Saturday, December 3, 2011 1:58:38 AM
Midnight Sun in Iceland
I just found this majestic video story on VIMEO about Iceland's Midnight Sun.
I don't think any explanation is needed, just let the buffer fill and go full-screen to see HD video at it's best...Enjoy
Thursday, July 28, 2011 7:56:58 PM
My only friend gone.
My Best Friend is GoneFihtolas Wonderboy - Dacey is gone. Torn away from us in a senseless tragedy on the street where I spent my youth. It's a quiet street with little traffic and when there is it's mostly slow and heading for home. A beautiful if somewhat hot Sunday afternoon and after a 30 minute ride in the Air cond. car to moms it was time for a squirt on the front yard tree.
So dragging leash behind I watched my boy go tho his tree and tell the world he was here. As he sniffed the rock in front next to the tree I thought nothing of it. Until I watched him go across the street to see the flowers at the Mailbox.
But by then it was already too late, Shouting Dacey NO! Come back here! was only a distraction to his current mission. His reply seemed to be "Dad don't worry I 'm just going right here."
The neighbor three or four doors down was rushing off somewhere, not paying close attention to the road ahead until the sickening thud that told her my son had found the bumper of her cute little VW Bug "ladybug".
I ran to his side as fast as I could and lay down on the hot pavement stroking him and checking for broken bones. When I got to him he seemed to calm down and trust in me as he always had to take care of his injuries. Only this time I feared the worst.
Thought there seemed to be no broken bones he was panting and still in great distress.
I gently as I could lifetd him in my arms and carried him to the car where the door was now closed and waiting for Sue to open it seemed to take an eternity. These last few moments with my Wonderboy would be the most distressfull of my life. I could only hope his distress was diminished. By the time the door opened I laid him in th ecar for the 1 mile drive to the Animal Emergency room. As I put him in though he lost bladder control and I feared the very worst.
Holly and Sue got in and the Lady who hit him followed us to the emergency at what was breakneck speed. When we arrived I ran in and finding no one there, I banged on the tiny bell on the counter Calling for help!
A girl came out and followed me to the car where I lifted my boy from where I had lain him just moments before. We rushed into the ER room and laid him on the table where the vet used her stethoscope to tell me he was gone.
No that can't be don't you hear him panting? "No sir" she said "its the other dog here o the floor". and the realization of the horror began to set in. I asked for a defibrillator but they had none. Just to convince me they hooked him up to a "Scope" to see no heart beat at all.
I asked if we could go then and yes we could. I asked for a towel or clothe to help carry hi,m home and bless them they gave me one. A pretty Pink striped affair large enough to place under his lifeless body and carry him back to the car and his waiting family.
I think Holly his faithful mate knew right away what was wrong. But she stayed with him in the back of the blazer all the way home. She licked his eyes to wake him as she always could but he wouldn't arise. Sue was inconsolable on the way home, and I was just in a daze steering the car on autopilot like a man whose soul had been taken away and was left with only routine to carry him on.
We arrived home and like a zombie I lifted his lifeless body and placed him on my workbench in the garage. I found the shovel and went into "His" yard to make his resting place. There is a nice spot between the hostas he loved so much in the yard and there is where I dug a hole. Three feet deep and four feet long and just wide enough to fit his now lifeless form.
The neighbor came to help but it was nearly done by then. I covered hi in his favorite blue and white towel we got when we first brought him home eight joyful years ago. We wrapped him carefully and then said a prayer and quickly covered him over.
There may be a preachy cautionary tale for some to find here. But I can only
find guilt and pain in losing my best friend and more all in an instant of
summer freedom.
Forgive me Dacey.
And please wait for me, at Rainbow bridge - I promise I won't be long.
I Love You,
Dad
Friday, June 17, 2011 3:47:42 PM
Socialism for America?
Thoughts on our Nations FutureI've been thinking quite a bit lately about the state of our Nation and what our Government should do as opposed to what it actually does. It seems we have become so polarized and Ideologically entrenched that the mere suggestion of ideas outside our own secluded sphere is heretical.
The only sure thing we can know from this point forward is that the status quo of infighting and acrimony, endless war and economic imbalance at home is obviously unsustainable.
A quick outline of a recent publication - THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY (513 pp.) by —William Appleman Williams and World Publishing, as outlined in the TIME article linked here
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872576,00.html
raises some very interesting thoughts on our capitalist economic model vs a more reasoned model of government bearing a balanced socialist component thus far missing in American discourse.
Though this may not be the end all solution to our serious social and economic problems. The one sure thing we should know now, is to continue on the road we are now will lead to a sad graveyard of lost empires, where even the greatest have met their end.
I hope we are still able to stop the ideological polarization and self centered infighting long enough for us all to see the abyss our nation is heading toward. If we don't pull together now with a singular purpose I fear we will never again see the marvel of the American Dream for anyone.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 9:18:58 PM
Kurt Wenner - Street artist in chalk.
Beauty Is Still Alive!!
From his birth in Ann Arbor, Through California's "Art Center College of Design", Then to NASA as an Illustrator for future space projects and otherworldly landscapes Kurt Wenner has been an artistic visionary.
After selling all of his possessions in 1982 and moving to Italy to Study art once again, this time in a deeper cultural venue. He found his muse in the most transient of art forms, that of the Madonnaro or Chalk Artist, in Italy the land where it has evolved over the past 400+ years.
His story is one of many Madonnaro across the globe working in this most fragile, dangerous and transient art form. Here in three parts is His story and that of his thriving art commune in northern Italy.[/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]
I hope you will Enjoy...
Now Continuing to part 2...
And finally concluding with Part 3...
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 3:31:25 AM
I knew it was happening I just didn't think it would be over so soon.
Oh well...
<iframe frameborder="no" width="480" height="270" scrolling="no" src="
http://www.theonion.com/video_embed/?id=19846"></iframe>
American Dream Declared Dead As Final Believer Gives Up
Rest in peace you big idealistic lug you.
Friday, December 10, 2010 11:45:32 PM
Empire
After hearing a report on President Obama's recent trip to Asia - with China's follow on comments about America being an Empire in decline, I thought I would see what others were thinking on this.
The first article was found on CBS News - Opinion page from Dec. 6th 2010 by Alfred w. McCoy author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972) among other studies on Asian empire building.
Short bio...
(CBS) Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author, most recently, of Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (2009). He is also the convener of the “Empires in Transition” project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/05/opinion/main7121029.shtml
I wish there were more to say but this looks like it for today...
Sunday, October 31, 2010 6:14:27 PM
WTF??I must have missed the memo on reducing the national debt.So let me share a bit of personal frustration I've been harboring over our National direction here.
Our folks in Washington seem to be having kittens, over a trillion dollar Bailout of Criminal Brokerages, Bankers, Schnooks and Nogoodnics with a midnight robbery of our American Bank account at the US Treasury.
The loudest protests I hear, all seem to center on the "Auto Bailouts" which undoubtedly saved jobs and 2/3 of our auto industry then teetering on the brink of insolvency. Call me sentimental but I still prefer American made products, even if many of them are assembled in Mexico.
But back to the elephant I was referring to. I have included a noteworthy link here I have been following for quite awhile with a nauseating fascination that alternates with stupefied incredulity at the things we find important.
Costs of Wars I feel like we are being skillfully manipulated by the mainstream Media and we don't even realize it until way too late. We are constantly being told by legislators and talking heads, that raising the tax rate on the ultra rich, will somehow devastate our economy and destroy our way of life in America.
Look out! It's socialism and it's coming to get us all!!
Any of you that know me will know my flights of radical and reactionary thought. They may not hold up to the scrutiny of time but they're mine nonetheless.
But this time I believe THE SKY IS FALLING. It may not happen this year or next, but by pouring limitless wealth into ill defined missions of saving the world from terrorism, we will bankrupt our great nation. If not wholly financially the certainly morally, by the folly we show while squandering scarce national resources on wars that can never generate any returns.
No war has never paid for itself.
It seems folly, that we continue to ignore this elephant in our midst continuing to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain who is guiding us down a road to third world status.
As a closing thought let me leave you with a memory of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which finally ended ten years later in 1989. An involvement that was soon followed in 1990-1991 by the dissolution of the Soviet Union and subsequent fall from superpower status.
As an epilogue to this last major Soviet military involvement in December of 2009 on the 30th anniversary of the start of the war, the Parliament of the Russian Federation issued a statement that ended with,Differing assessments of the war "mustn't erode the Russian people's respect for the soldiers who honestly fulfilled their duty in implementing tasks to combat international terrorism and religious extremists". Let's pray this isn't the eulogy we'll recite after our American adventures there have ended.
Russian T-55 Tanks abandoned at Bagram Air Base 1979
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 3:37:43 AM
Anniversary
Happy Anniversary!!!
26 Years and still going strong!
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My Opera
