I’ve notice when I put up something on Facebook about cats (as the photo above), I get a big response. Politics? Not so much.
So how many people do you think would turn out for an outdoor international internet cat video event? The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis recently found out. Astonishingly, 10,000 people showed up!
Here’s one of the shorts that was shown.
Yes, we’ve been here before, but there is still much to learn.
Something weird happens to us humans when we hear about stranded whales or dolphins. We want to help in their recovery, we follow their stories, their progress. We know intuitively that the state of their health relates to the health of the planet.
On Sunday, September 2, five pilot whales, out of a group of 22 that beached themselves on a Fort Pierce beach, were rescued. They were taken to Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Beach Institute for rehab.
“They’ve all been through a pretty stressful ordeal. We’ve seen each of them, at one point or another, have a little bit of trouble and need a little bit of help,” said Dr. Michelle Davis, senior veterinarian for SeaWorld Orlando.
The five survivors have only minor injuries. One of them, a whale under the age of two, was still nursing from its mother, who didn’t survive. They are being fed fish smoothies through feeding tubes every four hours. The hope is that they can be strengthened to the point where they can make the two-hour journey to Sea World in Orlando.
I have mixed feelings about Sea World. If these whales go into the enclosed tank, it means they will never again see natural sunlight or breathe natural fresh air. It means they will become tourist fodder, it means nothing good for the whales. But because they are so large, perhaps the whales will be placed elsewhere.
These creatures are wild. Unpredictable. Probably smarter than we are. If you were a whale, would you want to be at Sea World? Would you want to live out your life in a carefully controlled tank? Would you want to do tricks just because your trainer said that you should?
While I think it’s admirable that Sea World has agreed to take these creatures as they are recuperating, remember that the facility is for profit, a part of Disney, whose tentacles reach everywhere.
No synchro here, at least not yet. or there’s a synchro I’ve missed. That said, here’s my take:
The difference between the Republican and Democratic conventions could not be more striking, more stark.
The Republican convention’s theme was simple: you’re on your own. The Democratic convention’s theme is also simple: what affects you, affects me, affects all of us. Sounds like Indra’a net, doesn’t it?
What you do, as an individual, ripples outward to eventually touch my life and the lives of others. As Clinton said in his speech this evening, “We’re all in this together.”
The Republicans don’t recognize that word, together. In fact, the only together the Republicans recognize is to kick Obama out of office. It is why the Republican Congress nearly brought the country to its knees during the December 2011 in a negotiation about the debt.
Even though Obamacare is built upon the program Romney initiated in Massachusetts, the Republican candidates vow to overturn it. Yet, under Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act, insurance companies can no longer reject you for pre-existing conditions; there’s no cap on payments; children can remain on their parents’ health care plan to the age of 26; Medicare benefits are not reduced; the doughnut hole that cost seniors more in prescription drug costs is closed. And that’s just for starters.
Yes, I wished the bar had been higher, that Obama had started off with Medicare for all. But in order to extend unemployment insurance for millions of people, he had to compromise. It’s taken me a while to get that, but I get it now. I think, historically, that when we look back, Obama’s accomplishments, particularly because he was up against an intractable congress since 2010, midway into his term, will be extraordinary.
Right now, the Romneys have raised $100 million each month for the last four months. Think about that. $400 million far surpasses the GDP of many countries. It could buy you a country, a string of islands, a seat on the next rocket to Mars. It could buy you new organs, a new face, a new identity with a very fat bank account. Hell, maybe that much money can buy you a new soul. The infamous Koch brothers are spending $400 million in their superPACS.
This election is about you’re on your own society versus shared opportunities and we’re all in this together society. What’s your choice? Are we a nation of isolated individuals pitted against each other in phony competitions or are we all in this together?
I know my choice. No, Obama is not perfect. Yes, he has made mistakes. Yes, he entered as a young, naïve senator. But his version of reality speaks more strongly to me than anything the Republicans have said. The Repubs hope to marginalize women. They intend to hurl us back to the dark ages of back-alley abortions. They don’t want us to have health care screenings that might save our lives. They – mostly aging white men – seek to govern women, their lives, their bodies.
In Indra’s net, we are all connected. Your choices affect me, your thoughts impact mine, we don’t share just a planet, but a reality.
When you compare the two agendas, the choice should be clear. For those of you who think it’s a done deal, that your vote won’t matter, think again.
What kind of country do you want to live in?
The publishing industry is an incestuous business. Editors, agents and writers move around, disappear, and pop up over and over. There’s a saying, ‘Never knock down your bridges, because you may have to cross back over to the other side.’ It fits perfectly with publishing.
Now with the expansion into e-books, we are encountering the same sort of connections and re-connections as we found in traditional publishing. Recently, our new e-book publisher, David Wilson of Crossroad Press, wrote a post on Facebook that caught my attention. He said he was trying to find movie producer Anthony Yerkovich, who was the original producer of Miami Vice, and later of a little known TV series called Private Eye. David said he was hoping to re-publish a novel based on Private Eye, written by a deceased author, Dave Pedneau.
That puzzled me because I wrote the Private Eye novels for Yerkovitch under the pseudonym, T.N. Robb, after Trish and I wrote The Making of Miami Vice. I put up a comment on David’s post telling him as much. He was confused, because he had the book in front of him and the author was Dave Elliot, a pseudonym Dave Pedneau used. Yes, complicated and confusing.
I found the copies of the T.N. Robb novels and was about to photograph the cover and send to Dave when I solved the mystery. It turns out I wrote Private Eye #1 and #3. Dave wrote Private Eye #2. I probably knew that long ago, but had forgotten.
It turns out that another author Kathy Ptacek had recommended Dave Pedneau’s books for re-publication in Crossroad Press. When she found out Dave was dead, she managed to track down his daughter. The daughter and Dave’s former wife said it was a miracle that she’d contacted them because they were looking for some way to get Dave’s books published again. Another synchro.
Meanwhile, to show the incestuous nature of publishing, I surprised David Wilson when I told him I had written Dave Pedneau’s last novel after he died. Dave and I (and Trish) had the same agent and editor, and the latter had asked me to take Dave’s outline and three or four chapters and write the novel. It’s called N.F.D (No Fair Deal) – though in police jargon Fair is actually another four-letter word that couldn’t be put on the cover of a book.
Harvard students made news recently when almost half of a class of 279 students were accused of cheating on a test. The fact that the cheating scandal involved Harvard is what made it news. There’s a synchronicity here in that the subject of the course involves an organization that most Americans consider dysfunctional and whose members are often caught cheating or lying – especially a lot of the latter. The name of the course: Introduction to Congress.
Only 12% of Americans think their congress is doing a good job. Contempt for congress is so widespread that 87% of Americans think every member running for re-election should be thrown out of office. Not much confidence there.
Let’s take 14-year congressman and vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. He’s well known for not only expressing a strong opinion, but distorting the facts to support it. Just recently he has even been caught in a lie about his personal life. When asked how fast he ran a marathon he entered years ago, he said it was in the neighborhood of 2 hours and fifty-some minutes.
First of all, if you break three hours in a marathon, you’re probably going to remember the exact time. I ran a 15 kilometer race in 66 minutes years ago at the Tampa Gasparilla Festival, and have never forgotten After all, it was the only 15-k race I ever ran, just as Paul Ryan’s marathon was the only marathon he ever ran. Runner’s World pressed Ryan about the time and after a couple of days of repeated questions, he conceded that he ran that race in about four hours.
It seems that the congressman has an uneasy relationship with the truth. His acceptance speech at the GOP convention has been called one of the most dishonest political speeches in recent U.S. political history. Click here for more details. When his campaign was asked about the inaccuracies, the response was that Ryan was not going to change the direction of his campaign because of a few fact checkers.
As for the Harvard students, they are facing ethical charges of “academic dishonesty, ranging from inappropriate collaboration to outright plagiarism, on a take-home final exam.” The exam was open book, open internet, but no collaborating with other students on the test.
One senior who’s under investigation, and who spoke to Salon only on condition of anonymity, said that the scandal was a crackdown on a course that has a reputation for being easy. The course had a “culture” in which collaboration was “fostered, encouraged, expected.” Students were encouraged to treat exams like “problem sets,” which the student understands to allow collaboration. “The bubble burst this year and we’re being scapegoated.”
Maybe it’s time for the American public to follow Harvard’s footsteps and scapegoat the culture of congress for the mess they’ve created by their members’ unwillingness to agree on anything, with possibly the exception of the naming of new post offices.
Bottom line: It’s not surprising that students might treat a class on congress with the same amount of respect that congress treats the American people.
– Rob
from Jung’s The Red Book
In January 2011, Debra Page wrote a post about a psychological alchemical process that I thought was brilliant. We’re putting it up again, with a postscript. The PS on these synchros is often perplexing, but always intriguing.
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The past two months have been very strange for my husband and I. In October, I was battling my second round of bronchitis. On the 28th, the hot water pipes exploded in our shower while I was standing there. Within 45 minutes, our home was flooded. Within 8 hours, we were evacuated to a hotel 10 miles away. Then things became even stranger: the very day the work on our home was to be completed, the hot water heater exploded on the man who was finishing the tile work in the kitchen. (I am grateful he was not hurt.)
This created a second flood which covered area of the new floor and walls just completed. It also flooded the only space that wasn’t flooded in the previous incident. Also curious: no personal items (furniture, books, clothes, guitars, computers etc.) were destroyed by the flooding itself. When the work was finally done on our home on December 16, we moved back in. The adventure didn’t end there.
As this drama was unfolding, I was asking myself “What does this mean?” Trish MacGregor reminded me to analyze it like it was a dream….and I finally had a “light bulb” moment. All of it can be explained through the language of alchemy. In particular, the stage of dissolution! Jung wrote several books on the language of alchemy as a metaphor for the individuation process.
Some of the symbols representing the alchemical dissolution process include: whale, fish, toad, dragon, a stag in a forest, flooding, breaking apart, rivers, streams, tears, pools, warm bath, baptism, dissection, dissembling, dismemberment, the near death experience, mid-life crisis, lungs, the color blue, the metal tin. The first alchemical apparatus for use in experiments with water and dissolution were invented by a Jewish alchemist named Maria Prophetissa, sometime before 100 B. C E. Maria Prophetissa is considered a female Hermes (Hauck/1999). Hermes is the mercurial trickster force behind the alchemical process. The alchemical bath has since been called the bain-marie (French for Mary’s bath). This process can be repeated- solve et coagula: dissolve and solidify — several times before it’s done.
Prior to the flooding, I was battling bronchitis, a lung disorder. I have several problems with my immune systems as well as ME/CFS, so any illness can create complications. The first person on the scene to help me after the hot water pipes exploded was a woman named Mary. When my husband and I first walked into the lobby of the hotel that would be our refuge from the flood, we encountered a giant whale sculpture.
The lobby was also decorated for Halloween with pumpkins, skeletons, and skulls. During the first three weeks of our stay, the maid assigned to our room was named Maria. The room was decorated in blue. The view outside the window was of a surrounded courtyard with 3 heated pools. During this period of time, I read The Millennium Trilogy by Steig Larsson. The main chraracter in this trilogy is Lisbeth Salander, aka “the girl with the dragon tattoo.”
During this time, I had 3 dreams about shamans. In one dream, I was traveling over water on a boat in the Florida Everglades. I had 3 dreams that involved structures dissembling. I also had 3 dreams where I was communicating with people who have died. During the 3rd week of reconstruction, the hot water heater exploded, creating more flooding. At this point, we can say that the 2nd process of alchemical dissolution had begun. The day after Thanksgiving, we went down to the lobby. The whale in the lobby now had antlers and a sweater, decorated for Christmas.
Our alchemical whale had become a reindeer/stag. The following weekend, we moved to the fifth floor, into another blue themed room. This time our view was of a steep, forested hill. It was in this room where I celebrated a mid-life birthday.
During a dissolution phase of psychological alchemy, one finds oneself in a position of having no control over one’s life passage. When my husband and I entered the hotel, we no longer had our own identities. For 6 weeks, we became anonymous. Even the account at the hotel was done by a third party. We became Mr. and Mrs. Page, the displaced couple. We had none of our usual props in our daily lives. Very little belonged to us. We didn’t have our usual daily routines. We were living amongst a sea of anonymous, transient people. Even though we had computers, the hotel had very limited internet contact. The TV had very few channels (unless you paid extra).
Larry’s job was the only thing that remained constant, but even that was effected by the dissolution process. On one particular day, he went work to find corporate personnel in the office. Several of his co-workers were gone, either transferred or let go. There was no warning for this incident.
We were going through the dissolution together as a single body: the Sun/Moon, or King/Queen. (Larry and I). I have a natal (his)Sun/Moon (mine) conjunction in astrological charts.) We were removed from our collective body, our home, and taken to an anonymous bardo, or transition state, while our body (home) was dismembered and reconstructed. This is similar to a shamanic dismemberment & initiation. The point of this whole process is to learn to live in the moment.
Just this… Now.
We were finally able to move back in to our home on Dec 16. The alchemist would ask at this point: “Will the newly constructed vessel be able to contain without leaking?“
On December 21st, there was rare eclipse (sun/moon, or king/queen)– last seen in 1378. On Dec. 22nd, San Diego was hit by a storm that would bring record rainfall and flooding. On Dec. 23rd, we awoke to standing water– up to 8 inches — surrounding 3 outer walls of our condo. This had never happened before. The men who had just spent 6 weeks working on our home happened to be on the grounds already, so we were able to work fast on preventing damage to the interior of our newly remodeled home.
Christmas day was celebrated with family and friends. I received a beautiful golden bronze stag as a gift from my friend Teresa.
On the morning of December 28th, I pulled back the curtains to find many doves sitting outside my front picture window, looking inward at me. Usually there is only one or two, not several. The dove is prominent above the heads of the King and Queen in alchemical imagery– after the dissolution is complete.
At this moment I knew all was exactly as it should be. The storm on Dec. 29th did not cause any further flooding. The work of this phase of the alchemical process was complete. I hope we don’t need to repeat it.
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Here’s how some synchros come full circle.
In the spring of 2012, Debra wrote that she was suffering from an apparent electrical toxicity that originated in her condo, when the main electrical cable was accidentally cut. That electricity found her, traveled through her. “It was like being hit by lightning.” She developed seizures and could no longer stay in her home. She is presently living in a Spiritualist camp 40 miles north of San Diego, hasn’t had any more seizures, and is waiting for the electricity in her condo to be fixed.
“It’s been 110 degrees in the shade here,” she said in a recent phone conversation. “So the other day I’m sitting outside with a filmmaker, a skeptic, who is shooting a documentary on one of the psychic ministers in the camp, and a deer comes charging out of the woods and heads straight for us. Seconds before it slams into the concrete building, it veers off toward the brook.”
Everyone hears about the deer. Long term residents claim they’ve never seen a deer on camp grounds. The next morning, the filmmaker tells Debra: “I don’t know you, don’t know anything about you. But I feel the deer was intended as a message for you.”
Is the final step in this alchemical process healing?
Yes, I admit it. I’m addicted to flash mobs. This one is particularly magnificent.
This video is intriguing for several reasons – it’s from an ABC affiliate, the firefighters’ guide is more than 600 pages long, and chapter 13 is about what firefighters should do in the event of a UFO attack. Yet, the U.S. government remains in denial that UFOs even exist. Go figure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EHqPi7H90E
Fair warning: no synchro here. It’s just politics. I’ve used our daughter’s dolphin painting as the image because it symbolizes how we are often imprisoned by our perceptions.
And first, happy birthday, Megan, 23!!
**
Okay, in terms of politics, the idea is that you watch what the opposition is saying to see how they think. So this evening Rob and I watched some of the Republican convention – in particular Romney’s acceptance speech. I had to breathe through this, that’s how revolting the whole thing was, riddled with lies, lies, and more lies. I thought eight years of Bush was bad; a single day under Romney/Ryan would be intolerable, grounds for fleeing the country. And here’s why:
Today, while at the hair salon where I have been going for more than 20 years, the woman who cuts my hair leans forward and says, “Wow, did you see the anti-Obama film?”
Uh-uh, I thought. This isn’t good. I have a theory, see, that politics of all sorts begins in hair salons. I believe it’s where the buzz about 50 Shades of Grey began. I think it’s where some types of grass roots movements start.
“Uh, no, I haven’t seen it. What’s it about?”
“Obama is a socialist who is going to destroy America by 2016.”
She went on from there and before she’d finished, I held up my hands. “Lynn, if Obama is a socialist, then I’m Russian. Can you actually tell me it’s a good thing that the most vulnerable people in our society – the poor, sick, elderly – are marginalized?”
She thought about that for a moment. “Well, no. Of course not.”
“Can you tell me we need more wars?”
“No, definitely not.”
“And do you think the uber rich need a tax break that puts the onus on the shrinking middle class?”
“The middle class is screwed.”
“And you think it’s a great idea that women’s rights would be hurled back to the dark ages?”
“Well, no, of course not.”
“So tell me why you’re going to vote for Romney/Ryan?”
She couldn’t.
And that’s the thing here. You look around the convention and wow, there’s Clint Eastwood, an 82-year-old celebrity who spoke before Rubio introduced Romney. You know, the make my day guy, the star of countless classic movies, and sorry, he sounded like a demented idiot. He interviewed an empty chair in which an invisible Obama sat, telling him to go fuck himself.
Then Rubio followed Eastwood. Rubio is a powerful speaker, with a powerful biography. But he’s also a liar who was on the short list for the VP selection and was dismissed supposedly because he lied about his biography. His parents didn’t flee from Castro, as he often said. They left Cuba before Castro’s rise to power. And there’s some scuttlebutt about how he used campaign funds. In other words, Rubio was a dubious VP candidate, but is a rising star among Repubs.
Romney had this strange little smile after many of his statements, a condescending smile, the same sort of smile Anne Romney had when she said, “The people have seen all they are going to see of our tax returns.” A smile for us peons: You guys just don’t get it. Your rules don’t apply to us.
‘Romney sounded like a war monger – Syria, Iran, Russia, yes, he went after Putin – – we’re going to take on all of them, and never mind about how we’ll pay for it. We won’t raise taxes on the uber wealthy. We’ll just cut the safety net programs, you know, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, National Public Radio, Planned Parenthood, and oh yes, we’ll overturn Obama Care, which was fashioned on Romney Care when he was governor of Massachusetts. But Romney didn’t talk about that.
Romney tried to sell us on his business background through his involvement with Bane Capitol, a venture capitalist company that swept into companies, fired middle managers, accrued debt, and then paid off the top guys – like Romney – to the tunes of millions as the company went belly up. That’s business in America, right? Romney also took federal bail out money to save Bain from bankruptcy, according to a new article in Rolling Stone. In other words, he built that company, yes, on the backs of the taxpayers.
Romney promised 12 million new jobs- but avoided specifics.
He promised that the middle class would be bolstered – but avoided specifics.
Romney promised we would remain strong with security – but avoided specifics, other than new wars.
Then there was the most arrogant statement of Romney’s speech – something to the effect that only Americans can solve problems. Really? Was that a little birther dig?
Here’s the thing with Republicans: they talk like Democrats – we’re going to save Medicare and Social Security, we’re going to bolster the middle class, we’re for smaller government, we love women, we put them in important positions, and blah, blah. But their official platform is the exact opposite.
As I looked out over the convention floor, I saw almost no people of color, hardly any ethnic diversity. As Rob remarked at one point, “Anyone who isn’t white, is a speaker.” Like Condi Rice, former Bush secretary of state, who came of as the most sane, moderate in the crowd. Except for Jane Edmonds, former secretary of workforce development in Massachusetts, who described herself as a progressive Democrat. So why the hell is she speaking at this convention? Why is she supporting Romney?
What I feel right now is disgust. The other night, Rob suggested I should sign up for Obama’s camp and go door to door. My response? “You do it.” I tried that in 2008 and after a couple of doors were slammed in my face, I realized my strength didn’t lie in canvassing. My strength is language.
Here’s my scenario under Romney/Ryan. It’s close to The Hunger Games, without kids killing kids. You’re a pregnant single woman who can’t afford a child. You have been raped by your father or brother or some other male relative and the government demands that you must have this child because life begins at conception and a fertilized egg has personhood. You seek out someone who can abort this abomination.
In this world, in this scenario, there’s an entire dark underbelly that provides such services but it’s prohibitively expensive. Because you are unemployed or underemployed, you sell your soul to the devil or its modern equivalent, get your abortion and nearly die. And then you must deal with the devil and the government. If it’s a Hollywood ending, you find true love in a Clint Eastwood character who says, Make my day, I’ll love you forever, maybe.
And you’re thinking, Huh? What day is that?
Looking out at the faces in this convention, I was struck by the number of white women waving signs and banners and cheering at every speech. I am in total disconnect with these women. They aren’t connecting the dots. They fail to realize the end result is appallingly simple.
Women couldn’t vote until the 19th amendment passed in 1920. If you, as a woman in 2012, are considering a vote for the Repubs in 2012, then you should first read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. And then think long and hard about your vote. If you, as a woman, aren’t going to vote at all because Obama has disappointed you, then you better have an exit plan for life in another country.
Life under Obama versus life under Romney/Ryan spells the difference between freedom and indentured servitude. Life under Obama versus life under Romney/Ryan spells the difference between you as chattel and you as a sovereign human being. While it’s true that Obama has disappointed progressives on many of his change promises, he inherited a damaged country, and it may take decades to recover from Bush and the damage he did to this country.
If Romney wins – due to redestricting, voter purging, a Mercury retro on election day – I have an exit strategy. House on market, animals with documented innoculations, and a fervent argument that our daughter should join us in Costa Rica, a country still open to Americans. I refuse to live under a regime where a political party claims rights to my body, my being.
