Mea culpa, my friends. I have been so busy. Did poorly on one test and I was angry with myself. So I've been driving myself to finish this university year well. 

Anyway, I have neglected this blog for twelve days now. And I will have to be brief today. Here's a poem I have posted here before. I will be back on a regular basis in this space by April 20 or so. But between now and then, all I can do is put up the odd thing at the odd moment. Which is fitting seeing as how I am odd. I hope you like. 

Have a lovely Easter. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabach thani! Remember that that man's words have been distorted and abused for twenty centuries, but some of what he really intended has gotten through and down into our time. 

The message? 

"If you recall nothing else of what I've tried to tell you, at the very least, remember this: Love one another as I have loved you." 

For me, he was not divine. He was a morally driven man who lived a life that can stand even today as an example for the rest of us. But not divine. 

His message is the core of Buddhism before him and Islam after. And of Rabbi Hillel, his contemporary. What contradicts that message, you can trust, is the result of flawed reasoning, delusion, or someone's out and out lies. 

Enjoy your family this weekend, or, if you are alone, enjoy your biosphere family. There are more living things in a teaspoon of good soil than there are humans on this planet. All living in balanced, interdependent relationships. Want miracles? Go for a walk in nature. Drink it in by whatever means works for you.   

The Source

The heart that yearns to make a thing so pure,

To carve its curves and dance its moving sense,

To sing its notes with words that will endure,

In harmonies unbearably intense ...

Is filled with aching, fearing making things

Most surely and most finally empties things

The aria is yelled to yawning toads

The ballerina stumbles and unloads

The staring, glaring portrait fades

Believe first in believing. Only then ...

In one uncharted wing within your soul

I will be entering your secret den,

The room where precious things are safe and whole.

And look! An oaken harpsichord, still tuned!

A Strad, a music stand, a bacarole.

A rare edition ‘neath a Renoir nude.

And all arrayed about a blue-white gem,

Exquisite, perfect beauty ... ahh, still gleams!!

(Where could we meet, we two, if we were rich?

What gallery or trove could equal this?)  

Working hard at university courses. Sorry, faithful followers of this blog. Long delay since my last post. I've been a bit occupied. 

I also have been following every nuance of the US primary races. Interesting. And "interesting" is an interesting word. 



a clip of an article from the Guardian, Mar. 30, 1932

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The [anti-Nazi paramilitary] Reichsbanner is growing rapidly, flying columns are being organised. The leaders are having some trouble in restraining their men, for hatred of the Nazis and resentment for the toleration shown them by a partisan government and bitterness for the falsehoods that are allowed to appear in their newspapers, while the anti-Fascist newspapers are continually being censored or suppressed, are boiling up into a burning and general fury. But if the Reichsbanner were to retaliate, storm the Nazi barracks, it would totally suppressed. Thus the anti-Fascist movement that grows in numbers and efficiency remains on the defensive.

Will a whole nation, one of of the greatest and most civilised in the world, be handed over to the brute, the blackguard, and the charlatan? 


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The demagogues are harmless clowns ...until they aren't. 


Now comes an interesting test of democracy. Donald must be confronted by reasoning and evidence. If we give in to baiting, name-calling, physical assaults at meetings, and so on, the struggle will be lost. This is why I post no cartoons or other graphics lampooning Donald or anyone else today. Too incendiary. 

But democracy can work. For example, all of the studies show that all the waves of immigrants that came to the US and Canada were net gains for our two countries. Mexicans, Syrians ...will be the same. The Germans can get real work out of the Turks - who began coming there in numbers forty years ago. Some of the workers from the former Eastern rump German state, not so much. To be more accurate, the Turko-Germans are mostly now viewed as Germans and they think of themselves as such. Keep saying these things. 

Take on the Donalds with reasoning and evidence, my American friends. Quiet, but firm and persistent. You have a right to be a nagging parent. After the shouting dies down, the voices of decency and sense do get heard. You just have to hang in there.