Letters, a short story, and memories of Paul Bowles

Click all images of the manuscripts and letters to enlarge...

Paul Bowles (December 30, 1910 - November 18, 1999), was a powerful novelist and musician, who often seemed to be in the right place at the right time. He met with, partied with, and worked with people like W.H. Auden, Leonard Bernstein, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Virgil Thompson, Gertrude Stein, Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg, as well as a few truly masterful Moroccan storytellers, whose work he translated and helped popularize in the west. He was married to Jane Bowles, an excellent writer as well, who Tennessee Williams, John Ashberry and others consider one of the most underrated American writers. It was an odd marriage indeed, but somehow it worked. Jane served as the model for one of the main characters in The Sheltering Sky. At least one movie has been made about their marriage.

Paul Bowles wrote classic 20th century novels like Let It Come Down, The Spider's House, and The Sheltering Sky. He also published fourteen collections of excellent short stories, as well as translations of several native Moroccan authors, most notably numerous novels and collections of the strange and compelling writer Mohammed Mrabet (who people often claimed didn't exist and was merely an alter-ego of Bowles). Bowles also wrote a truly crazy autobiography, Without Stopping, and a masterful travel book: Their Heads Were Green, Their Hand Were Blue.



I was (and am) a big fan. When we started Scape magazine in 1981, I contacted him, and begged for stories, photos, anything. To my shock, he answered with a warm note. And then, to really knock my socks off, a few weeks later, he sent me a story for Scape (to us! Instead of Anteus, or The New Yorker, or The Paris Review!). These are scans of some of the notes from him, as well as the story he sent to Scape.

I blew my one chance to meet him. In 1982, Keelin and I were traveling in Europe, and spent a week in Morocco. In Tangier, I was dog sick with food poisoning (contracted in Granada, Spain) and could not pull my act together to spend any time with him...











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a note from e e cummings

While I worked at Carl Fischer in New York (77-82), I acquired this letter of the great American poet e.e. cummings. We were cleaning out the copyright files--purging contracts and documents for books and music that had been out of print for decades. No one wanted things like this, so I picked up this, a couple of letters from Theodore Roethke, and other ephemera.

This letter has been sitting in a ziplock bag with my photos for about 23 years, and I broke it out today. I also dug out three short letters (to me) from the great American novelist, short story writer, and composer, Paul Bowles. I will also be reprinting his original manuscript that we later published in our journal, Scape.

---click e.e.'s letter to enlarge---

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Poem: The Bay Of Delusion

Between what we do
And what we'd like to think we do
Lies a vast bay of denial and delusion

We make believe
There is war in our bones
That growth is the child of destruction

That we are the chosen ones
God's boys and girls given carte blanche
To make war

We make believe
We are right or wrong
That it doesn't matter

In this world
And we'll take a flier
It doesn't matter in the next.

---o0o---

Joni Mitchell's lyrics to God Must Be A Boogie Man

God Must Be A Boogie Man

He is three
One’s in the middle unmoved
Waiting
To show what he sees
To the other two
To the one attacking--so afraid
And the one that keeps trying to love and trust
And getting himself betrayed
In the plan--oh
The divine plan
God must be a boogie man!

One’s so sweet
So overly loving and gentle
He lets people in
To his innermost sacred temple
Blind faith to care
Blind rage to kill
Why’d he let them talk him down
To cheap work and cheap thrills
In the plan--oh
The insulting plan
God must be a boogie man!

Which would it be
Mingus one or two or three
Which one do you think he’d want the world to see
Well, world opinion’s not a lot of help
When a man’s only trying to find out
How to feel about himself!
In the plan-oh
The cock-eyed plan
God must be a boogie man!
- Joni Mitchell
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Jesusland in jeopardy? Pat Robertson retracts another statement

Pat Robertson, the American telenazi and leader of the evangelical Taliban, is now backing off from statements he made earlier that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon was smitten with a stroke by God in retribution for withdrawing from Gaza and moving real estate lines around in the Holy Land.

Why would the Reverend back off? You may have guessed: $$$.

Pat is frantically apologizing everywhere in sight to save his $50 million plan for a biblical theme park--Jesusland--in Galilee.

Jesusland's future was already a little shaky, due to esthetic and development issues. A statement from Robertson headquarters says that he was merely pointing out the Old Testament perspective on the division of Israel. Avi Hartuv, a spokesman for Israel’s tourism minister, said: "We will not do business with him."
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Poem: The Broken Chord

The rain falls
As you practice arpeggios

Running out the broken chord
In an ever-shifting

Pattern of music sifting
Through caesuras between notes

Forming a counterpoint
With the drumming of the rain

Thousand of patterns
Weave around and through other patterns

The rain chicanes in the wind
Breaking up and merging again

Billions of drops bump together
In a choreographed ballet

We can never reproduce
But that's nature for you

We replay the same stories and themes
Over and over

And nature trumps us
With a singular snowflake.
---o0o---

In praise of the reign of rain (with apologies to victims of S.A.D. - Seasonal Affective Disorder)

Rain, rain, go away
Come again another day,
Little Johnny wants to play.

Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never show your face again.

“The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A newcomer to Seattle arrives on a rainy day. He gets up the next day and it's raining. It also rains the day after that, and the day after that. He goes out to lunch and sees a young kid and asks out of despair, "Hey kid, does it ever stop raining around here?" The kid says, "How do I know? I'm only 6."

I am in a fairly small minority (of one?) on this. I have met several other NW natives who will reluctantly confess they like the rain too. After three weeks of rain, it feels cozy.

Rain imposes a certain rhythm on the world--the fantastic, incessant drumming and thrumming. Roostertails, mud puddles, downspouts funneling gallons of water a minute, the amazingly clean air, the glossy sheen varnishing the landscape, the muffled traffic and industrial sounds--I love everything about it. Rain reminds me of home, and family, of writing, listening to music, reading, and drawing. It feels like an old friend. They say in Seattle it's either a rain day or a drain day. At the moment we're trying to rain AND drain. The rain is winning. It's always there in the background, that wonderful, rhythmic drumming. It's a winter soundtrack.

You may have heard of the Alaskan tribes that have 400 words for snow? The Great Inuit Snow Hoax started in 1911 when anthropologist Franz Boaz mentioned that the Inuit—he called them "Eskimos," (the derogatory term for eaters of raw meat)—had four different words for snow. With each succeeding reference the number grew (or heh heh, snowballed), until it settled in at 400 words. The linguist Steve Pinker says they have no more words for snow that your average kid in Minnesota: "Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen." For rain, I only come up with a handful of synonyms in the northwest: showers, drizzles, sprinkles, flurries, precipitation, mist, precip, drencher, downpour.

It has rained every day in Seattle for the last three weeks. It is supposed to. And yet, transplants and locals alike complain about it every day. And we're not even close to the record (1953, when it rained 33 days straight).

The cumulative effect wears on people, and the land. My yard, which has already sprouted a small spring or two (e.g., the water table has nowhere to go but up). The yard is approaching 100% saturation. Walking across the lawn is like tiptoeing across a bowl of pudding, with the grass almost floating on top of a substrata of jiggling, barely solid mud. Even worse are the edges of the hills themselves. Seattle is largely a bunch of hills, separated by lakes, rivers, and canals. I live in the North Beach neighborhood of Ballard, on Crown Hill. Puget Sound is a ten minute walk down the hill. It is around the edges of these hills that things begin to liquify, slide, and tumble.

"We've reached a threshold for saturation."

Last week, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) issued an advisory that more rain could trigger slides in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. "The gradual buildup of rain makes it hard to predict slides," said USGS spokeswoman Stephanie Hanna, "because the soil is so soaked that it takes only a little rain to prompt a slide." "We've reached a threshold for saturation," she said.

I don't want the hills to slide into the sea, but I could easily enjoy another month or two of this. Break out your wacky sun lamps, bumbershoots, and parkas. Trudge in for your seasonal affective disorder treatments. In a few short months, it will dry up nicely. And I will miss the rain.
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Alien Lore 59 - Abductees, extraterrestrial sex, and "The Stockholm Syndrome"

One embattled psychiatrist, John Mack, M.D., argues that alien abduction cannot be understood in the western rationalist tradition of science.

Dr. Mack, of Harvard Medical School, is a long-time champion of alien abductees and a paranormal theorist. His 1994 bestseller, Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens, drew wide attention with his argument that the men and women he has debriefed have indeed been abducted (and molested, or worse) by aliens.

Dr. John Mack says abductees often come to love their alien captors.

This behavior in hostages is known as the Stockholm Syndrome. The most famous example is Patty Hearst's behavior following her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Despite waking bruised and rodgered, these abductees say their feelings for The Greys transcend temporal human bonds and lead to a sense of enveloping oneness with the universe that approaches the ecstatic sage of some religions.

Peter Faust, a 45-year-old acupuncturist, says he endured years of sexual probing by The Greys. Following hypnotic-regression sessions with Dr. Mack, Faust concluded that he is yoked to a female alien-human hybrid with whom he has multiple offspring. He said he "realized we're not alone in the universe. There are beings out there who care about us. But getting to this point is a long, arduous journey, with a lot of people who want to deny your experience."

Many abductees tell stories of displaced sexual desire and romantic fantasy. Some of the alleged victims have had hysterectomies, and yet they tell of alien insemination and being forced to conceive an alien child. Are they mourning lost fertility or fearing lost sexuality? The unpleasant aspects of imagining forced sex with an alien are played down, and the emotional satisfactions played up. Many women fall in love with the male aliens who have lifelong relationships with them, and father their hybrid children.

Some UFOlogists contend that abductees who perceive their experiences negatively do so because they themselves aren't spiritually advanced enough to truly understand what has really happened to them. Persons treading on a higher spiritual plane tend to have positive alien encounters, and those who have painful experiences are troglodytes. Whitley Strieber voiced this theory in his book, Majestic: "In the eyes of the others [the aliens], we who met them saw ourselves. And there were demons there."
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Links to the best of the original art on All This Is That

Collage: Happy New Year, Republicans!
Painting: The balance of power tilts
Painting: The President's Head Explodes During A Press Conference
Drawing: Teaching a horse the missionary position
A Company Photograph
Photograph collage: Donald Rumsfeld
Flag No. 16
Painting: W
Drawing: Lines
Sixteen Panels

Collage: Five Presidents
Painting: The Grey landing party
Painting: The nudist beauty pageant
Easel painting: A Jury of your peers
Painting: The spooks from the C.I.A.

Painting: The missing link
PaintingL The tyrannosaurus steps into history
All This Is That Poster
Painting: Cyclops
Painting: The 28 men who run the world

Painting: Self portrait
POTUS 28: President Woodrow Wilson - The President Who Short-Circuited & POTUS 28A: President Edith Wilson - An Alternate Portrait
Painting: Movie Love scene
All This Is That: Jack Drawing: Faces No. 467
All This Is That: Hobo Signs
Painting: Cyclops 2
Faces No. 407
Painting: Abduction
Another All This Is That Poster

The Grey
Priest Cartoon
Poster for The Seattle Sledgehammer Murder Movie
Chou En Lai collage and painting
New Years
Painting: General Douglas MacArthur
Heroes And Villains No. 20--> Two More Catholics--> Keelin Curran & Pope Alexander VI a/k/a Rodrigo Borgia a/k/a "The Bad Pope"
Heroes and villains no. 10 --> Ma Barker and Elizabeth Gaskell
Heroes And Villains No. 7---> Two Bald Guys--> Hideki Tojo and John Glenn
Heroes And Villains No. 6--> Jerry Garcia and Tokyo Rose (aka Ikuko Toguri)
Heroes and villains no. 4 --> Jeffrey Dahmer and Daniel Boone
Heroes & Villains No. 18--> Joni Mitchell and Maier Suchowljansky (a/k/a Meyer Lansky)
Heroes and villains no. 1 --> Adolph Shcikelgruber Hitler and Lyndon Baines Johnson
Flag No. 19

POTUS No. 9 - Wm. Henry Harrison, The drive-by President
POTUS 34: Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower - A Most Detached President
POTUS 38: Pres. Gerald R. Ford - Pardon Me, Mister President!
POTUS 16: Pres. Abraham Lincoln - The Most Beloved President?
Painting: Lines 2
POTUS 42: Pres. William Jefferson Clinton - The Comeback Kid
POTUS 35: Pres. Jack Kennedy - Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye
The peacekeeper robot
Heroes and villains No. 49: Mario Cuomo and Ann Coulter
Heroes And Villains No. 40--> Larry Rivers & Lucrezia Borgia (a/k/a The Duchess of Ferrara), Daughter of Heroes And Villains No. 20, Pope Alexander VI
Painting: The UFOs approach warp speed
Painting: Judge Alito
Heroes and villains no. 38 - Eleanor Roosevelt and Lee Harvey Oswald
Painting: Alien Landing part No. 2
Painting: Bipolar
Painting: Meet the new boss
Heroes and villains no. 35 - Doris Lessing and Typhoid Mary
Heroes and villains no. 34 - Mata Hari and Dr. William Carlos Williams
Heroes and villains no. 32 - John Lennon and Carrie Nation
Heroes and villains no. 31 - Nina Simone and Lynette Squeaky Fromme
Painting: The Wheel of progress
Heroes And Villains No. 29--> Phyllis Schlafly & Peter Jackson
Heroes And Villains No. 26--> Two People born in 1893--> Anita Loos & Joachim von Ribbentrop
Heroes And Villains No. 25--> Congresswoman (and 1972 Presidential Candidate) Shirley Chisholm & Senator Joseph ("tailgunner Joe") McCarthy
Painting: A Grey Visitor
Painting: Grey Alien No. 7
Painting: The battle for Rohan
Heroes and villains no. 23 - J. Edgar Hoover and Billie Holiday
Potus No. 33 - Harry S. Truman (The buck stops here)
Potus No. 17 - Andrew Johnson - The Worst President Ever?
Potus No. 39 - James Earl Carter
POTUS 15: President James Buchanan, The Man Who Left A Divided Country And War For Pres. Abraham Lincoln

Painting: U.S. Flag
Potus No. 8 - Martin Van Buren
Potus no. 21 - Chester Alan Arthur
Potus No. 2 - John Adams
Painting: The return of the king
Potus No. 43 - George W. Bush
Mosaic of George W. Bush
POTUS 13 - Pres. Millard Fillmore: Another Partial Term President
Potus No. 37 - Richard Nixon and the comedy of errors
Potus No. 10 - John Tyler, the first accidental president
POTUS 12: Pres. Zachary Taylor - The President Who Mostly Closely Resembled Mel Brooks
Seven Year Art Project - No. 12
Painting - The Invasion

Seven year art project no. 10
Seven year art project - no. 9
Easel painting: The flash
Easel painting: Bluehead
Easel painting: I read the news today
POTUS 32: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt - The Man In The Wheelchair Who Lifted The Country On His Shoulders; The Only POTUS To Win Four Terms
Painting: grey alien from Zeta Reticuli
Painting: Adam and Eve
Painting: Gomorrah
Mosaic
Painting: Chancellor Hitler
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Tom DeLay turns tail and steps down as Majority Leader

It seems fitting, somehow, that the guy who used to make his living as an exterminator ended up as the exterminated. Tom DeLay has been taking a lot of point blank shots from people he prevously wouldn't have deemed fit to kiss his boots. Those shots have escalated into jarring body blows. In the end, the ex-Majority Leader admitted the inevitable and abandoned his battle to hold on to the House leadership. Heh heh. You can read a less partisan version of the day's events here, on MSNBC.COM.

Facing an apparent sea change in Republican politics, DeLay, the one-time poster boy for the conservative revolution, threw in the towel yesterday under intense pressure from a Republican Party bitch-slapped, ambushed, and hamstrung by an unending parade of devastating news that continues unabated in 2006--an election year for every member of the House!

"I have always acted in an ethical manner within the rules of our body and the laws of our land," the Texas bad boy told fellow Republicans in a letter. There were shouts of jubilation from the Republican side of the aisle when they read the news. Not from us: Democrats hoped he'd continue his pointless and factionalizing fight until election time.

Delay went on in his letter to say "I cannot allow our adversaries to divide and distract our attention." The royal we is in operation here. "Our adversaries" are merely the prosecutors vying to put Delay behind bars.

Until yesterday, Tom DeLay insisted he would reclaim his rightful position after clearing his name. And then Black Jack Abramoff turning state's evidence drug him even further into the mud.

Reps. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the GOP whip, and John Boehner of Ohio, a one-time member of the leadership, want the job, along with two or tree others.

Speaker of the House Hastert said he expects elections to be held when lawmakers return to the Capitol the week of Jan. 31. Congress had put off resuming until late January in hopes Delay could put his troubles behind him. Heh heh.

Democrats, poised to take control of the House in November, twisted the knife around a bit:

"The culture of corruption is so pervasive in the Republican conference that a single person stepping down is not nearly enough to clean up the Republican Congress," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader.

Democrats must gain 15 seats in November to win control of the 435-member House. A year ago that seemed like a hopeless pipe-dream. Today? It seems inevitable.
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Ir's not fascism when we do it

click to enlarge

In "Fascism Anyone?," Laurence Britt identifies 14 characteristics common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 "identifying characteristics of fascism." Click here to read or download an interesting PDF pamphlet on the 14 characteristics and their current analogues... It's just a little spooky!

1.) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2.) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3.) Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4.) Supremacy of the Military
5.) Rampant Sexism
6.) Controlled Mass Media
7.) Obsession with National Security
8.) Religion and Government are Intertwined
9.) Corporate Power is Protected
10.) Labor Power is Suppressed
11.) Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12.) Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13.) Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14). Fraudulent Elections
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D.C. Bar disagrees with rules on sex with customers, considers masturbation and other alternatives

The leadership of the Bar Association in Washington, D.C. objects to rules barring sex with clients outright, according to a news story from The Associated Press.

The bar insists their objection to a rule proposed for D.C.'s 80,000 lawyers doesn't mean they approve of lawyers engaging in sex acts with their customers. No, no, no!

Instead, of an actual rule, the bar would like a warning that sleeping with clients could create a conflict of interest.

"At the very least," one spokeswoman said "sleeping with the clients can lead to problems with billings. It's hard to perform aggressive billing on a company when you've been thrashing around naked all night with one of the principals. Or their husband or wife!"

Another spokesman insisted off the record that the bar was considering urging its attorneys to use masturbation as a first line of defense. "It may not solve the problem, " the spokesman said, "but it takes the heat off for a while." "We've also asked our attorneys to make wider use of the many commercial escort services available in the Washington-area. "
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The Republicans begin to eat their young, self-immolate, and rat out their brethren

According to Time Magazine, convicted Congressman Duke Cunningham wore a wire when talking to friends and associates. . . He agreed to wear a wire after agreeing to cooperate with a corruption probe. Click on the link for details...
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Johnny Cash: lyrics for "What Is Truth?"

When this song came out, in 1970, it was an inspiration and a shot in the arm. After Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee" in 1969, that AWFUL "An Open Letter To My Son" (click here to hear that tune in a previous post) and tunes like Barry Sadler's "The Green Berets," it was a relief to hear a song like this, from the "older generation." During those dark Nixon war years, with J. Edgar Hoover running wild, where hardhats and Hells Angels beat up hippies and other peace marchers, it was good to hear one of the country stalwarts defend "the kids." Johnny was on our side.


What is truth?
by Johnny Cash, 1970

The old man turned off the radio
Said: "Where did all the old songs go?
Kids sure play funny music these days!
And they play it in the strangest ways
Everything seems so loud and wild
It was peaceful back when I was a child."
Well, man, could it be the girls and boys
Are tryin' to be heard above your noise
And the lonely voice of youth cries:
"What is truth?"

A little boy of three sittin' on the floor
Looked up and said, " Daddy, what is war?"
"Son that's when people fight and die."
The little boy of three says,"Daddy, why?"
A young man of seventeen in Sunday school
Is being taught the golden rule
By the time another years gone around
It may be his turn to lay his own life down!
Can you blame the voice of youth for asking:
"What is truth?"

A young man sittin' on the witness stand
The man with a book says, "Raise your hand!
Repeat after me, I solemnly swear"
The judge looked down at his long hair
And although the young man solemnly swore
Nobody seemed to hear anymore
And it really didn't matter if the truth was there
It was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair!
And the lonely voice of youth cries:
"What is truth?"

A young girl dancin' to the latest beat
Has found new ways to move her feet
A young man standin' in the city square
Is tryin' to tell somebody that he cares
"Yeah, the ones that your callin' wild
Are gonna be the leaders in a little while
This old world is breakin' to a new born day
And I solemnly swear that it will be their way!
You'd help that voice of youth find:
'What is truth'!"

And the lonely voice of youth cries:
(Spoken)"What is truth?"
---o0o---

An Open Letter To My Teenage Son

No wonder we were crazy in the 60s. This "song" was a big hit on AM radio. A lot of parents thought it was a smart piece of writing (as opposed to, say, smarmy, reactionary claptrap). It was just flat depressing. But then that's the way it was. I remember a lot of heated arguments with angry adults, and teachers and Sunday school teachers over the war and protesting and burning draft cards. I even witnessed an actual father-son fight over the war. I tracked the song down to http://www.fugly.com. You can listen to it on your PC, or download it... Click here to listen.


An Open Letter To My Teenage Son
by Victor Lundberg

Dear son:

You ask my reaction to long hair or beards on young people
Some great men have worn long hair and beards
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln
If to you long hair or a beard is a symbol of independence
If you believe in your heart that the principles of this country
Our heritage, is worthy of this display of pride
That all men shall remain free
That free men at all times will not inflict their personal limitations
Of achievement on others,
That demands your own rights as well as the rights of others
And be willing to fight for this right, you have my blessings

You ask that I not judge you merely as a teenager
To judge you on your own personal habits, abilities and goals
This is a fair request and I promise that I will not judge any person
Only as a teenager if you will constantly remind yourself that some of my
generation judge people by their race, their belief or the color
of their skin and that this is no more right than saying all
teenagers are drunken dope addicts or glue sniffers
If you will judge every human being on his own individual potential
I will do the same.

You ask me if God is dead
This is a question each individual must answer within himself
But a warm summer day with all its brightness
All its sound, all its exhilarating breathiness just happened
God is love. Remember that God is a guide and not a storm trooper
Realize that many of the past and present generation
Because of a well intended but unjustifiable misconception
Have attempted to legislate morality
This created part of the basis
For your generation's need to rebel against our society
With this knowledge perhaps your children will never ask
Is God dead?
I sometimes think much of mankind is attempting to work Him to death

You ask my opinion of draft card burners. I would answer this way
All past wars have been dirty, unfair, immoral, bloody and second-guessed
However, history has shown most of them necessary
If you doubt that our free enterprise system
In the United States is worth protecting, if you doubt the principles
Upon which this country was founded, that we remain free to choose our religion
Our individual endeavors, our method of government
If you doubt that each free individual in this great country
should reap rewards commensurate only with his own efforts
Than it is doubtful you belong here

If you doubt that people who govern us
Should be selected by their desire
To allow us to strive for any goal we feel capable of obtaining
Than its doubtful you should participate in their selection
If you are not grateful to a country
That gave your father the opportunity to work
For his family to give you the things you have and you do not feel pride
Enough to fight for your right to continue in this
Manner than I assume the blame for your failure
To recognize the true value of our birthright

And I will remind you that your mother will love
you no matter what you do, because she is a woman
And I love you too son
But I also love our country and the principles for which we stand
And if you decide to burn your draft card
then burn your birth certificate at the same time
From that moment on, I have no son
---o0o---

Disaster: Explosion Rocks The White House and Capital Hill

click image to enlarge

An explosion named Jack Abramoff rocked The White House and Capital Hill yesterday, causing extensive damage with more to come. Much much much more.
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The Abramoff virus spreads, multiplies, and mutates - is this the big one?

"The octopus of mayhem," Chris Matthews called the Abramoff scandal-crimewave-disaster tonight. Everyone complains that nothing sticks to this Administration. And with every new outrage it kind of seems like they're right. Here we go again. This one seems to be heating up with a little more intensity and butt-puckering fear among, possibly, scores of largely Republican congressmen. Huh huh huh. Delay, Hastert, and The President have even returned some money. Not all, but some.
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President Bush unloads Abramoff contributions

Like many other politicians today, The President's re-election campaign is unloading the (now) dirty money they received from Jack Abramoff.

President Bush's re-election campaign is giving up $6,000 in campaign contributions connected to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who faced more guilty pleas as part of a broad-ranging political corruption investigation. Even that dirtbag Tom DeLay hucked his Abramoff money over the fence to a charity.

I do note, however, that the Bush campaign is keeping more than $94,000 that Abramoff "raised." Only the $6,000 came directly from Jack; the rest of the money came from his organization. And they talked about Bill Clinton parsing words. . .

Click on the title of this post to read the entire sordid story...
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Tom Tomorrow nails it on the head

click cartoon to enlarge for legibility...


This is Tom Tomorrow's take on corruption. He could have written it today, or fifty years ago... could anyone nail the Abramoff and DeLay fiascos any better than this (in only two panels out of the eight)with a couple of drawings and a few words?
---o0o---

The West Virginia Mine Disaster

I watched MSNBC last night, flipping off and on to other news channels. The last I'd heard about the miners in West Virginia was that there was little hope. Probes sent into the mine showed it was highly toxic with carbon monoxide. The rescuers had found one body, which gave a little more hope, perhaps, that the others had escaped. The Governor was at a church with the families of the miners. And incredibly, word came to the church that 12 of the remaining miners were rescued. A cheer went up. They sang a hymn of thanks. The church bells rang.



A couple hours later word came again. The last call was wrong. It wasn't one dead and 12 alive, it was 12 dead and one alive. And then the recriminations began over how someone could do that to the families (when it was clearly a terrible mistake).

The Governor was grilled by the press in an endless press conference, although he didn't seem to have anything to do with the false news reports. Apparently someone misunderstood communications between the rescuers and their command center, and, of course, the cell phone network was activated and the familes were told that unconfirmed story. I had flipped off the television, thinking "well, that's pretty cool. This doesn't happen very often." And when I turned it on later, the new news was that the miners has perished.

You always feel for the families, in these all too public tragedies, but this was especially painful. . .those moments of hope have to make the other moments even worse. It also reminds me of the enormous changes cell phones have had on our society, and world. You can't really analyze this; it just sucks. I never did like the Bee Gees or U2 songs about mine disasters either. . .


---o0o---

Sweet hitchhiker

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Alien Lore 58 - KGB's secret UFO files finally made public

This information comes mainly from Pravda and MUFON.

Files from the famous "Blue Folder" have been declassified for some time now. The Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Popovich got the folder from the KGB in 1991. Today Comrade Popovich is the honorary president of the Academy of Informational and Applied Ufology.

The blue folder contains descriptions of UFO flights and reports on attempts taken by the military to engage and/or catch the aliens.

In 1968, 13 leading aircraft designers and engineers of a brand-new aircraft forwarded a letter to Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin. The letter requesed a organization dedicated to the study of UFOs. A reply to the letter was signed by an apparatchik, Shchukin.

"A number of competent organizations of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Chief Directorate of Meteorological Service, Defense Ministry and a few other agencies considered the issue of nature of the so-called flying objects. The organizations involved in the study of the atmosphere and space have been instructed to register and do research on any cases of UFOs for identification purposes. The USSR Academy of Sciences is charged with general monitoring of the phenomena, and therefore a special organization for the study of UFOs is not required."

Unlike the U.S., the Soviets appear to have acknowledged they were actively studying the UFO/Alien phenomenon.

Pavel Popovich was given the folder, a 124-page compilation of reports about encounters with UFOs filed by authorities, military units COs and eyewitnesses.

Mr. Popovich saw a UFO once while flying in a passenger plane from Washington to Moscow. According to him, the object looked like a shining triangle that popped up out of nowhere, for awhile it flew near the plane at about 600 miles per hour before vanishing.

Despite a cover letter denying any special program by the KGB for monitoring the UFOs, the contents of the folder indicated the opposite. The Soviet secret police launched investigations in several cases, and specifically one near Burkhala of the Magadan region in 1989. "The eyewitnesses claim to have watched a red shining sphere circulating above the village for half an hour." The northern lights are reported to have shone brightly all night long following the incident. The UFOs vanished after the explosion

KGB agents also studied what happened at the airport of the city of Mineralnye Vody on December 15, 1987. According to the airport dispatchers, at 23:15 flight No 65798 reported an "object resembling an aircraft with its headlights on." The radars showed no aircraft whatsoever. Three minutes later the UFO was gone.

The crew of another plane also observed the UFO flying in the area. The clock read approximately five minutes later. According to crewmembers, the UFO left a fiery trail in the air. The crews of the both planes reported that the UFO had disappeared after a flash resembling an explosion. A villager reported a burning plane flying over his village at 23.30. The eyewitness found no wreckage.

At times, the military tried to study UFOs independently. In August 1987, servicemen of an antiaircraft unit based on the Tiksi Peninsula tried to "get to know better" an unidentified flying object that appeared on a radar screen. Colonel Lobanov, duty officer of the military unit No 45038, said: "An unidentified target detected by the radar station of the commandant"s office of the antiaircraft unit at 05:45 Moscow time." The target moved speeds from 0 to 250 miles per hour. At 06.55 a helicopter took off for a closer examination of the object. Suddenly, the object became invisible. Another aircraft, the AN-12 flying in the vicinity at the time reported an emerald cloud with traces of purple and dark spots visible in the middle.

In 1987, five officers were dispatched to the northern part of Karelia in the Leningrad Military Region to accompany an object of unknown origin that had been located near the city of Vyborg. The object was said to be 50 feet long, 14 fee wide and 8 feet high. The military was never able to open the "extraterrestrial can." The object disappeared from the hangar late September. I don't know if its occupants awoke, someone stole the UFO, or it it just went up in smoke like a Mission Impossible recording...

On July 28, 1989, the arrival of an UFO spread panic among the personnel of a military unit stationed in the vicinity of Kapustin Yar, in the Astrakhan region. Corporal Valery Voloshin was on duty in the communications center at the time. He filed the first report on the case.



One of the documents from the "Blue Folder" describes a UFO encounter in 1984 in Turkestan Military District. Two fighters were scrambled, but all the attempts to shoot the UFO down failed. When the object was fired at, it descended down to one hundred meters above the ground to an altitude that made further firing by the fighters impossible. It is necessary to mention that despite the firing, the speed of the UFO did not change. During the flight the object passed above several military unit locations, and this made it possible to take photographs.

When the UFO approached the town of Krasnovodsk, a helicopter was scrambled to take another shot at downing the UFO. The saucer quickly climbed and hovered at an altitude that was inaccessible for the helicopter. After the pilots shot off all their ammunition the helicopter descended for landing; the UFO sharply changed its course and headed toward the open sea.

In 1985 a radar station under Captain L. Valuev in the Krasnovodsk region registered an unknown object at an altitude of 20,000 meters. Its dimension was about 1000 meters! The object did not move, but after some time a small disc having a diameter of approximately five meters flew out of the large object. This smaller disc-shaped UFO landed at the Krasnovodsk spit.

Patrol-boats of the Kaspian flotilla rushed to the landing place of the UFO, but when they approached it at a distance about 100 meters, the UFO took off and flew away for about a kilometre. Patrol-boats approached the UFO again, and it again flew away from them. The situation was repeated five times! Finally the object went up with tremendous speed. Its mark on the radar screen coincided with the mark of the mother craft, and then the large UFO flew into space.


The last document in the "Blue Folder" reports "On the 21st of March, 1990, officers in Alexandrovsky Town Department of Internal Affairs accepted a number of telephone calls from town and district residents about the appearance of unidentified flying objects in airspace.

"After obtaining more exact information it was established that rather large number of residents in the towns of Alexandrov, Strunino, Karabanov, villages Arsaki, Zhulino and in several other settlements became eyewitnesses of a UFO-and in several cases of two UFOs-on the 21st of March between 20:00 and 23:30. The flight of UFOs was accompanied by flashes of white light that followed one another after two or three seconds and resembled arc welding.

"But all eyewitnesses found difficulty in describing the appearance of the UFOs. In Karabanov one of the UFOs allegedly hovered above the Eternal Fire Memorial for the perished warriors, and a ray of light emitted from the object illuminated earth surface.

"A fighter piloted was scrambled towards the UFOs. He flew near one of the 'flying saucers' and saw against a background of Pereyaslavl-Zalessky town illumination 'a black body with two white flashing lights.'

"Shortly after the lieutenant colonel's report was published by the Soviet main military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (The Red Star), it was confirmed in the report that the author had revealed by sight a target having two bright white flashing lights.
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Photograph: John Newton Brummet 2nd

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You can probably tell I've had a scanner around the last couple weeks. This seems to be a studio picture of John Newton Brummet, Jr. (1922-1964). I'm John Newton Brummet, Jr., or the 3rd. This photo was taken in his hometown, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
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The shipwrecked White House: image of destruction

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Guilty!: Jack Abramoff goes down - faces up to 30 years in the hoosegow - dozens of legislators scared s***less - the canary is about to sing

Jack Abramoff, the now very well-known D.C. lobbyist, took a fall today for conspiracy, corrupting public officials (yeah, it's almost an oxymoron), fraud and tax evasion. In a plea deal, Abramoff admitted to crimes that could net him 30 years in the can. He will also plead guilty to similar charges in Federal court in Florida. You may recall that Abramoff was already in hot water over a fake wire transfer he used to secure a bank loan of $60 million.

Abramoff may have gone down, but it looks like he intends to bring down plenty of politicians to cushion the fall.

Once Abramoff begins singing, this could be the heaviest corruption case--ever. Some sources believe that Singin' Jack could take down as many as two dozens legislators (up to and including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay).

Abramoff and his partner in crime, Michael Scanlon (who pleaded guilty last year), were also accused by prosecutors of conspiring to defraud Indian tribes in four states of millions of dollars.

OK, Jack, start naming names!

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President: If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why

Yesterday, President Bush mounted his third defense in two weeks of his secret domestic espionage program. The President said that Americans understand this spying is protecting their security.

Government officials have said that perhaps thousands of people have been under surveillance.

"If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, " The President said, "we'd like to know why."

Did The President overstep his constitutional authority and violate a law intended to prevent government spying on its citizens? We'll find out sometime soon. Maybe. Congress raised the volume on their criticism today.

Click on the title of this piece to read the entire story from The Washington Post.
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Photograph of an Eisenhower-era child

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Alien Lore 57 - UFO Crash During The First Iraq War

This posting from "a high level source" appears on numerous UFOlogy BBSs and websites. The original, of course, WAS IN ALL CAPS, which I converted with a handy text editor called NoteTab Pro. This item was posted on an British amateur radio packet bulletin board "for world wide consumption." It is, shall we say, lean on details. The author, who appears to have been an eye-witness, never makes clear his nationality, exactly who "the Colonel" or "Petrokov" were, or what his relationship was to them.


DESERT STORM UFO
ALLEGEDLY SHOT DOWN

A high level source has revealed that an American Air Force F16 gunned down a UFO over Saudi Arabia during the "oration Desert Storm" war. Five nations are trying to cover up the encounter. I don't know all the details but I'm sure that when [garbled]. . .

The Saudis with me were so frightened that they asked American, British and French investigators to come to the crash site immediately.

The Colonel says he was visiting in Riyadh at the time and that he and a small Russian team were able to inspect the wreckage before American forces from Desert Storm arrived.

The craft was circular and made of a material I've never seen before, he says. About a third of it seemed to be missing--possibly blown away by the American missiles. The saudis wouldn't let us touch anything, but we saw instruments, machinery and other things that completely baffled us, he says. The markings on instrument panels and dials were not in any language he was familiar with. It seemed to be a relatively small craft, maybe 15 feet across, he says.

There were three chairs, probably for crew members, but they were so small they seemed to have been made for children. Evidently space aliens are only about three feet tall. Most amazing, though, is the fact that there were no bodies at the crash site, nor did there appear to be an engine in the craft.

The American missiles may have scored a direct hit on the engine, causing it to disintegrate, he says. ButIi checked with the Saudi radar technicians and they claim their instruments didn't show anyone ejecting or bailing out from the craft. Search helicopters were all over the area, which is a desert, and they did not spot any survivors in the vicinity of the crash.

During interviews with the radar technicians, Petrokov was told that the blip identified as the UFO appeared out of nowhere as four F16s were streaking toward Baghdad. One of the American planes broke from formation and headed for the UFO, he says. The alien craft started started moving southwest, away from the F16, and the American pilot gave chase. When the F16 was within three miles, the alien craft seemed to fire something at the plane but missed. The American then fired two missiles. Both hit the saucer. There was a teriffic explosion, and then the crash. When American investigators arrived, Petrokov says, he and his team were immediately ordered out of the area and flown back to Riyadh.

There were things they didn't want us to see--more, I think, than the fact that the craft was circular, that there were no survivors and that it was made of a foreign substance, he says.

Petrokov says members of his team were able to sneak pictures without the knowledge of the Saudis or Americans, but he was ordered to turn them over to Russian authorities the next day.

Petrokov says American Army engineers gathered up all debris and carted it away for shipment to the U.S.
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Metaphysics Credentials

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In case you ever doubted my grip (OK, maybe it's a touch migratory...my grip, that is) on questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation or analysis. . .my Doctor of Metaphysics credential.
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Best President Bush quotes of 2005

"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job." - This now famous line was on many people's quotes of the year list, in addition to being the punchline of hundreds of jokes, japes, and parodies. It was named on Thursday as U.S. President George W. Bush's most memorable phrase of 2005.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." - OK, this one is from 2004, but I can't let it die.

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." - President Bush explained his win-their-hearts-and-minds strategy in May.

"I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?" - POTUS wrote to Secretary Rice during a U.N. Security Council meeting.

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table." - The President said almost a year ago in Belgium.

"In terms of timetables, as quickly as possible - whatever that means." The President explained his timetable for passing Social Security legislation in March.

"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." - POTUS explained, describing illegal immigrants in Tucson in December.
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Happy New Year From The Brummets & Curran

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Bigfoot: Not Just In The Northwest U.S.

Bigfoot fever has come to Malaysia. The local 'papers and official news agency are reporting sightings of a Sasquatch in the southern rainforests.

Click on the title for a link to the Reuters story. . .
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Poem: Mad Song

In the kitchen in repose
Tuna tap at their cans with power
Wheat rustles in golden rows
Inside the bag of flour

All the mirrors and windows
Are crumbling back to sand
The wooden floors moan and bruise
Everywhere I stand

Late at night cockroaches sing
Lined up in an all-star choir
Voices so low I can't hear a thing
But they seem to be getting higher.
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It's the New Year. . .how do you feel?

Write in and let us know how you're feeling today. I had a great night and I came home and even wrote a poem. There are many better nights to get drunk (at least 300). I was compos-mentis anyhow, at the end of the night.

Happy New Year Mister President!

Happy New Year Mister President!

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Poem: Reasons To Keep On

Reasons to keep on

1
We build crystal palaces
Outside our tarpaper shacks of dreams

They make each other gleam
In juxtaposition

2
You can't be sure about the next world
Or the ones beyond that

3
All is never lost
But often gets misplaced

4
It's better to sit in the sun
And think about

That Cold Island across the river
Than the other way around

5
Our toys do not matter
This is as good as it gets

And it may be this good
Or better tomorrow.
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