"A time comes when silence is betrayal."

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." (Rev. Martin Luther King)

Strikes, Boycotts, Mutinies, Desertions

"Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens. (Howard Zinn)

Monday Burn Millay

I can relate to conflicting desires. But Americans' protection of the English Language while simultaneously hating it, just bites. I can't decide if I am irritated more at the English Only movement or the anti-intellectual stupidness (duh) of those who say Obama is nothing but pretty words.

"If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none."

George Bush, with his fifth grade English ability and his encouragement in the face of catastrophy to go shopping, is destructive. He's a fireman with no books hidden in his ceiling vent.

“So, when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world, there was no longer need for fireman for the old purposes. They were given the new job as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges and executors. That’s you and me!”

Two terms of Bush has dumbed us down. We don't want them fancy words, we don't want to learn no foreign languages, we want action. We want war! We want continual war! We want to feel superior! Goddamn it, we want sleeping pills!

Well... maybe not. Maybe two terms of Bush has given us more appreciation for language. I, for one, am not in the least conflicted about my desire to experience language that is creative and life changing. At best, language is art, and why wouldn't we want to live our lives as if we were making art? Why wouldn't we want to enrich ourselves through learning languages, finding the right word, and beyond that, through acts of kindness and friendship and mercy and love? Why wouldn't we want to keep growing, getting smarter, appreciating those who can teach us things? Why wouldn't we appreciate the pretty words of Obama? The movement to elect him is a manifestation of our desire to be better.

"Stuff your eyes with wonder ... live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that ... shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass."

(Quotes and Title)

I Remember Chrysanthemums

Orange fields thick with flowers stretched across the moon to your doorstep. Constant warm winds blew spicy petals into the atmosphere, spinning, floating, forever preserved in a museum of weightlessness. There I once observed you from a distance on your knees, singing loudly a song that couldn't be heard. Your fingers dug through rare dirt, copper and stone, bone and teeth, sand and flint, searching for some thing that disappeared long ago.