Librarian Not Allowed Free Speech at McCain Event

I saw this over at FranIAm's and she got it from Yikes!

Happy Birthday Dalai and Frida!

Today is the Dalai Lama's birthday! It's also Frida Kahlo's birthday as well. Happy Birthday Dalai and Frida. Anybody else with a birthday today I wish a happy birthday! Well, except one world leader who is a sociopath and is personally responsible for millions of deaths and who is the supposed leader of the free world. I don't wish him happy birthday. I wish his ass was out the door already!

I like this picture of the Dalai Lama because when we went to a teaching he gave in Bloomington this year this is indeed what he looked like. He had the visor on to shade his eyes from the bright lights in the auditorium. He was just an ordinary human being talking to us and hanging out.

This picture of Frida shows a personal library in the background and it also has her at its center.

Patriotic

Sure I am. I was born in Independence, Missouri. I had my daughter on July 4th and my son on Election day (of at least that year in 1988) so I think those facts speak for themselves. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Patriarchy is the root of patriotism. Of the fathers, for the fathers, descended from the father. Rule over. Authority. Do not question...no wonder liberals are painted as unpatriotic. Liberals do question authority. Liberals don't believe in ruling over . Liberals do believe in questioning assumptions. Does this mean that liberals do not love their country? I think it means they love it more and believe their country should be the best and have the best human principles. Their country should be just and fair. Their country should do the human condition proudly and when it does not, they are the first to bring it out for fixing. That is truly a love of country in my opinion.

To prove you love your country you have to do more than just wear a pin, blow up some fireworks and fly a flag. It means more than just believing everything your government tells you. It requires you to think and act in ways that benefit not just human beings living together but the very Earth itself.

The Bill of Rights

Someone made a brilliant remark on one of the blogs I read about how politicians should be given a copy of the Constitution in large print so they could refresh their memory should they actually take the time to read it. We hope that they can understand it. What a great idea! Print out a large type version and mail it off to your congress critters. Underline or highlight in yellow those parts you think they are having trouble understanding. Point out how their recent votes contradict the Constitution and tell them to straighten up their act or we'll see to it that they are removed from office.

With that in mind, here is a copy of the Bill of Rights 1-10:


Amendments 1-10 of the Constitution

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

On another note, I've been cruising the blogs and the web and here are a number of articles I found of interest that I'd like to pass along. Tell me what you think.

The Constitution

Keeping the Liar in Liasson

No Where Else To Go

Averting Our Gaze

UNFPA Funds Withheld Again

Yeah, yeah I know, always with the doom and gloom...

Crime of the Century

Last Friday we went to Bloomington and hubby asked me what I wanted to replace from the record collection that I hadn't yet. It has been years since I heard Supertramp (besides Breakfast in America and The Long Way Home, songs that I now pretty much hate because they played them to death and besides it wasn't their best work anyway) and that was what I wanted. So that is what I got. I've been grooving to songs like these...

Even in the Quietest Moments


Fool's Overture



Crime of the Century


They sure don't make music the way they used to in the good ole days ;)

What goes on behind our backs

Off today and cleaning house like a mad woman and I turn on the radio to catch Fresh Air because I hear today they will be interviewing Seymour Hersh, a real investigative journalist unlike most of the journalists and reporters that inhabit the airwaves. You just have to listen to this program. More duplicity from our congress critters, more Bush war powers on display, and more of a heaping helping of disdain for our liberal democracy than ever before!

" Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh believes that the United States may be closer to armed conflict with Iran than previously imagined. He writes about Congress' funding of covert military operations in the upcoming issue of The New Yorker."

Listen Now

Does this surprise you? What is going on with our democrats? WTF Nancy Pelosi?



This is not a new direction! This is going down the path of GWB's fascist states of America!

The Image of Christianity

I am taking a class this summer and it meets on Fridays. I really like this class a lot. The professor is an older woman and she is so down to earth and funny and full of stories. She doesn't like computers much either. I get so much out of this class each week and I look forward to attending. I wish I could say I felt this way about all my classes but that would be a lie. What surprises me is that I didn't think I would enjoy this class that much. It's about children's literature which I didn't read much of as a kid myself. When I was a kid it seemed the stories were boring to me and I didn't read much. It wasn't until I turned 15 that I even began to read at all on my own but once I started I couldn't stop and the stuff I read was adult. I got hooked on reading when I picked up a book of poetry by Emily Dickinson. Then I read a biography about her. I was hooked and I've never looked back.

When my children were small I read to them. I remember liking The Polar Express and The Napping House and the series that had PJ Funny Bunny in it. I know I read to them all the time when they were small but honestly I don't remember much of what I read. By the time they were in third grade I'd stopped reading to them. I can not really remember why I did now but I did. My parents never read to me so at least I did read to my kids from the time they'd sit still in my lap up until the third grade but now I'm thinking I should have read more, better, longer.

So last Friday I am sitting in class and we are discussing folk tales and fairy tales and the professor says something about being a Christian herself and...blah, blah, blah. I got stuck on that and couldn't get beyond it. I felt let down by her saying that. Now she could be, and probably is, a progressive Christian, you know like FranIAm, and Fran is cool with me so why was I so let down? I thought about that first thing this morning when I woke up and what I came up with is that most Christians I know are bigoted and narrow minded and mean spirited and not really spiritual in the way I consider to be the true meaning of spiritual. In other words, most people who profess to be Christians that I know around here are anything but spiritual. How sad is that? But maybe I am just being judgmental and need to knock it off.

On a related note, my friend is sending her four year old daughter to some Baptist summer vacation Bible camp this week and she was telling me how cute her daughter was when this daughter was talking about how bad it is to say the lord's name in vain and about going to hell if you are bad. I told her I think she should send her daughter to some other church because that church is just scaring her with that talk about hell. Oh it's making her a more moral person she told me. Uh, excuse me? Four years old aren't really immoral are they? So the moral to this story is what? Christians can be spiritual and progressive but most that I know personally are not. I have to say that in my personal experience the image of Christianity in this country is mostly negative--especially when used by the far right. And it seems to me, but I could be wrong, that more Christians are the negative type and not the positive type which is doing a disservice to the Christian faith.

Today we went to the Bloomington library, and to other various shops later of course. At one shop I saw these mini bumper stickers and one said "Jesus was a pacifist" and I thought oh hell yeah and I bought it and put it on my car right above my Darwin fish symbol. How's that for progressive Christianity?

Can I vote for this guy?

Because he isn't willing to give away my fourth admendment rights for starters...




This is what the Democratic party is supposed to stand for:




I don't want 'republican lite', is that asking for the moon?

Voting Republican

My neice just sent me this youtube video which is hysterical...

How we fit together

My hubby and I work different shifts so it can be quite an adjustment just trying to see each other and spend time together anymore. I work first shift mostly and have two days where I work second shift. On the days I work second shift the latest time I get home is 9pm. Hubby works mostly a late second shift and two third shifts. He comes home around midnight most nights. Sometimes he comes home earlier and sometimes later depending on how fast they get their work done or if there is overtime. When he works third shift he won't come home until 6 or 7 am and I rarely sleep more than 3-4 hours just because he's gone. When he comes home around midnight I end up staying up with him for a couple of more hours just so we get time together. Sometimes I do not get all the sleep I need for this reason alone.

He drives a train, you know, the engineer. Sometimes he is the boss of who is driving the train, called variously the conductor or foreman of the job. They move freight around from industry to industry, delivering empty cars to some places and picking up full cars at others. He does not work on the road, which is to say, going from state to state although he would make more money if he did. He likes coming home everyday, no matter what time it might be, and he hates spending time in motels waiting for the next run. So he takes a pay cut to stay in state but it is well worth it to him.

We have been married for over a quarter of a century so we have our habits. We used to sleep together but over time our habits have changed and now we rarely do. He has his own room and I have the master bedroom. He has sleep apnea so he snores and he is really tall so his feet hang off the bed and he flings his arms back and I'm always afraid he might inadvertently hit me in the face although he never has. I have restless legs syndrome and I can't sleep if he snores too much and I am a cover hog. Over time we just have decided that in order to be really comfortable, and because we have different schedules, to sleep in separate beds. He comes to visit me in my room when he wants some extra special loving and then we might sleep together for that night. However, he will wake up with a headache (my bed's too soft for him) and I will try to get up quietly without waking him up but I just look at him sideways and he wakes right up so it's no use. I have to get in my closet and drawers when getting dressed and I just end up bugging him so much I tell him to go to his room in order to get more sleep. So does this mean we don't have a happy marriage? Far from it. We give each other space and that is a blessing.

I feel really badly for my honey right now because he lost a lot of his favorite records and some of his Arkham House book collection in the flood. He had some German typewriters damaged too. He lost more than I did anyway. He had a lot of stuff stored out in the garage and we had around 10 inches of water come in there. He is still cleaning and reorganizing. And I feel bad because I made him put his stuff out there. I complained we had too much stuff and it had to go so he loaded it in boxes and stored it out there in the garage.

And with all the trees that went down, he is still busy with his chainsaw on his days off. Now if you knew this man the way I know him you would understand the hardship involved here. He is most happy typing on a typewriter or writing in his blog online. Or he might be listening to music and drawing in pen and ink or he is reading some book. Lastly, at late night when there is nothing better to do, he is watching some movie with his bowl of popcorn and his numerous pets all gathered around him begging for a kernal or two. He throws back his head and laughs at something funny on the show he is watching. I can hear him upstairs where I am either trying to get some sleep or reading or doing homework or writing papers or blogging. When he blogs on my computer (it's ours, but it's in my bedroom) I play my guitar and tickle cats ears or read or listen to him read to me. We have a charmed life together until reality comes crashing in in the form of floods or what not. Suffice it to say that lately we have not been the creative lazy beings we prefer to be but are instead the busy adults cleaning up messes and sawing up tree parts.

Last night when he got home I informed him that the washer was making a god awful noise when it went into the spin cycle and could he look at the machine for me. So rather than write or watch a movie or blog or anything else, he had the washer tipped over on it's side and was messing around with it but at any rate he fixed it for me and I was back in the business of washing clothes again. What would I do without him? We fit together so perfectly, I just don't think there is another person in this world who I could get along with half so well.

Concerning all things national security

I know you heard the news about how the Democratic congress caved on FISA. Most of the Democrats elected do not act like Democrats but instead are 'republican lite'. With friends such as these who needs enemies? And Obama, agent of change, where does he stand? Turns out he's 'change lite' too. He backs the cave in.

"Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, announced Friday that he would support the bill passed by the House of Representatives rubber-stamping the Bush administration’s illegal program of widespread electronic surveillance and wiretapping."

We are not all the same...

We are not all the same and can we live with that? That is the question I have been asking myself today. I have angered another blogger it would seem. Actually, this gal and I have much more in common than not but the differences are a button pusher to me. It is all about that wonderful hot button topic of sex. I admit I can not be totally objective. I think sex is wonderful and I enjoy it quite a bit myself but...and here is a big but...I do not like the sexual exploitation of women. Maybe I feel so strongly about it because I was raped as a young girl. I had to go to therapy for years and learn how to accept my body, my sexuality, myself but I guess they couldn't teach me that "anything to do with sex is acceptable and alright" because, goddammit, I know it's not. It's not alright to sexually exploit children. It's not alright to sexually exploit women, girls or boys, men or even animals. Not right and I'm always going to make a fuss about it, always. It's my button. I will get pissed off guaranteed! I know people who say everything sexual is alright between two consenting adults and that any depiction of sexuality is healthy and fine. Is it alright that one person wants to be abused by the other? Well I can't stop it from happening of course but it isn't alright by me. The person who is seeking abuse is mentally ill in some way and is reenacting some abuse from the past that has traumatized them is what I think. Moreover, I believe not all sexually depictions are healthy or wise.

Now about getting along: I know I have a hot button issue concerning sex exploitation so I suggest that if you read this blog and I am discussing this issue you just not comment unless you can agree 100%. I know that might strike you as weird or something but I don't want to go off the deep end or accuse you of something you had not intended. What can I say but that I obviously need more work in this area and I'm not quite over it yet. But that is the way I am and if that is a problem then I am sorry and see you around.

I Blog Too Much

I blog too much. It is true. What an addiction. I wake up in the morning and I wonder how Dcup of PoliTits is and if Dashiell will be writing another kick ass article for Jonestown and how Linda Sama of Ramblings of an Ageless Hippie Chick is doing. I wonder about Monkey Muck and Dr. Zaius of Zaius Nation. Is Randal of L'Ennui Melodieux back from vacation yet? Is the Dean of The Dean's Office back from his? Why is Freida Bee quitting? I think I know. I have stuff to do but first let me check on the blogs and pretty soon an hour is gone and all that stuff still needs doing. She says she has got to stop because she has work that needs to be done. I am reminded of a Kate Bush song that she released in the early 1990s about this very topic. It is called "Deeper Understanding" and I loved, loved, loved that song before I even had a personal computer. Maybe I can find it on youtube and if so you will be subjected to it.



Lyrics:

As the people here grow colder
I turn to my computer
And spend my evenings with it
Like a friend.

I was loading a new programme
I had ordered from a magazine:

"Are you lonely, are you lost?
This voice console is a must."
I press Execute.

"Hello, I know that you've been feeling tired.
I bring you love and deeper understanding.
Hello, I know that you're unhappy.
I bring you love and deeper understanding."

Well I've never felt such pleasure.
Nothing else seemed to matter.
I neglected my bodily needs.

I did not eat, I did not sleep,
The intensity increasing,
'Til my family found me and intervened.

But I was lonely, I was lost,
Without my little black box.
I pick up the phone and go, Execute.

"Hello, I know that you've been feeling tired.
I bring you love and deeper understanding.
Hello, I know that you're unhappy.
I bring you love and deeper understanding."

I turn to my computer like a friend.
I need deeper understanding.
Give me deeper understanding.


So that tree that had almost slid down the hill and would have hit our house if it hadn't been tied off to another tree was finally removed today. The company that we had contracted with had to do a bunch of work over at Bradford Woods, which being IU property and all probably paid a hell of a lot more than we could or would so they came first, and since I had to wait until payday to have $400 dollars available to pay them, they had us on the back burner. However, today it is gone and no longer a threat to the house. Another reason why they didn't cut it down sooner was because the bridge was out and they had no way of getting their equipment across. (It was a big truck with a bucket that could lift a man up high and I don't know what in the hell that is called.) I spent the day cleaning the house. Hell I even dusted which is my most unfavorite chore to do anymore. I have too much stuff. I mourn the loss of yet another album collection to the flood waters. Sure some of the records were saved but some of my favorite record sleeves were damaged and will not be worth a damn. Now is a good time to grow that Buddhist spine and not pine for "things".

For the class I am taking I am required to read several novels each week in addition to journal articles and other academic type fare. Anyway, two novels I must mention and that I highly recommend are:

1. Each Little Bird that Sings by Deborah Wiles. I cried my eyes out over this one!

2. Sold by Patricia McCormick. This book is heart wrenching!

Anyway, go (NO RUN) to your local library and put these on hold. Listen to them on audio if you don't have time to read.

Now dinner is over, the dishes are washed, I am washed and have shaved my legs and am waiting for my hubby to come home. I am on my second glass of red wine so I really ought to stop for now as I feel quite light headed.

Why I don't like rap (amongst other things)

This is a mini rant and all I have time for today as I'm super busy with work and writing papers for school. I also don't like the "c" word just like African Americans don't like the "n" word. It's not rocket science people. Discrimination is discrimination and wrong to do no matter if the people you are doing it to is a male or female, gay or straight, republican or a democrat, white, red, brown, yellow, black--whatever!

Before and after photos

Before



After

Well not quite done but at least I can drive across it.