Monthly Archives: October 2010

Sunday Roast: Summons

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Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I’m half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I’m not too hard persuaded.

By Robert Francis

 

Photo by Zooey

Here’s what William Rivers Pitt had to say about “Summons”…

“Summons” is about love, simply. The voice in the lines could be a man, a woman, black, white, gay, straight, American, immigrant, old, young…the person being addressed could likewise be a man, a woman, black, white, gay, straight, American, immigrant, old, young…there is no evidence to prove or disprove any assumption. The person asked to come stomp on the porch could be a lover, a wife, simply a friend, or even a stranger; the relationship is not established, which leaves the work wide open to any and every interpretation.

But it is above all else about love: love of the open heart, of the one who comes with that summons, of the moonlight and the night, of the wild urge to run and see and breathe and be, of the drive to experience all there is to be found, and not alone, but with that un-named other who is loved as much as the moonlight and the night and the lighting of the light.

What this poem says to me is, “Don’t let me drift away; don’t let me fade away.  If you see that happening, reel me back in.  It won’t be too hard; I just need a nudge.”

What does it say to you?  Anything?  Nothing?

This is our daily open thread.  Got something on your mind?

Friday night is Music Night!

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The whole musician birthday thing is getting a little tedious, at least for me. Watching this week’s episode of Glee, I was most impressed by one of the duets, and reminded of what an incredible resource crazy old Phil Spector was in his heyday. So, for a change of pace, here is the Glee segment, followed by a spectacular version by the original spectacular singer (from 1996, when she was 47 years old). After you listen to these, which you absolutely MUST do, feel free to chime in with other music. But, seriously, this is one of the greatest pop songs of all time.

 

The Watering Hole: October 15 – My Hunting Career

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Voters in Arizona, Arkansas, South Carolina and Tennessee go to the polls to cast their ballots on Nov 2, they will be asked if they support making hunting and fishing constitutional rights.

Let me tell you about my sole hunting experience:

Just after getting a job at a computer company in NY, one of my office mates offered (We were packed with 4 engineers in a 12′ x 12′ cubicle.) an opportunity to go hunting for deer in Sullivan County. Before I get any further, I’ll let you know that 90-95% of the hunters that eventually arrived there were from NYC and their only experience with a rifle was garnered from Civil War movies and/or Field and Stream or like publications.

We arrived at the hunting site about 6AM and set up a blind. Until about 9AM, everything was uneventful and we had only seen a few does and mature fawns go by. At that point, the city folks arrived and we were in a virtual combat zone, it was sheer mayhem – bullets were flying everywhere! By then we also had bucks flying by us at top speed, but we were flat on the ground. One of the city folk seemed to confuse our blind with a 14 pointer hiding in a tree and emptied his rifle into it. That was the first and last time that I ever went hunting.

This is our open thread. Please feel free to offer your own comments on this or any other topic.

The Watering Hole: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 – Hump Day: Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop. Don’t Stop.

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Don’t.
Don’t.
Don’t.

Don’t enforce
Don’t Ask,
Don’t tell.

Sure to be labeled an “activist judge” for upholding the constitution against a discriminatory law, Judge VIRGINIA A. PHILLIPS ruled the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act is unconstitutional and permanently enjoined (prevented) the government from enforcing the law. From the opinion:

The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act infringes the fundamental rights of United States servicemembers in many ways, some described above. The Act denies homosexuals serving in the Armed Forces the right to enjoy “intimate conduct” in their personal relationships. The Act denies them the right to speak about their loved ones while serving their country in uniform; it punishes them with discharge for writing a personal letter, in a foreign language, to a person of the same sex with whom they shared an intimate relationship before entering military service; it discharges them for including information in a personal communication from which an unauthorized reader might discern their homosexuality. In order to justify the encroachment on these rights, Defendants faced the burden at trial of showing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act was necessary to significantly further the Government’s important interests in military readiness and unit cohesion. Defendants failed to meet that burden. Thus, Plaintiff is entitled to judgment in its favor on the first claim in its First Amended Complaint for violation of the substantive due process rights guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment.

This is our Open Thread. Please feel free to add your thoughts on this, or any other topic that comes to mind.

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The Watering Hole: October 12 – Salem Witch Trials End

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Today in 1692, Christine O’Donnell could breath a sigh of relief. The Salem Witch Trials came to an end.

No longer did Christine need to worry about being outed as a witch. As everybody should know, in these trials, the innocent died while the guilty survived, hence she had nothing worry about as long as she survived the Bar-B-Que at the post (Which would be a snap for a real witch.)

This is our open thread. Please feel free to offer your own comments on this or any other topic.

Watering Hole – October 11, 2010 – Monday Rant

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In 2008, people voted for change. We were tired of watching our jobs get sent overseas, tired of being denied affordable health care, tired of war without end, and tired of being ignored by Washington, D.C.

In order for this change to happen, the populace voted for a 1/2 black and 1/2 white man for President. Within days of Barack Obama’s inauguration, the drug addict, loud mouth leader of the Republican party, Rush Limbaugh, shouted over the airwaves, “I hope he fails.” What that statement really meant is that Rush wanted us to fail and the Republicans bowed to Limbaugh and quickly did his bidding. Soon afterwards, crazy Glenn Beck started his revolution by stirring up hatred and encouraging racism among his followers. During the summer of 2009, the godzilla from Wasilla, Sarah Palin, could no longer tolerate being out of the limelight so she turned her back on Alaskans and quit her job as Governor so that she could travel around the lower 48 and become a money grabbing superstar. The morons responded by behaving poorly at town hall meetings and giving birth to the Tea Party Republicans.

Both domestic and foreign Corporations were pleased with the uprising of the morons because they knew that this is a group of people that can easily be manipulated to vote AGAINST their own best interests. Then a miracle happened. The Supreme Court of the United States of America gave the green light to the Corporations to spend as much money as they liked on elections. Finally, international corporations will become our masters and rule our nation. Oh happy days for the rich and greedy. Oh happy days for foreign interests. Oh happy days for the lords of the land.

This nightmare doesn’t have to happen. We still have time to take our country back.

VOTE

(h/t to cryptodiro at DailyKos for the video)

Here’s something else you can do.

This is our Open Thread so Speak Up!

(This rant is the opinion of Cats r Flyfishn and unless stated in the comments, doesn’t represent the opinion of The Zoo)

Here’s Yer Freakin’ Water, New York

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The water supply for New York City, “The Greatest City in the World”, is provided by three systems of reservoirs stretching through several counties north of the city. According to the NYC website, the “watersheds of the three systems cover an area of almost 2,000 square miles, approximately the size of the state of Delaware.” Wayne and I are lucky to live near several of the reservoirs in the Croton Watershed system. Both of us grew up in a development overlooking the Middle Branch reservoir, and the view on a fall day was glorious. Our wedding was held in late October, 1988, at the Middle Branch Restaurant adjacent to the reservoir.

This photograph is of one of the many reservoirs surrounding Brewster, New York, along Route 6 heading toward Danbury, Connecticut.

This is our Open Thread. Please feel free to add your thoughts on this, or any other topic that comes to mind.

Sunday Roast: Fetus trumps woman?

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In 1973, abortion was made legal in this country, via the Roe v. Wade decision by the United States Supreme Court.  Reproductive rights were now the law of the land, and women could now legally use birth control and get a legal and safe abortion, if she decided it was necessary.  Surely equal rights for women — across the board — were just around the corner…

We’ve come a long way, baby, but not in the direction we’d hoped.  Abortion is still legal in the U.S., as well as birth control of many varieties, but being legal and having access are two very different things.  There’s a fairly new trend out there, called a “conscience clause,” and it’s being used by medical personnel and pharmacists to deny their services to women who want birth control and/or abortion services.  Why anyone would go into such fields if they won’t actually do their job for everyone is beyond me, but that’s a topic for another day.

There’s a place called Guanajuato, Mexico.  This place is the anti-choice crowd’s wet dream come true — and a living nightmare for the women who live there.  Cecile Richards has an article on Huffington Post about what’s going on in Mexico these days…

Consider the case of a bleeding young woman’s reception at the Guanajuato hospital:

Before doctors would care for her, the authorities were summoned to interrogate her about her sexual history. Immediately after surgery she was forced to make a statement, and she is still being investigated for possible criminal action.

Yes, this woman’s life was literally draining out of her, but never mind that, the authorities need to find out if she was having a ‘legitimate’ health problem.

Across Mexico, women are being investigated, accused and jailed, even for the suspicion of terminating a pregnancy. Moreover, pregnant women with bleeding or other symptoms are now terrified to go to hospitals, lest they be accused of attempted “murder.”

Indeed, Guanajuato is the ultimate Utopian paradise for 2010 mid-term election anti-choice candidates such as Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Christine O’Donnell, Joe Miller, and Rand Paul.   These five Republican candidates for the United States Congress oppose abortion for any reason — even rape or incest.  That’s right folks, if Angle et al get their way, a victim of rape/incest who finds herself pregnant better just buck up and start making lemonade out of that truckload of lemons that were dumped on her, cuz God’s got a plan. Continue reading →

Music Night. Happy Birthday Johnny and C.J.

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Choosing a birthday celebration is easy enough when two of the people sharing a birthday are Ramones. Johnny Ramone was integral to the original band, serving as guitarist from 1974 to 1996. I thought it was interesting that Johnny was #16 on Rolling Stone’s 100 greatest guitar players and was on Time magazine’s 10 greatest rock guitarists, because frankly, I’ve never thought of any of the Ramones as “great” instrumentalists. Johnny’s guitar technique was simple and basic, but it was incredibly influential among punk bands. He died of cancer in 2004 at age 55, the last of the three original Ramones (preceded in death by Joey and Dee Dee). C. J. Ramone shared a birthdate with Johnny but was born 17 years later and replaced Dee Dee in the band, on bass and vocals.

More after the jump, including C. J. Ramone performing Blitzkrieg Bop. Your tunes, of course, in the comments.

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The Watering Hole: Friday, October 8, 2010 – How Much is Enough?

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Alan Greenspan, who championed the cause for the Bush Tax Cuts that disproportionately favored the rich, is now saying, “‘We’re going to have to start to cut’ from government entitlement programs.”

While tax cuts favor the rich, entitlement programs benefit the poor. The question is, how much is enough?

This author submits this number is unattainable, for if a man gathered unto himself all the riches in the world, so that he had everything and everybody else had nothing, it would still not be enough, for he would then look to the stars and seek to put those jewels into his vault as well.

This is our Open Thread. Please feel free to add your thoughts on this, or any other topic that comes to mind.