Sunday, January 30, 2005

The Stranger

The train was gone, and then inside, I saw
the old one standing, looking back at me
and out of pity I returned his gaze--
there was an urgency that held me fast.
It seemed that I could hear his thoughts that day,

"Come, stand with me beside the well of years
that I may bear to look at them. They feed
off memories and wisdom second-hand;
their refuse lies upon my aged mind,
and they are all I have."

We stood inside that station sealed from time,
and then I looked for madness in his eyes
and he in mine, until I realized
it was a full-length mirror that I viewed.

"Come look with me, into the well of tears, "
he said...
and turned,
and walked away.
~

Saturday, January 29, 2005

How can Democrats ever have a successful future election?

It is very simple:
(1) Insist that all electoral fraud is eliminated (publicize it widely and demand that it be fool-proof)
(2) Build a platform of distinctive issues
(3) Proclaim it loudly, passionately, and repeatedly in every community, at every opportunity, until the voter makes it his own.

Oh yes, a real challenge for sleepy Democrats....but it worked for the Republicans, except that they did it by the reverse of Number 1--encouraging and manufacturing the fraud. In the end, representative government disappears.

My own personal comment is that I think they will not take my advice. Consequently, if we survive until another election, they will lose again. It is a prediction I make with considerable confidence.

Friday, January 28, 2005

Thursday, January 27, 2005

This article

places our current situation in excellent perspective:

www.thedeprogrammer.com/
democracyisflatlined.html

(copy and paste it into your browser)

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Mother at 99

It was the prison of her body that
I saw beneath her downward gaze, but more.
Her mind lay in a quiet turbulence,
still knowing something I did not, and still
content to hide it from my probe. Yet my
humanity looked in and saw saturnine
shadows roiling.

I wished that I could cleave them, rearrange
their mad procession, but I knew there was
a reason of its own that drove them on,
defining shapes and setting courses for
a dance of death, perhaps, a mystery
that gifted her alone.

My mother, quite unknowing, peerless, left
me there, amazed by all the wisdom she
alone could understand...that one so near
and still eons away could bear to set
upon a course that left her rolling chair
and every soul she ever knew, behind.
~



Monday, January 24, 2005

Namaste

Here is the yeast of thought that like the dough,
though it become suppressed, is rising still
within two souls whose vision is just one,
then beaten once again becomes the bread,
the mounting God, the sinews shared, the death
of self, the breath of life.
~


You still doubt electoral fraud?

Then please do me, and your country, the laudable service of pointing out the inaccuracies and false assumptions of ALL the points in the following article--and may God bless you for doing so:

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE501A.html

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Revision: "Apostrophe to Martin"

(this poem appears farther below, but this version is an update
with assistance from Professor Michael Bennet)

Apostrophe to Martin

Two lifetimes I have seen since yours began
and still I am not free, though haunted by
your words, blood-coated with your passion, seeped
into a history of marching feet.
The cadence of the years still cannot stand
their purity, and you, baton still high,
drum major for a righteousness you saw
that lived in dreams, still march...and I cannot.

It's best you died, perhaps, for you would not
abide another line of voters kept
out in the rain, their voices slain by fraud
and perfidy, their backs still open to
the lash of scorn, and scarce remembering
the wounds that you received when all you asked
was but to love.

That loving didn't get much easier
around this shrinking ball, disfigured from
a restless floor beneath the sea, and for
a while the human heart was stirred, but more
had died from restless greed and naked power
when love was set aside.

There's not much zeal for marching now along
the streets of Washington, and bigotry
is steeped inside. We need to hear your dream
again, to have you sing with us once more,
to pledge anew that we shall overcome

someday.
~

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Let flesh retire

Upon reflection
there is something to this business
of a resurrection;
there is space within us set aside
to see the dead alive...to see

the Lord, and yes the least of these,
my sisters, brothers, now no more
imprisoned in their tombs,
nor subject to
that useless yeast
of faith dispensed on sawdust trails
and in the artless tents--the drums
and hoarse evangelists will plead no more,
no more.

"I am the resurrection and the life."
Though slender is the living bond
it is not cut
and what is manifested, too is artless,
though it seemed to die.
A love to imitate the Christ exceeds
the power to crucify.

"Not from the grave, my body
or my blood.
Discover in my words,
the realm of God,
and when you are together
eating,
drinking,
and remembering,
then you will touch,
and see,
and know
that it is I."
~

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Our hero Barack Obama---NOT!

voted to confirm Rice today. :-(

All of our pre-election excitement was in vain, my friends. We have us another political hack.


Something you can do

Will you help Senator Boxer get the truth from Condoleeza Rice?
She says:
http://www.pacforachange.com/

and here is where you can sign:
http://ga4.org/campaign/ricehearings

Is Social Security in trouble? See this!

www.eriposte.com/policy/socialsecurity.htm

Monday, January 17, 2005

Apostrophe to Martin

Two lifetimes I have seen since yours began
and still I am not free, though haunted by
your words, blood-coated with your passion, seeped
into a history of marching feet.
The cadence of the years still cannot stand
their purity, and you, baton still high,
drum major for a righteousness you saw
that lived in dreams, still march...and I cannot.

Best that you died
for you would not abide
another line of voters in the rain,
their voices slain by perfidy and fraud
their backs still open to the lash of scorn,
scarce remembering

the wounds that you received
when all you wanted
was to love somebody.

No, it didn't get much easier.
The love around this shrinking ball
got stretched from that one
restless floor beneath the sea,
but many more died
from the restless greed
and lust for naked power
when love was set aside.

Right now there's not much zeal
for marching, Martin.
We need your voice again
to sing with us,
though I am one who still believes
that "We shall overcome

someday."
~

A Dream for Everyman

www.truthout.org/docs_05/011805Z.shtml

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Denial

Too much the rapture of an earthbound spring
prevails, surpassing lovers' agony,
too many willows full of glory stream
like fountains there along the path
while history may languish free of art.
The queen of seasons is a harlot blessed
by her eternal youth, a tart redeemed.
Come forth, my muse of airy head and heart,
and dance for me, dissolve my crusted mind
with your inane delight where content flies
away like skittish dreams when darkness dies
and color sweeps away the night.

It is my right to thus betray
a January day.
~

Saturday, January 08, 2005

The Doll House (there is a later revision of this poem later on in the blog)

They seem to be for little girls
with scaled-down dreams
of future lives behind
the scaled-down images,
perhaps of incarnations
silently remembered.

There we walked together
down Peace Lane,
skipping back a century
and pausing at a picket fence,
'So this was home,or might have been.'
...a karma touchable
and still untouched
by interrupted time...its colors fresh,
the giveaway too lovely,
too inclined to the postiche,
and yet for little girls,
a step into dimensions
that I only thought I knew.

I knew of course, that she would lead me
to another view, though I would leave
reluctantly, the movie-set facade
entrenched in homemade dreams
for it spoke more of me
than comfort might allow.
For me, no bathos smeared my vision,
rather ghosts of my old friends
were lurking just beyond those walls
and I was one to see
a habitat (though strange to me)
was theirs, perhaps,
a life creating them,
a life, a book, in which the pages called
...one that I hadn't known.
'Wait......just a little more.'

And then the open side
with little rooms cut out.
Little beds and chairs
are moved about...
and tiny people stay away
as if the president
would come to call, and they
are suddenly unworthy.

There they might sleep
or sip at tea
with giants watching,
if they dared, but no,
the house is empty,
much too quiet,
too pristine,
and even presidents
would presidentially demur.

Now she takes my hand,
"Do you like it?"
"Oh, it is grand.
Might it be one you'd live in
someday?"
We agree. "No."
'It's beautiful, but never home enough,
for me.'
~

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Là où le temps n'est pas

C'est un voyage
quand je médite,
et avec sa crête je trouve
que je peux atteindre dans la perfection
bien que je ne puisse pas me retourner avec elle,
ni dans ma perception changée
Je jamais suis ainsi disposé
pour changer le monde,
ou même toi, jusqu'au moment
je me rends compte
que tu, aussi, atteignent
... pour me changer.
~

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Monday, January 03, 2005

Fraud?.............What fraud?

If this is your attitude....and if you get your news from
the corporate media.....you need to read this:

www.truthout.org/docs_05/010405Y.shtml

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Jane Stillwater's Web Log

Jane Stillwater's Web Log

Want a kick?

Poem: "New World Order" by Meredith Holmes, from Shubad's Crown. © Pond Road Press. Reprinted with permission. (from today's "Writers Almanac with Garrison Keillor)

New World Order

At dusk on January 2nd
we close the curtains,
eat bread and potatoes by candlelight
and burrow to sleep like marmots.
Pulse and respiration slow
not quickening until April.
Driveways go unshoveled
streets unplowed. Snow fills
doorways, sifts into mail slots.
No traffic, no church, no bowling.
Phones are still, offices unlit
and cities as dark as Nebraska cornfields.
All the interstates are deserted
the truckstops silent.
No steak and egg breakfasts
no Johnny Cash
By February, stars are visible
in the night sky over Manhattan and Detroit.
TV stations on the Gulf Coastand in Southern California
report only local weather.
The Industrial North, the Midwest
the Great Plains, the Great Lakes
are all but forgotten.
The continent is a closed door
with a narrow band
of light around the edge.
Everybody is dreaming:
fire, skin, cave, snow.

You still do not think the election was a fraud?

Did you know....?1. 80% of all votes in America
are counted
by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.http://www.onlinejournal.com/
evoting/042804
Landes/042804landes.htmlhttp://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/
Dieboldhttp://www.essvote.com/
HTML/about/about.
html2. There is no federal agency with
regulatory authority or
oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.http://www.commondreams.
org/views02/0916-04.htmhttp://www.
onlinejournal.com/
evoting/042804
Landes/042804landes.html3. The
vice-president of Diebold
and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.
net/html/
private_company.htmlhttp://www.
onlinejournal.com/
evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.
html4. The
chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major
Bush campaign
organizer and donor who wrote in 2003
that he was "
committed to helping Ohio deliver its
electoral votes to
the president next year."http://www.
cbsnews.com/stories/
2004/07/28/
sunday/main632436.shtmlhttp://
www.wishtv.com/
Global/story.asp?S=16478865.Republican
Senator
Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S.
He became
Senator in a surprise upset, with votes
counted by ES&S machines.http://www.
motherjones.com/
commentary/
columns/2004/03/03_200.htmlhttp://
www.online
journal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/
031004fitrakis.
html6.Republican Senator Chuck Hagel,
long-connected
with the Bush family, was recently caught
lying about his
ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.http://www.blackboxvoting.
com/modules.php?name=News&file=article
&sid=26http://
www.hillnews.com/
news/012903/hagel.aspxhttp://www.
onlisareinsradar.com/
archives/000896.php7. Senator Chuck
Hagel was on a
short list of George W. Bush's
vice-presidential candidates.http://
www.businessweek.com/
2000/00_28/
b3689130.htmhttp://theindependent.
com/stories/052700/
new_hagel27.html8.Kenneth Blackwell
co-chaired George
Bush's Ohio election campaign. As
Ohio secretary of state,
he left no stone unturned to surpress
the democratic vote.http://www.truthout.
org/docs_04
/113004Y.shtml#1
http://www.freepress.org/departments/
display/19/2004/
894http://67.15.90.110/article.pl?sid=
04/10/29/14142199.
Diebold's new touch screen voting
machines have no paper
trail of any votes. In other words,
there is no way to verify that
the data coming out of the machine
is the same as what was
legitimately put in by voters.http://
www.commondreams.
org/views04/0225-05.htmhttp://
www.itworld.com/
Tech/2987/041020evote
states/pfindex.html10.Diebold also
makes ATMs, checkout
scanners, and ticket machines,all of
which log each transaction
and can generate a paper trail.http:
//www.commondreams.
org/views04/0225-05.htmhttp://
www.diebold.com/
solutions/default.htm11.
Exit polls are usually excellent predictors
of election results.
Reputable analyses could not find and
explanation of the
discrepancy between exit polls and
results of the 2004
presidential election.http://ucdata.
berkeley.edu/http://
www.buzzflash.

com/alerts/04/11/Unexplained_exit_
poll_discrep_v00l.
pdfhttp://wwwnytimes.com/2004/
11/23/international/
europe/23ukraine.html?ex=1102245800&
amp;amp;ei=1&en=
3a3c24b7e64fe4912. A Diebold
subsidiary employed 5 convicted felons
as senior managers
and developers. These people helped
write the central compiler computer code
that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.http://www.wired.com/news/evote/
0,2645,61640,00.
htmlhttp://portland.indymedia.org/en/
2004/10/301469.
shtml13. Jeff Dean, senior programmer
on Diebold's central
compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts
of felony theft in
the first degree.http://www.chuckherrin.com
/Hackthevote
FAQ.
htm#howhttp://www.blackboxvoting.org/
bbv_chapter-8.
pdf14. Jeff Dean was served jail time for
planting back
doors in his client's accounting software and
using a "high
degree of sophistication" to evade detection
over a period of 2 years.http://www.chuckherrin.
com/
HackthevoteFAQ.htm#
howhttp://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_
chapter-8.pdf15.
None of the international election observers
were allowed in t
he polls in Ohio.http://www.globalexchange.
org/update/
press/2638.
htmlhttp://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004
/10/26/
loc_elexoh.html16. California banned the use
of Diebold
machines because the security was so bad.
Despite Diebold's
claims that the audit logs could not be hacked,
a chimpanzee
was able to do it!