Changing Places

Just the perfect example of Republican hypocrisy…..

How can the party that impeached Clinton for a blow job even let him run? It just proves that everything they say about “morality” is a political attack, and they don’t follow a word of it.

Rudy made the NYPD walk Nathan’s dog? Good grief:

The Shag Fund not only paid for the 11 tryst visits to Hamptons.

– It paid for hotel and other expenses for mayoral aides — in addition to the security detail — who also went with the mayor to the Hamptons on the tryst weekends.

– Nathan’s NYPD-chauffeured trips (without Rudy) to visit her parents in Pennsylvania, 130 miles outside the city.

– NYPD detectives and city-owned undercover Dodge to drive Nathan around the city.

– NYPD detectives and city-owned undercover Dodge to drive Nathan’s friends and family around the city even when she wasn’t in the car.

– NYPD security detail for Nathan, personally approved by Bernard Kerik.

– NYPD cops to walk Nathan’s dog.

Then again, at least the NYPD didn’t strap the dog on top of a car like Mitt Romney.

Of course, all the Republican candidates have some of the classic Republican features, as Hunter notes:

Watching the Republican debates is proving a surreal experience. The feeling is like watching… well, a science experiment, I guess, would be the best way to put it. All of the Republicans involved seem to be devolving into crude caricatures of Republicanism, but different crude caricatures of Republicanism — something a bit more surreal than mere pandering. It is as if modern Republicanism was pushed through an ideological prism, and each of its parts scattered onto a different podium at a different part of the stage.

Romney: The CEO Republican. The multimillionaire whose interest is an America secured for the financial goals of multimillionaires. The problems of the little people are nothing: give them a little verbal bread, by appealing to a few of their baser instincts (Guantanamo good! Terrorism bad! Torture good!), and the Republican party leadership can play the public like puppets on strings.

Huckabee: The Religious Republican. The perfect embodiment of true Republican religion; sings to the majesty of a Jesus that has been painstakingly repainted in the Republicans’ own image, scrubbed of inconvenient tendencies towards compassion. Huckabee does not know if Jesus would support the death penalty. He does not know if torture is anti-Christian enough to really make a big fuss over.

Giuliani: The Crime Boss Republican. Giuliani’s primary motivation in government has always been the consolidation of his own power, the use of that power to retaliate against his enemies, and, apparently, Herculean efforts to organize his city around best satisfying his own desires and needs and genitalia.

Tancredo/Hunter: The (Hypocritical) Bigots. Nativism and racism writ large; the “Southern Strategy” recast to draw from and stoke fear, resentment and loathing not against black Americans, now protected too well for such rank hatreds to be openly expressed, but against brown Americans.

Thompson: The Vacuum-Packed Professional Republican. Chosen by name alone, not skill, and specifically picked to be well known and inoffensive with no particular record, agenda, skills, or ideas that might get in the way.

Ron Paul: The To Hell With The Rest Of You Republican. The rejector of the base premises of government itself. Paul represents the large portion of the Republican party that condemns the very notion that government should have a role in bettering the health, education, or welfare of its citizens.

While not one of the current Republican candidates are eager to utter George Bush’s name — he is, after all, badly damaged goods, since he had the misfortune to put Republican ideas into practice and be branded with the now-obvious results — there have been absolutely no attempts whatsoever to distance themselves from either those ideas or those results. On the contrary, it has just been broken up into discrete portions, every one of them seeking dominance over the others.

It is as if all the failures and corruptions of principle of George Bush has been cleaved into parts, each one of them reaching an even more extreme level in one or another of those seeking to succeed him. Would you like the religious panderer Bush, or the fiscally incompetent Bush? Would you prefer the Bush that uses the crudely drawn specter of terrorism as distraction from every issue and act, no matter how seemingly petty or unconnected? Would you like the Bush that turns all aspects of government into crap, or the Bush that uses his position as a tribal lord, meting out punishments to all those that oppose him and lucrative positions and benefits to all those that maintain their loyalty? You have a choice: each one is represented onstage.

And why should that be surprising? It is, after all, the fabric of Republicanism. These are the things that get applause, when spoken from their podiums: the crude, the insincere, the blasphemous, the hateful, even the condemnation of the tasks of government themselves. Large portions of America cheer for these things, and, surely, those portions of America need a political party too.

UPDATE: My goodness, I forgot McCain, the Warmonger Republican. In my defense, it’s only because everyone has forgotten McCain. He is still running, right, and not just as a foil to Ron Paul?

But today, it does!!!! We’re getting rain!! Yay!!!!

Of course I just had all the carpets and floors cleaned yesterday….

I guess if you want rain, you have to clean something. At least I’m not getting the carpets done today when it would take forever to dry out again. And I trusted my instincts and brought all the area rugs back in last night, even the not completely dry ones, so they aren’t out getting all wet.

Guess it’s time for California’s mudslide season…

No One Really Wants Change | The Agonist

If we know that change is constant and the only thing that you can count on is change, then why do we resist it so much? Why don’t we embrace it and look forward to its arrival in the hope of lessening its impact. I have never understood why stubbornness and blind loyalty are considered traits to be emulated. Before his reelection Mr. Bush was given positive ratings for being stubborn and not willing to change course in the midst of mounting evidence against him. So there is something in many Americans that believes that change is bad, hence the mantra, “stay the course”. Even when change is discussed or contemplated, it is only presented as piecemeal or change-lite.

We know that the wealthy are siphoning off billions of private and taxpayer dollars, we know that the war in Iraq was unnecessary and based on false premises, we know that our government and its officials are awash in special interest money and influence, we know that the war on drugs is not working, we know that our government is torturing people in our name, we know that people who were sworn to protect it are ignoring or demolishing the Constitution, we know that our country is slowing becoming a police state and we are losing our democracy, yet despite all of these things we continue to spurn change. Anyone who advocates real change is immediately marginalized, depicted as insane, or killed and another brick is added to the wall.

It is hard to believe that we were the generation of change and revolution, we had such high hopes for ourselves and the world. Now many of us hide in our gated communities or suburban enclaves content with the treadmill existence we decried our parents for. Many of us have become stuck in our ruts, living lives of quiet desperation. So we complain and we moan and groan, but we are too afraid or too cynical to change. And as we amuse ourselves with the latest gadgets, reality show, or other distraction our country continues to spiral further away from us.

If we knew back then what we know now, I wonder if we would have done things differently. I don’t know, but this is definitely not what I envisioned.

Child materialism? I would say all materialism is linked to low self esteem. It seems like some people never grow up — I’m constantly amazed that I’m supposed to be impressed by someone’s stuff.

But I didn’t get it when I was a kid, either.

Child materialism linked to self-esteem – Yahoo! News

In two studies reported in the Journal of Consumer Research, they found that materialism spikes in early adolescence and declines by the end of high school, mirroring the years children are most prone to teen angst.

Between the ages of 12 and 13 children try to compensate for low self-esteem through material goods that they think will make themselves feel better, or that they think will raise their status among their peers.

“While peers and marketing can certainly influence teens, materialism is directly connected to self-esteem,” said Professor Deborah Roedder John of the University of Minnesota,

The Heart and Soul Nebulae. © CalTech/Palomar

Constellation of The Heart – Kate Bush songs lyrics song lyric

Oooh and if you see the woman with the key
I hear she’s opening up the doors to heaven
Oh and here comes the man with the stick
He said he’d fish me out of the moon…

Spiritual Emergency: Skeleton Woman [The Life/Death/Life Nature]

She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no one any longer remembered what it was. But her father had dragged her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. There, the fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes. As she lay under the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents.

One day a fisherman came fishing, well, in truth many came to this bay once. But this fisherman had drifted far from his home place and did not know that the local fisherman stayed away, saying this inlet was haunted.

The fisherman’s hook drifted down through the water, and caught of all places, in the bones of Skeleton Woman’s rib cage. The fisherman thought, “Oh, now I’ve really got a big one! Now I really have one!” In his mind he was thinking of how many people this great fish would feed, how long it would last, how long he might be free from the chore of hunting. And as he struggled with this great weight on the end of the hook, the sea was stirred to a thrashing froth, and his kayak bucked and shook, for she who was beneath struggled to disentangle herself. And the more she struggled, the more she tangled in the line. No matter what she did, she was inexorably dragged upward, tugged up by the bones of her own ribs.

The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her bald head rise above the waves, he did not see the little coral creatures glinting in the orbs of her skull, he did not see the crustaceans on her old ivory teeth. When he turned back with his net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth….

Indeed. Those same people who rail against national health care support bailouts for poorly run companies. Socialism only seems to be a problem for them when it is benefiting those who can’t afford to pay off legislators.

No wonder our country is a mess.

RGE – Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor

A fortiori the same public takeover should have been done in the case of Countrywide, the poster child of reckless mortgage lending and of the current mortgage disaster. Instead, rather than kicking out a reckless CEO – whose actions are now under SEC investigation – and putting the lender under public control, Countrywide has been rewarded with $51 billion of public money that was provided in a stealth bailout operation while the current shareholders and incompetent managers are still firmly in charge of the bank.

The right approach would have been – as Martin Wolf suggested for Northern Rock – to take over the bank and put it formally under public control. Instead the US Treasury, the FHFB, the Fed and the banking regulators have been tacit and/or explicit accomplices of the stealth public bailout of most egregious example of reckless and predatory lending, the core institution at the center of a subprime and mortgage disaster that is now taking the entire US economy into a recession.

The lesson of this sad and sleazy episode is that when profits are privatized and losses are socialized we get sleaze capitalism and corporate welfare that becomes public bailout of reckless lenders. All this from a US administration that hypocritically praises every other day the virtues of private markets capitalism. For all of us who do truly believe in free market economies where a variety of public goods are provided by governments and the financial sector is properly supervised and regulate this is not a capitalist system but rather socialism for the rich.

Sometimes women become tired and cranky while waiting for their mates to understand them. The women say, ” Why can´t they know what I think, what I want ? ” Women become fatigued with asking this question. Yet, there is a solution to this dilemma, a solution which is efficient and effective.

If a woman wants a mate who is responsive this way, she will reveal to him the secret of woman´s duality. She will tell him about the interior woman, that one who, added to herself, makes two. She does this by teaching her mate to ask her two deceptively simple questions that will make her feel seen, heard, and known.

The first question is this: What do you want? Almost everyone asks some version of this, just as a matter of course. But there is yet one more essential question, and that is: ” What does your deeper self desire?”

If one overlooks a woman’s dual nature and takes a woman at face value, one is in for a big surprise, for when the woman’s wildish nature rises from her depths and begins to assert itself, she often has interests, feelings, and ideas which are quite different from those she expressed before.

To securely weave a relationship, a woman will also ask the same two questions of her mate. As women, we learn to poll both sides of our nature and that of others as well. From the information we receive reciprocally from both sides, we can very clearly determine what is valued most and how to respond accordingly.

To love a woman, the mate must also love her untamed nature. If she takes a mate who cannot or will not love this other side, she shall be in some way dismantled and be left to limp about unrepaired.

So men as much as women, must name their dual natures. The most valued lover, the most valuable parent, the most valued friend, the most valuable ‘wilderman,’ is the one who wishes to learn. Those who are not delighted by learning, those who cannot be enticed into new ideas or experiences, cannot develop past the roadpost they rest at now. If there is but one force which feeds the root of pain, it is the refusal to learn beyond this moment.

We know that the creature Wild Man is seeking his own Earthly Woman. Afeared or not, it is an act of deepest love to allow oneself to be stirred by the wildish soul of another. In a World where humans are so afraid of ‘losing’, there are far too many protective walls against being dissolved in the numinosity of another human soul.

The mate for the wildish woman is the one who has a soulful tenacity and endurance, one who can send his own instinctual nature to peek under the tent of a woman’s soul-life and comprehend what he sees and hears there. The good match is the man who keeps returning to try and understand, who does not let himself by deterred by the sideshows on the road.

– Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

I drink a lot. No, I don’t mean alcoholic beverages, although occasionally it is those. I mean life. I drink in life in so many ways. I absorb whatever is going on around me, whatever is going on in the world, in the minds of the people around me. When I go to a party, I am overwhelmed by all the stories going on around me, the little dramas playing out between people and within people.

I think this is the real difference between extroverts and introverts. The extrovert can put themselves out there, be the life of the party, and keep going, because they aren’t taking in anything of the people around them, they are just putting it out. For me though, the cup is filling, filling, filling all the while, and while I may be also putting myself out there, I am absorbing as well, drinking in the substance and energy of those around me as well. And I become full, I run over the top with those around me, and I need to go find my space again to be still and become empty again, so I can go back and absorb more.

And though people accuse introverts of being self-absorbed, it isn’t that we are self absorbed at all. It is that we are other-absorbed, that within a few minutes we know you, we absorb you and feel who you are. You change us, we become you. And to find ourselves again, we have to retreat and back off and take the time to recharge ourselves. To become empty. So that we can do it all again, and know more, even deeper, always deeper.

You have rabbit holes? Show them to someone who is introverted, and they’ll help you learn to crawl through them, dig out more, go deeper, find another way back to the surface.

You have lakes of meaning? We’ll absorb them. And if you are shallow, we’ll know it and get bored easily. And if you are an ocean….

Ah.

So the last few days my dreams have been full of shiny black cars. The first night I was dreaming about them, the dark man was driving and drove us into a river. But I had rolled up the windows and the car floated along until I got out easily inside some building that the river ran through.

Last night I got to drive the car, briefly, and then my husband drove it for a while. We went to a place where there was a frail young dark-haired woman, and I held her for a while before I woke up.

I guess I need to take control of the car and take care of this woman.

According to one dream interpreter:

Dreams of someone else driving your car are potent dreams. Remember, your car is your vehicle. You are meant to be the driver plotting out your course. Your car is meant to be your ticket to freedom. When someone else in in the driver’s seat it means that is symbolically the person you feel or may even wish were in charge of your life.

Look at who is in the driver’s seat. Is it a parent, a spouse, a child, a friend? How do you feel about the person driving the car? Are you happy about where they taking you? If you like the person driving the car and are happy about where you are going, this dream might point to you wishing that you handled your life like the person in the dream does. It might also be a wish for being ‘rescued’ by that person from a situation in your life that you are unhappy with.

Alternatively, if you don’t like the person driving or the course you’re on, it may feel like that person is in charge of your life, or that you feel like you’re making the same choices as someone whose life you feel is less than ideal.

Remember though, the person driving the car is a symbol. Dreaming of someone of the opposite sex driving your car can point to an animus/anima figure who you feel is in control. For women, the animus is the thinking part of the psyche, for men, the anima is usually representative of the emotions. Do you feel you are making decisions according to faulty logic or misguided emotions? This is where your feelings about the driver of the car give you the most information about the dream.

Look at dreams of cars and driving as sign posts giving you information about how you can regain control of your life and what you can do to claim your freedom and power.

Black

For alchemists, black symbolized the beginning of the process of spiritual development. Black was the color which symbolized confusion, and a feeling of despair. It might be thought of as the color of wandering in the desert, feeling like nothing good will ever happen.

But wandering in the desert allows us to give up those things we no longer need, it allows for old parts of ourselves to die off so that new life may spring up. Even the mighty oak must first spend time as an acorn lying in darkness before it can reach up toward the sky.

“Black is the color of mud, the fertile, the basic stuff into which ideas are sown. Yet black is also the color of death, the blackening of the light. And black has even a third aspect. It is also the color associated with that world between the worlds which La Loba stands upon — for black is the color of descent. Black is a promise that you will soon know something that you did not know before.” — Clarissa Pinkhold Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

Wow. You know it’s really dry in SoCal when wildfire season runs this late. Normally we would have had some rain by now. But with a La Nina year, we may not see much rain at all this winter, which would mean next year will be even worse.

Wildfire destroys homes above Malibu – Yahoo! News

A fast-moving wildfire destroyed about 20 homes and spread through the canyons and hills above Malibu on Saturday, forcing hundreds of residents to flee.

No injuries were reported.

The blaze, feeding on brush and trees and driven by the dry Santa Ana wind, began shortly before 3:30 a.m. PST near Malibu Lake on state park land and burned roughly 1,500 acres in about five hours, said Los Angeles County fire Capt. Mike Brown.

Fire officials estimated about 20 homes had been destroyed, but the exact number was not known. The cause of the fire had not been determined.

Cognac in eggnog is yummy….

It’s just a Hennessy VS, but – good stuff….

Younger son is out for the evening to an “all nighter” at the local computer gaming salon. My older son’s gamer friends are here for the evening and have consumed massive quantities of ice cream and pumpkin pie and whipped cream. There’s a big pot of turkey bones cooking down on the stove into what will be turkey and wild rice soup….

Nom nom nom!

Thought-of-the-Week: The Soul of Money

There comes a point where having more than we need becomes a burden. We are overcompensated, overstuffed, swimming in the excess, looking for satisfaction in more or different. We live in a world where the prevailing belief is in scarcity. We don’t believe we have enough time, enough energy, enough love, and we are all pretty certain we don’t have enough money. Those beliefs drive us to over-consume, over-spend, over-eat, always thinking we still need more. We also buy into the myths that there’s not enough to go around, more is definitely better and the resignation of “that’s just the way it is.” [...]

We become burdened by our excess; it clutters our thinking and our lives as we become attached to our possessions and identify who we are by what we have. In the practice of sufficiency, we experience wealth in the action of sharing, giving, allocating, distributing and nourishing the projects, people and purpose that we believe in and care about with the resources that flow to us and through us. Accumulation in moderation — saving money and buying things we need — is part of responsible approach to personal finances. But when “holdings” hold us back from using money in meaningful ways, then money becomes an end in itself and an obstacle to well being. Money is only useful when it is moving and flowing, contributed and shared, directed and invested in that which is life affirming. [...]

We can begin by turning our attention to making a conscious effort to use our money with life-affirming purpose, to nurture those people, organizations, projects and products that represent our most soulful interests. And we can stop the flow of money toward those that debilitate or demean life, or drag us down. We can be more financially generous with organizations and individuals doing good work that we want to support. Some of us may devote ourselves to public service or become advocates for socially responsible public spending on health, education, safety and government. The mindset of scarcity and the longing for “more” will begin to lose its grip when we begin to make different choices. We each have the power to arrange life to take a stand with our money and our life. Every moment of every day we can bring this consciousness to our choices about our money, our time and our talents to take a stand for what we believe in.

–Lynne Twist, from an Interview on her book, “The Soul of Money”

Or as Ephram Levi said, “Money, if you’ll pardon the expression, is like manure. It’s not worth a thing unless you spread it around encouraging young things to grow.” Our society seems to have forgotten this right now. America is stagnant because we’re piling money on the people at the top in big stinking piles, instead of spreading it around to encourage growth.

Vasalisa – a Russian story about women’s initiation.

Darwin relaxes on the new patio

“As long as I kept focused on my main goal, which is to help others and to be able to share what little knowledge I have, I felt relaxed.” –Phagyab Rinpoche.

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” — Sydney J. Harris

“Softly and kindly remind yourself, ”I cannot own anything.” It is a valuable thought to keep in mind as you struggle to improve your financial picture, worry about investments, and plan how to acquire more and more. It is a universal principle which you are part of. You must release everything when you truly awaken. Are you letting your life go by in frustration and worry over not having enough? If so, relax and remember that you only get what you have for a short period of time. When you awaken you will see the folly of being attached to anything.” — Wayne Dyer

“Relaxation means releasing all concern and tension and letting the natural order of life flow through one’s being” — Donald Curtis

Relax with your loved ones and enjoy a great Thanksgiving!!

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” — Carl Gustav Jung

“Like the sun’s rays that cause the seed to stir within its husk, love’s radiant energy penetrates the facade of the false self, calling forth resources hidden deep within us. Its warmth wakes up the life inside us, making us want to uncurl, to give birth, to grow and reach for the light. It calls on us to break out of our shell, the personality-husk surrounding the seed potential of all that we could be. The purpose of a seed husk is to protect the tender life within until the time and conditions are right for it to burst forth. Our personality structure serves a similar function. It provides a semblance of security, as a kind of compensation for the loss of our larger being. But when love’s warming rays start to wake us up, our ego-shell becomes a barrier restricting our expansion. As the germ of life swells within us, we feel our imprisonment more acutely…..The brighter love’s radiance, the darker the shadows we encounter; the more we feel life stirring within us, the more we also feel our dead spots; the more conscious we become, the more clearly we see where we remain unconscious. None of this need dishearten us. For in facing our darkness, we bring to light forgotten parts of our being. In recognizing exactly where we have been unconscious, we become more conscious. And in seeing and feeling the ways we’ve gone dead, we start to revive and kindle our desire to live more expansively.”

– John Welwood Love and Awakening : Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” — Carl Gustav Jung

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” — Carl Gustav Jung

OK, my dreams are starting to bug me, so I guess it is time to turn to Jung. Don’t know if there are any Jungians among my readers, but feel free to play along if you like.

My shrink is not a Jungian type, so it’s difficult to discuss these things with him. Anyway, this dream is from a few months back, but I find it interesting and I’ve put off posting it here for a while now:

I dreamed one morning of a dark haired, bearded man with a wolf. He gave me a map, which was actually a puzzle of some sort. I felt in the dream as if he were a man of great power. The wolf growled and chased away almost everyone else from the scene, except for three of us who were left to listen and who were given the maps. We seemed to be starting a quest to search for something, although it was not clear what we were supposed to find.

So here’s one interpretation of wolf dreams that I found:

The second category of wolf dream is quite different. In these dreams the wolf is the symbol of noble wildness, freedom from societal restraints, and elemental reliance on instincts and nature. This is the women-who-run-with-the-wolves image, and it appears in the dreams of anyone who is beginning to acknowledge the powerful and natural side of themselves. This wolf often recalls a sense of power, wisdom and life-in-the-moment. There is an almost elemental freedom that temporarily is lost to us during the socialization process; but our vivid aliveness is never truly gone. Typically when an individual begins to feel stirrings of their natural self, or a power based on aliveness rather than external achievement they may dream of a wolf that is both awesomely powerful yet strangely welcoming to them.

So, in my searching around for some meaning to this dream, I then happened across “Women Who Run with the Wolves“, which I’m currently reading. I’m finding this book an interesting introduction to a lot of what I’ve never really understood about women’s, and my own, psyche. I don’t know if this is “the map” of the dream, but it seems to be at least a piece of the puzzle.

I found this quote from the book interesting today:

Classical psychological theory tends to, by absolute omission, split the human psyche away from relationship to the land on which humans live, away from knowledge of the cultural etiologies of maliase and unrest, and also to sever psyche from the politics and policies which shape the inner and outer lives of humans — as though that outer world were not just as surreal, not just as symbol-laden, not just as impacting and imposing upon one’s soul-life as the inner din. The land, the culture, and the politics in which one lives contribute every bit as much to the individual’s psychic landscape and are as valuable to consider in these lights as one’s subjective milieu.” — Clarissa Pinkopla Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

I’m talking politics more and more with my shrink these days, who seems to think I ought to be working in some sort of political think tank. He seems amazed again and again that I see things at the “big picture” level that I do, and am able to piece so many things into that picture.

Perhaps the puzzle is what I do with all these things I observe and know, if there is any place for that beyond my musings here and on my political mailing list. Or perhaps it is meant to spur my creativity, to take me back to doing artwork again and being active in that area. or to push me further in my therapy work with Darwin and eventually raising and training service dogs. I really don’t know yet.

But doors are beginning to appear, and the keys seem to be close at hand.

More in the “well, duh!” series.

Of course women who value themselves and take care of themselves are going to be better partners in life. Although the men who are attracted to them are likely to be better partners as well. I certainly wouldn’t want to be around a man who didn’t value me as an equal partner in life.

Study: Feminists are better mates — chicagotribune.com

“If you’re a woman paired with a male feminist,” said Rudman, “you have a healthier relationship across the board”–better in terms of relationship quality, equality, stability and sexual satisfaction.

“And men paired with female feminists have greater sexual satisfaction and greater relationship stability,” she said. “So, [there were] higher scores on two of the four dimensions, with no difference on the other two.”

There you have it: Feminists are sexy.

“Contrary to popular beliefs, feminism does not disrupt men’s pleasure in the bedroom,” said Rudman.

That makes perfect sense to counselors like Gina Ogden, who says “the cultural missionary position–man on top” isn’t conducive to romance.

“If a relationship is based on authoritarian control, keeping one person on top and the other underneath, it gets old pretty fast–for both partners, really,” said Ogden, a Boston sex therapist who surveyed 3,810 people for her book “The Heart and Soul of Sex.”

“In an egalitarian relationship, there is more flow of give and take,” she said, “and that’s the romantic tension. That tension–the sexual desire–is in that space between you where you’re able to flow back and forth.”

In her experience, said Ogden, “where there’s caring, sharing, openness and honesty, sexual satisfaction increases. It not only feels good now, but it is likely to get better and better as you age.”

Age Intervention Mascara?! Good grief….

Potentially harmful cosmetic eye product seized | Health | Reuters.com

U.S. marshals on Friday seized 12,682 applicator tubes of a cosmetic called Age Intervention Eyelash, which may harm some users’ vision, the Food and Drug Administration said.

The product, promoted as increasing eyelash growth, is sold and distributed by San Jose, California-based Jan Marini Skin Research, Inc., which did not return a phone call seeking comment.

The FDA said it considered the product “adulterated” and potentially dangerous to certain people, including those with elevated pressure inside the eye.

It said the sales value of the seized tubes was about $2 million and the marshals acted at FDA request.

Consumers, dermatologists and beauticians who may still have Age Intervention Eyelash should discontinue using it and discard it, FDA said.

It recommended consumers consult health care providers if they have experienced any problems they suspect are related to the product’s use.

More at the Consumerist.

Darwin and I were doing therapy work today at Gateway. Tomorrow we’re back at the Learning Center in Escondido. We made a few people happy today, so I guess it was a good day…

One older gentleman in particular kept wanting to see Darwin doing his “tricks” — shaking hands, etc. But I don’t really teach Darwin many tricks – my idea of therapy is more that he is there with people and available to and responsive to them, not that he does a lot of tricks to entertain them. He is well-behaved and is under control, but not “controlled” by me. I guess this piece sort of explains some of what I feel….

Author Mom with Dogs » Blog Archive » Control vs Self-Control

You’d like what Mother Teresa said to a reporter once! She was asked, how can we solve the problem of world hunger? Her reply, without missing a beat was, “Feed one hungry person.” That was her wisdom, the secret energy of toiling in the mess with personal commitment, practical personal acts, and the influence of personal example.

Back then to the world in which we live, where the first thing that so many children say as they walk up to me with one of my dogs is, “Can you make that dog sit?!” Spend a moment on what that sentence carries in it, what it implies about the human stance–from very early on… I can at that moment make a difference, not only by the REQUEST of a sit (as someone said in another discussion), as opposed to a demand, but I can also teach the child a different way of being with a dog.

There are many, many moments in our days when we can do the equivalent of feeding one hungry person to address the shame of inflicting ‘power over’ on the dogs who inhabit our lives–at home, in town, in class, at the ring…. Methinks that we HAVE TO do it. That’s why I’m hoping we who talk about this with one another will also speak up and out–not with a lot of brassy noise-making, but with a steady personal voice, and the personal acts that give that voice credibility and set an example in the world around us.

Now, if healthy control is properly a *balance* concept, then our example is needed to articulate not only when control turns to shameful power over, but also when it slides to shameful extremes represented by a lack of healthy control–that is, by neglect, indifference, discarding of dogs… and also insane indulgence that overburdens dogs with excessive emotion, goodies, and stimulation.

Railing at people isn’t going to do it. But, we can make a difference with the courage to look at ourselves and to speak by example, to not step away from looking into the eyes of those whom we find oppressed, but also looking into the eyes of those who wield the power that oppresses them. Feeding that one hungry person is the beginning. Don’t do it under a bushel, is what I’d add.

For me, I am realizing that the bigger challenge is often not that of speaking the truth or living it with the dog right in front of me, but to live and speak the truth without strangling the livin’ shit out of the human in front of me who is ‘controlling’ a dog and to whom I want to get the message. And that brings me back to the incredible difficulty of the power struggle within–and to the recognition that if I want to influence the person who is heaping power over a dog, I cannot do it by heaping my power over the person. Believe it, that’s a challenge. I keep trying to learn from Mother Teresa how to do that… stand in the truth and share it. She didn’t say, “… to solve the problem of world hunger, you slug the sob who hogged the rice bag…”

I have a lot of days where I feel like slugging the person hogging the rice bag, myself….

And yes, Darwin did “shake hands”, and we were nice about it, but I hope most of the group was able to simply enjoy Darwin for who he is, as I do.

Heartbreaking….

120 US war veteran suicides a week | Herald Sun

THE US military is experiencing a “suicide epidemic” with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS.

At least 6256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 – an average of 17 a day – the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population.

While the suicide rate among the general population was 8.9 per 100,000, the level among veterans was between 18.7 and 20.8 per 100,000.

That figure rose to 22.9 to 31.9 suicides per 100,000 among veterans aged 20 to 24 – almost four times the non-veteran average for the age group.

“Those numbers clearly show an epidemic of mental health problems,” CBS quoted veterans’ rights advocate Paul Sullivan as saying.

CBS quoted the father of a 23-year-old soldier who shot himself in 2005 as saying the military did not want the true scale of the problem to be known.

“Nobody wants to tally it up in the form of a government total,” Mike Bowman said.

“They don’t want the true numbers of casualties to really be known.”