Weblog 138
September 28, 2008~ 5:15am
I have the most beautiful sense of serenity that comes from a solitary (for the most part) existence.
My life is laid out in a kind of roped-off grid, and walls are not bad things when used wisely. It means I let in what I choose and (for the most part) when I choose. This prevents a lot of the feelings of resentment that others experience so often.
I've been known as a loner my whole life, but it permits a good deal of reflective, creative time just to myself. Creativity sometimes bubbles up in the midst of chaos and fierce activity, but I truly believe that if a human being does not allow times that are completely self-contained and controlled, the real bursts of lovely, generative energy never happen.
What I do let in is the magic of childhood, and 90 percent of that is found in times with my grandchildren. They recharge my middle-aged batteries even as they tire my physical self. This was a 'grandkids' weekend, and I watched 5 year old Bill and 3 year old Kay for six hours today. Being with them means seeing things very differently. I see the world from the perspective of standing about 3 ft. high again, and let me tell you-- it is a very different place -- full of phenomena and delight, and yes- fears- I'd forgotten all about.
Bill and Kay are exceptionally fanciful children, and today we acted out the story of King Kong. (They'd taken out a gorgeously illustrated book from the library, and it had fantastic illustrations-- whimsies like having a 'Kong' hidden in every picture.) This particular version was obviously drawn from the latest film remake, complete with the dinosaur/Kong fights which is a modern addition to the story, and straight out of the movie.
But Bill loves the part of the story from where Kong is displayed onstage and BREAKS THROUGH HIS CHAINS, stomping through the screaming theatergoers and out into the streets of New York City, looking for his lost little love. Then the famous climb up to the top of the Empire State Building, swatting at planes and finally saving his beloved just before he falls 101 stories to the ground. We each had to take our turn being Kong, and my turn was enacted in the backyard, because I need more room to fall. And just as I was staggering around, swatting and growling, lurching and hammering on my chest- my daughter drove up in her car, and thought I was having a stroke! LOL!!
The funniest thing for me, is the way Bill had to be faithful to every detail. Since the last two illustrations in the book show Kong with his arm bent- elbow stuck up in the air with his hand on his back, probably to try and dislodge a bullet, Bill thought he was scratching his back-- and because everything had to be absolutely faithful to the book, I'd hear, "No Gram! You forgot to SCRATCH YOUR BACK! Kong scratches his back, and then he puts his arms in the air, and THEN he falls..." LOL!! So I'd have a do-over: the mandatory 'scratch', then arms in the air, then fall 101 stories, and nothing less would do.
The world of children is full of ritual. Even their play. And if you faithfully follow them into their child realm, you are rewarded with lovely moons, and bright colors....
....you become, just for a while, a part of the magic. It's better than any tonic- it is youth, and it is one of the nicest gifts you can give yourself: Child For A Day. And when you combine that with the time alone to process it, you have a recipe for happiness. Try it-- it works.
October 2, 2008~ 5:15pm
Like most Americans- (no doubt, like most in the international community of this Family Of Man)- I have been watching with horror, puzzlement and consternation as politics and economics have heated to the boiling point in the past few days. It looks like we've lost our shirts, folks- and an even flimsier garment is being sewn even as I type this...
First of all, let me say that I am of the firm belief that we should not have bailed out the robbers of Wall Street (aka, this Republican administration)- and that banks SHOULD have been allowed to fail without rescue....a bad system is a bad system is a bad system. Something built on paper and lies cannot be made right by printing more worthless paper-- but we caved, and now those practices will continue. "Happy days are here again".....and this administration will exit office with all the Monopoly money they've thieved from the American citizens. What I most definitely want is for the Democrats to REVISIT that bill with zeal as soon as we assume office...and this will happen. I am certain of it.
The BEST thing I've read about this astonishing BAIL OUT, is the following article, which I am pasting here in its entirety. I only wish I'd written it.
The Bailout in Plain English
By JOE BAGEANT
Any number of cultural historians have noted the American belief that success is a sign of God's favor. And over the past couple of decades he has had a downright love fest with the already-rich. So much so that the richest 400 Americans now have more money stashed away that the combined bottom 150 million Americans. Some $1.6 trillion bucks.
This was accomplished by selling off or shipping out every available asset, from jobs to seaports, smashing usury and anti-monopoly laws, raiding the public coffers and manipulating the medium of exchange and blackmailing the peasantry regarding common needs such as heath care and energy to keep their asses warm ... to name a few. The ultimate coup was to convince the entire nation that the well-being of the rich, meaning the well-being of Wall Street, was indeed the common man's well-being.
All went well for a while. People went into credit card hock up to their noses in order to provide 26% credit card interest to Wall Street, etc. And when that became untenable, flimsy mortgages were cranked out by the millions ensuring that every American who could hold a crayon could sign to purchase a home. To facilitate this all sorts of shaky 'mortgage instruments' were created - balloon, (sign here Jeeter, you're gonna flip it in a year and make a hundred K on this house trailer) interest only, and finally negative balance mortgages where you only paid part of the interest and the rest was rolled back into the principal balance. And joy of joys you could refinance a couple of times while the inflated value of these houses was on the way up. Life was good for everybody. The bill was never gonna come due because, god in his wisdom, had deemed that capitalism would defy the second law of thermodynamics and expand forever. So every time a bank made a mortgage loan of say, $400,000, even though the debtor had never even made a payment yet, the loan was declared a bank asset and another $400,000 was loaned against it. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank yelled whoopee and printed another $800,000 in currency. Of course at some point the country had to run out of customers, so the loans got easier and easier. No matter that debt is not wealth. Wink and call it that and most folks won't even look up from their new big screen high resolution digital TVs.
Problem was that all the jobs to pay for this stuff were stampeding off toward places in China with names containing a lot Xs, Zs and praying for a vowel. It was becoming clear that the entire economy was running on fumes. In fact less than fumes. It was running on the odor of paper. Mountains of the stuff. Bundles of mortgages and very strange securities and derivatives of unknown origin and value. Paper that stated its own worth and signed by some mystic hand no one could quite identify though the blurry signatures looked to read Greenspan, Paulson and Bernake.
But there was a rub. Things reached the point where there simply was not anything left to defraud the public out of, nothing left to steal from the nation's productive capability, no matter how much paper Jeeter and Maggie signed for that trailer house, no matter how secure Brian and Jennifer out there in Arlington Virginia and Davis California thought they were. So the only thing left to do was steal from future generations of Americans and accept an I.O.U. which the government would happily sign on behalf of the people and enforce. By the wildest coincidence, under the Bush administration this I.O.U. happened to tally up to about $700 billion.
Seeing the oncoming train of financial disaster, the financiers just about wet their pants, and screamed "We want it all now! And if we don't get it the "economy" will lock its brakes and crash. Remember, we control the medium of exchange. Nobody gets a paycheck if we don't. Remember that it's lines of credit from us that backs every working man's and woman's paycheck in the country. So pay the hell up."
Folks, they've got us all by the nuts and nipples. McCain knows that. Obama knows that. In the end, regardless of the so-called dissenters in the House and the Senate, we will pay up. It's election season and the dissent is for show. So it looks like we will get some "concession." For example, we will get shares in these "toxic assets" that are stinking up the joint. The rich need to dump them and dump them fast. In another magnanimous concession, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will raise the insurance on "our savings" to $250,000 (how many readers have 250 K in the bank?). But it will be redeemable in even more inflated currency amid an inflationary environment. And, in case you didn't know, the FDIC has up to ten years to pay up on that insurance. So don't get any ideas about running off to Mexico, to which by the way, we are a net debtor nation.
We will pay. We will pay because the European banks holding all that bad paper we wrote demand that we make good on it so even more of their banks will not fail. We will pay because the Chinese, the Japs and everyone else will cut off the loan tap with which we pay the interest (not the principal) on our exploding super nova of national debt. We will pay because God loves the rich. We will pay because we will not be offered any other choice. We will pay because George Bush worked hard for all those D's in school and became the first MBA president. We will pay because our media has internalized the capitalist system so thoroughly they can only talk in Wall Speak. We will pay because the only language we have to describe our world is that of our oppressors because we have been taught to think in Wall Speak. We will pay because we hitched our wagon to last stage capitalism and even though the wagon has now two wheels over the cliff and roars forward, we don't know where the brake handle is located. And because we don't know any better or understand any possible resistance to the system because we have been kept like worms in a jar and fed horse shit.
And as we all know, worms do not rise up in revolt.
That takes a backbone.
For more of this glorious commentary, please visit Counterpunch. This brilliant essay was just a way of wetting your whistle, and thirsting for more. My God......somebody has to start making sense of corrupt American politics, and by extension, this skewed economy. I think these folks do it. And one more word for tonight.....GO BIDEN! Score a knockout against that talking-point-regurgitating, scripted moron.
Keep it on track. Bring it home, Joe!
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
I have the most beautiful sense of serenity that comes from a solitary (for the most part) existence.
My life is laid out in a kind of roped-off grid, and walls are not bad things when used wisely. It means I let in what I choose and (for the most part) when I choose. This prevents a lot of the feelings of resentment that others experience so often.
I've been known as a loner my whole life, but it permits a good deal of reflective, creative time just to myself. Creativity sometimes bubbles up in the midst of chaos and fierce activity, but I truly believe that if a human being does not allow times that are completely self-contained and controlled, the real bursts of lovely, generative energy never happen.
What I do let in is the magic of childhood, and 90 percent of that is found in times with my grandchildren. They recharge my middle-aged batteries even as they tire my physical self. This was a 'grandkids' weekend, and I watched 5 year old Bill and 3 year old Kay for six hours today. Being with them means seeing things very differently. I see the world from the perspective of standing about 3 ft. high again, and let me tell you-- it is a very different place -- full of phenomena and delight, and yes- fears- I'd forgotten all about.
Bill and Kay are exceptionally fanciful children, and today we acted out the story of King Kong. (They'd taken out a gorgeously illustrated book from the library, and it had fantastic illustrations-- whimsies like having a 'Kong' hidden in every picture.) This particular version was obviously drawn from the latest film remake, complete with the dinosaur/Kong fights which is a modern addition to the story, and straight out of the movie.
But Bill loves the part of the story from where Kong is displayed onstage and BREAKS THROUGH HIS CHAINS, stomping through the screaming theatergoers and out into the streets of New York City, looking for his lost little love. Then the famous climb up to the top of the Empire State Building, swatting at planes and finally saving his beloved just before he falls 101 stories to the ground. We each had to take our turn being Kong, and my turn was enacted in the backyard, because I need more room to fall. And just as I was staggering around, swatting and growling, lurching and hammering on my chest- my daughter drove up in her car, and thought I was having a stroke! LOL!!
The funniest thing for me, is the way Bill had to be faithful to every detail. Since the last two illustrations in the book show Kong with his arm bent- elbow stuck up in the air with his hand on his back, probably to try and dislodge a bullet, Bill thought he was scratching his back-- and because everything had to be absolutely faithful to the book, I'd hear, "No Gram! You forgot to SCRATCH YOUR BACK! Kong scratches his back, and then he puts his arms in the air, and THEN he falls..." LOL!! So I'd have a do-over: the mandatory 'scratch', then arms in the air, then fall 101 stories, and nothing less would do.
The world of children is full of ritual. Even their play. And if you faithfully follow them into their child realm, you are rewarded with lovely moons, and bright colors....
....you become, just for a while, a part of the magic. It's better than any tonic- it is youth, and it is one of the nicest gifts you can give yourself: Child For A Day. And when you combine that with the time alone to process it, you have a recipe for happiness. Try it-- it works.
October 2, 2008~ 5:15pm
Like most Americans- (no doubt, like most in the international community of this Family Of Man)- I have been watching with horror, puzzlement and consternation as politics and economics have heated to the boiling point in the past few days. It looks like we've lost our shirts, folks- and an even flimsier garment is being sewn even as I type this...
First of all, let me say that I am of the firm belief that we should not have bailed out the robbers of Wall Street (aka, this Republican administration)- and that banks SHOULD have been allowed to fail without rescue....a bad system is a bad system is a bad system. Something built on paper and lies cannot be made right by printing more worthless paper-- but we caved, and now those practices will continue. "Happy days are here again".....and this administration will exit office with all the Monopoly money they've thieved from the American citizens. What I most definitely want is for the Democrats to REVISIT that bill with zeal as soon as we assume office...and this will happen. I am certain of it.
The BEST thing I've read about this astonishing BAIL OUT, is the following article, which I am pasting here in its entirety. I only wish I'd written it.
By JOE BAGEANT
Any number of cultural historians have noted the American belief that success is a sign of God's favor. And over the past couple of decades he has had a downright love fest with the already-rich. So much so that the richest 400 Americans now have more money stashed away that the combined bottom 150 million Americans. Some $1.6 trillion bucks.
This was accomplished by selling off or shipping out every available asset, from jobs to seaports, smashing usury and anti-monopoly laws, raiding the public coffers and manipulating the medium of exchange and blackmailing the peasantry regarding common needs such as heath care and energy to keep their asses warm ... to name a few. The ultimate coup was to convince the entire nation that the well-being of the rich, meaning the well-being of Wall Street, was indeed the common man's well-being.
All went well for a while. People went into credit card hock up to their noses in order to provide 26% credit card interest to Wall Street, etc. And when that became untenable, flimsy mortgages were cranked out by the millions ensuring that every American who could hold a crayon could sign to purchase a home. To facilitate this all sorts of shaky 'mortgage instruments' were created - balloon, (sign here Jeeter, you're gonna flip it in a year and make a hundred K on this house trailer) interest only, and finally negative balance mortgages where you only paid part of the interest and the rest was rolled back into the principal balance. And joy of joys you could refinance a couple of times while the inflated value of these houses was on the way up. Life was good for everybody. The bill was never gonna come due because, god in his wisdom, had deemed that capitalism would defy the second law of thermodynamics and expand forever. So every time a bank made a mortgage loan of say, $400,000, even though the debtor had never even made a payment yet, the loan was declared a bank asset and another $400,000 was loaned against it. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank yelled whoopee and printed another $800,000 in currency. Of course at some point the country had to run out of customers, so the loans got easier and easier. No matter that debt is not wealth. Wink and call it that and most folks won't even look up from their new big screen high resolution digital TVs.
Problem was that all the jobs to pay for this stuff were stampeding off toward places in China with names containing a lot Xs, Zs and praying for a vowel. It was becoming clear that the entire economy was running on fumes. In fact less than fumes. It was running on the odor of paper. Mountains of the stuff. Bundles of mortgages and very strange securities and derivatives of unknown origin and value. Paper that stated its own worth and signed by some mystic hand no one could quite identify though the blurry signatures looked to read Greenspan, Paulson and Bernake.
But there was a rub. Things reached the point where there simply was not anything left to defraud the public out of, nothing left to steal from the nation's productive capability, no matter how much paper Jeeter and Maggie signed for that trailer house, no matter how secure Brian and Jennifer out there in Arlington Virginia and Davis California thought they were. So the only thing left to do was steal from future generations of Americans and accept an I.O.U. which the government would happily sign on behalf of the people and enforce. By the wildest coincidence, under the Bush administration this I.O.U. happened to tally up to about $700 billion.
Seeing the oncoming train of financial disaster, the financiers just about wet their pants, and screamed "We want it all now! And if we don't get it the "economy" will lock its brakes and crash. Remember, we control the medium of exchange. Nobody gets a paycheck if we don't. Remember that it's lines of credit from us that backs every working man's and woman's paycheck in the country. So pay the hell up."
Folks, they've got us all by the nuts and nipples. McCain knows that. Obama knows that. In the end, regardless of the so-called dissenters in the House and the Senate, we will pay up. It's election season and the dissent is for show. So it looks like we will get some "concession." For example, we will get shares in these "toxic assets" that are stinking up the joint. The rich need to dump them and dump them fast. In another magnanimous concession, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will raise the insurance on "our savings" to $250,000 (how many readers have 250 K in the bank?). But it will be redeemable in even more inflated currency amid an inflationary environment. And, in case you didn't know, the FDIC has up to ten years to pay up on that insurance. So don't get any ideas about running off to Mexico, to which by the way, we are a net debtor nation.
We will pay. We will pay because the European banks holding all that bad paper we wrote demand that we make good on it so even more of their banks will not fail. We will pay because the Chinese, the Japs and everyone else will cut off the loan tap with which we pay the interest (not the principal) on our exploding super nova of national debt. We will pay because God loves the rich. We will pay because we will not be offered any other choice. We will pay because George Bush worked hard for all those D's in school and became the first MBA president. We will pay because our media has internalized the capitalist system so thoroughly they can only talk in Wall Speak. We will pay because the only language we have to describe our world is that of our oppressors because we have been taught to think in Wall Speak. We will pay because we hitched our wagon to last stage capitalism and even though the wagon has now two wheels over the cliff and roars forward, we don't know where the brake handle is located. And because we don't know any better or understand any possible resistance to the system because we have been kept like worms in a jar and fed horse shit.
And as we all know, worms do not rise up in revolt.
That takes a backbone.
For more of this glorious commentary, please visit Counterpunch. This brilliant essay was just a way of wetting your whistle, and thirsting for more. My God......somebody has to start making sense of corrupt American politics, and by extension, this skewed economy. I think these folks do it. And one more word for tonight.....GO BIDEN! Score a knockout against that talking-point-regurgitating, scripted moron.
Keep it on track. Bring it home, Joe!
(Return To Weekly Archives)
...
. or pay a visit to my Audio site to hear things
I've written- 
Some are just 'jotters', thoughts as they fly- going
nowhere but where they are. If you stop and read a few~ or post a
few~ thanks for
the perusal. Last of all, if you've a hankering for rants and raging,
try making a stop at my other blog- 
