Before She Sleeps...

As she dozed on the crowded city bus, draped on the bench atop her plastic bags, mismatched luggage - everything she owned carried with her - I snapped her picture with my cell phone. Trying not to stare her awake, I looked away. Her imprint in my mind was indellable - a Pieta. The Bag-lady crucified, Christ of my commute that day. The blue vinyl bus seat seemed to be holding her like the Blessed Mother. Something about her made me think of peace.

She must have been a regular on the route, for when the driver braked, he indicated it was her stop and asked that her fellow passengers wake her. No one moved, though everyone heard, and since I knew their paralysis was unique to Minnesota and incurable, I stood up. Shaking her shoulder and saying, "Excuse me, Ma'am?" in a clear gentle voice, I tried to rouse her. Her face was paper thin and paper white. Complicated lines of weather and time flashed a sweet smile as her dream ended and her moist eyes blinked open. I explained we had arrived at her stop and helped her gather her life's luggage and disembark.

Though years ago she haunts me still. Did I do a good thing by helping her get where she was going? Or was my action an assault? A rude interruption of the temporary peace her passing dream-time had provided? Just a moment's reverie in a life I doubt she'd ever dreamed would be hers. Sleep sweetly, sister. May you be cradled in dreams without trouble, want or pain.

THE BEST OF the epistle #1. Fear - Original Post April 10 2006

NOW WITH MUSIC. PLAY IT LOUD.
COLLIN HAY "MAN@WORK" OVERKILL

In 1818 Mary Shelley unleashed FRANKENSTEIN, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS on the literary world. This Gothic cautionary tale warned of an Industrial Revolution spinning out of control. Man, mad with arrogance, dared to enter the realm of God - the creation of human life! Victor von Frankenstein cobbled together pieces and parts (now pieces is pieces, but parts is parts) of discarded human remains to construct his monster. I've always thought he was particularly lucky to have found body parts of similarly sized men. Had he used Shaquille O'Neal's left leg and my right the poor monster would have just spun counter-clockwise when it tried to move forward.

But I digress, my point was that Ms. Shelley warned of the horror of patchwork living creatures at a time when harvesting the DEAD to save the LIVING was a dread thought. Today, we can participate in a process thought noble and compassionate by simply indicating our willingness to be "harvested" on the back of our Drivers' License. In the last 60 years, medicine has saved countless lives by attaching pieces and parts from the dead (soooo pig! sometimes even from the dead of other species) to the sick and dying. Medical ethicists, philosophers and theologians struggled with early transplants - thinking them "a step too far" and evidence of Man's arrogant attempt to usurp God's power. Luckily, those arguments abated and settled themselves as the lives saved bore evidence of God's will for Medicine.

They have resurfaced, however, as we have begun to master the Human Genome and all of the potential industries that might flow from the application of our new Knowledge. Stem cells and genes are just smaller pieces and parts, really. We are only just glimpsing the "blueprint" of human life - yet already the ethicists, philosophers and theologians have begun their emotional moral hand-wringing. Have we, at last, gone "too far?" Will God smite us for our prideful folly? Is there no end to Man's Curiosity and the lengths to which he will go to apply cutting-edge Knowledge to improve all of our lives?

I hope not.

Many Good Days Go By - Let The Water Hold Me Down

Same As It Ever Was...

Since beginning to reconnect with High School friends I haven't seen for 20 odd (very odd, trust me) years it continues to surprise me how other people's lives make me feel a lot older than mine does all by itself. Maybe that's why I've stayed hidden away in the frozen North for 14 years - on ice (like Elizabeth Taylor or Nancy Reagan) fighting the passing of years. If only I'd fought the intake of calories with equal ferocity.

Oh well, two month's until the Reunion - plenty of time to get skinny? Yikes! Jinkies! And Zoinks!

A SHAMELESS PLUG!

I have loved Maggie, Terre and Suzzie Roche for 30 years. Their latest album - the first collaberation of all three sisters in ten years - is everything a Roche fan could dream of. Read my review (as caesersghost) on iTunes.

Buy this CD.

May Our Memories Of Them Never Fade

I know since my politics veer left of center, it may seem odd that Memorial Day would for me be so solemn. I am afraid that for the second time in my 43 year old life that we are in a war we cannot win. I wish that I was wrong. More than 3400 of our young fighting men and women have given their lives. 30,000 so injured they will never return to the military. A third of that number disabled for a lifetime.

God Bless America. Keep her young men and women from harm.

My Adorable Niece and Nephew

I'm an insufferable Uncle. I'm always showing pictures of my Sister Rachel and her husband Mark's progeny. Pictured are Donovan (of Late a Pretend Car Salesman) and Katie (Professional Wrestler). The Cuteness Factor just went way up on this blog.

100 EARTHLINGS

If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the village would look something like this:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
8 Africans
52 females
48 males
70 nonwhite
30 white
70 non-Christian
30 Christian
89 heterosexual
11 homosexual
6 people would possess 59 percent of the world’s wealth;
all 6 would be from the United States
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South
70 would be illiterate
50 would suffer from malnutrition
80 would live in substandard housing
1 would be near death;
1 would be near birth
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer

Source: Amnesty International

Does Dark Matter?

The Universe is mocking me, GENIUS! It screams - only NOW as my body fails I see it
in the folly of Physics and Cosmology! So simple, just so simple. Our blasted eyes were
focused on the light - LET THERE BE LIGHT, GOD, MAN & COINCIDENCE! Before the Light
GOD existed in a dark eternity alone. It is into that blackness we will
all one day dissolve.

The LAWS that govern us, endless patterns created from staring too long at
the CHAOS. Newton driven half Mad, Einstein never finishing his Unifying Theory,
Hawking has twice revised his attempt to bring cosmology, physics and mathematics together. And
how he has sufferred.

Only in the oily black of true chaos is the universe's "truth" visible, if even for a nanosecond.
The chaos of unpredictable sub-atomic particle motion. God's first toy for himself - one not
even He can predict.

And as my Anxious Mind dissolves into the chaos of its many noises I hear Him, Dark God.
He tries to free me from the seen, the accidental - patterns are inevitable in infinity but they are
anomaly, an unclean shining blue speck in the beautiful smooth Darkness. He speaks,

"How Ya Doing?"

Dance This Mess Around!

Afghanistan - dee dee dee dee deep.
Jalabad - dee dee deep dee.
The Taliban - dee dee dee dee deep, dee dee deep, dee dee deep,
Dee deedle dee dee, deep deep dee deep dee...

What'd You Say? Well I'm Just Askin'!

You Say Bin Lay-den and I Say Ben Lah-den.
You Say al Quay-da and I Say al Qui-da.
Bin Lay-den, Ben Lah-den.
al Quay-da, al Qui-da.
Let's Call The Whole Thing Off!