Friday, April 30, 2010

Liberty...

I have to join a 12-step program....the Criminal Minds support group.

Shocking to have intelligent television....and it stars Mandy Potemkin.

Mandy P was Inigo Montoya in the best movie ever made: The Princess Bride. "My name is Inigo Montoya. You kill my father...prepare to die.
"

Anything Mandy Potemkin is in, automatically has my vote.

Not only is Criminal Minds smart, but it begins and ends each show with a pithy quote.

How about this "A question that sometimes drives me crazy: am I or the others crazy?"

I love that quote, and didn't know it. We all know Einstein on the definition of insanity....

And, if you google that quote, the Criminal Minds episode comes up near the top of the page. So, I may be hazy....but I am not crazy.


Tonight there was an especially well done episode. The final quote was: "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." Thomas Paine

Well, it turns out is was Thomas Paine, from The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776
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I couldn't agree more. I am sitting here trying to write a talk at my best friend's son's funeral from a methadone overdose...it seemed especially apropos.

This is what parents do. We try to clear a space of freedom and light for our kids in which to grow and prosper.

Also, as a spiritual pacifist...with many, many friends in harm's way in the military who are trying to do just what Tom Paine said, albeit by force of arms, and at the peril of their being....the quote seemed piquant. My soldier friends like their toys, but they don't like their jobs.

When I googled the Paine quote, imagine my surprise to find that it has been hijacked by the Tea Party crowd. This crowd is not worried about economic battles, or foreign policy....They think that they are fighting against their own government, and scary liberals. And Universal Health Care.

This is the crowd that brought us the Arizona anti-immigrant legislation, for example.

I wonder if any of them have actually read any history....or even read Thomas Paine? Actual research is so boring and time consuming.

Here are some further quotes.....ones I learned in the Communist State of New Jersey. One of our signers, John Hart understood Tom Paine much better and more personally than the Tea Bag Scum Bags.

Anyway here is the kind of Tom Paine they teach in New Jersey public schools:


He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, December 23, 1791

The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 4, September 11, 1777

A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1792

The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.
Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 5, March 21, 1778

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 4, September 11, 1777

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Oh...and how about this one, since the Tea Party and the anti-evolutionists and anti-climate change folk drink from the same trough:

A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1792

Lift a jar to John Hart.....and check out Criminal Minds. Just for the quotes.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Brian's Song....

Sorry to be gone so long. Suffice it to say that everything that could go wrong, has. All my text and photos of Spain were moved to my little Dell back-up computer....which someone stole.

Tax time: Intuit is paid by us hundreds of dollars to store our stuff on line....they lost it.

Walking the dogs in the beautiful Central Coast sunshine...I get whipped in the eye by poison oak. Eyeball poison oak. I have dealt with blindness before.....champagne cork blindness, which is kind of ironic, but.....

Luckily, Hacienda Hay and Feed Medical Supply still rules.....and works. Veterinary opthalmic anti-biotic and steroid gels have saved the day again.

Meanwhile....my oldest friend Brian came to visit. And dedicated a perfectly good day off to document a Monday Night at The Store. Ignore the fact that it was actually a Tuesday Night...

His photos are awesome.....and you have never heard him play piano!

Here is the link to his most recent work.

Pax vobiscum.