down fell the heavy tear;
Its gaze so mournful was,
Fra Leo, standing near,
Pitied the little ass.

That night our father died,
All night the kine did low:
The ass went heavy-eyed,
With patient tears and slow.
The very birds on wings
Made mournful cries in the air.
Amen! all living things
Our father's brethern were.

BY KATHARINE
TYNAN

Sheep and Lambs

2010-04-06T02:02:00.003-04:00

All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the road.

The sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the road;
All in the April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.

The lambs were weary and crying
With a weak, human cry.
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.

Up in the blue, blue mountains
Dewy pastures are sweet;
Rest for the little bodies,
Rest for the little feet.

But for the Lamb of God,
Up on the hill-top green,
Only a Cross of shame
Two stark crosses between.

All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.

Katharine Tynan

A Better Resurrection

2010-04-04T05:37:00.001-04:00

By Christina Rossetti

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall–the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish’d thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

“GOOD FRIDAY” – by Christina G. Rossetti

2010-04-02T04:10:00.003-04:00

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky.
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.

Yet give not o’er
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

-Christina G. Rossetti(5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894

‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, Their Innocent Faces Clean

2010-04-01T15:29:00.004-04:00

By William Blake

‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green,
Grey-headed beadles walk’d before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow.

O what a multitude they seem’d, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

Holy Thursday: ‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, Their Innocent Faces Clean

The Last Supper (1542), Rome, Galleria Borghese

2010-04-01T03:03:00.001-04:00

Jacopo Bassano (also known as Jacopo da Ponte, c. 1510 – 13 February 1592) was an Italian painter active in the Republic of Venice. He was born and died in Bassano del Grappa near Venice, from which he adopted the name.

His father Francesco Bassano the Elder was a "peasant artist" and Jacopo adopted some of his style as he created religious paintings with novel features including animals, farmhouses, and landscapes. He trained initially with his father, Francesco da Ponte the Elder, then in the studio of Bonifacio Veneziano. His mature style, however, followed the example of Titian. Having worked in Venice and other Italian towns, he established a workshop in Bassano with his four sons: Francesco the Younger , Girolamo, Giovanni Battista and Leandro. They shared his style, and some works are difficult to attribute precisely.

While he learnt from other artists of the time, his relationships with them varied, notably when he portrayed Titian as a moneychanger in Purification of the Temple. Other particularly notable works include Jacob’s Return to Canaan, Dives and Lazarus, Acteon and the Nymphs, The Last Supper and Annunciation to the Shepherds.

He died in Bassano.

Third of people in Scotland believe religious freedoms are being restricted

2010-03-31T14:52:00.002-04:00

March 18, 2010

Nearly a third of people believe that religious freedoms have been restricted in this country over the past decade, a new survey shows.

The results came as an influential think tank warned that keeping religious voices out of public life "undermines democracy".

In a paper for the public theology think tank Theos, Roger Trigg, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, called for more respect to be given to the right of religious freedom when it clashed with secular rights and principles.

He wrote: "A free society should never be in the business of muzzling religious voices, let alone in the name of democracy or feigned neutrality."

The professor added: "We also betray our heritage and make our present position precarious if we value freedom, but think that the Christian principles which have inspired the commitment of many to democratic ideals are somehow dispensable."

The survey conducted on behalf of Theos by ComRes found that 32 per cent of people believed religious freedoms have been eroded over the past ten years.

• Full story at the Daily Telegraph.

Jesus riding into Jerusalem

2010-03-30T23:52:00.004-04:00

by Jean Hippolyte Flandrin

For Palm Sunday

2010-03-27T03:33:00.003-04:00

by Benjamin Robert Haydon

Benjamin Robert Haydon, an English painter, born in Plymouth, Jan. 25, 1786, died by his own hand in London, June 22, 1846. Disre-; garding the wishes of his father that he should adopt his own business, that of a bookseller, he went to London at the age of 18, and became a student in the school of the royal academy. He was an enthusiast in the pursuit of what is called "high art," and prosecuted his studies in drawing and anatomy with singular earnest- ness. His first picture, "Joseph and Mary resting with our Saviour after a Day's Journey on the Road to Egypt," was exhibited in 1807, and immediately purchased by Thomas Hope, the author of "Anastasius." This was followed by "Dontatus," a work which established his reputation, but involved him in a quarrel with the academy, whose hanging committee had placed the picture in a small side room. A fondness for controversy led him to publish several attacks upon the academy, which had only the effect of estranging some of his most valuable friends, of exasperating his own temper, and of cutting him off from what was the chief ambition of his life, the honor of being an academician. From this time forward, notwithstanding the frequent production of eminent works, who had constantly to struggle with pecuniary difficulties.

In 1815 he established a school, in opposition to that of the academy, in which the Landseers and Eastlake were instructed, and about the same time became associated in the conduct of a periodical entitled "Annals of the Fine Arts." Having no tact for either pursuit, he failed in both; and in 1823, two years after his marriage, he was so involved in debt that he became an inmate of the king's bench prison, where he remained two months. Subsequently he painted here one of his most characteristic works, "The Mock Election," representing a scene which took place within the prison walls in July, 1827, and which was purchased by George IV. for 500 guineas. For his "Pharaoh and Moses," painted soon after his release, he obtained an equal sum. Notwithstanding these and similar emoluments, in 1836 he again became a prisoner for debt, but was soon after enabled to compound with his creditors. About this time he lectured on painting with considerable success. Upon the publication by government, in great part through Hay-don's own exertions, of proposals for decorating the new houses of parliament with frescoes representing scenes in the history of the nation, he sent to the exhibition in Westminster hall two cartoons, "The Curse" and "Edward the Black Prince." No notice was taken of his performances, and his hope of executing some great public work of art was crushed for ever.

To show the world how erroneous had been the decision of the judges, he commenced a series of gigantic pictures, including " Uriel and Satan," "Curtius Leaping into the Gulf," the " Burning of Rome," and the " Banishment of Aristides," the two latter of which, while on exhibition in London, attracted but 133 visitors during the time that Tom Thumb in an adjoining room received 120,000. Under the weight of this neglect and of pecuniary embarrassments his reason gave way, and while engaged on his last great picture, " Alfred and the Trial by Jury," he put an end to his life, having first written in his journal: "Stretch me no longer on this rough world." A postmortem examination discovered a long-seated disease of the brain, which may account for much of his eccentricity. His family were provided for by a public subscription. Hay-don's autobiography, edited by Tom Taylor in 1853 (2d ed., 3 vols. 8vo), lays bare the character of the man, and explains his unhappy career. His love of art was a passion rather than a principle. An impetuosity of temper, impatience of criticism, and an exaggerated estimate of his own powers and of his mission as the apostle of high art, were continually involving him in disputes.

His "Judgment of Solomon," "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem," "Christ Rejected," "Christ's Agony in the Garden," and "Raising of Lazarus," all painted previous to his first imprisonment for debt, and in the maturity of his artistic powers, are among the most favorable specimens of his style. Several of these pictures contain portraits of eminent personages, and the " Christ's Entry into Jerusalem " is now the property of the Catholic cathedral in Cincinnati. His literary efforts are confined chiefly to his "Lectures on Painting and Design" (2 vols. 8vo, 1844-'6), which are bold and clear expositions of the principles of art as he understood them. He also wrote the article on painting in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and induced the government to purchase the Elgin marbles.

Taking Christianity to Ireland A.D. 432

2010-03-20T15:48:00.000-04:00

St. Patrick is credited with taking Christianity to Ireland around A.D. 432. To sell his message, Irish legend says he chose the shamrock as a symbol of the Christian church. Its three leaves were meant to represent the Holy Trinity: God, Son and the Holy Spirit, joined together by a common stalk. Apparently, the shamrock campaign worked: by the time of St. Patrick's death on March 17, 461, he had created a number of churches, schools and monasteries dedicated to the faith.

The Donkey Reel

2010-03-17T20:35:00.002-04:00

By The Dubliners

More Iish Donkeys from the days of Yore!

2010-03-17T20:18:00.002-04:00

Irish Donkeys for Saint Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T20:05:00.004-04:00

Teaching kids to read from the back of a burro

2010-02-25T23:21:00.001-05:00

Magdalena, Colombia (CNN) -- To the unaccustomed eye, a man toting 120 books while riding a stubborn donkey would seem nothing short of a circus spectacle. But for hundreds of children in the rural villages of Colombia, Luis Soriano is far from a clown. He is a man with a mission to save rural children from illiteracy.

"There was a time when many people thought that I was going crazy," said Soriano, a native of La Gloria, Colombia. "They'd yell, 'Carnival season is over.' ... Now I've overcome that."

Soriano, 38, is a primary school teacher who spends his free time operating a "biblioburro," a mobile library on donkeys that offers reading education for hundreds of children living in what he describes as "abandoned regions" in the Colombian state of Magdalena.

"In [rural] regions, a child must walk or ride a donkey for up to 40 minutes to reach the closest schools," Soriano said. "The children have very few opportunities to go to secondary school. ...There are [few] teachers that would like to teach in the countryside."

At the start of his 17-year teaching career, Soriano realized that some students were having difficulty not just learning, but finishing their homework assignments. Most of the students falling behind lived in rural villages, where illiterate parents and lack of access to books prevented them from completing their studies.

To help bridge the learning gap, Soriano decided to personally bring books to the children.

"I saw two unemployed donkeys at home and had the idea [to use] them in my biblioburro project because they can carry a heavy load," Soriano said. "I put the books on their backs in saddles and they became my work tools."

Every Wednesday at dusk and every Saturday at dawn, Soriano leaves his wife and three young children to travel to select villages -- up to four hours each way -- aboard a donkey named Alfa. A second donkey, Beto, follows behind, toting additional books and a sitting blanket. They visit 15 villages on a rotating basis.

"It's not easy to travel through the valleys," Soriano said. "You sit on a donkey for five or eight hours, you get very tired. It's a satisfaction to arrive to your destination."

At each village, some 40-50 youngsters await their chance to get homework help, learn to read or listen to any variety of tall tales, adventure stories and geography lessons Soriano has prepared.

"You can just see that the kids are excited when they see the biblioburro coming this way. It makes them happy that he continues to come," said Dairo Holguin, 34, whose two children take part in the program. "For us, his program complements what the children learn in school. The books they do not have access to ... they get from the biblioburro."

More than 4,000 youngsters have benefited from Soriano's program since it began in 1990. Soriano says countless others have been helped, too; parents and other adult learners often participate in the lessons.

Soriano has spent nearly 4,000 hours riding his donkeys, and he's not traveled unscathed. In July 2008, he fractured his leg when he fell from one of the donkeys; in 2006, he was pounced on by bandits at a river crossing and tied to a tree when they found out he had no money. Despite these injuries, which left him with a limp, Soriano has no intention of slowing down.

In addition to the biblioburro program, he and his wife built the largest free library in Magdalena next to their home. The library has 4,200 books, most of which are donated -- some from as far away as New York City. They also run a small community restaurant.

Soriano's hope is that people will understand the power of reading and that communities can improve from being exposed to books and diverse ideas.

"For us teachers, it's an educational triumph, and for the parents [it's] a great satisfaction when a child learns how to read. That's how a community changes and the child becomes a good citizen and a useful person," Soriano said. "Literature is how we connect them with the world."

Follow the link for the video:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/02/25/cnnheroes.soriano/index.html?hpt=C1

Christmas Donkey Art for 2009

2009-12-21T04:00:00.003-05:00

Have yourself a very rattty Christmas!

2009-12-14T21:16:00.001-05:00

3,400 NY soldiers heading to Afghanistan

2009-12-09T01:55:00.001-05:00

Fort Drum soldiers will go in first wave

Updated: Monday, 07 Dec 2009, 6:31 PM EST
Published : Monday, 07 Dec 2009, 6:31 PM EST

WASHINGTON D.C. - The first wave of President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan surge will add about 16,000 U.S. troops who got their orders over the past few days, the Pentagon announced Monday.

About 1,500 Marines from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina will leave for Afghanistan later this month, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters. He would not be precise about when those troops arrive, but military sources have said the first forces are expected on the ground by Christmas.

After the first of the year, the Marines begin sending another 6,200 from Lejeune, Whitman said, and 800 from Camp Pendleton in California.

The Army will also begin sending in the first of its forces - a training brigade from Fort Drum with about 3,400 members. Whitman said about 4,100 support forces from various places will also deploy early next year.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates signed the deployment orders last week. They cover a little more than half the 30,000 additional troops approved by Obama as part of an overhauled war plan announced last week.

The overhaul followed three months of deliberations about whether and how much to expand on an already record U.S. fighting force of about 70,000.

Not covered in Monday's announcement are the expected deployments of two Army brigades from Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Those and additional training or support units are expected to be announced in a second wave of orders in the coming weeks.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was visiting Fort Campbell and Camp Lejeune on Monday to speak to troops expected to deploy as part of the new strategy.

New Carol by Bill Ward

2009-12-08T04:08:00.001-05:00

This is a lovely Christmas song with a slide show of paintings of angels and the Nativity. Bill Ward and the Doerfels perform one of Bill's compositions, The Angels Said It True. This is a cut from the CD ,The Christmas Sessions, which is already on sale on CD Baby. Proceeds from each purchase will help benefit Project Chacocente, an organization which exists to help the extremely poor in Nicaragua. Buy this CD:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bwarddoerfels
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Christmas Sessions, a recording released last year by Bill Ward and the Doerfels, will be featured as a live performance at a series of specials throughout WNY this holiday season. The project features all original Christmas songs written by Ward, and was recorded by him and the popular touring family band last winter. The specials will performed live this season by Ward, a veteran Western New York singer/song-writer, and two other well-known area performers.

While the Doerfels won't be there in person, Ward has enlisted the help of Amanda Barton and Matt Homan to present at least three performances prior to Christmas. The CD is already on sale, and proceeds from each purchase will help benefit Project Chacocente, an organization which exists to help the extremely poor in Nicaragua. The recording will also be available at the concerts.

Ward is a respected Chautauqua artist, having performed throughout the country for nearly four decades. A community developer and promoter, he founded and organizes the Mayville Bluegrass Festival, and was recognized by the Chautauqua County Music Hall of Fame as Promoter of the Year in 2007. It was that same year that he was inducted in the Hall.

Homan is a relative newcomer to the WNY music scene, but has made an impact. Forming the Haybalers in 2006, he quickly became a mover and shaker in the local acoustic music scene. He is now the leader of the Bluegrass Disciples, a virtual 'who's who' of WNY bluegrass musicians.

Barton is, at her young age, the reigning queen of Southern Tier acoustic music. Her sweet, smoky vocals and touch-perfect fiddle playing with groups like Big Leg Emma, the Steve Johnson Band, and now her own band, Zamira, have long been a favorite of many, many fans.

The Christmas Sessions performances will be held at the following locations:

Nov. 29 - Busti Federated Church, 6:30 p.m.

Dec. 2 - Hurlbut Memorial Community Church Vespers, Chautauqua, 6 p.m.

Dec. 6 - Christ First Church, Jamestown, 6:30 p.m.

For more information on the recording or performance locations, visit billwardband.com or call 753-2800. To learn about Project Chacocente, visit outofthedump.org.

The Truth About Unfermented Soy and Its Harmful Effects

2009-12-01T16:32:00.000-05:00

(NaturalNews) With vegetarianism gaining increasing popularity from the 1970's, reaching its peak in the 1990's, soy has emerged as a 'near perfect' food, with supporters claiming it can provide an ideal source of protein, lower cholesterol, protect against cancer and heart disease, reduce menopausal symptoms, and prevent osteoporosis - among many other things. It seems like a good thing - or is it really?
How did such a 'healthy food' emerge from a product that in 1913 was listed in the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) handbook not as a food but as an industrial product?

According to lipid specialist and nutritionist Mary Enig, PhD, "The reason there's so much soy in America is because the soy industry started to plant soy to extract the oil from it and soy oil became a very large industry." There was a lot of soy oil and with it came a lot of soy protein residue as a left over by-product, and since they couldn't feed it to the animals, except in small amounts, they had to find another big market which, of course, was human consumption.

This excess soy production and its protein residue was the motivation for the multi-million dollars spent on advertising and intense lobbying of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which resulted in about 74 percent of U.S. consumers believing that soy products are healthy. Australia has traditionally prided itself as being a dairy consuming nation, due to the fact that we have such abundant supply of cattle. However, lactose intolerance is becoming a health concern recognised by the medical profession; accordingly, soy is becoming very popular as an alternative to dairy, following in the footsteps of US consumers in believing that all soy-based products have health benefits. In reality, the research that has concluded that all soy products are healthy is far from accurate, and very much skewed by economic motives.

Let's examine why soy products are far from healthy:

For greater clarity, soy products are classified into two main groups: fermented and unfermented. There are also another two sub-groups: organic and Genetically Modified (GM). The GM soy is to be avoided at all costs, as the hazards of GM are some of the worst innovations of modern day bio-technology. Not only are all GM products unhealthy to humans and animals but also to the normal plants that grow in the surrounding area, due to the natural process of winds causing cross-pollination, resulting in mutated species of what were once natural variations of plants. This topic is too vast to cover in this article but for more research, visit (http://www.non-gm-farmers.com) .

The unfermented soy category is a most problematic one. It includes soy products, such as tofu, bean curd, all soy milks, soy infant formulae, soy protein powders and soy meat alternatives, such as soy sausages/veggie burgers, made from hydrolysed soy powder.

So what is wrong with unfermented soy products?

Soy belongs to the family of legumes. Other members of the legume family include beans - such as adzuki, red kidney, navy, barlotti, etc., as well as chickpeas. Peanuts are included as well, as they are technically not a nut but a legume. All legumes and whole-grains - such as, rice, barley, oats, wheat and rye - contain amounts of phytic acid. Being a legume, soy contains a high amount of phytic acid. So, what's wrong with phytic acid? A number of things - yet, in some cases, phytic acid can also be beneficial.

Phytic acid's structure gives it the ability to bind minerals, proteins and starch, and results in lower absorption of these substances. Hence, phytic acid, in large amounts, can block the uptake of essential minerals, like calcium, magnesium, copper, iron, and especially zinc in the intestinal tract. Soy also inhibits the uptake of one of the most important minerals needed for growth and metabolism, iodine, which is used by the thyroid gland in the production of thyroid hormones.
However, for non-vegetarian men, phytic acid may prove to be quite helpful, due to its binding/chelating ability with minerals.

Since a large percentage of non-vegetarian adult males have excess iron, phytic acid would be helpful to them by binding the excess iron. But we need to bear in mind phytic acid will simultaneously bind other minerals, such as calcium, magnesium and zinc. In the case of children and menstruating women, the phytic acid in soy can be a serious negative, as women and children need iron. In women, iron is needed to replace the loss during their menses and in children iron is required for growth and development.

Apart from the phytic acid-related phenomena, there are additional factors that make soy an unhealthy choice.

Soy:

* contributes to thyroid disorder, especially in women

* promotes kidney stones

* weakens the immune system

* contributes to food allergies and digestive intolerance

Perhaps the most disturbing of soy's ill effects on health has to do with its phytoestrogens, which can mimic the effects of the female hormone, oestrogen. These phytoestrogens have been found to have adverse effects on various human tissues, and drinking only two glasses of soy milk daily for one month has enough of the chemical to alter a woman's menstrual cycle.

Soy is particularly problematic for infants and it would be very wise to avoid giving them soy-derived products, since it has been estimated that infants who are exclusively fed soy formula receive the equivalent of five birth control pills worth of oestrogen every day. Check out (www.westonaprice.org) to find some alarming research and statistics on what can go wrong when infants and children are regularly fed soy formula.

In order to derive some benefit from soy, consuming only fermented soy products - such as organic miso (mugi barley and genmai miso are the best), organic tempeh, soy sauce or tamari and natto - is the way to do it. This is because the phytic acid, which is inherent in soy beans, has been neutralized in the process of fermentation. Consuming fermented soy is very beneficial in recolonizing the friendly bacteria in the large intestine, which neutralizes the 'unfriendly' bacteria and allows for greater general assimilation of foods and nutrients.

So, fermented soy is of benefit and unfermented soy is not. It is not only soy that needs to be fermented but whole-grains as well. In fact, grains (apart from millet, buckwheat and couscous) and legumes are best consumed after soaking them for 48-72 hours prior to cooking, which allows fermentation to take place. The soaking of grains and beans is also advocated in the principles of macrobiotics, which is very popular amongst vegetarians. Yet many vegetarian restaurants do not have time or forget to incorporate this very important process in their vegetarian cooking and thus people who regularly eat out at vegetarian restaurants might develop severe mineral deficiencies due to the large consumption of phytic acid in their diet.

Another common fallacy is that soy foods couldn't possibly have a downside because Asian cultures eat large quantities of soy every day and consequently remain free of most western diseases. In reality, the people of China, Japan and other Asian countries eat very little soy. The soy industry's own figures show that soy consumption in China, Indonesia, Korea, Japan and Taiwan ranges from 10 to 90 grams per day. That is grams of soy food, not grams of soy protein alone. Compare this with a cup of tofu (250 grams) or soy milk (240 grams). Many Americans and Australians today would be consuming a cup of tofu and a couple of glasses of soy milk every day. They might also add veggie burgers to this, thinking they are getting their much needed protein intake. Infants on soy formula are probably the most disadvantaged, as that is their main source of nutrition and they ingest large amounts of soy relative to their body weight. Often the side effects are not noticed but, as they are growing up, runny noses, frequent colds, irritability, severe sugar cravings and food intolerance develop.

The summary below outlines the adverse effects of unfermented soy products:

* Trypsin inhibitors in soy interfere with protein digestion and may cause pancreatic disorders. In test animals soy containing trypsin inhibitors caused stunted growth.

* Soy phytoestrogens disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women.

* Soy phytoestrogens are potent anti-thyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease.
Vitamin B12 analogs in soy are not absorbed and actually increase the body's requirement for B12.
Soy foods increase the body's requirement for vitamin D.

* Fragile proteins are denatured during high temperature processing to make soy protein isolate and textured vegetable protein.

* Free glutamic acid or MSG, a potent neurotoxin, is formed during soy food processing and additional amounts are added to many soy foods.

* Soy foods contain high levels of aluminum which is toxic to the nervous system and the kidneys.
Source: (www.westonaprice.org)

In contrast, consuming organic fermented soy products is quite beneficial. Consuming even small amounts of unfermented soy on a regular basis could cause some adverse effects in our body. Next time you consider drinking soy milk; perhaps instead consider oat milk, coconut milk or goat's milk. Some people who are allergic to dairy can tolerate goat milk and goat cheese products in small quantities. Replacing soy and regular milk with these alternatives allow us to enjoy our beverages and cereals without harming our health.

References:

(http://www.phytochemicals.info/phyt...)

(http://www.westonaprice.org/soy/ind...)

Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America's Favourite Health Food by Kaayla Daniel (http://www.mothering.com/articles/g...)

Trump halts dealings with Menie resident

2009-11-23T20:08:00.001-05:00

Michael Forbes is a vocal objector to the Trump venture

The Trump organisation has said it will have no further dealings with one of the property owners refusing to sell up to make way for a £1bn golf resort.

The move to sever links with Aberdeenshire resident Michael Forbes comes after a personal attack on him by Donald Trump.

Mr Forbes lives on the Menie Estate where the resort is due to be built.

Mr Trump, from his offices in New York, said Mr Forbes was a "loser" who was damaging the image of Scotland.

The attack came after Mr Forbes' mother, Molly Forbes, launched a legal challenge in a bid to stop the building of the golf course on her land.

The 84-year-old said she was seeking an interim interdict over the decision to grant planning permission for five pockets of land not owned by Mr Trump's company.

'Personal vendetta'

Papers lodged with the court claim Aberdeenshire Council did not determine the planning applications correctly, and that Trump Golf Links Scotland did not give enough information about why it now needed the land.

But Mr Trump said the claims were "misguided" and not based on fact.

He went on to accuse Mr Forbes of exploiting his elderly mother to further his cause.

Donald Trump Jnr oversaw the initial work on the estate

In a statement he said: "It is tragic that an elderly woman is being exploited to further the personal vendetta of Michael Forbes and his few supporters.

"He [Mr Forbes] is a loser who is seriously damaging the image of both Aberdeenshire and his great country."

He added: "We will not be distracted by the rants of the local village idiot and intend to vigorously defend any challenge to our project."

But Mrs Forbes said that Aberdeenshire Council had rushed to allow the project to go ahead and it had "grievously let down local residents".

She added that she would not be giving up her battle and she urged both the council and the Trump empire to think again about going ahead with the project.

Mrs Forbes is being represented by the Environmental Law Centre Scotland, a charity offering legal advice and help on environmental matters.

Everyone should watch this!!!!!

2009-11-23T16:28:00.005-05:00

RReviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

by Mary Pipher

Dr. Mary Pipher is a clinical psychologist and best-selling author. Dr. Pipher's work combines her training in both the fields of psychology and anthropology, examining how American culture influences the mental health of its people. She has received two American Psychological Association Presidential Citations. Dr. Pipher has appeared on the Today Show, 20/20, The Charlie Rose Show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and National Public Radio's Fresh Air.

This is the groundbreaking work that poses one of the most provocative questions of a generation: Why are American adolescent girls falling prey to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and dangerously low self-esteem? Dr. Pipher posits that it's America's sexist, look-obsessed "girl-poisoning" culture-one in which girls are constantly struggling to find their true selves. In Reviving Ophelia, these girls' uncensored voices are heard from the front lines of adolescence. Personal and painfully honest, this is a compassionate call to arms, offering strategies with which to revive these Ophelias' lost senses of self.
Annotation

A therapist who has worked extensively with young girls reveals firsthand evidence of the damage that can be caused by growing up in a "girl-poisoning culture, " raises a call to arms, and offers parents compassion and strategies for survival. A perfect book to commemorate "Take Your Daughter to Work Day."
Publishers Weekly

From her work as a psychotherapist for adolescent females, Pipher here posits and persuasively argues her thesis that today's teenaged girls are coming of age in ``a girl-poisoning culture.'' Backed by anecdotal evidence and research findings, she suggests that, despite the advances of feminism, young women continue to be victims of abuse, self-mutilation (e.g., anorexia), consumerism and media pressure to conform to others' ideals. With sympathy and focus she cites case histories to illustrate the struggles required of adolescent girls to maintain a sense of themselves among the mixed messages they receive from society, their schools and, often, their families. Pipher offers concrete suggestions for ways by which girls can build and maintain a strong sense of self, e.g., keeping a diary, observing their social context as an anthropologist might, distinguishing between thoughts and feelings. Pipher is an eloquent advocate.

License Plate Tracking for All

2009-11-14T12:08:00.001-05:00

Luke O'Brien 07.25.06
Two Civica cameras crown a Los Angeles Police Department cruiser rigged to read license plates. An infrared camera records license plates with a strobe that flashes passing cars. A digital camera grabs images of the surrounding environment to use in investigations. The equipment helps police find stolen cars and catch wanted persons.

WASHINGTON -- Jealous lovers may soon have an alternative to sniffing for perfume to catch a cheating mate: Just follow their license plate.

In recent years, police around the country have started to use powerful infrared cameras to read plates and catch carjackers and ticket scofflaws. But the technology will soon migrate into the private sector, and morph into a tool for tracking individual motorists' movements, says former policeman Andy Bucholz, who's on the board of Virginia-based G2 Tactics, a manufacturer of the technology.

Bucholz, who designed some of the first mobile license plate reading, or LPR, equipment, gave a presentation at the 2006 National Institute of Justice conference here last week laying out a vision of the future in which LPR does everything from helping insurance companies find missing cars to letting retail chains chart customer migrations. It could also let a nosy citizen with enough cash find out if the mayor is having an affair, he says.

Giant data-tracking firms such as ChoicePoint, Accurint and Acxiom already collect detailed personal and financial information on millions of Americans. Once they discover how lucrative it is to know where a person goes between the supermarket, for example, and the strip club, the LPR industry could explode, says Bucholz.

Private detectives would want the information. So would repo men or bail bondsmen. And the government, which often contracts out personal data collection -- in part, so it doesn't have to deal with Freedom of Information Act requests -- might encourage it.

"I know it sounds really Big Brother," Bucholz says. "But it's going to happen. It's going to get cheaper and cheaper until they slap them up on every taxicab and delivery truck and track where people live." And work. And sleep. And move.

Privacy advocates worry that Bucholz, who wants to sell LPR data to consumer data brokers like ChoicePoint, knows what he's talking about.

"We have pretty much a Wild West society when it comes to privacy rights," says Jay Stanley, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union. "The overall lesson here is that we really need to put in place some broad-based privacy laws. We need to establish basic ground rules for how these new capabilities are constrained."

Current laws don't constrain much. Just as it's legal for the paparazzi to take pictures of celebrities in public, it's legal for anyone to photograph your license plate on the street. Still, there aren't enough LPR units in service yet to follow your car everywhere.

The systems, which cost around $25,000 and are made by G2 Tactics, Civica, AutoVu and Remington Elsag Law Enforcement Systems, among others, have been sold mostly to major police departments around the country.

Police in cities such as Los Angeles use them to hunt down stolen cars and felony vehicles like getaway cars. And parking-enforcement officers use LPR to collect money -- lots of it. In the first 12 hours after New Haven, Connecticut, deployed a G2 Tactics LPR to crack down on parking violations, the city towed or booted 119 cars, resulting in a $40,000 windfall, according to Bucholz.

LPR cameras, which are usually around the size of a can of tomato sauce, can be mounted on police cruisers and powered by cigarette lighters. As the car moves, the camera bounces infrared light off other vehicles' license plates. The camera reads the plates and feeds them to a laptop in real time, where information from an FBI or local database can tell an officer if the car is hot. Some systems can read up to 60 plates per second, and they work at highway speeds and acute angles.

The next step is connecting the technology to databases that will tell cops whether a sexual offender has failed to register in the state or is loitering too close to a school, or whether a driver has an outstanding warrant. It could also snag you if you're uninsured, if your license expired last week or even if your library books are overdue.

The subway has never looked more appealing.

Bittergate

2009-11-05T09:17:00.002-05:00

Bittergate: The Untold Story of the 2008 Campaign
by Mayhill Fowler

Yesterday I read David Plouffe's book and was struck by a sentence in his explanation of Bittergate -- Barack Obama's notorious campaign remark at a San Francisco fundraiser in early April, 2008, where he said that "bitter" Pennsylvania blue-collar voters "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." Plouffe quotes Obama as telling him that, "I really don't know how the hell I constructed my point like that."

Well, I know how the hell he did it. In fact, it actually makes perfect sense. It is the untold story of Bittergate. Obama's remark was and still is one of the biggest stories of that historic Presidential run. It is also still one of the least understood. Though I was the first to report on his comments in my Levittown post, here on HuffPost as a citizen journalist following the candidates and covering the campaign trail, it was not until later that I fully understood the driving forces behind that statement. I don't think it was really an accident at all, but rather, that in his quick rise to power, Barack Obama did not have the chance to get to know his fellow Americans -- at least not the ones in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

I've given the full account in my upcoming e-book, Notes from a Clueless Journalist: Media, Bias and the Great Election of 2008, due out in January. The following is an excerpt, exclusive to HuffPost.
*****
The Story of 'Bitter"

The night before Haverford, I was fidgeting in a Pennsylvania school gymnasium while waiting for Hillary Clinton and weeping over a dog. Senator Clinton, of all the candidates, brought out the pet-mania in a supporter. Canine attendance at her events was a phenomenon of the trail, and I had begun to take photographs of the various dogs, all wearing Hillary regalia, many squeezed into little Hillary costumes. On the evening of Monday, April 14, however, I realized that this penchant signaled more than enthusiasm. It was a sign that here sat a room full of losers--their loss magnified by their obliviousness to the reality that their candidate also was a loser. By April, despite Clinton victories in Texas and Ohio and a likely upcoming win in Pennsylvania, no one in the press, except for those prone to Super Delegate conspiracy theories, believed that Clinton would get the Democratic nomination.

But this was the time when Hillary Clinton, nourished perhaps by the respect she had received in the poor Hispanic communities of Texas, began to get her voice and a receptive audience--always now in a town's meaner streets and not, as only a season before, in the nation's professional enclaves, which had begun to drift into the Obama camp. Here filling the gym risers at the Bristol Borough Junior-Senior High School, listening to John Mellencamp's "Small Town" and chanting Hillary-Hillary-Hillary! were the working class folk who would stick with her until the end in South Dakota because she, more than any other candidate in decades, was finding a way to speak to the many and varied losses in these Americans' lives.

This is retrospect. On that April weekday evening I did not make the connection between what I had seen in Texas and what I was beginning to hear in Hillary Clinton. I had no way of predicting South Dakota. But I knew I was looking at a gym full of losers whose bright cheer cast therefore the more garish glow. In that jaundiced reportorial frame of mind, sitting in the press compound at Bristol, desultorily I watched a woman shepherd a young man in a wheelchair onto the gym floor. Likely the young man, who had ALS, was her son. I watched a slow delight spread up these two faces, lifting to the Hillary fervor rising from the bleachers. Beside the wheelchair was a large but patient dog, tethered much more by the palpable spirit of expectation than by his leash. Contemplating the dog's jauntily-angled kerchief with its cheap silkscreening of Hillary's face, I began to tear up.

"Oh for Christ's sake, Mayhill," I said to myself, "get a grip." I could not believe I was losing it over a goddamn dog.

A man who looked vaguely familiar walked up and extended his hand. "You're Mayhill Fowler," he said. "I'm John Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times. I like what you said about Pennsylvanians."

My first thought was vain--that he had recognized me from my original OffTheBus photo, in which my head seemed to sprout like a stalk of broccoli. Already Mullane was telling me a story, something about Barack Obama at Truman High School in Levittown, a five-minute drive from Bristol. Now I knew why Mullane looked familiar, for the previous week I had covered Obama's Levittown event, too.

Looking back, I can hardly believe I wrote about Levittown. A week ago that Monday I had posted Obama's musing on choosing a running mate. Tuesday I had flown East to resume covering the Pennsylvania primary. On the flight, I had decided to write more about his remarks, for a Friday posting. I understood that revealing the rest would be a blow, a serious blow, to his campaign, and yet on Wednesday I went to the town hall meeting in Levittown as if everything were business as usual. Even as I was resolved to keep writing about the campaigns, I was also in some state of denial. Who was that April woman? By now I have acquired too much of a reporter mindset ever again to do such a nutty thing: to cut a story in half--to suspend it in time, as it were--in order to think through a decision and meanwhile to carry on with work. Maybe that Mayhill was the real journalist. Maybe it is a paradox. But rereading my Levittown article for the first time since I wrote it (and I had forgotten I wrote it until I began researching post-November), I see that I was prescient about the political journey many Levittowners would make, if not about the immediate opportunity Barack Obama would have to focus on the distant horizon.

April 10, 2008. Barack Obama's town hall meeting in Levittown, PA, yesterday was, in the sphere of political conversation, the epilogue to Michael Sokolove's fine essay in the New York Times Sunday magazine blending a reminiscence of the changes in Levittown since his childhood there with an analysis of Obama's chances with Levittown voters. At a fundraiser in San Francisco Sunday night, Obama dismissed Sokolove's conclusion that blue collar Levittown might not be quite ready to vote for a black man. "People are misunderstanding the way the demographics in this contest are broken up the way they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to white working class don't want to vote for the black guy. There were intimations of this in an article in the Sunday New York Times today--kind of implies it's sort of a race thing. That's not what it is."

If that's not what it is--then what is it? For two hours, I talked to people waiting for the doors at Levittown's Harry S. Truman High School to open for the Obama event. The conversations would seem to support both Sokolove's and Obama's realistic appraisal that Levittown is not Obama Country. Obama's analysis of his cool reception from the working class is that it stems from a feeling of having been betrayed by government and subsequent cynicism. But it's precisely this cynicism that makes men like Ed and Frank, both Vietnam Veterans and union electricians, willing to take a flyer on Obama. In their estimation, Hillary and Bill Clinton are part of the world's wealthy ruling class that "knows exactly what they're doing but not telling us." Like many people in line--and indeed Americans everywhere--Ed and Frank aid that "we need somebody new."

Most of the Levittown town hall meeting crowd were older folk, and many of them were from New Jersey. It's only a 20-30 minute drive from Princeton to Levittown, so Princetoners have been working for Obama in and around Levittown and lower Bucks County. When I asked Afton, a pet shop owner in Princeton, if she thought Obama was right about Levittown and race, she replied, "He hasn't been on the canvass." Both she and her husband, who is determined to sell Obama on Rhodesian ridgebacks as the dogs of choice for his daughters, shook their heads. "A lot of white men are not voting for him here." Debbie, a former army brat and currently a worker for peacecoalition.org, concurred. "There's a lot of misinformation--Muslim, that he'll subvert the Pentagon." Debbie said that some of her neighbors had re-registered as Republicans just so they wouldn't have to vote for either Obama or Clinton.

Indeed larger Levittown itself seemed to be absent from the Levittown town hall meeting. The group that came out in force to see Obama were the local teachers, the people who hold communities like Levittown and its neighbor Bristol together. Many of these teachers were women and Clinton supporters who nevertheless wanted to hear Obama before finally making up their minds. Melissa, a teacher at Truman High, said that she was for Clinton because "men have messed up things too much." And, yes, "race and gender are not irrelevant" in Levittown, but "I hope we're not that shallow." Jo Ann, another local teacher, described herself as "an open-minded supporter of Hillary Clinton." She felt that Clinton had the most detailed plan to overhaul No Child Left Behind. When I pointed out that Clinton wants to "scrap" N.C.L.B. and that Obama wants to "overhaul" it, Jo Ann said she didn't see much difference, but that she'd be interested to hear what Obama had to say about education.

In the subsequent town hall meeting, Senator Obama did talk about education, as he always does, although for the Levittown and Bristol teachers he wasn't as detailed and specific, or as impassioned, as he can be on the need to improve education in America. He had arrived late at Truman High and was a bit rushed. This may have been one of those missed opportunities to which all campaigns, due to the rigors of the road, succumb. Having followed the Obama Campaign for almost a year, I have come to believe that education is the lodestar for the direction in which Obama wants to take us. The significant moment in Levittown yesterday was Obama's comment that we must be "willing to sacrifice on the behalf of future generations." As I've written before, the call to sacrifice has been a chord, at first muted, now louder, in Obama's speeches from the beginning. But Levittown was the first time I've heard him say anything more specific about that sacrifice--and the implications of "future generations" for a place like Levittown are many and not least in the field of education.

The one thing everybody waiting in line to hear Senator Obama agreed on is that change is in the air. Lower Bucks County is going Democrat (despite the neighbors who have re-registered as Republicans), Central Bucks County is going Democrat--all Bucks is going Democrat. The reality is that the white working class guys who won't vote for a black guy, or a woman, are getting old and slowly passing on. With the loss of manufacturing jobs, Levittown may be dying, but new and different towns are sprouting nearby. Everybody talked about the growing African-American communities and the million-dollar homes five minutes away. Lower Bucks County is becoming a bedroom community for people with good jobs in Manhattan, a 50-minute train ride. These commuters are, in a spiritual if not a literal sense, the children and grandchildren of the aging Levittowners, a more prosperous generation who have been able to afford bigger and better homes than those in the tracts of Levittown and Bristol Township. Perhaps someday, long after Barack Obama is President but as a consequence of his policies, a well-educated work force with twenty-first century jobs will appraise the beautiful bones of Levittown and Bristol with an eye to tearing down the old tract houses and building for a newer and greener world. Nothing lasts--everything passes away--change is inexorable. In the light of this paradoxically immutable truth, Barack Obama is right to focus in the distance, beyond racism in places like Levittown, lest he get mired in the here and now. ["Obama Courts Working Class through 'Future Generations"]

Much to do with John Mullane--a sentence from my Levittown post stands out. "He [Obama] had arrived late at Truman High and was a bit rushed." That was the crux of the story John Mullane told me less than a week later at the Clinton rally in Levittown. As is clear from Obama's remarks at the San Francisco fundraiser, he had that same Sunday, on the flight to San Francisco, been reading in the New York Times Sunday magazine Michael Sokolove's engrossing essay on returning to Levittown, where Sokolove had grown up, and finding the old working class community not particularly disposed to Obama. According to Mullane, after the town hall meeting in Levittown Obama had planned to stop by Gleason's Bar, where Sokolove had conversed with the locals. "Eight men sat around the bar, and not one of them supported Obama," Sokolove had written. Mullane said that in setting up the Gleason's stop the campaign staff had told the bar staff that Obama really wanted to talk to Steve Woods, the Gleason's habitué whose negativity had been particularly colorful. "Rapid fire, he told me the issues he cared about," Sokolove wrote. "'No. 1, gas prices. It's killing everybody. No. 2, immigrants. They should go back to Mexico. Three, guns. Everybody should have the right to bear arms. In fact, everyone should have a gun in this day and age,'" Woods had said. But, as is often the case with campaign schedules, Obama was running very late that Wednesday and never got the chance to swing by Gleason's Bar and meet Steve Woods.

"That's why Obama said what he did in San Francisco," Mullane told me. "He was thinking about Steve Woods. He'd just read about Woods in Sokolove's piece. Did you notice that Obama in San Francisco echoed both Woods and Sokolove?"

I had not noticed, but as Mullane ticked off the similarities, I agreed. Barfly Steve Woods had told Sokolove that two of his issues were immigrants and guns. In San Francisco, Obama had picked up on the words. Obama had also echoed Sokolove's succinct description of working class Levittown. "The cascade down the job ladder . . . is the sort of slide that makes a person . . . more prone to cling to the familiar," Sokolove had written. "Jobs have been gone now for twenty-five years and nothing's replaced them," Obama had said in a more loquacious rumination, reaching towards the now-famous conclusion: "It's not surprising then that they get bitter and they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment." Surely, the pejorative verb cling--the word that most offended many Americans--came from reading Michael Sokolove in the New York Times Sunday magazine.

Obama could not get Woods out of his head, Mullane suggested. "If Obama had gone to San Francisco after Levittown instead of before, and if he'd had the time to talk with Woods, he never would have said what he did."

Surely John Mullane had it. "You're right," I said. "He's like a college professor, trying to work out a problem by verbalizing a potential line of reasoning." Having known many professors, I was well aware of this tendency--one which non-academics often misunderstand. A common conclusion--a version of ridicule--is that professors often do not know their own minds or stand for much of anything. This is one reason our society at large does not have much respect for the profession. But politicians are not professors. We hold politicans to their words. And many Americans had not been pleased by Obama's comments, from wherever they sprang, about small-town Pennsylvanians.

As Mullane and I talked, I realized that this was the coda to my essay about Obama's remarks in San Francisco. This was a good story in its own right. But I knew I would not write it. I could not do it. With my life turned upside-down--the scrutinizer become the scrutinized--buffeted by suspicion and accusation, I turned away, feeling that any revisiting of the fundraiser story would be tainted by questioning of my motives in doing so. Indeed for the rest of the presidential race I carefully eschewed any use of the adjective "bitter." By that Monday evening in April, I suspected, furthermore, that if I did not write up John Mullane's conclusions, no one else would. The days when I assumed naively that someone in the mainstream media would get a particular story were long gone. In fact, John Mullane told me that he had called Michael Sokolove to point out the interesting connection, but that Sokolove had yet to follow up.

Monday, April 14, Bristol, Pennsylvania was a day I failed to commit the act of journalism. Even though my stepping forth to cover the presidential campaigns is in many ways so much more the story of my learning to be a journalist than it is of the great election of 2008, nevertheless there would be only three days between April and December when I presumed to think I was more than a pretender. Now I wonder if my failure to follow through on John Mullane's story is at heart the reason why--even thought at the time I had no full sense of its importance.

On June 30, 2008, John Mullane and I met again in Bucks County. At a McCain rally in Pipersville, Mullane reintroduced himself and again mentioned the Sokolove-Woods-Obama connection. "I wrote about it, you know," Mullane said, and I made a mental note to check out his piece, but at the time I was absorbed with the difficulties, as a citizen journalist, in transitioning to the daunting hurdles in covering a general election rather than a series of primaries. In the last days of the race, reading Michael Sokolove's "second return to Levittown" article on November 9 for the New York Times "Week in Review," and two weeks before having read Matt Bai's cover story on Obama and the working-class vote for the October 15 New York Times Sunday magazine, I began to grasp the significance of the loss for a wider audience of John Mullane's story. I found it curious that Michael Sokolove in his November article, an account of his return to Levittown on Election Day to interview voters, made no mention of Steve Woods, particularly since John Mullane had pointed out to him the Woods connection to Obama's infamous remarks.

I had already been wondering about Matt Bai, interviewing Obama aboard his campaign plane late in the race with McCain and yet not confronting Obama when Obama said, "I was actually making the reverse point [in San Francisco]." By now, the campaign's explanation for Obama's remarks was that he had misspoke. It is clear from the audiotape, however, that Obama did not say the opposite of what he meant. Since such misspeaking happens to all of us now and then, we know it when we hear it. In his October article, Bai recounts Obama telling him, "That [those remarks] was my biggest boneheaded move." Likely this was a disarming, slightly-confessional airborne moment. But Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia Democratic consultant, had called Obama's remarks "boneheaded" the Friday I posted them and quickly the adjective had become a campaign staple. Therefore, Barack Obama was not really engaging Matt Bai with a glimpse of introspection.

At this point, in the last days of the election, I looked up online John Mullane's article of April 15 for the Bucks County Courier News. In fact, Mullane wrote two articles, for like Sokolove he returned just before the election to the subject of the Levittown voter. In April, Mullane had headed straight for Gleason's Bar and talked to Steve Woods, who, as it turns out, had been fooling around a bit with Times reporter Michael Sokolove. Woods did not own a gun. He had nothing against legal immigrants; his mother was an immigrant. Steve Woods, it would seem, like many of the working class folks I met on the campaign trail, had given the big city reporter what Woods thought the guy wanted to hear. It was this kind of passive-aggression that had held me back from writing about the many racist remarks I got in Texas. In most conversations, as I have said before, I suspected that the Texan peppering candidate Obama with racial slurs was not a racist and likely had an African-American acquaintance or two. It was an act for my benefit--because isn't that just what snotty educated not-from-around-here reporters believe about folks like us no matter what we say or do?

Steve Woods is merely the human interest element in Mullane's April column. These are the key sentences: "Obama read it [Sokolove's article in the April Sunday New York Times]. When he finished, he told his staff he wanted to book a speaking engagement at the biggest high school in Levittown." Upon reading his piece at last, I emailed John Mullane. In his reply, he expands upon the assertion. "Congressman Patrick Murphy [an early Obama supporter in Pennsylvania] at the opening day of little league baseball in Levittown told me that Barack had read Sokolove's Times piece on his way to San Fran, and had expressed great frustration to his staff about the comments quoted from Gleason's Bar. Obama told his staff he wanted to visit the bar to find out why his policies weren't selling with ordinary Levittoids."

Here is the missing link in the Bittergate story--a story that, for all the verbiage, no journalist, including me, properly told. It was in many ways the biggest story of Election 2008 until the entrance of Sarah Palin upon the scene. And yet nobody got it. Time and again, pundits and voters asked, "Who is Barack Obama?" As a reporter on the campaign trail, I had re-learned a lesson from my teaching days: people do not believe something is true simply because you tell them so. Beyond all the beautifully-crafted campaign rhetoric, beyond the soaring (and therefore to many minds suspect) enthusiasm of supporters, beyond the increasing (and to many minds annoying) infatuation of journalists, the answer to the question about Obama rested in a resolve he made--an April dramatic action.

Here is a guy who, reading that a bunch of other guys do not like him and sure as hell are not going to vote for him, very much wants to meet these guys. He is determined to do so. He is intrigued. He is not only going to the bar where they hang out, but he tells his staff to book the biggest school in town right away, as soon as possible. Obama gives the order on Sunday; the Levittown event is Wednesday. But the revelation is not that his campaign had amazing organizational skills. Rather here is a man who does not hold a grudge. Where most individuals would respond to the Gleason's guys with some peevishness at the very least, Obama bears them no ill will. Politicians are drawn not first to their core supporters but to those outside the circle. It seems to be an attraction as sure and strong as a magnetic force. And, of course, that urge to garner is one way in which power ultimately corrupts. That being said--here in his response to reading about Steve Woods and his companions, in his curiosity and in his lack of animus, is Barack Hussein Obama.

Mullane's two Courier Times columns reveal, just as he and I had spoken on that April Monday night in Bristol, the impetus for Obama's unfortunate remarks in San Francisco. A thoughtful and well-spoken man did not suddenly bungle a sentence. Rather he did not know who these Pennsylvanians were and are, and he was trying to figure them out. Barack Obama did not understand them. I know them because I grew up in small towns in both the South and the Midwest. And therefore I had called Obama out on his assertion that he wanted to bridge the country's cultural divide. But why would a Barack Obama have understood these Americans? He had known only islands, growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. He had come to the mainland to attend a small college in Pasadena, California. Then he had lived in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduating from Ivy League schools and briefly working. Choosing Chicago, partly as a way to establish an African-American identity, he had quickly become a member of that city's large and influential circle of educated African-American professionals. Except for a brief legislative campaign foray to downstate Illinois and a summer in Iowa before the caucuses, Barack Obama had not had any sustained encounters with ordinary Americans in the heartland.

In his quick rise to power, Barack Obama did not have the chance to get to know his fellow Americans. This is the truth that his words at the San Francisco fundraiser reveal. Friday evening at Ball State University in Indiana, only hours after my piece went up, Obama tried to explain his San Francisco remarks. His paraphrase, perilously close to his San Francisco linkage between religious belief and economic distress, shows how far he had to go in understanding Middle America. "I didn't say it as well as I should have. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to. And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families." Instead of acknowledging that people pray in many circumstances, and that some pray daily no matter the circumstances, and that for those of religious belief such belief exists a priori to any quotidian detail of human existence--instead of placing prayer in this larger context--Obama clumsily rephrased himself. Then Obama tried to place the blame elsewhere for the brouhaha. "Lately, there's been a little typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns . . . who are bitter." Finally, he came up with a better rephrasing. "So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on."

The next day, in a Saturday conference call with the press, small-town Pennsylvania mayors who supported Obama took up his cause. John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, said, "We are very much a community of faith . . . . We have over twenty church congregations here." As the larger campaign would do consistently going forward, Fetterman shifted the conversation to the social problems on which everyone also agreed: the loss of jobs, the needs in health care, a call for better education. "We've lost ninety percent of our population," Fetterman said, in speaking of jobs. Richard Gray, the mayor of Lancaster, contributed to this purposeful confusion of the issue by arguing semantics. People were angry, not bitter. It is not that people cling, but that they have been diverted away from the real issues. A signal, however, that the campaign thought Obama had more than a semantic problem was the fact that not the mild-mannered David Plouffe, who usually spoke on the more important calls, but the wily strategist David Axelrod directed the conversation.

"The question at hand here is what is the mood about our economy," David Axelrod said, rescuing Mayor Gray from the diversion argument in which, as Gray added "gender and sexual preference" to the mix, he began to mire rather than help the campaign. We need to keep focus on economic issues and special interests and trade deals, Axelrod said. "It means consistent leadership--telling people what you mean and sticking to it," Obama's chief strategist said, seemingly--although of course no one in the press could see--with a straight face. "Senator Clinton pounced on this first thing in the morning--predictably. She has been a longtime foe of trade deals." David Axelrod was already wielding the tactics that would work for the campaign: recast Obama's remarks; attack the opposition; push the argument to terrain far, far away from cultural issues like guns and religion.

Therefore, the damage control and spin began, at first wobbly, with Obama himself in Indiana and then with the mayors' conference call and later the Pennsylvania Sportsmen for Obama conference call (a campaign/press gem for all time). The line of defense would be exactly that which Obama first drew at Ball State and Axelrod redrew in the mayors' conference call, most importantly shifting attention from the verb "cling" to the adjective "bitter"--never the controversy--but the Obama Campaign would make it seem as if it were. And so the fallout from the San Francisco gaffe gelled into "Bittergate."

Like any political campaign, Obama's could not tell the truth. A presidential campaign can hardly say that the candidate does not know the voters yet but is making progress. Furthermore, Obama was careful never to apologize directly--at least in part likely because he is a superstitious man. There was a history of verbal gaffes in Pennsylvania political contests. In every instance where a candidate had apologized, he or she had lost.

Therefore, in that Saturday conference call with the press, David Axelrod said merely, "He [Obama] was sorry for the offense anybody took from them [his words]."

"People have interpreted it [the San Francisco remarks] in a way he didn't mean," Axelrod went on to say. Over time, this would become the campaign meme. And so on October 19 Obama said to Matt Bai, "I was actually making the reverse point," and Bai did not take him up on the assertion--at least not for The New York Times. In elaboration, Obama added, "I mean, part of what I was trying to say to that group in San Francisco was, 'You guys need to stop thinking that issues like religion or guns are somehow wrong.'" If Obama had so exhorted, I would never have had that shock moment of distress because he was inferring the opposite. I would never have had anything to report. More importantly, even though Barack Obama may by now have come to believe his statements to Bai, these untruths, patently false upon examination, are not worthy of him. But just as I am now wedded to the observation that Obama is an elitist--a comment I made in order to keep myself from speaking the truth, a comment on a subject I find irrelevant to discourse about presidential qualifications--so Barack Obama is wedded to the assertion that he said the opposite of what he meant.

Despite the talk post-election that 2008 has been a game-changer for tactics and tools and strategy in presidential races, some basics, like message damage control and its consequences, have remained the same. Nowhere is this less-than-exciting reality more evident that in the media's failure to get the whole story of Bittergate. By the time Matt Bai wrote the Times October piece on Obama and the working-class vote, he did not want to revisit an old story in Pennsylvania. Bai followed Obama on to fresher territory: Virginia and that state's working-class voters. The media were no longer interested in Pennsylvania, because all signs pointed to Obama and not McCain winning there. The hot topic in autumn was Virginia, and the possibility that a Democrat might carry the Old Dominion for the first time in decades.

More importantly, Michael Sokolove never followed up on John Mullane's story. If the Internet has been as transformational for politics as post-election pundits would have it, then surely Sokolove would have posted an addendum to his Levittown article on "The Caucus," the New York Times online political blog, and linked back to Mullane's Courier Times column. But Sokolove did not. For all the self-congratulatory cork-popping among Internet media enthusiasts about the leveling influence of the blogosphere and the democratization of campaign coverage, for all the chatter about linkage and knowledge transfer, the real story of Bittergate never made it out of Pennsylvania--never made it out of Bucks County. In fact, Googling a string of terms like "Obama--Pennsylvania--bitter--guns--religion--San Francisco" produces hundreds of articles from known media outlets and bloggers, all linking to one another in a circle, like an enormous tiger chasing its tail. Without more information--like Mullane and Courier Times--several hours of Googling will not provide the two columns by J.D. Mullane.

In his email to me of November 17, 2008, John Mullane wrote:

"I called Mike Sokolove at his home in Bethesda, Md. and connected the dots--from Woods to Sokolove to Murphy to Obama to you. Mike was intrigued, and agreed that it was his article and his interviews at Gleason's that inspired Obama's thoughts.

I asked Mike for a quote, and he said he had to collect his thoughts. He sent me an e-mail response, which is what appeared in the April 15 column.

By the way, I went to Gleason's in October, prior to one of the Obama/McCain debates, and chatted with Steve Woods. He told me he had reconsidered and was now going to vote for Obama. I wrote a column about it, which was published Oct. 16.

Neil Samuels, vice chair of the Bucks County Democratic Organization, e-mailed me to say he liked that column. He said he had e-mailed a copy to Mike Sokolove. I will speculate that this is why Sokolove returned to Levittown on Nov. 4 to see for himself that Obama had 'closed the deal' with working class whites here. Sokolove did not mention me or the Courier Times in his second piece for the Times. But, let's face it, May, you've been among the big dogs of journalism on the campaign trail. That's the way a lot of them are. The higher up some people go on the journalism food chain, the stingier they get giving credit to others.

A couple of years ago I wrote a column poking fun at the Times. It ended up on Jim Romenesko's journalism blog at Poynter.org, which is widely read in the industry. I got an angry email from a Times editor calling me and local writers like me, 'hacks in the hinterlands.' So there you go. Why give a hack in the hinterlands of Pa. any credit? Obama and guys who write for the Times and other august publications regard themselves as a cut above most of us. If it had been Sokolove at the San Fran fundraiser--and not Mayhill Fowler--Obama's 'bitter' comments to those his donors would still be their little secret."

I like to think that Michael Sokolove would have heard the significance in Obama's San Francisco remarks and reported them. Nevertheless, some of my experiences post-Bittergate speak to the truth of what John Mullane calls the journalism food chain. In a panel discusssion about Internet impact on politics and journalism at the Personal Democracy Forum media conference in New York City in June, 2008, for example, Ben Smith of Politico made a distinction between himself, as a journalist, and me. "She's a source. She's a great source. She smuggled a tape recorder into a fundraiser and put the audio online. . . . The central thing she did was bring a tape recorder into an event and emerge with it. . . . We [journalists] love it when sources do deceitful things on our behalf." At the forum, I was struck not so much by the condescension, for I was not a smuggler but a chronicler, however small-news, of a hundred or so campaign events by June 2008. I was struck, however, by Ben Smith's misapprehension of my intent in writing about Barack Obama at the San Francisco fundraiser. "She tried so hard to protect Obama from his words," Ben Smith said. On the contrary, I was calling Barack Obama out--politely, to be sure. If he were not the same man who had once stood up and declared that Democrats need to honor a place for religious belief in the public square, then he was not the man I had thought he was. And if he did not figure out how to talk about small-town Americans to more worldly coastal folk then even if he were President he would get no chance at "change."

And so the fiefdoms of journalism failed a story. Bai was not interested in old news. Sokolove did not link. Mullane could not get out of the county. I lost my nerve.

I also lost a certain naïveté. Since I had long since done background research on Obama, I knew the extent to which he had cut-and-pasted both his biography and his journey through the world of Chicago politics. But it was not until I saw him as the consummate politician with just the right touch of pander perfectly nail the Philadelphia speech for the AFL-CIO, and until I heard him in San Francisco a few days later, that I began to regard him coolly. I admired him still, but with more skepticism and at a distance. What happened to me in the aftermath of Bittergate, moreover, made me see that if I wanted to do good reporting I had to keep that distance. Ironically, even as I was becoming detached, many journalists, now that it looked like they would not be fruitlessly investing in another John Kerry, began to allow themselves to fall for Barack Obama. A complementary narrative was unfolding, as both Obama and Clinton spoke more and more to and about the working class Americans who had once been the constituency of the now-forgotten John Edwards of North Carolina.

Marriage and the Biology of the Earth

2009-11-03T02:35:00.007-05:00

Men and women are very different from each other. That is the magic and the wonder of marriage, when two very different creatures, wired differently come together in an amazing union! The very definition of the word marriage is the coming together of two different things to make one all new thing. The sparks fly, the hormones hop and all is life affirming and electrifying. Thus the glorious marriage of a man and a women with the mystical and astounding ability to create new life with the joining of their sperm and egg. It is what our very DNA cry out for! It connects us back to the caves and to the very creation of life on earth. I am not trying to be unkind but a union of two people of the same sex do not come together in this way. It cannot be, and pretending it can is ridiculous. The emperor has no cloths. What two people of the same sex may have is a form of love but it is not cemented by biology and the spark of creation. Just because in 40 years our society has gone roaring down this road to reinvent itself because it has wealth and will does not change God's plan for mankind or the pulse and fire of the very basic cells that make life possible. This is all a new and trendy little experiment by modern man that defies the truth of the cosmos. Baby boomers and their seed are forever trying to play God and remake the world in their own self centered image and they are making a royal mess of it all. It will not be long before there is a correction by the very earth itself for our tinkering with God's creation. Money is why this is all coming to the fore. These high times are but a nanosecond in God's calendar and clock. We have thrown away our families and our neighborhoods and abandoned our children for pleasure and profit and so this too is part of the arrogance of post modern man who thinks he is smarter than God. Pretending God does not exist is another part of this misguided revolution of narcissism.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T17:56:00.000-04:00

Witch of Fife

2009-10-30T00:35:00.002-04:00

“Where have ye been, ye ill woman,

These three lang nights frae hame?

What gars the sweat drap frae yer brow,

Like drops o’ the saut sea-faem?

“It fears me muckle ye have seen

What gude man never knew;

It fears me muckle ye have been,

Where the gray cock never crew.

“But the spell may crack, and the bridle break,

Then sharp yer word will be;

Ye had better sleep in yer bed at hame,

Wi’ yer dear little bairns and me.”

“Sit dune, sit dune, my leal auld man,

Sit dune, and listen to me;

I’ll gar the hair stand on yer crown,

And the cauld sweat blind yer e’e.

“But tell nae words, my gude auld man,

Tell never a word again;

Or dear shall be your courtesy,

And driche and sair yer pain.

“The first leet night, when the new moon set,

When all was douffe and mirk,

We saddled our nags wi’ the moonfern leaf,

And rode frae the Kilmerrin kirk.

“Some horses were of the brume-cow framed,

And some of the green bay tree;

But mine was made of ane hemlock shaw,

And a stout stallion was he.

“We raide the tod doune on the hill,

The martin on the law;

And we hunted the owlet out o’ breath,

And forced him doune to fa’.”

“What guid was that, ye ill woman?

What guid was that to thee?

Ye would better have been in yer bed at hame,

Wi’ yer dear little bairns and me.”

“And aye we rode, as sae merrily rode,

Through the merkest gloffs of the night;

And we swam the flood, and we darnit the wood,

Till we came to the Lommond height.

“And when we came to the Lommond height,

Sae lightly we lighted doune;

And we drank frae the horns that never grew,

The beer that was never browin.

“Then up there rose a wee wee man,

From neath the moss-gray stane;

His face was wan like the colliflower,

For he neither had blude nor bane.

“He set a reed-pipe till his mouth;

And he played sae bonnily,

Till the gray curlew, and the blackcock flew

To listen his melody.

“It rang sae sweet through the green Lommond,

That the night-wind lowner blew;

And it soupit alang the Loch Leven,

And wakened the white sea-mew.

“It rang sae sweet through the green Lommond,

Sae sweetly and sae shrill,

That the weasels leaped out of their mouldy holes,

And danced on the midnight hill.

“The corby crow came gledging near,

The erne gaed veering bye;

And the trouts leaped out of the Leven Loch,

Charmed with the melody.

“And aye we danced on the green Lommond,

Till the dawn on the ocean grew:

Nae wonder I was a weary wight,

When I cam hame to you.”

“What guid, what guid, my weird, weird wyfe,

What guid was that to thee?

Ye wad better have been in yer bed at hame,

Wi’ yer dear little bairns and me.”

“The second night, when the new moon set,

O’er the roaring sea we flew;

The cockle-shell our trusty bark,

Our sails of the green sea-rue.

“And the bauld winds blew, and the fire-flauchts flew,

And the sea ran to the sky;

And the thunder it growled, and the sea-dogs howled,

As we gaed scurrying bye.

“And aye we mounted the sea-green hills,

Till we brushed the clouds of heaven,

Then soused downright like the stern-shot light,

Fra the lift’s blue casement driven.

“But our tackle stood, and our bark was good,

And sae pang was our pearly prow;

When we couldna speil the brow of the waves,

We needled them through below.

“As fast as the hail, as fast as the gale,

As fast as the midnight leme,

We bored the breast of the bursting swale,

Or fluffed in the floating faem.

“And when to the Norroway shore we wan,

We mounted our steeds of the wind,

And we splashed the floode, and we darnit the wood,

And we left the shore behind.

“Fleet is the roe on the green Lommond,

And swift is the couryng grew;

The rein-deer dun can eithly run,

When the hounds and the horns pursue.

“But neither the roe, nor the reindeer dun,

The hind nor the couryng grew,

Could fly o’er mountain, moor, and dale,

As our braw steeds they flew.

“The dales were deep, and the Doffrins steep,

And we rose to the skies ee-bree:

White, white was our road that was never trode,

O’er the snows of eternity.

“And when we came to the Lapland lone,

The fairies were all in array,

For all genii of the north

Were keeping their holiday.

“The warlock men, and the weird women,

And the fays of the wood and the steep,

And the phantom hunters all were there,

And the mermaids of the deep.

“And they washed us all with the witch-water,

Distilled frae the moorland dew,

Till our beauty bloomed like the Lapland rose,

That wild in the forest grew.”

“Ye lee, ye lee, ye ill woman,

Sae loud as I hear ye lee!

For the worst-faured wyfe on the shores of Fyfe

Is comely compared wi’ thee.”

“Then the mermaids sang, and the woodlands rang,

Sae sweetly swelled the choir;

On every cliff a harp they hang,

On every tree a lyre.

“And aye they sang, and the woodlands rang,

And we drank; and we drank sae deep;

Then soft in the arms of the warlock men,

We laid us dune to sleep.”

“Away, away, ye ill woman,

An ill death might ye dee!

When ye hae proved sae false to yer God,

Ye can never prove true to me.”

“And there we learned frae the fairy folk,

And frae our master true,

The words that can bear us through the air,

And locks and bars undo.

“Last night we met at Maisry’s cot;

Right well the words we knew;

And we set a foot on the black cruick-shell,

And out at the lum we flew.

“And we flew o’er hill, and we flew o’er dale,

And we flew o’er firth and sea,

Untill we cam to merry Carlisle,

Where we lighted on the lea.

“We gaed to the vault beyond the tower,

Where we entered free as air;

And we drank, and we drank, of the bishop’s wine,

Till we could drink nae mair.”

“Gin that be true, my guid, auld wyfe,

Whilk thou hast tauld to me,

Betide my death, betide my lyfe,

I’ll bear thee company.

“Next time ye gang to merry Carlisle

To drink of the blude-red wine,

Beshrew my heart, I’ll fly with thee,

If the deil should fly behind.”

“Ah! Little ye ken, my silly auld man,

The dangers we maun dree;

Last night we drank of the bishop’s wine,

Till near near taen were we.

“Afore we wan to the sandy ford,

The gor-cocks nichering flew;

The lofty crest of Ettrick Pen

Was waved about with blue,

And, filchtering through the air, we fand

The chill chill morning dew.

“As we flew o’er the hills of Braid,

The sun rose fair and clear;

There gurly James, and his barons braw,

Were out to hunt the deer.

“Their bows they drew, their arrows flew,

And pierced the air with speed,

Till purple fell the morning dew

With witch-blude rank and red.

“Little ye ken, my silly auld man,

The dangers we maun dree;

Ne wonder I am a weary wight

When I come hame to thee.”

“But tell me the word, my gude auld wyfe,

Come tell it me speedily;

For I long to drink of the gude red wine,

And to wing the air with thee.

“Yer hellish horse I willna ride,

Nor sail the seas in the wind;

But I can flee as well as thee,

And I’ll drink till ye be blind.”

“O fy! O fy! my leal auld man,

That word I darena tell;

It would turn this warld all upside down,

And make it warse than hell.

“For all the lasses in the land

Wald mount the wind and fly;

And the men would doff their doublets syde,

And after them would ply.”

But the auld good man was a cunning auld man,

And a cunning auld man was he;

And he watched and he watched for mony a night,

The witches’ flight to see.

One night he darnit in Maisry’s cot;

The fearless hags came in;

And he heard the word of awesome weird;

And he saw their deeds of sin.

Then ane by ane, they said that word,

As fast to the fire they drew;

Then set a foot on the black cruick-shell,

And out at the lum they flew.

The auld gudeman cam frae his hole

With fear and muckle dread,

But yet he couldna think to rue,

For the wine came in his head.

He set his foot in the black cruick-shell,

With a fixed and a wawling ee;

And he said the word that I darena say,

And out at the lum flew he.

The witches scaled the moon-beam pale;

Deep groaned the trembling wind;

But they never wist that our auld gudeman

Was hovering them behind.

They flew to the vaults of merry Carlisle,

Where they entered free as air;

And they drank, and they drank of the bishop’s wine,

Till they could drink nae mair.

The auld gudeman he grew sae crouse,

He danced on the mouldy ground,

And he sang the bonniest songs of Fife,

And he tuzzlit the kerlyngs round.

And aye he pierced the tither butt,

And he sucked, and he sucked sae lang,

Till his een they closed, and his voice grew low,

And his tongue would hardly gang.

The kerlyngs drank of the bishop’s wine

Till they scented the morning wind;

Then clove again the yielding air,

And left the auld man behind.

And aye he slept on the damp damp floor,

He slept and he snored amain;

He never dreamed he was far frae hame,

Or that the auld wives were gane.

And aye he slept on the damp damp floor,

Till passed the mid-day height,

When wakened by five rough Englishmen,

That trailed him to the light.

“Now wha are ye, ye silly auld man,

That sleeps sae sound and sae weel?

How gat ye into the bishop’s vault

Through locks and bars of steel?”

The auld gudeman, he tried to speak,

But ane word he couldna finde;

He tried to think, but his head whirled round,

And ane thing he couldna mind:

“I cam from Fyfe,” the auld man cried,

“And I cam on the midnight winde.”

They nicked the auld man, and they pricked the auld man,

And they yerked his limbs with twine,

Till the red blude ran in his hose and shoon,

But some cried it was wine.

They licked the auld man, and they pricked the auld man,

And they tied him till ane stone;

And they set ane bele-fire him about,

To burn him skin and bone.

“O wae to me!” said the puir auld man,

“That ever I saw the day!

And wae be to all the ill women

That lead puir men astray!

“Let nevir ane auld man after this

To lawless greede incline;

Let never ane auld man after this

Rin post to the deil for wine.”

The reeke flew up in the auld man’s face,

And choked him bitterlye;

And the low cam up with an angry blaze,

And he singed his auld breek-nee.

He looked to the land frae once he came,

For looks he could get ne mae;

And he thoughte of his dear little bairns at hame,

And O the auld man was wae!

But they turned their faces to the sun,

With gloffe and wondrous glare,

For they saw ane thing baith large and dun,

Comin sweeping down the air.

That bird it cam frae the lands o’ Fyfe,

And it cam right tymeouslye,

For who was it but the auld man’s wife,

Just comed his death to see.

She put ane red cap on his head,

And the auld gudeman looked fain,

Then whispered ane word intil his lug,

And toved to the aire again.

The auld gudeman he gae ane bob

I’ the midst o’ the burning lowe;

And the shackles that bound him to the ring,

They fell frae his arms like tow.

He drew his breath, and he said the word,

And he said it with muckle glee,

Then set his feet on the burning pile,

And away to the air flew he.

Till ance he cleared the swirling reeke,

He luckit baith feared and sad;

But when he wan to the light blue aire,

He laughed as he’d been mad.

His arms were spread, and his head was high,

And his feet stuck out behind;

And the laibies of the auld man’s coat

Were wauffing in the wind.

And aye he neicherit, and aye he flew,

For he thought the play sae rare;

It was like the voice of the gander blue,

When he flees through the air.

He lookèd back at the Carlisle men,

As he bored the norlan sky;

He nodded his head, and gave ane grin

But he never said gude-bye.

They vanished far i’ the lift’s blue wale,

Nae mair the English saw,

But the auld man’s laugh came on the gale,

With a lang and a loud guffaw.

May everilike man in the land of Fife

Read what the drinkers dree;

And never curse his puir auld wife,

Right wicked although she be.

Hallowe'en

2009-10-30T00:29:00.002-04:00

In ancient Britain and Ireland, the Celtic festival of Samhain eve was
observed on October 31, at the end of summer. This date was also the eve of
the new year in both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon times and was the occasion for
one of the ancient fire festivals when huge bonfires were set on hilltops to
frighten away evil spirits. The date was connected with the return of herds
from pasture, and laws and land tenures were renewed. The souls of the dead
were thought to revisit their homes on this day, and the autumnal festival
acquired sinister significance, with ghosts, witches, hobgoblins, black
cats, fairies, and demons of all kinds said to be roaming about. It was the
time to placate the supernatural powers controlling the processes of nature.
In addition, Halloween was thought to be the most favourable time for
divinations concerning marriage, luck, health, and death.

The Hag

2009-10-30T00:28:00.002-04:00

The hag is astride
This night for to ride,
The devil and she together;
Through thick and through thin,
Now out and then in,
Though ne'er so foul be the weather.

A thorn or a burr
She takes for a spur,
With a lash of a bramble she rides now;
Through brakes and through briars,
O'er ditches and mires,
She follows the spirit that guides now.

No beast for his food
Dare now range the wood,
But hush'd in his lair he lies lurking;
While mischiefs, by these,
On land and on seas,
At noon of night are a-working.

The storm will arise
And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder,
The ghost from the tomb
Affrighted shall come,
Call'd out by the clap of the thunder.

-- Robert Herrick

New Age Nonsense gone amuck...

2009-10-22T03:32:00.003-04:00

Sweat Lodge Survivor Beverley Bunn Says James Arthur Ray Played God Before Deadly

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (CBS/AP) Beverley Bunn, a Texas woman who took part in an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony that resulted in three deaths, says the man who led the event pushed people too far, even after several participants got sick and passed out.

Bunn, who spoke to the Associated Press, is the first survivor of the sweat lodge tragedy to talk publicly about the ceremony.

The forty-three-year old told the AP in a series of interviews this week that by the time the ceremony began, the participants had undergone days of physically and mentally strenuous events that included fasting. In one game, Bunn said, spiritual guru James Arthur Ray even played God.

Within an hour of entering the sweat lodge on the evening of Oct. 8, people began vomiting, gasping for air and collapsing. Yet Bunn says Ray continually urged everyone to stay inside. The ceremony was broken up into 15-minute "rounds," with the entrance flap to the lodge opened briefly and more heated rocks brought inside between sessions.

"I can't get her to move. I can't get her to wake up," Bunn recalls hearing from two sides of the 415-square-foot sweat lodge. Ray's response, she recalled: "Leave her alone, she'll be dealt with in the next round."

By that time, Bunn had already crawled to a spot near the opening of the sweat lodge, praying for the door to stay open as long as possible between rounds so that she could breathe in fresh air.

At one point, someone lifted up the back of the tent, shining light in the otherwise pitch-black enclosure. Ray demanded to know who was letting the light in and committing a "sacrilegious act," Bunn said.

The account marks a significant revelation in the investigation because it portrays Ray as driving participants to stay in the lodge despite signs all around him that the situation had gone horribly awry. Until now, few details had surfaced about Ray's actions inside in the sweat lodge.

Investigators are considering bringing charges against Ray in a case that has cast a harsh spotlight on him and his self-help empire as he led dozens of people into the sweat lodge during a five-day retreat that cost more than $9,000 per person. He has hired his own investigative team to examine the tragic events.

Ray led the group in chants and prayers during the ceremony, Bunn said. People were not physically forced to stay inside but chided by Ray if they wanted to leave as he told them they were stronger than their bodies, and weakness could be overcome.

Bunn lasted the entire two hours, but nearly two dozen others suffered serious injuries that sent them to the hospital.

Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y., and James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee, died upon arrival at a hospital. Liz Neuman, 49, of Prior Lake, Minn., lingered in a coma for more than a week before dying.

Sheriff's investigators in Arizona's Yavapai County are treating the deaths as homicides but have yet to determine the cause.

Investigators are looking into the construction of the sweat lodge, the fact that people had fallen ill at previous sweat ceremonies led by Ray and questionable medical care on site, as they try to determine whether criminal negligence contributed to the deaths and illnesses.

Authorities have said a nurse hired by Ray was directing rescue efforts including CPR when emergency crews arrived. Ray is the primary focus of the probe but others also are being investigated, Sheriff Steve Waugh has said.

"I too want to know what happened that caused this horrible tragedy," Ray wrote on his Web site Tuesday.

He vowed to continue with his work.

"I have taken heat for that decision, but if I choose to lock myself in my home, I am sure I would be criticized for hiding and not practicing what I preach," he wrote.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I will take my chances with the Presbyterians, thanks!
-Beth Maxwell Boyle

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/21/crimesider/entry5406119.shtml

The Earth Is The Lord's, And The Fullness Thereof

2009-10-18T14:53:00.000-04:00

The Earth Is The Lord's, And The Fullness Thereof
Psalm 24:1
The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

1
The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
2
For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.
3
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?
4
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
5
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
6
This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.
7
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
8
Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
9
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
10
Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.

2009-10-18T05:16:00.001-04:00

The scarlet of maples

2009-10-18T04:52:00.002-04:00

"The scarlet of maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
to see the frosty asters like smoke
upon the hills."
- William Bliss Carman

At auction, buyers get their goats

2009-10-17T17:07:00.002-04:00

By Jay Tokasz
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: October 17, 2009, 5:04 PM / 0 comments

Wearing a faux mink stole and a jeweled collar, Zasu Pitts strutted her stuff like a runway model.

A spotlight shone, accenting the sprayed glitter on her black-and-white coat. The emcee pointed out her impeccable pedigree.

And by the time the bidding was finished, Richard and Rica Waldeman from North Carolina bought a goat for $2,050.

Not just any old goat, either.

Six-month-old Zasu Pitts was among the 17 finest young goats in the country selected as part of the annual American Dairy Goat Association Spotlight Sale this morning in the Adam's Mark Hotel.

"It's hard to part with her," said Zasu Pitts' previous owner, Sheila Nixon, a California goat farmer who named the flamboyant goat after a 1930s and '40s era film actress.

"They're very intelligent, curious animals," said Nixon. "This week, I taught her to dance for her dinner. She wags her tail and gets on her hind legs and jumps up and down a little."

The four-hour auction was the capstone event of the association's 105th annual convention, which began Oct. 10 and ran through today.

Here, no one was blaming the goats for anything.

They traveled from as far as California, many in airplanes, with only so much as a few bahs, and ended up drawing winning bids that ranged from $800 to $3,800.

Handlers outside the hotel prepared each of the goats for their momement in the spotlight, brushing coats, applying glitter and feeding treats of animal crackers and ginger snaps.

The goats acted as if it were just another day at the farm.

Elenna, an American Saanen doe, got the top bid of the day. White as a fresh snowfall in Buffalo, Elenna calmy strode the stage and coaxed $3,800 out of an Oregon dairy farmer, Flavio de Castellanos.

Shari Reyna, a fellow Oregonian, submitted the winning bid on Castellanos' behalf and told him by phone "you got a really good doe."

Reyna made out all right, too, picking up two bucks for herself.

"I didn't intend to buy anything," said the owner of Ferns' Edge Dairy in Lowell, Ore., which has about 300 goats.

Her purchases proved too much of a bargain to pass on. She plans to breed a purebred Nubian buck named Forevermore, which sold for $1,900.

"He'll sire a lot of daughters," said Reyna. "He will pay for himself in a year or two, there's no doubt in my mind."

About 500 people participated in the weeklong convention, which included, yes, a trip to Goat Island at Niagara Falls, as well as a variety of health workshops with veterinarians, a goat first-aid class and seminars on cheesemaking.

The Spotlight Sale is typically a highpoint of the week. Goats bought from the sale will be used for breeding, showing and producing milk.

"These traditionally are going to go to show homes and be exhibited at fairs and shows throughout the country," said Kristina Bozzo-Baldenegro, co-chair of a committee that organized the auction.

And if you thought $3,800 was a lot to spend on a goat, Bozzo-Baldenegro said a single goat once sold at spotlight sale for $16,000.

The sale brings out the best young goats in the country, submitted by nomination to the American Dairy Goat Association. Because of the difficulty with travel, larger adult goats aren't included in the auction.

"They are the cream of the goat crop," said Doni DeVincent, a hospital laboratory technician who owns 40 goats on 16 acres in Middletown.

DeVincent started caring for goats 25 years ago, when her parents purchased two Nubians to help clear away the woody brush on their property.

Now, "it's an obsession," she said with a smile. "It's my hobby that takes all my money."

Reyna's raising of goats stems from her own lactose intolerance and discovering that while she could not drink cow's milk, goat's milk was easily digestible.

Interest in goat's milk is growing rapidly, she added.

"Now, goat cheese is a really big deal," she said. "My milk is selling at $7.99 a half gallon, and I cannot fill all the orders."

jtokasz@buffnews.com

http://2009adgaconvention.web.officelive.com/hotel.aspx

Why Joe Biden Should Resign by Arianna Huffington

2009-10-14T16:12:00.009-04:00

Pollyanna progressives can only carp and wail because they had such ridiculously high expectations for this administration. It's sad to see Arianna has begun pulling her hair out so soon. Arianna has stepped into a political pundit's cow pie with this one. Bad misstep, Arianna. Very bad! Is this revenge for the recent blogger comments made by the Whitehouse about pajama clad bloggers? I could not disagree more with your comments. Joe Biden is Obama's connection to the real Democratic party not the New Age self-congratulating Democratic party. With no Joe Biden I would not have voted for Obama and with no Joe Biden in 4 years I would not vote for him. Well off ,smug yuppies do not make the Democratic Party work real hard working Americans who are not afraid to get their hands dirty make it work. Biden is Obama's only connection to reality. Most of America wants the war in Afghanistan to end and they want Obama to start showing some teeth concerning education, health care and the reform of Wall Street. Obama has taken the Democratic party back to the right and is beginning to look more like a moderate Republican than a Democrat. Biden is the true blue Democrat on the ticket.-Beth Maxwell Boyle

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted: October 14, 2009 02:32 PM

Why Joe Biden Should Resign
by Arianna Huffington

Joe Biden met with CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus this morning to talk about Afghanistan -- an issue that has pushed the vice president into the spotlight, landing him on the cover of the latest Newsweek.

I have an idea for how he can capitalize on all the attention, and do what generations to come will always be grateful for: resign.

The centerpiece of Newsweek's story is how Biden has become the chief White House skeptic on escalating the war in Afghanistan, specifically arguing against Gen. McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops to pursue a counterinsurgency strategy there.

The piece, by Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas, opens with details of a September 13th national security meeting at the White House. Biden speaks up:
"Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent.

Being Greek, I'm partial to Biden's classic use of the Socratic method -- skillfully eliciting facts in a way that lets people connect the dots that show how misguided our involvement in Afghanistan has become.

It's been known for a while that Biden has been on the other side of McChrystal's desire for a big escalation of our forces there -- the New York Times reported last month that he has "deep reservations" about it. So if the president does decide to escalate, Biden, for the good of the country, should escalate his willingness to act on those reservations.

What he must not do is follow the same weak and worn-out pattern of "opposition" we've become all-too-accustomed to, first with Vietnam and then with Iraq. You know the drill: after the dust settles, and the country begins to look back and not-so-charitably wonder, "what were they thinking?" the mea-culpa-laden books start to come out. On page after regret-filled page, we suddenly hear how forceful this or that official was behind closed doors, arguing against the war, taking a principled stand, expressing "strong concern" and, yes, "deep reservations" to the president, and then going home each night distraught at the unnecessary loss of life.

Well, how about making the mea culpa unnecessary? Instead of saving it for the book, how about future author Biden unfetter his conscience in real time -- when it can actually do some good? If Biden truly believes that what we're doing in Afghanistan is not in the best interests of our national security -- and what issue is more important than that? -- it's simply not enough to claim retroactive righteousness in his memoirs.

Though it would be a crowning moment in a distinguished career, such an act of courage would likely be only the beginning. Biden would then become the natural leader of the movement to wind down this disastrous war and focus on the real dangers in Pakistan.

The number of those on both sides of the political spectrum who share Biden's skepticism is growing. In August, George Will called for the U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan and "do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units."

Former Bush State Department official and current head of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haas argued in the New York Times that Afghanistan is not, as Obama insists, a war of necessity. "If Afghanistan were a war of necessity, it would justify any level of effort," writes Haas. "It is not and does not. It is not certain that doing more will achieve more. And no one should forget that doing more in Afghanistan lessens our ability to act elsewhere."

In Rethink Afghanistan, Robert Greenwald's powerful look at the war (and a film Joe Biden should see right away), Robert Baer, a former CIA field operative says, "The notion that we're in Afghanistan to make our country safer is just complete bullshit... what it's doing is causing us greater danger, no question about it. Because the more we fight in Afghanistan, the more the conflict is pushed across the border into Pakistan, the more we destabilize Pakistan, the more likely it is that a fundamentalist government will take over the army -- and we'll have Al-Qaeda like groups with nuclear weapons."

And Senator Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam vet and Biden confidant, told Newsweek that, while "there are a lot of differences" between Vietnam and Afghanistan, "one of the similarities is how easily and quickly a nation can get bogged down in a very dangerous part of the world. It's easy to get into but not easy to get out. The more troops you throw in places, the more difficult it is to work it out because you have an investment to protect."

And doing so, as we've seen, usually means losing more and more of that "investment": each of the last six years of the Afghanistan war has been more deadly than the one before.

Both sides of the Afghanistan debate were represented on this Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Sen. Diane Feinstein offered up a few rationales for why Obama should rubber stamp Gen. McChrystal's wishes. First, she said, "there has to be a process of finding out, which of these people can we work with and which can we not." Really? Seven years in and we still haven't checked that one off our to-do list?

Feinstein then broke out the latest trendy, new-for-fall reason why we need to up the ante in Afghanistan -- it's all about the women. " I particularly worry about women in Afghanistan," Feinstein said, "acid in the face of children, girl children who go to school, women who can't work when they're widowed, huddled on the streets, begging, women beaten and shot in stadiums, you know, Sharia law with all of its violence."

This is indeed very tragic, and I share her concern. But missing from the discussion was the fact that "Sharia law with all of its violence" has just been made the law of the land by President Karzai -- you know, our man in Kabul. The Sharia Personal Status Law, signed by Karzai, became operational in July. Among its provisions: custody rights are granted to fathers and grandfathers, women can work only with the permission of their husbands, and husbands can withhold food from wives who don't want to have sex with them. On the plus side, if a man rapes a mentally ill woman or child, he must pay a fine.

Of course, even with America standing guard, only 4 percent of girls in Afghanistan make it to the 10th grade, and up to 80 percent of Afghani women are subjected to domestic violence. As one of the Afghan women interviewed in Rethink Afghanistan sums up the current situation: "The cases of violence against women are more now than in the Taliban time."

So can we please put to rest the nonsensical rationalization that we're there for women's rights? And don't be surprised if that reason is soon replaced by another -- those pushing for escalation in Afghanistan seem to have learned the Bush administration's old tactic of constantly moving the goal posts. Don't like this reason? Fine, here's another one.

Countering Feinstein on Stephanopoulos was Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, who has taken the lead on this issue in Congress, introducing a bill calling for an exit strategy in Afghanistan.

"I think adding more American forces to Afghanistan would be a mistake," he said. "I think it would be counterproductive. And I think there's a strong case to be made that the larger our military footprint, the more difficult it is to achieve reconciliation."

McGovern then amplified Biden's concern that the real threat is elsewhere:
When I voted to use force to go to war after 9/11, I think I and everyone else in Congress voted to go after Al Qaida. That was our enemy. And Al Qaida has now moved to a different neighborhood, in Pakistan, where, quite frankly, they're more protected. And we're told by Gen. Jones that there are less than 100, if that, members of Al Qaida left in Afghanistan... So we're now saying we should have 100,000 American forces to go after less than 100 members of Al Qaida in Afghanistan? I think we need to re-evaluate our policy.

Or, as Biden put it, "does that make strategic sense?"

In June, Gen. Jones, the president's National Security Advisor, was at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan, meeting with U.S. commanders there. This was shortly after the arrival of the 21,000 additional troops President Obama had sent over. Jones raised the question of what the president's reaction would be if he were asked for even more troops. Well, Jones said, answering his own question, if that happened, the president would probably have a "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment." In other words, wtf?

Well, Obama has gotten that request, but it wasn't a "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment" for him after all. Sadly, Newsweek reports that Obama is typically "looking for a middle way." But this isn't a negotiation for a used car, where you split the difference. It's either in our national security interest to be there or it isn't. It's either a necessary war or it isn't.

Newsweek's profile makes much of Joe Biden's loyalty. He's a "team player," one close friend says. And after he dissented on Afghanistan this spring he "quickly got on board."

I have no doubt that Joe Biden is a loyal guy -- the question is who deserves his loyalty most? His "team" isn't the White House, but the whole country. And if it becomes clear in the coming days that his loyalty to these two teams is in conflict, he should do the right thing. And quit.

Obama may be no drama, but Biden loves drama. And what could more dramatic than resigning the vice presidency on principle? And what principle could be more honorable than refusing to go along with a policy of unnecessarily risking American blood and treasure -- and America's national security? Now that would be a Whisky Tango Foxtrot moment for the McChrystal crowd -- one that would be a lot more significant than some lame, after-the-fact apology delivered in a too-late-to-matter book.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/why-joe-biden-should-resi_b_320929.html

Fall Riding

2009-10-13T15:07:00.002-04:00

POPULISM

2009-10-13T14:07:00.004-04:00

WHY POPULISM IS IMPORTANT AND WHY THE DEMOCRATIC INTELLECTUALS DUMP ON IT

John Emerson, Open Left - Populism is politics which opposes wealth and power in the name of the common folk. It takes both left wing and right wing forms and sometimes degenerates into bigotry and attacks on minorities. Populism can be faked, and that is being done right now - e.g., Limbaugh and Beck. Populist appeals can be made by spokesmen for special interests who have no intention of fulfilling their democratic promises, but who are just opportunistically faking populism as part of an attack on some enemy. . .

Since the Fifties the Democratic Party, whose populist wing was critically important during the New Deal, has avoided and repressed populism. Individual populists such as Paul Wellstone have occasionally been elected, often in defiance of the party machine, but they have never had much influence in the party. The Democratic strategy has been cooperation with big business, and their slogan has been "a rising tide lifts all boats" -- "win-win" solutions where everyone wins and nobody loses. . .

When they made their deal with big business, the Democrats became a wonky party of technocrats and expert administrators . . . As part of this transformation of the party, the Democrats needed to misrepresent populism. Since then there's been an almost unmixed stream of slanders coming from both parties, until by now anyone counts as a populist as long as they're abusive, ignorant, racist, and dishonest. . . .

During most of the period since the Civil War, however, progressive energy in this country has mostly come from movements of the populist type working outside the parties or against the party leadership: Greenbackers, Progressives (three kinds), Socialists, Farmer-Laborites, Nonpartisan-Leaguers, and independents -- to say nothing of unions, farm organizations, and civil rights groups. (Martin Luther King's movement was essentially populism, albeit minority populism).. . .

The Populist Party was a national party only from 1890 to 1896; when they endorsed the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, in return for very small concessions - this basically destroyed the party. . . Altogether the Populists elected ten governors, six Senators, and about forty Congressmen. In 1892 the Populist candidate got 8.5% of the vote for President and carried four states and parts of two others. . . Presidential third parties seldom come close to winning, and the populists are no exception. Furthermore, as often as not the third party doesn't survive the election, and that was essentially the case with the Populists. But the Populists had enormous significance -- by bringing poor farmers and labor, and their issues, into the electoral equation for the first time, by stealing voters from some of the Democratic and Republican constituencies, and above all, by disrupting the other two parties' strategies. . . .

After the collapse of the Populist Party the attitude of the Democratic Party toward small-p populism was ambiguous. Many of the Populist issues were kept alive by progressives working mostly at the state level -- the national campaign organizations in 1912 and 1924 were ad hoc and short-lived. The Democratic leadership was as stodgy and business-dominated as ever, but) if they ever wanted to win they still needed to get as many votes as possible from ex-Populists and their Progressive successors. .

By 1932 the Populist Party itself was a distant memory, but between 1932 and 1938 (Roosevelt's most progressive period) Roosevelt and the Democrats relied heavily on support from populist - progressive Senators and Representatives - some from third parties, and some from dissident factions of the two major parties. The progressive-populist faction pushed Roosevelt steadily to the left in domestic policy. . .

Because of the religious appeals, moralism, and majoritarianism of the Populists (and many Progressives), from WWI on, the technocratic New Republic liberals held Populists and Progressives in very low regard despite their many valid proposals, . . .

In 1948 the Democrats purged its left, much of which had populist roots, and the right populists mostly ended in the Republican Party. . . Meanwhile, Democratic intellectuals. . . developed a theory holding that all populism is ultimately totalitarian, either Fascist or Communist.

My main conclusion is that the Democrats have crippled themselves by renouncing populist and majoritarian appeals while presenting themselves as expert administrators and effectively allowing the Republican Party to cash in on fake populism. This strategy hasn't worked since 1968, and it has crippled the Democrats by making them incapable of counterattacking against blatantly dishonest fake-populist appeals by the Republicans. . .

The institutional Democratic Party is not anti-populist by accident. In order to change its direction, we will have to take it over from the bottom up and bounce the present leadership.
-Sam Smith

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
96 Maine Street #255
Brunswick ME 04011
202 423 7884

No Susan Boyle But Shining Brightly like a Star!

2009-10-07T00:43:00.002-04:00

Willard Boyle

Willard Sterling Boyle, one of the Fathers of Digital Photography Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, he was the son of a medical doctor and moved to Quebec with his father and mother Beatrice when he was three. He was home schooled by his mother until age fourteen, when he attended Montreal's Lower Canada College to complete his secondary education. Boyle attended McGill University, but his education was interrupted in 1943, when he joined the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. He was loaned to the Britain's Royal Navy, where he was learning how to land Spitfires on aircraft carriers as the war ended. He gained a BSc (1947), MSc (1948) and PhD (1950) from McGill University. After receiving his doctorate Boyle spent one year at Canada's Radiation Lab and two years teaching physics at the Royal Military College of Canada. In 1953 Boyle joined Bell Labs where he invented the first continuously operating ruby laser with Don Nelson in 1962, and was named on the first patent for a semiconductor injection laser. He was made director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at the Bell Labs subsidiary Bellcomm in 1962, providing support for the Apollo space program and helping to select lunar landing sites. He returned to Bell Labs in 1964, working on the development of integrated circuits.

In 1969, Boyle and George E. Smith invented the charge-coupled device (CCD), for which they have jointly received the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1973, the 1974 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award, the 2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize, and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Boyle was Executive Director of Research for Bell Labs from 1975 until his retirement in 1979. In retirement, he settled in Wallace, Nova Scotia, and helped launch an art gallery with his wife Betty, a landscape artist.

Boyle and Smith will share the prize!

The day Boyle and Smith invented the CCD sensor

(AFP) – 9 hours ago

STOCKHOLM — The CCD sensor, the digital camera's "electronic eye" which earned inventors Willard Boyle and George Smith the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday, was drawn up in a few hours in October 1969.

It was 8:30 am, 40 years ago, and Willard Boyle was sitting in his office at Bell Laboratories in the US state of New Jersey. The videophone rang, and it was Jack Morton, Boyle's boss, according to an account on the Canadian website www.science.ca cited by the Nobel committee.

"What are you semiconductor guys doing? The heck with transistors. Try and come up with something different. I'll call tomorrow."

After lunch, Boyle was joined by his colleague George Smith, and together they worked on "an idea for handling little pockets of charge in a silicon matrix," the website explained.

The pair "fiddled with some math and drew some sketches on the blackboard," with Boyle declaring: "Okay, this looks pretty good," after about an hour and a half of brainstorming.

"We should name it something," suggested Smith.

"Well, we've got a new device here. It's not a transistor, it's something different," replied Boyle.

"It's got a charge. And we're moving the charge around by coupling potential wells," said Smith.

"Let's call it a charge coupled device," said Boyle.

"Sure,'CCD'. That's got a nice ring to it," Smith agreed.

The CCD was at that point only a theory, explained the website, which was quoted in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' press release announcing Tuesday's Nobel laureates in physics.

Boyle and Smith decided to take their invention one step further, and took the plans to the workshop down the hall to see if the CCD could be made.

"Some months later it was made, and it worked exactly as expected," the website said, noting that CCDs can, in addition to their use as image sensors, be used as computer memory, electronic filters and signal processors.

"As imaging devices, they have revolutionised astronomy; virtually every large telescope... uses CCDs because they are about 100 times more sensitive than photographic film and work across a much broader spectrum of wavelengths of light," said the website, run by a non-profit society based in western Canada.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i5wGzY3SMvxR7KxtIwE-dCuKi5dQ

AND MORE...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Willard Boyle

N.S. resident, father of digital photos, shares 2009 Nobel Prize in physics

Tue Oct 6, 6:04 PM

By Michael Macdonald, The Canadian Press

HALIFAX, N.S. - Willard Boyle was born in a small town in Nova Scotia and spent most of his childhood in a rough-and-tumble logging community in northern Quebec, where his mother home-schooled him in a log cabin.

His nickname was Butch.

It was an unlikely beginning for a man who would later help invent a complex gizmo that would lead to the birth of digital photography, earning him the 2009 Nobel Prize in physics.

Boyle, who learned of winning the prestigious award Tuesday at 5 a.m., said much of the credit for his groundbreaking work should go to his mother, who always inspired him to do great things.

"She liked to read about science and then ask me to explain to her how this worked ... 'How did they do this?' " the 85-year-old Halifax resident said in an interview.

"She felt I could do no wrong ... I knew differently, but that didn't bother her. She was convinced that I was the brightest thing on two legs. That helped, really."

When he was 14, he was sent to Lower Canada College, a private school in Montreal, where one teacher challenged him to excel at physics. He went on to earn a PhD in physics at Montreal's McGill University.

He was a fighter pilot during the Second World War and later spent one year at Canada's Radiation Lab and two years teaching physics at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont.

He joined Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1953.

"There were many times when we stayed up late in the lab ... nine o'clock, 10 o'clock at night," he recalled. "We might have had a beer at the end. That was it."

He co-invented a type of laser, worked on the Apollo space program, and in 1969 helped develop an image sensor, later hailed as a scientific breakthrough.

The charge-coupled device or CCD, developed with the help of American scientist George Smith, transforms light into a large number of digitized image points, or pixels, in a split second.

Today, the device is used in most digital cameras and camcorders, including the tiny, delicate ones found in operating rooms and the heavy-duty versions inside massive telescopes.

The stunning deep-space images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Mars Rovers came from CCDs.

"Digital cameras are big and everyone has one," Boyle said Tuesday. "It's having a tremendous effect on how we live and how we do things."

He said the CCD enabled people to handle light in the same way the transistor allowed them to handle sound.

"That's something you couldn't do with plain film," he said. "Before that, with good old Kodak films, you had to wind them up, put them in the baths and all the rest of it."

In its citation, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said: "CCD technology makes use of the photoelectric effect, as theorized by Albert Einstein and for which he was awarded the 1921 year's Nobel Prize."

The academy said the CCD "revolutionized photography, as light could now be captured electronically instead of on film."

But Boyle, who retired in 1979 and spends most of his time at his cottage in Wallace, N.S., remains humble about his accomplishment.

"These things come and go," he said, adding that he still enjoys dabbling in digital photography.

"It's like lady's fashions. Everybody's all excited about a certain technology ... and in a few years, a lot of the stuff we have today will be superseded in some way or other."

Boyle said he knew the Nobel Prize was about to be awarded but thought it was taking too long and he had written off any chance of winning.

"You know how it feels when the phone rings at 5 a.m.," said Betty, his wife of 62 years. "You think emergency or wrong number."

Boyle, who was born in Amherst, N.S., was incredulous when he heard a woman with a Swedish accent tell him he had won.

"I thought, 'Oh, God. Not that same old joke ... And then in the sweetest voice she said, 'I'm in Stockholm and I want to tell you about the Nobel Prize.' "

The award's US$1.4-million purse will be split between the three men who shared the prize Tuesday.

Boyle and Smith will get US$350,000 each. American scientist Charles K. Kao gets US$700,000 for his breakthrough involving the transmission of light in fibre optics.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulated Boyle and his colleagues on receiving the Nobel Prize in physics, calling it "a remarkable accomplishment."

"Thanks to the work of Dr. Boyle, people in Canada and around the world benefit in their everyday lives and the boundaries of science have been expanded," Harper said in a statement.

The prize ceremonies will be held in Stockholm on Dec. 10, and Boyle plans to attend.

Boyle is the second graduate of McGill to receive a Nobel Prize this week.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091006/national/eu_nobel_physics_cda

Last Night by the River

2009-10-06T15:09:00.001-04:00

Last Night by the River
Neither wind nor bird
That was my voice you heard
Last night by the river
In the wind that stirred the grass
And whispered when you passed
That was my voice you heard

Neither wind nor bird
That was my heart you heard
Last night by the River
Making thunder through the land,
Shaking earth where you did stand
That was my heart you heard

Neither wind nor bird
That was my blood you heard
Last night by the river
Pouring into your heart's lake
Running redder for your sake
That was my blood you heard

In the moonlight through the pines
In the deepest part of night
My heart called your name
Last night by the river

Music by Connie Dover
Lyrics by Connie Dover, inspired by the traditional Shoshone love poem, "Neither Spirit nor Bird."

From the CD, The Border of Heaven, by Connie Dover © Taylor Park Music/Connie Dover

EVANGELICALS SUBVERTING MILITARY

2009-10-01T19:57:00.001-04:00

It should be no wonder that military personnel are committing suicide at an alarming rate. It used to be that the military was a "band of brothers (including sisters). Now, in the Air Force especially, it is a band of Christians who promote their faith ahead of their oath to the Constitution. The lack of leadership shown by general officers and senior non-commissioned officers in establishing clear limits on religious fanaticism has seriously hurt our ability to defend ourselves. You want to improve morale and unit effectiveness in the Air Force? Get rid of the born again Christians. Simply put, if they are not willing to respect the non-discrimination laws, court martial them. They will think that they are suffering for Christ, and our Air Force can once again become a band of brothers. - A Man

Will Spirituality Ever Be Serious?

2009-09-30T00:52:00.002-04:00

Will American spirituality get serious? Those of us who do regular spiritual practice -- whether it's meditating every day or giving our time to the less fortunate, spending focused time with our kids or going to church each week -- have long been vilified by the cynical press as narcissists, flakes, or worse. In general, this is a cliché born out of fear and ignorance. But let's admit that the insult has some truth to it -- and will take work to rise above.

Let's start with two hard truths. The first is that spirituality makes claims to transformation and transcendence, but is often just a balm. Now, all of us who do a spiritual practice have experienced transformation. In small ways, this happens all the time. Before yoga, you feel angry, tense, and egocentric; after yoga, at least for a little while, you feel open, loving, and generous. In larger ways, it happens once in a while. A particularly inspiring sermon, a deep insight gained on an extended retreat, an ecstasy experienced at a place like Burning Man -- these kinds of things can meaningfully, and more or less permanently, change one's life. What they all have in common is transformation: a growth beyond one's previous limits.

All too often, however, spirituality reinforces rather than transcends conventional limits, boundaries, and notions of the ego. Sandwiched in between manicures and lunch dates, the quickie yoga class becomes just another way to augment and reinforce the self; pop Kabbalah and the Secret promise ways to get what you want more effectively, rather than, say, question whether "what you want" is really aligned with your deepest humanity, and your potential to lessen the suffering of others.

Not that there's anything wrong with manicures, lunch, or things which make the body more beautiful and life more pleasant -- I like all of the above -- but when spirituality is put into the service of pleasure, it is open to the cynical critique that all we're doing when we do breathwork, paint, and light Sabbath candles is making ourselves feel better. It's no different, really, from going to a NASCAR race -- except the racing fan isn't deluding himself that what he's doing is anything more than having a good time.

Second, spirituality often gets a bad rap because it often involves, well, a lot of hoo-hah. Water blessed by a "kabbalistic" rabbi, dubious modalities of energy healing, UFOs -- it's not that all of these are necessarily false, but the way that many spiritual people relate to them is all too credulous. Many of us rush to supernatural explanations for entirely natural phenomena, ascribing all sorts of mind-states and ideas to God or subtle energies or alien intelligences or whatever.

Now, unlike most of the cynics, I've experienced a lot of those mind-states, mystical experiences, and insights that indeed feel heaven-sent. I've had these experiences, and I know how they seem to be. But seems is not is. And when we interpret our experiences incautiously, we're not so different from the fundamentalist who believes she is on a mission from God. We deserve to be called out on this.

What's frustrating for those of us who really do take spirituality seriously is that there's often a lot of good mixed in with the bad. I remember seeing the film What the Bleep Do We Know? with a cynical friend of mine. I was so gratified by some parts of the film, yet so horrified by others. I wanted to say to my friend, "look, just because this crazy idea is crazy, that other idea is really very good. Really!" But of course, the leaps of illogic and messy thinking in the film negated its occasionally brilliant insights. The whole thing was suspect.

But I want to suggest that spirituality, as practiced here in America, can indeed rise out of the twin mucks of messy thinking and self-aggrandizement. Yes, it can be serious. And there are a few basic principles by which it can do so.

First, let's get serious about the worth of spiritual practice, and stop hiding. One of the reasons articles like this one appear on The Huffington Post is our editors' belief -- beginning with our editor in chief -- that spiritual work is part of being a well-rounded person, and that it should be taken as seriously as politics and culture. Just as one's life is incomplete if one never takes the time to appreciate music or art or film, so is it missing something if one lacks a spiritual practice. Let's not hedge about this. Let's be clear that intellectual giants who are spiritual infants are just as deficient in terms of human excellence as people who never exercise, or travel, or read.

And let's be serious about the proposition that learning to open the heart has real-world consequences; that it is possible to become more generous and compassionate toward others, and that it matters to do so. Our society has found ever more elaborate ways to get more stuff. Like religion used to do, spiritual practice offers one of the few counterpoints to the relentless march of desire. And that has political consequences, in the largest sense of the word.

Second, if we are serious about spirituality's worth, then we should be serious about doing it. Whatever your personal growth practice is, from kirtan to karate, pilates to psychodrama, it oughtn't be a hobby. These things work, in ways we can articulate and understand, and they should be respected as sacred -- or at least as important. Sometimes getting serious about spiritual practice means sacrificing other things in order to do it -- other activities, or certain foods, or indulging in gossip or revenge. Sometimes it may just mean ratcheting it up the priority list, fixing it as a regular part of your routine just as religious people prioritize going to church or synagogue. Sometimes it may even mean taking time off to do it; I recently devoted five months to silent meditation retreat, and it was one of the best (and hardest) things I've ever done.

Of course, not all of us are lucky enough to get away for months at a time. But wherever we find ourselves, that is where we begin. "Wherever you're going, there you are," as Jon Kabat-Zinn says. Or, in the words of the Talmudic rabbis, "It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task -- but you are not free to desist from it." If we take our own spiritual practice as seriously as traditionally religious people take theirs, we will help it gain the respect it deserves, not least because the benefits we obtain will be so obvious to ourselves and others.

Third, let's stop running away from the intellect. I believe that spirituality is one of the axes of human excellence. But so is rationality. Yes, Western materialism has been narrow-minded and brutal for hundreds of years. Clearly, the people who wear the suits and live in big houses are not to be trusted naively. But we owe it to ourselves as 21st century people to evaluate claims critically, whether they are made by Big Agri-business or holistic healers, corporations or gurus. Spiritual integrity and intellectual integrity should be allies, not enemies.

Finally, getting serious about spirituality means opening up to the possibility that the self is the object of the practice, not the boss of it. Working on the self means not taking every whim for granted, even if they are spiritual whims, and doing the practice even when you don't feel like doing it. If you're serious, you go to the gym even when you're not in the mood; likewise with meditation, or prayer, or yoga, or any other kind of spiritual or personal growth work. Old-fashioned values like constancy, reliability, and fortitude are invaluable allies. Remember, if it's authentic, it's not about feeling good -- it's about feeling, period. Let's not run to the comfortable, and let's be unafraid of hard work. Some days, spiritual practice feels like the last thing in the world I want to do. Often, those are the most important days to do it.

Admittedly, describing spirituality as hard work, soul-searing, and intellectually rigorous is probably not good marketing. Times are tough: people want to feel better, and there's nothing wrong with that. But each of us individually -- teachers and students, skeptics and true-believers -- has the opportunity to take responsibility for the care of our own soul. And in that work, spiritual people should spirituality the way that religious people treat religion: as serious, important, and worth building a life around. Not only will it get the respect it deserves -- it will be more able to do the most vital work on the planet.

Follow Jay Michaelson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaymichaelson

Sherman!

2009-09-29T21:55:00.000-04:00

The Scourge Persists

2009-09-19T00:43:00.005-04:00

By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 18, 2009

Did we really need Jimmy Carter to tell us that racism is one of the driving forces behind the relentless and often scurrilous attacks on President Obama? We didn’t know that? As John McEnroe might say, “You can’t be serious.”

“There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president,” said Mr. Carter. I guess he was aiming his remarks at those who contended when Mr. Obama was elected that we had achieved some Pollyannaish postracial society. But it’s hard to imagine, after all the madness and vitriol of the past few months, that anyone still believes that.

For many white Americans, Barack Obama is nothing more than that black guy in the White House, and they want him out of there. (Mr. Carter knows a little something about kowtowing to that crowd. During his presidential campaign in 1976, he blithely let it be known that he had no problem with residents “trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods,” and he tossed around ugly terms like “black intrusion” and “alien groups.” He later apologized.)

More than three decades later we have Sherri Goforth, an aide to a Republican state senator in Tennessee sending out a mass e-mail of a cartoon showing dignified portraits of the first 43 presidents, and then representing the 44th — President Obama — as a spook, a cartoonish pair of white eyes against a black background.

When a gorilla escaped from a zoo in Columbia, S.C., a longtime Republican activist, Rusty DePass, described it on his Facebook page as one of Michelle Obama’s ancestors.

Among the posters at last weekend’s gathering of conservative protesters in Washington was one that said, “The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African.”

These are bits and pieces of an increasingly unrestrained manifestation of racism directed toward Mr. Obama that is being fed by hate-mongers on talk radio and is widely tolerated, if not encouraged, by Republican Party leaders. It’s disgusting, and it’s dangerous. But it’s the same old filthy racism that has been there all along and that has been exploited by the G.O.P. since the 1960s.

I have no patience with those who want to pretend that racism is not an out-and-out big deal in the United States, as it always has been. We may have made progress, and we may have a black president, but the scourge is still with us. And if you needed Jimmy Carter to remind you of that, then you’ve been wandering around with your eyes closed.

Glenn Beck, one of the moronic maestros of right-wing radio and TV, assures us that President Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Some years ago, as the watchdog group Media Matters for America points out on its Web site, Beck said he’d like to beat Representative Charles Rangel “to death with a shovel.”

There is nothing new about this racist rhetoric. Back in the 1970s Rush Limbaugh told a black caller: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”

But the fact that a black man is now in the White House has so unsettled much of white America that the lid is coming off the racism that had been simmering at dangerously high temperatures all along. Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow with Media Matters, said, “If someone had told me in February that there would be mainstream allegations that Obama was a racist and a fascist and a communist and a Nazi, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Republicans have been openly feeding off of race hatred since the days of Dick Nixon. Today’s conservative activists are carrying that banner proudly. What does anybody think is going on when, as Anderson Cooper pointed out on CNN, one of the leaders of the so-called tea party movement, Mark Williams, refers to the president of the United States as an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug, and a racist in chief.

After all these years of race-baiting and stirring the pot of hatred for political gain, it’s too much to ask the leaders of the Republican Party to step forward and denounce this spreading stain of reprehensible conduct. Republicans are trying to ride that dependable steed of bigotry back to power.

But it’s time for other Americans, of whatever persuasion, to take a stand, to say we’re better than this. They should do it because it’s right. But also because we’ve seen so many times what can happen when this garbage gets out of control.

Think about the Oklahoma City bombing, and the assassinations of King and the Kennedys. On Nov. 22, 1963, as they were preparing to fly to Dallas, a hotbed of political insanity, President Kennedy said to Mrs. Kennedy: “We’re heading into nut country today.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/opinion/19herbert.html?_r=1&ref=global

Matthew 25:31-46

2009-09-16T18:48:00.002-04:00

31 When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his throne of glory; 32 and all the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate them from one another, just as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.

34 Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come! you who are the blessed ones of my Father, inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you from the beginning of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and fed you, or thirsty and we gave you a drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and we invited you in, or naked and we clothed you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and we came to you?”

40 And answering, the King will say to them, “Truly I say to you, as much as you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

41 Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you accursed ones, into the eternal fire that has been kept in readiness for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you did not give me anything to eat, I was thirsty and you did not give me a drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I was naked and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”

44 Then they will also answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and we did not help you?”

45 Then he will answer them, saying, “Truly I say to you, as much as you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.”

46 And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

Gaddafi Not Invited to Obama UN Reception

2009-09-16T15:57:00.001-04:00

Posted:
09/15/09

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host their first international reception for world leaders later this month, in connection with the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Politics Daily has learned that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has not been invited because of the hero's welcome Gaddafi gave the convicted Pan Am Lockerbie bomber when he returned home to Libya after being released from a Scottish
prison.The Obama reception will be Sept. 23 in New York, as the president makes
his first visit to the United Nations General Assembly and spends several days at the UN.

By coincidence, the United States in September takes its turn holding the rotating presidency of the 15-member UN Security Council. A Libyan is the president of the UN General Assembly, and Libya is also taking a turn as one of 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council.

Besides speaking before the General Assembly, Obama will chair a Security Council summit meeting on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament, host a lunch for leaders of sub-Saharan African nations, and chair a meeting with countries contributing police and troops to UN peacekeeping operations.

In addition, Obama and the first lady will host the traditional U.S. welcome party for the heads of state converging in Manhattan for the opening of a new session.

Gaddafi is among a small group of world leaders -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is another -- not invited to the Obama party. "We can decide who we want to entertain and who we don't," a source close to the situation told me.

The Gaddafi snub, I was told, is directly related to Libya giving a hero's welcome last month to Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the Dec. 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people, 189 of them U.S. citizens.

Al-Megrahi left a Scottish prison after Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill ordered him released from his 27-years-to-life sentence on "compassionate grounds," which is allowed under Scottish law. Al-Megrahi has prostate cancer, and on Aug. 10 was given three months to live.

While relations with the Lybyan leader had been improving, a new strain emerged in the wake of the high-profile welcome al-Megrahi received on Aug. 20. The U.S. and Britain had asked Gaddafi that al-Megrahi's homecoming be without fanfare.

Gaddafi may have been hoping to open a new chapter in U.S-Libya relations, as he just marked the 40th anniversary of the September, 1969 military coup that installed him in power. Last July, Obama and Gaddafi were in Italy for a G8 summit -- Gaddafi there in his role as the president of the African Union -- and Obama shook his hand, a small but symbolic action.

A gesture likely not to be repeated.

Obama and Gaddafi on Sept. 23, both address the UN General Assembly, with Gaddafi following Obama. U.S. United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, at a breakfast with reporters last Friday sponsored by the Christan Science Monitor, said Obama will not be taking part in any kind of hand-off.

Rice also said that Gaddafi has given up on what had been a plan to pitch a tent on the grounds of a Libyan residence in New Jersey and instead will stay in Manhattan.

This about Sums it Up eh?

2009-09-16T12:41:00.001-04:00

Here is a little song celebrating our position at #37 in the world in healthcare.

"We're Number 37"

Come one, Come all
Down to the hall
Were gonna make noise
Were gonna bust balls
Were gonna disrupt
Were gonna jump in the fray
I got a list of all the things that were supposed to say
Were gonna get real rowdy
Have a barrel of fun
But were the USA so by the way be sure to bring a gun
And buddy

Were Number 37
Were the USA
Were Number 37
And were so proud to say
We got old people crying at the pharmacy
Pay your deductible
This aint the land of the f-f-f-free Grandma
Were Number 37
Were the USA

People of the town come on down
And if you got a crazy rumor you can spread it around
I kind of like my insurance and I like my health
The other 47 million can go treat themselves
To some prayer in chapel
Fold your hands and pray
Because we are a Christian nation and that is the Christian way
And brother

Were Number 37
Were the USA
The big Number 37
And were so proud to say
Were #1 one in tanks
Were #1 in planes
Were #1 in war with #2 for brains
Were Number 37
Were the USA

I drew a Hitler mustache on the president
Yea! Aint that neat
My brother had a hernia operation last year
And now hes living out on the street

Were Number 37
Were the USA
The big Number 37
And we want to keep it that way
Be sure to bring the kids
All of the boys and girls
Because the #1 health care system in the world.

Is inFrance???

Were Number 37
Were the USA
Were Number 37
And we got something to say
We pay more for less
40% in fact
Lets bite some fingers off
Shout at the handicapped
Cause buddy
Were Number 37
Were the USA

Were Number 37
Were the USA
Were Number 37
Were the USA

© Paul Hipp 2009

Here is a truly delightful YouTube Channel!

2009-09-12T23:24:00.000-04:00

Naturalist Notebook

http://www.youtube.com/user/naturalistnotebook

Happy Labor Day 2009

2009-09-07T13:23:00.002-04:00

Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September (September 7 in 2009).

The holiday originated in Canada out of labor disputes ("Nine-Hour Movement") first in Hamilton, then in Toronto, Canada in the 1870s, which resulted in a Trade Union Act which legalized and protected union activity in 1872 in Canada. The parades held in support of the Nine-Hour Movement and the printers' strike led to an annual celebration in Canada. In 1882, American labor leader Peter J. McGuire witnessed one of these labor festivals in Toronto. Inspired from Canadian events in Toronto, he returned to New York and organized the first American "labor day" on September 5 of the same year.

The first Labor Day in the United States was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in New York City. In the aftermath of the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the US military and US Marshals during the 1894 Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with Labor as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike. Cleveland was also concerned that aligning a US labor holiday with existing international May Day celebrations would stir up negative emotions linked to the Haymarket Affair. All 50 U.S. states have made Labor Day a state holiday.

1882

The form for the celebration of Labor Day was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday: A street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations," followed by a festival for the workers and their families. This became the pattern for Labor Day celebrations. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civil significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

Traditionally, Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer. The holiday is often regarded as a day of rest and parades. Speeches or political demonstrations are more low-key than May 1 Labour Day celebrations in most countries, although events held by labor organizations often feature political themes and appearances by candidates for office, especially in election years. Forms of celebration include picnics, barbecues, fireworks displays, water sports, and public art events. Families with school-age children take it as the last chance to travel before the end of summer recess. Similarly, some teenagers and young adults view it as the last weekend for parties before returning to school. However, start dates for schools vary widely, beginning as early as July 24 in urban districts such as Atlanta, Miami, and Los Angeles. In addition, Labor Day marks the beginning of the NFL and college football seasons. The NCAA usually plays their first games the week before Labor Day, with the NFL traditionally playing their first game the Thursday following Labor Day.

Back in the saddle after 63 years … Riding returns to Edinburgh

2009-09-06T23:32:00.005-04:00

Back in the saddle after 63 years … Riding returns to Edinburgh

Published Date: 07 September 2009
By FIONA MACLEOD
THE clatter of hooves on cobbles filled the streets of Edinburgh yesterday as an ancient tradition that dates back to the 16th century was revived after an absence of more than 60 years.
At a stately pace, 250 elegant mounts and their smartly dressed riders took part in a procession up the Royal Mile for the city's Riding of the Marches.

The event had not taken place since 1946, when the tradition was resurrected to mark the end of the Second World War and just 70 horses took part.

From 1579 to 1718 it was an annual ceremony to mark the town boundaries and ensure no-one was encroaching on the common land. People could be fined for non-attendance.

Yesterday, thousands of onlookers watched the riders progress through the city from the Braid Hills, up the Royal Mile and down to the Grassmarket.

Such was the popularity among budding participants that the number of riders had to be capped.

Wendy Dixon, who brought her horse Tripper from Berwick-upon-Tweed for the event, said: "Riding up the Royal Mile was something you could only dream of doing before. It was a privilege to fly the flag for Berwick, a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

However, Ian Douglas, who led the ride on his grey horse Monarch, hopes the Riding of the Marches will be repeated.

He said: "I like to think it can be carried on on an annual basis. It was absolutely fantastic, a great experience. You could really sense the history.

"The 1946 ride was a bit of a one-off, but it had been held before that from 1579 to 1718."

He bore the Edinburgh banner and presented a traditional scroll to Lord Provost of the city, George Grubb. It was his suggestion to revive the tradition after being inspired by reading about previous ride-outs and council leaders thought the year of Homecoming would be suitable.

Steve McGill, first officer of the event, took part on his grey Mannie.

He said: "We were really fortunate with the weather.

"Although we had to reroute a little around Swanston as a lot of water earlier in the week had affected some of the tracks we were going to use."

And he revealed the choice of three grey mounts to lead the procession was no coincidence.

He said: "The research we did showed the leader in 1946 had a grey and we liked the idea of repeating that tradition."

At the Grassmarket, the procession delighted passengers on an open-topped tourist bus as riders inched over to let the double-decker past.

Dave Cruickshank, from Edinburgh said: "It's great if it brings the tourists to Edinburgh. My wee boy is over the moon with all the horses."

And shop worker Alex Randall was delighted to see hundreds of horses passing the door instead of the usual traffic. She offered a unique suggestion to the city's congestion problems.

She said, with tongue firmly in cheek: "It's nice to see horses. I think we should get rid of cars and have horses instead."

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Back-in-the-saddle-.5622266.jp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I would have loved to see this. I think I would have wept!

-Beth

What does the Bible say about poverty and health care?

2009-09-06T22:03:00.001-04:00

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.
Leviticus 19:15

The LORD sends poverty and wealth;
he humbles and he exalts.
1 Samuel 2:7

But you, O God, do see trouble and grief;
you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
Psalm 10:14

"Because of the oppression of the weak
and the groaning of the needy,
I will now arise," says the LORD.
"I will protect them from those who malign them."
Psalm 12:5

My whole being will exclaim,
"Who is like you, O LORD?
You rescue the poor from those too strong for them,
the poor and needy from those who rob them."
Psalm 35:10

For he will deliver the needy who cry out,
the afflicted who have no one to help.
He will take pity on the weak and the needy
and save the needy from death.
He will rescue them from oppression and violence,
for precious is their blood in his sight.
Psalm 72:12-14

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless;
maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.
Rescue the weak and needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
Psalm 82:3-4

... For he satisfies the thirsty
and fills the hungry with good things.
Psalm 107:9

I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor
and upholds the cause of the needy. Psalm 140:12

He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets prisoners free, Psalm 146:7

A poor man's field may produce abundant food,
but injustice sweeps it away.
Proverbs 13:23

The poor are shunned even by their neighbors,
but the rich have many friends.
He who despises his neighbor sins,
but blessed is he who is kind to the needy.
Proverbs 14:20-21

He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker,
but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.
Proverbs 14:31

He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD,
and he will reward him for what he has done.
Proverbs 19:17

What a man desires is unfailing love;
better to be poor than a liar.
Proverbs 19:22

If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor,
he too will cry out and not be answered.
Proverbs 21:13

Rich and poor have this in common:
The LORD is the Maker of them all.
Proverbs 22:2

A generous man will himself be blessed,
for he shares his food with the poor.
Proverbs 22:9

... For drunkards and gluttons become poor,
and drowsiness clothes them in rags.
Proverbs 23:21

He who works his land will have abundant food,
but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty.
Proverbs 28:19

If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still.
Eccles. 5:8

... But with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Isaiah 11:4

He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
"Is that not what it means to know me?"
declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 22:16

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
Ezekiel 16:49

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink ... He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
Matthew 25:42, 45

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything -- all she had to live on."
Mark 12:43-44

The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me.
Mark 14:7

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed....
Luke 4:18

Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?
James 2:5

Every Women should watch this!

2009-09-05T14:03:00.001-04:00

War photography

2009-09-05T02:53:00.002-04:00

War photography captures images of armed conflict and life in war-torn areas, beginning with Roger Fenton's photographs of the Crimean War of 1853-56, in which he was limited by his bulky equipment and the technology of the day, which had not yet developed a method for photographing moving objects.

The photography of war depicts the terrors of war mingled with acts of sacrifice. Different to paintings or drawings of war, photographic images are not easily altered; although in some cases, photographers manipulate the subjects and scenes depicted in a work, resulting in an image that is not completely objective in nature.

Photography, presented to the public in 1839, was believed to create images that were accurate representations of the world. In 1859, it was predicted that photography would be able to visually document future wars correctly by generating precise documentation of battles, fortifications, landscapes, soldiers, and military officers. Photography’s accuracy was assumed and taken as a mechanical impression of reality. As explained by Louis Daguerre, the creator of the first commercial photographic process, images produced by the camera were of “absolute truth” and “infinitely more accurate than any painting by the human hand.”

Photography was used to record historical information, but not always in the optimistic way that was conceived at the advent of the medium.

It was anticipated that photographers, supposedly not acting as active participants of war but as neutral partisan, would be able to bring their cumbersome photographic equipment into the battlefield and record the rapid action of combat. This was not the case, as the technical insufficiency of the photograph in recording movement was not considered. The daguerreotype, an early form of photography that generated a single image using a silver-coated copper plate, took a very long time to produce. This prevented action photography, as images took minutes to develop and could not be processed immediately.

The first war photographer was Roger Fenton in the Crimean War of 1853-56, although with his bulky equipment he was limited to posed still photographs or landscapes. He took a large van and an assistant, and returned to Britain with over 350 usable large format negatives.

The inability of the early photograph to record a moving object lead to the practice of recreating scenes of battle, such as in the work of both Haley Sims and Alexander Gardner. They admittedly reconfigured scenes that took place during the American Civil War (1861-1865) in order to intensify the visual and emotional effects of battle. Alexander Gardner and Matthew Brady rearranged bodies of dead soldiers during the Civil War in order to create a clear picture of the atrocities associated with battle. In Soldiers on the Battlefield, 1862, Brady produced a controversial tableau of the dead within a desolate landscape. This work, along with Alexander Gardner’s 1863 work Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter were images, which, when shown to the public, brought home the horrific reality of war.

Since early photographers were not able to create images of moving targets, they would record more sedentary aspects of war, such as fortifications, soldiers, and land before and after battle along with the re-creation of action scenes. Similar to battle photography, portrait images of soldiers were also often staged. In order to produce a photograph, the subject had to be perfectly still for a matter of minutes, so they were posed to be comfortable and minimize movement.

Unlike paintings, which presented a single illustration of a specific event, photography offered the opportunity for an extensive amount of images to enter circulation. The proliferation of the photographic images allowed the public to be well informed in the discourses of war. The advent of mass-reproduced images of war were not only used to inform the public but they served as imprints of the time and as historical recordings. Mass-produced images did have consequences. Besides informing the public, the glut of images in distribution over-saturated the market, allowing viewers to develop the ability to disregard the immediate value and historical importance of certain photographs.

Photographers who participate in this genre may find themselves placed in harm's way, and are sometimes killed trying to get their pictures out of the war arena. Journalists and photographers are protected by international conventions of armed warfare, but history shows that they are often considered targets by warring groups — sometimes to show hatred of their opponents and other times to prevent the facts shown in the photographs from being known. War photography has become more dangerous with the terrorist style of armed conflict as some terrorists target journalists and photographers. In the current Iraq War, several photographers have been captured and executed by terrorists or shot by armed insurgents.

AP IMPACT: Calm — then sudden death in Afghan war

2009-09-05T02:21:00.005-04:00

The U.S. patrol had a tip that Taliban fighters were lying in ambush, and a Marine had his weapon trained on the trees 70 yards away. "If you see anything move from there, light it up," Cpl. Braxton Russell told him.

Thirty seconds later, a salvo of gunfire and RPGs — rocket-propelled grenades — poured out of the grove. "Casualty! We've got a casualty!" someone shouted. A grenade had hit Lance Cpl. Joshua "Bernie" Bernard in the legs.

A Marine and son of a Marine, a devout Christian, Iraq war veteran and avid hiker, home-schooled in rural Maine, Bernard was about to become the next fatality in the deadliest month of the deadliest year since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The troops of Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines had been fighting for three days to wrest this town in southern Afghanistan from the Taliban who had ruled it for four years. As dusk approached on Friday, Aug. 14, things had quieted down. The Taliban seemed to have gone. Another day had passed in the long, hard slog for U.S. troops serving on the parched plains and mountains of Afghanistan, in a war that has steadily intensified.

Then, as the Marines were enjoying some downtime, reports of mortar, machine-gun and sniper fire sent them scrambling again. The 11 Americans and 10 Afghan soldiers edged their way into the town's abandoned bazaar. With them were Associated Press correspondent Alfred de Montesquiou, AP photographer Julie Jacobson and AP Television News cameraman Ken Teh.

Eyes scanning rooftops for gunmen and the ground for buried bombs, the patrol pushed past shops still smoldering from U.S. mortar shells, past Taliban posters on the walls exhorting the populace to fight the Americans. Bernard, his face daubed in gray and brown camouflage paint, was the point man.

A young Afghan in front of the family store showed the patrol a patch of upturned earth in a ditch. It was here that insurgents had fired their mortars a few minutes earlier.

"But don't say I told you, or they'll kill me," the man said.

As he spoke, the Marines got word of the ambush being readied nearby. Two Cobra helicopters circling overhead fired Hellfire missiles at a mortar position. The Marines weren't sure this had settled the matter with the Taliban. They pushed on.

Then they reached the pomegranate grove.

___

At first Jake Godby thought Bernard had stepped on an explosive device. Godby, a 24-year-old 2nd lieutenant from Fredericksburg, Va., quickly regrouped his men and directed the returning fire.

The squad found itself stuck under sustained and heavy fire with a wounded man on a narrow crossroad — buildings behind them, insurgents hidden in the orchard in front of them, and a large puddle from a broken water pump in the middle. Godby had the troops advance to the cover of a mud wall and an irrigation ditch. The orange streaks of bullets whizzing in every direction grew visible as the light faded.

"That's when I realized there was a casualty and saw the injured Marine, about 10 yards from where I'd stood," Jacobson would write in her journal. "For the second time in my life, I watched a Marine lose his. He was hit with the RPG which blew off one of his legs and badly mangled the other. ... I hadn't seen it happen, just heard the explosion. I hit the ground and lay as flat as I could and shot what I could of the scene."

Bernard lay on the ground, two Marines standing over him exposed, trying to help. A first tourniquet on Bernard's leg broke. A medic applied another.

"I can't breathe, I can't breathe," Bernard said. Troops crawling under the bullets dragged him to the MRAP, the mine-resistant armored vehicle that accompanied the patrol.

"The other guys kept telling him `Bernard, you're doing fine, you're doing fine. You're gonna make it. Stay with me Bernard!' He (a Marine) held Bernard's head in his hands when he seemed to go limp and tried to keep him awake. A couple more ran in with a stretcher," Jacobson recalled in the journal.

"Another RPG hit the mud wall on the other side of the street from where we were, about 5 yards away. It was a big BOOM, and I just lay my face in the dirt and everything went quiet for about 10 seconds. It was just silence like I was wearing noise-canceling headphones or like world peace had finally descended upon the earth. The air was white with sand. Then I started feeling the rubble fall down around me. And I thought, `Is this what it's like to be shell shocked? Am I all still here? I can't believe I am.'

"I was fine and surprised at how calm I was and that I could actually still hear."

___

The rocket-propelled grenade exploded in a powerful pinkish blast, lighting up the scene and briefly knocking out de Montesquiou and Staff Sgt. Alexander Ferguson. When Ferguson recovered, he helped haul Bernard inside the vehicle. Bernard was driven back to base some 500 yards from there, receiving first aid along the way. Minutes later, a helicopter evacuated him to Camp Leatherneck, the main Marine compound in southern Afghanistan. His vital signs were stable when he left.

At the ambush site, the fighting continued uninterrupted for 10 to 15 minutes. The men could see the grenades coming in at them, and even some of the machine gunners. They estimated they were facing six to eight fighters.

Adding to the confusion, an Afghan soldier with the troops fired his own grenade at the insurgents, but he hadn't checked whether anybody was close by. A Marine was knocked out by the back-blast.

Another grabbed the Afghan by the collar. "Once he stopped shooting, we were able to get control of the situation," Russell said.

Some Marines are uneasy patrolling with the Afghan National Army. For one thing, there's a language barrier. During the shootout at the orchard, the patrol's Afghan interpreter disappeared and took cover, leaving the Marines unable to coordinate their moves with the Afghan soldiers.

"They're not lacking courage, they're just lacking training right now," said Russell, 22, from Stafford, Va. "At least they were shooting in the right direction."

The fighting ebbed with nightfall. Godby and some of the Marines equipped with night vision glasses pushed deeper into the orchard, but the insurgents were gone. Intelligence pointed to three enemy dead, several Marines said, but it could not be confirmed.

That night, officers assembled the platoon in a darkened room of the run-down house where the Marines had camped after taking Dahaneh two days earlier. There the officers delivered the news: Bernard had died of a blood clot in his heart on the operating table. He was Golf Company's third fatality since arriving in Afghanistan in May.

Bernard was the 19th American to die in Afghanistan in August. Fifty-one Marines, soldiers and seamen lost their lives that month. Of the 739 Americans killed in and around Afghanistan since 2001, 151 died last year and 180 so far this year.

___

Down a rural dirt road in New Portland, western Maine, John and Sharon Bernard sat on their porch and talked about their son.

Joshua, they said, loved literature and showed early interest in the Bible and Christianity. "He had a very strong faith right from the beginning," his mother said.

His father described him as "humble, shy, unassuming — the very first to offer help." He didn't smoke or drink, and always opened the door for others. His main friends were his church group, whom he would visit when on leave, and his sister Katy, 20.

Bernard's father is a retired Marine 1st sergeant. Three weeks before the Aug. 14 ambush that killed his son, he had written to his congressman, Rep. Michael Michaud, expressing frustration at what he described as a change in the Afghanistan rules of engagement to one of "spare the civilians at all cost." He called this "disgraceful, immoral and fatal" to U.S. forces in combat.

Joshua loved videogames and snowboarding, and hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail with his father. He hoped to become a U.S. marshal.

"Service and personal honor," is how his father summarized his son.

___

Three days after Bernard's death, as his belongings were being packed for shipment to his family, Cpl. Joshua Jackson, his squad leader, was still referring to him in the present tense.

"He definitely doesn't hesitate," said Jackson, 23, from Copley, Ohio. "He's very good, he definitely has the nerves to do what he's needed to do."

He called Bernard "a true-heartedly very good guy ... probably one of the best guys I've known in my entire life."

The hardest part is "just wondering if there's something that I could have done different, or maybe prevented him from dying," Jackson said. "But that's something we've all got to deal with."

"I think it's got to do with being a Marine; you just carry on," said Godby. That night he got two hours of sleep. Before dawn, his platoon took part in a raid on a suspected Taliban stronghold.

Bernard was determined, his comrades said. That's why he was chosen as the squad's point man and navigator, moving at the front of his unit.

Lance Cpl. Jason Pignon, 22, from Thayer, Ill., was his close friend. They had been in the same platoon since 2007 when they joined "the Fleet," as Marines call the units preparing to deploy. They served together near Fallujah in Iraq in 2008, and again in Afghanistan.

During the firefight, Jacobson had wrestled with a question every war photographer faces: whether to offer to help save a life, or keep out of the way of the professionals and go on shooting pictures.

Some of Bernard's comrades asked to see the photos. In her journal she described them flipping through the images she had captured that day:

"They did stop when they came to that moment. But none of them complained or grew angry about it. They understood that it was what it was. They understand, despite that he was their friend, it was the reality of things."

___

It had all gone very quickly. It was late afternoon when the Taliban fired their first RPGs. It was dusk when the Marine was driven away in the armored vehicle. And it was night when the patrol returning to base saw the dark silhouette of the helicopter that flew him away.

Lance Cpl. Joshua "Bernie" Bernard was 21 years old.

___

Glenn Adams contributed to this report from New Portland, Maine.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090904/ap_on_re_as/as_afghan_death_of_a_marine

Julie Jacobson photographer

2009-09-05T02:04:00.011-04:00

Lance Cpl. Joshua "Bernie" Bernard is hit

With all due respect this photograph by Julie Jacobson of the mortally wounded soldier was published to make people aware. Before you react please be sure you read the post above this? Remember, the photos of Vietnam actually helped bring the war home and change allot of peoples minds about what the war really was like. This helped end the war. Look at the photos of the Civil War casualties that were published when photography was new to the public. The military, by hiding all photos of coffins and of the dead is misleading the public and its wrong! They are taking away the gut shock war brings and pillowing the public from reality. It is immoral and un-American to censor the press unless it endangers the troops or compromises a mission. Gates and the military wanted to keep this from the public but the soldiers julie was embedded reacted this way:
"Some of Bernard's comrades asked to see the photos. In her journal she described them flipping through the images she had captured that day:

They did stop when they came to that moment. But none of them complained or grew angry about it. They understood that it was what it was. They understand, despite that he was their friend, it was the reality of things."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_photography

Here is a rare image of Petersburg, Virginia. Dead Fed. Soldier. It was taken in 1865 by Roche, Thomas C., d. 1895.

"He punched me hard, straight in the face, so I bit his finger off."

2009-09-03T21:33:00.001-04:00

65-year-old man's finger was bitten off at a health care rally Wednesday night in Thousand Oaks, California. KTLA reports that the man was part of an anti-reform crowd:
About 100 protesters sponsored by MoveOn.org were having a rally supporting health care reform. A group of anti-health care reform protesters formed across the street.

A witness from the scene says a man was walking through the anti-reform group to get to the pro-reform side when he got into an altercation with the 65-year-old, who opposes health care reform.

The injured anti-reform man walked to Los Robles hospital to have the finger reattached.

He had Medicare.

A blogger who witnessed the fight from the pro-reform side says that the finger-biter was provoked:
The man in the orange shirt hit the pro-reform guy (I'm going to call him PR Guy just to keep the players straight). Hard. ... He punched him in the face, knocked him to the ground and into that thruway. ... He got up, tried to get back up on the curb, but Orange Shirt guy was in his face. Finger in his face, PR Guy standing, steps up to the curb, and there's a scuffle. Orange shirt seemed to have PR Guy in a hold, but again, I was across the street, so won't state that as absolute fact. Next thing I see is PR Guy's hat being tossed into the street, both yelling at one another, then Orange shirt walks away, PR Guy picks up hat and crosses to our side.

When he gets to our side, he tells a story in one sentence: "He punched me hard, straight in the face, so I bit his finger off."

MoveOn.org released a statement in response:
"Yesterday, MoveOn held over 350 peaceful candlelight vigils nationwide, in which tens of thousands of people participated in, to call for immediate action on health care reform including a strong public option.

"We have seen press reports that indicate at one event in Southern California a regrettable act of violence happened. While we do not have any more facts about what happened then what we saw in press accounts, MoveOn condemns violence in all forms. We have seen passions run high on both sides all summer in the health care debate, and we strongly believe that this nation deserves an honest, peaceful and respectful debate about health care reform."

"While we don't know if either party involved was a MoveOn member, we regret any violence that may have occurred yesterday, and we support the Ventura County Sheriff's investigation into the situation. It is our firm hope that this event does not detract from the tens of thousands who were out peacefully making their voices heard for health care reform and a public option."

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America has fallen off the deep end!

The Speckled Sussex

2009-09-02T03:21:00.015-04:00

Can Lay 240 to 260 eggs a yearMedium-Large Creamy Brown Eggs per year.
Will Lay in Winter
Single Comb
Can Be Broody / Good Mother
Large Fowl
Hen Weight: Aprox 7 Pounds
Friendly, Make good Pets Adapts well to Confinement

History

The Sussex originated in the county of Sussex, England. They were prized table birds more than 100 years ago. The original colours were brown, red and speckled. I have only seen the speckled for sale in the USA. Bred to be a dual purpose bird, it is very productive choice for small farms and homesteads. The hen will lay around 260 large eggs that are cream to light brown in colour. The Sussex is one of the oldest breeds from England that are still in existence today.

Behavior

The Sussex chicken is an alert but docile breed that can adapt to any surrounding easily. They are good foragers. Whilst they are quite happy to be free range, they will also be fine if kept in a confined space. They can occasionally but not very often go broody. The speckled is the most likely of the breed to do this.

Varieties
The colors found in Sussex chickens are brown buff, light red, speckled, silver and white. The Sussex chicken whatever its color should be graceful. The eyes are red in the darker varieties but are orange in the lighter ones. They have a medium sized single comb. The earlobes are red and the legs and skin are white in every variety. The brown and red varieties are rare now with the other colors being quite common.

The Speckled Sussex was most famous in England as a table fowl with pinkish white skin and long, deep body ideal for fattening. It is of medium size, in the heavy breed class, a layer of light brown or tinted eggs, and the hens will set. Its plumage color is a delight to the eye being of rich mahogany base color with individual feathers ending in a white tip separated from the rest of the feathers by a black bar. Baby chicks vary greatly in color from a creamy buff to dark chestnut and some also have alternate dark and light stripes lengthwise on the back. This variety combines beauty with utility, and is very nice to raise for showing. These birds are very friendly and handle winters in the northeast very well. I just love them. I have raised these now for 20 years. The one dark hen in the back on the left in this photo is a barred rock. The other birds are all Speckled Sussex. Note the comb on that handsome cock!

Happy Chickens

2009-09-02T03:08:00.002-04:00

I think every family should have five hens or more running in the yard! Chickens love their lives free ranging on family farms under the kindly watch of good people.

Chicks Being Ground Up Alive Video

2009-09-02T02:33:00.009-04:00

(AP) WASHINGTON — An undercover video shot by an animal rights group at an Iowa egg hatchery shows workers discarding unwanted chicks by sending them alive into a grinder, and other chicks falling through a sorting machine to die on the factory floor.

Chicago-based Mercy for Animals said it shot the video at Hy-Line North America's hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, over a two-week period in May and June. The video was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

Hy-Line said in a statement it has started an investigation "of the entire situation," adding that it would have helped their investigation "had we been aware of the potential violation immediately after it occurred."

The video, shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy for Animals employee who got a job at the plant, shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips cards.

These chicks, which a narrator says are males, are then shown being dropped alive into a grinding machine.

In other parts of the video, a chick is shown dying on the factory floor amid a heap of egg shells after falling through a sorting machine. Another chick, also still alive, is seen lying on the floor after getting scalded by a wash cycle, according to the video narrator.

Hy-Line said the video "appears to show an inappropriate action and violation of our animal welfare policies," referring to chicks on the factory floor.

But the company also noted that "instantaneous euthanasia" – a reference to killing of male chicks by the grinder – is a standard practice supported by the animal veterinary and scientific community.

According to Mercy for Animals, male chicks are of no use to the industry because they can't lay eggs and don't grow large or quickly enough to be raised profitably for meat. That results in the killing of 200 million male chicks a year.

The United Egg Producers, a trade group for U.S. egg farmers, confirmed that figure and the practice behind it.

"There is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens," said the group's spokesman, Mitch Head. "If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we're happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need."

Using a grinder, Head said, "is the most instantaneous way to euthanize chicks."

Hy-Line says on its Web site that its Iowa facility produces 33.4 million chicks. Based on that figure, Mercy for Animals estimates a similar number of male chicks are killed at the facility each year. Hy-Line did not comment on that estimate.

Mercy for Animals says it will call on the nation's 50 largest grocery chains to include labels on their eggs that say, "Warning: Male chicks are ground-up alive by the egg industry."

Head called that proposal "almost a joke," saying the group had no credible authority, and had questionable motives. "This is a group which espouses no egg consumption by anyone – so that is clearly their motive." The video does in fact end with a call for people to adopt a vegan diet, which eliminates all animal products – meat, eggs or dairy.

Nathan Runkle, executive director of Mercy for Animals, said most people would be shocked to learn that 200 million chicks are killed a year.

"Is this justifiable just for cheap eggs?" he said.

As to more humane alternatives to disposing of male chicks, Runkle said the whole system is inherently flawed.

"The entire industrial hatchery system subjects these birds to stress, fear and pain from the first day," he said.

___

On the Web:

Mercy for Animals video: http://www.mercyforanimals.org/hatchery

Hy-Line International: http://www.hyline.com/

WARNING THIS IS HARD TO WATCH BUT PLEASE DO!

My hens are royalty to me and enjoy a wonderful life and they don't come from a commercial hatchery like this. I think every family should have five hens or more running in the yard! Chickens love their lives free ranging on family farms under the kindly watch of good people. Vegans may want to ban all egg production but that is no answer. I am a better person for having chickens and my chickens love thier lives here. None are debeaked and none are commercial breeds.

Some of my chickens

Swine Flu

2009-09-02T01:27:00.001-04:00

This is older and there have been some people die since this was made but watch this. It's right on the money!

LOCAL HEROES: NEW ZEALAND SCHOOL GIRLS BLOW FOOD CORP'S COVER

2009-08-31T23:22:00.002-04:00

Guardian - Two New Zealand schoolgirls humbled one of the world's biggest food and drugs companies after their school science experiment found that their ready-to-drink Ribena contained almost no trace of vitamin C. Students Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo tested the blackcurrant cordial against rival brands to test their hypothesis that cheaper brands were less healthy. Instead, their tests found that the Ribena contained a tiny amount of vitamin C, while another brand's orange juice drink contained almost four times more. . . GSK is in court in Auckland today facing 15 charges relating to misleading advertising, risking fines of up to L1.1m. In Australia, GSK has admitted that its claims about Ribena may have misled consumers.

Cellphones Cause Brain Tumors, Higher Risk In Children, Report Says

2009-08-31T22:46:00.001-04:00

A new report, "Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone," was released today by a collaborative of international EMF activists. Groups affiliated with the report include Powerwatch and the Radiation Research Trust in the U.K., and in the U.S., EMR Policy Institute, ElectromagenticHealth.org and The Peoples Initiative Foundation. Download the report.

The exposé discusses research on cellphones and brain tumors and concludes:

- There is a risk of brain tumors from cellphone use;
- Telecom funded studies underestimate the risk of brain tumors, and;
- Children have larger risks than adults for brain tumors.

This report, sent to government leaders and media today, details eleven design flaws of the 13-country, Telecom-funded Interphone study. The Interphone study, begun in 1999, was intended to determine the risks of brain tumors, but its full publication has been held up for years. Components of this study published to date reveal what the authors call a 'systemic-skew', greatly underestimating brain tumor risk.

The design flaws include categorizing subjects who used portable phones (which emit the same microwave radiation as cellphones,) as 'unexposed'; exclusion of many types of brain tumors; exclusion of people who had died, or were too ill to be interviewed, as a consequence of their brain tumor; and exclusion of children and young adults, who are more vulnerable.

Lloyd Morgan, lead author and member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society says, "Exposure to cellphone radiation is the largest human health experiment ever undertaken, without informed consent, and has some 4 billion participants enrolled. Science has shown increased risk of brain tumors from use of cellphones, as well as increased risk of eye cancer, salivary gland tumors, testicular cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and leukemia. The public must be informed."

International scientists endorsing "Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern" include Ronald B. Herberman, MD, Director Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute; David Carpenter, MD, Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, University at Albany; Martin Blank, PhD, Associate Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University; Professor Yury Grigoriev, Chairman of Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, and many others.

Source
Radiation Research Trust

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/161960.php

Sixty percent of adults can't drink milk

2009-08-30T12:45:00.005-04:00

8/29/2009 7:46 PM

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO --

Got milk? If you do, take a moment to ponder the true oddness of being able to drink milk after you're a baby.

No other species but humans can. And most humans can't either.

The long lists of food allergies some people claim to have can make it seem as if they're just finicky eaters trying to rationalize likes and dislikes. Not so. Eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish soy and gluten all can wreak havoc on the immune system of allergic individuals, even causing a deadly reaction called anaphylaxis.

But those allergic reactions are relatively rare, affecting an estimated 4% of adults.

Milk's different.

First off, it's not actually an allergy in that there's not an immune response.

People who are lactose intolerant can't digest the main sugar lactose found in milk. In normal humans, the enzyme that does so lactase stops being produced when the person is between two and five years old. The undigested sugars end up in the colon, where they begin to ferment, producing gas that can cause cramping, bloating, nausea, flatulence and diarrhea.

If you're American or European it's hard to realize this, but being able to digest milk as an adult is one weird genetic adaptation.

It's not normal. Somewhat less than 40% of people in the world retain the ability to digest lactose after childhood. The numbers are often given as close to 0% of Native Americans, 5% of Asians, 25% of African and Caribbean peoples, 50% of Mediterranean peoples and 90% of northern Europeans. Sweden has one of the world's highest percentages of lactase tolerant people.

Being able to digest milk is so strange that scientists say we shouldn't really call lactose intolerance a disease, because that presumes it's abnormal. Instead, they call it lactase persistence, indicating what's really weird is the ability to continue to drink milk.

There's been a lot of research over the past decade looking at the genetic mutation that allows this subset of humanity to stay milk drinkers into adulthood.

A long-held theory was that the mutation showed up first in Northern Europe, where people got less vitamin D from the sun and therefore did better if they could also get the crucial hormone (it's not really a vitamin at all) from milk.

But now a group at University College London has shown that the mutation actually appeared about 7,500 years ago in dairy farmers who lived in a region between the central Balkans and central Europe, in what was known as the Funnel Beaker culture.

The paper was published this week in PLoS Computational Biology.

The researchers used a computer to model the spread of lactase persistence, dairy farming, other food gathering practices and genes in Europe.

Today, the highest proportion of people with lactase persistence live in Northwest Europe, especially the Netherlands, Ireland and Scandinavia. But the computer model suggests that dairy farmers carrying this gene variant probably originated in central Europe and then spread more widely and rapidly than non-dairying groups.

Author Mark Thomas of University College London's dept of Genetics, Evolution and Environment says: "In Europe, a single genetic change...is strongly associated with lactase persistence and appears to have given people with it a big survival advantage."

The European mutation is different from several lactase persistence genes associated with small populations of African peoples who historically have been cattle herders.

Researchers at the University of Maryland identified one such mutation among Nilo-Saharan-speaking peoples in Kenya and Tanzania. That mutation seems to have arisen between 2,700 to 6,800 years ago. Two other mutations have been found among the Beja people of northeastern Sudan and tribes of the same language family in northern Kenya.

There's been a lot of research over the past decade looking at the genetic mutation that allows this subset of humanity to stay milk drinkers into adulthood.

A long-held theory was that the mutation showed up first in Northern Europe, where people got less vitamin D from the sun and therefore did better if they could also get the crucial hormone (it's not really a vitamin at all) from milk.

But now a group at University College London has shown that the mutation actually appeared about 7,500 years ago in dairy farmers who lived in a region between the central Balkans and central Europe, in what was known as the Funnel Beaker culture.

The paper was published this week in PLoS Computational Biology.

The researchers used a computer to model the spread of lactase persistence, dairy farming, other food gathering practices and genes in Europe.

Today, the highest proportion of people with lactase persistence live in Northwest Europe, especially the Netherlands, Ireland and Scandinavia. But the computer model suggests that dairy farmers carrying this gene variant probably originated in central Europe and then spread more widely and rapidly than non-dairying groups.

Author Mark Thomas of University College London's dept of Genetics, Evolution and Environment says: "In Europe, a single genetic change...is strongly associated with lactase persistence and appears to have given people with it a big survival advantage."

The European mutation is different from several lactase persistence genes associated with small populations of African peoples who historically have been cattle herders.

Researchers at the University of Maryland identified one such mutation among Nilo-Saharan-speaking peoples in Kenya and Tanzania. That mutation seems to have arisen between 2,700 to 6,800 years ago. Two other mutations have been found among the Beja people of northeastern Sudan and tribes of the same language family in northern Kenya.

Haflinger Horses always a Hit!

2009-08-29T23:33:00.010-04:00

he Haflinger, also known as the Avelignese, is a breed of horse developed in Austria and northern Italy during the late 1800s. There are several theories as to this breed's origin, but its current conformation and appearance are the result of infusions of Arabian and various European breeds' blood into the original native Tyrolean ponies. Haflinger horses are relatively small, are always chestnut in color, and have distinctive gaits described as energetic but smooth. The breed is well-muscled, but with an elegant appearance. Haflingers have many uses, including light draft and harness work as well as various under-saddle disciplines such as endurance riding, dressage, equestrian vaulting and therapeutic riding programs. The World Haflinger Federation (WHF) is the international governing body that controls breed standards for the Haflinger.

I took this photo in 2005 of one of the Queen's own Haflingers near Balmoral Castle on the estate in the highlands of Scotland. She has Fell ponies, Highland ponies and Haflingers together as seen below in the second photo I took at Balmoral.

This was taken at the Crawford County Fair in Western PA, Aug. 23, 2009

The Haflinger is an old breed of small horse that originated in the mountains of the Austrian Tyrol. The name comes from the village of Hafling, part of Austria prior to the end of World War I, but now, located in Italy. The beginning of today's Haflinger can be traced to the year 1874 and the birth of the stallion, "249 Folie," out of a refined, native Tyrolean mare and sired by the half-Arab stallion, "133 El' Bedavi XXII." All purebred Haflingers trace their lineage to this stallion.

The Haflinger came to North America in 1958. Tempel Smith of Tempel Farms, Wadsworth, Illinois, imported them from Austria to begin a breeding program along with his imported Lippizzan horses. Others soon began importing Haflingers, and today there are a number of importers and breeders throughout the United States and Canada. While Haflingers are imported from Germany, Holland, England, and Italy, most continue to come from Austria.

I took this photo last week of a lovely Haflinger driving at the Crawford County Fair in Western PA, Aug. 23, 2009

Iraqi journalist who hurled shoe at Bush gets early release for good behaviour

2009-08-29T21:32:00.001-04:00

Iraqi journalist who hurled shoe at Bush gets early release for good behaviour

By Mail On Sunday Reporter
Last updated at 1:22 AM on 30th August 2009

Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi, who became a star in the Arab world when he hurled his shoes at visiting US President George W. Bush and called him a dog

The Iraqi journalist jailed after hurling his shoes at former President George W. Bush, will be released next month after his sentence was reduced for good behaviour.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi’s act during Bush’s last visit to Iraq as President turned the 30-year-old reporter into a folk hero across the Arab world, amid growing anger at the 2003 invasion.

He has been in custody since the outburst on December 14 last year during a Bush news conference.

The President was forced to duck for cover as the journalist shouted in Arabic:

‘This is your farewell kiss, you dog!

This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.’

His lawyer, Karim al-Shujairi, said: ‘His release will be a victory for the free and honourable Iraqi media.’