We Grimly Reap What We Grimly Sow

These days, you might get searched at the airport by some swaggering moron who probably couldn’t get a job doing anything else that didn’t involve asking. “You want fries with that?’

Or you might get your door kicked in at 3am by cops who look disturbingly like the bad guys from Star Wars. While they taser you and hold your kids at gunpoint so they can check under your bed for “terrorists,” you can reflect that “freedom isn’t free” and this is all part of our friendly service to protect you from the "terrorist threat."

If you happen to ask about your rights – warrants, probable cause and all that quaint stuff – then just before some masked bully butt-strokes you into oblivion, you’ll probably get this all-purpose answer shouted hoarsely and brainlessly in your ear: “Nine-Eleven!”

The cry of the faithful.

Our version of “allahu akbar.”

Yes, yes. We lost a lot of people on Sept 11, 2001.

3000 or so, including 363 of my brother firefighters.

Terrible thing.

No question.

And if we ever decide to find out who was responsible for that arson/mass murder and prosecute them, I hope the guilty parties wind up spending several lifetimes in the joint.

But with all this shoe-sniffing for explosives and indefinitely detaining anyone who passes gas during the National Anthem, with billions and billions of dollars --- YOUR dollars – going to fight the "war on terrorism," you might suppose there are whole armies of terrorists, taking out innocent Americans in big bloody batches on every Main Street in every Hometown in the good old US of A.

Well, there aren’t

But I can tell you what is taking us out.

Heart disease killed 631,636 innocent Americans in 2006, according to figures from the CDC. For those of you whose minds have been turned to mush by incessant war propaganda and no longer have any other reference point, that’s the equivalent of more than two hundred 9-11’s.

Cancer murdered 559,888 Americans, including women and children. There’s another, well, almost a couple hundred 9-11’s, right there.

Between just those two diseases, that’s one 9-11 each and every day of the year – with a lots of extras thrown in for holidays like Christmas.

Cerebrovascular diseases (strokes) took out 137,119 of our family, friends and neighbors.

Chronic lower respiratory diseases killed 124,583; accidents 121,599; diabetes 72,449; Alzheimer's 72,432; influenza and pneumonia: 56,326 (puts that swine flu “threat into a little perspective, doesn’t it?) ; nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis chalked up 45,344 kills.

Septicemia, batting last, nailed 34,234 people.

That’s the top ten.

Not just that year or this year.

But every year.

"Terrorism?"

Doesn’t even get an “honorable mention.”

But where’s the “war” on these diseases?

Where are the billions and billions of dollars to find the cave where breast cancer is hiding?

How about mammagrams at the airport instead of confiscating your nail clippers as a deadly weapon?

Why aren’t we funding a fight against these remorseless killers instead of bankrolling an overkill effort against a “threat” that doesn’t even move the needle on the bodycount scale?

Because war is sexy and righteous and righteous and sexy.

And medical research?

Well, hell, that’s just about saving lives.

This is America.

sj

El Dorado

The color of the day was gold.

We chose one of our favorite trails through the woods, splashing along through fallen leaves.

All the reds had fallen and lay prostrate before us like a royal carpet spread along the path.

The leaves that remained were of gold.

Some newly minted gold, still retaining the past-life memory of green.

Some were a rich, buttery gold.

A golden fire ignited by streaks of sunlight filtering through the attending pines to dazzle the eye.

Gold that dazzles the brain with imaginings of splendor.

Others were soft, deep golden brown, like the skin of an exotic lover.

Aztec, perhaps. Or Incan....

El Dorado, they called it. "The Golden One."

A legendary cache of jewels and golden coins.

Or an entire city made of gold.

Explorers -- Gonzalo Pizarro, Phillip von Hutten and Sir Walter Raleigh among them -- searched for it for a couple of centuries.

They searched in Mexico, in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela and Guyana.

They looked for it everywhere, unable to resist the lure of easy money and the easy life it would bring.

Some are still looking.

But maybe it’s not a golden city.

Maybe it’s the holy grail, the fountain of youth, or Shangri-la.

Maybe it’s true love.

Or happiness.

Or The Truth.

A black pearl or a white whale.

Something somewhere over the rainbow or just at the end of one.

Maybe it’s your own personal “holy grail,” whatever that means for you.

Some ultimate prize important enough to you that you spend your whole life questing after it.

Even though you know you may never find it.

Even though you know it might not even really exist...

We paused on a high hill overlooking a valley strewn with autumn gold.

The subtle breeze was cool and clean.

The sun stood arms akimbo in a cloudless sky.

A distant smell of woodsmoke.

He caught a mouthful of green grass and munched thoughtfully as we surveyed the scene.

“Still trying to find El Dorado, huh, Jack?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Well, then,” he snorted. “Don’t... you... move.”

He was right, of course.

He usually is.

sj

The Weeping of the Guitar

The weeping of the guitar

begins.

The goblets of dawn

are smashed.

The weeping of the guitar

begins.

Useless

to silence it.

Impossible

to silence it.

It weeps monotonously

as water weeps

as the wind weeps

over snowfields.

Impossible

to silence it.

It weeps for distant

things.

Hot southern sands

yearning for white camellias.

Weeps arrow without target

evening without morning

and the first dead bird

on the branch.

Oh, guitar!

Heart mortally wounded

by five swords.

Federico Garcia Lorca

1898-1936

Watch This One...

It may make you weep.
It may make you mad.
It may make you act.
I hope so.

sj

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsrMzfhdmkU

You Raise Me Up

When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;

When troubles come and my heart burdened be;

Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,

Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;

You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;

I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;

You raise me up... To more than I can be.

You Raise Me Up
Recorded by Josh Groban

Breakfast at Epiphany's

I was taking a fire service course called EVOC – Emergency Vehicle Operation Course. Most of the content could be summarized in one sentence: “Slow down and wear your seatbelt.”

The grand finale was to go out on a driving course that was marked out with cones in the university parking lot, and take an engine through some simple maneuvers.

I’m a pretty good driver.

Been driving since I was 15 and that’s a lot of miles.

Took a driving course once called “evasion and escape.” Learned how to do boot-legger turns. Some other interesting tidbits.

Drove a garbage truck for a while.

And a dump truck a few times, in the waybackwhen.

So I wasn’t intimidated by a fire engine.

But I haven’t done much except “routine” driving in a long time.

And I crushed just as many orange cones as anyone else...

There’s a huge, huge difference between driving a car and driving a fire engine. The load, the momentum, the turn radius, the stopping distance (1000 gallons of water at 8 lbs a gallon…..)

And that’s when something really hit home.

In the official conspiracy theory of 9/11/01, some guys who’d been trained on Cessna’s (with mediocre performances in at least one case) flew those commercial airliners with appreciable precision.

That’s like saying a guy who just learned how to drive a VW bug drove a fire engine through midtown traffic.

I just don’t think so.

Apparently, a lot of experienced pilots don’t think so, either, because quite a few have come forward to the declare the notion – shall we say “extremely unlikely?”

It’s possible that ONE wild, anomalous aerial wunderkinder might have gotten incredibly lucky. But four out of four?

I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.

sj

Dubya's Third Term

In utter defiance of the US Constitution, George W. Bush claimed the unprecedented authority to declare any person an unlawful enemy combatant (a term he created ex recto) and imprison that person without charges, without legal representation, without a trial, without recourse to habeus corpus, for an indefinite period --- not for anything the person had done, but for something the President thought the person might do.

Now Obama claims the same unconstitutional power.

Oh, but he's not going to use the "enemy combatant" term.

That makes it all better.

Still think that frog you kissed is going to turn into a handsome prince? You've got a long wait ahead of you.



See this Rachel Maddow clip:

http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=6083&title=Obama_Proposes_New_Law___Prevention_Detention_quot_

sj

OBAMA: Like BUSH only darker.