Blue, blue

Not really interested in psychoanalysis -- breaking up the psyche. But I am very much interested in mythos, in Psyche as she lives in us.

I think it was good to grow up Catholic with those Buddhist liberal nuns I had. Ritual and Guardian Angels are a great gift to a child. They build imagination. I think of so many who haven't a clue about anything but the literal. No awareness of the inner daemon, an important understanding that's been degraded, twisted, and simplified into a belief in evil. It's what makes so many adults ripe for evangelicals and so many religions not for adults.

At Delphi: Know thyself. Can't be bad.

+++++++++

The unconscious is not a demonical monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgment go, is completely neutral. It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases. ~C.G.Jung The Practical Use Of Dream Analysis, Collected Works

+++++++++

 New York Times October 27, 2011 James Hillman, Therapist in Men’s Movement, Dies at 85 By BENEDICT CAREY
 Interesting headline, therapist in men's movement: Hillman boiled down and reduced, saucy Jem!

And the below gifts from Samten -- take the links, mull with care, and call me in the morning!

James Hillman, Alchemical Blue and the Unio Mentalis http://www.pantheatre.com/pdf/6-reading-list-JH-blue.pdf

James Hillman, The Azure Vault http://www.adepac.org/Ingles/IP01-7.htm Lecture given at the XVI International Congress on Analytical Psychology, Barcelona, Spain, September 2004.

See also: Michel Pastoureau, Blue. The History of a Color, Princeton University Press, 2001.

And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language

the odyssey

via Annenberg Learner

thick as a brick

Important series. And watch : what denial and inflation at 6:36. This guy from the Kennel Club, their "geneticist" -- saying --"What would have been if they'd done nothing?", etc. His facial gymnastics tell us he thinks he has an unassailable brilliant insight, as he misses the point that nothing has been done -- certainly nothing by the Kennel Club, whose place it is to act -- even after the problem was found. But a clue to the problem of change, the wall created by unexamined social identity. It's the baboon finding the cheetah kitten hidden in the grass. Always the fooking baboon.

Feed your soul

Not your average Sweet Potatoes. Great stuff from Robin Ellis, and not just for diabetics! I've cut out sugar entirely and feel great.

James Hillman has passed

Irreplaceable. With deepest gratitude for your work. more

Sally, go to your room.

Silly Daily Mail

Malkitty

Stealing Libby's lair.

"Listen, Moirai (Fates) ... hear our prayers ... send us rose-bloomed Eunomia (Good Order in civic government) and her bright-throned sisters Dike (Justice) and garland-wearing Eirene (Peace), and make this city forget its heavy-hearted misfortunes." - Greek Lyric V Anonymous Fragments 1018 (from Stobaeus, Anthology)

WHY

The time is now. Your time is now.

Iris

I happened to look out the window yesterday and saw a rainbow -- well, one side of it. Went to grab my phone to take a picture (here it is),

and as I reached for it, got a message. It was my son, up the highway 20 miles, sending me a picture -- of the rainbow.

It wasn't even raining.

---

PS Krugman got one, too. AND LOndon. Twice.

cover

Temple is everywhere

Beejum Book

Beattitude

What beats my heart? 

This wisdom that knows how to beat a heart: 

it beats all hearts. 

 It's here right now — birthing in every breath

saying

Let peace begin
with me

Only the change in the attitude of the individual is the beginning of the change in the psychology of the nation. ~CGJUNG (CW7,4, trans, mod.)

Left Behinder

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23rapture Silly Rapture people. For the scary folks, see the Jews On First reports.

Quo Modo Deum

in Ohio as we speak

Truss penned this, so you can rest assured there will be no stray nor missing 's!

The book: Tennyson's Gift


review: Guildford Diary: Famous friends
 DAISY DUNN Monday, Book Blog, The Spectator
17th October 2011

Vonda Wolff's serious satisfaction

member this?

in brief:

deb:

I'm not sure what to make of the native tongue of the writer of the below marketing ploy... maybe mike and you linguists can tell by the anatomy. But wouldn't old William Strunk have loved to use it as an example in his chapter on elementary use of language. ("Sentences violating Rule 11 are often ludicrous." ) !

Hey,
I just wanted to share with you the experiences I've had in the past year. As many men are familiar with, my wife was never really satisified with my size. This caused many problems within our relationship and made me feel very insecure.
Well, just like a lot of you out there, I was ready to do anything to make my wife happy. I tried everything, pumps, excercises, pills, but never found anything that actually worked until now. I was talking to a friend which recommended to a website that carried a new type of pill which I had never seen before. To my surprise, it actually worked. Now, i'm not going to lie and say that I grew a foot but it was definately a noticable increase, which has seen made my life a happier.
If your sick and tired of trying pro ducts that just don't work check this out.

Vonda Wolff

(url to ad or maybe worse removed : wunna want ter tempt ya!)

______________________

mike:
i get hundreds of these every day. one of these days i'm gonna unwind my john thomas from around my thigh an' SHOW the buggers what a dickman really is.

but not yet...

don' wanna scare 'em...

_____________________

alice:

O Mike!

_____________________

C:
What did I miss to provoke such a response? go on, show them, Mikey!

C

____________________

Phoebe:

I'm with C.

xx
ph

______________________

deb:

Long as it don't grow a foot!


****

Pantheatre

http://www.pantheatre.com/

 JAMES HILLMAN

Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.

Break It. Share It. Love It.

i want to be a pop idol

The source of light is at home in the darkness.

"There was also a famous Orphic poem, written by a Pythagorean in southern Italy. Hardly any traces of it have been allowed to survive. It presented Orpheus making his journey to the underworld in another state of consciousness, in a kind of dream. And the poem described him as making one major discovery that he brought back to the world of the living. This was the fact that Apollo shares his powers with Night."

~Peter Kingsley

THE MARES that carry me as far as longing can reach
rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary
road of the divinity that carries the man who knows
through the vast and dark unknown. And on I was carried
as the mares, aware just where to go, kept carrying me
straining at the chariot; and the young woman led the way.
And the axle in the hubs let out the sound of a pipe
blazing from the pressure of the two well-rounded wheels
at either side, as they rapidly led on: young women, girls,
daughters of the Sun who had left the mansions of Night
for the light and pushed back the veils from their faces
with their hands.
These are the gates of the pathways of Night and Day,
held fast in place between the lintel above and a threshold of stone;
and they reach up into the heavens, filled with gigantic doors.
And the keys — that now open, now lock — are held fast by
Justice: she who always demands exact returns. And with
soft seductive words the girls cunningly persuaded her to
push back immediately, just for them, the bar that bolts
the gates. And as the doors flew open, making the bronze
axles with their pegs and nails spin — now one, now the other —
in their pipes, they created a gaping chasm. Straight through and
on the girls held fast their course for the chariot and horses,
straight down the road.
And the goddess welcomed me kindly, and took
my right hand in hers and spoke these words as she addressed me:
'Welcome young man, partnered by immortal charioteers,
reaching our home with the mares that carry you. For it was
no hard fate that sent you travelling this road — so far away
from the beaten track of humans — but Rightness, and Justice.
And what's needed is for you to learn all things: both the unshaken
heart of persuasive Truth and the opinions of mortals,
in which there's nothing that can truthfully be trusted at all.
But even so, this too you will learn — how beliefs based on
appearance ought to be believable as they travel all through
all there is. *

                                           ~Parmeneides Translation from Peter Kingsley,  

Persephone Dante Gabriel Rossetti

There is no excusing classical scholars today for ignoring the developments in scientific theory and practice throughout the twentieth century, and continuing to pursue their own specialized interests apparently unaware of the fact that many people at the forefront of contemporary science are no longer able to accept that distinguishing between mind and matter represents a genuine approach to reality—let alone an achievement—or that the basic Aristotelian dictum of the 'excluded middle' (that something is either x or is not x, but cannot be both simultaneously) necessarily holds good. For anyone accustomed to the world of the Presocratics and also the world of modern science and cosmology, it is difficult not to notice how the second of these realms appears to moving closer and closer to the first with its increasing appeal to bold paradox, to the simple but also the enigmatic and—dare we say—mythological....

Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic

review In the Dark Places of Wisdom by Peter Kingsley, Reviewed by Anne Baring

---

---

Night

Leptus

Brave Arnaut 
who gathered the wind, 
hunting the Hare with the Ox 
while swimming against 
the incoming tide   ~from a Troubadour poet



a year ago I wrote samten:

 Drew the IV of Swords in Tarot -- I of little faith. But it tells me something about what I'm thinking, feeling, fearing, hoping. This card precisely: on the cross, balanced between forces. Or rather -- understanding that within the stillpoint perfect center, the forces balance themselves. Accomplish this miracle, achieve this peace, and it brings something good into our sphere. or so it says to me.

Today
from samten:

show details 6:44 AM (6 hours ago)

4.LEPUS (al-arnab).
From: Wellesz, Emmy, An Islamic Book of Constellations, Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1965. (Bodlean Picture Book No. 13.)
4 0f Swords
April 21 to April 30
Pictured by the constellation LEPUS - A hare running timidly away.
Legend: The Isle of Lepus - multiplication of hares and their eventual destruction. Vid: Robson.
TAURUS — 1st Decanate. The masters of olden times in tracing symbolical pictures in the sky, to convey to later generations their conception of the influence of the various sections of the heavens, sometimes pictured the highest attainment and sometimes pictured the greatest obstacle to progress. In LEPUS — the Hare — they symbolized the thought that timidity is the greatest bar to advancement of those born under the first decanate of Taurus. Being the first decanate of the sign naturally ruling the house of money, there is often a tendency to devote too much energy to the acquisition of wealth. And as this decanate is particularly mediumistic, those born under it easily acquire magical powers. Hence the various traditions regarding it as a place of black magic. Yet its children become adepts at white magic just as easily if they but overcome the lust for material things. It is only when they are blinded by physical aims that the place of the soul’s exaltation becomes an adverse symbol. Those born here have great natural healing power and ability to crystallize conditions to their desires by the power of the imagination upon the astral light.
Ulysses S. Grant, whose fixity of purpose was his most remarkable trait, was born with his Individuality polarized in this decanate, the Sun being here. G. R. S. Mead, who edited The Theosophical Review and did an immense amount of laborious work to enlighten students, had his Mentality in this decanate, It being the place of the Moon in his chart. And Jerome Cardan, who became famous as a mathematician and astrologer, had this decanate Rising at his birth. It is the decanate of DETERMINATION.
________________________________________
The Good Luck of the Rabbit’s Foot.— Seeking to discern what the ancients had in mind when they traced the picture of a rabbit in the sky to represent the earthy decanate of the sign of material possessions brings instantly to thought the three outstanding attributes of the hare: fleetness, timidity, and rapidity of reproduction.
Fleetness, as indicated by wings on the feet of Mercury and Perseus, has to do with thought; and as the Moon exerts its strongest power in the Taurus-decanate of Taurus, we perceive the aptness of an association between this section of the zodiac, occupied by the Sun from April 21 to April 30, and the lunar orb, which in a birth-chart rules Mentality.
Easter is a modern adaptation of the old name of the Moon, which by the Chaldeans was called Ishtar, became Astarte to the classical nations, Easter to the Saxons, and finally was designated by the term now used for her chief annual festival. In this festival her greatest power, as signified by her exaltation in the beginning of Taurus, is celebrated as chief aid to the function of the Sun. Easter is the Sunday after the Full Moon after the Sun has passed into the summer half of the zodiac.
At this Full Moon, because the Sun is in Aries, where its creative energies are strangest, the Moon must be in Libra, the sign ruling both marriage and eggs. Eggs, consequently, form a persistent factor in that spring festival dedicated to the redemption of the world by united man and woman, even as it is deemed to be rescued from winter through the offices of the united Sun and Moon.
These eggs commonly are colored in various hues to signify diversity in the expected harvest, and they are hidden about, and must be hunted for, even as other seeds are placed in the Sun-warmed dark ground of the beginning of Taurus, where they germinate, and only later thrust green shoots through the surface into the kindly light of day.
Bunnies also are part of the ceremony: for although they do not lay eggs, as children are sometimes led to believe at Easter, they are unusually prolific, and stand symbol of the power of the earth to bring forth.
This decanate where Easter has her strongest power also is associated with the greatest tragedy mankind has ever known. Halloween commemorates the destruction of the world, the fire, the flood, and the sinking of Atlantis. The Sun at that time is in the death-decanate of the death-sign Scorpio, directly across the zodiac from this rabbit-decanate of Taurus. Thus when Ophiuchus, the man in death struggle with a serpent, who pictures the first-decanate of Scorpio, sets in the west, vanquished by the great destruction, Lepus, the hare, rises in the east, and is shown fleeing from the scene of catastrophe as fast as fleet legs will carry him.
Tradition holds that the time when such cataclysms occur may be timed by the position of the Pleiades, a group of stars behind the shoulder of the Bull, in relation to the precessional cycle. As the Bull faces eastward toward the earth as it rises, and as the whole rear half of it has been destroyed in the cataclysm, the Pleiades come up first, as Lepus pictures that section of the Sign Taurus first to rise. Noah quickly left behind his sinful companions when he entered the ark, Lot left Sodom in great haste: and legend says that the wise ones of Atlantis, warned by the position of the Pleiades, went from their doomed land at top speed.
In one of the oldest written accounts in existence, the Gilgamesh Epic of still more ancient Sumeria, the cuneiform tablets of which have been recovered from Assurbanipal’s famous library at Ninevah. it is related that after the hero conquers the mighty Bull which has caused seven years of sterility on the earth, that Ishtar places a curse upon him. But Gilgamesh evades the curse, tears the entrails from the Bull, dedicates its crescent horns to the Sun, and washes his hands in the Euphrates. which was the river Eridanus of the Sumerians.
As the earthy decanate of Taurus may well be taken to represent the more physical section of the sign, so the rear of the Bull, which in rising comes first, is similar in its symbolic implications. It was the materialism and wickedness of the world that made necessary the flood from which Noah fled. It was the turning from God to abominations of the flesh that led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And the use of mental powers and psychic forces to enslave the populace is said to have preceded the sinking of Atlantis.
All magic, now more commonly called mental demonstration, new thought, or metaphysical practice, is made possible through the activity of the mind. And this peculiar power resides in greatest measure in those born with the first decanate of Taurus dominant.
Such magic, such healing energy, and such force of mind, can be used in either of two directions. The voodoos of our South follow the example of Ishtar, and place a curse upon their enemies. But others more enlightened follow the example of Gilgamesh, and dedicate this crescent power, the horns of the Bull, to spiritual purposes, represented by the Sun.
That the self-seeking, materialistic, or destructive use of this lunar power must never be countenanced was portrayed by the ancients when they failed to picture other than the front portion of the Bull in the sky. Nor will the Jews, preserving the symbolic custom to this day, eat of a beef other than the portion pictured. To those of that orthodox faith the portion omitted from the stellar picture is unclean and may not be served as food; as they say, it a not Kosher.
As the Sun, in practical astrology rules the Individuality, and has its exaltation in the Eridanus decanate, and the Moon rules the Mentality, having its exaltation in the Lepus decanate, when the epic hero of Sumeria dedicated the crescent horn of the Bull to the Sun and washed his hands in the river, in pantomime he was consecrating his Mental powers to their highest, most spiritual, use. And these horns of the Bull, through various avenues have descended to us as a means by which the adverse effect of mental forces can be avoided.
How blind are those who can see no farther than the material plane; who prostitute their souls for the attainment of carnal desire, and whose minds turn only to wickedness and destruction. When Sodom and Gomorrah fell in flames the Bible relates: "And they Smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great; so that they wearied themselves to find the door."
This blindness of devoting the energies solely to the gross, with no thought for the finer experiences of life; and that even more terrible practice of using the psychic powers for the injury of others, is pictured by the star which blots out the eye of the rabbit in the sky. Blindness is also traditionally associated with the Pleiades, the cyclic pointers of cataclysmic destruction.
Ptolemy, compiler of ancient astronomical knowledge, says that when the Moon is with the Pleiades and afflicted by Mars in a chart of birth that the person will go blind. As a matter of astrological research, when the Moon is greatly afflicted by Mars, trouble with the eyes may be expected whether the Pleiades are involved or not. But in this manner has the tradition of loss of sight through evil mental practices come down to us.
And thus it is today, in all regions where prevails the belief in "evil eye," which is supposed to be a curse placed upon one person by another’s malignant look, that the attempt is made to ward it off by farming the sign of the Bull’s horns. This is done by closing the hand in such a manner that the first and little finger stand out to form a crescent, and then gouging in the direction of the person casting the spell as if to gouge out his eyes.
The rabbit in the sky is pictured fleeing in great haste from all such influences; and as he is moving directly away from the section of the zodiac where the cataclysmic struggle takes place, turning his back, on the scene of various iniquities, the legend persists to this day that, like those who fled from Atlantis before it sank, and like Lot who made his escape from Sodom, the rabbit gained safety. It thus acquires an implication of good fortune.
The foot of any Creature is the universal symbol of understanding of some kind: and the foot of the rabbit implies an understanding of those things for which the rabbit stands, that is, of mental practices devoted to injury, and how to escape their influence. The negro who carries a rabbit’s foot to prevent a "jinx" being placed upon him, and as a talisman of good luck in general, is merely perpetuating, by means of a symbolic ritual, an ancient truth of vast import.
It requires great determination not to look at, or think about, the thing which if permitted to do so would cause fear: and thus those born with the first decanate of Taurus dominant have, as the Key-word clearly indicates. The earthy decanate of the earth a own sign in particular needs to exercise the Determination which it so abundantly possesses to face away from the gross and sensual, and to escape the paralyzing effect of fear.
The hare, although fleet of foot, is a timorous creature that burrows in warrens beneath the ground, like those who, submerged in materialism, live in constant dread of death. Lot escaped from the hail of fire and brimstone, but his wife, unable to resist visualizing the thing which she feared, looked back, and became rooted to the spot. The salt, which ultimately she became, shows the crystallizing power of selfish inclinations.
When we positively desire a thing we flash the image of that which is sought upon the mental screen, and the thought-cells belonging to that department of life work with such energy as they possess to make that condition a reality. But when in fear the image is the opposite of that which we seek, these four-dimensional sparks of consciousness work just as hard to carry out the orders they thus receive, disastrous though the result may be. Even as the rabbit is blind, so fear blinds the eyes to the proper mental picture, accepted as a command by unconscious mind, to get wished-for results. Hence follows the text: One of Man’s Greatest Enemies is Fear.
________________________________________
NOTES
RABBIT-HARE
The Rabbit is shown in Arcanum 22 of the Alchemical Tarot deck. The Rabbit, or Hare, is  the name of a Constellation, LEPUS, in Taurus.
Where I think it is better placed than Pluto.
Watership Down.
The March Hare in Alice in Wonderland…
A rabbit appears in the Triumph of Venus in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, and Venus rules Taurus.
Also the rabbit is associated, very profoundly in the mass unconscious, with Easter, and the fertility rites that this Christian Festival incorporated.

Peter Kingsley

In the Image of Orpheus

In the Image of Orpheus: 
RILKE - A Soul History
Daniel Joseph Polikoff

aptly named, all round

The Guardian found evidence that the Wall Street Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal's true circulation.

Wow. Just like they do in the US for Ann Coulter's "best sellers."

Wall Street Journal circulation scam claims senior Murdoch executive

What If We Had a Nutrition Label for the News?

Idea Lab

Shenandoah

From the heart. Love this song. Sang it often during those years when I was abducted by Kansas City. Please Protect Shenandoah Mountain

It's in all our interests to understand how to stop another Great Depression

go read: George Monbiotguardian.co.uk, Monday 10 October 2011 14.29 EDT

I note:

 "from the late 1960s onwards, private sector debt in the US began to exceed GDP. It built up to wildly unstable levels from the late 1990s, peaking in 2008." 

 This period also corresponds to the relative decline of worker's salary and the rise of managerial and corporate profits. The 1% now sit on wealth amassed at the expense of these workers, wealth that increased especially in the past decade. Making up the worker's deficit -- food, clothing, shelter, education, infrastructure, etc., things they need so they can work and get to work -- has fallen to government. Social programs. The workers.

Question: Why are we putting up with this sleight of hand corporate handout? Oh. That's right. They're the "job creators". And we are moving to a new form of slavery.

 Yes. We need to rethink all this, don't we. There is simply no defending it.

 more: If Top 1% Hadn't Ripped Off Trillions, You'd Likely Be Making Thousands of Dollars More Right Now

 EXTRA CREDIT: Bankers’ Salaries vs. Everyone Else’s

The Pavlopetri Underwater Archaeology Project

Investigating the oldest submerged town in the world

Schamalicious

it is by now not absurd to see Burne-Jones and William Blake as the two ends of the same resistance to the Satanic Mills of Albion

Rage against the machine 
review by BRIAN LYNCH 
IRISH TIMES 


BIOGRAPHY: The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination, By Fiona MacCarthy, Faber, 656pp. £25 excerpt:

Ned liked to represent himself, in MacCarthy’s phrase, as a pitiable object. But he had what Turgenev said the poet Belinsky possessed, “the timid sternness peculiar to nervous people”, and in his soul there was, in the words of his nephew, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, “iron and granite”. The man to whom Burne-Jones deferred all his life, William Morris, was undoubtedly a greater genius as a personality, and yet, perhaps because of his superiority as a draughtsman (in itself a gift that, for proper use, requires moral strength), Burne-Jones did not succumb to Morris’s socialism – when he was offered a knighthood he took it, but only, he said apologetically, for his son’s sake. The hereditary part of a peerage, he hardly needed to say, is pretty much its whole point.

Another way of getting away from the red revolutions of politics and sex was humour, an avoidance technique Burne-Jones used from an early age. Any time his nanny – he was wary of her “potentially overwhelming fondness” – asked what he was thinking he always had the same answer: “Camels”. This constant jokiness is very English: Ned, after all, is a character in The Goon Show, and an avatar of Prince Charles. But Irish humour, in the portly person of Oscar Wilde, also appealed to Burne-Jones. At the artist’s first and only one-man show, the playwright wore a bronze-red coat, the back of which was cut in the shape of a cello. As Wilde’s commerce with prostitutes was revealed, Burne-Jones referred to him as “that horrible creature” and lamented that “he hadn’t had the common courage to shoot himself”. But, as MacCarthy intelligently points out, what upset the sexually tolerant artist was “his perception that Wilde had betrayed the cause of beauty . . . a heinous crime”. In any event Ned relented: before Oscar was released from prison he said, “I should shake hands or bow to him if I saw him.”

how to talk to FOX news

unfold your love

oh beautiful...

http://media.talkingpointsmemo.com/slideshow/occupy-dc/1-224838

occupy

stats book nota bene 2

Thank you, Steve Jobs

Borders to Sell Intellectual Property to Barnes & Noble

Dispute
This isn't about emails and spam. It's about monopoly. If you want market forces to work, you need a level playing field. This comes at a time when the market is being shaped by electronic books, and much is in dispute between writers and publishers and readers and the eventual format of their reading materials, the rights to those works. Remember Betamax? A monopoly in the hands of B&N affects directly the power of its ebook format, to the detriment of Kindle and others. To the detriment of authors and publishers of other formats.  The market serves all of us -- not just the shareholders. Books are the foundation of our culture and keeping people reading and writing has to be the goal served.  

Tell The Super Committee

send them a message Who makes the money for "big business"? Who does the work, keeps things going, figures things out at the actual physical level? Who makes it so the boss, company, stockholder get paid? Well, the workers. And happy they are to do so if they can live on their wage, obtaining the food, clothing and shelter to care for their kids. Happy they are to commit decades to a company that responds fairly to them. A strong, healthy, well-educated workforce is essential to any business. Remember Joe the Plumber? He wants to expand and grow his business, and worries he'll have to pay more taxes once he makes over $250,000 -- which more than 90 percent of small business owners don't. But if Joe wants to expand, he has to hire workers. What kind of workers does he want? Healthy, educated workers; people he can trust to do the work. Naturally, he wants his crew to get to work on time. So he, as well as they, depend on good transportation. They depend, too, on good health care delivery so that his workers can come to work strong, giving their best. Smart workers, well-schooled workers. The best he can afford. This is what taxes are about. Making things run, making the good workers good so they can make wealth. It makes sense that the more wealth a company makes, the more it depends on all the things taxes go to pay for. We share the wealth so we all can grow -- because, as a business, you need people who are able to pay you for your services (you and your worker, that is; the people who actually go out and do the work). Socialism? Where? This is foundational, defining to whatever our country has been. To what made it grow. Is that socialism? Working together to meet our needs as a nation? What a big umbrella of a word you make it. You know, money isn't equal really -- not in real life. What's $1,000 to someone making $30,000 a year? What's it to someone making 10 times that? It's all relative, all changing, based on things that change. We're so disconnected from our needs, from seeing what shapes our world. I hope most of all that we connect with it again, plan and envision together. That's the strength of a community, a nation. a whole planet.

wise beyond hope redux

~MStillman

Many are the awesome things but nothing more awesome than man
This being on the stormy surface of the gray sea goes, through the roaring
swells making his way.
Of the gods the highest, Earth unfailing, untiring, he wears away with the ploughs' passage, year by year with the horse-like breed tilling.
The fickle clan of birds he traps and directs, and the tribes of beasts and the sea kin of the deep in his mesh-woven nets, ingenious man.
He controls, with his devices, of the wilderness beast the mountain-going, the hairy-necked horse he breaks with harness about its neck, and the bull, ruler of the mountain
Speech and wind-like thought and city-ruling desires he learnt, and from
chilling frosts and harsh rain's clear-aired arrows to shelter, always ingenious.
He goes into nothing unprepared for what may come.
From Hades alone he will not avoid but he has made himself an escaper from incurable diseases.
Cleverness in ingenuity, something wise beyond hope, sometimes moving him to harm and sometimes to good...
Respecting the land's laws and the gods' oath-bound justice, he is of a high city but an outlaw is he for whom the dishonorable is companion because of his audacity.
Never by my hearth nor in agreement of thought may anyone who does such things be!
SOPHOCLES Antigone

2

Harper's, June 07

Many things are formidable, and yet nothing is quite so formidable as man.
Over the gray sea and the storming south wind,
Through the foam and welling of the waves, he makes his perilous way;
The Earth also, highest of the deities, who never shows fatigue, nor exhaustion, nor decay,
Ever he furrows and ploughs, year on year, with his ploughshare, muzzles and horses.
The light-seeking birds of the air he stalks and traps, the wild beasts of the forest, and the salty brood of the sea, he catches with his richly woven net–
He, the cunning one,
And by his arts he achieves mastery of the savage game, of the creatures who
wind their way upon the heights, tamed through his wondrous art,
And the defiant steed he bends to his will under the bit.
Speech and wind-driven thoughts and emotions form the foundation upon which he builds the city,
All of this he has taught himself; and to take shelter before the inhospitable torrents of the heavens, and the freeze of the winter sky.
He is prepared for everything; against nothing does he want for protection.
Even against once perplexing ailments he has developed an escape.
Only against death has he at last no refuge.
Supplied with cleverness of every imaginable type,
He ventures once towards evil, and then towards good.
If he honors the laws of the land and the right attested by the Gods,
Then may his city prosper. But homeless shall he be if he boorishly debases himself.
–Sophocles, “Antigone,” Chorus (lines 340-380) (S.H. transl. after Hans
Jonas)

3

Wonders are many, yet of all
Things is Man the most wonderful.
He can sail on the stormy sea
Though the tempest rage, and the loud
Waves roar around, as he makes his
Path amid the towering surge.
Earth inexhaustible, ageless, he wearies, as
Backwards and forwards, from season to season, his
Ox-team drives along the ploughshare.

He can entrap the cheerful birds,
Setting a snare, and all the wild
Beasts of the earth he has learned to catch, and
Fish that teem in the deep sea, with
Nets knotted of stout cords; of
Such inventiveness is man.
Through his inventions he becomes lord
Even of the beasts of the mountain: the long-haired
Horse he subdues to the yoke on his neck, and the
Hill-bred bull, of strength untiring.

And speech he has learned, and thought
So swift, and the temper of mind
To dwell within cities, and not to lie bare
Amid the keen, biting frosts
Or cower beneath pelting rain;
Full of resource against all that comes to him
Is Man. Against Death alone
He is left with no defense.
But painfull sickness he can cure
By his own skill.

Surpassing belief, the device and
Cunning that Man has attained,
And it bringeth him now to evil, now to good.
If he observe Law, and tread
The righteous path God ordained,
Honored is he; dishonored, the man whose reckless heart
Shall make him join hands with sin:
May I not think like him,
Nor may such an impious man
Dwell in my house.
trans H. D. F. Kitto

********

The city state and individual. The gods and the mortal. Fate and choice. Genius and self/ego. Rocks and hard places.

Down the road a bit, off in the sand:

"I am the light, and create the darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord, that doeth all these things." (Isa. 45:7)

That's Yahweh being very clear, little concerned for the tireless who so endlessly feel obliged to apologize for his darkness. How impious of them.

Bless paradox. Bless us all who find a way to live with bend not break, the deep message of Antigone.

---

"Listen, Moirai (Fates) ... hear our prayers ... send us rose-bloomed Eunomia (Good Order in civic government) and her bright-throned sisters Dike (Justice) and garland-wearing Eirene (Peace), and make this city forget its heavy-hearted misfortunes." - Greek Lyric V Anonymous Fragments 1018 (from Stobaeus, Anthology)

the whole world is watching

Join the Virtual March