Toronto Skyline
shot by Sam Javanrouh at Daily Dose of Imagery. Wallpaper version available
here.
Unrest
in Oaxaca Produces More Police Violence: As Mexico gets
closer to a July 2 election that could be won by an anti-imperialist,
anti-free-trade candidate Lopez Obrador, there have been a series of
violent confrontations in Mexico between protesters and out-of-control
police gangs, that some believe have been deliberately orchestrated to
engender a sense of fear and lawlessness favourable to the incumbent
government's right-wing law-and-order candidate. Media sympathetic to
the protesters have been raided and shut down, women protesters have
been reportedly gang-raped in prison, and in the latest
protest by teachers in Oaxaca, several people including
children have reportedly been gunned down by police.
Scripts
for Lists on Your Blog/Website: Lots of ready-to-use
scripts to incorporate vertical or horizontal lists, tabs and
navigation bars on your site. Thanks to Dale Asberry
for the link.
Opposing
Animal Cruelty is Not About Faith: Kevin
Cameron at Bastish deconstructs the phony argument that
refusal to eat meat from animals raised in cruel and inhumane
conditions is a 'religious' decision rather than a moral and rational
one. "I wonder if it is only with the advent of our modern religions
that
people have come to believe that disrespect for other living beings is
the norm, and that having respect for other living beings constitutes
'religion'."
Why
Our Food Choices Matter: On a similar theme, Elizabeth at Half
Changed World reviews The Way We Eat, Peter Singer's new
book, and links to a recent Salon
interview
with Singer. Some interesting insight into the thorny choices between
locally-grown versus organic, and eating vegan versus eating meat from
humanely-raised animals. There's also some interesting insight on the
savagery of kosher slaughter and the 'disposition' of hens who no
longer lay eggs, on the energy savings of eating vegan versus driving a
Prius, and, of course, on the evils of factory farms.
Are
All Organized Religions in Decline?: Columnist David
Warren argues that the rise of fundamentalism -- whether in
Christianity or in Islam -- is the death-gasp of an organized religion
in long-term and permanent decline. Thanks to Good
and Happy for the link.
Ayahuasca
as Depression Therapy: Cyndy at MouseMusings
reviews a National
Geographic report on the use of the Brazilian drug ayahuasca,
used by some native tribes and attracting increasing attention for its
greater effectiveness and lower side-effects than SSRIs in the
treatment of depression and anxiety disorders. Add it to the
açai berry, stevia and hemp in the list of tropical plant
products that the big multinational corporations don't want you to know
about.
Great Passages:
Here are some of the passages that commenters to my March 1 article
suggested as candidates for the Greatest
Passage Ever Written:
The last paragraph
of "The Dead":
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had
begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark,
falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to
set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow
was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark
central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of
Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous
Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely
churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly
drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the
little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard
the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like
the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Also, the last graf of Gatsby is beautiful. [Scott Smith]
You know, mine is
one line, by Lorca from a Poet in New York. Translated into English it
goes like this:
"There are spaces that ache in the uninhabited air."
Amazing image. [Chris
Corrigan]
In the beginning,
there was a river. The river became a road and the
road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a
river it was always hungry.
In the land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could
assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries.
There was much feasting, playing and sorrowing. We feasted much because
of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played much because we were
free. And we sorrowed much because there were always those amongst us
who had just returned from the world of the Living. They returned
inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all the suffering
they hadn’t redeemed, all that they hadn’t
understood, and for all they
had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of
origins.
There was not one amongst us who looked forward to being born. We
disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the
enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the
ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference
of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We
feared the heartlessness of human being, all of whom are born blind,
few of whom ever learn to see.
The Famished Road by Ben Okri, 1991 [Judith]
Ignoring many
examples from The Snow
Leopard, or Bruce Chatwin, or Barry Lopez, I’ll offer this,
from Desert
Divers, by Sven Lindqvist.
“This morning I saw a marabout, the sepulchre of a holy man,
its
distant walls reflecting the light like a beacon. It takes about an
hour to climb up to the stillness and solitude. There is nothing there.
Nothing but a few lizard tracks in the sand.
Nothing but a few unglazed, cracked and crumbling jars, the tombstones
of the poor.
Nothing but a few large split palm trunks, grey with age, their timber
like pressed straw.
And then the marabout door glowing acid-green and sulphur-yellow in the
morning sun.
Far down below, a man is hacking in the dry riverbed and some dark men
are spreading out their dark, moist dates to dry beyond a low mud wall.
I go down to them, where it is already hot in the sun. But when they
greet you, the men’s hands are still cool, almost cold
– as if the
night had remained behind in their bodies.
The only language we had in common was our hands.” [pohanginapete]
My love of
reading. From 'My Fater's Library ' by Finn-Olaf Jonese. Appeared on
Forbes.com 2005. A lifetime of written wisdom has gently settled like
silt on some distant ocean bed, and somewhere within, the long
conversation between man and books continues, though ever quieter. Love
disappears, wealth disappears, desire disappears. But good books stay
absorbed in the soul, and a soul, if educated, endures. Or at least
that's what some pretty good books say. [Cindy]
El mar es un alma
que tuvimos, que no sabemos donde esta y que apenas
recordamos nuestra... El mar es un alma que siempre es otra, en cada
uno de nuestros malecones ... "La Casa de Cartón"
Martín Adán (A translated approach: The
sea is a soul we once had, that we know not
where it is, that we slightly remember ours....The sea is a soul that
is always another in each one of our sea shore walks.) [Mariella]
Every passage I read by Annie Dillard is the best
I've read yet, as I read it. So, from her Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek, Chapter 14: Northing:
"The woods were as restless as birds. I stood
under tulips and ashes, maples, sourwood, sassafras, locusts,
catalpas, and oaks. I let my eyes spread and unfix, screening out all
that was not vertical motion, and I saw only leaves in the air---or
rather, since my mind was also unfixed, vertical trails of yellow
color-patches falling from nowhere to nowhere. Mysterious streamers of
color unrolled silently all about me, distant and near. Some color
chips made the descent violently; they wrenched from side to side in a
series of diminishing swings, as if willfully fighting the fall with
all the tricks of keel and glide they could muster. Others spun
straight down in tight, suicidal circles. Tulips had cast their leaves
on my path, flat and bright as doubloons.
I passed under a sugar maple that stunned me by its elegant
unself-consciousness: it was as if a man on fire were to continue
calmly sipping tea. In the deepest part of the woods was a stand of
ferns. I had just been
reading in Donald Culross Peattie that the so-called "seed" of ferns
was formerly thought to bestow the gift of invisibility on its bearer,
and that Genghis Khan wore such a seed in his ring, "and by it
understood the speech of birds." If I were invisible, might I also be
small, so that I could be borne by winds, spreading my body like a
sail, like a vaulted leaf, to anyplace at all? Mushrooms erupted
through the forest mold, the fly amanita in various stages of thrust
and spread, some big brown mushrooms rounded and smooth as loaves, some
eerie purple ones I'd never noticed before, the color of Portuguese
men-of-war, murex, a deep-sea, pressurized color, as if the earth heavy
with trees and rocks had pressed and leached all other hues away." [Barbara W.
Klaser]
The first and the last passage of the first two pages of "The Bone
People" by Keri Hulme - and it´s not a nomination but a
recommendation,
and I cannot even quote it because I don´t have it in English
- which
suits me fine: I think the mountain's peak is tied to its base.
[Cristosova] Thought
provoking or social commentary? I can think of two short
passages that have captured my attention for what they say. Both by
Ernest K. Gann
1) They must never, for fear of official ridicule, admit other than to
themselves that some totally unrecognizable genie has once again
unbuttoned his pants and urinated on the pillar of science.
2) For loneliness, I thought, is an opportunity. Only in such a state
may ordinary minds, spared comparison with superior minds, emerge
victorious from thoughts that might prove perilous to explore in
company. Loneliness is not deadening, even for dullards who contrive
against the condition because it forces them to think. Unless men are
transformed into true imbeciles and simply stare at nothing, or play
with their physical toys, then loneliness can form a magic platform
which may transport the meek to thoughts of courage, or even cause a
scoundrel to examine the benefits of honesty. Yet to be lonely is to be
pitied, which is an insult, since pity is most loudly offered by the
patronizing and hypocritical. Pity for the lonely speaks of uncleanness
and rejection; thoughts so often nursed by those terrified of
separation from the masses.
[ Michael McNally]Our
generation of scanners might not appreciate poetry instead of prose,
still my vote goes to the poets.
One of my favorites Emily Dickinson: "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners, to and fro Kept treading--treading--till it seemed That Sense was breaking through-- And when they all were seated, A Service like a Drum-- Kept beating--beating-- till I thought My mind was going numb-- And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space-- began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being but an Ear, And I and Silence some strange Race, Wrecked, solitary, here. And then a Plank in Reason broke, And I fell down, and down-- And hit a World at every plunge And Finished knowing then--
Too often I hear the treading, feel a plank break and the tumble." [Marty Avery] The last
passage from an essay in James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son. The
author begins the essay in 1943 with an account of driving to his
father's funeral through what he calls a "wilderness of smashed plate
glass". He then deftly walks us through the history of Harlem race
riots, while at the same time, attempts to come to grips with his own
experience of being alienated from both his father and his country. By
the end of the essay, he emerges victorious over both the bitterness
that engulfed his father's life and the racial hatred that threatens
his own. "hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy
the man who hated..." He then concludes with this passage: "It began to
seem that one would have to hold in mind two ideas which seemed to be in
opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance totally
without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of
this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But
this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was
of equal power: that one must never in one's own life accept these
injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength.
This fight begins however, in the heart and it had now been laid to my
charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation
made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished
that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for
the answers that only the future would give me now." The second idea
that came to mind was an idea I came across while reading Barry Lopez,
Arctic Dreams. He puts forth the idea that "the wilderness is an
antidote for the alienation experienced by urban people" it was more
the idea that resonated with me than the prose. It reminds me that a
wilderness is not a national park or a protected space but a place
completely wild and hostile that has a healing effect. [Theresa] |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
