Jefblog

"Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another."

G Harrison-the baby brother Beatle

If you think the whole of me,

is a little dark, and out of key

you're correct

there's nobody there...


George links

Salon's obit

Hard to say Goodbye

"Well, first of all, I don't like your tie."

George to G. Martin upon their introduction...Martin had asked the Beatles to let him know if there was anything they didn't like..

Asked by a reporter what he called the Beatles' famous moptop hairstyle, he quipped, "Arthur."

This blog is turning into a goddamm obit page, and I am gettin' pretty damm sick of it!

George Harrison 1943-2001. Rip Ltd 2001

Remember to declare those pennies on your eyes, George!

All Things Must Pass

Words of Warning from James Madison concerning our current President, G.W.Bush

The Beat Warning that war is "the true nurse of executive aggrandizement," the nation's fourth president argued:
"Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

Chateaulin Restaurant and wine shop in Ashland, Oregon

If you do nothing else in your life, go to this restaurant. Easily one of the best in the country, and that's no hype. This restaurant, located in the small artsy town of Ashland, would easily standout in New York, Paris or San Francisco.

The Dawn of a New Democratic Party It has become an article of faith since January 20th, 2001, that the Democratic chieftains who walk the halls of power in Washington D.C. can not be trusted to fight for this agenda. When the results of the scandalous 2000 election were ratified in Congress, only the Black Caucus had the courage to turn their backs in protest. When religious extremist John Ashcroft stood for nomination as Attorney General, no true opposition was offered.
Today, as the 4th, 6th and 13th Amendments to the Constitution are disposed of, as Posse Comitatus is replaced by clandestine military tribunals that know no civil authority, the Democrats stand almost completely silent. Only the timely defection of Senator James Jeffords has allowed Democrats to thwart Republican thrusts into the Federal larder and our environmental inheritance. Had Jeffords not jumped, there would be no stopping the GOP.

Thus, it falls to us. We must become the calcium in the withered Democratic backbone, and we must do it now.

Despite its flaws, the Democratic Party is the best tool we have available for the propagation of the liberal, progressive agenda. The Party have faithful followers in every state, and unconquerable strongholds on both coasts. The Democratic political machine stands in every county in every state in the Union. There are doubtless men and women in the U.S. House of Representatives who would savor the chance to act upon principle, instead of from a core of self-defense, a chance we can give them if we get to work now.

The time has come to invade this Party, to storm the battlements from the ground up. The Democratic Party can again become a bastion of true liberalism, as the Republican Party has become a bastion of ultraconservatism, if American progressives take it over from pillar to post. If we take back the Party, if we change the dialogue coming from the media through the brute reality of our strident and unyielding voices, if we tend and nurture that flame of new comprehension blazing in every American breast, we can achieve all that our dreams have whispered.

I don't know if any of you managed to stay up and see the Leonid meteor storm on Sunday morning around 2am, but if you did, I am sure you will agree that it was worth it. For myself, dealing with the trauma of family illness, it was quietly reassuring.
A cosmic dance of lights, all quite silent. It felt like a light show, courtesy of the Universe. It seemed like a a little gift from God (or whatever term you like to use), a little magical respite from the cares and conflicts of life. Just a little beauty for those who could see it. And in a way, a sort of spiritual tickle, reminding us that even in destruction (hope that is not too strong a word) there is beauty.
I don't intend on making any great pronouncements or overly-sentimental statements about the meteor storm, but as I stood silently under the stars, I felt that Things Will Be Okay, and the Universe or God ( I am ecumenical), has great love for his/her/its Creation.
Hope you all have a good T-Day. Make sure to hug the ones you love, and let them know how you feel.

Cheers

Prayers, please from all the Jennings family friends. Sarah is in the hospital for surgery. She made it through the surgery. We appreciate all your prayers and wishes for a speedy recovery.
Thanks,
Jeff

1999 Interview with Ken Kesey-Down on the peacock farm

It Ain't Over Yet!

Ground War Strategies Part 4: What's Next for the Taliban?

Excellent analysis from Stratfor.com. Here is an excerpt:
Political Hand Grenades

In precipitously handing the cities to the Northern Alliance, the Taliban tossed two political hand grenades at the United States.

First, they generated an immediate crisis in relations between the United States and Pakistan. Islamabad invested a tremendous amount of money and both domestic and foreign political capital into securing control of Afghanistan via the Taliban. With the Taliban swept from power, Pakistan now needs to ensure it does not lose all its influence in Afghanistan to Russia and Iran, which back the Northern Alliance.

Pakistan fears the primarily Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara Northern Alliance will marginalize the role of Pushtuns, Pakistan's allies, in the new Afghan government. While promising to forge a broad-based government, the Northern Alliance has done little to dispel this fear, rejecting any former Taliban members in the new government and downplaying any potential role for exiled Pushtun king Mohammed Zahir Shah.

The United States needs Islamabad not only as a base of operations and to influence the Pushtun tribes but also to cut off sources of Taliban support inside Pakistan. Thus, Washington's first priority is to hammer out a deal between the Northern Alliance and Pakistan instead of mopping up al Qaeda.

A second grenade is the Northern Alliance itself. The Alliance is anything but allied. It encompasses the oft-conflicting interests and egos of several ethnically and regionally distinct armies. Alliance factions have fought each other as frequently as they have fought the Taliban, and with Mullah Mohammed Omar out of the way, they are once again focused on dividing the spoils.

Alliance squabbling will complicate the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. It will saddle Washington with the burden of nation-building and relief operations and thus tie up transportation assets and troops. It will also render the Afghan border with Pakistan harder to secure from the Afghan side.

Flashback

Flashforward!

Country Joe

Country Joe McDonald's page on the current crisis...

The Oracle

More about Allen Cohen...

We Are All On The Bus

in memory of Ken Kesey - November 10, 2001

Waking down Pearl St. in Oakland
a curled brown oak leaf flutters
and floats down to the sidewalk.
I think of Kesey's great soul
ripped like a giant redwood
from the earth floating upward
fluttering around us laughing
urging us to an openness that
humanity has forgotten
in the midst of yet another
war of fear and hatred.

He joins the great cabal
of our generation -
our beat-hippie ancestors
urging future generations to move
toward freedom-real freedom
that has its roots in the open heart
and the truthful mind.

They are greeting him there
in the land of the ancestors
Kerouac, Ginsberg, Leary
Garcia, Cassidy, Parker,
Coltrane, Janis , Hendrix
Miles, Corso, Micheline.

They are there smiling
at the wonder of the cycles of life
at the humor of being and not being
at the playfullness of the illusions
we build our empires upon.

They will dance there forever
and we can dance with them as we have
in the great exploration that opened
up the unity we discovered together
hidden in the depths of the mind.

This is the real graduation,
the alignment with the light
toward which we are forever traveling.

Allen Cohen

Salon.com People | Novelist Ken Kesey dies at 66

He's Gone...

Another great warrior shuffled off the mortal coil today. Ken Kesey, age 66, stirred things up, and when they was stirred, he left.
He walked large across America, and helped to change the direction of the big ship.

B: September 17, 1935
D: November 10, 2001

He will be sorely missed.
See ya around, Ken....

Speaking of the muse,

and of great artists, my friend Laura Hohlwein recently opened her online gallery. From a review by William Zimmer, contributing art critic for the New York Times:

"Hohlwein’s true and abiding subject is light, and she invokes it literally. In the past she constructed light-boxes dependent on electric light. Her new works rely on the effects of natural light. She now paints often on Lexan, the proprietary name for a very sturdy plexiglas. Because these compositions are painted on the back of sheets of Lexan, they appear to the viewer in reverse, but more importantly, her glassy and highly reflective matrixes mean that her imagery appears to float or be suspended, rather than firmly fixed. She often makes double-layered paintings, where the force of her new way of working is enhanced by pairing a composition on Lexan, serving as the front layer, with an under layer visible at the back of a thick frame. Similarly, in her large abstractions on canvas, one peers through layers of paint into a space that seems to be in flux and thereby suggests a larger space moving outside the confines of the canvas."

The Muse

I have gotten the impression that Hendrix was channeling the muse during his
better moments. Much like Mozart or Van Gogh. My take on that is that all
those people just had it flowing through them and had to get it out as fast
as they could. With Mozart, his prolific output in 30 years contains things
that other composers would die for, just to have written one thing like
that. Mozart seems to have just tossed off some of these complex and sublime
musical phrases. His talent made his life unreal and he could not live a
normal life. It killed him.
I went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam some years back. In ten years,
Van Gogh just churned out hundreds if not thousands of paintings and
drawings. He was most critical of himself, but almost everything he did has
a transcendent quality to it. It was at the museum that I started to develop
my theory of "channeling" the muse. I was trying to understand him.
In the Van Gogh Museum, the paintings are arranged chronologically, over
four floors. As you go through the paintings, you can correlate his work to
his bouts of madness. When he is okay, his strokes are defined, small,
unhurried and the paintings seem calm. As he starts to go into one of his
bouts, his paintings become more frenzied, strokes are thicker, subject and
feeling of the paintings is haunted or "out of this world". These are
actually some of his most compelling paintings. I also got the impression
that he was driven to get his drawings out. Had to get them out NOW! More
than he could bear, it was just flowing and flowing. Apparently he would
work for days on end without sleep or food. Pretty manic. It seems that he
might have been acutely sensitive visually, almost painfully so.
So, did the muse choose him? What an honor. The price: your sanity, your
life. You will serve the muse and she will reward you. The reward? See
"price" above.
Garcia, Brian Jones, Cobain and others had a similar relationship with her,
in my book. Not that all of them would have put it that way.

That is not to say the muse eats everyone who serves her. McCartney is
spoken to by the muse. Franz Josef Haydn had a long, good life and was a
great composer who influenced everyone and bridged the gap between Baroque
and Classical. Haydn taught both Mozart and Beethoven.

Monet is another painter who the muse touched. He is another relatively calm
artist with a long and somewhat normal life. A long good life, with kids and
marriage and gardens, etc. I am in awe of the channelers, but I would hope
that if the muse ever picks me, she is gentle with me. I'd like to live a
long life. But a creative long life.

Maybe the "muse" is another term for creative energy, the raw stuff of
creation. Maybe some nervous systems can tap into that and put it out in a
modulated way. Maybe other nervous systems are ultra sensitive and
fine-tuned and can pick up on that energy, but it is too much and they
overload eventually. I try to straddle the line between skeptical science
and open-minded mysticism when it comes to understanding Life, the Universe,
and Everything. 8>)
Doug Adams-RIP