I Feel the Earth Move (Carole King)

My husband and I had the honor and pleasure of attending the Carole King concert last night at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood (Florida, not California!), where my daughter Sarah works - such a memorable evening from start to finish... :-)

It was billed as The Living Room Tour, and the stage was set up with couches, chairs, plants, rugs and lamps (as well as the piano, of course) - Carole came on stage about 8:15 p.m., escorting an older woman to a seat on one of the couches... and we soon found out that was her mom ("a local", she said), who sofa-danced and sang along all evening.

Carole was later joined by instrumentalist (guitar and mandolin) Rudy Guess, Nashville singer/songwriter Gary Burr and Louise Goffin, her daughter from former husband/songwriting partner Gerry Goffin who each showcased some of their own original material - the harmony vocals throughout the concert were sublime.

Seems in the 70's, Carole wrote a song about the Hard Rock Cafe... so of course I had to go googling - in her introduction of it, she said something like "this is the portion of the show where I have a brief costume change"... and she put on a black Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt (which the hotel manager had given her earlier in the day) before sitting down at the piano and starting to sing... :-)

I thought the show felt very smooth and intimate, especially for such a large venue (I'm used to coffeehouses and house concerts these days) - I loved the way Carole encouraged audience participation (how gratifying to an artist for their fans to know every word to every song). She performed a good many songs from Tapestry, did a medley of her early Brill Building hits, finished with You've Got a Friend... and the encore was Loco-Motion - my husband and I were both moved to tears throughout the evening with memory floods from a very important time in each of our lives.

Here are photos and an article about her pre-show appearance, autographing a guitar for charity... as well as a March 2008 interview with Tavis Smiley and the Wikipedia entry detailing the overview of Carole's extensive career...

Rewind to 1994: When my husband and I finally purchased a CD player, in a fit of practicality I vowed that I wouldn't replace anything we already owned on album or cassette but would just move forward from that point on - my sister came to my 40th birthday party, gifted me with the Tapestry CD and said, "that's the stupidest f*cking rule I've ever heard"... :-)

P.S. My book club just finished discussing the book mentioned below, so the timing of this show was perfect - I highly recommend Weller's retelling of the lives of these three legendary singer-songwriters!

SONG: I Feel the Earth Move by Carole King

BOOK: Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon - and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller

POEM: Songs for the People by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.

Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life's fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o'er life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.

QUOTE: "So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit." ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Love in the Library (Jimmy Buffett)

You are not reading enough
Has the Internet killed the joys of sitting down with a good book?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The pile is waiting. The pile is getting higher. The pile looks impressive, probably isn't, still feels slightly overwhelming, vaguely threatening, even as it sighs, waits, drums its fingers on the inside of my skull, promising all manner of wonder and insight and syntactical bliss if I'd just, please, maybe, right now, even for just an hour or three, pay it some serious, focused attention. Please? It's a bit of a problem. More than that, it's a moral, ethical, personal issue, a deep indignity of the soul, a painful twist to the nipple of my id.

See, I love books. Admire and appreciate and adore. Was a lit major at Berkeley, read voraciously, still love to read, still like to consider myself a big consumer of books and deep thinker about bookish issues and ideas and authoralia.

And yet, if I'm painfully honest, I have to admit it: I barely read books anymore. Not nearly like I used to, anyway. Not for a long, long time. And chances are, if you're at all addicted to the new media vortex, neither do you.

It's become a social conundrum, a cultural sore spot, a morose sign of the times. The question has been posed by agents and writers and a confused, hyperconsolidating publishing industry: What happened to all the readers? What happened to the culture of books? And the hint of fatalism, just underneath: If few truly read anymore, what of the state of the American mind? How much more dumbing down can we possibly stand?

Oh sure, books still sell, product is moving like crazy, but by and large it's truckloads of self-help and how-to flooding over a precious handful of sure-hit novelists, topped off with the grand cherry that is Oprah, single handedly keeping the tepid melodramatic coming-of-age family saga alive. In between, 18 zillion copies of "Eat, Pray, Love."

But overall, the message is bleak: Fewer writers of real talent are being discovered, fewer publishers are willing to take any sort of risk, and serious, literary-minded reading, that glorious pastime, that fine personal art, the immersive and transportive and beautiful intellectual fertilizer, appears to be giving way to the more addictive but far less nourishing hellbeast of new media and the Net.

It's an easy beast to blame. I skimmed through Nicholas Carr's fascinating and depressing piece in the recent Atlantic Monthly ("Is Google Making Us Stupid?"), which talks up, among other things, the downfall of deep reading, of spending uninterrupted hours immersed in a literary tome or even a long essay, a victim to modern media's vicious ADD, short-attention-span approach to engaging the world of ideas.

Carr's upshot: The Net might actually be rewiring our brains, changing the way we read because it's changing the way we think, forcibly adapting us to tolerate only bite-sized summations and simplified blips at the expense of deeper thought, of the ability to parse ideas, to sink in for a long, committed intellectual journey.

Proof? That's easy: Just try to sit down with that dense copy of W.G. Sebald or Haruki Murakami after spending any portion of your week online, and watch as your Net-addled brain becomes almost instantly anxious and frustrated, eager after just a couple thousand words to jump away, ogle pictures, watch dumb teens humiliate themselves on YouTube, buy some shoes.
Christ, if TV numbs you out, encourages a passive, flaccid state of intellectual disengagement, the Net does the opposite, slamming so many tiny shots of pseudo-meaning and media and nothingness into your brain over the course of a few hours, it's like getting stung by a swarm of horny bees.

It seems all dour and dreary and unfortunate because not a week goes by that you don't hear about some gloomy book fair or publishing industry merger or the death of a legendary independent bookstore that just couldn't compete not only with Amazon, but with a generation trained to read nothing more challenging or lengthy than grammatically mangled e-mails or snarky text messages or snide 300-word pop culture takedowns on Gawker.

Ah, but I do believe all is not lost. There is lingering hope. I am moderately sure a brain thusly amped on the wicked energy drink of the Web can, through honest time spent, through forcibly yanking the Ethernet cable out of one's cerebral cortex, be re-rewired, untrained, re-addicted to the deeper juice. In fact, it isn't that difficult, really. We just like to think it is.

I can personally attest. About a year ago the most astounding thing happened: The hard drive on my MacBook suffered a rare and painful meltdown when I was away on vacation. I was, much to my initial horror, to be e-mail/Net-free for over a week. What was I missing? Who was e-mailing? What about all the blogs and the news and the Significant Global Happenings? What of all the salacious offerings of nubile flesh and social wonderment stroking my in-box as I sat there, entirely cut off and adrift?

Mercifully, the yoga kicked in and I quickly shrugged, sighed, noted the incredible opportunity, the gods trying to tell me to unplug. I hit the bookstore and bought three thick, sticky literary novels like a misguided vegan buys some grass-fed steaks for the first time, and devoured them whole.

As I did so, an amazing thing happened. Time slowed down. The brain quickly returned to its normal breathing. The mental seizures and the near-constant desire to click away and leap to something different, faded and soon vanished. And the books I so loved suddenly moved from the bottom of the intellectual priority list straight back to their original, top-tiered state of grace.
I vowed to never let them drop so low again.

Even though, right now, they have. Even though, right now, even as I add to the glorious pile of must-reads on my desk, I realize I've been sucked back into Net-time again, back to the world of instant feedback and clickable everything, as the pile grows heavy and scornful and lonely. Ah but here again, an opportunity. For it is here that I remember the most wonderfully humbling lesson of all ...

When I finally got my precious MacBook back, when all e-mail was restored and all Net access was re-granted and I was able to dive back into the perky digital maelstrom, when I spent a few hours and got all caught up, it finally hit me: I'd missed exactly nothing. The world was exactly the same. The beautiful churn continued, same as it ever was, with or without me. Isn't that fantastic? Someone should write a book about it.

SONG: Love in the Library by Jimmy Buffett

BOOK: The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World by Guillaume de Laubier, James H. Billington (photographer)

POEM: In the Library by Charles Simic

for Octavio

There's a book called
"A Dictionary of Angels."
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She's very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

QUOTE: "To those with ears to hear, libraries are really very noisy places. On their shelves we hear the captured voices of the centuries-old conversation that makes up our civilization." ~ Timothy Healy

Walking with Roget (Lou and Peter Berryman)

DICTIONARY FRESHENS UP LEXICON
New word menu adds dash of mondegreen
—Associated Press
July 6, 2008

Is it acceptable to serve edamame to a dinner guest who's a pescatarian? And do you wash it down with prosecco or soju? Before your next party, go ahead and consult the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which now includes edamame (immature green soybeans), pescatarian (a vegetarian who eats fish) and about 100 other newly added words that have taken root in the American lexicon.

Quite a mouthful

Many of the new entries reflect the nation's growing interest in the culinary arts, including prosecco (a sparkling Italian wine) and soju (a Korean vodka distilled from rice). Others define new technology or products, such as infinity pool—an outdoor pool with an edge designed to make water appear to flow into the horizon.

Name your fears

Others reflect current events and much-discussed news topics, including dirty bomb (a conventional bomb that releases radioactive material) and norovirus (small, round single-stranded RNA viruses, such as the Norwalk Virus).

Mistaken identity

And then there's mondegreen. In a category of its own, it describes words mistaken for other words. A mondegreen most often comes from misunderstood phrases or lyrics.

It comes from an old Scottish ballad in which the lyric "laid him on the green" has been confused over time with "Lady Mondegreen."Among the best-known modern examples: "There's a bathroom on the right" in place of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "There's a bad moon on the rise" and " 'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy" in place of "kiss the sky" in the 1967 Jimi Hendrix classic "Purple Haze."Merriam-Webster's editors were so amused by the mondegreen concept that they plan to ask people to submit their favorites on the publishing company's Web site.

New to who?

Mondegreen, first spotted in print in 1954, was among tens of thousands of words the wordsmiths watched for decades. That and others make the cut for the dictionary based on how widely they are used in publications ranging from newspapers to technical manuals."They can float for decades. What that means for the most part is that they've been used in more spoken forms than they were found written until recently," said Peter Sokolowski, an editor-at-large for Merriam-Webster.

Et tu, professor?

Allan Metcalf, executive secretary of the American Dialect Society and an English professor at MacMurray College in Illinois, said he thinks the entries that grew from the popularity of cooking shows and international cuisine will be the among most lasting and useful of the newcomers."I'm kind of used to laughing at the choices these editors publicize, but this time I'm impressed," he said.

[ Added 7/12/08: this YouTube video was posted to the Joni-list - hysterical! ]

SONG: Walking with Roget by Lou and Peter Berryman

BOOK: 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy: And Other Misheard Lyrics by Gavin Edwards (author), Chris Kalb (illustrator)

POEM: Eye Halve a Spelling Chequer by Sauce Unknown

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

QUOTE: "It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water." ~ Franklin P. Jones

Don't Forget to Dance (The Kinks)

Christine Kane posted the above video (backstory here) a few days ago to her always-inspiring blog - to quote CK: "Here’s to a world that dances, laughs, and shines for no particular reason." (I second that emotion... :-)

SONG: Don't Forget to Dance by The Kinks

BOOK: And Never Stop Dancing: Thirty More True Things You Need to Know Now by Gordon Livingston

POEM: Tomorrow by David Budbill

Tomorrow
we are
bones and ash,
the roots of weeds
poking through
our skulls.

Today,
simple clothes,
empty mind,
full stomach,
alive, aware,
right here,
right now.

Drunk on music,
who needs wine?

Come on,
Sweetheart,
let's go dancing
while we still
have feet.

QUOTE: "Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) (Bruce Springsteen)

Boardwalk fixture and Springsteen song legend Madam Marie, the seaside clairvoyant immortalized in "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," died last Friday [June 27, 2008] at age 93, great-granddaughter Sally Castello told the Asbury Park Press.

The medium, whose real name was Marie Castello, was an iconic presence along the Asbury Park boardwalk, performing her palm reading next door to Springsteen's old Jersey Shore haunt, the Stone Pony.

"Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do?" Springsteen sang in the track off his 1973 sophomore release, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.

He was so fond of Castello that he always dropped by her small stand to say hello whenever he was in town.

"I'd sit across from her on the metal guard rail bordering the beach, and watched as she led the day-trippers into the small back room where she would unlock a few of the mysteries of their future," Springsteen writes in tribute on his website. "She always told me mine looked pretty good—she was right.

"Over here on E Street, we will miss her."

SONG: 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) by Bruce Springsteen

BOOK: The Fortune Telling Book: Reading Crystal Balls, Tea Leaves, Playing Cards, and Everyday Omens of Love and Luck by Gillian Kemp

POEM: Hotel Insomnia by Charles Simic

I liked my little hole,

Its window facing a brick wall.

Next door there was a piano.

A few evenings a month

a crippled old man came to play

"My Blue Heaven."

Mostly, though, it was quiet.

Each room with its spider in heavy overcoat

Catching his fly with a web

Of cigarette smoke and revery.

So dark,

I could not see my face in the shaving mirror.

At 5 A.M. the sound of bare feet upstairs.

The "Gypsy" fortuneteller,

Whose storefront is on the corner,

Going to pee after a night of love.

Once, too, the sound of a child sobbing.

So near it was, I thought

For a moment, I was sobbing myself.

QUOTE: "A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." ~ Jean de La Fontaine

Mischief and Control (Vonda Shepard)

George Carlin
May 12, 1937 - June 22, 2008

Always do whatever's next.

At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period oftime.

Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.

Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

"I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.

I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the Professional Building. I felt better right away.

I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer's disease where they slowly began to recover other people's lost memories.

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven't tried that for a while. Maybe this time it'll work.

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me - they're cramming for their final exam.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.

I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it.

I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect.

If God had intended us not to masturbate he would've made our arms shorter.

If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him.

If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

In comic strips, the person on the right always speaks first.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did.

One can never know for sure what a deserted area looks like.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

People who say they don't care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don't care what people think.

Religion is just mind control.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that.

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

The reason I talk to myself is that I'm the only one whose answers I accept.

The status quo sucks.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire,but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

Think off-center.

Weather forecast for tonight: dark.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?

When someone is impatient and says, "I haven't got all day," I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I'm sure it made the work seem that much more urgent.

When you step on the brakes your life is in your foot's hands.

When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat.

You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar.

You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.

I love this country. I wouldnt live any other place at any other time in history. BUT! BUT! Say what you want about America-Land of the Freee, Home of the Brave--we've got some dumb-ass motherfuckers floatin' around this country. Dumb ass motherfuckers.

SONG: Mischief and Control by Vonda Shepard

BOOK: Napalm & Silly Putty by George Carlin

POEM: Balance by Adam Zagajewski (translated by Clare Cavanagh)

I watched the arctic landscape from above
and thought of nothing, lovely nothing.
I observed white canopies of clouds, vast
expanses where no wolf tracks could be found.

I thought about you and about the emptiness
that can promise one thing only: plenitude—
and that a certain sort of snowy wasteland
bursts from a surfeit of happiness.

As we drew closer to our landing,
the vulnerable earth emerged among the clouds,
comic gardens forgotten by their owners,
pale grass plagued by winter and the wind.

I put my book down and for an instant felt
a perfect balance between waking and dreams.
But when the plane touched concrete, then
assiduously circled the airport's labryinth,

I once again knew nothing. The darkness
of daily wanderings resumed, the day's sweet darkness,
the darkness of the voice that counts and measures,
remembers and forgets.

QUOTE: "Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs." ~ Christopher Morley

Marie (Irving Berlin)

My Aunt Marie (my mother's sister) has been in the hospital since Sunday morning - my mom, brother and sister have been by her side around the clock, taking turns spending the night. Marie has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure - her doctors believe she also suffered a stroke... and now pneumonia has set in.

She hasn't eaten in four days - although they have been giving her morphine to ease the pain, she is still agitated and frustrated... because she isn't able to communicate nor to understand what is going on. They are moving her to a hospice center this afternoon - I will be flying up first thing Saturday morning to widen the circle of family...

Marie is my mother's sister, two years older (turning 80 this September) - I love hearing the stories of her early life, how glamorous and carefree she was, all the photos showing a shapely, mischievous woman with red lips and an ever-present cigarette. Her dating life was legendary and she finally settled down with B, older and previously married with two daughters - she gave birth to a son soon after and, at the age of 37, had a debilitating stroke, which paralyzed the entire right side of her body. My mom flew up to Minnesota to be with Marie and to help take care of Brad, her child, who was almost 2 - it quickly became obvious that extensive physical and speech therapy would be necessary... so mom brought Brad home to live with us (I was 10 at the time).

Marie moved to New York to live with my grandmother... and my parents legally adopted Brad 4 years later - I was thrilled to have a younger brother (as I still am, even now that he has grown into adulthood). He didn't think it a bit unusual to have two moms, one in the house and one long-distance. Marie would visit us, as well as send Brad cards for special occasions (birthdays, Christmas, graduations... including from the Marine Corps) - her speech remained halting and her motor skills shaky, but we loved the game of figuring out what she was trying to say as she sounded out each syllable, and she would beam with pleasure when her efforts and our powers of deduction would come together for a successful sentence (whew!).

When my Nana died, Marie moved to a nursing home in Atlanta, where my mom inherited the role of caregiver - my brother and sister would visit, and I would occasionally call and send cards and flowers, but the bulk of assistance fell to mom, who faithfully stopped in a few times a week, phoned every day, and kept Marie in tissues (Puffs!), her favorite headbands and flannel nightgowns. Mom ran interference with the nurses and took Marie to her doctor and dentist appointments - even when Marie would go through episodes of paranoia and dementia, Mom was a constant of calm and support.

Marie has been the epitome of unconditional love, never a moment of blame/shame/guilt... and always an instant smile, a chipper voice and a stroking hand - she never worried when she didn't hear from us but radiated when she did. Spending time with her during our once-a-year Christmas visits was warming and all-too-short, whether at Mom's house or at the nursing home - she's always been such a *sport* and basked in any family interaction, no matter where, who or how many (or few).

It is distressing to know her body is now betraying her... and, for someone who's always been a fighter, it is very clear she is now making a conscious decision to allow the shutting down - I think she's really... just... tired. So... whether I'm in time to hold her hand and give her permission to let go... or whether I arrive after the fact to help with various arrangements, I feel the need to be there for Marie, who's always been there for me (as well as for my husband and children) - this world will be a different, sadder place when she has passed...

[Added 6/13/08: My aunt transitioned comfortably and gracefully in her sleep at 2:45 a.m., with my mom, brother and sister by her side - R.I.P. Ree Ree...]

SONG: Marie by Irving Berlin

BOOK (in this case, a short story): The Last Leaf by O. Henry

POEM: Sonnets to Orpheus, Part II, XIII by Rainer Maria Rilke

Be ahead of all leaving as though it were
behind you, like the winter as it parts,
for among winters is one so endlessly winter
only through overwintering can your heart

survive. Be dead forever in Eurydice -
rise singing, praising back to pure relation.
Be here among the vanished; near the tree
of death, be ringing glass that shatters even

as it rings. Know conditions of nonbeing,
the endless ground of your vibration down
in you: one day you'll be fully fulfilled.

And to full nature's store of speechless things,
of worn and everything that's dumb and muffled,
joyfully add yourself - and end the count.

QUOTE: "Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life." ~ Albert Einstein

Moving Mountains (Amilia K. Spicer)

SONG: Moving Mountains by Amilia K. Spicer (I can't seem to find the lyrics, but here's the mp3)

BOOK: Moving Mountains: a personal tale of healing through dreams, guides, kundalini and the music of Donovan by Lucy D'Mot

POEM: A Physics by Heather McHugh

When you get down to it, Earth

has our own great ranges

of feeling - Rocky, Smoky, Blue -

and a heart that can melt stones.

The still pools fill with sky,

as if aloof, and we have eyes

for all of this - and more, for Earth's

reminding moon. We too are ruled

by such attractions - spun and swaddled,

rocked and lent a light. We run

our clocks on wheels, our trains

on time. But all the while we want

to love each other endlessly - not only for

a hundred years, not only six feet up and down.

We want the suns and moons of silver

in ourselves, not only counted coins in a cup. The whole

idea of love was not to fall. And neither was

the whole idea of God. We put him well

above ourselves, because we meant,

in time, to measure up.

QUOTE: "How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountain-top it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make - leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone - we all dwell in a house of one room - the world with the firmament for its roof - and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track." ~ John Muir

Beautiful Day (U2)

Is Obama an enlightened being?
Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain't no ordinary politician. You buying it?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 6, 2008

I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?

I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.

Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.

Ready? It goes likes this:

Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.

Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there's something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.

Let me be completely clear: I'm not arguing some sort of utopian revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. I'm not saying the man's going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.

Please. I'm also certainly not saying he's perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual. While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.

But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically draw to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.

Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.

Not this time.

SONG: Beautiful Day by U2

BOOK: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

POEM: Searching for the Dharma by Xu Yun

You've traveled up ten thousand steps in search of the Dharma.

So many long days in the archives, copying, copying.

The gravity of the Tang and the profundity of the Sung

make heavy baggage.

Here! I've picked you a bunch of wildflowers.

Their meaning is the same

but they're much easier to carry.

QUOTE: "The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light." ~ Felix Adler

Barack Obama, Get Happy (Susan Werner)

From MoveOn.org:

[Tuesday] night Senator Obama locked up the nomination.

Amazing.

After years of DC insiders running the show, a progressive candidate who started in politics through community organizing, who unequivocally opposed the war in Iraq, who isn't afraid to stand up to the politics of fear, an African-American, became the Democratic nominee for president.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The great Barack Obama insurrection
Hillary was ready. Hillary was unstoppable. Hillary was, by all accounts, a lock. What the hell happened?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 30, 2008

Are you paying any sort of attention to this moment in time? Are you reading bits and hints about the transformation, the shift, the unusual and slightly surreal energy coursing through the nation? Are you tattooing this seminal period on the sacrum of your sociopolitical consciousness? Are you under 50? Then there's been nothing else like this in your lifetime. And there probably never will be again.

You gotta take it all in, you know? Because it was no time at all ago, less than a year, and Hillary Clinton's presidential nomination was pretty much a given, and even I was relatively thrilled and gung-ho for her candidacy, especially given how she was so ahead in the polls and so ahead in fund raising and so ahead in public opinion her imminent nomination felt much like a slam dunk, a forgone conclusion, a sure thing.

And therefore it was all something rather otherworldly for progressives, a bit unprecedented, a Democratic race to watch only for the sheer historic value and for the surprising quality of the other candidates involved, and not because there was any doubt as to the eventual outcome.

Just a bit beyond incredible, then, what has happened since, in such a short time, in this, one of the more fascinating turning points in American history.

It almost cannot be understated: Barack Obama's steady, astounding, almost inexplicable rise to the top to not only become the presumptive Democratic nominee but also to overtake one of the strongest, smartest, most well-funded, tenacious rival candidates in American history — and also to out-poll his deeply connected Republican opponent — is both remarkable and historic on a number of fronts.

But the thing is, no matter how you crunch the data and try to logically analyze all the components that made Obamapalooza happen, there appears to be something just beyond the logic, just outside the normal machinery, that makes you shake your head in amazement, and perhaps remember this forever.

On one level, I suppose it's not all that unusual. There have been plenty of scrappy, outta-nowhere, come-from-behind victories in political races before. There are plenty of tales of one candidate holding an overwhelming lead early on, only to have his lunch eaten by some brilliant, whippersnapper upstart. JFK charmed the hell out of the planet and revealed the deep sourness of once-omnipotent Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton, the handsome, populist Arkansas governor with minimal big-stage experience but loads of effortless charisma, came from seemingly nowhere to build a phenomenal following and stomp all over the doddering, baffled, how-much-is-a-gallon-of-milk Bush 41.

But with Obama, as with just about everything about his campaign, something feels different, more historic, deeper and more profound and even a bit more, how do you say, intimate. It is not politics as usual. It is not just another smart, deeply intelligent upstart senator making a surprising play for The Show.

You have to take note. Because Obama has accomplished his astonishing rise without the normal weaponry of American politics. As of yet, there have been almost no dirty tricks. He has not really attacked Hillary, has not "gone negative" or run a nasty smear campaign or swiftboated her; he has not employed, in short, any of the disgusting tactics Karl Rove's Republican party notoriously used against Al Gore and John Kerry so as to lie themselves into a brutal and failed chokehold of power.

Verily, plethoric are the pundits who've been trying to parse just why, exactly, Obama has been so much more effective, so much more far-reaching and cross-cultural than the once-unstoppable Clinton, not to mention McCain or anyone else. What is it about him, exactly? What is it that draws such a broad circle of endorsements, from Ted Kennedy to Andrew Sullivan, John Edwards to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich?

It's the networking, they say. Obama is the first "Facebook candidate." He's the first to successfully leverage all the modern tech, the viral marketing, YouTube, Web 2.0, lovely videos by celebrity rappers who are nearly moved to tears by the man's speeches. Yes, that must be it.

Or maybe it's his remarkable, idealistic team of aides, his hotshot fresh-faced speechwriters, his wondrous oratory skill. Is it the cool campaign posters? Is it the game-altering speeches on race in America? Or is it what the terrified right-wing hatemongers are calling "liberal guilt," the feeling that we on the whiny tree-hugging ultra-PC left feel so gosh-darn guilty about how blacks, Hawaiians and Harvard-trained lawyers have been treated, lo, these many millennia — even more so than the oppressive treatment of women — that Obama gets our vote out of sheer nervous remorse?

Problem is, those explanations feel insufficient and inadequate and, in the case of that last one, exceedingly stupid. Is there not something else going on? Is there more to it than just a battle between old school/new school styles of campaigning?

Maybe the answer lies elsewhere. Maybe you need to look to the dark side for a hint, for a bit of proof that there's more to this moment in history than mere shifting times. It comes in the form of that very ugly and violent rumor that gets whispered among skeptics and conspiracy theorists and joked about by cretins on Fox News, and even sighed by many otherwise happy, progressive idealists, those who've had their dreams shattered and hopes pummeled enough times that a form of sinister cynicism creeps in.

It is this: Some feel Obama will not survive. There are those who think something violent and lethal is bound to happen to him and not merely because he's black, but because he's too revolutionary, too much a force for harmony and peace, and the forces of darkness and oppression in America, be they troglodytic Southern racists or anarchist radicals or insular BushCo die-hards, simply cannot have that.

There is no need to invite that repulsive idea in for long. It is too dark, disquieting, pointless, not to mention how it feels like it could create some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy by mentioning it too damn much in the media. But it is worth noting for one curious aspect: It is a fear borne of a truly rare historic circumstance, the amazing idea that someone like Obama is, to put it bluntly, too good for this particular role, a bit too conscious and enlightened for what is a brutal and soul-numbing and potentially deadly political machine.

Then again, maybe, in a morose way, this is how we know transformative change is arriving, perhaps quicker than expected, but arriving nonetheless. We're already deeply scared of losing it. Really, how long's it been since we've felt anything like that?

SONG: Barack Obama, Get Happy by Susan Werner

BOOK: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama

POEM: A Morning Offering by John O'Donohue

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcome the wonder of this day,

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath,

The tent of thought where I shelter,

Wave of desire I am shore to

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invite me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more.

QUOTE: "If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth." ~ Senator Barack Obama

June, 1989 (Nick Annis)

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1989 that the Chinese troops stormed Beijing's Tiananmen Square to crack down on students conducting pro-democracy demonstrations. The demonstrations had begun months earlier, after the government accused them of planning a coup d'etat. They drew thousands of supporters from three dozen universities and staged hunger strikes and sit-ins. The Chinese government declared martial law, and troops approached the square with tanks in the late evening of June 3.

Ordinary workers had gathered along the nearby roads. They had been demonstrating in support of the students for weeks, and they crowded into the streets to block the advance of the tanks toward the square. Though the event would come to be called the Tianamen Square massacre, almost all the people killed were the ordinary people in the streets outside the square. Violence broke out around midnight on this day in 1989, with some people throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the troops, and the troops responding with gunfire.

The violence continued in and around the square for the rest of the day. The famous photograph of a student staring down a tank was taken by an American Associated Press photographer named Jeff Widener. He went to the top of a hotel near the square and began to take pictures of the tanks clearing the last remnants of people from the streets. Then he saw one man walk up to a tank and stand in its path, refusing to move. He took several photographs and then the man was grabbed by bystanders and pulled out of the tank's path. Widener asked another journalist to hide the film in his underwear to smuggle it out of the country.

The identity of the protester in the photograph is not known with any certainty, but he's been called one of the most influential revolutionaries of the twentieth century.

SONG: June, 1989 by Nick Annis (track 11)

BOOK: The Tiananmen Papers by Liang Zhang, Andrew J. Nathan, Perry Link, Orville Schell

POEM: Requiem (for victims of June Fourth) by Bei Dao (translated by Bonnie McDougall and Chen Maiping)

Not the living but the dead

under the doomsday-purple sky

go in groups

suffering guides forward suffering

at the end of hatred is hatred

the spring has run dry, the conflagration stretches unbroken

the road back is even further away

Not gods but the children

amid the clashing of helmets

say their prayers

mothers breed light

darkness breathes mothers

the stone rolls, the clock runs backwards

the eclipse of the sun has already taken place

Not your bodies but your souls

shall share a common birthday every year

you are all the same age

love has founded for the dead

an everlasting alliance

you embrace each other closely

in the massive register of deaths

QUOTE: "The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution in spirit, the forces which had produced inequities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance, and fear." ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Ode to Billie Joe (Bobbie Gentry)

"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day..."

Discuss among yourselves...

SONG: Ode to Billie Joe by Bobbie Gentry

BOOK: 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time and the Artists, Stories and Secrets Behind Them by Toby Creswell

POEM: The Saddest by Eugen Jebeleanu (translated by Matthew Zapruder)

The saddest poem
is the poem which is not written
swallowed with knots
stalked by customs officials and bridges
the one which cannot be contemplated
not for anything ever.

Keep that poem.

She is surely the woman
who will give birth in pain.

And in her we shall each
recognize ourselves.

QUOTE: "The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn." ~ David Russell

Come Down in Time (Elton John)

Still putting off talking about my mom's ill health - figured I'd concentrate on one of my many character flaws instead. Despite my keen awareness of, and my sincere efforts to change my time management habits, I am perpetually punctuality-challenged - shades of Joni's Just Like This Train, eh?... :-)

6 Tips for Arriving On Time

Those of you who usually arrive late know who you are… the people you're inconveniencing also know who you are. So we'll save the point counterpoint discussion regarding being late for another article and offer ways to get your attractive face, magnetic personality, and vital intelligence to places on time.

First you need to firmly embrace what on time means. On time is to say you're in position and ready to contribute on the appointed clock time. Meetings that begin at 9:30 have you in place and done chatting by 9:25-28. Think of your commitments as European trains that leave so precisely on time that you could set your clock by them. Picture a meeting starting without you giving you that pit in the stomach feeling of you standing on the platform while the train pulls away. In other words, missing the train and beginning of meetings is not negotiable. You have to be there when it starts.

Practice exit strategies so you leave previous meetings or events far enough in advance to get where you have to go next early. Exit strategies include telling your co-workers when you must leave at the beginning of the meeting so they work to that deadline at the end of the meeting. It includes the whole set of interruption interceptions covered elsewhere here. Exit strategies include respectful lines that allow you to leave such as, "Thanks for the update, I have another meeting in 10 minutes and it's 8 minutes away so I have got to wrap this up now and get on my way. I look forward to our next conversation."

Ignore your email when you're passing your desk between meetings. Chances are you will want to write a quick reply, leave a brief voicemail response, or note a reminder on your action list. This attention to the email master (you're the slave) is a frequent obstacle to people getting places on time.

Do not set your watch ahead. Some people put their watch 10 minutes ahead as a way to fool themselves to being on time. In reality you know that you have built the '10 minute cushion' into your watch time and you consistently accommodate that reality. There is the additional complication of knowing what your watch says compared to those in public places or your counterpart's. Get real – set your watch on the time your computer has.

Use alarms in your calendar. Whether you're a PC or MAC user your calendar has an alarm function. When you set a meeting, include an alarm reminding you to get on your way to the meeting on time. If you work on a campus where you might have to go to another building, calculate travel, parking, and walking time when you schedule the meeting, add 5 minutes, and have your alarm ring that far in advance. Maria works on a campus and sometime she walks to the next building, 4 minutes away. Other times she has to get in the car and drive over a busy highway and sit through 6 stoplights to get to another building. She must plan 10 minute departure for the close building and 20 minutes for the distant building. Doing the planning in advance to set the alarm ensures she is free to work right up to departure time and she does the calculation once.

For you who are usually latecomers, visualize the possible surprise and probable appreciative recognition you'll receive for arriving on time (or 5 minutes early).

SONG: Come Down in Time by Elton John

BOOK: Never Be Late Again: 7 Cures for the Punctually Challenged by Diana Delonzor

POEM: Punctuality by Lewis Carroll

Man Naturally loves delay,

And to procrastinate;

Business put off from day to day

Is always done to late.

Let ever hour be in its place

Firm fixed, nor loosely shift,

And well enjoy the vacant space,

As though a birthday gift.

And when the hour arrives, be there,

Where'er that "there" may be;

Uncleanly hands or ruffled hair

Let no one ever see.

If dinner at "half-past" be placed,

At "half-past" then be dressed.

If at a "quarter-past" make haste

To be down with the rest.

Better to be before you time,

Than e're to be behind;

To open the door while strikes the chime,

That shows a punctual mind.

Moral:

Let punctuality and care

Seize every flitting hour,

So shalt thou cull a floweret fair,

E'en from a fading flower.

QUOTE: "Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow." ~ Denis Waitely