And the Rest of the Story . . .

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By Jonathan Petre
Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010

• Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
• There has been no global warming since 1995
• Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

More...

• MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: The professor's amazing climate change retreat

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

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But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.

Ein bemerkenswertes Angebot von Ukraine hat Talent

This is just Amazing . . .

Und Sie dachten, dass Sozialismus… tot war. HA!

Glücklich als Made im Speck, dass dieses schließlich zur vordersten Reihe kommt!

This just in from the folks at Big Hollywood. Thought I'd pass it along as the discussion continues . . .











Kids to Meet Marx in School – Care of Hollywood and The History Channel
by Patrick Courrielche

Children are uniquely malleable beings, readily convinced of magically colorful tales – Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are the first that come to mind. This innocence is beautiful, but it is a quality that can easily fall victim to radically foreign ideas if taught consistently and pervasively at an early age. One need only look at the birth of fascism or socialism to see a recipe for how radical ideas become ubiquitous among a nation’s youth.

Enter Howard Zinn – an author, professor and American historian – who, with the help of Hollywood and the History Channel, intends to change the way our pre-K through high school children learn American history. His current curriculum suggestions, like introducing three-year-olds to the lynching of African-Americans, or quizzing seven-year-olds on which Presidents owned slaves, should be a red flag to parents.

people speak kids

Zinn has spent a lifetime teaching college students about the evils of capitalism, the promise of Marxism, and his version of American history – a history that has, in his view, been kept from students. His controversial 1980-book The People’s History of the United States paints traditional American history as a façade – one that has grotesquely immortalized flawed leaders and is based on principles that victimize the common man. In 2004, Zinn wrote a companion book entitled Voices Of A People’s History Of The United States, which includes speeches and writings from many of the people featured in The People’s History.

These two books have now become the basis for a new documentary, entitled The People Speak, to be aired December 13th at 8pm on the History Channel. The trailer portrays the documentary as a collage of compelling one-person readings, told through the words of “ordinary” people who have struggled throughout American history against oppression. Produced by Zinn, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Chris Moore, the documentary appears to be cloaked, ironically (given Zinn’s admitted socialist agenda), in many of the traditional ideas that were behind our founding. The verdict is still out on the doc, but it is not for the books that inspired the film as well as the educational initiative associated with it.

Perhaps due to their one-sided perspective of America’s past, Zinn’s history books have largely been limited to colleges and universities, until now. In the press release announcing the broadcast, HISTORY introduced a partnership with VOICES Of A People’s History Of The United States, a nonprofit led by Zinn that bares the same name as his companion book, to help get his special brand of history into classrooms.

Delving into Zinn’s nonprofit is where this story gets interesting, and the organization’s grade school educational ambitions concerning.

VOICES’ function is to provide live performances of readings from the book Voices of a People’s History as well as educational materials to schoolteachers. The nonprofit’s site provides teachers with resources, including a teaching guide that explains how to get students excited about Zinn’s history books. Their educational materials also includes the Zinn Education Project, a resource for teaching Zinn’s perspective of American history to – drum roll please – pre-Kindergarten through high school students! Included in the curriculum for pre-K students (that’s three and four year-olds) is “Rethinking Columbus,” which counters “the myth of Columbus.” In Zinn’s view, our pre-K children “need to hear from those whose lands and rights were taken away by those who ‘discovered’ them.”

Another teaching lesson for our three-year-old students is “One Country! One Language! One Flag!” that includes teaching ideas for “examining the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and the political milieu in which it was written.” The teaching plan suggests introducing our pre-K-ers to the lynching of African-Americans in the 1880s, and introducing the history of violence and discrimination against minority groups. It also proposes a discussion on an old “One Language!” chant allegedly used in classrooms up until 1942, and poses teachers with the question, “Why not lead kids in the original Pledge to the Flag, including the ‘One Language!’ chant and the Nazi-like salute, and then lead a discussion about the politics of the Pledge?”

This discussion is proposed for kids age three to seven?

Zinn also includes a youngster version of his influential book entitled A Young People’s History of the United States as an introduction to his untold American History. The publisher of the book

The background of the board of directors and advisers of VOICES’ can only be described as jaw dropping and begins to show a clear motive behind teaching this predominantly anti-American history at such a young age.

Made up of several notables including Zinn, Kerry Washington, and Marisa Tomei, all of whom make appearances in the documentary, the VOICES board also includes radicals who play a role in our public schools. Brian Jones, a New York teacher and actor, is a board member of VOICES and has also played the lead in Zinn’s play Marx in SoHo. You can see Jones speaking about Zinn and the play below, recorded for a performance in Greece, where he extols the benefits of this one man play as a tool to introduce people to Marx’s ideas:



Jones is also a regular contributor to Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and speaks regularly on the beneficial principles of Marxism, including this year at the 2009 Socialism Conference. He recently gave a speech on the failure of capitalism, proclaiming that “Marx is back.”

Sarah Knopp, a Los Angeles high school teacher, is also on Zinn’s Teacher Advisory Board. Like Jones, Knopp is also a regular contributor to International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker, is an active member in The International Socialist Organization, and was also a speaker at the 2009 Socialist Conference. Here is Knopp speaking about the benefits of socialism, how capitalism destroys lives, and how she advocates workers taking over their factories:


Is it becoming clearer why this group might want to teach children to think poorly of the American system?

Then there is Jesse Sharkey, a schoolteacher in Chicago. Sharkey is another of Zinn’s Teacher Advisory Board Members and, completely uncharacteristic of this group, is a contributor to… Socialist Worker.

This is the group that the History Channel is working with “to develop enhanced, co-branded curriculums for a countrywide educational initiative.” If readers choose to watch The People Speak, which we at BigHollywood encourage, keep in mind the context of the documentary’s creator and the pre-K to high school curriculum that the History Channel and VOICES could possibly create given the makeup of the board members.

I am not advocating that we spare our kids the harsh truths of American history, but I am suggesting, given Zinn’s far-left political affiliation, this project is designed to breakdown our vulnerable children’s views of American principles so that they can be built back up in a socialist vision.

Zinn’s one-man play Marx in SoHo provides an example of his attempt to reestablish the socialist ideology. The play, created in 1999, places Marx in New York after bargaining with the authorities of the after-life for a chance to come back to earth to clear his name. At the end of the cold war, Zinn felt that Marxism was unfairly discredited through being anchored to the fall of the Soviet Union. Through the play, Zinn wanted “the audience to see Marx defending his ideas against attack.” Those associated with the play have described it as an attempt to reestablish Marx’s philosophic and economic outlook – a philosophy that views capitalism as corrosive to the human condition. It doesn’t take a great leap to surmise that instilling in children a pessimistic view of the American experience could make his ideas more palatable.

Zinn’s socialist philosophy has definitely made its way into the documentary, including a speech by prominent socialist Eugene Debs. In his speech, which is a prose to the ills of the capitalist system, he speaks to a court that convicted him of sedition:

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man, who does absolutely nothing…to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

The promotional videos can be viewed here:


It is not surprising to me that there are groups sympathetic to Marx’s ideas throughout our country. What is surprising is that the most powerful persuasion machine in the world (Hollywood) and the History Channel would provide Zinn such a prominent soapbox to stealthily build a case for a destructive ideology to our children, and as a result mainstream his ideas with the magic of cool music, graphics, and celebrity. Groups that push Marx’s philosophy are like a virtual organism that will not die off even when stung by the undeniable historical evidence showing human behavior makes such a system unsustainable. If we let this virtual organism into our grade schools, it will take decades for our kids to unlearn the ideology.

And if there are any doubts of the intentions of Howard Zinn’s movement, I provide a quote of his in closing. When a reporter asked Zinn, “In writing A People’s History, what were you calling for? A quiet revolution?” Zinn responded: “A quiet revolution is a good way of putting it. From the bottom up. Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives. It would be a democratic socialism.”

It appears that Zinn’s ilk have started the institutional phase of their agenda. highlights a review by the magazine Socialist Review, who proclaimed “Howard Zinn has adapted his People’s History of the United States for younger readers, but in no way do these books pull their punches. Zinn feels the younger reader is entitled to look at US history honestly.”

SAKI ! ! !

Sometime ago in these pages, I introduced a good friend of mine from the 16th century, Michel d'Montaigne. I thought it might be of interest to introduce to readers another of my favorite authors, Saki (nee' H. H. Munro) through a series of his short sketches. Munro (Saki) captured the essence of an era long gone - the pristine yet portly period of Victoriana through the Edwardian Age. Things were either done or NOT done. There wasn't anything gray or marginal about conduct, deportment or polite speech. However, under the pen of Saki, the Ionic columns of polite society during that time come crashing down with one swift line of ink.

I am not alone in my admiration for Saki. No less than A. A. Milne had this to say:

There are good things which we want to share with the world and good things which we want to keep to ourselves. The secret of our favourite restaurant, to take a case, is guarded jealously from all but a few intimates; the secret, to take a contrary case, of our infallible remedy for seasickness is thrust upon every traveller we meet, even if he be no more than a casual acquaintance about to cross the Serpentine. So with our books. There are dearly loved books of which we babble to a neighbour at dinner, insisting that she shall share our delight in them; and there are books, equally dear to us, of which we say nothing, fearing lest the praise of others should cheapen the glory of our discovery. The books of "Saki" were, for me at least, in the second class.

It was in the WESTMINSTER GAZETTE that I discovered him (I like to remember now) almost as soon as he was discoverable. Let us spare a moment, and a tear, for those golden days in the early nineteen hundreds, when there were five leisurely papers of an evening in which the free-lance might graduate, and he could speak of his Alma Mater, whether the GLOBE or the PALL MALL, with as much pride as, he never doubted, the GLOBE or the PALL MALL would speak one day of him. Myself but lately down from ST. JAMES', I was not too proud to take some slight but pitying interest in men of other colleges. The unusual name of a freshman up at WESTMINSTER attracted my attention; I read what he had to say; and it was only by reciting rapidly with closed eyes the names of our own famous alumni, beginning confidently with Barrie and ending, now very doubtfully, with myself, that I was able to preserve my equanimity. Later one heard that this undergraduate from overseas had gone up at an age more advanced than customary; and just as Cambridge men have been known to complain of the maturity of Oxford Rhodes scholars, so one felt that this WESTMINSTER free-lance in the thirties was no fit competitor for the youth of other colleges. Indeed, it could not compete.

Well, I discovered him, but only to the few, the favoured, did I speak of him. It may have been my uncertainty (which still persists) whether he called himself Sayki, Sahki or Sakki which made me thus ungenerous of his name, or it may have been the feeling that the others were not worthy of him; but how refreshing it was when some intellectually blown-up stranger said "Do you ever read Saki?" to reply, with the same pronunciation and even greater condescension: "Saki! He has been my favourite author for years!"

A strange exotic creature, this Saki, to us many others who were trying to do it too. For we were so domestic, he so terrifyingly cosmopolitan. While we were being funny, as planned, with collar-studs and hot-water bottles, he was being much funnier with werwolves and tigers. Our little dialogues were between John and Mary; his, and how much better, between Bertie van Tahn and the Baroness. Even the most casual intruder into one of his sketches, as it might be our Tomkins, had to be called Belturbet or de Ropp, and for his hero, weary man-of-the-world at seventeen, nothing less thrilling than Clovis Sangrail would do. In our envy we may have wondered sometimes if it were not much easier to be funny with tigers than with collar-studs; if Saki's careless cruelty, that strange boyish insensitiveness of his, did not give him an unfair start in the pursuit of laughter. It may have been so; but, fortunately, our efforts to be funny in the Saki manner have not survived to prove it.

What is Saki's manner, what his magic talisman? Like every artist worth consideration, he had no recipe. If his exotic choice of subject was often his strength, it was often his weakness; if his insensitiveness carried him through, at times, to victory, it brought him, at times, to defeat. I do not think that he has that "mastery of the CONTE"—in this book at least—which some have claimed for him. Such mastery infers a passion for tidiness which was not in the boyish Saki's equipment. He leaves loose ends everywhere. Nor in his dialogue, delightful as it often is, funny as it nearly always is, is he the supreme master; too much does it become monologue judiciously fed, one character giving and the other taking. But in comment, in reference, in description, in every development of his story, he has a choice of words, a "way of putting things" which is as inevitably his own vintage as, once tasted, it becomes the private vintage of the connoisseur.

Let us take a sample or two of "Saki, 1911."

"The earlier stages of the dinner had worn off. The wine lists had been consulted, by some with the blank embarrassment of a schoolboy suddenly called upon to locate a Minor Prophet in the tangled hinterland of the Old Testament, by others with the severe scrutiny which suggests that they have visited most of the higher-priced wines in their own homes and probed their family weaknesses."

"Locate" is the pleasant word here. Still more satisfying, in the story of the man who was tattooed "from collar-bone to waist-line with a glowing representation of the Fall of Icarus," is the word "privilege":

"The design when finally developed was a slight disappointment to Monsieur Deplis, who had suspected Icarus of being a fortress taken by Wallenstein in the Thirty Years' War, but he was more than satisfied with the execution of the work, which was acclaimed by all who had the privilege of seeing it as Pincini's masterpiece."

~A. A. MILNE.

As a way of introduction to Saki, let me introduce you to one of his star characters:

REGINALD


I did it — I who should have known better.

I persuaded Reginald to go to the McKillops’ garden-party against his will.

We all make mistakes occasionally.


“They know you’re here, and they’ll think it so funny if you don’t go. And I want particularly to be in with Mrs. McKillop just now.”

“I know, you want one of her smoke Persian kittens as a prospective wife for Wumples—or a husband, is it?” (Reginald has a magnificent scorn for details, other than sartorial.) “And I am expected to undergo social martyrdom to suit the connubial exigencies”—

“Reginald! It’s nothing of the kind, only I’m sure Mrs. McKillop Would be pleased if I brought you. Young men of your brilliant attractions are rather at a premium at her garden-parties.”

“Should be at a premium in heaven,” remarked Reginald complacently.

“There will be very few of you there, if that is what you mean. But seriously, there won’t be any great strain upon your powers of endurance; I promise you that you shan’t have to play croquet, or talk to the Archdeacon’s wife, or do anything that is likely to bring on physical prostration. You can just wear your sweetest clothes and moderately amiable expression, and eat chocolate-creams with the appetite of a blasé parrot. Nothing more is demanded of you.”

Reginald shut his eyes. “There will be the exhaustingly up-to-date young women who will ask me if I have seen San Toy; a less progressive grade who will yearn to hear about the Diamond Jubilee—the historic event, not the horse. With a little encouragement, they will inquire if I saw the Allies march into Paris. Why are women so fond of raking up the past? They’re as bad as tailors, who invariably remember what you owe them for a suit long after you’ve ceased to wear it.”

“I’ll order lunch for one o’clock; that will give you two and a half hours to dress in.”

Reginald puckered his brow into a tortured frown, and I knew that my point was gained. He was debating what tie would go with which waistcoat.

Even then I had my misgivings.

* * * * *

During the drive to the McKillops’ Reginald was possessed with a great peace, which was not wholly to be accounted for by the fact that he had inveigled his feet into shoes a size too small for them. I misgave more than ever, and having once launched Reginald on to the McKillops’ lawn, I established him near a seductive dish of marrons glacés, and as far from the Archdeacon’s wife as possible; as I drifted away to a diplomatic distance I heard with painful distinctness the eldest Mawkby girl asking him if he had seen San Toy.

It must have been ten minutes later, not more, and I had been having quite an enjoyable chat with my hostess, and had promised to lend her The Eternal City and my recipe for rabbit mayonnaise, and was just about to offer a kind home for her third Persian kitten, when I perceived, out of the corner of my eye, that Reginald was not where I had left him, and that the marrons glacés were untasted. At the same moment I became aware that old Colonel Mendoza was essaying to tell his classic story of how he introduced golf into India, and that Reginald was in dangerous proximity. There are occasions when Reginald is caviare to the Colonel.

“When I was at Poona in ’76”—

“My dear Colonel,” purred Reginald, “fancy admitting such a thing! Such a give-away for one’s age! I wouldn’t admit being on this planet in ’76.” (Reginald in his wildest lapses into veracity never admits to being more than twenty-two.)

The Colonel went to the colour of a fig that has attained great ripeness, and Reginald, ignoring my efforts to intercept him, glided away to another part of the lawn. I found him a few minutes later happily engaged in teaching the youngest Rampage boy the approved theory of mixing absinthe, within full earshot of his mother. Mrs. Rampage occupies a prominent place in local Temperance movements.

As soon as I had broken up this unpromising tête-à-tête and settled Reginald where he could watch the croquet players losing their tempers, I wandered off to find my hostess and renew the kitten negotiations at the point where they had been interrupted. I did not succeed in running her down at once, and eventually it was Mrs. McKillop who sought me out, and her conversation was not of kittens.

“Your cousin is discussing Zaza with the Archdeacon’s wife; at least, he is discussing, she is ordering her carriage.”

She spoke in the dry, staccato tone of one who repeats a French exercise, and I knew that as far as Millie McKillop was concerned, Wumples was devoted to a lifelong celibacy.

“If you don’t mind,” I said hurriedly, “I think we’d like our carriage ordered too,” and I made a forced march in the direction of the croquet-ground.

I found everyone talking nervously and feverishly of the weather and the war in South Africa, except Reginald, who was reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away look that a volcano might wear just after it had desolated entire villages. The Archdeacon’s wife was buttoning up her gloves with a concentrated deliberation that was fearful to behold. I shall have to treble my subscription to her Cheerful Sunday Evenings Fund before I dare set foot in her house again.

At that particular moment the croquet players finished their game, which had been going on without a symptom of finality during the whole afternoon. Why, I ask, should it have stopped precisely when a counter-attraction was so necessary? Everyone seemed to drift towards the area of disturbance, of which the chairs of the Archdeacon’s wife and Reginald formed the storm-centre. Conversation flagged, and there settled upon the company that expectant hush that precedes the dawn—when your neighbours don’t happen to keep poultry.

“What did the Caspian Sea?” asked Reginald, with appalling suddenness.

There were symptoms of a stampede. The Archdeacon’s wife looked at me. Kipling or someone has described somewhere the look a foundered camel gives when the caravan moves on and leaves it to its fate. The peptonised reproach in the good lady’s eyes brought the passage vividly to my mind.

I played my last card.

“Reginald, it’s getting late, and a sea-mist is coming on.” I knew that the elaborate curl over his right eyebrow was not guaranteed to survive a sea-mist.

* * * * *

“Never, never again, will I take you to a garden-party. Never . . . You behaved abominably . . . What did the Caspian see?”

A shade of genuine regret for misused opportunities passed over Reginald’s face.

“After all,” he said, “I believe an apricot tie would have gone better with the lilac waistcoat.”

Verkaufen Sie den Vatican…. Ein was für Konzept!

This, just passed on to me, HAS to be the most brilliant bit in recent history. It's a slice of what passes for pure Art in the school of Clear Thinking. Next to allowing Heath Insurance procurement across state-lines as a cure all for our Health Insurance woes, this bon-mot is nothing short of delicious in it's simplicity.



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Tragödie gegen Wirklichkeit

Working in a library brings a lot of odd/bizarre/touching experiences. One never knows, from day to day, what one will encounter. F'instance: 1) the isolated patron who comes in and delivers an excuse for her overdue items: "I RENEWED THESE ONLINE . . . . . WHY DO I HAVE LATE CHARGES? " Well, of course, they were renewed AFTER the grace period and so they have late/overdue charges. 2)" I HAD NO IDEA WHEN THEY WERE DUE: HOW ON EARTH COULD I KNOW WHEN THEY WERE DUE? . . . . . . " Well, we gave you a receipt that indicated when each item would be due. Did you look at it? ? ? ? ? ? 3) "I NEVER, EVER, CHECKED THAT ITEM OUT . . . . WHY WOULD A WOMAN/MAN SUCH AS ME CHECK OUT HARRY POTTER AND THE GARDEN OF LOST BOOKS? . . . . ." Never mind the mindless patrons out there in LibraryLand . . . . . I have another story . . . a bit more sensitive . . . .

A woman two days ago came up to the desk. She indicated that she hadn't her library card with her but needed to use the computer. I asked her if she had lost her card [SOP] and she said, with little emotion or emphasis, " my son was killed in Afghanistan yesterday and I need to use the computer. Can you find my card number? " I said: "I'm so very, very sorry. Just give me a moment." The woman was as cool as cucumber and soooooooooo focused. I found her number and gave it to her. She went to the computer and proceeded to do her business.

This event has haunted me from the start. I've related it to fellow workers, some of which have been ex-military, and all of them, to a man, have explained that this abrupt, matter-of-fact demeanor is de riguer. I wouldn't have thought it.

I wanted to come round the counter and hug the mother and help her but, apparently, this is not done. Casualties of war are treated differently than your garden-variety Chicago clubbing-to-death.
Guy goes to Afghanistan, gets killed = to be expected. 14 year old in Chicago gets clubbed to death: No Prob.

Die einfachen Freuden an einem landwirtschaftlichen vegetabe Standplatz kommen SCHLIESSLICH nach Washington….

Zu markt, zu markt, um ein fettes Schwein zu kaufen….


Ah, the simple, unfettered joy of a breezy stop by your local fruit stand. This, just in, from the Washington Post . . . . of all places . . .

Hi-Ho, the Derry-O

By Dana Milbank
Friday, September 18, 2009

Let's say you're preparing dinner and you realize with dismay that you don't have any certified organic Tuscan kale. What to do?

Here's how Michelle Obama handled this very predicament Thursday afternoon:

The Secret Service and the D.C. police brought in three dozen vehicles and shut down H Street, Vermont Avenue, two lanes of I Street and an entrance to the McPherson Square Metro station. They swept the area, in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with bomb-sniffing dogs and installed magnetometers in the middle of the street, put up barricades to keep pedestrians out, and took positions with binoculars atop trucks. Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens.

Then, and only then, could Obama purchase her leafy greens. "Now it's time to buy some food," she told several hundred people who came to watch. "Let's shop!"

Cowbells were rung. Somebody put a lei of marigolds around Obama's neck. The first lady picked up a straw basket and headed for the "Farm at Sunnyside" tent, where she loaded up with organic Asian pears, cherry tomatoes, multicolored potatoes, free-range eggs and, yes, two bunches of Tuscan kale. She left the produce with an aide, who paid the cashier as Obama made her way back to the limousine.

There's nothing like the simple pleasures of a farm stand to return us to our agrarian roots.

The first lady had encouraged Freshfarm Markets, the group that runs popular farmers markets in Dupont Circle and elsewhere, to set up near the White House, and she helped get the approvals to shut down Vermont Avenue during rush hour on Thursdays. But the result was quite the opposite of a quaint farmers market. Considering all the logistics, each tomato she purchased had a carbon footprint of several tons.

The promotion of organic and locally grown food, though an admirable cause, is a risky one for the Obamas, because there's a fine line between promoting healthful eating and sounding like a snob. The president, when he was a candidate in 2007, got in trouble in Iowa when he asked a crowd, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" Iowans didn't have a Whole Foods.

For that reason, it's probably just as well that the first lady didn't stop by the Endless Summer Harvest tent yesterday. The Virginia farm had a sign offering "tender baby arugula" -- hydroponically grown, pesticide free -- and $5 for four ounces, which is $20 a pound.

Obama, in her brief speech to the vendors and patrons, handled the affordability issue by pointing out that people who pay with food stamps would get double the coupon value at the market. Even then, though, it's hard to imagine somebody using food stamps to buy what the market offered: $19 bison steak from Gunpowder Bison, organic dandelion greens for $12 per pound from Blueberry Hill Vegetables, the Piedmont Reserve cheese from Everson Dairy at $29 a pound. Rounding out the potential shopping cart: $4 for a piece of "walnut dacquoise" from the Praline Bakery, $9 for a jumbo crab cake at Chris's Marketplace, $8 for a loaf of cranberry-walnut bread and $32 for a bolt of yarn.

The first lady said the market would particularly appeal to federal employees in nearby buildings to "pick up some good stuff for dinner." Yet even they might think twice about spending $3 for a pint of potatoes when potatoes are on sale for 40 cents a pound at Giant. They could get nearly five dozen eggs at Giant for the $5 Obama spent for her dozen.

But whatever the socioeconomics, there can be no doubt that Obama brought some serious attention to her cause. Hundreds of people crowded the market entrance on I Street as police directed pedestrians to alternative subway entrances. Hundreds braved a light rain and gave a hearty cheer when Obama and her entourage took the stage. "I can't imagine there's been a day in the history of our country when people have been more excited about farmers markets," Mayor Adrian Fenty, Obama's warm-up act, told the crowd.

The first lady, in gray slacks and blue sweater, marveled that the people were "so pumped up" despite the rain. "I have never seen so many people so excited about fruits and vegetables!" she said. (Must be the tender baby arugula.)

She spoke of the global reach of her cause: "The first thing world leaders, prime ministers, kings, queens ask me about is the White House garden. And then they ask about Bo."

She spoke of the fuel fed to the world's most powerful man: "I've learned that when my family eats fresh food, healthy food, that it really affects how we feel, how we get through the day . . . whether there's a Cabinet meeting or whether we're just walking the dog."

And she spoke of her own culinary efforts: "There are times when putting together a healthy meal is harder than you might imagine."

Particularly when it involves a soundstage, an interpreter for the deaf, three TV satellite trucks and the closing of part of downtown Washington.

Welcher Patrick Swayze wirklich ganz ungefähr war:

From one of my favorite Artists who recently [and too soon] Translated, I offer you this Gem. ( Thanks to my beautiful sister for the heads up) Watch and be moved. A wonderful and gifted aspect of God visited us and gave us such a gift.

Etwas Furchtsame Warnungen von der Vergangenheit

From 1961, a short clip from former President Reagan before he was president. Back in those days, when we needed a doctor we just got in the car and went to his office, saw him and then were either billed or paid it then and there. When I was a very young child back in the '50s, I became seriously ill and wasn't expected to live. The doctor would come over to the house [whenever mom or dad called] to check up on me.

Those were also the days when the milkman would come into the house and put the milk in the fridge; the bakery truck would come 'round with all sorts of bread, including little lemon tarts for us kids.

I thought it instructive to hear that what is transpiring today isn't anything new to the United States - It's been tried before and addressed before, as you will hear in this clip. I'm posting it as another part of the national discussion we're having on what is being presented as "Reform".

Dieses Gerade Innen von Pravda

The following, published on 27 April, 2009, is from our friends at Pravda over in Mother Russia . . .

American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper . . .

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, losses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, . . . . and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

-Stanislav Mishin

Eine Schwingungsrückkehr

Große Göttin!

Wie lang ist er gewesen, da ich geschrieben habe?

It's been 3 months since my last entry. Well, never mind. Things have been a-poppin' around here, some good, some bad. We're still a one-income household but hopefully that will change with the upturn in the economy. We're holding our own but it is, after all, a matter of time. The last time this happened it happened to both of us and we did the only sensible thing given the circumstances: we went to the Swiss Alps to salve our wounds. Bernese Catharsis is highly underrated . . .

June will be a very busy month for me and partly for Himself: On the 18th we set out for Houston to see Cousin Deb and her family to celebrate her mom's 80th with a huge family reunion. Everyone is flying in from hither and yon, mostly yon, and we're driving there from Tampa. We'll stay with our dear friends in Santa Rosa, FL the first night and then ZOOM into Houston the next day. I booked us a room in Conroe, TX [where Jesus lost his other sandal] and we'll stay there through the following Sunday night. Drive back to Tampa via Santa Rosa, arriving home on the 23rd. I'll race to do laundry and then early on the morning of the 24th, I'm off, off, off to Kansas City and Parkville to attend Alumni Weekend - an event I've NEVER gone to before. Should be a hoot. I'm staying with a dear, dear friend who's the college archivist and she is just toooooo much fun. We have been best buds since college - 1968 - 1971 and off an on since then. Volumns could be writen about her and p'rolly will . . .

I'll stay there from Wednesday through Monday morning, flying back on the 30th.

I've begun composing again due to a request of another schoolmate of mine whose taken up the fiddle. I've missed writing and think it providential that she asked me to do it. There are many programs out there that provide ease and instant gratification for composition so it's been a fun and rewarding re-work of old whiles.

After a long period of personal threats to myself, longing to massage the Muse of Gardening, I broke down and bought a Brown Turkey Fig which has been duly planted in a beautiful "art" pot and, as I type, is just knocking itself out. It gets about 11 hours of sun a day out on our pool lanai and apparently is a happy little soldier. It was but a two-brancher baby when I bought it this Spring, but it's now going nuts. Can't wait for it to bear. My grandmother Tovey [mom's mother] had a fig tree in her backyard and I remember just standing there gorging myself on those lucious figs. And . . . . . the endless hours on the throne as payback for gluttony!

Favorite Bon Mot gleaned recently is this extracted and deleted scene from "The Secret", a film about the law of Attraction (Mentioned earlier in this blog). It's a sequence featuring Esther Hicks and it just blew me away. I've just never thought of putting the Universe in this sort of order before but it certainly does even the playing field and raise the expectation level of our own individual beings . . . . Paraphrased, here it is:

'We are vibrational translators. When we hear, we are translating vibrations. When we see, we are translating vibrations. When we taste, we are translating vibrations. When we touch, we are translating vibrations. When we smell, we are translating vibrations. When we 'feel emotions' as a result of intercourse with others or with a situation, we are translating vibrations.

We are amazing translating entities who need to realize that if we can do these miraculous translations, why can we not attract to us other vibrations {those which we desire/want/need} of which we can translate?'

That is astoundingly important. We are so good at attracting and translating (positively AND negatively) what is going on around us that we forget that we are masters of the Art of Translating and we can simply and easily attract the vibrations that we desire if only we request them, expect them and wait in anticipation of them.

Alles beste!

Persönliche Kreation und Sie

I belong to several online groups. Periodically, small but powerful shots of brilliance are fired across my bow and I just sit here and ponder over the beauty sent my way. The following is one of these. Please consider:


""At the end of knowledge there is a question that only imagination may answer."
-or alternately-
"At the end of learning there is a question that only the Artist may answer."

This so entranced me that I sent the author a reply that ran thus:

"When I was a piano teacher, years ago, I took over my mom's students after her passing. I used to tell them, as she had taught me, that music was just useless ink on a piece of paper. It was only after the pianist processed the notes into the BRAIN and then into the HEART that it could be sent to the fingers (which had the fore-knowledge through endless practice to execute) to play the REAL MUSIC the composer had written.

And that music that the composer had written is not, necessarily, the same thing he had intended. Each soul/musician brings a fresh 'take' on a piece of music that is intrinsically 'individual'. The manuscript is just that: a road map one is invited to follow: the 'end' of the map is not dictated.

So, your quotations are, to me, preaching to the choir. Right on the money. At the end of the day, our genius, our human-ness is what processes the raw data . . . . AND; since that is the case, we are all, indeed, artists in Creation."

You never know from whence genius will come, be it a fellow human, a flower, a hummingbird.

The message is an important one: It is only AFTER the labour of learning is done, and the act of mastering the specific lessons needed that one is set free to CREATE at WILL. Only with the due diligence of study and mastery of a subject, be it manual or intellectual, can one release it all and move on, secure in his/her mastery, to unlimited Creation.

We are the Stuff of Stars and we hold the Keys to the Universe within each of us. Creation is our Play, our Muse, our Fun. Get out there and stir something up . . . . .

Palm Beach & Fire

My beautiful sister, as you know from previous posts, is involved with an ashram out in Crestone, Colorado. This year, they had their semi-annual meeting in the Palm Beach area of Flahridah and I was invited to attend. Having a four-day weekend, I, of course, said yes!

It was wonderful. Great energy the evening preceding the Fire Ceremony. I stayed at a friend of my sisters home in Palm Beach, Fl. Thems of you who have heard/seen evidence of Palm Beach will be cheered to read that all the legends, pictures, images of Palm Beach fall sadly shy of reality. OMG! PB makes Beverly Hills and the Hamptons look like Section 8 housing.

Years ago, when Himself and I drove down 41 through Naples, we thought we had seen it all. Not so. The North end of Palm Beach, where I stayed, is the most understated, secluded, quiet piece of real estate I've ever encountered. Every property is just exquisite.

This morning I lugged my tea two blocks over to watch the sun rise over the perfectly blue Atlantic . . . . I think it's in the covenants that the ocean be always BLUE . . . and thought to myself: Ya know? It's location, location, location. These people don't have anything that I don't have. Oh, sure . . . they have beachfront views with private beach access, gates in front of their drives, private drives for deliveries/servants, select seating at the bestest eateries around town, etc. But, read on . . .

T'was eyeopening, really. I realized that, with all this 'stuff', they were still experiencing the same things that I experience: day to day angst, day to day joy, day to day disappointments, et al. The only thing separating me from 'them' was "STUFF" which I, happily, don't have to deal with. And then, I hit upon this realization:

I bet my last shoe that I had something they hadn't. Something money couldn't buy. Something not tradable on some exchange or other. Nope. Could be wrong here, but I'd bet that for all their material wealth, they were the poorer but for one thing.

A knowledge of where they are in this Cosmic Play. AND: I'm betting my other shoe that they lack the MOST IMPORTANT KEY TO THIS LIFE:

Something Esther and Jerry Hicks bellow at length:

"Life is supposed to be Fun!"

These "things" that they have surrounded themselves with are nothing but 'fullers' for wanting souls. "If I have more things, I'll be happier . . . . " The hole within, the yearing for fulfillment, is where this opulance comes from whence. In some ways, it's an addiction, I suppose. You get some: it's nice. But you still feel unfullfilled. Let's get a little more . . . Nice, but still, no cigar. Let's get a bit more . . . etc. But the internal "Craving" has never been addressed.

As I drove/walked up and down Old County Road/ Ocean Blvd in Palm Beach, I was awe-struck at the opulance. I told Himself that it reminded me of our trip up to Newport, RI. The archetecture was a bit different, but the scheme of things was the same. Quiet, overstated Severity. Certainly not understated, and certainly not shy. Nope. Opulence. Sheer, Opulence. On the Lake Worth side of the island: boats. Not your daily, mail-run skiff's mind you. Nope. Whole acres APIECE of Marine Acreage. I dunno. What? I don't think I saw anything remotely of the 90 foot range. These crafts were mansions with rudders. The saloons on the sterns of these dingies were a full twenty feet across! One would have to begin his return journey to the bar ten minutes before finishing his prior draft just to be assured of anti-dehydration.

Not moored up to any old marina, you understand. Why, can't be bother in dragging out the Bentley to drive to the Marina to set out the ship. 'Have yer own pier in the back, Jack. Easier to have the staff swab the decks, wouldn't you say?' No. t'is better to be just spittin' distance from the kitchen, so as to saunter down with the vittals and beer and take off for a day of . . . . . well, as Kenneth Grahame would say . . . . "Messing. Simply Messing about in boats."

It's a wonderful life, I suppose. Charmed, in some aspects. Must come with alot of minus's though.

I was glad to visit, see, experience, and feel another plane of this world. That's what travel is all about, No? In the meantime, I've got my knitting, my Diet Pepsi and my Journal to keep me happy at the public beach on the West Coast of Flahridah . . . in an undisclosed area . . . . where clothing is optional . . . . AND: you don't have to look your best . . . and you don't have worry about whether the vittals and beer have been delivered to the saloon . . . . Beer imported, Vittals Boar's Head.

The Quick Trip at Terra Verde is my Mise en Place. Great jerky, ice-cold Pepsi and a clean Potty. I'm a rich man . . .

Endeavouring

Anyone who thinks that Magnificent Magick isn't out there for anyone to see just isn't looking. At all.

Last night I suggested to Other Half (here-to-fore known as OH) that we arm ourselves with adult beverages and walk up to the golf course to watch the space shuttle zoom off into the sky. One of the rewards of living in Tampa is that we have a golden vantage point to witness such wonders. Indeed, by merely stepping out onto the lanai, poolside we can watch these rare occurances from our own backyard. But, last night was such a beautifully clear night that it begged for us to be shed of the pool cage and make the effort to go out into the night and see the event burst forth without the filter of a polypropylene screen.

With a barely less-then-full moon, a lusciously elegant buttery yellow, we searched the sky at 7:55pm. Nothing. Well, we are around 2 hours away from Titusville, after all. So, we stared, and we searched, and we stared, and we searched. Nothing. I started to get the queezies but then, from way across the golf course in another village, we heard whooping and cheering and clapping which caused OH to grab me and cry, "WHAT? Where is it?" I had told him it would appear in the northeast quadrant of our view but I was so wrong.

Just from the bottom right of this glorious moon came our quest. Brilliant, fiery reddish orange. It slowly aimed itself directly for the moon's face and soared right in front of it. I thought my very skin would take flight with it. What a sight! Then it cleared the moon and continued up into the Infinite and away to it's mission.

Every time I see this I think of back to where we come from. Back to the time when we were stardust and p'raps not even a glimmer in the unborn Universe's Mind. How we emerged from that collective energy to finally find ourselves here, as we are just now, watching with childlike eyes our reach back to our origins. That we are able to conjure up such a feat to me is the essence of Magick. The Desire, the Anticipation and finally, the Acceptance of our Oneness with the Universe and our ability to direct such huge physical properties through our mental and spiritual faculties [and occasionally not without a bit of, shall we say, pure dumb luck] is a testament to just who we are.

~Blessed be und Alles Beste!

Eine Andere Democrat-Ansicht

I don't, as a rule, comment publicly on civic matters. But, I have to pass on this column from a Democrat in North Carolina. He is no friend of the Republican party and has written many articles against the stands that party has taken. However, this piece should be presented far and wide and I'm posting it here because it fearlessly stabs to the heart of this election year. The columnist is a Democrat out of North Carolina writing for the Rhinoceros Times.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina

Feen, Elfe und die Kleinen Leute in den Wollen

The current state of affairs in the financial markets have oozed their miasmal stench all the way down to the humblest levels of life. We think of the huge houses of commerce and the Gnomes of Zürich industriously brewing mercantile magic without any concern whatsoever for what may come to pass for the rest of us. It's unseemly, really.

Well, long ago things were different. Normal, everyday people had help at the mere whisper of a request. We're too sophisticated these days for the need of 'The Little People' and try to fool ourselves into thinking that we can handle it all rather well ourselves. Just this past week, across my desk came a rather odd looking book. I started to process it paying it no mind at all, but my hand would not release it and, instead, drew it back to my focused gaze.

"An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures" by Katharine Briggs - 453 pp., fully indexed : with complete bibliographic entries.
ISBN : 0-394-73467-X [$19.00]

As a spinner, weaver and knitter, I am always on the lookout for anything at all even loosely connected to those arts and, sure enough - within the pages of this wonderful collection was the patron fairy of Spinners: Habetrot. Who knew? I was aware of the American Indian legend of the old spirit of the loom that would confound a weaver's warp if the shuttle was left in the shed of the warp over night, but the spinning pixies were a revelation. Here's the entry . . . (Be patient with the language - it's in Scots but you'll soon adjust)

HABETROT

The name of the Border patron fairy of spinning. William Henderson in Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties (pp. 258-62) tells a story from the Wilkie manuscript about this faiy which has many points of interest.

A Selkirkshire gudewife had a bonny, idle daughter who much preferred roaming over the countryside gathering flowers to blistering her fingers with spinning. The gudewife did all that she could to make the lassie a notable spinster, but all in vain, till one day she lost patience, gave her daughter a sound whipping, threw down seven heads of lint in front of her and told her that they must all be spun up into yarn within three days, or it would be the worse for her. The lassie knew her mother meant what she said, so she set to work in earnest, and worked hard for a whole day, but she only blistered her soft little hands and produced a few feet of lumpy, uneven thread. When it grew dark she cried herself to sleep.. She woke up on a glorious morning, looked at her wretched stint, and despaired. 'I can do no good here,' she thought, 'I'll away oot into the caller air.'

She wandered here and there down the stream and at last sat down on a SELF-BORED STONE and burst into tears. She had heard no one come near, but when she looked up there was an old wife beside her, plying her spindle busily and pulling out her thread with a lip that seemed make for that very purpose. The lass was a friendly wee thing, and she wished the old wife a kind good morning. Then like the bairn she was she asked, 'Whit way are ye saie lang lipit, gudewife?' 'With drawing the thread, ma hinnie,' said the old wife, well pleased with her. 'I wet my fingers with my lips, as I draw the thread from the distaff.' 'That's what I sud be doing, ' said the lassie, 'but it's a' nae gude.' And she told the old wife her story. 'Fetch me yir lint, and I'll hae it spun up in gude time,' said the kind old wife; and the lassie ran home and fetched it.

'What's yir name, gudewife?' she asked, 'and whaur will I get it?'. But, the old wife took the lint without answering - and was nowhere. The girl sat down, thoroughly bewildered, and waited. Presently the hot sun made her drowsy and she fell asleep.

The sun was setting when she woke, and she heard a whirring sound and voices singing coming from under her head. She put her eye to the self-bored stone and beneath her she saw a great cavern, with a number of queer old wives sitting spinning in it, each on a white marble stone, rounded in the river, called a 'colludie stone'. They all had long lips, and her friend of that morning was walking up and down among them, drecting them all, ad as the lassie peped in she heard her say, 'Little kens the wee lassie on the brae-head that Habetrot is my name. There was one spinner sitting a little apart from the rest who was uglier than all of them. Habetrot went up to her and said: 'Bundle up the yarn, Scantlie Mab, for it's time the wee lassie sud gie it to her Minnie." At that the lassie knew that it was time for her to be at the cottage door, and she got up and hurried home. She met Habetrot just outside, who gave her seven beautiful hands of yarn. 'Oh whit can I dae for ye in return?' she cried. 'Naething, naething,' siad Habetrot, 'but dinna tell yer mither whae spun the yarn.'

The lassie went into the cottage treading on air but famished with hunger, for she had eaten nothing since the day before. Her mother was in the box-bed fast asleep, for she had been hard at work making black puddings, 'sausters' they called them round there, and had gone to bed early. The lassie spread out her yarn so that her mother could see it when she waked, then she blew up the fire, took down the frying-pan and fried the first sauster and ate it, then the second, then the third, and so on till she had eaten all seven. Then she went up the ladder to bed.

The mother was awake first in the morning. There she saw seven beautiful skeins of yarn spread out, but not a trace of her seven sausters except a black frying-pan. Half-distracted between joy and anger, she rushed out of the house singing:

'Ma daughter's spun se'en, se'en, se'en,
Ma daughter's eaten se'en, se'en, se'en
And all before daylight!'

And who should come riding along but the yound laird himself. "What's that you're crying, Goodwife?' he said, and she sang out again:

'Ma daughter's spun se'en, se'en, se'en,
Ma daughter's eaten se'en, se'en, se'en

an' if ye don't believe me, come and see for yersel!'

The laird followed her into the house, and when he saw the smoothness and eveness of the skeins, he wanted to see the spinner of them, and when he saw the bonny lass, he asked her to be his wife.

The laird was handsome and braw, and the lass was glad to say yes, but there was one thing that troubled her: the laird kept talking of all the fine yarn she would be spinning for him after the wedding. So one evening the lassie went down to the self-bored stone and called on Habetrot. Habetrot knew what her trouble would be, but she said, 'Never heed, hinnie, bring your jo here and we'll sort it for ye.' So next night at sunset the pair of them stood at the self-bored stone and heard Habetrot singing, and at the end of the song she opened a hidden door and let them into the mound. The laird was astonished at all the shapes of deformity he saw before him asked aloud why their lips were so distorted. One after another they muttered in hardly intelligible tones, 'With sp-sp-spinning.' 'Aye, aye, they were once bonnie eneugh,' said Habetrot, 'but spinners aye gan of that gait. Yer own lassie 'ill be the same, bonnie though she is noo, for she's fair mad about the spinning.'

'She'll not!' said the laird. 'Not another spindle shall she touch from this day on!' 'Just as ye say, laird,' said the lassie; and from that day on she roamed the countryside with the laird or rode about behind him as blithe as a bird, and every head of lint that grew on their land went to old Habetrot to spin."

This pleasant version of Grimm's tale of 'The Three Spinners' is more than a mere folk-tale, for Habetrot was really believed to be the patroness of spinners, and it was seriously held that a shirt made by her was a sovereign remedy for all sorts of diseases. It is strange that so many of these spinng fairies had names ending in 'trot', 'throt' or 'tot'. There is TRYTEN-A-TROTEN, GWARYN-A-THROT and TOM TIT TOT. Habetrot, however, is not sinister like the others, though the over-hearing of her name suggests a similar motif which somehow got overlaid.

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Fairies and their ilk seasoned Man's explanations of his universe in the best way possible for his time and experiences. Personally, I think we could use a bit of fairy dust these days to unravel the tangled Web of Woe we are currently witnessing. The good news is that we all have our own magic wand completely at our disposal, any time of day or night. The simple three-part spell of Attraction carries with it our own innate ability to create for ourselves great joy and prosperity - without the help of the Gnomes of Zürich or the Wizards of Wall Street. It's not even necessary to dance naked 'round a fire in the forest on a full moon, fun as that may be.

Belief, Expectation, Acceptance