. We certainly ought not to just allow anyone to abuse the right to die and be reincarnated without proper government approval, no doubt in triplicate.
The government of China, which claims control of Tibet despite the region's vigorous culture of independence, announced in August that it would henceforth require Tibet's "living Buddhas" (special clergy believed to be continuously reincarnated) to get permission from China's religious affairs officials before submitting their souls to be embodied in the future. The government acted, it said, because the reincarnation process needed to be managed better. [Agence France-Presse, 8-3-07]
. I have taken a little time to update some of the sites I check. Some each day and others occasionally, but all have good things to say from time to time.
I've been a little lax lately although no more than at other times. I can only rant and rave for so long before I realize that you don't care and it doesn't make me feel any better. Just relives the monotony some what.
But tomorrow is another day. Ihop in the morning until the bank opens then garner some mammon and head out to buy a few herringbones. Boy did they go out of fashion or what? People thought you could wear them like any other necklace. Sleep in them, work in them, mess around in them, whatever, it took only a small kink to ruin them. Most jewelers and pawnshop owners held on to them way too long.
With the recent surge in gold prices people are starting to reevaluate their worth. I don't care, they refine easily.
Of course the price is also a reflection of the perceived worth of the US pictures of dead presidents. Right now we're losing out to the euro, which makes them happy as a pig in a mud wallow. Wait until they force us to pay for oil in euros. Don't think the Fed lowered rates to help the housing market. No, it's all about them making money in the currency markets.
Funny how we spend our lives, or a great portion of it, to gain what few pieces of paper that we can, and if we do amass a large number in our bank account call ourselves rich.
At least you can eat Kudzu and make paper out of it.
. On second thought, this guy isn't a redneck, he's an Idot.
I don't care how many beers you have in you, if you put a poisonous snake in your mouth, no matter how large or small, it's just a damn pity that he didn't garner a Darwin Award.
. Having been the proud possessor of a cast iron stomach most all my life, I rarely hesitate to eat what ever gets in front of me, although I have for the most part hidden from common knowledge that holiday meals don't see me return for seconds as often as once I did.
Today the first thing to get in front of me was a nice sausage biscuit eaten on the go along with a quart of water between then and lunch. Lunch time saw a new Mexican restaurant opened up. Remember these clues: 1. it's in an old Arby's in a small town, 2. the Arby's sign is still up and the now open sign is printed on half an old bed sheet. Not quite up to hopeful expectations. I'm all about equal opportunity but they've used theirs up. Remember those clues and violate your good judgment at your own risk.
This evening saw the piling on of a Supreme Pan Pizza, picked up and consumed with the addition of crushed red peppers to taste. I'm reasonably sure the ol' pipes will be alright in the morning, but the ears are ringing even more than usual, and I've a slight throbbing in my temples.
Checked the blood pressure before taking the daily BP pill this evening and it was a nice 106 over 62. Seemed reasonable considering I hadn't seen pictures of either Angelina Jolie or Lil Toni today.
Looking around to make sure there are enough Kudzu leaves within reach here in the kudzu grotto.
. ..........The two blogging Goddesses LL and Lil Toni. Both of these wonderful ladies contributed to my new Header. A thing of beauty excelled only by they celestial glory.
. Allen Greenspan husband of Andrea Mitchell claims in his new book that the Iraq War is all about OIL.
Well Duhhhh. He makes it sound like he and his masters had nothing at all to do with it.
If you still believe that Bush and Congress run this part of the world, I've got news for you. They're as much cattle as you and I.
You can call me a conspiracy nut if you want, I don't care. Read "Proofs of a Conspiracy" written in 1798 if you would seek understanding. Any number of other books. Look at a history of Henry Kissinger. The writings of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
They consider us the unwashed, unintelligent masses who have to be molded and led around with blinders on for our own good and their power and profit.
Financial Vampires they are. Feeding on the spoils whether there are wars or the illusion of peace. So for Greenspan to come out all self-rightous over this is just more of the same old, same old to keep the kettle boiling, just like they always have.
I could really get worked up over this, and I have over the last 30 or so years, but, most people don't want to hear it and it doesn't make me feel any better.
. Nice bit of rain falling this evening. Gracie the dalmatian hiding outside in her hidey hole and Toby the yorkie curled up on the couch burying his head against the thunder like the wuss he is.
Used to be we'd call this snuggling weather. Now it's known as sleeping weather.. Which is what I did after arriving home from the trip to Clayton and back. Flopped down in the rocking recliner and never felt the second rock backwards. Woke just in time to eat a bowl of veggie beef soup and cornbread.
I know, it's a hard life, but, someone has to do it.
While in Clayton I stopped at the Ranger Station and picked up a few topo maps of the northeast part of Georgia. I want to get one of the hand held GPS systems and do a little trekking before the year turns too far toward winter. Of course the term winter doesn't really apply here like it does in the more northerly parts of the country.
Snow measured in more than inches just makes me cold, although back when younger I liked to go sliding over it. Now.........just want it to go the heck away.
Lil' Toni over at Random bits of Pomposity has posted a couple picture of some kudzu from down in Miss-a-sloppy. Hopefully I can get LL of Chromed Curses to tell me how to use it as the header for this poor excuse of a blog. That would be really , like, cool, you know?.
. No, I don't really have any reason to say that, except that it's almost as if a feeling of calm has washed over me. May be getting the meds adjusted or me adjusted to them.
Yet it's such a strange feeling. I who always feels something lacking, or wrong, or disgusting. Who loathes politicians with a feeling of having just puked my guts out after trying to pick up a dead dog by the hind leg only to have the hair and skin come loose in my hand and a half gallon or so of maggots burst from the distended stomach. Who holds bankers in a position of low esteem only slightly higher than lawyers. Which are on an equal footing with politicians since most pols are or would like to give signals to lawyers under the bathroom stall divider.
. Time goes by quickly, and our memories are short. Our individual memories can sustain us for lifetimes baring head trauma or Alzheimer disease, but our national collective memories seem too often shaped by our viewing of the boob tube, or even by our adherence to a particular party line.
Mostly we don't like to look back at the bad things in life, or if they didn't happen to us directly we don't want to think that they might next time, so we squint our minds eyes as if looking at the sun too closely and pretend they didn't happen.
Men like Churchill could see the signs of WWII coming ten or more years in advance. George Patton knew that our alliance with Stalin during that same war was a deal with the devil and that we would pay the price afterwards. Senator Goldwater knew that the way to keep our precious freedoms was for freemen to exercise those rights given to us by our Creator. Ronald Regan knew that you didn't sit with your pants down in the Oval office getting a Lewinsky while foreign governments supported terrorists who tried to blow up the twin towers or blew up our warships and our troops stationed in foreign lands.
Whoever said that "those who don't learn from history are doomed to forget it" was pretty wise. The question is are we?.
I've always been moved by the writings of our founding fathers. Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech (you can read the text here, the sound plug in didn't work for me) has always roused a fire in my heart that takes days and weeks to quench, and never goes out entirely, but, like the clamor of the ambulance siren, seems to make most people I try to express those sentiments to smile weakly while nodding there head and casting their eyes around for the nearest emergency exit. Nothing like a zealot to run most people off. And I wonder what it is about me that does that to them. I do take a shower every Saturday after all. And in my opinion Old Spice is still in fashion. My Grandfather wore it by golly, and so do I.
I had started this post with the intention of repeating last years post for this date. If you didn't read it then you can look it up in my archives.
All I want to say is, Look at the threats ( and there are many more than Islamic fanatics alone) and don't hide your eyes, but face the enemies of freedom full on and Never surrender, Never give up.
Sharpen your bayonets, see to your weapons. Get some sleep, you're going to need it.
"There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares.
It seemed that, lately, I had barely been touched at all"
I've always wished that I could sing in a way that would make people stop and listen. These girls make it look easy but I know that it's not.
Good music enlarges your heart and soul. According to some research it will increase the intelligence of children. Don't know how good it works on adults as we sometimes scoff at that which enthralls us as we don't want to be labeled geeks. Too late for me of course. My geekdom needs only a pocket protector to be complete.
. .............but is there anything better that a bowl of peach cobbler along with a little vanilla ice cream on top. Well, at least in the typical food groups anyway. At least that is the opinion of this ol' redneck country boy. I can remember as a young child our mother cooking up apple pies and peach cobblers and my favorite, blackberry cobbler. Served still hot from the oven. So hot that we would take real cream, skimmed off of milk from our own jersey cows, and pour it liberally over the top, cooling it down enough to eat. And if you had it the next day there would be a film of congealed butter on top sweetened by the copious amounts of sugar it took to make. Yum doesn't hardly begin to describe how it tastes in my memory.
All of this triggered by the last bowl of cobbler I'm eating on right now between every sentence.
. You meet many different people in your life these days.
Unlike days past (long ago and far away) when a person might live his whole life in the same town or village and possibly never travel outside a short distance (compared to how we measure distance today with automobiles and airplanes and rocket ships into outerspace and even once upon a time to the moon) from where he or she was born. Today we can in a few hours travel to the opposite side of this ol' world
The furtherest I've ever traveled was 13 time zones away, which is about half way around the world or a little better away from Georgia. But in terms of seeing much of this planet, I can't really say that I've seen much. About 37 of the United States, a couple of territories, 7 foreign countries. And really most of them I can only say that our plane landed there or we drove thru them on the way to somewhere else. So I really haven't seen much. To be sure we can turn on the Travel Network on TV or read about places and learn a great deal that once was the realm of only the rich who could afford to travel or the military who'll send you where they want you, but knowing a place or understanding it requires a little more I think.
There is something within most people, I think, which yearns to see and experience different places or things. We can admire the view from a roadside pull off high in the mountains where we can see for 50 miles or more, but I think in our deepest subconcious parts of our brains the explorer in all of us wishes we could experience all of what is within our view. And more if that is possible. That's why I have a lot of respect for researchers, scientists and deep thinkers of what ever persuasion. They are reaching out for answers to question we may not even have thought of yet.
Several years ago I was in a small trading post in a little NE Ga town. They sold used furniture and appliances and STUFF.. They would also buy or pawn items from people. They had accumulated a good bit of old jewelry of various description and had decided to get rid of things they hadn't been able to sell. I sorted thru all their items and picked out the genuine gold from all the costume jewelry. Quite a nice little buy I thought. One of the items kinda caught my eye and after I got home I gave it a closer look.
It was an apparently hand crafted piece of 18 kt gold with a curiously crafted design on it which resembled a central or South American ancient carving. Anything like that gets my attention since supposedly my mother was 1/8 Cherokee Indian, so I feel a certain amount of kinship towards Native American cultures where ever they were.
I took the piece to my friend Renato, a Peruvian Lawyer who immigrated to this country many years ago and because his legal training was in that country could not practice as a lawyer since he didn't complete his JD in this country. He works as a legal aid to the hispanic community assisting with taxes, passports and other things they need help with.
A most interesting person. Highly intelligent, the author of 2 books now. A speaker on the ancient architecture of South America and very interested in many of the unexplained mysteries of that region and the world. I met him at church and our friendship seemed to have that bond of long knowing of each other.
He told me that the design was one of the smaller winged gods engraved on the Sun Gate of the Tiwanakuan culture high in the Bolivian Andes mountains at about 12500 ft above sea level.
This is a picture of my piece:
Click through some of the links to the Sun Gate or related sights and you'll get a better idea of the image shown.
An interesting item is that some of the cut stones making up Machu Piccu is that they weigh 400 tons or better. The largest stones in any of the pyramids of Egypt weigh about 300 tons and they're at close to sea level. These are at an altitude of two and a third miles in some of the steepest parts of the world. How did ancient workers get them there???
My friend has a website at http://www.renatolongato.com
I think you might find some things to consider and maybe even ponder there. I might try to get together a group to have him speak to sometime. I learn new things every time I visit with him.
Sitting in the Kudza picking at the lint in my navel. Never know what will turn up.
. Growing up in the 50's and 60's was a unique time, now that I think back on it. The agricultural past of this country and especially the South was fast changing. I feel fortunate to have grown up on a small family farm, part of a tradition that stretched back to the early 1900's when my Great Grandpa moved his family out of the hills around Gainesville, GA (a place then known as New Holland) to a new farm in the center of Gwinnett County along the Alcovy river.
Dairy farming could be profitable there. Close enough to make daily deliveries of milk, cream, chocolate milk and even at times orange juice to the door steps of families on the eastern part of Atlanta. Decatur, Stone Mountain and other small towns that provided growing room for what became quite a bustling town rising out of the ashes of the War between the States.
Then a Farmer could pretty easily count the number of families he could feed. Now 1 farm can produce more that they ever thought possible.
Families provided the basis of your whole life then.
The small church we went to had a cemetery full of dead relatives that we never knew and the pews full of family with ties going back 3 even 4 generations, although as kids we didn't know that. Names like Buffingtons, Pratts, Dewberries, Dunagans, MaHaffee's, Hinton's all tied into a circle the that just kept growing.
The circle today is large enough that we have a hard time seeing from one minute of arc to any of the other 360 degrees. It both saddens and gladdens me to think of how it's grown. Sad to think of all those I've never known and never will, and glad to be a part of those I do.
It's kinda like life it's self. With no beginning and no end in sight, we just keep on marching around on the path before us, whether it's fated to us or just happenstance, I can't tell, and feel no real need to know at this point. I'm just glad to be a part of it.
There was a PBS documentary on The Carter Family on the tube tonight. I suppose that's what started me thinking along these lines.
They started a tradition that shaped the music world of their day and to great extent still does today. I wish I could have found the following song on YouTube by the original 3 Carter family members, A.B., Sarah and Maybelle, but 1 and 2 generations later they still kept the traditions alive.
May the Circle be unbroken.
I can get all misty eyed just hearing it again. I think of the almost 60 years behind me and the 135 years yet to go to reach my goal.
Maybe later I can find something by Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers.
. I may not agree with all of his politics, but no one can reach me with this song better than the original. Seems appropriate for a cloudy Sunday morning.
. ...................would you do for a Klondike bar??
Not much, if this evening is to be any judge. Although to tell the truth I did drag my sorry behind out of the easy chair wherein I had parked it to crawl to the freezer and fetch my own.
Where I had flopped after a supper of pinto beans, cornbread, a slice or two of onion and 1 1/2 pork chops. This after a loooooong day of climbing up and down a set of stairs and a short ladder painting a bedroom and living room in a condo rehab I got suckered into helping on.
Still the heavy lifting of hanging the sheet rock and finishing and painting it lies ahead.
I tell ya, I'm getting toooooo old for this kinda stuff. I tried to talk Don into hiring a crew to hang the sheet rock. Oh no that didn't go over once he heard they wanted $400.00.
I'm not gonna get paid enough to cover my gas going back and forth, but right about now I would pay that $400 just to get this job over with. Can't confuse me about what a job is worth.
Ya'll pray for me. I'm off for a long cool shower and we'll just have to see if I have the strength to rant on anything tonight.
Hiding and cowering in the kudzu hoping no one wants me to carry the trash out.
. Can go by in a few blinks of the eye if you're not careful.
Time enough to get married, have kids, grow them to adulthood and send them off to have kids of their own. Sometimes you can try the getting married and having kids two or three times, if you try hard enough.
What brings this looking back on, you ask? And well you might.
Oh nothing, just that I attended my 40th high school reunion last evening. Getting together to see how much hair everybody else had lost and how many extra pounds the girls who wouldn't give you a second glance have packed on. And which had anything lifted and enhanced.
I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. Oh don't misunderstand. There was enough thinning and graying hair among the guys, for some reason women don't seem to get gray as soon as men. And lots of belly's were a little past the ol' belt far enough that I soon quit trying to hold mine in so much. What a relief. I did suspect at least one guy of having a elastic belt on under his shirt, but I'm sure it was to protect his back or something. And the girls, while there were a few who might have had a little of the sand shift, were seen with rose colored glasses, and surprisingly friendly for a change. Probably because they knew that I'd been married since 7 months after graduation.
A couple of surprises. Joe Ford got married 2 years ago. Charlie Ray 11 years ago. You'd have to have known them to understand and I don't have time to tell those stories here.
Wade is still an Anarchist and makes his living working in a silencer factory. Still lives with his mother in the Castle his father designed and built. But not for long, she's finally seen the money and is moving out of metro Atlanta.
Gail and Nancy inherited their mother's ability to cook. Coconut cream pie, ummmmmmm one of my favorites.
51 out of 56 still among the living and 33 attended, with assorted spouses.
Below is a CD cover of the music album my friend Charlie made. He's standing in front of the Methodist church I attended every Sunday of my youth. The graveyard out of sight to his right is full of mostly my kin.
The title Wagon Tracks refers to the still visible ruts worn by iron rimmed wagon wheels in the granite rocks of the church yard.
Whereas, on the 14th of December, 2011, the House of Representatives of these United States voted in favor of indefinite military detention, without charges, of any American, anywhere, anytime, without due process of law, at the discretion of the government alone;
Whereas, on the 15th of December, 2011, the Senate of these United States voted in favor of the same bill;
Whereas, on the 31st of December, 2011, the President of the United States signed the same;
Whereas, the proscription against the use of military force to police the populous has been an essential feature of American civic life and civic liberty since the arrival of our civilization upon this continent;
Whereas, the wanton violation of this proscription was one of the chief causes of the separation of the American peoples from their government in Great Britain;
Whereas, the Constitution so chartering the government of these United States does not grant this power;
Whereas, the Constitution forbids the addition of any power not enumerated to the general government;
Whereas, the use of such draconian measures has been an essential feature of the enforcement of tyranny by totalitarian governments of the 20th century, including, but not limited to, the Nationalist-Socialist government of Germany, the fascist government of Italy, the government of the United Soviet Socialist Republics, and the government of Vietnam;
Whereas, the use of such draconian measures is carefully calculated to quash all political dissent amongst a captive people;
Whereas, the codification of such draconian measures effectively nullifies all civil liberties the people may hope to hold;
Whereas, the codification of such draconian measures are the last act in the quest to hold a people captive to the rapacious will of their government without recourse;
And whereas, the codification of such draconian measures is an act of war against the populous at large;
Therefore, be it declared that a STATE OF WAR formally exists between the Government of these United States and the People of these United States.
We, the People of these United States, declare any and all attempts to enforce the provisions of HR 1540 to be unlawful, void, and of no force.
We, declare ALL WHO voted in favor of HR 1540, and ALL WHO attempt to enforce HR 1540 to be traitors to these United States, punishable under law.
We, SHALL DISOBEY, APPREHEND, OR RESIST WITH DEADLY FORCE, in our discretion, any person who attempts to enforce the provisions of HR 1540.
We, SHALL NOT aggress against any employee of any American government who shall not attempt to enforce or aid and abet the enforcement of HR 1540, they being as trapped as the rest of the populous.
Such STATE OF WAR shall continue until HR 1540 is stricken from the code of law, and all who had hand in HR 1540 are brought to justice under due process of law.
Signed and witnessed by we, the individual citizens of these United States, below:
Kdzu
The Constitution is a written instrument. As such, its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when it was adopted, it means now. — SOUTH CAROLINA v. US, 199 U.S. 437, 448 (1905)
"The task before us now is to instill in our people an intolerance of despotism in all its forms, and an admiration and desire for independence in everyday life. Cussedness will be the order of the day. Taking handouts will be shameful. Only in this way can we begin to gain ground on those who would make us sheep."
