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Why did he do it? We glorify violence. We glorify the tools of violence. Our Nation, our Culture, glorifies the use of violence to solve problems. Look at any video game, at any ‘contact’ sport --- from our SWAT teams armed to the teeth with tactical weapons to Superman comics and Popeye cartoons --- violence is glorified as the solution to problems. From any “charming” James Bond movie to the shock & awe invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, violence is sold to us as the definitive solution, but it solves nothing. Violence may coerce obedience. Violence can interrupt an on-going action, but it does nothing to resolve the problems that initiated that action. Violence denies the problem and interrupts the real chance at resolution as being unnecessary. The use of violence to ‘solve’ a problem is a denial of reality. Cutting off the hands of a thief of bread does nothing to feed the hungry. Killing Osama Ben Laden does not resolve the underlying impetus on the part of the followers of al Qaeda to act against what they perceive to be injustices. Violence is brutal. Premeditated violence is evil. However, violence is cheap and easy, and is resorted to by those who fail to address the real kernel of the problem at hand. Its victories are the victories of those who have failed to become civilized.

#shooting #mass shooting #ak15 #violence

Why are they spending billions of dollars to get your vote?

August, September, October - about three months of electioneering left. The political circus describes the Issues in bite-sized pieces, individually wrapped in fear, for our entertainment, as though this were a trailer for an up-coming action-thriller.

I so wish that the candidates would just sit down together and talk things through - not a debate, but a discussion. Face to face and not face to cameras. This is not a game. It is not a horse race for special interests to place bets on.

Viva la France

#Nice #France #Vive la France

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine's Day! A day when, traditionally, the birds begin to mate -

Two Eagles, Elk Ridge

I was finishing up some cabinets I made for the cabin, treating them with oil outside before installing them, when I heard a loud rushing sound in the air above me. There is a pair of golden eagles (they are actually brown) that hunt the ridge every third day or so, soaring along the ridge-top in interlocking circles, one turning clockwise and one counterclockwise, so that they look out in opposite directions. Sometimes they skim the tops of the trees just overhead, the eight foot wing span making a dark shadow flashing by, turning a head to look me in the eye as they pass. The rushing sound was this pair of eagles. From high above the ridge they had both folded their wings and were in a full dive together, side by side, accelerating down a thousand feet, directly overhead. Then, just above tree top level they opened their wings, together, and the momentum of their decent carried them high above the ridge again. Without a single beat of their wings, at the top of their ascent, one turned left and one turned right, and they resumed their counter-turning, interlocking circles. It could only be for the sheer joy of it that they had made this dance, with an enthusiasm for their vitality.

Thomas Evans

skunkbear

These photos from 1908 convinced Teddy Roosevelt to create the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon (first called the Malheur Lake Reservation). That’s the place currently occupied by anti-federalist militants.

Finley and Bohlman’s hand-colored images were provided by Bob Sallinger of The Audubon Society of Portland

Vive la France

#Paris #Notre Dame #Centre Georges Pompidou

December 12, 1851. "I have been surveying for twenty or thirty days, living coarsely, even as respects my diet (for I find that will always alter to suit m employment), indeed leading a quite trivial life, and to-night, for the first time, made a fire in my chamber and endeavored to return to myself. I wished to ally myself to the powers that rule the universe. I wished to dive into some deep stream of thoughtful and devoted life which meanders through retired and fertile meadows far from towns. I wished to do again, or for once, things quite congenial to my highest, inmost, and most sacred nature, to lurk in crystalline thought like the trout under verdurous banks where stray mankind should only see my bubble come to the surface. I wished to live, ah, as far away as a man can think. I wished for leisure and quiet to let my life flow in its proper channels, with its proper currents, when I might not waste the days, might establish daily prayer and thanksgiving in my family, might do my own work, and not the work of Concord and Carlisle, which would yield me better than money. I bethought myself, while my fire was kindling, to open one of Emerson’s books, which it happens that I rarely look at, to try what a chance sentence out of that could do for me, thinking at the same time of a conversation I had with him the other night…" Thoreau, Henry David, G. O. Blake, editor. 1892. “Autumn: From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau.” The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, MA.