Rockabilly Swell

I had a sweet dream,
he was Rockabllly swell,
I could only reach that far,
far enough to hold him,
my arms wrapped around,
walking arm in arm.
I asked if he had any idea of how much I loved him,
he answered he had made a mistake and then I ran,
not wanting to hear him with regret,
wanting only to hear he was happy now,
no longer in pain.
I had a sweet dream,
he was Rockabilly swell,
Time reminds, does not heal.
Other contact,
remember being in his fire presence,
I try to reach that far,
talking and calling and waiting,
for another hipster taste
the door of sleep
opening inner worlds,
all jive as we wait.
Is he with Joe & Joey, rockin'?
with Johnny walkin'?
No time passing, no time there,
The sweet dream world of crazy,
no harsh corners and surfaces,
fluid being, wild dancing,
all things new, thought creating,
colors making sound,
our home.

News / Daily Bummers

Withdrawing from the News has been good. I find my spirits lifting! Natasha Richardson has passed from Earth...so very sad for her family. I adore her in "The White Countess". It is one of my favorite movies, though the near loss of her child to another woman stings a bit, as I have been there. Her triumph over adversity in life and in the movie is inspiring. Not bad news, but sad news that she has left us.
Death is transformation. Just the other day I got a glimpse of my son in a photo, and experienced a fleeting moment of happiness. I was timidly curious, as most often what I have felt in the past was a tragic sense of loss and sadness. If you break down the word "miserable" you get miser-able, holding on to things which are not ours, the pain of that. I am trying to realize how fortunate I was to know Gannon for 35 years, to remember the good times and all of the magic he was. To get it right. The cup being so full, not empty.

What is it about the human race, that we called the daily bummers news, that obsession? Why not the other way round? News could be all of the positive things that are happening in the world, the triumphs, where there is peace, love, consideration for all things. Would not the world be a profoundly different place?

Biologically Altered

The post I entered in the Times flu virus blog. Ain't it grand that the internet can hook us up, letting us know how long it will last and that we are not the only ones stricken. This nasty virus has been winding it's way through the US all winter.

We both came down with it about 5 days ago right after a bout of the respiratory flu. Our next door neighbor just told me he had it about a week before we were chosen. What fun! We can't blame him as we hear everyone is getting it, not that blaming would help but one does pull at straws at times like these. Chills, headaches, body aches, severe cramping, sometimes nausea and vomiting, relentless diarrhea, so bad there is no hope to make it to the bathroom in time, then you think you're better and it starts up in some way, shape or form again, usually with thunderous growling and rolling so loud you feel like you just might explode! So far today, I am drinking Newman's Own lemonade and getting away with it. I have high hopes! Now that I know this will last about two weeks we will be very careful! Yesterday my son ate a big beefy sandwich with his buddies at work, as he thought he was all better, and then on the way home from being out for the night he had to pull over and heaved like he never has before in his life, popping blood vessels around his eyes. He will be very careful for the week or so as well. Personally, I think we are all being biologically altered from the inside out to enable continued living in this harsh new world we have created for ourselves and these symptoms are just our bodies way of reacting to these necessary modifications. Not really but, Hey, it could be true.

Faith not Fear

It has come to my attention that I should not be watching the daily news, which I have been totally obsessed with. I had a taste of life without it when I visited my daughter last year. They have no cable and only watch movies. TV shows they like, they rent or buy. It was serene and I knew that I should stop with the news then, but it has taken until now to really hit home in my head. I do remember when I was a young hippie mother with my second husband we killed our TV and it did have an amazing positive result. If I am saying the mantra daily "I will not dwell on the unpleasant things in life" then why watch such crap, especially when it is continually seasoned with mind altering commercials from the drug companies with no other intention than to make us feel paranoid about our health, so we will run out and buy drugs we don't need for maladies we don't really have, and would be so much better off realizing the physical difficulties we feel throughout each day would have a liberating purpose if we followed them through to their ultimate conclusion, personal growth. Instead we lose that growth by paying into a system that does nothing other than demoralize us. Then we get more physical difficulties and need more drugs, or so we think. I've blogged my last here about Palestine...I've had enough. I do believe there is a greater plan working through it all, and I need not dwell on it so. The Palestinians will have justice.

I have been called a changeling, an old soul, a seeker, a seer, an emasculator, a feminist. I have been called worse as well, a drunk, a nut and the like. I have been told I am from another planet (by a Buddhist monk, as a compliment, so that wasn't so bad) that I unintentionally intimidate others, that I am selfish, impossible, intense, difficult and aloof. Some have been in awe, that I throw myself into the fires of life so easily...well, it hasn't been so easy. When people get to know me they most often like me even if my type of energy bothers them. I don't know what I am. I live a relatively private life, have not traveled outside the US, have not worked for any great causes, so I am no big deal. I never really wanted to be a big deal. (I should take that back..I did have dreams of making it big in NYC as an artist, but stopped on my way there to have two children in Massachusetts....two of my children completed that journey making it there. Ha!) I have raised, in a very bumpy fashion, three beautiful talented children, created a lot of quality art, and my vintage touches some souls, and that will be my legacy. What is a person but a stream of consciousness belonging to us all, just one picture of the myriad possibilities, no more or less important than any other. My daughter says I should blog because we Humans learn from each other, and so I do write. It also seems to be a release. I wish I had more responses, negative or positive, as it would be nice to know others are reading some of this, and maybe being affected by it.

I have watched myself over the last two years, come out into something new, so I am a changeling once again. I wonder at all that I have been through, put myself through, and how very heart-breaking and difficult some of it has been, all so that I could learn and be a better person. Now that I am 60 (I wish it hadn't all taken so long and that I was younger still) and finally able to look at myself in a mirror again and actually see someone I know, that I can again hear the birds singing and wonder at the world without feeling impending doom at every turn. How amazingly fucked up I have been through so much of it and how it has affected my personal image presented to the world. Change is a big thing, though it shouldn't be. It should be so natural, so fluid, but we bind ourselves up against it, fearing it. Anyway, I know I have had that tendency and still do, because you see, I am a slow learner. No matter that I hit myself continually up against that wall of fear I never seem to get over it. We must have faith that all will turn out well...faith, not fear.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

There is always hope

Weeping, sorrowful lost thoughts,
trailing over the morning sun as it shows itself in my window,
always trying, trying to make sense of it,
the sad thoughts settle heavy and stuck,
like heavy boots stuck in mud.
Wish that I could fly beyond,
never feeling like lead,
Wanting always to stay around,
stay on Earth's solid ground,
Don't dwell on things sad,
pick up and move on,
remember times smiles abound.

How Many Chickens?

Today it feels like spring, almost 60 out there! I have really felt the cold this year, as have dropped a few sizes....I always think of it as how many chickens I am not carrying around, assuming each chicken weighs about 3 lbs.. I won't say how many I left by the wayside, as that is just too personal, but it has been many! It all started out with severe pinching in my right side, along with some back pains and occasional indigestion. Every now and then it would happen, and I thought it was just part of getting older. Then last summer I had a really severe attack and almost ended up in an ambulance....but came out of it just before they carried me off, stuffed me in and drove off to the scream of sirens and many hundreds of bucks trailing along behind into infinity. I pride myself on having worked it out with my body, to get really scared before the pain let up to save my pocketbook that shocker and yet bring about the necessary changes. Funny we be that way, creating crisis to bring about change. Tiz the Human way, right?

The Chinese term for crisis is "danger-opportunity."

With the help of a family member who had had a gal bladder removed a year before and a Doctor family member's helpful concern, and of course the trusty always-there-for-us internet, I was on my way to recovery and a much thinner self. I changed my diet drastically. It was called the gal bladder attack diet, basically no fat, cucumbers, green beans, and celery, lots of beets, aloe Vera juice, apple cider vinegar and apple juice and lots of fruit and no fat whole grain breads. Most of the symptoms went away and I was dropping weight like a snowman melts in the sun. I would carefully add a few natural healthy goodies to my diet as directed, then in the fall I was tired of the reoccurring minor back aches, so went on line and found gal bladder cleanse testimonials. Very exciting!
I did two organic olive oil/lemon juice with Epsom salts chaser cleanses, about three weeks apart and dropped thousands of stones. The body acts so much more efficiently when it can produce bile as it was meant to. Pretty amazing when gal bladder surgery is the third most common surgery in the US and costs upwards from 12,000.00. My ingredients had cost under 20.00. And....I could go on and on about the American Medical Profession and the Drug Companies but I want to keep this post relatively light after all of that Israeli stuff of my earlier posts. So, I took a lot of clothes to the Salvation Army and bought some new clothes...mostly at thrift stores, my favorite. I found a pair of 50s never worn ankle high dark purple/brown leather boots that fit me perfectly and are my dear friends these days, and plaid flannel lined jeans! Ohhh, are they nice! I have been living in them since Christmas time when I bought a pair for everyone. I bought them long so they have a big 3 inch turned up flannel cuff, very punky. Anyway...it's been fun and I am so looking forward to Spring without all of those chickens around and more cute clothes. Yay!

Israel's authoritarian transformation

Israeli riot police in Haifa at a Gaza solidarity demonstration, December 2008. Oren Ziv

What is happening? How bad can things get in a supposedly modern civilized country? The world should be more concerned about this friendly country gone rogue than they are with Iran, since this tiny country creates nothing but justified Arab hostility for all things western, including the USA as we continue to fund Israel. Read all about the Israeli War Machine. Just as I feel deeply for the Palestinians, I also feel deeply for the Jewish population in Israel and what they are all going through at the hands of the government they have created, and pray they will find a way to turn things around before it is too late. Very scary.

Answers to Palestian Issues

This graphic says, "We are all Gaza" and is shown in support of the Palestinian people.

This two part post needs some work, but you have it in the rough for now.


A personal note: The Palestinian issues are very upsetting for me. It all makes me so angry I could spit. America tax payers are supporting Israel! When I first watched the movie, Munich, I enjoyed it as I actually felt good seeing Palestinians suffer. I felt it was just desert after 911, as I blamed the Arabs for same. My daughter and Jewish daughter-in-law told me there was more to this issue than I was aware of, and that there was a human rights movement in Israel in support of the Palestinians. I never consciously wished to become aware of same...it came to me, and the horrors of it do not leave my mind. Most of daughter-in-law's family live in Israel. Her cousins have served or are serving in the Israeli army as demanded. It is my understanding that her family also believes that the Palestinian Human Rights are being horribly violated there. My daughter-in-law and I have talked of these things. We talked of the abused growing up to be abusers, and how the cycle must be broken.
* Check out the PBS video, Journey to the occupied Lands.

So I have to suppose from your answer that if your mother suffered a cavity search while trying to visit her relatives, or that your sister's home was demolished with one days notice, or that you were beat up mercilessly by Israeli soldiers while trying to graze your goats on ancestral lands as you have done since childhood, that you would not also feel like becoming a suicide bomber? What about the thousands of Israelis that are working for human rights against their governments treatment of the Palestinians? Do you think them all idiots? Have you ever watched a video of what the Israeli soldiers are actually doing in Gaza and the West Bank? If you had would you really think the USA could learn from that kick-ass country? I certainly hope not.


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What!? yes, the Israelis did tear down some of their settlements and forced their citizens to leave, including most of Gaza....By the way...they did not remove all settlements/people from either territory.

In August 2005, Israel had forcefully evicted illegal settlements in the southern Gaza Strip but retained control over the borders, the land, the airspace, the coastline and the underground water. Reality is that 1.5 million people in Gaza have been living under Israeli occupation since 1967.

Very commendable. I have seen the videos, and they are heart wrenching and certainly make one feel for the Israelis in those situations, although the settlers acted like criminals in light that they were being asked to leave in a peaceful manner by their own elected government, to right wrongs that had long been perpetrated against the indigenous population . One would hope that the Israeli Government was planning to continue the process to remove ALL illegal settlements. I think not. More likely their government knew that if they made token efforts, the peoples of the world would see them and think them righteous and leave alone their continued expansionist policies. One video shows Israeli settlers from the US stating that they have to expand into those lands as there is not enough room for them all unless they do, and that the holy writings of history say they are the true owners of those lands. The Israeli maps do not even show Gaza and The West bank... the land is ALL ISRAEL WITH NO PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES SHOWN. Consider that the settlements are illegal in the first place, and that the Israeli government felt that if they gave up some settlements that they would be vindicated, and then could continue their confiscation of other Palestinian lands in the West Bank in a grand scale along with their superbly inhumane occupation of Gaza. Israel uses every Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists act to justify their continued expansion into the already severely limited Palestinian inhabited areas, and that is exactly what you are buying into. Israel has created the terrorism vented against itself, cavity searches (do you now what that means?) at checkpoints, Israeli soldier brutality and demolition of Palestinians homes and many more human rights violations too numerous to mention. This violence will not end until human rights are restored for ALL peoples in the holy lands. Do you really think that thousands of Israelis involved in the Human Rights Movement in Israel are just barking up the wrong tree? B'Tselem, just one of the any Israeli groups working for Human rights, even supplied Palestinians in the West Bank with video cameras to document the horrendous human rights violations. Do you not think they really know what is going on at the hands of their so-called righteous government? I don't think we are getting the same information, but it is all there, readily available for all those that wish to seek it out.

And, to answer your comment "Judenrein".....Jews could have been living peacefully in Palestinian territories, including Gaza, if they respected the Palestinians and their property, but they don't and you know it. The Israeli soldiers evict them from their homes, settlers move in and take them over or demolish them, just one of the many horrid human rights violations. The Jews now control more than 3/4 of the Palestinian lands through occupation. I think they have shown that they can't be proper neighbors and are incapable of sharing lands, and that is one of the many reasons a two state solution is the only answer.

In answer: A lot has happened since 1922, that the maps of Israel do not show. Time goes on and new mandates are made, like Partition. Do you think denial of the progression of events helps to create peace? The Palestinian Territories should be shown out of respect for truth and history.

Our New Obama Government at Work

Oh Happy Day! We finally have our US government clearly speaking out against Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people! It's a start! I LOVE OBAMA, though I am disappointed that the earmarks in the spending bill are being left in with Obama signing it anyway, understanding the urgency of the bill I can see why this is happening however disheartening it may be.....

President Obama will sign spending bill despite earmarks, top aides say

by Philip Elliott | The Associated Press
Monday March 02, 2009, 6:18 AM

President Obama will sign spending bill despite earmarks, top aides say
President Barack Obama will break a campaign pledge against congressional earmarks and sign a budget bill laden with millions in lawmakers' pet projects, top administration officials said.

Obama budget chief Peter Orszag and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel signaled that the president would hold his nose and sign the $410 billion spending bill.

Orszag said: "We want to just move on. Let's get this bill done, get it into law and move forward."

Said Emanuel: "That's last year's business."

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This is long, but too valuable not to present.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday blasted Israel's plans to demolish Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem as a violation of its international obligations and "unhelpful" to Middle East peace efforts.

"Clearly this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the 'road map'," Clinton said, referring to the long-stalled peace plan.

"It is an issue that we intend to raise with the government of Israel and the government at the municipal level in Jerusalem," she added at a joint news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Clinton said she planned to take up the issue with the incoming Israeli government, which is expected to take office in the coming weeks.

Israel has in recent days issued orders for the demolition of 80 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem it says were built illegally.

But Palestinians say they cannot receive proper building permits from Israeli authorities, and the planned demolitions are means to assert Israel's control over the disputed city.

Clinton also displayed strong public support for Abbas. "The Palestinian Authority is the only legitimate government of the Palestinian people," she told the news conference.

The Palestinian president has steadily lost support at home, particularly
after a year of inconclusive peace talks with Israel. At the same time, his Islamic militant Hamas rivals, who seized Gaza from him in 2007, are widely seen as emerging stronger from Israel's recent military offensive against them.

Abbas, meanwhile, was expected to ask Clinton to push Israel to freeze West Bank settlements and open Gaza's blockaded borders.

Senior Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said the Palestinian leader was seeking a tougher U.S. stance toward Israel and would raise specific Israeli construction projects in Jerusalem with Clinton.

"The main point is that the Israeli government needs to accept the two-state solution and ... that it stop settlement expansion," Erekat said, hours before the meeting.

Abbas was also expected to tell Clinton that the Palestinian Authority would not agree peace negotiations unless Israel agreed unequivocally to a two-state solution, Saleh Rafat, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee.


A day after pledging the new Obama administration would always protect Israel's security, Clinton delivered a message of support for
Abbas' Palestinian Authority and repeated that the U.S. was committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state.


During her visit to Ramallah, Clinton met briefly with young Palestinians studying English, and announced a U.S. initiative to help poorer Palestinian students attend four-year Palestinian universities and give grants to other Palestinians to attend U.S. schools.

"For a Palestinian state to be prosperous, accountable to its people and be able to live up to its obligations in the international community, it has to have more people who can do the job in the 21st century," she said.

The Palestinians are watching closely for signs of change in U.S. policy toward their conflict with Israel. Even Palestinian moderates were disappointed with the previous administration's failure to take Israel to task for accelerated construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Clinton: 'Economic peace' is futile without diplomacy

Clinton was critical on Tuesday of the "economic peace" plan of Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu and said that an economic initiative without a political solution had no chance to succeed.

During a meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak the Secretary of State said that Israel must do more to open the border crossings into the Gaza Strip to larger amounts of humanitarian assistance so that civilians there could get some relief. She also appealed for a broadening of the list of items that it considers "humanitarian aid," and called the humanitarian situation there problematic.

Last week Haaretz reported that messages had been relayed from senior U.S. officials signaling the Secretary of State was angered by the delays in the flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and the apparent obstacles that defense officials here raised over the types of goods that they considered essential to minimize civilian suffering.

During her meeting with Netanyahu, Clinton said that it is important for Israel to consider whether the closing of the crossings may be more harmful than it is useful.

In addition to her meeting with Barak, Clinton also met with President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Benjamin Netanyahu and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Check this out.

The Israeli Jerusalem Municipality is still continuing its colonization policy in East Jerusalem in the form of demolishing Palestinian homes under the pretext of building without a permit. Obtaining such a permit is close to impossible as it is forbidden for the Palestinian resident while it is easily obtained by the Israeli colonist. Israeli occupation authorities make their utmost to create hurdles and obstacles to make life impossible for Palestinian Jerusalemites. The goal is to attain its overall goal and objective of making Jerusalem without any Palestinian presence in it and making it purely Jewish. The situation is expected to get even worse after the winning of the racist Nir Barakat in the recent municipal elections. He ran on the promise to build a new colonial neighborhood between the French Hill and Anata under the pretext of “solving the housing crunch for Jewish university students and the newly-wed.”[1] He also made it clear that he was proud of the backing of MK Avigdor Liberman who is known of his anti-Palestinian stances and his continued campaign to ethnically clines everything that is Arab.[2]

As part of the municipal campaign, Israeli occupation bulldozers carried out, without any prior warning, a vicious demolition campaign against Palestinian building in East Jerusalem as four houses and a wedding hall were demolished leaving at least 26 Palestinians homeless. These demolitions raised the number of Palestinian structures demolished in Jerusalem since January 2008 until the end of October 2008 to 65 Palestinian homes. The total number of demolished rooms is 183 rooms while its total area reached 7,170 m2. More than 392 Palestinians have become homeless including 234 children whose only guilt was that they are Palestinians who were denied permits by a municipality that cannot resist devouring Palestinian lands in Jerusalem.

All Americans should be concerned about this issue and write Obama and the present administration in support of our efforts to end this travesty and give all support possible to the Israeli Human Rights Movement. One can understand, though not accept, third world countries and the horrors that go on in them, when there is no stable government elected by the people. The Israeli government is not third world, and yet it have been allowed by the International Community to continue eating up the West Bank and destroy Gaza while they are at it, not to mention the cavity searches at checkpoints and brutality of Israeli soldiers in the occupied territories that the Palestinians are made to endure by this supposedly civilized people. Why isn't this all in the world news more, and hardly ever in the US network news services?

Anticipation

Anticipating a snow storm... waiting for the peace it brings. It makes all things right in the world, softening all of the hard edges. I wonder at those who live where there is no such mother nature wonder to delight in. I have lived in Florida twice, where there was no snow, and Christmas just was not the same. I found myself longing for the white cloak covering all, sending every creature to hole and home, awaiting the warm blanket of sleek silk soon to come, erasing every imperfection. There is just nothing else like it, one of our most amazing super conscious creations. I am longing for spring, but I do welcome this last burst of winter, maybe the last, but we have had blizzards in April after all. I remember them well. Time for watching out the windows, eating hot soup and feeling cozy and warm, sheltered from the storm. Isn't that a Bob Dylan song?

We are anticipating, watching and waiting, as it will start soon! I must take some pictures to remember it by, for those long relentless summer days, when no such peace will offer itself, when all things will race at an unbelievable pace deep into the night, when the traffic's dull drone on the express way miles away will invade the moon lit nights yearning for the quiet that can't be found in this, our civilized world, not until the next winter season if we are so lucky to live that long.