Teachers' Lounge

strange and wonderful things mean something strange and wonderful is about to happen

I didn't see Little Coches today.

I had meant to... I'd made plans in my head the day before - free catnip, bring my Quick Chess game and anyone who could beat me (which would be most chess players of any depth) could choose an Angel card from my beloved deck by Sulamith Wulfing. (Sorry, I never did learn how to properly use Key Caps on the Mac, and so I want you to imagine two little dots over the u in Wulfing.)

What happened was, I was a guest at my brother and sister-in-law's last night... they were leaving Las Cruces for Pennsylvania early today... and so we ate many deliciously prepared dishes, and drank a bottle of wine, and finished up the evening with exotic cheeses and honeys and habanero jellies and coffee and biscuits (crackers) and my brother and I talked over old times and I drove home very happy. I went to bed happy. I woke up happy.

An hour after I awoke I was not happy. Something was dragging me down. I felt like I was stuck in some gluey goopey mess. I did my walking, but pooped out early. I did my Yoga, but my poses were half-hearted. I ate a light breakfast, trying to gear up to go to the Las Cruces Farmers Market and hang out a while with Little Coches. Instead, I lay down on the couch at 8 a.m. and slept fitfully until 10.

I think the culprit was the elk sausage. It was superb, but, much like sausages in my past (usually pork sausage) I am prone to highly depressive reactions from certain sausage products. I'm guessing it's not the meat itself, but the "sausage" ingredients that go into it.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel a bit more spunky right now (2 in the afternoon), so I'm just going to sign off for a bit and play with my balls.

Update - I set up the keyboard outside my front door and played for about 40 minutes. Caveman curled up against the door for a front row seat. I ate a quick supper abput 4 p.m. and proceeded to fall asleep on the couch until 8:30. I got up and went to bed and woke at 1:30 Sunday morning. I feel much better.

Thanks for asking.

Art

From The Teacher List - "I got this one from my friend, Kim Froehler. These downloads can be printed out and your students can make them up in class. There is a wide range of content and several skill levels here!"

Canon 3D Papercraft

Ask a simple question

Why are we in Iraq? by Donald C. Hudson Jr.
Donald C. Hudson Jr. is a private assigned to the 1st Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. E:mail donaldchudsonjr@yahoo.com

Donald,

It took a lot of guts for you, a private in the U.S. Army, to take a public stand against the madness. I know of other military personnel who oppose the occupation of Iraq. Most remain publicly closed-mouthed for fear of retaliation from the government they serve. You are to be commended for your bravery. Perhaps one day soon others on active duty, from privates to generals, will break their silence and stand behind you.

Pax,

Jeffrey Field

Still goofing at Teachers' Lounge @ http://consilience.typepad.com/

The Real Reason We're In Iraq by by Harley Sorensen

Update - My e-mail to Donald was unable to be delivered. Full details below.

Brother sun, sister moon

"We're acutely aware of whether or not other people are looking at us. We spend every second of interaction inferring the emotional state, values, and likely actions of others."

Yep.

"There's a small minority of people who are consistently strange in particular ways. You've probably met a few of them. Human though they are, interaction with them doesn't follow the usual dance of eye contact, facial expressions, intonations, gestures, conversational beats, and so forth. For most, it can be disconcerting to interact with such people. Often, it's not their fault, but even so the most extreme of them can seem spooky, and are sometimes half jokingly referred to as monstrous or robotic."

Yes, however... there is a minority of people who, although they don't follow the usual social conventions, in some way strike a resonant chord with the person sitting next to them. I discovered such a person today. Perhaps she discovered me.

Sympatico. Unbound by space or time.

Some might call it grace. Grace, however, is a two-way street.

I digress. Allow me to direct you to a treatise I believe worth reading. Artificial Intelligence In The Uncanny Valley

Thy name be fool

Anyone who called her an attention-whore is a fool, and is absolutely ignorant of what real sacrifice looks like and feels like and requires and costs. Anyone glad for her departure from activism is celebrating a disaster, is celebrating the loss of a face and heart and soul that brought this war into the living rooms of this TV-dulled nation in a way that no other effort or march or activism had before.

Cindy Has Earned a Rest
    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Columnist

    Wednesday 30 May 2007

    My alliance with Cindy Sheehan began with an exchange of emails several years ago after I made mention of her son, Casey, in an article about the expanding number of American troops lost in Iraq. She wrote to thank me, and to correct me on some small details about precisely when and how Casey died. Our friendship grew from that moment, and over time, she was always there to hand me a good kick in the pants whenever I needed one.

    Last March, Cindy's long-belt of road-bound activism brought her to Boston, where she spoke at a rally commemorating the four-year anniversary of the war. My bar is a favorite spot of hers; I'd brought her there twice before during previous visits she made to Massachusetts, and both times I saw the same woman of passionate energy and commitment who sat in a Texas ditch until the country could no longer ignore her - or the war. The light was in her eyes, the hope that things could be changed was in every word she spoke and, as ever, the sorrow from her loss was there like a shroud. She was motivated, optimistic, cynical, tired, inspired and resolute, all at the same time.

    When I brought her and some of her friends out to have a beer and relax last March, however, I saw a different Cindy.

    She was not broken or in despair, but neither was she the same woman I'd known before. Health problems had robbed her of the energy that once crackled around her, one arm was in a sling because of tendon damage, and she was tired. Bone-tired. Tired in soul and spirit. I began that evening looking forward to the kind of rollicking talks we'd always enjoyed together, but wound up spending most of the night pleading with her to take some time off and rest.

    Cindy hadn't really stopped, you see. She'd never left the road, never surrendered to exhaustion or sadness, never allowed the barbs from enemies and so-called "allies" to deter her or discourage her. But sitting there, I could see how much of a toll her efforts and sacrifices were taking. The treads on her tires were worn down to the radials, so to speak.

    The announcement of her withdrawal from activism the other day, therefore, came as no real surprise. Everyone has limits, and Cindy's inspired and determined sacrifices took her farther past any limits most could imagine. The last time I saw her, she was so tired, so worn, so discouraged, so sad and, worst, was beginning to succumb to a sense of futility over the cause. She was, at that moment, a shadow of the hardcase I'd come to know and love.

    Cindy has never completely recovered from the loss of her son, I think, and the exhaustion she now feels surely stems in part from that sorrow. The road played a large part in robbing her strength, of course, because the road always takes far more than it gives. Attacks from those who still support this Iraq war, who still treat politics like an our-side-your-side football rivalry, likewise took their toll.

    What seems to have cut her deepest, however, were all the insults and denigrations and frustrations that any public-facing progressive activist will find within the community of their so-called allies. We spoke of this in March, spoke of how utterly impossible it is to keep progressives from undermining their own efforts and ideals, simply because so many within that community choose to place this narcissistic, self-important egoism above actually getting anything done.

    "I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life," wrote Cindy in her farewell letter the other day. "This group won't work with that group; he won't attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that it's named after has so many divisions."

    That pretty much sums it up, and best describes why so many simple, good and necessary progressive policy ideas wither on the vine. It is what it is, and Cindy tried her best to batter through that phenomenon to bring people together and end this Iraq war. It should come as no surprise that insults from the very community that once championed her became the final straw. Herding cats is hard enough without getting scratched to ribbons for your troubles.

    Anyone who called her an attention-whore is a fool, and is absolutely ignorant of what real sacrifice looks like and feels like and requires and costs. Anyone glad for her departure from activism is celebrating a disaster, is celebrating the loss of a face and heart and soul that brought this war into the living rooms of this TV-dulled nation in a way that no other effort or march or activism had before.

    But anyone surprised that she's going home should have been with me in March, and seen her condition of body and spirit. Cindy has done enough. She has done more than anyone else to end this war. She has honored her son, changed the way this nation looks at this war, she has inspired, and that is enough. Those who rallied to her banner, who still consider her a hero - and yes, Cindy, there are many more of us than you can possible imagine - will take it from here as best they can.

    And, by the way, there's also this:

    "We're going to see what other direction we can come at it," said Cindy on Tuesday during Ed Schultz's radio show, "because obviously the direction that we're going has stopped being effective. We're going to close up the factory, we're going to retool, and we're going to see how we can come at this problem from a different angle."

    So.

The Immigration Conundrum

Theoretically, we would love to be able to welcome everyone to "the land of the free and home of the brave." Theoretically, everyone should have a shot at the American dream. Practically, because of limited resources, limits must be place on the number of those who immigrate to this country. The United States is a country of laws, and not of men. Theoretically, all of those who have broken the law to enter this country or violated the law while in this country should be captured and punished. Practically and realistically, that is not going to happen. So, what do we do?

When Common Sense Is Not All That Common

Managing reality and perception

Media prevented from covering the reality of war.

Thinking outside the box.

Everything's a number, man

Cindy Sheehan and Andrew Bacevich have independently reached much the same conclusions regarding the foreign and domestic policies of the United States.

The political system is broken.

The American public is at the mall.

Cindy Sheehan throws in the towel - "Good Riddance Attention Whore" by Cindy Sheehan

Andrew J. Bacevich rethinks his world - I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty by Andrew J. Bacevich of The Washington Post

Exactly how do you spell denial?

Update - Cindy Sheehan's letter to the Democratic Congress (below)

On this Memorial Day

BILL MOYERS: I'm Bill Moyers. Welcome to the JOURNAL. On this Memorial Day weekend I am reminded that I have never had to go to war, never been tested under fire, never had to kill or be killed. What I have learned about battle I have learned from the real experts, from veterans -- and from poets. With their power of empathy and evocation poets open us to what lies buried in the soldier's soul. I remember to this day hearing one of my high school teachers read Wilfred Owen's pained cry from the trenches of France: "I am the enemy you killed, my friend." So, even as America is fighting this weekend in Iraq, we turn to a poet, a writer, to honor all those soldiers who have served our country, in war and peace.

BILL MOYERS: Welcome. No one I know personally has done more to help veterans themselves bear witness to unspeakable experience than Maxine Hong Kingston.

Bill Moyers Journal.

A situation most curious

With the Bush administration's "Support the Troops" bill and its benchmarks, primarily Benchmark No. 1, we finally have the reason for the US invasion of Iraq: to get easily accessible, cheap, high-grade Iraq oil for US corporations.

Now the choice is for US military personnel and their families to decide whether they want their loved ones to be physically and emotionally injured to protect not our national security, but the financial security of the biggest corporate barons left in our country - the oil companies.

What Congress Really Approved

Dear Saint Anthony

Cowboy up by David C. Iglesias, the US attorney for New Mexico from October 2001 to February 2007.

In search of a cigarette

You know what addiction means to me? Hard to quit something.

But doable.

I drove out to Mesilla in search of a cigarette. Cause I really wanted to smoke a cigarette. I started out picky - "Might I beg an unfiltered cigarette?" I ended up not picky. "Excuse me, are you, perhaps, the one person on Mesilla's plaza this beautiful Sunday who might have a cigarette of any conceivable description?"

I was dismayed, but hopeful. A nice lady told me there's a "smokers corner" on the corner there. I noted that this northwest corner was in the sun. So I hoped for a trolley, sparks falling on the cars, impervious to everything but maybe Godzilla's big smelly feet huh? (They gotta be smelly!)

Look. I'm hungry. I had to find a cigarette, and that's why this post is about addiction.

I smoked a cigarette yesterday. I didn't anticipate the need for one today. But, there it was, a-knocking on my brain.

So I walked the plaza clockwise. I walked the plaza counter-clockwise. I spoke with a well-dressed very wise old man who loved smoking cigarettes when he was younger - he was a god then - and we shared some memories about smoking and cigarettes and we laughed and I bid him good-bye. I approached the church. Hanging out in the shade in the shadow of the church were bikers. I asked them for a cigarette. Someone to my left pointed to the elder on my right (Ha! He was younger than me!) and he gave me a Salem, which I gratefully puffed. I asked if I could take their pictures (as a thank-you for their generosity). I had planned to shoot them in the shade, where I stood smoking, but the man who gave me the cigarette, which really hit the spot, suggested I shoot them with their bikes. So I smoked and shot and thanked them again and gave them the blog's address and then I drove back home and that's the last cigarette I'll ever smoke maybe for sure maybe.

Update - Well, no wonder it took me so long!

I grabbed five shots. All are here. All but one are heavily messed with due to my graphic obsessions. I hope they like all of them.

Thanks dudes!

career move

MM, and I don't mean MM, kinda sorta maybe not maybe not sure maybe likes this cartoon. I think she likes it.

I think the cartoon's quite insipid. Except for the guy who was gonna ask her out. That was kinda funny.

The reporter looks a heckuvalot like MM? Me too!

Earth to M! There are reasons, and then there are reasons from other dimensions, why your petty piece of propaganda ain't ever gonna be published on the NYTimes or WaPo.

Uh, what's WaPo? A cereal?

I want my WaPo!

Or something.

---

The above is nothing more than me mocking out MM. T'was a bit fun, too.

Hey! I like the

Good news from Walter Reed

Video games help soldiers heal.

Previous

And wabi-sabi to you, my good friend

Little Coches and Thomas and Miss Tombstone are homeless again.

Friday night's storms dumped so much hail that their tarp collapsed as they huddled inside. As we packed up our gear at the conclusion of Saturday's farmers market, Little Coches asked me if I would drive her to Wal-Mart so she could buy a roll of plastic sheeting to repair their shelter. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I arrived at the market at about 9 a.m. Little Coches was putting the finishing touches on her display. I gave her a printout of the May 20th post. She read the title (Little Coches, Bengal tigers, Bob Hope and Zen Buddhism), then looked at me.

"It's Zen-I Buddhism, not Zen Buddhism," she instructed me. "Zen originally came from India, where it was called Zen-I."

I couldn't find a "Zen-I" reference on the web. Then it hit me. Zenai. I found a solid reference, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism but couldn't access it.

(During my search I rediscovered an old friend - wabi-sabi.)

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.

I set up my keyboard a few feet from Little Coches. I hung the monkey sign. I loaded six D-cell batteries. I was ready.

My camera (a 1997 Kodak Digital DC50 Zoom) refused to zoom properly, so I was forced to take this shot from about 15 feet back. When I "developed" it this morning I saw it was out of focus, so I turned it into an "arty" shot.

The boy with the keyboard arrived about a minute before I did. He set up to the left of COAS books so he could plug into the juice. Ha! I didn't care. I had batteries and could play wherever I fancied.

Little Coches rolled a cigarette. My hands were shaking some, probably due to my continuing experiments with Nikola Tesla and the fact that I don't normally play a keyboard unless I'm drinking whiskey, and I only play for my own pleasure - not in a public place where I can make a damn fool of myself. (Caveman sometimes joins in by jumping on the keyboard and hitting a few notes.)

"Little Coches, may I please roll a smoke?"

She hands me the pack.

"It's she nah in Cherokee. That means 'please.'

I repeat it... she nah, she nah, she nah...

"No. Now listen. She nah ah. She nah ah."

I roll a skinny smoke as I repeat aloud. I take her BIC lighter. I inhale. The smoke hits my lungs like a sledgehammer. I double over. I inhale again, but not so much. Hey, this is really good. Tastes really good. I'm just gonna sit here and smoke the whole damn thing.

Which I do, until it burns my fingers. I field strip it.

I AM READY!

I punch the keyboard's power button.

Nothing.

I punch it again. Nothing.

I flip it over, pull off the battery cover, making sure they're inserted properly. They are. I flip it back and punch the power button.

Nothing.

The boy with the keyboard has moved to another part of the market, so I shlep the keyboard and stand over to the empty spot and plug in the AC adaptor. I punch the power button. I AM READY! I select church organ and strike a C chord with my left hand. Oooh, it sounds so good on a Saturday morning... until... what the hell? A Cha-Cha-Cha rhythm stampedes from the speakers, making for a most disquieting musical juxtaposition of latin soul and holy spirit. I jab the "stop" button. Silence. I restart the keyboard, setting everything to factory specs.

I am wearing my monkey sign. "What's the sign for?" someone asked earlier.

"That's the name of my act," I explain. "I'm the Monkey."

"But who's Junebug?"

"Beats me," I reply. "I've never met her, but I think she's watching me."

Again I key in church organ. I set the sound to max. I play with my balls. People are curious, for no one has ever seen a musician play with his balls. I'm just making it all up as I go along, and it sounds pretty good. I close it out.

I key in a Samba rhythm and a breathy sax. I let the rhythm flow unimpeded for a bit, then kind of creep in with the sax. It's sounding okay, I guess, but I'm not really grooving on it, so I bring it down.

I key in Goblins. No rhythm. My two balls are resting on the keyboard's upper registers. I begin to play with my left hand. My right hand jumps in and does its little improv thing, moving crab-like over the keys, calling down the angels. A woman appears out of nowhere (my eyes are glued to the keyboard due to shyness and concentration, although I am quite able to play this way without looking) and places a dollar on the keys.

"Oh no, thank you, ma'am, but I'm playing just for fun."

"It's so beautiful," she says, smiling at me as she withdraws her offering.

I figure I ought to go out on a high note... I've been playing about 30 minutes... so I play upper and lower registers, rolling my balls, caressing them, really, and the music is ethereal and people are looking at my balls and they're thinking, "I never thought about playing a keyboard with my balls. I must give it a try when I get home."

Done. I shlep everything back over to Little Coches, who is packing up her wares. She holds up a doll for me to inspect. I take a picture. It too is out of focus, so I play around with it and I like the way it turned out because it reminds me of the crone or hag, one of Jung's archetypes. (You'll see what I'm talking about when you read The Anima or Animus in the above link.)

So we drive to Wal-Mart and Little Coches comes back to the car and she's pissed off because a roll of plastic is like seventeen dollars and it's recycled plastic for God's sake and recycled is supposed to be cheaper and she's not going to pay seventeen dollars for something that costs maybe a dollar or two to produce.

"I'll buy a bunch of black plastic trash bags and cut the bottoms out and duct-tape them together and that'll do," she says.

I tell her I've got half a box of those black trash bags at my house and we'll just drive on over and she can have them cause I never use them.

Once the bags are loaded, we drive to Save-Mart, where she picks up some groceries. Then I drive her to the TA truckstop where we part ways. I go home and unload all my stuff. I pour a stiff whiskey. It's 3:30 and I'm quite famished because breakfast was at four that morning. I drive over to Dick's Hamburgers and drink a Corona while devouring tortilla chips and hot chile and that's just the appetizer because here comes a huge beef burrito swimming in red chile and there's refried beans and I eat everything in sight and by golly I'm in the sack at 5 in the aftrnoon and I wake up at 2:30 this morning and it takes me a freaking hour to get my camera to communicate with the computer and I take two shots to try to get the camera working properly and it worked cause now 16 pictures are downloading to my hard drive and here's #15 of me doing my best Tesla impersonation. And I've been sitting here since, what? 3 this morning? and my computer clock reads 8:43 a.m. and I'm starving and I need to get out in the sun and I expect this will be the last of my articles about Little Coches and believe me I've left out one helluva lot of stuff about her - stuff you wouldn't believe anyway so let's just say I'm dancing with don juan and leave it at that okay?