Changing Places

Caroly Van Duyn, Homeless Woman

What Athena says.

First Draft

There is some kind of twisted expectation we have now, that everybody who needs help deserves their fate in some way. That misfortune is beneficial, even, character-building. There are people who’ll talk about the lessons of poverty, the proud “I didn’t need a handout, and I’m just fine,” the kinds of things you never hear from anybody until after they’re not poor anymore. It’s easy to make something a pretty story when you’ve got some distance, money in the bank, a canapé in your hand.

I think it’s a defense mechanism, the thought that the homeless, the hopeless, the poor, are that way because they want to be. Because if it’s not about making choices, well, then it could happen to people who do everything right, who have jobs and insurance and a home and a car and are doing just fine. If it’s about people “wanting” to be homeless (which, can I just say, has never been the dream of any child growing up that I’ve ever known) then we don’t have to be scared, because we don’t want to be homeless, and the universe isn’t that random, and it’s going to be fine. A cascade of circumstances — mental illness, economic downturn, addiction, divorce, sickness, death — that leads to you being on the street talking to yourself and scruffing up the park for the suburbanites couldn’t ever, ever happen to you. Blaming the victim is a time-honored way of making ourselves feel safer.

And what zenyenta says.

Another city addresses its problem with homelessness. In Orlando, you now need a special permit to serve meals to large groups of people in public places. And charitable organizations that feed the homeless won’t be among those to whom the permits are issued. This has the makings of a trend and it seems to be catching on fast.

You know what’s funny? Not funny in a ha-ha way. More like funny in a grotesque way. Conservatives argued against welfare and all the things that might help to keep these people housed for like thirty years. They argued that it was fine to help people in need and sure, everyone should lend a hand to those less fortunate, but we shouldn’t be forced. It should be voluntary, unlike funds to, oh, wage elective wars, for instance. But, so say the small government conservatives, feeding the hungry should be the job of private charities, not the government. As it turns out, what they meant to say was that charities could feed the hungry and homeless, but only if they could do it somewhere that they don’t…you know…show.

I think this is a huge problem with America today. We are so separated from each other as a society, with our gated communities and squeaky clean suburbs. People don’t see the homeless as one step removed from themselves. I have a mentally disabled sister and nephew. The nephew lived with my mother until she passed away two years ago, and has had a huge adjustment to living on his own. He’s been kicked out of several apartments now, and last I heard from him, was staying with a friend. He is one step away from homelessness and has spent a couple nights on the streets.

But everyone wants to think these things can’t happen to them. They think the homeless shoulld just get a job, or something. My nephew can’t hold a job, he lives on a limited income from his trust and social security.

It doesn’t take much to end up homeless. Lose a job, get sick, become mentally disabled, lack insurance, and there you are. A lot more kids than you think are growing up homeless in this country, through no fault of their own. The attitude that we are not responsible for these people, that we don’t need to help them, is bad enough. But to tell others they can’t help them, can’t provide them food?

That’s just heartless and cruel.

Sure, it’s nice to have parks to enjoy without the homeless there to distract you from your pleasure. But it’s nicer to live in a society where you can have your kids see someone feeding those homeless people and say, “See, honey? It’s good to care for other people.”

Unless you really want your kids to be as selfish as you are.

Let’s declare victory and start talking - Haaretz - Israel News

When there is fighting, guerrilla organizations want the entire population to be harmed. When everyone is a victim, the hatred will be directed at the enemy more forcefully. That is why bombing residential neighborhoods, power plants, bridges and highways is an act of folly, which plays into Hezbollah’s hands and serves its strategic goals: An attack on the overall fabric of life creates a common fate for the fighters and those standing on the sidelines. At the same time, the greater the population’s suffering, the greater its alienation from the formal ruling institutions - the government, the parliament and the various security forces that are powerless to save them.

It is an illusion to hope that the 700,000 Lebanese refugees will direct their fury at their government, or that the population that still remains in place will evict the Hezbollah members from among it. As far as the population is concerned, responsibility for its catastrophe lies entirely with Israel, and failure to cooperate with whoever fights against Israel would be considered national treason. It was foolish to assume that the Lebanese political elite would dare to confront Hezbollah and use force against it. And anyway, who was even capable of using force? The Lebanese Army, whose bases were bombed as well?

Because it’s just been one of those weeks.

This is what “precision guided missles” get you.

Somehow, I really don’t think the Israelis are making any new friends in their neighborhood. They need to learn to play well with others.

But then, our administration needs to go back to kindergarten too.

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Happiness is always a delusion

“Anybody in this culture who watches the news and can be happy - there’s something wrong with them.”

“The cultural demand now is be happy, or enjoy yourself, or succeed. You have to sacrifice your unhappiness and your critique of the values you’re supposed to be taking on. You’re supposed to go: ‘Happiness! Yes, that’s all I want!’ But what about justice or reality or ruthlessness - or whatever my preferred thing is?”

“It’s very simple. The reason that there are so many depressed people is that life is so depressing for many people. It’s not a mystery. There is a presumption that there is a weakness in the people who are depressed or a weakness on the part of scientific research and one of these two groups has got to pull its socks up. Scientists have got to get better and find us a drug and the depressed have got to stop malingering. The ethos is: ‘Actually life is wonderful, great - get out there!’ That’s totally unrealistic and it’s bound to fail.”

…

“Your psycho- analyst is one of the last people to whom you’re allowed to show that you’re unhappy. If in the public world you’re supposed to be very smiley and having lots of sex and being very successful, at least with your analyst you can articulate your miseries, woes, doubts. It becomes a place where you can admit to and elaborate your doubts and vulnerabilities, which is rare in culture that encourages invulnerability.”

I started journaling again today after a break of several months. I’ve felt mostly uninspired the last few months, and done no art at all. I’ve also felt truly lousy the last couple of days, and came home early from Japanese class last night, completely wiped out. Lately it’s just been day after day of hot, oppressively humid weather. Today it’s only 90, but still quite humid. The plants outside are wiliting in the heat, even the tropicals. My last line in the journal entry today was a comparison to the plants and their strength even in this weather, “I feel wilted, but alive.”

Perhaps in the heat of this summer, beginning to feel the effects of global warming and with just a hint of what future years may hold for us, this is the best we can hope for, to be wilted but alive. Maybe we can begin to make the changes we need to make, moving to more sustainable ways of living and alternative energy to lessen our impact on the world. The war over oil and the lands of the Middle East is the last war, and we are caught up in fighting it instead of planning for the future, a future that must be built on alternatives. We need smaller cars and houses, smarter ways of living that don’t require hour long commutes, better public transportation so we aren’t all out driving our own vehicles, and less need for that transpotation with houses built near stores and urban centers, instead of bedroom communities that require so much driving.

We are wilted, but alive, and we have to focus on our roots. The branches and leaves are pretty, but not necessary. We have to get back to what sustains us, and what is sustainable.

Fresh from the garden and about to be eaten….

preparing for the devouring…

Yum….

Solace, Pino Daeni

Seeking Solace

There is no comfort tonight
No friend willing to spend the long night
Talking things over,
Seeing what can be made right
And what is gone forever.

“I thought we were beyond that”, he says -

And yet a part of me
Will never be beyond that,
Entrapped in a time when Love
Justified so many hurts.

Tonight the memories linger
And I long for someone
Who understands it all
Knowing the depths of those feelings
And how it all unraveled.

I know he’ll never get it
How deep this river runs,
How far it flows from the quiet springs
To the roaring rapids,
And finally to the sea’s edge.

Until at last we join that ocean again -

And what is the difference then
between one drop of water and another?
And yet they all insisted
That only two drops could ever join together…

Please go read the entire post:

Informed Comment

I am a Middle East expert. I lived in the area for nearly 10 years, speak several of its languages, and have given my life to understanding its history and culture. Since September 11, 2001, my country has been profoundly involved with the region, both negatively and positively. Powerful economic and political forces in American society would like to monopolize the discourse on these matters for the sake of their own interests, which may not be the same as the interests of those of us in the general public. Obviously, such forces will attempt to smear and marginalize those with whom they disagree. Before the Internet, they might have had an easier time of it. Being in the middle of all this, trying to help mutual understanding, is what I trained for. Should I have been silent, published only years later in stolid academic prose in journals locked up in a handful of research libraries? And this for the sake of a “career”? The role of the public intellectual is my career. And it is a hell of a career. I recommend it.

Juan R.I. Cole is a professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His blog can be found at http://juancole.com

Bravo, Mr. Cole. And thank you for all the writing you do, and giving me and so many others a better understanding of the issues in the Middle East. In an age where we are all so misled by our government’s administration, our media, and the corporate interests, those willing to speak out as you do are such a breath of fresh air. All I can do is point others towards those like you who are willing to tell the truth and support you and others who are willing to do so. I seriously hope that somewhow, that makes a difference.

The blog has been down all day due to a hosting outage. California power is not very reliable during stage 2 alerts. Sigh.

Available at offworlddesigns.

New shirt acquired at ComiCon…

OK, you’ll probably really need to be a geek to get this one, or a Discworld fan. BUt then, those terms are redundant. Anyway, I saw this pile of turtles at ComiCon, and had to take a picture of them.

My new baby from ComiCon - isn’t he the cutest lil’ thing?!

Valentino Cthulhu…

Update:

Well, that was weird. I guess posting Cthulhu pictures messes up blogs. That figures. Anyway, we’ll try this again and see if it works a bit better…

Yup, seems all better now. I think the database was just messed up last night. Or, it was just the strange power of Cthulhu in action.

JAI LU - COMPLETENESS

Hold to your ethics and principles
Stand strongly for what you hold true.
Believe in your true self without compromises.
Trust in the power within yourself and use it.
Act in concert with your dreams and visions.
Cleanse your heart and soul as nature renews itself.
Be honest with yourself and you will be aligned with what is right,
in harmony with the natural laws of the universe.

– Tao Mentoring

It’s strange to me that sometimes when I’ve been accused of a lack of integrity, I was really being most true to myself and to those around me. What others see as integrity may not be what is truly integrity in ourselves. Real integrity is about being true to your own principles, not to those other people or society may impose upon you.

Our country is now officially The Wrong Place to do Scientific Research. What this will cost us in terms of future scientific advancement, patents, monetarily and in lives lost due to to research not getting done is incalculable. But no, Bush has to pander to an ignorant base that doesn’t care if people die, as long as they aren’t incredibly valuable embryos at the time. Of course, Bush does his photo op with people who had babies from in vitro fertilization. I guess all the embryos destroyed in the process of creating those lives don’t count for anything, either. The hypocrisy and ignorance of these people is simply stunning.

But hey, a few stem cells will be “saved”.

I wonder if stem cells rate higher than Israeli lives, even.

What A moronic country we live in. Dr. Charles says it better than I can, though.

The Examining Room of Dr. Charles

Taking something that is living and making it dead. Not allowed. Not allowed for the purpose of research. It is okay to make something dead for the purpose of justice (i.e. the death penalty). It is okay to make something dead for the purpose of geopolitical democracy building in middle eastern countries with oil (i.e. Iraq). I could go on, you get the idea…

But if it’s for research then that’s bad. Extra embryos created in the process of in vitro fertilization should never be discarded or used in medical research that might one day help cure incurable diseases, but rather all of them should be implanted in the mother, even if that means she’ll be delivering 14 children and will hemorrhage. It’s getting slippery now… I suppose all the yeast fermenting in the research labs of the world, busily cranking out recombinant vaccines and medicines, should be immediately liberated. Right now they’re being murdered after each experiment. Don’t even get me started about the yeast genocide that’s happening at Anheuser-Busch! The stem cell doctrine might also slip down that slippery slope towards antibiotics. Penicillin will be out of the question and banned. It takes living things and make them dead. Cancer treatments kill living cancer cells. They are to be outlawed soon. The Grim Reaper is no longer allowed. Death itself has been outlawed. We will simply chose to live forever. When we sneeze, millions of living nasal mucosa cells are expelled along with our snot. Save this snot. It is immoral to let these cells die. Using stem cell technology, it is almost possible now to reverse these cells back into stem cells, which can then be implanted into wombs to grow more human life. Place each used tissue in a petri dish, and store carefully in your freezer.

A person with true self-acceptance is “a person with full awareness of self in body, mind and spirit. This person’s center of consciousness (Hsing - “Heart Flower”) is in full bloom, ready to receive power from above, openly relating to and being reflected by others.”

It may seem clever to know and accept others
Yet accepting oneself is the way to Wisdom.
It may feel powerful to overcome others
Yet disciplining oneself is true Strength.
It may be noble to honor others
Yet respecting oneself is deep self-esteem.

– Tao Mentoring

It has taken me a long time to fully learn to accept myself as I am. And it is a process I’ve repeated many times over. Each time I come to believe I finally accept myself, I find something I still want to improve. Meeting this balance between accepting myself as I am and knowing that I have even more room to grow is always interesting. It means not being complacent with where I am at, but always knowing there is more to know, more to see and feel and do, and that is ok.

But I think the key is really respect. Self-respect is not simply about accepting who you are right at this moment, but also respecting yourself enough to continually challenge yourself. Not allowing yourself to become complacent, thinking you are already the best you can be, but knowing there is more you can do and always being ready to learn and grow and change, truly opening yourself to the possibilities of life that are all around you.

Having an open mind, an open heart, and an open spirit is true self-acceptance, knowing that at your center you cannot be shaken by the differences around you, since they are all a part of you anyway. Because accepting yourself, with your flaws and imperfections, means you can also accept the flaws and imperfections in the world around you, in the people around you. It leads you to not demand perfection of others because you know that you cannot achieve it yourself. This is not believing that things cannot be improved, but knowing that to improve things requires first acceptance of how things actually are. Denying those things, pretending they don’t exist, only means it is that much more difficult to overcome challenges.

We cannot lead others, we cannot teach others, until we admit that we ourselves do not have all the answers. A good teacher or mentor learns as much from their student as they are able to teach. It is the process that is important.

Hey, indeedy, as Atrios would say. Stirling nails it again.

The power of the network, and of all of us within that network, is only beginning.

The Revolution of the Sphere | TPMCafe

The threat that the blogsphere makes is that it is the small visible top of a great iceberg – an iceberg populated by a different kind of person, one whose faith is not in Numbers, or even numbers, but in the network itself, and the ability of the network to adapt, create nodes of activity, forge connections of economic, political and intimate dimensions and to run the world.

This is the important revolution – from a system where a particular body of texts is deconstructed into maxims which are then repeated endlessly, and from the body of people exposed to them, the ones who are best indoctrinated are given the task of sledge hammering the world into the box that the book as they read it creates – to a system where a web is woven around the world – and not merely the changing of committee chairmen in the House of Representatives – that is in the offing. This was the important lesson of the yearly Kos – the people on the internet are now the people of the internet, and they are capable, far more capable, than the system which is now imposed on the nation. As the tide turns against Bush and his isms, it will be the growing belief that the internet can not only run our software, but be the basis for running our body politic, which is the real, and deeper revolution of the sphere.

So, little Arab children, even if Canadian citizens, don’t matter as much as Israeli citizens?

Remember, there are 25,000 American citizens in Lebanon too. I guess they don’t count, either.

And we wonder why they hate us. Really?

I hate Bolton too now, for that matter. Fucker.

Lebanon civilian deaths morally not same as terror victims — Bolton - Yahoo! News

US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in
Israel from “malicious terrorist acts”.

Asked to comment on the deaths in an Israeli air strike of eight Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon Sunday, he said: “it is a matter of great concern to us …that these civilian deaths are occurring. It’s a tragedy.”

“I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts,” he added, while defending as “self-defense” Israel’s military action, which has had “the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths”.

The eight dead Canadians were a Lebanese-Canadian couple, their four children, his mother and an uncle, said relatives in Montreal.

The Montreal pharmacist and his family had arrived in Lebanon 10 days earlier for a vacation in his parents’ home village and to introduce his children to relatives, they said.

Three of his Lebanese relatives died too, a family member told AFP.

“It’s simply not the same thing to say that it’s the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense,” Bolton noted.

Tao gives life to all things
Te fosters them, makes them grow, develops them
Gives them shelter — a place to dwell in peace
Nourishes them and protects them

Tao gives life without possession
Te acts without claiming credit
Guides without imposition
This is the Mystic Virtue.

– Tao Mentoring

The Tao virtues view people in a positive light, seeing all of us as capable of just about anything. It is time to recapture the essence of this vision. In Chinese, humaneness or humanized thinking actually means reasonable, truthful, virtuous thinking in accordance with human nature. Anything that departs from such nature cannot be regarded as truth. To be unreasonable is to be self-righteous, while to be reasonable or human is to entertain the possibility of not being right.

As I watch the world these last few days, and follow conversations, there is a lot of talk about who is right, who is wrong, who started the troubles, who should act to end them.

Perhaps the place to start is to let in that bit of doubt - maybe we are not right. Maybe it is not right to let thousands languish in jails, without trials, including women and children. Maybe it is not right to act by force to try to take what we want. Maybe it is not right to respond to that force with force in kind. Perhaps it is better to let in some doubt, to take the step back, to see where our own actions are going against the true forces of human nature. If we lash out at others, won’t they just lash back at us? If we force our will on others, aren’t they naturally going to resent it?

Tao gives us all life, Te sustains us. If we stop accepting the Te force in our lives, making our will and our needs more important than anyone else’s, than we are cutting off the sustaining forces of life, and our lives will become more difficult, more of a struggle. If we can accept that our needs will be fulfilled, and work to fulfill those of others, than more of what we need will come into our lives naturally.

Be willing to say, “I changed my mind,” or “I was wrong”, and open the door to another’s point of view.

With an attitude of unassuming modesty
you offer no danger or threat to those around you
Sincere modesty
invites loyal alignment with others.

Do not boast and glare overtly.
Keep the jade and treasures
subtly reserved within the bosom.
A posture of humble heart and
genuine respect for the wise
will bring blessings from all directions.

– Tao Mentoring