violence

-

-

crikey mates... who left the gate open?

-
Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.

- Mark Twain

-

Well, Oregon, you let me down. Somebody left the gate open (musta been one of them city folks, don't know the rules of common sense) and now Cliven Bundy's spawn and his pack of armed whack-a-doodles have snuck in.

Yeah. The internet is abuzz.

Me? I think they're a bunch of yahoos with guns.

The "men" (term used loosely here) that have occupied Malheur Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon are no more than a bunch of fakes and flakes. And Cliven Bundy?

Cliven Bundy is a racist and a real welfare queen.

Ignorance at that level does not bode well for his cognition skills in other areas. I'm just sayin'...

As for his son and the clowns at Malheur (#VanillaIsis) I really don't know what (other than "not") they're thinking. They are not patriots and are far from "heroes." In fact there is a case of some stolen valor within the ranks of these faux militiamen.

The young men and women that "occupied" Wounded Knee ("occupying" their own land, go figure) are patriots. Mary and Carrie Dann  are patriots.

In the early 1980s a movement that had built momentum from the '60s and '70s began protests across the country against the insane levels of nuclear weapons stockpiled (mostly) by the United States and the old Soviet Union. Over 30 thousand nuclear devices were ready for use by us and the Soviet Union had 20 thousand plus nuclear weapons in their arsenal. And people protested.

We occupied federal facilities. People like the Berrigan brothers, Wavy Gravy, Starhawk, Daniel Ellsberg - and me and hundreds of others - stood up face-to-face with federal authority. And we did it unarmed. Nationwide there were probably no more than a few thousand of us at several facilities (me at Vandenberg AFB in Central California).

Key phrase: unarmed and willing to be arrested. Which of course we were.

We claimed the higher moral ground. We faced the criticism, the name calling and insults. We were arrested and we served our sentences. And we did bring some sense to the issue.

In 1986 there were over 60,000 nuclear weapons world wide. By 1992 the nuclear stockpile was reduced by a third. By 2002 levels had been reduced by more than 2/3 from the 1986 peak of 65,000.

"Unarmed and willing to be arrested." That's how human beings being human do it. That's patriotism.

Go home fellas. Leave and close the gate behind you. You simply are not wanted, nor needed.

-

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

- Mark Twain

-

Christmas 2015

-

You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.

- Terence McKenna

-

For me, over these 6 decades come and gone, this season is a triad of "holidays" (holy days). Dec 21 is both the day I mark as the Winter Solstice and my mother Vivian's (RIP) birthday.

Of course these days my mom's birthday is kinda sad as I do miss her, very much. She was such a good soul and having to raise me along with my 2 1/2 siblings must have been quite the challenge.

The Winter's Solstice... aaah... this is me. Long ago I slipped into the life stream of the natural world. And that world is one that exists not just as material but as the core of my heart, mind and soul. 

I love the earth. More than my mom, my family or my friends. 

Nature is all. It is all we have and all that we have has come from her. The life here on our planet is absolutely connected to life everywhere. There is no other, there is but here. Infinite life expands in all directions - macro and micro.

But Christmas... sigh... 

... Christmas was great as a kid. Innocence makes so much believable. But Christmas is like the Kachinas. It dances into the village costumed and caricaturized. Dancing a lie, a myth but telling the story. Only when an individual is old enough are they made aware that the Kachinas are their relatives, their neighbors. The masks come off.

For me the mask came off Christmas when I started doing sweatlodge and traveling with the plant medicines, the entheogenic spirits. 

I can't in good conscience share the "joy" of giving. Our consumption will be our doom. It's as simple as that. While many of my friends understand this, the majority of modern humans are clueless. For 40 years I've been at odds with the society around me. Heck, I've flung my body at that wall more than once.

And it's never been easy! I mean I sure don't want to be the Grinch. I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment, especially the children's. So my kids were raised celebrating Christmas. But once we moved into the farm celebrating Christmas became an enigma. It was mid-winter, energy bills are high, I'm raising 2 kids (teenagers!) by myself and I don't believe in it. 

Luckily (?) I've never had an issue being a bit different. It was tough maturing into it but the same process was always involved - "how many sheep does it hold?" Because of me being me fighting to save an old growth forest or being a hippie working for an environmental organization in the middle of conservative ranching country or driving a truck with pot leaves painted all over it when pot was still illegal (ughhh, gross!) takes a certain amount of crazy. The rewards tho'... that's the kind.

AND driving that truck (20' flatbed loaded with tons of lumber) for almost 5 years with no violations shows a certain level of skill. 

I'm not trying to change anybody. I do work hard on occasion trying to change minds - and hearts - but mostly I want to enjoy this lifetime's sojourn on a beautiful planet. A planet I call home and mother.

Merry Christmas!

(self portrait)

-

Please, if you like this, visit my other blogs as well:

AE, photographer (my photography)

Good Dog (drug war) (drug war)

Eugene Emeralds at Civic Stadium (Eugene Emeralds baseball)

for those who enjoy my work with Courtney

My Oregon Muse (adult content)

and my Facebook

My photography on FB

Thanks for visiting, feel free to leave me a comment or share with your friends.

-

Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.

- Terence McKenna

-