Heathcare reform, like some flowers, needs tending to bloom

I'm waiting for the mums outside to break open. They seem plush and plentiful this year, all without care on my part. I have done nothing to encourage them.  The holly harbors a flock of  red berries, and again - I have not lifted a finger for them. Might be all the rain we have had this season.

The summer geraniums remain red in their cement pots, but these I have pinched and prodded, snapping off the dead leaves,  spent blooms, and whatever parts rotted in the excessive rains this year. There are new buds on both plants.  The air is cool - it was in the 40's last night. I am beginning to believe its really September.

I also wrote to both Connecticut Senators and to my district representative to urge them to support health care reform.  Changes in law and policy are more like this year's geraniums than the mums.  They need a little encouragement to bloom unexpectedly....

Finally, a good night of sleep

Focus has always been a problem for me. As a jack of all trades, a casual experimenter with various art materials, technology and software - I find I am always spread too thin to really get into the groove of doing.

I currently have too much raw video
I have been staying up late, fiddling with the Wedpoetry.net website which was moved this week from blogger to wordpress.   I have been staying up late, and rising early for several weeks.

Last night, around 10:30 I laid down, just for a moment and woke up this morning feeling really good. I slept in my clothes, forgot the dog, (who i have to wake up to take out anyway..)   It seems we were both better off after a full night's sleep. Dog investigated the yard this morning, casually, without being in a hurry, and took care of business.  I think maybe I am going to try to get to bed earlier.

DEAR JOE LIEBERMAN -what's good for the goose....

"If we create a public option, the public is going to end up paying for it." - Senator Joe Lieberman

Ah how Joe Lieberman loves to send money and support to Israel.  Our government has given Israel $114 Billion dollars since its establishment (See Reference material)  And that doesn't count the dollars sent out of the US by all sorts of individuals and organizations.

But let's look at what kind of healthcare system Israel has...   Wiki says: "Health care in Israel is both universal and compulsory, and is administered by a small number of organizations with funding from the government. All Israeli citizens are entitled to the same Uniform Benefits Package, regardless of which organization they are a member of, and treatment under this package is funded for all citizens regardless of their financial means. "

Dear Joe - lets give Americans the same healthcare arrangements the citizens of Israel enjoy. According to the World Health Organizations rankings Israel has the 28th best health care system in the world, while Amercians have a healthcare system that ranks 37th.  Take a look at the list  - even Costa Rica has a better health care system.  Of course having a system of whatever rank can't help anyone who can't get access to it  - and having access is small comfort to someone who loses their home and everything they have to a collection agency hired by a local hospital......

So Joe Lieberman  - let's hear your reasons it's okay to subsidize Israel but Americans are too expenisve to insure.... Go ahead Joe tell us...

Irrational hysterics scream about a speech they've never heard

“As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology.” said Jim Greer, Florida Republican Party Chair.

He's fanning the flames - blocking what might be an inspiring speech for children by THE PRESEIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES BASED ON WHAT HE THINKS THE MAN IS GOING TO SAY.

At least so far you can't use that in a court of law. Yes sir Judge - lock this man away because I think he is going to do something I don't approve of...

A) They have never heard the speech.
B) It was George W Bush who "bought" the banks!

I have never been more disgusted with Republicans. Nothing that they fear is in the speech - except perhaps that kids will find nothing fearful in Barack Obama - that the children of scary fanatics will find it is their parents who are crazy

Listen to the speech on CNN OR READ THE SPEECH

Coming out heathen

In case you missed it, I am an atheist. That is not what I believe - merely what I lack a belief in...

Being an atheist  means I do not have a belief in a god or gods. By inference it means that I regard religion as a vestigial organ of human culture best understood as psychological metaphor. I think that human beings invented gods and god-appeasement rituals, partly in an attempt get protection and control over a dangerous natural world beyond their understanding. And partly in an attempt to get control over their own impulses for the good of the tribe. And often to get and keep control over each other....

As a possible hanger on of the brights movement ** with a naturalistic world view - I am interested in living in this world, this universe, and in this present life. I believe that everything that is, both within us and without us, arises from the natural physical world. That what most folks refer to as the soul is merely the amazingly intricate human brain. (I suggest a book called "The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks which shows how our very core changes when the brain is injured...)

I think when we die, that we are gone forever - so cherish this one life you have. Never throw it away as few folks I know have done. Cherish it. You only get this one, so live it well.

For those of you who think an Atheist is an immoral angry monster - well, you are suffering from a stereotype - a prejudice - a form of bigotry. I am just a human being, with a catalog of merit and defect, just as all you religious folks are. Nothing more, but nothing less. A human being. As a secular humanist, I believe that each human being should endeavor to live a good and moral life using his or her individual talents for the good of society, life in general, and for the life of the planet. Living toward this ideal does not requires the assistance, inspiration, commandment or hellfire threats of various gods and religions.

** the brights movement is a loose internet-based alliance of people with a naturalistic view of the world, who see life in terms of the testable, beautiful physical world and who do not find it necessary to cobble imagined gods or goblins, spirits, ghosts, supernatural powers, fairies, what have you, onto a reality that is already complex and amazing.

Poem: Tea at the end of the World - how crazy people who fear it mightcause it

a poem from my chapbook, Inverse Origami

Incoming at 4 oíclock... "Tea?" he asks,
slinging shiny steel kettle onto black coils,
citing communist conspiracy
revealing two red mugs
and two tarnish-patina-ed teaspoons,
my host, a post-glasnost peddler
of prefab fiberglass bomb shelters
pounds the pine table
predicting economic collapse
and unidentified flying objects
from the Book of Revelations.

Circumlocution, no pause, no breathing,
he's apple-pie slicing,
cerated knife in hands
ticking minutes
he does not have
years he will refuse to see
that he ís plastering over gaps in the logic
smoothing over the entrance
to a room under the lawn.

No matter if some other pie bakes
fragrant apples cooking easily
peeled and unpeeled the same,
he would seal his own fragility
under the browning crust
in under ground chambers,
closing his steel door
with its peephole and gun-sight,
sheltered from nuclear hell
by a thickness of cement
from change by brittleness of belief.

Radioactive words
firestorms over tea with mint:
"Commie pinko feds, homos with aids, the IRS,
fat people, stock brokers, illegal aliens
Don't trust, just stock up
on canned goods and ammo....."

He shoots peach-marmalade volleys,
apple-crisp pudding, his eyes, his ears impervious
to the kettleís screaming, to oven doors slamming
his cards face down, without looking, he folds,
pours boiling water for tea,
smiles and makes a little joke,
flexes eyebrows overgrown
as untended graves,
arching hoar-frosted inch worms
measuring Armageddon.

---

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

Mail Snoopers, Identity Theft, A Locking Mail Box

Monday, I answered the doorbell to discover a visitor with my family’s U.S. Mail cradled in one hand while the other hand flipped slowly through the first class envelopes. This is the second time I have found this nosy individual going through the mail. Getting caught garnered neither an apology or an explanation, not a blush or a fumble on either occasion.

I have done my share of house and pet sitting, and done numerous stints taking in mail. I have retrieved mail for friends and neighbors. I just don’t look at it letter by letter – it’s not my business even when I have been asked to retrieve the mail – unless i have been asked to watch for something in particular.

But this person has not been asked to bring in the mail and it is none of her business. I am very offended by it. And TAMPERING WITH THE MAIL IS ILLEGAL!

And I thought, if this woman is reading the envelopes, what is she looking for? Is she planning on Identity theft? I didn’t think so BUT it did raise the question – who else might be pawing through the mail without ringing the bell?

So I went to Lowes the same day and spent $27 on a locking mail box. You can’t tell it locks until after you lift the lid. Would love to see her face when she realizes….