Caroline @191: Even woo-oriented rituals still do something even if you don't intellectually accept the woo. I don't mean that they do something supernatural. But they still make meaning, in the way people understand themselves, other people, their relationships with other people, their interactions with material objects.
I can testify. I did two years of group work with this guy in Seattle. The money we paid only went to rent the space, and the intent was to discover in ourselves and as a group how to create spontaneous, meaningful ritual without any shared social or ideological relationships between us. From the first hour, the "instigator" (as he called himself) hammered on the rule that we were absolutely responsible for our own safety, and that if we felt we were in danger, we were to leave the floor and just witness. To take care of oneself was considered a valid and honorable part of the personal work.
It was an amazing two years and I still have great friends from it.
I have had two painful experiences with people who rocketed out of Landmark having disconnected from all common sense, and promptly ruined their lives; I have also reconnected with two good friends whose natural common sense was validated and encouraged by Landmark into new careers and joyful living. Go figure.
A brief and lucid explanation of the American health-care/insurance system, and what the reform legislation offers to do about it:
Health Care Reform on a Napkin ...
[Edited by JDM to add link. The post was held for moderation due to a broken link. I'm only guessing that this was the one meant.]
kid bitzer @ 70 --
One need not adopt, to love.
Then there's this from Food Renegade -- that Mexican media are all over the connection between swine flu and CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations, or factory farms). The US media ... "What's a CAFO? Can't be important."
An astrologer friend is dead set on getting people to hold the Taurus New Moon as New Year, since it is in an Earth sign and Earth Day has been assigned to that part of the Julian calendar.
She has noticed that where a culture places its new year in the zodiac shapes the kind of culture they create:
China - Aquarius - inventive, electric, group-centered, rigidly controlling.
Judiac - Libra - Justice, merchant's scales, being pleasant to keep the peace (?Is the State of Israel listening anymore?).
European - Capricorn - corporatist, patriarchal, political organization, status-oriented.
Thoughts from others?
monasteries ...
On a trip to India my companions and I had had enough of ruins and ancient statues by the time we reached Varanasi. So our guide took us to a new Tibetan Buddhist monastery outside Sarnath, where the Buddha first taught. The colorful place was non-touristed, such a relief. But it was on our ride back into Varanasi that I saw a large haystack walking down the side of the road.
Underneath it, perfectly centered, perfectly straight-backed, and moving with unstoppable purpose, was a woman ...
... wrapped in a beautiful sari, and carrying the haystack home on her head.
Al Giordano has an excellent post (as usual) up at The Field:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/biden-second-chance-the-everyman
Wherein he addresses the "plagiarism" issue:
Biden had, on previous occasions, credited the Brit, Neil Kinnock, with the words, but on subsequent moments did not. "Plagiarism" was the charge - hardly the kind of thing that would have sunk a candidate today, but in 1988 - when a less politically savvy public didn't understand that most politicians don't write their own speeches - it was devastating. Biden dropped out of the presidential contest and didn't enter it again until last year. But by then it seemed more a Last Hurrah; a kind of revival tour for a one-hit wonder pop group from the 1980s.
Yet the words in that 1988 speech were essentially true, if not original. He was the first Biden to go to college. He did descend from coal miner country. This was a man with the class resentment that comes naturally to being born from below. And as the national media vetting process will disclose in the coming days, after 36 years in the US Senate, he's still one of the poorest US Senators: he never availed himself of the back-door personal enrichment techniques that most of his colleagues - Democrat and Republican - have utilized. Beyond class resentment, he retains a sense of class solidarity. His wife since 1977 never went into Washington lobbying: she remained a public schoolteacher.
Next graf has info I was unaware of:
Biden has also lived personal tragedies that would have splat most people like watermelons tossed from the sixth floor of a Wilmington tenement: between his first US Senate election in 1972 and being sworn in, his first wife and three small children were in a gruesome car accident. Mrs. Biden and his daughter died, his two boys were wounded, and he became a single father. Biden never quite entered the Washington DC culture so seductive to his peers: commuting from Delaware to DC, always coming home at night.
Another plus is that since Biden has run for President before, the corners of his closets have been pretty well explored already.
Further down in Al's blog, there's a post about how Senate committee posts shift if Obama-Biden wins and JB becomes VP:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/if-its-biden-theres-a-consolation-prize-dodd-and-maybe-you-too
Suffice to say, Yeah, I'll take that!
Funny, I had a grey-brown aardvark in Darfur.
There are 108 stitches in a baseball.
Re: Depression II: Already people in urban and suburban places are putting in what gardens they can for herbs & veg, raising chicken if zoning allows. Gas prices have already forced some small businesses in my hometown to close - furniture movers & a floral delivery business.
But I really think it would just encourage people to get creative, figure things out with their immediate community about how to share and barter.
Heck, maybe board games and Twister would come back as entertainment. Live music in the backyard.
I mean, Argentina went through a huge economic meltdown and - as an entire country - adopted a small-business barter system for an economy.
I'm Bloomington, IN. I did a radio news story on this last Thursday (WFHB Community Radio, 91.3 FM, www.wfhb.org). Got audio from the spokeslady at the State AG office. (I tried to find you, Bonnie Kaye, but all your sites give is e-mail! And the Phila. Community College number kept me on hold for half an hour.)
The details of the deception, laid out on Bonnie Kaye's web site just made me sick.
Michelle @ 95:
Speaking of a bad health care plan ...
I found this disturbing.
http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2008/04/sci-fi-author-larry-niven-wants-to-kill.html
The comment thread reflects my reaction: "Larry Niven? WTF?"
Wesley Clark as veep could give the Democrats serious appeal to the rightier variety of independents, as well as military folks disgusted with Bush.
Wesley Clark for SecDef.
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