tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41736126609355443092024-03-19T08:49:33.536-04:00Elrond HubbardElrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.comBlogger187125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-40909496677010025482015-01-26T09:41:00.000-05:002015-01-26T09:41:00.277-05:00Parallels<span>
We are on the plane, poised to transit from 22 degrees Fahrenheit to 22 degrees Celsius. I'm wearing my magic lonjohns that will melt away as soon as I disembark from this plane. We will rent a Pathfinder and navigate by sign shape, not sign text. We will pull over at the maccaw observation site that the proprietor of the bird watching store in Carrboro told us about. I'm hoping there will be some sort of "Okay not to know Spanish" tourist trap of a restaurant to ease us in to our first meal.
</span>Elrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-28756364653265119242014-06-21T14:59:00.001-04:002014-06-21T14:59:27.296-04:00Redeployment?About this idea of deploying troops again to Iraq and staying forever: can anyone think of a political outcome that would make this worthwhile? We have just finished helping to install a semblance of democracy there, but that democratically elected government has a largely Shiite identity and has marginalized many of Iraq’s Sunnis and former Baathists. Now a group of Sunni extremists has garnered some support from Iraq’s marginalized population and is coming back with a vengeance. We would like Sunnis and Shiites to live together peacefully, but is that realistic in the near future in Iraq? The struggle between these two groups is not about us. If we become militarily involved again, we will likely be seen as taking sides, and that will not soften the sectarian divides or promote any more democracy and peace than what we already have promoted . . . and look at what has happened to that.Elrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-11089026285228259332013-09-03T01:34:00.000-04:002013-09-03T02:03:51.613-04:00Life on MarsHere’s what I don’t get. Why is everyone hung up on whether there is life on Mars, and on the related question of whether that planet ever had water? There are other bodies in our solar system that have water-ice crusts, and may have water beneath these crusts held in liquid state by heat from geological activity. Some such bodies are Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Triton, a moon of Neptune. On earth, we have some sections of our oceans heated by volcanic activity and supporting an ecosystem completely independent of the rest of life on our planet. If this can happen here, perhaps it can happen in the sub-surface oceans of one of these moons.
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But we’re still hung up on Mars. Why, because he’s closer? Forget him. He’s not putting out. It’s time to stop sending space-probes by his house to see if he’s home. Move on, and get with a satellite that has some potential. Elrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-17271436863934280862012-05-22T23:53:00.002-04:002012-05-23T10:57:49.845-04:00Grokking Grout and CaulkI paced and watched the youtube videos again. Then there was no avoiding it. I would have to caulk.
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But it took me an hour to figure out how to pierce the inner foil in the caulking gun. I had cut a small hole in the tip, like they said to. But that inner wrap was way in there. My jewelers’ screwdrivers would not fit down there. Would I have to go to Home Desperate and buy something? That seemed silly. The salespeople there would peg me as a novice. So I paced. Maybe I had some wire stiff enough to poke down in there. I finally found my smallest Allen wrench, and this was skinny enough and just barely long enough.
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The caulk did not seem to flow like it had in the videos. I realized that maybe my silicone caulk was different from what they were using. Mine did not seem to fill the gap between the tiles that well. Then again, in some places the gaps were huge. The previous owner had done this tile, and the next door neighbor had expressed his pride in this. “He did the remodeling himself,” he had said.
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Yeah. And now I’m having to redo his shower corners.
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He had sealed the corners with grout, but it was now crumbling. The internet says not to use grout on the corners because the joining of two planes is where the movement and stress occurs. Grout is not flexible and simply cracks under this stress, while caulk does have the flexibility to remain sound.
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So, I wondered during my hours of research, why does everyone use grout in the corners? Why, in the demonstrations, are they having to show us how to take out the grout before putting in the caulk?
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I finally learned. It is because, when tile is first installed, grout is mostly what they use to cement it in place. And since it is there, on hand, it is used in the corners too. So then it’s just a matter of time before the grout crumbles in the corners and needs to be sawed out and replaced with caulk.
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This is how it is. Someone does what’s easy at first. Then someone else has to come along and redo it later.
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My caulk bead is uneven, the lumpy wake from one motorboat that you bound across in yours. But the tiles are also unevenly spaced, with bumps that stop the tip and cause extra build-up; and gaps of varying width that need varying amounts. I use my finger a lot to rub off the excess on the edges, and shove it into the gap. The guys on TV didn’t use their fingers that much. I practically do everything with my finger. Why don’t I just caulk my finger and rub it all on that way like hydrocortizone?
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I know there’s a little hole in my work somewhere. In five years, there will be water damage under the shower despite my efforts. We’ll just have to pay for that then, and not trouble ourselves too much with thoughts of far-ranging causes, because normal people who own houses don’t do that.
</span>Elrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-15335984158145566322012-01-28T17:01:00.001-05:002012-01-28T17:02:28.177-05:00Be Careful Out ThereA friend said she cracked a rib by coughing. An X-ray confirms it. She had been sick, and you know how it can be when you're sick. You get good at coughing. You practice that rattling resonance in your throat, and you really get into it. She still has the cough, but because of the pain in the rib, she has to cough very carefully now.
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I strained my back from coughing one Saturday morning last December. I had not had enough sleep for many days, and my cough, which had been subsiding after a cold I had thought I was over, was bad again. And my back had been tweaked six days prior while pushing a housemate's van off its long-term parking spot on a bed of pine needles in our front yard. On that Saturday, in the midst of moving equipment from my house to my car, I paused with my hands resting on some cases on the dining room table. I coughed, and I felt that electric coil spiraling up my spine, muscles seizing from the base upward. It had been worse years ago, the first time it ever happened. That time, it happened while I was bending over tying my shoes, and it rendered me completely immobile. Now, maybe my conscious mind sent some ameliorative message down to those muscles as they were seizing: relax guys, it's just a cough, don't go completely on sabbatical on me. The seizing was not as bad as that first time tying my shoes, and I was still able to go to work. I could carry things as long as I kept my back rigidly straight, in good dancer form, using my ab muscles. Funny how back pain like that makes us all in to dancers. But I spent the day wincing. There was so much to lift: C-stands to hold sound blankets, the sound blankets themselves, the sandbags to hold down the C-stands. I went back and forth from the staging area on the porch to the dining room inside, carrying these things. I would be sometimes giving instructions to an assistant while lifting something ("When we roll . . ."), and when I felt a twinge in my back, my voice would become noticeably tight (". . . can you be sure the air system is turned off in the hallways, upstairs and downstairs"). But I would continue speaking right through the pain, and no one asked about it.
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And then there's this other guy I heard about who tore a hernia while laughing. He was just leaning back in his office chair and holding a pen in a weird way between his fingers. Someone came in and said something so funny that he was wracked with laughter -- and he was holding that pen weirdly, and his hernia tore and he had to go to the hospital.
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The moral of these stories? Be careful out there.
</span>Elrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-68350941247955616862011-10-08T14:17:00.000-04:002011-10-08T14:41:32.465-04:00First Visit to an Algae Farm<a href="http://algaeresource.com/">Alganomics</a> is a small algae company in Oak Island, NC. Located on the property of the wastewater treatment plant, the algae is grown in plastic tubes using reuse water from the plant. The operation is still in its experimental stage, like most algae operations around the world. I ache to see this industry take off, but I must be patient.
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For its next stage, Alganomics will build open ponds in a nearby park. Open ponds are the cheapest way to grow algae, but the drawback is that the particular strain of algae intended to be grown in the pond can find itself competing with less productive strains that invade the pond. To address this problem, Alganomics will use its plastic tubes to grow the desired algae strain in high concentrations. Then it will inoculate the open ponds with this strain, giving it an advantage over other strains.
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Extracting the oil is one of the biggest challenges in algae farming. I had not heard of Alganomics’ method before, which is to simply pressurize the solution of algae and water to crack open the algae cells. Whether this is cost effective remains to be seen. (Another interesting method I know of is that of is that of OriginOIl’s, which uses CO2 to lower the pH of the algae/water solution, then adds radiation to crack the cells.)
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Alganomics’ extraction compressor is on a trailer. It can travel to natural ponds all over the region and remove the oil from the algae growing in those ponds. I think the intention is not to make a business out of farming algae in natural ponds, but rather to show farmers that they can set up their own algae production facilities, use manure from their farm as fertilizer, and have their oil harvested periodically by the mobile extractor.
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This speaks to the local aspect of algae farming, which is like the local food movement. By reusing and recycling pollution (manure and CO2 for instance) locally, communities can produce their own fuel with little outside input. This would be quite a transformation in how we look at energy. But, the economic feasibility of algae farming has yet to be proven.
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The leading project in the world to watch for algae feasibility on a large scale is <a href="http://vimeo.com/28371121">this one in Australia, where MBD Energy and Origin Oil are working to grow algae on the CO2 emissions from a power plant</a>.
<br></span>Elrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-47117190633058775512011-10-03T13:42:00.000-04:002011-10-03T14:44:01.301-04:00A CommentWhen I comment on a Pajamas Media I have to copy the comment on my own blog just to insure that it appears somewhere. It likely will not pass "moderation" on PJ Media. The following comment was made on this article about how the <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/09/30/blowout/#comment-177476">U.S. will be the "Saudi Arabia" of oil by 2017</a>.
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The first big question the shale gas drillers need to answer is, where will they get the fresh water required to do this? Each well requires over 3 million gallons of fresh water. Anyone reading his have drought conditions where they live?
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Then, there is <a href="http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/hydrofracking/methane-levels-17-times-higher-in-water-wells-near-hydrofracking-sites">this study</a> finding a correlation between high methane levels in drinking water and proximity to fracking wells:
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Finally, Small Town America is becoming important. The conservative town of Dish, TX has experienced air and water contamination from fracking. If fracking is coming to your town, as the people of Dish learned, don't be too quick to dismiss environmentalists. <a href="http://www.water-contamination-from-shale.com/texas/hydraulic-fracturing-in-texas/">You might have to become one yourself.</a>
</span>Elrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-28392126102989729342011-10-01T16:51:00.000-04:002011-10-09T10:38:57.748-04:00Making TracksDeer appear as if they’ve floated in, like cottonwood seeds. How do such creatures with hooves move so silently? These are not the horses for whom your mother demonstrated her love by mounting and riding them for hours on end. They do not whinny or gallop or become spooked by mere treacherous terrain. They arrive without fanfare, minding their business; and when they are startled, they bound into thickets where lumbering horses could not tread, leaving no trace.
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You crack open your door and see one. It’s looking at you, its bay-leaf ears cupped in your direction, judging distance. Take a few steps and it might bolt, and you don’t want that. Rare is the yard, you think, that welcomes deer. So you carefully lower yourself each step down to the walkway, then skirt the yard. You're going to get your day timer from your car. The deer continue grazing, affirming your behavior as non-threatening.
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At your car you look back to the yard and see that others have joined the first. A small one with spots has taken the lead into the yard. The medium sized one you saw first is just behind it. The third is bigger still, but does not have antlers. So perhaps the buck is remaining concealed somewhere, watching the others to make sure they are grazing safely.
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You retrace your deferential path, still hoping not to startle them. There is not just the distance from yourself to the one. Now there is your distance to the other three, and also their own spacing to each other. They’ve triangulated in your yard, staked boundaries like a surveying crew. It’s nature’s turf, a new order descended without a sound.
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Back in your house, you shut the door as quietly as you can and describe the incident to a housemate. Later he goes out and returns to say they had gone, returning your yard to its usual boundaries agreed upon by owner and city.
</span>Elrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-84917388482270830102011-09-29T11:15:00.004-04:002011-10-03T13:38:33.529-04:00Conservative Values Trading CardsThere's a political candidate some are calling "Ol' Tool Shed" because of his TV ad showing him sitting in his tool shed. Apparently, he said at one point that he and his friends get together there to discuss conservative values.<br /><br />Some liberals and I were thinking, we've probably heard in the news what all these values are. Do those folks at the tool shed really sit around rehashing what's in public discourse? How interesting is that?<br /><br />I wondered if those folks at the tool shed might have their conservative values on trading cards, and trade them like baseball cards. "I'll trade your tax cuts for 10,000 NPR cuts." You know, that kind of thing.<br /><br />Then the ideas started flying:<br /><br />"I'll see your Defense of Marriage and raise you One Immigrant Wall."<br /><br />"I'll see your <a href="http://www.politicalaffairs.net/prison-lobbyists-help-spread-anti-immigrant-laws-to-u-s-south/">Prison Lobby</a> and raise you one <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism">American Exceptionalism</a>."<br /><br />"I'll see your Heartland and raise you one <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/opinion/putting-an-antebellum-myth-about-slave-families-to-rest.html">Happy Slave</a>."
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Anyone else have suggestions?
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Oh, here's one: "I'll see your Joe the Plumber and raise you one Bigger Oil Producer than Saudi Arabia in 2017."Elrond Hubbardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11723771523336254820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-41903088952680655212011-07-06T01:40:00.001-04:002011-07-06T23:49:52.171-04:00Some Neighbors Might Notice Their Garbage HeavierI had moved shelves to the new place but left papers and magazines they had once held strewn about the floors in the old place. H-Town and The Prophet wanted to bag the papers.<br />
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"I was just going to take them out when some recycling bin or garbage can became free," I said. Tomorrow was to be garbage day, and then I would be able to refill the containers.<br />
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They wanted to bag them now to make it easier to take the stuff out. I didn't think this was necessary, but I said okay.<br />
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But then leaving the old house tonight, I saw the neighbors' garbage and recycling containers standing at the curb. Did any of them sleep in the front rooms of their houses? Would any hear a slight rattle of cans?<br />
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I went back inside and brought out some recycling bags. The neighbor across the street had filled his recycling bin half way. I filled it the rest of the way, upgrading his waste by adding Outside magazines to his mere beer cans. <br />
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A second neighbor had garbage and recycling bins nearly empty. I filled these as well. <br />
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From down the street there were gunshots. I figured I'd better move fast lest someone imagine some connection between the shots and the Mad Recycler on their own block.<br />
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Returning to a third neighbor with still more bags, I saw the neighbor at the second house actually standing at her recycling bin, looking at the papers I had added to it. This was after midnight. <br />
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I whispered loudly, "I'm adding stuff to everyone's recycling bins."<br />
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"What?" she said. I repeated myself. <br />
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"I wanted to put this in," she said, hefting a cardboard box full of more stuff. <br />
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"Well here," I said. I dropped my stuff, went to her, took her box, and dumped it into the third neighbor's bin. I think fast like that sometimes because I play those computer games where you move things around to solve puzzles. <br />
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I then dumped my stuff on top of it, swung the lid shut, and said, "That's cool, right?"<br />
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"Fine," she said, turning and going back to her house. <br />
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Sheesh lady, just trying to spread a little love here. <br />
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Good thing I'm leaving. <br />
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-92171607222469938532011-06-27T11:23:00.001-04:002011-06-27T13:13:31.694-04:00It's Like The Rapture Up In HereThey're all gone. The housemates have gotten their acts together and mostly moved their personal stuff out. I've been detained by excess cleaning of filthy appliances, carpets, trash in the basement, none of which was put there by any present housemates, including myself, but for which, having lived here for 17 years, I feel more responsible.<br />
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H-Town and Tater-T moved first, carrying out their boxes a few at a time, making many trips in their mini-vans. Now their rooms are empty. This weekend, only The Prophet and I were left, feeling like it was The Rapture, with our comrades now passed on to a better place -- a place, in this case, with air conditioning. Last night The Prophet made dinner here and left his dirty dishes, and went to the new place. Today I woke up alone. <br />
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Stopping over at the new place, finding them settling in, it's different. In recent years in the old house, we never had played music in the common spaces. Now, H has set up a small stereo in the living room and was playing the sugary pop of today, which sounds like either Black Eyed Peas or Lady Gaga, depending on whether the singer is Black or White. They asked me where I would put the disturbing art of wood, nails, and glass that dates back to the genesis of our old house, and I said I didn't know -- it is perhaps too heavy to hang on the drywall. The Prophet mentioned the mantle over the fireplace, and H said maybe it could go there. "The art is dark, and might blend in there. I could accept that," he said. <br />
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In the old house, the art was grandfathered in. Now, H-Town decides. <br />
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Speaking of the mantle, I said I'd like to put that picture of myself with those old housemates from 17 years ago on it. <br />
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"No," said The Prophet. "This is a new house."<br />
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"I never want to hear about those folks again," said Tater.<br />
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We're getting the truck today. We will keep it for 3 days, moving in the evening hours the big furniture, including my bed. Perhaps tonight I, too, will sleep in AC. But I will have much work to do back here before it's all over. <br />
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-51932735966599648892011-06-20T23:54:00.003-04:002011-06-20T23:55:50.084-04:00Quite a StatementOne friend lent me his paper shredder, but another said it sucks and lent me his as well. The second friend said of the first's, "His makes thick strips. Mine makes thing ones."<br />
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Like tagliarini vs. fettucini, I figured. Or Burger King fries vs. home style. <br />
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As an afterthought before leaving me to feed the machines, the second friend said that his shredder tends to shut off when it overheats. You can't do anything until it cools off. <br />
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So I use the second paper shredder until it overheats. Then I set it aside and use the first one. It also overheats. Then both need to cool. I have 17 years of paper statements to go through, and it's not pretty. I had thought about just burning them, but I wanted to be environmentally conscious and shred them for recycling. Now I'm not so sure. Still, to sit and feed these to a fire would take just as much time, maybe. <br />
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The shredder can fills quickly with the fluffy strips. While the shredders cool, I take the can to the recycling bin and dump it in. All that paper pasta is filling the bin fast. I scoop it in my hands and turn it over, as if it were compost needing fresh air. I hold it to my nose and smell something comforting in it. What does it remind me of? It takes me several trips to the bin to finally identify it. It is the same smell as the paper in the Hardy Boys books I loved when life was simple, when I was not getting kicked out of my house with nothing to show for it but the joke of having lived here for 17 years with some 50+ different housemates, all of whom the landlord never knew about, paying dirt cheap rent . . . and after all this time, the joke still feels cut short. I had wanted to stay until I could finally buy a house. Now I simply must move, like commonplace people do. <br />
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Seventeen years of statements. This is quite a statement. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-8148961528858921222011-04-19T21:48:00.001-04:002011-04-19T21:49:38.306-04:00An Open Letter to Former HousematesYou dressed mummies in a second floor bedroom . . . <br />
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You took calls in a fundraiser for Hell in the dining room lined in plastic . . .<br />
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You wired the living room for heart-popping beats when techno was still technical . . .<br />
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You were not too proud to sweat with 20 or so others in our rooms of barren plaster and no AC to watch countless season openers and closers of Star Trek . . . or flicks by Pedro Almodovar or Peter Greenaway or Andrei Tarkovsky. <br />
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How much would you pay now to own a piece of your post-college past? <br />
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It’s not just a piece we’re talking about. It’s the whole place. <br />
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Yes, now your old hippie group home can be yours for the ridiculously high price of just 300,000! Hardly a wall has been painted, a floor waxed, a bathroom mildew stain scrubbed since you left. Everything is just as you left it, but multiplied . . . no, exponentiated! A single washer dryer set in the basement has become two; a few unclaimed clothes strewn about have become heaps; that collapsing shed in the back has collapsed further like the body of some decaying animal once bloated by the gasses of bacterial digestion, but now slowly deflating while snakes and maggots scurry around it. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1818-Glendale-Ave_Durham_NC_27701_M64573-92541
">Act now while supplies last!</a><br />
<br />
(Just please don’t kick us out or raise the rent. If 300,000 is too high for you to pay, name your own price. You might get laughed at now, but soon enough they’ll come around. As one housemate said, “We can live here until we die while the price is 300,000.)<br />
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-24444980273017776422011-04-07T20:51:00.002-04:002011-04-07T20:51:49.944-04:00A Moonshine PartyI understand that the Tea Party is a movement desiring small government and low taxes, and that its name references the Boston Tea Party which was a protest against taxation without representation. <br />
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But what about the moonshiners? They eschewed not only taxation without representation, but taxation of all kinds. If Tea Partiers are serious, shouldn't they become Moonshine Partiers?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-61898765299160477812011-03-29T15:24:00.001-04:002011-03-29T23:56:22.973-04:00Brownwashing is the New Green?I’ve only heard this word "brownwashing" from Riggs Eckelberry of Origin Oil, and it refers to the absorption, by algae, of the CO2 in smokestack emissions from power plants. The algae uses the CO2 to produce oil which can be harvested and re-used as fuel. So, essentially, brownwashing is carbon recycling. <br />
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(For a while, some folks thought CO2 from power plants needed to be buried in the ground. But after <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/prairies/carbon-capture-project-leaking-into-their-land-couple-says/article1866299/">this farmer</a> in Canada, whose land lies above the world’s biggest carbon sequestration project, found his damp ground and puddles to be bubbling like tonic water, and small animals that live near the ground to be dying, the idea of burying carbon might be defunct.)<br />
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Eckelberry and others have been saying for some time that algae, as a fuel source, will first appear in conjunction with some other purpose, and brownwashing is such a purpose. <br />
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The first company to make a major attempt to recycle power plant carbon emissions was Greenfuels Technologies. They installed test facilities at Arizona Public Service’s Redhawk natural gas plant, and NRG’s Big Cajun II in Louisiana. But then <a href="http://elrondhubbard.blogspot.com/2009/07/first-bad-news.html">Greenfuels went out of business</a>. APS seems to be making some attempt to <a href="http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/aps-gets-70.5m-to-feed-captured-carbon-to-algae/">continue the experiment</a>, but no recent news on this can be found. <br />
<br />
There are lots of other algae companies around the world working on carbon capture from power plants, but the project that seems to be leading the way is the collaboration between Origin Oil and MBD Energy in Australia. <br />
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<a href="http://www.mbdenergy.com/">MBD</a> is a company focused on carbon recycling, while Origin Oil is, for now, focused on extracting oil from algae. Oil extraction has been one of the major obstacles in algae farming, but Origin Oil claims to have cost effective methods. Their <a href="http://www.originoil.com/technology/single-step-extraction.html">Single Step Extraction</a> method is to infuse algae-laden water with extra CO2 to lower its pH; then to use low energy electromagnetic radiation to break the algae cells. They also have <a href="http://www.originoil.com/technology/live-extraction.html">Live Extraction</a> which uses electromagnetic pulses to make algae cells leak their oil without killing the cells. The algae can then continue to produce more oil without needing to grow entire new cells. <br />
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How cost effective are Origin Oil’s methods? There is no way to tell just from reviewing company press releases. But we can watch what happens in Australia. To my knowledge, this collaboration is the first time an algae-fuel technology has been purchased from a company; and the first phase has been successful, so <a href="http://www.originoil.com/company-news/originoil-lands-first-order-for-industrial-scale-algae-oil-extraction-system.html">the next phase</a>, a scaling-up of the operation, is underway. <br />
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-47307353126534587172011-03-13T13:59:00.000-04:002011-03-13T13:59:10.627-04:00Explaining ConservativesFor some years, I've been explaining liberals and conservatives this way: A liberal is someone who wants to control how much money someone else makes; a conservative is someone who wants to control how much sex someone else has. <br />
<span id="fullpost"><br />
Neither side exerts any control over itself -- the distinction is in how each side tries to control others. <br />
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For example, if liberals really wanted to help the poor, we would spend our own income, privately, to do so. But instead, we want to tax others -- the rich -- to pay for social programs. And, if conservatives really wanted to save lives, then before engaging in war, they would explore all possible alternatives and consider likely undesirable or mixed outcomes that would show the loss of lives and money to be unwise.<br />
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Given today's conservatives' general support of our current wars and death penalty, it would be hard to understand their anti-abortion stance if it were not for my original premise. By forcing us all to give birth to, and care for, all the babies we conceive, they think they can reduce how much sex we have. But if we are allowed to abort our babies, then we are getting away with sex and not having to face the consequences. My premise also explains their stance on gay marriage. Opposing it allows them to at least imagine that they are reducing gay sex, which is a subset of all sex. <br />
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Recently, a friend postulated a different explanation of what makes a conservative vs. a liberal. He said that it depends on the degree of exploitation on is willing to tolerate. For example, conservatives may oppose unions and civil rights movements because these rally against exploitation. Conservatives may favor business deregulation because it allows businesses to behave more abusively toward the environment and general public.<br />
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Now, I counter with yet another explanation about conservatives and liberals. It's not so much about money and sex, or exploitation. It's about authority. Basically, conservatives align themselves with icons and institutions of authority, and liberals align themselves with questioning, opposing, subverting authority. <br />
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For instance, why are conservatives so worried now about the Middle East uprisings against totalitarian governments when the Iraq war was justified, in the mid 2000's, on the basis of bringing self-determinism to the Middle East? My answer is that it's about authority -- with the U.S. needing to be, in conservatives' eyes, the highest authority. Mubarak was playing our game by shutting off supplies to Palestinians and keeping control of the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia was keeping the oil flowing. Gaddafi had renounced WMD's in the early 2000's, which had seemed he was submitting to U.S. authority expressed in our invasion of Iraq. But now these three governments are being removed, questioned, or fought, and conservatives are worried about how the U.S. will maintain its authority in the Middle East.<br />
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Opposition to abortion and gay marriage is also related to authority. The process of getting married and having children is traditional, and tradition carries authority. For sex to happen out of wedlock, or for its resultant child to be aborted, or for it to happen between same-sex partners subverts tradition and is thus frowned upon. <br />
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"Family Values" is about authority. Opposition to the "Ground Zero Mosque" is about authority -- indeed, it has been called by conservatives a "slap in the face" for being so close to the World Trade Center site, where it was shown that despite our robust military and authority in the world, we can be penetrated.<br />
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Fossil fuels are now a tradition and are associated with big international businesses which have lots of money and carry lots of authority. Nuclear energy and its associated weapons also carry lots of authority. However, wind power, tidal power, algae fuel, and other alternative energy sources carry comparatively little authority. <br />
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For what other issues can the conservative vs. liberal stance be explained by positions with respect to authority?<br />
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-52225163333831944252011-02-18T17:45:00.001-05:002011-02-28T22:54:58.136-05:00Mating by the InterstateAn audio experience:<br />
<span id="fullpost"> <embed width="160" src=https://sites.google.com/site/elrondaudio/home/mating-by-the-interstate/TreeFrogs1.mp3?attredirects=0&d=1" autostart="true" loop="true" height="50"></embed><br />
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-56468800382841045072011-02-17T12:52:00.000-05:002011-02-17T12:52:58.393-05:00Not The Last Semi-Authoritarian Regime?I was going to joke that, with all these Middle East protests, soon only Iraq would have a semi-authoritarian regime. The current government there has been cited as <a href="http://www.carnegieendowment.org/arb/?fa=show&article=40278">one of the most corrupt in the world,</a> but I have been thinking that most Iraqis are tired of upheaval and would need a few years off before engaging in large-scale political activism. And, as if to forestall protests, <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41437551/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa/">Maliki said he would not run for prime minister for a third term.</a> <br />
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But now there are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/15/iraq-protesters-demand-jo_n_823607.html">small protests in Iraq</a> and efforts to make them large protests. So maybe we will see a larger movement. The problem in Iraq is that it is the Middle Eastern country most fractured along ethnic and sectarian divides. Protests there would not take the form of "people vs. government" so much as "people vs. people vs. government," in violent competition to see what group might prevail. We saw this situation already in the civil war that flared prior to the surge, Awakening Councils, and the near purging of Sunnis from Baghdad. And with some of the U.S. military still there, it would be hard for us to maintain the distance stance we have kept from other protests. After all, this is the country that the U.S. had a direct hand in "liberating." Can we allow it to appear to need to be liberated again?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-19276534953301133482011-02-09T20:54:00.000-05:002011-02-09T20:54:42.419-05:00Late Night Thoughts on Listening to "Hey Mama"What are kids today supposed to think? If the music they hear is mostly commercial stuff such as the Black Eyed Peas' <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtczBseiAac">Hey Mama</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqV7DB8Iwg&NR=1">Let's Get It Started,</a> where do they think music comes from? They can see that vocals come from the voice, sure. But the instrumental parts? That appears to emanate from the dancing. <br />
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We see instruments in some videos, yes. There's a rock band in the background of "Started" and there's a chamber orchestra in "Shut Up." But the sounds we hear are not what come from these instruments, mostly. <br />
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And the stars of the videos are never instrumentalists anyway. If they produce sound from anything other than their voices, it's by manipulating a turntable with a record -- which itself is a recording. So, in the music video, which is how we receive recorded music these days, we watch a guy playing a recording. Isn't this like not watching a basketball game, but instead watching a video in which the Lakers are watching a video of themselves, or someone else even, playing basketball?<br />
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When do kids these days become inspired to actually play an instrument?<br />
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<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KRzMtlZjXpU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-20740782568720365632011-02-03T21:45:00.002-05:002011-02-03T22:06:03.822-05:00This Would Have Cut "Black Swan" ShortWhen the choreographer was asking his lead if she masturbates, a more world-weary dancer might have said, "Yeah, I masturbate. Is that why you invited me up here? You just wanted to ask me if I masturbate? Shoot. I could be home masturbating right now."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-15017473463250756012011-01-13T17:50:00.000-05:002011-01-13T17:50:51.498-05:00Killing Government ProgramsRepresentative Gohmert wants to introduce <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/13/louie-gohmert-congress-guns_n_808436.html">legislation</a> allowing members of Congress to carry concealed weapons to the Capital and around D.C. This is one way to shrink government -- let Congressmen shoot each other. <br />
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On the other hand, there is Peter King's <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/11/peter-king-strict-gun-control_n_807323.html">move</a> to ban guns within 1000 feet of a government official. <br />
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Don't they know that if both laws are passed, they'll need to build a gigantic capital building?<br />
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P.S. I'd put this on facebook, but I'm trying not to use violent language in public forums. My public blog, on the other hand, is basically a private forum.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-80295211356737696622010-12-30T15:12:00.001-05:002010-12-30T15:15:54.792-05:00Class DistinctionIt’s a process that few would understand. Certainly not the realtor who sat under the chandelier and proclaimed that the house and property we rent could sell for over $300,000 as it is now (in need of much renovation and central air) if the empty side yard is big enough to build another house on. <br />
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Sitting with a more understanding friend under that same chandelier, I explained it thusly: We keep four of the bulbs in it loose enough to not shine, and the fifth tightened until it does shine. That is a bright enough light for that room, though being a point-source, it casts stagey horror-flick shadows. When that light burns out, we tighten another, making it glow until it burns out. <br />
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“How many housemates do you have here?” said my friend.<br />
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I told him five. <br />
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“So each housemate could be responsible for one,” he said. <br />
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Yes, I said. And when all five have burned out, then it’s time to change the filter in the Brita pitcher, I said. <br />
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It’s a beautiful process. And yet, like the realtor, whatever sucker buys this heap of bricks for $300,000 certainly would not understand.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-80051555419440963382010-12-01T16:17:00.002-05:002010-12-02T08:34:17.722-05:00Why Did She Do It?I had simply taken 6 months to complete my registration on Freecycle, a process drawn out partly by the numerous obstacles established by the group’s proprietor, who is quite the net-nanny when it comes to keeping scammers off her site. I swear, you could let your pre-schoolers on there talking about free toilet seats or hernia belts, and they really would be talking about just those exact things, with people not lying about their age or gender.<br />
<span id="fullpost"><br />
To register on Freecycle, you have to send an email saying you will follow the rules. And then, to post, you have to follow the rules. Which I didn’t on two attempts each to offer two items, a washer and a dryer, which have been out-of-service for years and probably don’t work. My last rejection was back in May, and I didn’t follow up on it for months. But this past Monday we got the bad news that our landlord was sending a realtor to check out or property with an eye toward deciding whether to sell it in the next year. This means we better be purging. So I took a deep breath and my ADD pills and set out to follow the rules exactly this time. <br />
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Within hours of posting, someone responded. She wanted the washer. We worked it out. She would rent a Home Despot pickup truck and come get it after work. <br />
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I worried. I had envisioned two guys in overalls from Habitat or something, with ownership of a truck and skills at repair presumed -- not some single woman having to rent a pickup. <br />
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I wrote back, “You understand these have not been used for years, right, and might not work?”<br />
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She didn’t respond to that, and I thought she might not show up. <br />
<br />
I was heading out to clip my nails in the dark front yard around 6pm when a stranger came up the walkway toward me, her feet shushing through the leaves. She was the type who refused to raise her voice, and thus, didn’t respond to my calling out, “Hello?” as she approached. She was in handshaking distance when she said her name. Her truck was down the street -- she was walking house-to-house so she could read numbers. <br />
<br />
I directed her to drive around back and I opened the cellar door. Her pickup had come with a handtruck but no straps or ramps. We dusted off the washer, and I said again, “Are you sure you want this,” reminding her that it had not been used for years.<br />
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She said she didn’t mind tinkering with it, and did I know what a new washer cost these days?<br />
<br />
I reminded myself that these were free. But still, it seemed, since she had paid for truck rental, that she was paying too much.<br />
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Housemates came out and gathered ‘round, and we hoisted the washer on to the back of her pickup.<br />
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She had not asked about the dryer, but I pointed that out to her. “Sure, I’ll take it,” she said. So we wheeled that out and lifted it onto the truck. <br />
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Then we went about the basement gathering up old boxes and styrofoam packing material to put in the spaces in the truck bed to keep the washer and dryer from clanking against each other. <br />
<br />
I offered her all the rest of the contents of the basement, but she declined. Indeed, taking the old unused washer and dryer was aid enough for us. We had been talking for years about cleaning out the basement. We had had a yard sale and barely sold anything (and had been unable to sell this washer and dryer); we had talked about taking them to the landfill where we would probably have to pay a fee for dumping them; we had cleaned out a few other things around them. Still, these appliances had remained unyielding in their spots, essentially natural rocky outcroppings, immovable in our basement, a burden persisting.<br />
<br />
Now, just because I had managed to send a few emails correctly, someone else had rented a truck and taken them. It’s like a void opened where a bad feeling had been; like being absolved of guilt. Some of our persisting roots have been uprooted. I can see to a day when we might actually float free. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-58760383380799631322010-11-14T15:18:00.009-05:002010-11-14T16:10:26.307-05:00Being Counted<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJbeIMu8Pl3mD4c7FSxNGLH4C_1whJcu1TDZ8Jkh_Y00Y_VtdgVv0vf7GUMmYJ5aasRruGNAz__IaKA1Ri_NglhlLecaq9gd2pq5uZ1nniyWbOlIouHAx4KZDLpzUDS1S6kQSsmdCNWN8/s1600/RallyTowardNorth.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJbeIMu8Pl3mD4c7FSxNGLH4C_1whJcu1TDZ8Jkh_Y00Y_VtdgVv0vf7GUMmYJ5aasRruGNAz__IaKA1Ri_NglhlLecaq9gd2pq5uZ1nniyWbOlIouHAx4KZDLpzUDS1S6kQSsmdCNWN8/s200/RallyTowardNorth.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539506254598198594" /></a><a href="http://www.bigshed.org/page2/page2.html">The podcaster asked me if I thought it was a cluster fuck</a>. I said, to describe it that way would be to disavow our newly cultivated caution against hyperbole. I said, instead, I would just call it . . . crowded. <br /><span id="fullpost"><br />During the drive up, Svetx had asked what would be most important to me about the rally. I said the important thing was to be counted. I had learned that phrase from a friend who was in a civil rights march one time. She got arrested, and said later that it was important to her to be counted with respect to that issue. <br /><br />This was my time to be counted. I wanted attendance at this rally to beat that of Glenn Beck’s. On the phone the night before, my step-father had assured me it would NOT surpass the Beck rally, and I needed to prove him wrong. <br /><br />Svetx said she was going to restore sanity. She said that, in any discourse, that was the first thing that should always be restored. <br /><br />We woke on Saturday in friend G’s apartment right across the street from the College Park metro station. We took our time and ventured into the chilly morning around 9:30. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6DLa5VcnPBGNIIFaU7KS-s3Ojhewuc9vYxQKKF84-GJIqjd3tBGSjbCxIOp1-UrpV3vgLU593lxBREqiLITuKN0ccQ7EedPO-86ZzF1G_ty52pODj7GKFcQ0k5gJ8Iucin8BdOwdNdps/s1600/College+Park+Crowd.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6DLa5VcnPBGNIIFaU7KS-s3Ojhewuc9vYxQKKF84-GJIqjd3tBGSjbCxIOp1-UrpV3vgLU593lxBREqiLITuKN0ccQ7EedPO-86ZzF1G_ty52pODj7GKFcQ0k5gJ8Iucin8BdOwdNdps/s200/College+Park+Crowd.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539505089756607314" /></a>At the metro station, the ticket line unfolded before us, laying dismay upon dismay, like some awful vista of a mob trying to fit itself into a few dinghies to escape the land-roving aliens in War of the Worlds. The crowd filled the large sheltered space before the ticket machines; it went 4-persons wide up the steps, around the corner, along the parking lot and into the parking deck. And it was not moving very fast, as if everyone were figuring out the ticket machines for the first time.<br /><br />I had not prepared properly. I should have had us purchase tickets the night before. This was not sane. <br /><br />I texted that sentiment to friends who were driving up from NC that morning. They texted back that they were at the station in Springfield and having the same trouble. <br /><br />One woman in line front of us said the line was worse than the line for Obama’s inauguration. A guy behind us said to bear in mind that this was a college stop and would draw an inordinately large crowd for a Stewart/Colbert event.<br /><br />This was my second strike. Not only should I have bought Metro tickets the night before, I should have thought that this might be a bad place to board the Metro. Svetx and I talked about driving to another station, or even driving downtown. But we figured, countryfolks like us shouldn’t try to drive in the city on a day like this. We stayed in the line. And, an hour later, we were buying tickets and heading to the platform where, thankfully, the distribution of people allowed us decent positioning to get on the train. <br /><br />We College Parkers did fill the train though, so that from the next stop onward, virtually no more were able to get on. Crowds on the platforms would look at us in disbelief as our doors opened and our ranks swelled outward a little, taking a breath, before retracting so that the doors could slam again. One rider yelled to waiting passengers, “Go to Greenbelt,” meaning, ride out of town to a station not crowded, then get on an empty train coming in. <br /><br />We had seen our first sign at College Park. It read, “Fear Through the Ages” and gave examples like “Satan” and “Fallen Women.” On the train we saw a woman with “I Could Be Working.” I was glad I had not executed my own sign idea, “Algae Oil -- The Sanest Transportation Fuel,” because now it seemed bland compared to these others.<br /><br />Folks pressed against us on the train said we should get off at the Archives. Sailing into that station, we saw hordes of people, shadowy through the train’s tinted glass. We wondered why this platform, the Metro exit point for rally-goers, was even more packed than those we had passed. Then, stepping out, of the train, we saw why. The exit escalator and gates were simply clogged. <br /><br />But this crowd was moving steadily, if slowly. We would get out. As long as nobody set off a bomb or something and caused a panic. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnqfN7eANii_SZao31stRomqMIEgH9KgzEpyMbnaSTn8MHUgafVwcal1VWwCtZZa_viql2k4nc4OLo83_ez2MvIzdofEhX5HLeVmwUyA0s81wQ-MS34xoPsb-KBy3MpxbE61vjWphj0ek/s1600/Metro+Sign.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnqfN7eANii_SZao31stRomqMIEgH9KgzEpyMbnaSTn8MHUgafVwcal1VWwCtZZa_viql2k4nc4OLo83_ez2MvIzdofEhX5HLeVmwUyA0s81wQ-MS34xoPsb-KBy3MpxbE61vjWphj0ek/s200/Metro+Sign.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539504730633482290" /></a>Ahead someone held a tall sign on a stake, like a military standard, leading the way. The Metro ceiling was high enough to allow this sign to tower above the rest of us, broadcasting its message even to this underground audience before emerging to its intended venue of daylight on the mall. <br /><br />For the Metro’s part, it doesn’t help that you have to run your ticket as you LEAVE the station, not just as you enter. Why on earth does DC require this? <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG0B0Ggk_6I8gHEakYyHxYvf2nA9DyWAfDHFe9XUBTGCTJRzmk-Bk58rqB0Zxli43r319ZvHkYfB9mFZHhIkrvBjzbo391fTbSSPdky3kutUh_CFWshxO6SzZu94MfTZzgUgXTeJdMtDs/s1600/CloseToRally.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG0B0Ggk_6I8gHEakYyHxYvf2nA9DyWAfDHFe9XUBTGCTJRzmk-Bk58rqB0Zxli43r319ZvHkYfB9mFZHhIkrvBjzbo391fTbSSPdky3kutUh_CFWshxO6SzZu94MfTZzgUgXTeJdMtDs/s200/CloseToRally.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539505258238262514" /></a>Upstairs in daylight, everyone walked with long strides on streets, sidewalks, low walls bordering sidewalks, heading south toward sunlight, toward the wide open space lined with grand marble buildings, toward shimmering glints in windows. We ignored regulatory walk signs and simply crossed, giving cars no chance. We passed hucksters selling activist buttons and signs -- the pink booby awareness people, the abortion people, some Guantanamo people -- groups I’ve only seen, heretofore, on TV -- and one guy advertising “Generic Signs” holding my favorite for the day: “My Balls Itch No Matter Who’s In Charge.”<br /><br />Clearly, this was the big time. <br /><br />Ahead of us bobbed other signs advancing toward the Mall, including “God Hates Figs: Mark 11:12-14”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzQwMolgus-LQcrjAWXn0yz9VxNdyLAueUp7Yjyix_yteGZD7zfpto00T2UDVZDSlZgDZhKnKcnyS3csosuKsgOacBiZu2vyZT6OL1yE6YhyPDrlzlnloySBzbLVSZMgtFdaem6vinA88/s1600/TowardWashMon.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzQwMolgus-LQcrjAWXn0yz9VxNdyLAueUp7Yjyix_yteGZD7zfpto00T2UDVZDSlZgDZhKnKcnyS3csosuKsgOacBiZu2vyZT6OL1yE6YhyPDrlzlnloySBzbLVSZMgtFdaem6vinA88/s200/TowardWashMon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539505455391433970" /></a><br />We were on 7th, which was supposed to be the back of the Rally. Entering the Mall, though, it seemed the crowd stretched equally far toward the Capitol and toward the Washington Monument. <br /><br />I’ve been tuned to crowd murmurs since, as a child, my Dad would listen to the Metropolitan Opera on the radio. He once told me that as soon as we heard the crowd noise on the radio broadcast, that would be the top of the hour, and I could set my watch. <br /><br />I would do this every Saturday. I learned to spot that audience murmur as soon as I heard it. Now, entering the Mall, we became enveloped in a crowd murmur far more substantive. The 200,000+ voices sounded hushed under the big bright sky, with no concert hall to lend its reverberation. But like the <a href="http://elrondhubbard.blogspot.com/2010/07/grass.html">South Dakota grass</a>, there was power in the numbers.<br /><br />And, like the South Dakota grass, there were waves. We would hear a roar coming and, country boy that I am, I would experience slight panic -- was there a terrorist attack going on ahead where we couldn’t see? The roar would come closer and we would hear the strength in those voices, the mid-range growing, alarming; and then there would be the hands in the air and we would raise our hands too, and the wave would pass on. <br /><br />It probably took us half an hour to cross the Mall on 7th. Then we spent another half-hour crossing back. Like hardening concrete, the mob was getting denser, and we needed to quickly pick the spot we would be cemented to. So we stood at the back of 7th sort of behind and to the side of the TV trucks. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXLph-FHf4_u4fWw4D9HuPGYoVtP3sLGhmIVdDYSscRP6WlEhiTVzl6VSJvLx9_iuDTgReWM_SIhUCdI8lLo2SGzE8UQI3MUZVn5LyRToqWvOcKnD-daMPa-o_gvHvOtXn885-FHCe8A4/s1600/TowardCapitol.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXLph-FHf4_u4fWw4D9HuPGYoVtP3sLGhmIVdDYSscRP6WlEhiTVzl6VSJvLx9_iuDTgReWM_SIhUCdI8lLo2SGzE8UQI3MUZVn5LyRToqWvOcKnD-daMPa-o_gvHvOtXn885-FHCe8A4/s200/TowardCapitol.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539505733304214882" /></a><br />We could barely see a jumbotron and hear a stand of speakers; then an ambulance parked in our line-of-sight, and obscured both of these. We essentially saw and heard nothing through the entire rally.<br /><br />In front of us, on 7th, the concrete never fully hardened. People oozed past in both directions, pressing each other. And, strangely, immediately to my left, there was a constant single-person thick trickle of people going both in to, and out of, the grass behind us. It was like when you take a decongestant, and you can’t believe how relentlessly your snot flows out. This line of people flowed through the whole rally. A grumpy northeasterner just to the other side of this trickle kept griping at the people. “We’re going to cut this off. There’s no room back there. Why are you heading there?”<br /><br />Expressing counter sentiment, one passing mom said, “Cut it off after me. My son just went through.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8GFYp8fY4erl_5X-_IVomDSuClZ3waIjK5D5KCKeRT2RpyPmS-dugg4C31QgrWrV1NXFRTTNHwcriY0ctU6zPWdFLKCXUBU0TMedO1GW0qgULc4yZvBdO5BDQhWCGNmvWYTYLKKhC2Es/s1600/RallyTowardSouth.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8GFYp8fY4erl_5X-_IVomDSuClZ3waIjK5D5KCKeRT2RpyPmS-dugg4C31QgrWrV1NXFRTTNHwcriY0ctU6zPWdFLKCXUBU0TMedO1GW0qgULc4yZvBdO5BDQhWCGNmvWYTYLKKhC2Es/s200/RallyTowardSouth.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539506583168665298" /></a>When the Rally was over, we just stayed where we were. The crowd thinned slowly. A set of signs went by, each held by a different person: “How Do We Get Out Of Here?” “I Don’t Know.” “How ‘Bout That Way?” “Okay.”<br /><br />Svetx and I laid down in the grass and rested our backs. The late October sun was still bright, but angled low in the sky. It would be a long time before anyone could freely walk wherever one wanted. I later heard that, into the night on blocks surrounding the mall, people could be seen still wandering or just sitting on the sidewalks in their folding lawn chairs, with no idea what to do for the night. Hotels and transportation were probably booked, leaving them with no options.<br /><br />Text messages had been impossible during the rally, but when they finally started again, friends said that they were at the Archives steps. We met up there, and wandered to view the WWII Memorial. <br /><br />The WWII Memorial does make great use of spacial divisions, with upper layers of flat pools giving way to waterfalls which spill to lower layers; and curving ramps that draw the visitor down to its bottom layer. But what’s with the columns depicting names of states and territories? Arkansas, Alabama . . . these words alone do not represent soldiers fallen in war. If I had not known this was a WWII memorial, I would have thought it was simply a monument commemorating the states, as stamps and quarters do.<br /><br />The Vietnam Memorial, on the other hand, is a truer memorial in my view. There is no confusion about what the names listed there mean, and no way not to be conscious of the death. Every visit there, I have seen people making rubbings from the names of the dead, and volunteers helping them and answering questions. This is what a memorial is for -- place to address the pain. I’ve known no one who died in that war, but it is hard even for me to go there without being moved to tears. Svetx’s father was in the war and surely he knows lots of names on the wall. I think about how I’m so glad he survived, and I think about the others coming here who know a name on the wall, and for whom the only explanation I can give is that a president did not want to appear soft on communism.<br /><br />Friend S pointed out that the list of names for memorial for an Iraq and Afghanistan war would have a distinction from the Vietnam list: Many would be Latin American. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ-5brkEzrqVofmi355XydGn9nwFqtPsQrO5A2UvjY2OOU9pUm0527m5DHe7hQaO5w3tgjnZGuz7p1arWXUro6VFB7QnTIXsKmBEuM5PP1Q0Nx2OoQwRAC8Rl2OxiBbSExRApspHJCfdk/s1600/LincolnMem.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ-5brkEzrqVofmi355XydGn9nwFqtPsQrO5A2UvjY2OOU9pUm0527m5DHe7hQaO5w3tgjnZGuz7p1arWXUro6VFB7QnTIXsKmBEuM5PP1Q0Nx2OoQwRAC8Rl2OxiBbSExRApspHJCfdk/s200/LincolnMem.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539507730991365842" /></a>We moved on to the Lincoln Memorial, which now stood on its hill in the setting sun. Inside are the words of a president who served during war and claimed responsibility for his decisions about that war, vocally questioned his own wisdom, and observed the correlation between the slashes of the swords and the lashes of the whips in slavery. How refreshing this is compared to today’s politicians who never seem to question themselves, and never acknowledge how our nations past actions may have contributed to present strife. <br /><br />The Lincoln Memorial has been the site of past rallies of people who really needed to rally. They were oppressed, or protesting a war, for instance. In my lifetime, I have also seen rallies of laborers, people seeking abortion rights, women’s rights. I have not felt moved to attend any of these. Why, of all rallies, did I come to the Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear?<br /><br />Because it struck a chord. Because I get it -- at least, I hope I can claim to be one of the “It Getters” that Colbert identified as the viewers of his first show back in 2005. It was a rally about rallies, with signs mostly mocking or referencing slogans from past rallies, and Stewart invoking the criteria on which past rallies have been judged -- the size and composition of the crowd -- and declaring the rally to have some exaggerated number of people, just as past rally organizers have done. <br /><br />We were not desperate people fighting for civil rights, as many Americans rightfully have done; and we do not perceive ourselves to be living under a socialist or Muslim president. We are the more middle-ground folks, the “million moderates,” in Stewart’s words. <br /><br />Probably, we can afford to be moderate because we are just lucky. But surely it is a good sign that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/30/rally-to-restore-sanity-attendance_n_776547.html">our rally was more than double the size of the teabaggers’</a>.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4173612660935544309.post-78125917299356313072010-09-23T00:10:00.006-04:002010-09-23T00:36:34.783-04:00Ideas for Signs for the Rally to Restore Sanity<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.rallytorestoresanity.com/"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 140px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVj4WC70CyrtvNUR26sYil7rnXjAbUA8mapnq_Zs6csfFeYGRXvX6c_5VIV1rZlORbktIUPMdiTfOFq-5dk9NDeSBN4yGjxRMeOIJjHFwqOTqXLE6hltbdkK7qDNcMZdKTMOgMT7FjyZA/s200/jon_image.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519961728166036306" /></a>Here's all I have so far:<br /><br />"Hitler . . . Was a 'Ho!"<br /><br />"Once you steep loose tea, you can't go back to bags."<br /><br />"Hey Teabaggers, you're not grassroots. Everybody knows Fox News and Dick Armey sencha!"<br /><br />"The best way to steep tea . . . is in a French press!"Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0