Peace Pilgrim

 

"Overcome evil with good.

Overcome falsehood with truth.

Overcome hatred with love."

Peace Pilgrim

...

The Gate

There is a gate

Once you've passed through

Turning back

You cannot do.

...

Pacific

 \

 

Pacific means peaceful

When Magellan named his 1521 discovery "Mar Pacifico" he set a mood.

Now for the millions living on the shores or nearby
the name becomes a watchword.



...

Democracy with a Vengeance

A few years ago I was traveling by bicycle through Yugoslavia.

There was some  commotion going on. Riots, shootings, confusion and my friends in Italy had warned me not to travel through at that time, but I wanted to get to Greece and that was the best way to do it. 

Since I had lost my maps as usual-- early one morning I found myself in the town where the most intense troubles had been--and were still happening.

My bike had broken down and I needed a repair shop and found one in the center of the town where the riots had been held the day before.

I arrived before the shop opened (it never did open that day) and some neighborhood kids demonstrated for me the events of the previous evening with sound effects and action. Must have been pretty exciting for kids.

When someone who knew about bicycles had arrived he invited me to his garage to fix my bike and I went along. He soon had a small group of friends collected and someone who spoke English arrived.

Of course they thought I was an American spy and so they told me that they were VERY interested in democracy.

 "We want to have a democracy like you have in America!" Their spokesman said.


"It seems to work for us." I said.

"Yes. We of the (whatever it was) race and religion are the majority of the residents in this town and so after this revolution (or whatever it was) we are going to have a democratic government and the first thing we are going to do is have an election. We will vote about who lives in this town and since we are the majority we will decide that the minority must leave town. And if they don't we will kill them."

Democracy with a vengeance.

...

July 4, 2011

 Redding, CA. (Tomasito photo)

Happy Birthday, USA!


I wonder about this country on this Fourth of July.


We bought a cheap package of hot dogs and some squishy soft buns which I like to eat with brown mustard. We are mostly vegetarians now but the taste of hot dogs is a once-a-year treat which I really enjoy--they taste just like I remember and all the kid memories come flooding back--and wasn't it all fun?!


Now, I wonder about this country. 

Happy?


I guess I don't know much about my fellow Americans any more.


I even dreamed I was back in the navy last night--riding in a bus with a bunch of young sailors in work dungarees--just like in the days of my youth--but I wasn't young any more. I was just back in the navy from some administrative fluke. We were stationed somewhere in California guarding some mothballed ships.


One of the men in my dream, a tall, husky chap with teen-age zits, was talking about "War Number Two"--which I realized was not the big one of my childhood--but the one in Afghanistan, "I guess that is how they talk about it now." I thought in my dream. "I better pay attention since I should know how to talk war with my fellow Americans now I am in the navy again."


The odd part of this dream is that I was NOT a war-time sailor. I was a navy man in the few short years when this country was NOT at war--the breathing space between Korea and Viet Nam.


Ever since then this country--my country--has been at war constantly. Americans have spent so much money on war we don't even know how to spend it on peace anymore. It seems Americans are not interested even slightly in peace. Everything about America is war and violence. 

And greed--don't want to forget THAT magic word.

For all of us American "Human Resources", like coal or wheat--used, burned up and discarded--working for faceless bureaucracies for pitiful wages--commuting hours in dangerous frustrating traffic so we can pay exorbitant rent and ever higher prices for everything--or the out-of-work hopeless citizen--the on-the-run illegal alien--this "land of the free and home of the brave" is only a stupid joke in poor taste.


1776-2011. 

That's quite a life. Now I wonder how many more years it will take for America to grow up.

. .

Pliny

 Ghost. (Tanya photo)

" I think they are lucky whom the gods have given the gift of either doing something worth writing about or writing something worth reading, but those who have done both are the most blessed of all." 

(Pliny the Younger writing of his uncle Pliny the Elder in a letter to Tacitus, c 93 CE.

Ashen Sky--the Letters of Pliny the Younger on the Eruption of Vesuvius illustrated by Barry Moser

...

Doctors and Medicinemen

 Rocks and Yucca. (Tomasito photo)

"Doctors study what man has learned, I pray to understand what man has forgotten."  

Vernon Cooper, quoted in Wisdomkeepers, by Steve Wall and Harvy Arden.

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