O Mighty Ship of State* (a rant)

Maybe it’s the result of middle age or the loss of youthful idealism that is coloring my outlook, or perhaps there has in reality been a shift in our national priorities, but I feel like we as a nation need to take a good hard look at ourselves.

I can confidently tell you that most parents I know would swallow hard if they witnessed their children being motivated in life solely by power, greed, possessions, and blind self interest. And yet somehow we find this behavior perfectly tolerable as our national modus operandi. America seems to have come to define democracy as the freedom to do any damn thing we want without consequence. We protect our right to profit without condition as if it were as precious as the freedom to speak. We covet our possessions as if they embody life itself, and we blindly cling to the dogma that America IS it’s economy. I mean, I understand that our prosperity enables us to experience a quality of life worth defending. But, aren’t we more than just our material wealth? Don’t we want our cultural priorities to transcend consumption and profit? Can’t we collectively value peace, health, joy, compassion, and awareness without being so paranoid as to simplistically fear becoming a nation of socialists? Is it really acceptable that our government is being held hostage by corporations and driven by little more than GREED and POWER? Why have "We The People" settled for so little, and when are we going to escape this cycle of politicized, ego driven, representation and demand selfless, intelligent, and conscientious governance?

My point is that we are a good and fortunate citizenry who out of cynicism tolerate far too much and demand far too little of ourselves, and our nation. Somehow we need to find an honorable path forward together; striving to be our better selves even if it means that we fall flat on our faces. Tilting at windmills isn’t a bad thing and maybe, just maybe, we’ll all be better off for trying.


* title from the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s Democracy

Entranced

Me: Did you get any good pictures?
Zoe: Yeah, I put a frog into a trance and he just sat there like a person.
Me: How did you do that?
Zoe: You just stroke it's sternum......

LATER TODAY

Me: I Googled stroking a frog's sternum and didn't find anything. Where did you learn that?
Zoe: At bird banding class. They taught us to put the birds in a trance first and then band them, so I tried it with frogs and it works.
Me: Oh......

Hangin' With Whooey........

This is Whooey. He owns a ranch down the road from us where Zoe started riding lessons last week. Since he has people who do the lessons for him he was free to show me around a little. Don't get me wrong, being a ranch dog is hard work and he takes his chores VERY seriously. In fact he barely stood still the entire hour we were together. Honestly, I don't know how he keeps up. Luckily there are two other dogs to help out but Whooey seems to take cleaning up after the horses as his personal calling, and those horses never stop piling up the work if you know what I mean (and if you don't, it's just as well because it's a ranch thing and not very pretty!).

Anyways, this is one of Whooey's horses.

Here he's helping me out with my camera bag.

Another horse.......

Showing me the puddle.........

One of Whooey's ponds. He doesn't like to talk about it but there are some pretty scary frogs in that pond and he wasn't at all pleased when one had the audacity to scare him silly in front of me.

It was a beautiful warm day and I took about 100 shots before it was time to go. Unfortunately my camera is dying a slow death and turns everything pink (see pond shot) hence the black & white. One of these day's I'm going to settle on which camera to buy
and hopefully Whooey will sit for the camera again.
Hope you are all having a great day........
Whooey & I did!

Another Mindless, Meandering, Alphabet Meme

A. Actively Pursuing.........equilibrium
B. Belief........the unlikely miracle of this existence speaks to a larger reality
C. Cake or pie........ pie
D. Daily life........wake, shower, email, eat, home school, chores, post office, computer, art, reading, walk, cook, etc., etc.
E. Essential item..........air (and my computer)
F. Fluent in.........animal
G. Grateful for.........freedom from want, freedom of time
H. Hopes...........peace, universal healthcare, universal respect for human rights, thoughtful, selfless, & accountable governance, that Zoe grow safely into a healthy, self directed, independent and contented adult.
I. Indulgences...........food, naps, pets
J. Just learned...........when missing a cat from an enclosed room, look inside of your box spring.
K. Kids...........one pretty great one
L. Life isn’t complete without...........love, tolerance, and respect
M. Marriage date...........September 1988
N. Number of brothers and sisters.............2 biological sisters and 3 adopted brothers
O. Obstacles.....poor memory/retention, lack of discipline, speech
P. Phobias..................heights, crowds, disapproval.
Q. Questions............Where did the primeval atom come from???
R. Realization..........that moving to Canada with 2 dogs, 2 geese, 2 ducks, 2 fish, 2 turtles, 6 cats, and untold numbers of parakeets and pigeons, is NOT going to be easy so McCain/Palin had better not win this election or we may have to secede from the union.
S. Simplicity............see Rauf’s comments.
T. Thought............there are no “whole” people
U. Unknown.........so much
V. Vocation...........meandering
W. Worst Habit.........angst
X. Xenagogue.......everyone
Y. Yearning.........for understanding, direction, and being able to actualize my better self
Z. Zero Tolerance.......small talk, machismo, self righteousness, superficiality

Geriatric Sex

When Zoe was little she had a pair of gerbils, both boys. Unfortunately one of them died. We waited about a week postmortem before heading to the pet store in an effort to prevent Gerbil #1 (Jake) from leading a lonely and unfulfilled existence. There would have been times in my life that I’d have been mortified to scrutinize rodent genitals in public but having had a child of my own I had evolved beyond such silly insecurities. So there I stood, at the pet store, in full view of the entire town, giving that little bugger a good thorough once over. And while Larry may never believe me, I was certain that Rose possessed all the necessary boy parts to prevent any unwanted hanky panky. Mysteriously though some malevolent force must have intervened between the time I left that store and the time I got home because unlike Rose #1 (much to Jake’s delight) Rose #2 was a girl. To make a long story short we ended up with 13 lovely gerbils sorted by gender into 4 tanks where they lived happily to ripe old age(s).

I know that seems like a rather long introduction to nowhere but what I’m trying to get at is that I’ve done it again. We have two parakeets that flutter and serenade us above our living room. Parakeets generally live between 2 and 7 years so a couple of years ago when Sunny died at the age of 4 1/2 we weren’t too surprised. Luke (parakeet #1) had hated Sunny (parakeet #2) with a vengeance. Nonetheless in my vivid imagination I couldn’t stand the idea of her living out her remaining days alone and pining for companionship. So we (I) brought home Savannah only later to realize that “he” was male. That was about 2 years ago but since we figured Luke was about 150 in bird years we weren’t too concerned with Savannah's persistent and devoted wooing of her. Now at the geriatric age of 6 or 7? someone needs to tell Luke that she’s supposed to be on her way to the grave, not starting a family. In fact about three weeks ago when she first went missing Larry and I looked everywhere for her little corpse but couldn’t for the life of us find it. What we did find was that the hole in their perching log was suspiciously full of stuff. Not long after that Luke came flitting out of that log alive and well. She’s been in and out every since and this morning there are clearly little voices chirruping from inside of it. If the internet is right we may have as many as 5-10 (gasping and swallowing hard here) new souls in our midst, but it will probably be another month before we see them. I’m not sure what we’re going to do once we get a final count but I’m sure it’ll all work out.

Today was the first time we’ve ever had a reason to read the breeding section in Zoe’s parakeet book but according to page 28 the male must be kept near the female after breeding because her eggs will only mature if she can hear him singing. How romantic is that???

Zoe's Art and Standing Back..........

I haven't written anything to post so I thought I would put up one of Zoe's drawings. The girl is a prolific artist and draws constantly. One day I'm going to walk into her room and be unable to find her beneath all of that paper! If I had to hazard a guess I would be willing to bet that a thorough cleaning could turn up hundreds of finished pieces, and probably a thousand unfinished ones and that's without even venturing to look under her bed.
So anyways, this is one of hers that I really like.

I, on the other hand, have spent the summer indulging in blogging rather than focusing my energies in the studio like I should have. It's not that a normal and sane person couldn't easily be doing both things simultaneously but I seem to be compulsively single minded. So, what I'm trying to say is that all of this week I've been distractedly channeling my mental energies toward art and will keep trying to do so for the next couple of weeks. If, in the interim, I happen to have a coherent thought I'll post it. If not, you'll probably just find the occasional, mundane, typing off the top of my head, posts like the ones from this week. I'll keep my toes crossed that something blogworthy comes to mind but if it doesn't I will continue, as always, to be inspired by what all of you are doing.......and by Zoe.

Noonan and Murphy on Palin

Republican strategists Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan offer their unvarnished opinion about the Palin pick during an off-mic conversation on MSNBC.

The Mountains Know......

Yep, believe it or not summer is over and once again we’ve been forced to build a fire today. We tried to hold off all morning but temps have fallen throughout the day and it’s 30+ degrees colder (48 and raining) than it was Saturday. Now I have one very wet and very mad cat on my lap wanting reassurance that winter isn’t here yet. Hopefully it isn't.
Happy Labor Day Everyone!