EARTH ~

all hands

(photo : sean proctor/nytimes)

It might not look like much, seen it hundreds of times, rolling out the tarp onto the infield during inclement weather, but I just love it that handwork is still being seen in this over technological and modernized and nearly crippled society.

By working together those guys are talking together, working together, thinking together. They're pulling an idea.

They aren't waiting for some ATVs (god forbid if it comes to this) to strap onto either corner of the tarp and pull.

It's people stuff, while people in the stands watch, wait, and the rain falls. Or may soon.

Umpires wait, heads down.

All sorts of colors and caps and slacks and yanking, and mother nature runs the show.

Game 4 of the A.L.C.S., Yankees vs. Tigers at Comerica Park

 

 

 

EARTH ~

Sweetheart and I were sitting down for supper last night, in the living room, surrounded by the library of books, music, films and the woodstove, in other words — headquarters — when we heard the tell-tale rattling on the woodstove. The woodstove that normally never moves. The woodstove we lugged in here some years ago and some hundreds of pounds and has no reason to move, never mind rattle.


Sweetheart said she was feeling a trembling also under her feet. I wasn't, the meal was that good, but Sweetheart was raised in California and has experienced more than one or two earthquakes. Her feet know earthquakes and we were having an earthquake. New England boy me was still fixated that the woodstove was rattling.


It ain't supposed to do that, I was saying to myself. Isn't it something that it is.


The last time I remember an earthquake, nevermind in New England, was when we were up in the woodlot on a sunny autumn day cutting wood, although at that moment we were broken down and relaxed enjoying lunch. Probably crackers, cheese and an apple. Thermos of cold water. Sitting on a hillside and talking, when the same trembling came as a wave under us. Now what in the world was that? we asked one another instantaneously with our eyes.



And before that was decades earlier, in this same spot in the living room, even same hour of the year, autumn, and we were studding up all the rooms in the downstairs as we renovated the twice century house and with the studs only showing and no finished walls yet up we got to watch the block chimney sway before our eyes. There was a woodstove attached and that was swaying, too.


Oh and ah, Mother Earth. Talking. Shifting in her bed. Just as we do.


This morning at 4AM here comes the official report:


"The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of the 4.0 magnitude quake was about 3 miles west of Hollis Center, Maine, and about 3 miles deep. That location is about 20 miles west of Portland.


The quake was felt in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, including Boston, and as far south as Rhode Island and Connecticut."

photo © bob arnold

PUT INTO THE PIPE AND SMOKE ~

David Stockman on Mitt Romney and Bain:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/14/david-stockman-mitt-romney-and-the-bain-drain.html

EARTH ~

Ursula K. Le Guin

Photo by Wes Guderian

Ars Lunga


I sit here perpetually inventing new people
as if the population boom were not enough
and not enough terror and problems
God knows, But I know too,
that's the point. Never fear enough
to match delight, nor a deep enough abyss,
nor time enough, and there are always a few
stars missing.


I don't want a new heaven and new earth,
only the old ones.
Old sky, old dirt, new grass.
Nor life beyond the grave,
God help me, or I'll help myself
by living all these lives
nine at once or ninety
so that death finds me at all times
and on all sides exposed,
unfortressed, undefended,
inviolable, vulnerable, alive.





For the New House


May this house be full of kitchen smells
and shadows and toys and nests of mice
and roars of rage and waterfalls of tears
and deep sexual silences and sounds
of mysterious origin never explained
and troves and keepsakes and a lot of junk
and a flowing like a warm wind only slower
blowing the leaves of trees and books and the fish-years
of a child's life silvery flickering
quick, quick, in the slow incessant gust
that billows out the curtains for a moment
all those years from now, age.
May the sills and doorframes
be in blessing blest at every passing.
May the roof but not the rooms know rain.
May the windows know clearly
the branch and flower of the apple tree.
And may you be in this house
as the music is in the instrument.





Song for a Daughter


Mother of my granddaughter,
listen to my song:
A mother can't do right,
a daughter can't be wrong.


I have no claim whatever
on amnesty from you;
nor will she forgive you
for anything you do.


So are we knit together
by force of opposites,
the daughter that unravels
the skein the mother knits.


One must be divided
so that one be whole,
and this is the duplicity
alleged of woman's soul.


To be that heavy mother
who weighs in every thing
is to be the daughter
whose footstep is the Spring.


Granddaughter of my mother,
listen to my song:
Nothing you do will ever be right,
nothing you do is wrong.





Infinitive


We make too much history.


With or without us
there will be the silence
and the rocks and the far shining.


But what we need to be
is, oh, the small talk of swallows
in evening over
dull water under willows.


To be we need to know the river
holds the salmon and the ocean
holds the whales as lightly
as the body holds the soul
in the present tense, in the present tense.





Stammersong


Let

let me

let me be

Set

set me

set me free



Own

only

only soul

Lone

lonely

lonely whole



Sigh

silence

silencing

I

island

and I'll sing

_____________________________

Ursula K. Le Guin

from Finding My Elegy

new and selected poems

Houghton Mifflin, 2012

POETRY ~

Almost 100 years ago William Carlos Williams said aloud, "A bad poem is full of English literature".



And these days, Poetry Magazine (Chicago) continues to produce a quite usual English literature. They are capable of publishing many fine poets, but it is all presented through a narrow sieve, despite their riches and funding.


Most recently comes The Open Door (which it isn't), edited by Don Share and Christian Wiman. It is showcased as "100 poems, 100 years of Poetry Magazine". Basil Bunting to Jack Spicer, not bad. Gwendolyn Brooks to Lorine Niedecker, yeah! One poem each. Quenched. Severe. Static. So what. But certainly not terrible. Statuesque in a small way. Little juice.



It's embarrassing how badly made the contributors' notes can be, and this from the Poetry Foundation gods:


Lorine Niedecker: "Although her long correspondence with Louis Zukofsky, who frequently published her poems in his journal, Origins, brought her some critical notice. . ."

Niedecker had a correspondence with Zukofsky, but in this case it is Cid Corman that is being referred to here, and it isn't "Origins" as every poet knows, but Cid's magazine and press Origin.



Cid Corman: "The first two volumes of his selected poems, Of (1990) contain nearly 1,500 poems. Corman spent many years in Japan."

Of is not Cid Corman's selected poems, but three published volumes (of a proposed five volumes) of original poems, many unpublished until these glorious handmade volumes appeared. Cid's selected poems is The Next One Thousand Years, edited by Ce Rosenow and Bob Arnold (Longhouse), one of many to come of this poet's selected poems from a vast field of poetry.

Cid didn't spend many years in Japan — he lived decades in Japan, with his Japanese wife Shizumi, in a very modest abode in Kyoto where he translated many of the finest Japanese poets and poems ever seen. That's all.



How in the world are we to support already little known, or at the very least quiet, backwater poets, when they are misrepresented this way?




From "Cahoots"
by Cid Corman



There wasnt space
for two to pass
at one moment


and that moment
at Potniae.
Fate had spoken


And Fate followed
through at the cost
of the Other.


It takes a life
time's blindness to
see one's father.


. . .


The way one
wood-dove—buzz
buzz—follows


another—
the slow low
repeat—the


twang of an
arrow—the
way she to


whom I smile
returns the
smile: the way.


. . .


To come out
after a
long day's work


into snow—
the latest
version of


nothingness
and all so
light and crisp—


as if we're
the candles
on the cake.


February 1983

THE 1% ~

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/no-more-industrial-revolutions/?

nytimes

EARTHWARD ~

                   
                   
                   
                   
               

Felix Baumgartner later told a press conference: "When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you don't think about breaking records." He admitted all he could think about was getting back alive, but added: "Sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are." 

TIN ANGEL ~

__________________________________


Tin Angel
by Bob Dylan


It was late last night when the boss came home
To a deserted mansion and a desolate throne
Servant said: “Boss, the lady’s gone
She left this morning just ‘fore dawn.”


 “You got something to tell me, tell it to me, man
Come to the point as straight as you can”
“Old Henry Lee, chief of the clan
Came riding through the woods and took her by the hand”

 
The boss he lay back flat on his bed
He cursed the heat and he clutched his head
He pondered the future of his fate
To wait another day would be far too late

 
“Go fetch me my coat and my tie
And the cheapest labour that money can buy
Saddle me up my buckskin mare
If you see me go by, put up a prayer” 

 
Well, they rode all night, and they rode all day
Eastward, long down the broad highway
His spirit was tired and his vision was bent
His men deserted him and onward he went


He came to a place where the light was dull
His forehead pounding in his skull
Heavy heart was racked with pain
Insomnia raging in his brain

 
Well, he threw down his helmet and his cross-handled sword
He renounced his faith, he denied his lord
Crawled on his belly, put his ear to the wall
One way or another put an end to it all

 
He leaned down, cut the electric wire
Stared into the flames and he snorted the fire
Peered through the darkness, caught a glimpse of the two
It was hard to tell for certain who was who

 
He lowered himself down on a golden chain
His nerves were quaking in every vein
His knuckles were bloody, he sucked in the air
He ran his fingers through his greasy hair

 
They looked at each other and their glasses clinked
One single unit, inseparably linked
“Got a strange premonition there’s a man close by” 
“Don’t worry about him, he wouldn’t harm a fly” 

 
From behind the curtain, the boss he crossed the floor
He moved his feet and he bolted the door
Shadows hiding the lines in his face
With all the nobility of an ancient race

 
She turned, she was startled with a look of surprise
With a hatred that could hit the skies
“You’re a reckless fool, I could see it in your eyes
To come this way was by no means wise” 

 
“Get up, stand up, you greedy-lipped wench
And cover your face or suffer the consequence
You are making my heart feel sick
Put your clothes back on, double-quick” 

 
“Silly boy, you think me a saint
I’ll listen no more to your words of complaint
You’ve given me nothing but the sweetest lies
Now hold your tongue and feed your eyes” 

 
“I’d have given you the stars and the planets, too
But what good would these things do you?
Bow the heart if not the knee
Or never again this world you’ll see”

 
“Oh, please let not your heart be cold
This man is dearer to me than gold” 
“Oh, my dear, you must be blind
He’s a gutless ape with a worthless mind” 

 
“You’ve had your way too long with me
Now it’s me who’ll determine how things shall be” 
“Try to escape,” he cussed and cursed
‘You’ll have to try to get past me first” 

 
“Do not let your passion rule
You think my heart the heart of a fool
And you, sir, you can not deny
You made a monkey of me, what and for why?” 

 
“I’ll have no more of this insulting chat
The devil can have you, I’ll see to that
Look sharp or step aside
Or in the cradle you’ll wish you’d died” 

 
The gun went boom and the shot rang clear
First bullet grazed his ear
Second ball went right straight in
And he bent in the middle like a twisted pin

 
He crawled to the corner and he lowered his head
He gripped the chair and he grabbed the bed
It would take more than needle and thread
Bleeding from the mouth, he’s as good as dead

 
“You shot my husband down, you fiend”
“Husband? What husband? What the hell do you mean?
He was a man of strife, a man of sin
I cut him down and threw him to the wind” 

 
This she said with angry breath
“You too shall meet the lord of death
It was I who brought your soul to life” 
Then she raised her robe and she drew out a knife

 
His face was hard and caked with sweat
His arms ached and his hands were wet
“You’re a murderous queen and a bloody wife
If you don’t mind, I’ll have the knife” 

 
“We’re two of a kind and our blood runs hot
But we’re no way similar in body or thought
All husbands are good men, as all wives know” 
Then she pierced him to the heart and his blood did flow

 
 His knees went limp and he reached for the door
His tomb was sealed, he slid to the floor
He whispered in her ear: “This is all your fault
My fighting days have come to a halt”

 
She touched his lips and kissed his cheek
He tried to speak but his breath was weak
“You died for me, now I’ll die for you” 
She put the blade to her heart and she ran it through

 
All three lovers together in a heap
Thrown into the grave, forever to sleep
Funeral torches blazed away
Through the towns and the villages all night and all day

photo: sam jones/rolling stone 

EARTH ~

"THOMAS TRAHERNE (1637-74) was the son of a shopmaker in Hereford. It has been supposed that he and his younger brother Philip were orphaned at an early age and brought up, in part, by a wealthy innkeeper named Philip Traherne, who was twice mayor of Hereford and who may have been their uncle. Both boys received a good education, and Thomas graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, in October 1656. In the following year he was appointed rector of Credenhill, Herefordshire, but probably did not take up residence there until 1664. He was ordained in 1660 and took his MA from Oxford in 1661. At Credenhill he is likely to have joined the religious circle at nearby Kingston centering on Susanna Hopton, for whom he may have written his meditations now known as the Centuries. In 1669 he took his B.D. at Brasenose and became chaplain to the Lord Keeper Sir Orlando Bridgeman, in whose household at London and Teddington he spent the rest of his life. many of Traherne's works, including the Centuries, remained undiscovered until the end of the nineteenth century. During his lifetime, however, he published Roman Forgeries (1673), which exposes the falsifying of ecclesiastical documents by the Church of Rome, and prepared Christian Ethics (1675) for the press. At the time of his death he was at work on a vast encyclopedic project called Commentaries of Heaven, which was intended to show 'ALL THINGS. . .to be Objects of Happiness'. The long-lost manuscript of this unfinished work was recovered in 1967 and identified in 1982. But his major achievements remain the Centuries, the poems and the Thanksgivings, which reveal him as among the first English writers to respond imaginatively to new ideas about infinite space. The boundless potentiality of the human mind and spirit is his recurrent theme, as is the need for adult man to regain the wonder and simplicity of the child."


(Penguin Books, 1991)




The Apprehension
_______________


If this I did not every moment see,

And  if my thoughts did stray

At any time, or idly play,

And fix on other objects, yet

This apprehension set

In me

Was all my whole felicity.

A MAN TO REMEMBER* ~

President Barack Obama October 2012

Nothing is feeling right right about now. Do you feel it like I do?


And at the same time, doors are opening and closing. Cars are starting and moving. Work is there to do and millions are doing it. The foliage is changing in Vermont but not quite with the brilliance I remember as a boy, but that could just be the boy. We can't get everything we once had. Nobody can, not even the filthy rich, try as they might.


Last night Joe Biden did okay during the Vice Presidential debate and so did Representative Paul Ryan. One is a senior politician with all the tricks of his trade on display — half of it crippled by bluster — the other is the new sharpie with all the so-called "facts" as a salesman selling us a line of goods manufactured for his CEO bosses. In my own personal life the past year I've dealt with sheriff deputies and other lawmen who individually act exactly this same way: polite, efficient and as legal assassins, alongside one or maybe two old-style lawmen, much like Joe Biden, filled with old-school charm, bluster, and fighting in a paper bag going out of style. That style has values. And values, good people, are disappearing right before our eyes.


So is a President Barack Obama. He's now left the campaign trail to "study" for a few days before the second Presidential debate. Gone to "study" what? More facts and figures? How to develop and deliver "zingers"? Gone to study how to talk to the American people? Isn't this the same fellow who already wowed the country and the world with a speech on racism? Who went to Europe and attracted millions even before he spoke, and then he spoke and it reverberated around the world? Who rose from a single mother and a phantom father — one white, one black — and took in along his rise some fools and some angels and some hardcore truths and values and put them to work? Who isn't afraid to make mistakes along the way: mistakes get you places as long as you know them as mistakes and repair them with your own hands. Isn't this the same fellow who killed Osama bin Laden for the revenge seekers? Ended the war in Iraq that should have never been a war, and the same in Afghanistan? Dropped drones on the bad guys instead of threatening nuclear war with everyone, and yes some very good people died along the way. Good people die each and every day now. It's what we've made for ourselves.


I won't even go into how Barack Obama's leadership saved a country financially broke, didn't jail the thieves, attempted to put them back into the service for their country only to watch them piss on him now from great heights, this almost zen master from Harvard robes and Chicago street life we have.


Racism. Color. Prejudice. Non-communication is what is killing us. Always has. We haven't learned our P's and Q's. A black man rising in America beyond civil rights is what Barack Obama is, quite a phenomenon. He came with a thrill, a bounce to his step, he galvanized the children and the children in adults, and even the grown ups believed in him. He won past the old guard of stale heroism built on violence and glory and revealed a better heroism built on every day existence of mutual respect, black and white mixing it up like a terrific R & B song, and naively and truly wanting to get down and dirty and work with the opposition who already since Sunday let it be known they wanted nothing in the world to do with him. Have you ever been up against these guys? and I can tell you it's almost always guys, and it's not that they are entirely wrong, some have a very good head on their shoulders and can likewise work with their hands, but they're mainly closed down to their chief habits. They do make the trains run. But the train rails were made by dreamers, inventors, explorers, madmen, chance-takers, leaders, and this is what has scared Washington DC rulers from the time Barack Obama hit town. He's a rail man. He should have thrown a good bunch of them into jail. Instead he forgave them. Instead he revealed them. Instead he asked them to play-ball, the all-American past time and middle ground, and they told him to go fuck himself.


For four years we have watched a very good family man, husband, young heart and champion, make strides and become ruined. Right before our eyes. The black pride and intelligence that guided him, may be the same ingredient that brings him down. Since he came out of nowhere and rose to a personal and public greatness, we expect him to provide and grow greater still. Mostso because he is black, was virtually unknown, skinny, packed with power and glory. There's no time not to show up to a debate. There's no time to have this pride and glory stuff get in the way. There's no time not to act with almost a vengeance because we are frustrated and mad as hell, why isn't he? The savior we've made with really very little help of our own isn't performing the way we wanted — so left and right, both sides of the aisle, we're going to react against him! Unbelievable. The voters are leaving Barack Obama in droves from the carefully nurtured and crafted center (the playing field), that he made piece by piece, because of a combined hot atom mixture of he not performing for us when we wanted. When it counted. And he knows it. And we know it. It's all part of putting down those rails in the wilderness and not knowing what is around the next bend and he's ready to do it, and we're suddenly not so sure. We just may resort to the carpetbagger, the salesmen, the slick conman (and he makes a great speech but remains a sleaze bag and conman, Bill Clinton), the CEO empty-suited who will get just enough done for the middle class, status quo, while the unknowns, mysterious and poor die.


Barack Obama blew it big-time for the world in one debate. I thought he performed just fine with Q & A, but he didn't come down off his pedestal far enough so the smug, the hurt, the ruinous, and his slip was showing. Lenny Bruce would have shrugged it off with a "That? You mean that? Oh don't worry about that" and got it all revived within seconds on an athlete's pivot foot and steered the train back onto its rails. Barack Obama's hard-earned, uphill battle achievements in many of the swing states was once upon a time (as soon as last September) built on slow momentum and belief, assisted by millions of workers who all still have a little bit of dream in them, going against a 'screw-these-dreams let's get down to basics' opponent. It's all about money not dreams. It's all about slick not substance. It's all about a populace rising out of its junk food and junk cultured diet and crying toward and into a wilderness, where rails have gone.



[BA, Oct 12, '12]

Obamacare/Clancy Sigal

Matt Taibbi : vp debate

 

photo: nytimes

*I'd liked him to stay where he is for the rest of my life

pier paolo pasolini and maria callas 
 (napoli, september 1970)

CIVIL CANTO



Their cheeks were fresh and tender
and kissed maybe for the first time.
Seen from behind, when they turned
to return to the gentle group, they were more adult,
with overcoats over light trousers. Their poverty
forgets it's a cold winter. Their legs a little bowed
with collars frayed like their older brothers',
already discredited citizens. Still, for some years
they're priceless: and there can't be anything humiliating
in one who can't be judged. For, since they do it
with so much incredible naturalness, offering themselves to life,
life asks for them. They're so ready for it!
They give back kisses, tesing the novelty.
Then they leave as undisturbed as they came.
But since they're still full of trusting that life loves them,
they make sincere promises, project a promising future
of hugs, and kisses as well. Who could make the revolution
—if ever one needed to make it—if not them? Tell them so: they're ready,
all in the same way, just as they hug and kiss
with the same smell on their cheeks.
But it won't be their trust in the world that will triumph.
That's what the world must ignore.


1969. Translated by Jack Hirschman 



 _____________________________ 


from In Danger
A Pasolini Anthology
edited, with an introduction
by Jack Hirschman
(City Lights Books 2110)

BOOK LOVE ~

Once In Vermont films © bob arnold

EARTH ~

STEPS


 

Life

is

 


but

an

 


ad

just

ment





[ BA ] 







photo © bob arnold

PICNIC ~

IT ~

It's mentioned everywhere in Neil Young's new memoir, even if it isn't mentioned, as it is in every song he has composed and sung around the world for almost 50 years now. This "IT". Or "it", however you have yourself, if fortunate enough, been able to live "it". Some have successfully put it into their lives, marriages, made families, and maybe not and never all three of those together. But maybe one came about for you. I hope so. And you nurtured it. Read the good books, built personal libraries, learned a trade, taught yourself how to get out of simply being yourself and into the life and world of an animal, bird, a loved one, neighbor, stranger, a river, a grocery line bag of fruit in your hand, and by some degree of talent and insight even an enemy – as Clausewitz and Buddha taught us.

 

Neil Young broke a toe and instead of moping around the house, he sat down and wrote his memoirs. His "it" is the mountain top he believes we (of the sixties) almost reached. Maybe the same mountain top as spiritual and gospel songs climb to. Both have this vision, sometimes whimsical, sometimes unbelievable, reaching this "it" place. What 50,000 may collectively reach at almost the same moment watching and absorbing Young on stage with his shovel-like guitar in hand —scooping, thrashing, alive — with a few other members playing toward his "it" crescendo. You can't even believe a mere concert ticket, no matter the cost, got you to this place of crushing and dizzying heights, spangled with colors, with thousands and thousands of others! a literal sweep of humanity, that have in history been likewise wiped out by one massacre, genocide, the evil of a few others, or but one. Laughing, joyous, unified, deliriously human and inspired on one day; destroyed, washed away, gone the next.

 
This "it" made from books you bought, underlined, traveled with, lent, lost, re-bought, quoted from, made a life discovery from, lost again, re-bought again, saw someone else read and got a thrill, and from one book you bought hundreds of other books. Made a shelf. Developed a bookcase. Stacked more bookcases, and maybe you built those bookcases and the tools you used are like books themselves, and now you have a library. A craft. Something to believe in. Moving toward the quieter and quieter "it".

 
Something you may never achieve. Because it is selfless.

 
Some haven't even bothered to get this far reading because some are so brilliant and skilled and sometimes jaded that they have taught themselves not to bother too long with dust, with dirt, with rambling. Kick the rolling stone only so far. . .

 
Yesterday I worked with a fellow worker and we talked awhile hunched down together on the side of a dirt road, by a river, in the woods, with large machinery shutdown all around us for lunch (machinery eats a lunch too), and he told me about a time recently where he was shutdown for 4 or 5 days in a hunter's cabin with four other guys and outdoors was days on end of steady rain and no bow hunting was getting done. Some miles from a service road, stuck and caught. And so in this abode they all found rubber bands and with those rubber bands these bow hunters killed every housefly that moved. Kept to their skill. Simplified. Talked and laughed and grown man boyish got to know one another. Didn't kill one another. I was listening to this tale from a voice and accent made from homemade pies, alcoholism, rumbled poverty, kick the can, rolling hills, loss and regain. I could listen to the words undulate and smooth out, much like watching the nearby river. I could lift my arm and with my hand held flat quiver it slightly as I moved my arm peacefully for you standing close by and listening to me tell you about this, and that movement of the hand were this guy's words and voice. It was the "it" we're maybe after, it was the "it" we always have, if you want it.

 
Neil Young wrote a whole book about it. So did Lao Tzu. So did Lee Iacocca, supposedly.

 
The other day, and the same day as listening to this hunter, I watched and listened to Barack Obama after his debate with Mitt Romney, open up, joyously, his many thoughts and good will, in speech after speech, to thousands, instead of millions, as a television debate would have provided. He had a bounce to his step. All the words and playful venom one wished for at the debate were now here, but not there! Curious. Mitt Romney's debate appearance was declared the sure winner. Mitt Romney's appearance was built on many lies and manufactured from the increasingly popular: style-over-substance. The very ingredient that has killed the "it", or tried to. Momentarily, Romney punk'd Obama, right before our eyes in the zenith of live television. Obama was well aware what was happening: Romney inch by daily inch moving his ponderous empty vessel closer and closer to the moderate center, the seesaw graceful tipping balance, the place Obama's worked for all his life, the "it" spot, only to be taken over, eclipsed, by a cheap shot medicine man show. Who the next day apologized for his "off the cuff 47 percent comment". Well, that was easy! Shake off a little dust, adjust the tie, adjust the face. Feel better? I don't.

Willard Mitt Romney during the Presidential debate with President Barack Obama, and it may go down in simple tone history as one of the more telling comments ever uttered on television, said to moderator Jim Lehrer, who works for PBS: “I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

We were watching a bully CEO have the gall to even think he could fire a debate moderator, a public television station, millions of children, hope, knowledge, dreams and joy, right before our eyes. With a satanic chuckle and a smile on his face.  It was chilling.

PBS programming is 0.00014 percent of the budget.

If anyone lost during this debate, if you think Mitt Romney won this debate, it is us.

This time it's not about apology. It's about knowing what you see and feel and know and you don't like how it all smells. It's about knowing the "it" and protecting the "it" and believing in the "it". In believing in books, hunching down, rubber bands, kick the can, houseflies, homemade pies, rivers, neighbors, things that aren't just about you.

 
Patience.

 
The unknown "it".

 

photos © susan & bob arnold

imes

The radical activist Tom Hayden with his 22,000-page F.B.I. file, circa 1979.

"subversives"

photo Los Angeles Times