Ahmadinejad Ate Their Votes!

Alteration of Photo I took Flying to the East Coast 9/09
11/2/09
Alteration of Photo I took somewhere over the southwest, on my flight to the east coast

Original: http://www.fotolog.com/richnature/39323059

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In honor of an important local writer and teacher, Morton Marcus, who recently passed away, I am going to share some of his writings:

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LAUGHTER

Of all the secrets Eduardo Galeano knows, this is the best: "‘The important thing is to laugh. . . and to laugh together.’"

He was told this by Jose Luis Castro, a carpenter, who heard it from his father, a man who made everyone laugh with his tall tales and love of life.

The old man knew that the one who laughs alone laughs at his wife and neighbor, at the child who scrapes his knee in the gutter; laughs at the worker demonstrating for a better life and the banker suffering from toothache; laughs equally at the man with a country and the man without one, at the dwarf, the stutterer, the hemophiliac. For he is the one expunged from the Bible, who laughed in the Garden to see God on his knees breathing the breath of life into the clay figure.



WHAT HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT TODAY


What have you thought about today?
You must ask yourself that question
at least once each time the Earth, your planet,
rotates on its axis as it whirls around the sun.
That is, what have you thought about
in the last 24 hours, in the last 1,464 minutes,
in the last 87, 840 seconds?

If you sleep eight hours every night
that leaves you 16 hours, or 960 minutes,
or 57,660 seconds to think about something.

I believe that if you think about something
every 24 hours, if you think about it
with your liver, your lungs, your large
and small intestines—if you think about it
with your whole being—then you will not lose hope.

I’m not talking about just any thought,
like whether you’ve left the stove on
or if you took the one white and two red pills,
but something that will make your heart
lurch for a moment like the engine of a car
that for thirty years has been wearing
a shroud of cobwebs in the garage—something
that will make your mind start clicking
like the clock on the living-room mantle
that hasn’t worked in a decade or two.

So, what have you thought about today?
What realization of universal sorrow
has so weighted your eyes that your tears
have fallen like bodies buried at sea
on a moonless night off a foreign coast?
What thought caused a smile to stretch on your lips
as if it had just woken from a long sleep—
the same kind of smile that was on the lips
of the princess after the kiss woke her:
you know, the smile that began just before
she opened her eyes to behold,
wonder of wonders, the whole world,
brimming with its 24 hours, smiling at her.



I VISITED JOSEPH HAYDN IN A DREAM

I visited Joseph Haydn in a dream. He was so old and small that he seemed enclosed by the high-backed armchair where he sat in a powdered wig, pink silk waistcoat, plum-colored velvet jacket with matching britches, his silver-buckled shoes dangling almost half a foot above the floor. With his rouged cheeks and talcumed face, he resembled a genial eighteenth century wind-up doll waving welcome with choppy strokes.

"Tell me, Papa, what is a symphony?" I asked.

"A symphony is a universe, my son, " he said in a soft voice, "and each moment is another note. Planets, galaxies, and stars, and eruptions in deepest space are a gigantic orchestra playing that symphony note by note."

"And who is the composer?"

"I am, you are, the planets, the stars, even the cockroach in the corner of the kitchen. From moment to moment, we simultaneously create and play the symphony and thereby determine what the next note will be."

http://www.mortonmarcus.com/
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Last night we went to a nice club in the Santa Cruz Mountains http://www.donquixotesmusic.info/ to see the great Scottish band, "Battlefield Band" http://www.battlefieldband.co.uk/ and http://www.myspace.com/thebattlefieldband Being a Tuesday night, the crowd was a bit less animated than I expected, but the music was great! Such amazing musicians, and they sing so well together too!

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX5RbEXjdPI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uri_RpWzq
http://www.nme.com/artists/battlefield-band

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