friday cat blogging

A lady in Portland awakes every morning when the weather is decent under the gaze of this semi-feral female waiting for her morning dish.

The cat has found a human, but there's no physical contact between them -- yet.

visions of god

       

An incredible illumination from a 13th-century French book of hours, depicting God in the act of creating the  world. Having completed the sky, the sun (l) and moon (r), and the seas, the author and architect  of the cosmos now  prepares to give shape and form to the center of the medieval unverse -- earth. 

When I first saw him, at age 5, he was very much  like this image, only older & calmer, & the earth was older as well.

I first saw him on the way home from kindergarten one day. It wasn't as dramatic as William Blake's seeing the face of the Almighty thru a window when he was 3, but it answered all my questions.

This is the corner where I saw God for the first time. there was a large sign frame on the lawn, facing the corner, and one day on my way home from Kindergarten, after successfully negotiating the Market Street crossing (kinda scary for a little kid), I found myself in front of a poster which showed God levitating the earth between his outstretched palms.

         

An elderly gentleman with long, silver hair and beard, God was decidedly caucasian, and there was no doubt his language of choice was English. He looked pretty much exactly as I thought he would, and I was awestruck by the concreteness of the image. Instead of the vague and invisible sky god I´d heard about, this was finally the real deal, reasurringly familiar. God looked like my friend Lewis´s Uncle Lew, but a hell of a lot cleaner, not to mention much bigger.

And this is where our house used to be. Old Mr. Christie lived alone in the house on the left; the lady who lived on the other side we called "Aunt" Ruth. Every school day I set out from this spot and headed east for the 8-block shuffle toward school.

Finally after a half hour´s trudge and 3 blocks east of Market, I arrived at Garfield Elementary. I finally retraced the route on Google Maps yesterday, after not remembering it for years, and as soon as I saw the cement slab. Knew where I was. Garfield was demolished years ago, and there is no known photo of it. But I´ll always remember the imposing, soot streaked red brick exterior, the huge wooden windows which shrieked in pain as the teachers pried them open in hot weather, the glow of the wooden floors, the cloak room in every classroom where "bad" children were isolated for an hour or two, and most of all, the smell of books, or rather of the glue of their bindings. All these things still exist, but only in the memories of Garfield Elementary´s former inmates.

At the end of my home block I´d turn right on Oak Hill Ave. 60 yrs ago Oak Hill was a bustling scene, with small businesses lining both sides of the street. Mr. White´s grocery was right here on the corner, a tiny shop that was probably one of the first to go.

                                        Oak Hill Ave looking north. A holy roller church
                                             is the only remaining business on this once-
                                             thriving thoroughfare.

To see any of these images full size, click on them. But unless you

be new to computadors, you gnu that.

almost there

                                           

Out on the Salish Sea where the spirits spoke 2 me;
Out on the Salish Sea,  let it roll...

Any people that doesn´t turn away from torture in horror and disgust isn´t worthy of the name "people."

I know we´ve been doing it more and more since thet leetle dust-up in Veetnam started, but until Darth Cheney was appointed de facto Torturemaster, we were ashamed enough to keep it hid.

Gotta give old Darth credit for one thing: he always brazened it out, and let us know eggs ackley what he was doing. He's impervious to reason, proud of his blood-drenched record, and has already testified against himself in many TV appearances, during which he would snarl while extolling the virtues of waterboarding. There is sufficient evidence to convict him of war crimes on video recordings of them.

You know, we got thru WWII without doing any of what the Germans did to others, or the Japanese did to us. Our leaders back in those were wise enouh to know that if we tortured, we would have no grounds for objecting when the screws were put on our boys. They also had possession of a moral sense, and in that were different from your average neocon.

We let the architects of Vietnam off the hook, but the architects of Iraqghanistan will be brought to book. It won´t be soon, but as Guantanamo bumps & grinds toward closure, we will be reminded by the reappearance of torture porn in the media retrospective that accompanies it, that crimes of the neocons cast a very long shadow.

#30#

4th of July

    

As Americans prepare to celebrate the 238th birthday of our country later today by fire roasting large chunks of cattle and poultry and blowing stuff up, we need to reflect on the nature of revolution and our declaration of it. What does it mean, this document written 238 years ago by Jefferson et. al.?

As we look at today´s headlines, we are struck by the amount of unrest in our society, focused mainly today on women & homosexuals. Just as it ocurred in 1776, in 1863, and 1965, today, this disturbance is about is extending the rights formerly limited to aristocrats and royalty to everyone.


We´ve see a lot of whining in the papers & on the internet these days about gay people´s demands.  But because they are human, ...they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Women today, by the same principle, are demanding full equality with men, & to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men People, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

There are much wider implications than gay rights and female emancipation that are driving the current phase of revolution, however. Today the US government´s power to rule has been usurped by the .01% of citizens rich enough to buy it, in violation of all the principles laid down in the declaration, & whenever any 
Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the 
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Not all revolutions require war & death, and let's hope this phase of our ongoing experiment in self-government does not cause a lot of blood 2 B spilled. But it's naive to think our oligarchic masters will relinquish their autocracy without resorting 2 violence. Now it's 

lobby 4 my hobby

This is certainty the mot du jour on all the lefty & righty Blogs 2day.

II don't know how or why people would expend so many pixels (at least theyre not killing all those trees Any more) on such a simple case.

The Supremes have decided, or at least 5/9ths of em have, that the US does have a religion (Christianity) that's favored in some circumstances & that one of the tenets of that faith that should be respected is that women may not have unauthorized sexytime.

At least 4/9ths of the court did not sign on to such specious, quaint, clanking, antique notions.

Wher thar's life, Ma, they say ther's hope.

whose refugees?