Talkin' to Myself

Good Lord, good Lord, send me an angel down.
I can't spare you no angel but I'll send you a teasin' brown.
--Blind Willie McTell
"Talkin' to Myself"

The most revolutionary thing any of us could do right now is sell our cars and not replace them. Of course, this assumes either a walkable environment or effective public transit, which is what makes the idea so revolutionary.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
--William Blake

Every person in the world gives me pleasure; some by coming and some by going.

Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook.
--Adolf Hitler in "Mein Kampf," p. 171

I was instructed, early in my teaching career, not to self-identify as a hippie. "That makes a very bad impression," my mentor told me, and I agreed. After all, peace and love are dangerous, anti-social ideals compared with the manly, conventional, and entirely acceptable notions of war and hatred.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
--James Madison
"Political Observations," 1795

I thought I was awake this morning when I was apparently asleep and dreaming. I dreamed we were still in Vietnam, but all the V.C. had grown big beards and they had tablecloths on their heads.

We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.
--Gandhi

It's not enough to want peace; we have to be peace.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

(Portrait of Blind Willie McTell by Henry Wynn.)