Not a drop to drink ...

California Drought Reaches A Terrifying Milestone - http://huff.to/1zAp8y7

Opera strike / lockout?

Save the Met #weareopera - http://huff.to/1rTECMM

Update

My partners taking our splay project to a pitch fest. I wish them good fortune. Something I would be terrible at. I think it is Fri-Sun. See if they remain enthusiastic afterwards. Do I sound burned out ha ha?

There is war and there is this

Reporter Breaks Down Over Children Killed In Gaza - http://huff.to/1ACyNpo

"I've seen dead children before, but never like during this war in Gaza. Never so many, never so often."

Hussein, who shared those thoughts in a blog post on Wednesday, is just the latest journalist to reflect on the toll that the bloodshed in Gaza has taken on her psyche. British journalist Jon Snow wrote that he was "deeply scarred" by what he'd seen there. ABC's Alexander Marquardt told HuffPost about the experience of seeing "children and babies crushed to death in their homes or targeted in airstrikes."

The Farewell Wake

The trailer:

 

A review: Small World, Big Bang

OK! Mr. Scatter thinks we just might be seeing the beginning of a trend in low-budget, do-it-yourself, power-to-the-people, new-media-driven movies. And it tickles him no end that a crusty renegade in his 70s is one of the first guys out of the gate to show the kids how it’s done.

2011 Director's Cut (86 minutes) and other versions.

The Men Who Killed Kennedy - Watch Free Documentary Online

The Men Who Killed Kennedy - Watch Free Documentary Online:

 "This artfully constructed series offers chilling evidence that American democracy has become a convenient lie; that a conspiratorial coup d'état removed a sitting president and then hid that fact from the American people.

This sounds like the stuff of wild-eyed paranoia, but these filmmakers did their homework well--interviews include levelheaded witnesses, suspicious government agents, and Dallas cops present in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963."

Episode One shows the medical evidence, which is enough to establish the conspiracy. Personally I think the CIA had more involvement than shown here. But the main fact, at least two shooters, is irrefutable.

O say can you see?

'Patriotic' Big Banks Profit Helping U.S. Companies Dodge Taxes - http://huff.to/1zqzAZ8

The problem defiined

Basketball Player Twice Accused Of Sexual Assault Is Recruited By A New College - http://huff.to/1AqMMhR

Sad

Poll On Attitudes About Muslims And Arabs Finds Disturbing Trend - http://huff.to/1AtXlkp

Central Park Five

Watched the Ken Burns doc ... rips my heart out, pisses me off.

Result of such major miscarriage of justice? Rationalization, denial, "too bad." At least a minority expresses outrage - but it doesn't change the power structure, the sensational press, or the frenzy of racism.

"We can be a terrible people," observes one historian.

Flanagan after record

http://www.oregonlive.com/trackandfield/index.ssf/2014/07/shalane_flanagan_will_be_shoot.html#incart_river

Go, gramps!

Grandpa Breaks It Down With Age-Defying Dance Moves - http://huff.to/1yQHQRI

It's pretty good

The best sandwich in the universe
http://www.cnn.com//2014/07/28/living/tomato-mayo-sandwich-eatocracy/index.html

Venice Beach lightning

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/27/us/lightning-strike-venice-beach/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

I love Venice Beach!

Audio book

Recorded first chapter of a book, really hard work to get it right, harder than I want to work, in fact. Bye, bye, this idea. If poems pass tech test, which I doubt, I'll go with it. But no new recording.

War and the herd

Henry Miller On War - http://huff.to/1zggVis

"War results because men surrender their individuality to the will of the herd⎯a herd that is manipulated to pursue the interests of a privileged few."

Social media encourage the herd.

Hiss, boo!

Woke up from a dream: I was giving a screenwriting lecture.

Happy birthday, GBS

The most cantankerous of old men ...

Retirement

Maybe I can feel like I'm on a perptual vacation.

Old school

When I was a kid, and later than that, a complete game by a pitcher was no big deal. Happened all the time. Now it's rare because pitchers get taken out after 100 throws. Baseball's political correctness. Healthy progress. It sucks.

Bob Feller, old school

Today the Mariners' Young has a two hit shutout after 7. But over 100 pitches. Bye, bye. Orioles come back and score 3 in the 8th and almost win the game.

The older I get, the more often what is called progress strikes me as one big Snow Job.

Remembering Esther

http://cdeemer2007.blogspot.com/2009/12/rip-esther-price.html

Yep

America's Classist Education System - http://huff.to/1AgMcmT

Yep

UC Complains Of Funding Shortfall, Then Gives Execs Pay Raises - http://huff.to/1zcUGKm

Yep

'Big Business IS The New Big Government' - http://huff.to/1AjxXh8

Looking into the near future

Detroit Shuts Off Water To Residents, But Not To Businesses Who Owe Millions - http://huff.to/1AjJ35G

World affairs according to Kley

Extraordinary!

I've not enjoyed Moby Dick more than now, listening to Frank Muller read it. Two reasons, I think. He is a more dramatic reader than I to my mind's ear; and reading aloud slows the narrative considerably, letting the poetry of the prose resonate.

The is as wonderful a literary experience as listening to the Dos Passos trilogy some time ago.

Nails it

Keith Olbermann Delivers Powerful Speech About Sexism In Sports - http://huff.to/1AhhxWw

Yep

We're In The Early Days Of A New Mass-Extinction, Researchers Warn - http://huff.to/1zcZWO2

Cain video

http://olympictalk.nbcsports.com/2014/07/25/mary-cain-world-junior-championships-video-3000m/

Incredible Mary Cain victory

http://www.iaaf.org/competitions/iaaf-world-junior-championships/iaaf-world-junior-championships-2014-4954/news/feature/women/3000-metres

In Eugene, 8000 cheer her on.

Waiting

Uploaded files to Audible ... if approved, home free ... if not, may be over. Don't know much about audio tech. Be a week or two.

Audio

Looking into possibility of turning several of my books into Audible books. If tech isn't too much work. Already recorded poems, begin there. If it works, I'll do novels, reading myself, big projects.

This is what comfort looks like

Woke up to see Sketch curled up on the bedroom chair. He later awoke full of piss and vinegar, his old self.

The right stuff

Germany wants to build an atomic bomb. Let's beat them to it.

Russia puts a man in space. Let's beat them to the moon.

We start late and behind. Then we get down to it. We meet difficult challenges.

And now climate change ... ? Where is the leader who can inspire us to get down to it?

Good news

Sketch fine, coming home in a couple hours.

The Adventures of Sarah Stalin

More adventures.

Media in Gaza ... unreported war crimes?

Jeremy Scahill: 'We've Hit All-Time Lows' In Media Coverage Of Gaza - http://huff.to/1Abqtg9

Stress

We take Sketch in for minor surgery this morning. It will be a long day.

Teaching

Early in my career I published two short works about teaching, a story and an essay, and nothing since. Now, over forty years later, I still own up to them.

THE TEACHER

By Charles Deemer

From The Colorado Quarterly, Summer 1969

            If I were a menial clerk, to whose gloom a Dostoevski or a Melville could give cosmic importance, then readily would I win your understanding. We are in an age the sensibilities of which are riveted to the absurd and what, after all, is more absurd than filling a ledger book with numerals, sorting out dead letters, filing away last year's purchase orders or pulling a lever in a factory? If I made my livelihood in so dreary a fashion, you would accept my gloom as being inevitable, deem it significant, and find in it an occasional metaphor for your own misgivings, whatever your employment; you would offer me understanding, empathy, sympathy, at least something more meaningful than what you now offer me, which is flattering but undue praise, or what usually is called "a good press." Were my life filled with physical danger and pain, were mine the life of a hunter, a mountain climber or a boxer, I then would be judged to be a kind of existential hero, for my temperament is naturally introspective. Would that I were a revolutionary, for Christ's sake! But in fact I am a high school teacher, a teacher of the physical sciences, and though compliments, even admiration, periodically come my way, they are presented not with understanding nor with respect but out of social necessity, in precisely the way one might admire the wife of an alcoholic: what she puts up with -- it's heroic!

Read the story.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION AS A HAPPENING

By Charles Deemer

From College English, November, 1967

EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary) 

Our entire school system, like our over-organized economy, politics, and standard of living, is largely a trap; it is not designed for the maximum growth and future practical utility of the children into a changing world, that they too will hopefully improve, but is a kind of inept social engineering to mold, and weed out, for short-range extrinsic needs. An even when it is more benevolent, it is in the bureaucratic death-grip, from the universities and the boards of education down, of a uniformity of conception and method that cannot possibly suit the multitude of dispositions and conditions. (Paul Goodman, "From John Dewey to A. S. Neill") 

*

For better or worse, our educational system is undeniably rigid. Not even the university is free from its demands. The English Composition course, as we should expect, is the rigid child of a rigid parent. It is, after all, taught in a classroom, a medium (in its present form) Marshall McLuhan would call "hot" and of "low participation." 

Consider the fragmentation of the composition course in its daily inaction. The "teacher" speaks from his place in the front of the classroom, sheltered more than likely by the wall of his podium, while the class in the rear listens or pretends to. Even when discussion occurs, the fragmentation of the inaction into two segments (the "teacher"-as-wise-authority and the class-as-recipient-of-knowledge) is retained. The division is as clear as stimulus and response. Lecture and note-taking. Assignment and essay. Bell and saliva. Watch the class yawn for its food. 

Read the essay.

***

Last term's class evaluations arrived today. Strange things, always. First, evaluating the class is voluntary and takes the effort to go online, so 70-90% of the class don't bother. The extreme opinions, positive and negative, probably make the effort. The positive has always won but this term was closer than usual. I admit I didn't go out with my best term of teaching.

So what are the results? Some folks like my teaching:

He truly cares about our success, and his enthusiasm for the subject is contagious.

A good, challenging, and eye-opening class. I would not change anything

 Clear and focused, he is what all art teachers should strive to be.

It's been a wonderfully no-nonsense class, and if he weren't retiring, I'd

   reccomend (sic) Deemer to everyone.

Charles Deemer is fantastic and I will miss him, as he's retiring this year. He's a legend at PSU. :)

And some folks don't:

He clearly didn't give a shit about anything except the countdown until the end of  term.

Please acquire a viable teacher for future offerings of this course

It's a good thing Charles Deemer is retiring. I learned nothing in this class

I got the distinct impression that he puts others down to feel better

   about himself. Good riddance to him.

I would not suffer through another class of his even if I had to.

... talk about a zero sum universe, ha ha! Unfortunately, I seem to fret about the negative more than I smile about the positive.
BUT I AM DONE!

A young writer's validation

Former students

Always great to hear from former students. One, Jeremiah, just checked in, bringing me up to date. He has a job in fields he likes, film and sports, but parenting has taken so much time he's done little writing but he can catch up on that later.

He wrote an adaptation for film of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio that I greatly admire. Here it is.

Jeremiah Rickert
WINESBURG, OHIO
A Screenplay
Based on the novel by Sherwood Anderson 

---

FADE IN:

EXT. WINESBURG – MAIN STREET – NIGHT

SUPER: Winesburg, Ohio, 1900s

The town is still.

A flatbed wagon, driven by a MAN, 50s, upsets the stillness.

He’s chugging whiskey from a bottle.

The Man laughs and toasts the local church as he passes it.

The night-watchman HOP HIGGINS, a grizzled man in his 50s, finishes lighting a nearby lamp and watches the wagon pass.

The driver toasts him as well.

DRIVER

All’s well, Hop Higgins, All’s well!

At the end of Main Street the wagon passes a rickety hotel.

The driver waves at the sign out front that reads “New Willard House.”

The wagon passes the edge of town and the man takes a chug and whips the horses.

A train whistle blows in the distance. 

The man whips the horses harder and harder, accelerating into the night. 

The train whistle gets louder and louder. 

Read the screenplay.

Note: this URL won't be valid after August. In my retirement, I no longer will pay to keep it up out of my pocket. The PSU English Dept said they will take it over, with a new URL.

Gray damp gloom

Portland weather sucks. It's July, for chrissake. Makes me want to crawl under the bed with Sketch.

Rewriting for market

More than any "retired" person should do, but it didn't take too long. Need to be careful, though, and not get UNretired.

Moving forward

Considerable activity in splay marketing arena by my collaborators this week and next. Good sense of moving forward.

R.I.P. Thomas Berger

Wrote Little Big Man.

Hangin' in

Saw eye doc, no cataract surgery yet ...maybe next year. Otherwise healthy eyes, physically. I wear glasses for distance, driving, and he tweaked this.

Weather

I've been cold all day, rising to find H forgot to close a window and never recovering. Doesn't put me in the best mood.

R.I.P. James Garner

James Garner, Star Of 'The Rockford Files' And 'Maverick,' Is Dead At 86 - http://huff.to/1rtiU1I

A damn good question

Why so much concern and moral outrage about the treatment of corpses in a field and so little concern and moral outrage about the treatment of the living elderly?

Frank Muller

This "award-winning narrator" reads the Moby Dick audiobook I listen to. First rate! A new appreciation, "personal" storytelling, a different dramatic spin.

A 23 hour experience

I've read Moby Dick several times. I've studied it in several classes. I know the novel.

Now I'm engaging it as an audio book ... first impressions, this may be the most enlightening "reading" yet. More later.

Movement ...

... on the screenplay revival front. Meeting end of week in LA with major player ... Steve, my partner, has great repackaging idea, might require minor tweaking, no prob ... nice to see something happening! I can't help being a little excited, burn out and all ha ha.

Jerry Mander

Another important voice against the noise ...

Israel and the press

The Chilling Document Journalists Entering Gaza Have To Sign - http://huff.to/1yDlcvW

Vets stand down

Just volunteered to help at homeless vets stand down in Sept. Least I can do.

Against Nature

The older I get, the less I think of our medical profession. It focuses too much on prolonging life rather than on making death comfortable. A humane culture would celebrate death as the natural end of life. Yes, CELEBRATE.

The big Wie crash

Since winning the U.S. Open, M Wie can't make par and can't make weekend cuts ... and keeps getting worse. The biggest sports crash I can recall. It's mental.

Berman in Mexico

Morris Berman is now an expatriate - and no wonder, given his writings. He moved to Mexico. He loves what he calls a fuller sense of life and community. In the USA, he writes, everything works but nothing works out. In Mexico, nothing works and everything works out.

Incremental living

Since retirement, my actions and steps and daily goals are markedly smaller and slower and less ambitious. Life as puttering. I like it!

15 boxes

More donations to Vietnam Vets of America as downsizing continues. Piled the boxes up at end of driveway early a.m. Probably do it again in a month.

Baking bread, dog treats. Sanity.

Not a productive day

But at least I posted in The Years and brought finances up to date. Hope to load the car with boxes this eve, unload in morn at end of driveway, 15 boxes for pickup by Vietnam Vets, my charity of choice.

Yard in reasonable shape.

Listening to Salem minor league game on Fire. Not very exciting. Background noise.

Finished Berman book. Quite good. Excerpts later.

Jack hammer city

Workers are back. Hopefully finish up today.

My favorite cultural historian ...

... Morris Berman, has done it again in his new book, Why America Failed. Just into it ... much more later.

Berman establishes America's business-centered culture and hustling lifestyle values as our very soul - so it's not all that surprising how America turned out. 

The Occupy movement used to drive me up the wall with their "We're the 99%" signs. What a fantasy world! Progressives make up maybe 25% in a good year, which is rare and always has been. We are consumers, born and raised, and it takes considerable effort and some sacrifice to become anything else.

Berman documents how bad things really are.

Baseball in Portland

• In his new book The Children of Vaughn, Terry Simons presents an entertaining, engaging and informative overview of professional baseball in Portland, Oregon, 1901-2010. This story is filled with memorable characters and shady dealings, up and coming players and reborn veterans, and Simons manages to infuse the dates and events of history with dramatic energy. Along the way, short chapter introductions create a subtext of loss, of the fall of baseball as America's entertainment soul, giving the story more than regional interest. 24 pages of wonderful historic photographs complete the package.

A wonderful book! Get a copy for yourself and one for a friend. Remember what baseball used to be.

Retirement rhythm

A good morning, after breakfast revived me ... some downsizing, another box for the vets (14 so far) ... some yard work ... some writing on The Years (perfect retirement project) ... everything on the agenda except ukulele so far ... my kind of start to a day.

Breakfast!

To the rescue ... dragging thru the morning until I put two eggs up over milk toast and a sausage patty ... the world got set right. Breakfast rules. You can mess with lunch and dinner all you want ... as long as I can have an old school breakfast, I can face the Great Mess.

World Cup

Germany's 1-0 victory in extra time was harder earned than I expected. At halftime, showing fans around the country, the gathering in downtown Portland made the cut:

Ms rock tonight

6-2 over As ... Iwakuma one out from complete game shutout. Seager and Cano homer in 14 hit night against division leaders.

Feels right

The Years feels right as the project I need at this time of my life. Low maintenance, no stress, but also challenging with possibilities to expand its reach. I expect to keep it going in the immediate future.

Brazil easily beaten again

Hard to watch the stunned fans of the host country.

Art and Madness

This "memoir of lust without reason" by Anne Roiphe is first rate, both in literary skill, human insights and ruthless honesty and introspection. Highly recommended. (Also gave me the structure for The Years, a Eureka! moment).

Nostalgia

Until its shut down in 1976, football season began with a charity game between the college all stars and NFL champs. I loved these games! Don't tell me sports get better.

Art and politics

Good post by TS: 

http://roundbendpress.blogspot.com/2014/07/in-arts-hostility-to-political-truth.html

The old Wie

Golf is a mental game, my late buddy Ger used to tell me. He had been a golf pro at a country club. Also an expensive game, which he seldom could afford after he gave up banking for poetry.

For all her talent, Michelle Wie didn't have the mental toughness to be a great golfer. She kept making excuses for herself. She looked on the bright side, a good strategy for life but a poor one for competitive sports.

Then lately she seemed to turn things around. Until the British Open, entering as a favorite. Her first round on Thursday was a disaster: a 3 over par 73. Was she tough on herself afterwards? Nope. She made excuses. I had a great game plan, she said. It could have been worse.

Friday it was much worse, so bad she didn't even make the cut. Wie may never get the mental toughness of, say, a Sharapova.

*

Ms nip As, thanks to a called 3rd strike that was a ball. An honest win feels better.

The Years: A Writer's Memory

My recent idea for an AlphaSmart project and blog petered out. I try again. I need a low key, low stress writing/blog project, which may or may not blossom into a book.

The new attempt at this begins today: http://cdyears.blogspot.com ... notes for a memoir, perhaps. Things worth getting down, at any rate.

Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goat,_or_Who_Is_Sylvia%3F

Just read the script. An extraordinary play. I'd love to see it.

Room to run

Sketch at neighborhood school, where he finds something disgusting to roll in.

Out and about

Good coffee visit this morning with Round Bend Press publisher, friend, and colleague Terry Simons, who was a tad frazzled from a sleepless night of putting up with apartment noises, like couples trying to kill one another. He gave me a copy of his new book, about which more later. Don't visit often with him, or with anyone any more, but it always feels good to visit with kindred souls.

Not much energy upon return home. Reading, that's about it so far.

Hmm

This Computer Brings Internet Art Into Your Home, And It Is Stunning - http://huff.to/1xS5kFF

What a difference ...

... a day makes etc. Netherlands-Argentina 0-0 into extra time.

More I think about it, more satisfied with downsizing progress so far. Slow but sure. I'm retired = lots of time and no deadline. I can putter!

Rereading: Genesis Angels

Aram Saroyan's Genesis Angels is a masterpiece, one of those books with a unique voice inseparable from its content, subject and form perfectly bonded, a book with no rivals. The best thing ever written about the Beat Generation, it also captures the soul of American life in mid-20th century, the soil in which the Beats grew. Its subtitle "The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation" provides a perfect focus for Saroyan's purpose, Welch getting his due, but all the other major players are here as well. Saroyan does in a few pages what others books do less evocatively with verbose and traditional prose. This is non-traditional prose, a prose poem, and this is what the Beats were and are about.

Only a few books create such a singular unique voice, inseparable from its content. Several come to mind: James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. E.E. Cummings' Eimi. Norman O. Brown's Love's Body. Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night.

About these, and about Genesis Angels, you can say, Nothing like this has been written before. I must have read Saroyan's book 8 or 10 times and each rereading increases my admiration of it.

Listen to Saroyan's music:

And one night—in the history of you and me—at the West End Bar, with alive tables and chairs and beers, and incredible conversations about everything under the sun, under the electric light—with West Side traffic outside, and goofed-up drunks, and young couples, husband with his tie loosened, wife with a new permanent—one night John Kerouac is introduced across the table to young, deep-fabled, not long out of New Jersey, Allen Ginsberg. This is the primal meeting, the plug-in that reverses historical currents and lights up new rooms in the mind of generations. One poet and another poet, in America, getting to know the drift of their own, single mind: Hello, I see you. Hello, I see you, too.

*

In America, each of us is a stranger. The communities are mostly too large. Our neighbors are sphinxes, as we are to them. Passionate men and women are confused and rendered inefficient, and suspicious of their own enthusiasm and energy. We hide the poem written in our own soul, or offer it obliquely to the light: daisies in the city window, roses on the dining car table: the landscape speeds by, and our dream is unloosed in meaningless efforts: buying and selling pieces of a lost vocabulary of feeling, the dollars and cents can never replace. These Beat people were gardening in each other's real earth, starting to water and plant a new estate of the mind in the midst of American urban commerce. All the rehearsals of their identities are now like sacred texts of the genesis of an original, native American culture. We hunger for more of the truth of ourselves which they allowed themselves to be.

*

 Lew was a poet, and he was still, too, an apprentice poet, which is a complicated thing in its own way. The poet's apprenticeship ends when his life and his art become one, much as any writer's apprenticeship ends. And yet, this is a more difficult passage at times for the poet: words are a kind of spell for the poet to break through; and they can hold a poet longer in their thrall. Finally, when he becomes himself fully, the poet knows the language with an intimacy that is rare among writers because he has endured through so deep an awareness of the autonomous powers of the language itself.

Appalling

Survey: Rapes not investigated at 2 in 5 colleges http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268802/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=QOSWXoQH (from @AP)

Progress ...

... this morning, downsizing basement office. Even ridding self of a few things I thought would be, well, valuable. Maybe this was my last hallucination. Probably not ha ha.

I kept thinking of James Otis, "the First Patriot" (John Adams), destroying his life's work in a fit of despair. I get it.

Brazil's front pages

http://mashable.com/2014/07/09/brazil-front-pages-world-cup-germany/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link

Our brilliant politicians

GOP Lawmaker Says Climate Change A Hoax Because Earth And Mars Have 'Exactly' Same Temperature - http://huff.to/1qTb1Cq

--but is he laughed out if office? No, he gains as many votes as he loses. This is why we are doomed. The patients run the asylum.

Free screenwriter interviews

This DVD series now FREE!

Brazil to cleaners

25 mins. in ... 4-0 Germany! Astounding.

Robert Fisk

Fisk is an old-school war correspondent. I just started his very thick book on the Middle East, and it's already remarkable, an early scene describing his first meeting with bin Laden, no demonization here (the more frightening for it, for you understand the energy of his cause), novelistic detail, a leusurely pace, a big book to spend a lot of time with.

He is a remarkable, courageous British journalist.

What's in a name?

The news is never new. Let's call it the olds.

Construction zone

Jack hammers, drills, considerable noise with workers in the basement, hard to focus on anything halfway serious. Go with the flow ...

Finally some common sense

BBC Fighting Its Addiction To False Climate Change Balance - http://huff.to/1qO7LZ3

Quotation of the day

"There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." --John Adams

Current reading

Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media, and the Religious Right

by John Buchanan

"Hence, through the modern “science” of advertising, the “consumer” was born: a human being whose responsibility is to buy and consume goods and services he or she no longer genuinely needs—but merely desires, and only because a false sense of “need” has been artificially created."

Observation

What extraordinary people are in this country, this world! There has to be to balance all the horror in a zero sum universe.

How to embrace the former without the latter getting you down?

Cooking therapy

Buttermilk bread. Quinoa salad. Mariners day game. Retirement.

Recent re-reading

They Killed Our President: 63 Facts That Prove a Conspiracy to Kill JFK

by Jesse Ventura

The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed. There was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car. Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood. There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head.

Multiple witnesses, who were medically and otherwise credible, confirmed that they clearly saw an entry wound in the FRONT of President Kennedy’s head, in his upper right forehead at the hairline.

*

 The bald fact is that Oswald cannot be placed on the sixth floor either at the time of the shooting or during the half hour before it. The last time he was reliably seen before the assassination was by Mrs. Arnold—in the second floor lunchroom. The next time Oswald was firmly identified was immediately after the assassination—again in the second floor lunchroom.

*

 here’s a huge problem with the Mannlicher rifle that was supposedly found on the sixth floor and was used to connect Oswald to the assassination. When the rifle was first found, it was not identified that way. It was identified instead as a 7.65 millimeter Mauser rifle. 

 Homicide is there. The head of the crime lab is there. A cop who’s a gun expert is there. Doesn’t it defy credulity to say that they all got it wrong on such a simple point at an extremely important time? It sure in hell does to me. They said it was even stamped on the rifle, for Pete’s sake. If these guys knew how to read, then it was a Mauser.

*

 First, the official skull X-rays do not show the condition of the skull or the brain as seen at Parkland. Stop and think about that for a second. The wounds in the official X-rays did not match the wounds documented by the emergency room doctors. They were dramatically different. They reflect an entry wound from the rear, whereas the wounds that were seen in Dallas clearly reflected an entry wound from the front.

*

Thus, the press’ curiosity was not aroused when a 7.65 caliber German Mauser mutated into a 6.5 caliber Italian Mannlicher-Carcano; or when the grassy knoll receded into oblivion; or when an entrance wound in the President’s throat became an exit wound [first for a fragment from the head wound and then for a bullet from the back wound]; or when a wound six inches below the President’s shoulder became a wound at the back of the neck. The press was thereby weaving a web that would inevitably commit it to the official findings.

*

 John F. Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy involving disgruntled CIA agents, anti-Castro Cubans, and members of the Mafia, all of whom were extremely angry at what they viewed as Kennedy’s appeasement policies toward Communist Cuba and the Soviet Union. President Kennedy sought peace and was viewed by these groups as a cowardly traitor by not giving in to their overwhelming call for war. Those groups—it should be clearly noted— are precisely the same groups that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy concluded were responsible for his brother’s death, after conducting his own private investigation.

Quotation of the day II

“We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both.” -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

A Capitol Fourth

Futbol

Like much but do not like the excessive acting (injury) and whining (ref).

Triple threat

Practicing ii V I in one key after the other, listening to Ms game, watching WC. Ain't life grand?

Quotation of the day

"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism, because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

Practice

Have the ubiquitous jazz progression of ii - V - I in good shaoe in all 12 keys! Rather amazing actually.

Dog's good morning

Sketch, hiding under the bed since evening, finally crawled out to join me on the sofa. Rough night.

Welcome back, stranger!

Our quiet 4th

BBQ hot dogs & lamb kebobs ... H made potato salad ... just hang out at home and comfort Sketch from the explosions of firecrackers.

Good day, though. Yard work, ukulele, WC.

Holiday spirit

Iraq War Vet: 'I Don't Want Men And Women Dying For Dumb Causes Or Pride' - http://huff.to/1xrTt0L

"I don't want men and women dying for dumb causes," veteran Ruben Gallego told host Ricky Camilleri. "I also don't want American men and women dying in uniform because of pride. That's all this is. It's a bunch of people that were wrong about the Iraq War that are trying to put more blood on their hands to save pride."

July 4 blues

http://roundbendpress.blogspot.com/2014/07/red-white-and-blue.html = Terry Simons' reflection on the 4th expresses the feelings of more "true patriots" (who else would find failure sad and depressing?) than he realizes. I hope so, at any rate!

WC returns, or about the German anthem ...

France-Germany this morning.

In the Army a fellow Russian linguist, who aspired to sing for the SF Opera (home), used to belt out a very obscene version of the German national anthem. He made up for insulting the natives by titilating them with Hitler speeches he'd memorized in German, always good for free drinks.

Unreformed Nazis were everywhere! Scarier to me today than it was at the time.

My least favorite holiday ...

... has been July 4 ever since, some 20 years sgo, I spent the holiday in a VA facility and watched vets react to fireworks by shouting "Incoming!" and diving for cover. Sketch also hates fireworks - so I never look forward to the 4th.

Mariners on winning streak

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/sea/five-reasons-for-seattle-mariners-recent-success?ymd=20140703&content_id=82902324&vkey=news_sea

DOW Jones

Broke 17000 for first time.

In early 1980s, when I was managing editor of Oregon Business magazine, we published an issue around the theme/question, "Will the DOW ever break 1000?"

Pretty funny!

Ukulele studies

Just added the two songs below to the archive. Ukulele archive.

Stir the pot

10 American Facts You Can Use To Ruin Any July 4 Party - http://huff.to/1xhbWwV

Harriet's opening

From Harriet:

Dear friends,

I have had a busy art year in 2014 and it continues.....

In March I traveled to Ningbo, China for a cultural exchange and solo art exhibit in their Cultural Center.

Please come to my opening at the Pond House in Milwaukee July 2^nd from 7-8 p.m. I have 35 paintings hanging there for the summer. Pond House is an auxiliary building of the Milwaukee Public Library and is open on Fridays and Saturdays from 10-3,  and when there are poetry readings and special events there. It is located at 2215 SE Harrison St. near  downtown Milwaukee, just west of the library.

July/August 6 person exhibit at  First Unitarian Church on SW 12^th and Main St.Portland.Opens July 6^th

^{The exhibit runs through August 31st.}

November: 9 person exhibit by the Oregon Women’s Caucus for Art at the Chrysanthemum Festival at the Chinese Garden, corner of NW Everett and 3^rd Ave. Show  open during the garden hours. Special opening on Saturday afternoon, November 1. Contact me for free passes for the opening at the garden.

December/January: Group show of the Oregon Women’s Caucus for Art at the First Unitarian Church on the corner of SW 12^th and Main St. Show opens Sunday, December 21^st. Reception from 10-11 a.m. and 12:15-1:15 p.m. For garden passes and more info, contact me at amelia693@yahoo.com and see updates  to my exhibit schedule on my website atwww.artistliszt.com/harrietlevi

Autumn Leaves

Keyport Rag

My favorite World Cup fan

What heat spell?

Office time

Hot and sweaty and pooped after a long walk with Sketch, who ran and ran at the local school, and he's pooped, too. Recover and head to the basement office for various chores.

WC break

No games until Friday, time to crank up on all activities.

Duh

15 Charts That Show The U.S. Isn't Over Racism - http://huff.to/1qxqhVq

Photo show

THE MIDDLE EAST REVEALED: A FEMALE PERSPECTIVE - http://huff.to/1quliFa

USA getting whipped, 0-0

Defense keeping us in game. Barely.

*

Extra time, thanks to a dozen saves (!) by Howard.

Belgium scores 2 min. into extra time.

US has great heart. Loses 2-1.

Broken record

Damn, I make good iced coffee!

Big day for U.S.

I don't see them winning but I'd love to be proved wrong.

Yard work high on agenda again today, despite forecast into the 90s. Still too noisy to record. Workers will be here most of the week.

Now that I've learned that the WC is a liberal/Obama conspiracy, I can enjoy it even more!

My toasted buttermilk bread tasted so good this morning!

Last night Harriet took me to a belated retirement dinner at a hole in the wall Cajun restaurant. Lousy music, slow service - and fantastic food! Most impressive, her fried catfish. We'll go again, esp to happy hour.

World Cup as moral decay (wow)

Conservative Rage at Soccer and World Cup Is Nothing New - http://huff.to/1qmSbDx