The Law in its majestic equality,
forbids rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges,
to beg in the streets,
and to steal bread
~Anatole France~
Since 1993 we’ve been an organically certified small farm in California. I had a job with a contractor which paid our household expenses and kept us solvent even when the farm sales were less than our farm expenses. But two years ago when the factory in town closed down, and most of us were laid off, I decided to go into the cactus growing more full time. We grow a unique vegetable which we’ve shipped throughout the country. Initially we shipped the cactus leaves as nursery stock, then governmental regulations tightened and we became more aware of the laws and regulations of shipping nursery stock into other states. So we switched to shipping the younger leaves for people to eat themselves as produce. Our goal has been to ship to Health Food Stores, and restaurants as well as individuals who might be interested in the leaves we grow. Through the years our customer list grew slowly but steadily at a steady 30% rate. As the years progressed the governmental regulations seemed to grow more onerous… and the last year we’ve lost many of our older customers due to the recession. Other businesses have quit, some people seem to have stopped their regular orders. Yet, due to aggressive marketing, our sales this year are the highest we’ve ever had due to many new customers. Yet this was done at the expense of any profit we might have had. And again the government has come down on us harder. Now we have been notified that we must complete a fifteen hour ‘continuing education’ credits in water pollution and conservation. I’m all for education, but these government-mandated classes for all farms in the state are not provided for free… we must pay for them ourselves. The worse part is that they are given in the major population centers of Ventura or Monterrey to which we must take ourselves, and pay for our own lodging for the three days of the course.
It is this extra bit that has me stymied. We don’t really make any money doing this cactus business. All of our money goes to shipping, governmental fees of several thousand dollars yearly in order to maintain our licenses, permits, and associated fees and overhead expenses. Knowing that this trip will lead us into negative financial territory makes me reluctant to want to go. Knowing that due to these regulations, we must take a sample of our water and have it analyzed monthly at unknown costs…. I am seriously aggravated at the state of our laws and the level of compliance required even for tiny little micro-farms.
We have some months in which to take the classes, and maybe I’ll find some classes nearby, but this more personal posting than usual is to let the people know that governmental regulations are a double-edged sword. While they give the USA good traceability in produce, and what is perhaps the safest produce in the world, it also makes for stronger economy-of-scale issues that stymie the small grower… right at a time that we are needing MORE small farms, not less. If we were a huge corporate farm, with many employees, still we would need just one person to go to the classes, but when it’s a one-man operation, the standards are the same. The costs are the same, but they are a larger share of the profit in a small operation like ours.
My usual outlook is of hope and positive thoughts. Rarely am I dragged into this level of aggravation. I am sure I will sign up for the classes in Monterrey, they seem very informative and interesting. But people need to know that excessive governmental regulations strangle small business, they hamper the process of business formulation. We need to seriously look at what we want for this country, a place where people can transact business legally and efficiently with little governmental interference. If the government requires classes such as this, it should place them within the reach of the people, if it requires monthly water sampling, it should have a method to make such sampling efficient and inexpensive, (the paperwork mentions some samples might cost $8,000 yearly).
Excessive governmental regulations hamper small business more than the large. If due only to ‘economy of scale’.
When my dad grew up on an Ozark farm in the thirties and forties, they raised corn and wheat, raised hogs which they sold every fall and winter, and had a hundred or so chickens from which they sold eggs daily. They had five or six milk cows which they milked by hand, using the milk for food and their dogs, and one milk-can daily which they left on the roadside for the milk company to pick up. They also went to neighboring farms to supply skilled farm labor. Nowadays they would have to have many more permits, and each operation would require specialized equipment and permits and licensing. As all these regulations pile onto business, you must streamline your operations, drop aspects that have no profit and require permits, then you start to specialize. Yet a small family farm should not be a specialist farm, it should have a wide variety of foods and animals to create the ‘loop system’ for bio-diversity. Yet through the years we have had to drop livestock from our farm, first initially because we did not have proper butchering facilities, so we stopped the breeding of animals, until we had no more. We stopped using manures for fertilizer years ago because the government is worried about contamination of the soils with bacteria from manures. We stopped bringing in mulches for weed control and soil building because we could not vouch for the exact trees the wood chips came from. We are now a closed system with no outside inputs, and only material going out at a rate of a ton a month. Yet even this production is priced so low, and the shipping and governmental costs are so high, that we make no profit. One day, it might just get through my head that I’m better off just enjoying the property ourselves, and stop working so hard to make a business out of it. Yet, I know I can’t, we have such great customers….
While mulling these thoughts over in my head, I decided I needed to go for a walk. So with my camera in hand, I went down the road and took photos of the things I love about living here. And it is when in the wilderness, when I am furthest from people and the government, that I am closest to God and nature. These photos are my world, they are my daily activities and sights…. it is what is most in my heart.
The large oak once was a nut that stood its ground
Spanish Moss on Black Oak
Cutbank on the canyon road
Cutbank on the canyon road
The green lush creek bottom
The green lush creek bottom
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Old cattle Loading Chute
Miocene Deposits, this was all once underwater
Oak Woodlands
Poison Oak vines wind up the Oak Trees
Spanish Moss on the Oak Tree
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
Right around the bend from home, my daily view
‘One Tin Soldier’
`Lambert-Potter’
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They’d have it for their very own.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they’d kill.
Came an answer from the kingdom,
“With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there.”
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
Now the valley cried with anger,
“Mount your horses! Draw your sword!”
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.
Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it…
“Peace on Earth” was all it said.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
As humans we are prey to the same physical frailties and infirmities of any animal. But as modern humans we have a social network, technology and learning to enable us to live far beyond the usual lifespan of a wild person living alone would. We also have the mind that enables us to see our own suffering and that of others, and to have the awareness that this will not cease in our lifetime, and is only relieved on our last day.
The old song Mr. Bojangles kept coming to me today as I was picking cactus on the terraces this morning…the song tells the age-old enigma of mankind… how to live through loss, and to come to terms with the suspician that things will likely not get better.
We all have our favorite people and animals taken from us…. and we’ve all witnessed our own friends, family and critters go through hard and tough times, and knowing we really cannot do anything but lend support and a hand to hold is some times the hardest thing to go through.
Whether it be substance abuse, war memories, physical/mental abuse, physical trauma/disease or just plain old loss of love or loved ones…. what can you tell a person? We know that in time most wounds heal, although they leave scars…. but scars are the knitted-together and tougher filaments of material, designed to keep that area less susceptible to further injury. And a broken bone, if well-set and healed, will be stronger than original. When we cry and experience loss… might it be that then we can more fully appreciate the good times and happiness? Indeed, happiness is a lofty goal to reach for, and I wish all well in attaining a good amount of it, and the realization when they experience it, to hold onto the memory of it. But there are some who seem to have all, and are mightily unhappy…. perhaps a certain amount of loss will open one to remembering the good times… and any wistful memories of the beloved departed will hopefully include a great many instances of joy… the joy that brings us to the realization that this life is for learning, that there is a great many good things awaiting us beyond this life, and we will be able to more fully appreciate them when we have lived through our travails here. Blessings of the Creator upon all who wander lost in this life, may they bring their troubled soul to a loving and caring Father.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises,
was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine
the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit,
the very wood that was hollowed with knives?When you are joyous,
look deep into your heart
and you shall find it is only that which has given
you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping
for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,”
and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits,
alone with you at your board,
remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales
between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty
are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you
to weigh His gold and His silver,
must needs your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
Gyenis Boglárka’s performance at the Ras El Sena Bellydance Competition
in Budapest, Hungary, 30 December, 2007
I suppose there’s several reasons I like this video, the competition was held in Budapest, my mother’s birthplace. Hungary is a crossroads country… on the edge between the East and the West. Just as in nature the borderlands are the most productive for animals, so too for people. It is in the merging of elements that we get the most variety and growth. Hungary was held by the Mongols for over 300 years. There is a huge amount of blending of peoples and cultures that occurred in those years, and perhaps it made the people more open to other influences….
And I like the music a lot…..
Her performance is an example of merging of cultures and methods… it is NOT traditional Belly-Dance… it is an amalgam of styles…. very different, like something from another planet.
And yes, she dances well and is cute… what can I say
Our little tiny town of Nipomo was catapulted to a sort of ignominy during the dark days of the Great Depression. A photographer named Dorothea Lange was tasked along with many others to roam the country taking photos of the travails of the people, to document the effects of the depression.
While she was traveling through our little town, she passed a small camp of the roaming field workers who traveled from town to town following the harvests. She continued to think on this while driving, the thought nagging at her that regardless of need to get to San Francisco quickly, she should stop at that camp. She made it almost halfway to San Luis Obispo before she decided to turn around and visit the camp.
It is said that she drove to the entrance of the camp, stopped her car, and took six photographs of a woman and her children. She then gave her name and the purpose of taking the photos, and got in her car and drove North again.
Soon one of those photographs became an iconic image of the Depression in America. It has been seen worldwide and is among the most famous photographs ever taken…and it all happened in our town.
Those days were full of homeless people, but we called them Oakies, itinerant fieldworkers, tramps, vagabonds and hobos then. There is something of an alluring mystique to the Hobo thinking, but this evaporates for most young men after a few weeks of little food and the dangers of the road. It is in honor of the people and spirit of those times that the song lyrics such as those below were written…
Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange
‘The Best Durn Ride’
~IIIrd Tyme Out~
Clancy was an old man living in the old folks home,
telling me tales about all the roads that he once roamed.
He used to ride the freight train, hoppin’ cars and stockin gloves,
watchin’ that Missouri moon shining down from above
He was just a ramblin’ man, another year, nothing more,
made a little money pickin’ fruit and sweepin’ floors
He drifted back home again in 1944,
watched out for all the old folks while the whole world went to war.
Clancy was an old man and he told me stories about the things that his years had brought
He said some day he’d take that last great ride to Glory,
and it’d be the best durn ride he ever got.
Clancy never watched TV, he didn’t like to hear the news,
said he was just too old to put up with the blues
He traded in his drafty house for a warm room with a view.
Said he appreciated having nothing left to lose.
Clancy was an old man and he told me stories about the things that his years had brought
He said some day he’d take that last great ride to Glory,
and it’d be the best durn ride he ever got.
Now I travel on the road, and roam around from place to place,
and as I pass through a number more than the lines on an old man’s face…
some are very far away, an old Hobo’s changing cars,
tradin’ in his wheelchair for the Lord’s Great Road of Stars.
Clancy was an old man and he told me stories about the things that his years had brought
He said some day he’d take that last great ride to Glory,
and it’d be the best durn ride he ever got.
There is a national treasure that each society has, it is the aged. The ones with the experience, wisdom and humility to guide a society sit in their chairs and their beds and gaze through old eyes at a new world, one they know better than the others that they will soon leave. To them it is not an abstract concept, but a reality they have seen fulfilled time and again in their lives. But there is so much we can learn from these ones who have been through it all… do not discount the counsel of the aged, learn from them while they are still around to give guidance.
~Psalm 92.13-14~
Those who are planted in the house of the Lord,
Shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall still bear fruit in old age;
They shall be fresh and flourishing.
~ Job 12.1 2~
Wisdom is with aged men,
And with length of days, understanding.
~Proverbs 16.31~
The silver-haired head is a crown of glory,
If it is found in the way of righteousness.
~Isaiah 46.4~
Even to your old age, I am God
And even to gray hairs I will carry you!
I have made, and I will bear;
Even I will carry, and will deliver you.
How much can we learn of a people from meeting one representative of that group?
We go through life, looking through our own eyes, the jaundice of preconceived ideas clouding our perceptions, prohibiting honest evaluations of events and concepts.
What do others see in us that we don’t see?
In much of Europe there has long been a fascination of and appreciation for Native Americans. This has been evident since the days of Karl May, but the German love of the ‘Noble Savage’ has much deeper roots. The roots of this arise from loss, loss of the Native German wildness that resulted from contact with the technologically superior Romans. In general, the ones who have the most firepower and are least afraid to use it indiscriminately win. The Germans (mostly kind of) lost (for the first five hundred-some years). The ones who weren’t killed (both were ruthless societies) were introduced to technological achievements and military/societal advances that moved them out of the ‘simple Barbarian’ category. Due to their loss of this wilderness aspect of their ancient society, they have often as a people moved into a ‘wilderness fascination’ phase. This also results in the study of cultures who are seen as closer to the earth than ‘modern’ societies. A ‘simplicity of being’ is ascribed to these peoples, almost as though they themselves hold the secrets to life and nature, and they will also soon lose it when they become ‘civilized’.
One thing I’ve noticed is that both the ancient Germanic/Celtic sociological and religious traditions are very similar to the Native American sociological and religious traditions. Now admittedly, this is painting in a broad brush… there are a great many thousand N/A tribes in the Americas, and the Celtic/Germanic peoples were never a unified and homogeneous society either. But some sweeping generalizations can be made nonetheless.
In the Czech Republic there is a band called Cankisou. They have a great many songs and videos you can see on YouTube. But my favorite is ‘Anay Yo’ I like the simple elemental Native American drumming… easy to ‘move to’ for a ‘White Guy’ like me…. trance inducing… monotonous and repetitious….. I suspect the lyrics are segments of song they picked up from some video….by the way… I like Teutonic drumming even more… that stuff makes me want to kick my feet up some!
Beyond the song itself… it is the strange mix of musical styles in it that thrill me.. it is in the mixing of elements that we get new chemicals…. and new musical styles.
‘Magic Mirror’
~Leon Russell~
Standing by the highway
Suitcase by my side
No place I want to go
I just thought I’d hitch a ride
Many people look my way
And many pass me by
In moments of reflection
I wonder why
To the thieves I am a bandit
the mothers think I’m a son
to the preachers I’m a sinner
Lord, I’m not the only one
To the sad ones I’m unhappy
to the losers I’m a fool
To the students think I’m a teacher
with the teachers I’m unschooledTo the Hobos,
I’m imprisoned by everything I own
to the soldier I’m just someone else
dying to go home
The General sees a number
A politician’s tool
to my friends
I’m just an equal in this world
To policemen I’m suspicious
It’s in the way I look
I’m just another character
To feed and brand and book
To the censor I’m pornography
with no redeeming grace
to the Hooker I’m a customer
without a face
And the sellers think I’m merchandise
They’ll have me for a song
The left ones think I’m right
The right ones think I’m wrong
And many people look my way
And many pass me by
And in my quite reflection I wonder why
Magic Mirror won’t you tell me please
Do I see myself in anyone I meet
Magic Mirror if we only could
Try to see ourselves as others would
We go through the roads of life
it doesn’t matter whether we travel the Freeway or the country roads
stuff gets thrown onto the windshield
each time someone hurt you is a bug on the window
each time you listened to a rumor about someone
another bug obscures your sight
How long before we are driving blind?
no long determining our own course…
but letting conditioned reactions determine our actions.
that’s what preconceptions do to you
but every time you try to fight the urge to respond viscerally
you are wiping your own glass cleaner
before you sully your glass more
it would be good to turn from the roads that have the bugs
you’ll have less dirt keeping you from seeing clearly enough
to clean the glass to drive properly through life
One of the big things you learn in agriculture is to keep your fields and farms free and clear of invasive pests. It’s something of the old ‘war against nature’ that man has had since existential awareness. Just keeping the native pests at bay is bad enough, but you have natural predators to help out. The natural ecosystem can deal with the myriad pests that are native… they slip into the system like they belong there.. which they do. A super-real danger to both agriculture and the local ecosystems is the introduction of non-native pests. Non-natives can sometimes have a way of spreading widely into their new areas. They have coping strategies that are unfamiliar to the native predators, and can often blanket an area within a short time. These new introductions to the local environment can displace native species, crowding them out and causing large disruptions to the local species.
It is in a ‘paradise’ system like Florida, California and Hawaii that these introductions can most readily spread and cause damage far beyond what you might imagine. For this reason many states have ‘declaration’ rules, so they can try to avoid the huge damage that introduced species can have. Every time I hear of a new insect somewhere that is causing problems, I think of my own responsibility in reducing insect spread. With us, much of it is just an awareness of our part in reducing spread of anything beyond our boundaries. Part of it is our own responsibility to not bring anything into California that is non-native. And part of it is our responsibility as citizens to help everyone understand the true implications of introduced pests. To that end, we are registered as a nursery and have to undergo inspections of our crops and plant material for serious pests, we don’t import anything onto our place from out-of-state without purchasing from an approved nursery. And we try to speak out on this subject, in a plain and straight-forward way. So that others can see and understand the true implications of being the guy who brought ‘such-and-such’ critter into Paradise.
To that end, we wish to introduce all to the ‘Invasive Pest Tracker’. It is a website designed by the California government to inform the public of both the dangers of invasive pests, but also to make the public aware of the ‘hotspots’ in the state. These are places that have a small localized infestation of some pest, and a quarantine has been put into effect in that area to stop the spread beyond that area. That area will also have an eradication plan in effect, to try to kill the pest off before it can establish a viable population for breeding. These ‘hotspots’ are shown on a map, so you can see where the current quarantines are in effect.
Please, when visiting other states and countries, please do not bring any fruits and vegetables back here. If you do, make sure you declare them to the customs agents. If you purchase plants through the mail, make sure they are a licensed registered nursery, not some guy selling his backyard plants over E-Bay. Believe me, even if you don’t get caught, if you suspect you are the one who brought something terrible into paradise, you’ll have a pit in your stomach for the rest of your life.
~The Eagles~
‘The Last Resort’
Then the chilly winds blew down
Across the desert
through the canyons of the coast,
to the Malibu
Where the pretty people play,
hungry for power
to light their neon way
and give them things to do
Some rich men came and raped the land,
Nobody caught ‘em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes,
and Jesus People bought ‘em
They called it paradise
The place to be
They watched the hazy sun,
sinking in the sea
We can leave it all behind
and sail to Lahaina
just like the missionaries did, so many years ago
They even brought a neon sign that said ”Jesus is coming”
Brought the ‘White Man’s burden’ down
Brought the White Man’s reign
Who will provide the grand design?
What is yours and what is mine?
‘Cause there is no more new frontier
We have got to make it here
We’ve satisfied our endless needs and
justified our bloody deeds,
in the name of destiny
and in the name of God
And you can see them there,
On Sunday morning
They stand up and sing about
what it’s like up there
They call it paradise
I don’t know why
You call someplace paradise,
kissin’ it goodbye
The great Gobi desert of China is a paleontologists dream. Since I first read of the early 20th century dinosaur egg discoveries in it’s arid tracks, I’ve had an interest in the people and environment of the Gobi.
Now the spread of the desert is causing great problems to people not accustomed to the desert.. they live on the edges, in the grasslands and herd animals.
Perhaps a great planting campaign of cactus might help. It would give food for the goats and the people…. the cactus plants will survive in the heat… and the plants might well trap some of the blowing sand and organic debris… in time it might lead to deeper soils and a larger mass of plants, perhaps on the scale of thousands of acres this might help release enough water vapor to change the local environment.
MSNBC has a great article on the hazards the Gobi now faces…
There is an interesting book called ‘The Greening of Mars’. I highly recommend it for a glimpse into what technology might be able to do some time in the future. It also has some insights into the human mindset.
This is a pretty big world. Until the last decade most people were unable to really find out a whole lot about other cultures and peoples. Sure there was TV and other media, but those avenues tend to show the masses what marketers have determined will attract the viewership of ’the masses’. Now we can sit on YouTube and watch videos from other places, seeing what life is like inside the living room of someone across the world. We can watch music videos of ‘strange’ musical styles that would have little or no market appeal in the States. MTV would not play the haunting ethereal ballads of QNTAL of Germany, with their German, and ’Old French’ lyrics that even modern Frenchmen cannot understand.
I miss Europe, I’d like to travel back there again, but time and finances argue against it. So instead, I spend the time before morning light watching videos to heal some of the pain of separation.
I can watch the video below, and think about the Eberbach burg in Baden Germany we used to explore as children…. the ancient stone walls overgrown with ivy, and roofless for hundreds of years. And the old stone watch tower built by the Romans. And from my years in Spain… the ancient cliffs with their hundreds of holes, homes to Gypsies, and the long aqueduct, again built by the Romans, and still carrying water.
It is in looking back that we can see some of the direction we are going. When walking an unfamiliar trail… stop and look back often, memorize the topography you have travelled, because when you come back later, the trail will look different than initially travelled due to the different direction you saw it from.
To see and know the past, will reduce dismay in the future.
QNTAL is a German band that utilizes ancient instruments and lyrics to foster a sense of Renaissance in their songs. They saw themselves as tackling a new subject, and they wanted no ‘pre-conceived ideas’ about their band and its focus, therefore they chose the name QNTAL, which has no meaning in any language.
QNTAL, Entre Moi Et Mon Amin
The music is soothing, yet there is an edge to it….
The scenic backdrop of the ruins is great. In Europe, almost every town has some ancient ruins…..
It’s quite a thing to see.
We have a tendancy to impart a certain amount of ‘good, and learning’ to the ancients. We are amazed at the works they did without modern machinery…. but they were just people, no different than now. People who woke in the morning, and went to turn the wheels of their industry, perhaps literally inside a giant wheel giving the power to move giant stones up a fortress wall to nest onto the stones below it. Then as now they were compelled to work to build their society…. to be cast beyond the walls of ancient Europe put one at the mercy of lawlessness, and in their minds, more prone to the mercies of witchcraft. While I appreciate the stone work of the ancients, and find intrigue in how they were able to manipulate their environment, invent tools, and engage in learning to be passed on…. I’m much more content in this modern time with eyes that can travel the world, and see so much. I lived in a castle for years in Germany….. I think in the old days, with the xenophobia of the walled cities, it must have given a ‘siege mentality’ to the people. I’m sure there were times that things were good, and people were happy. But I think we tend to impart too much of a romantic attachment to the old days. We’re much better off now.
Painted Ladies, the small butterflies that resemble the large monarchs have made a huge pilgrimage to the Central Coast the last couple days. Huge volleys of them roam the countryside, I see thousands crossing the highways before me. On my travels along the coast I have had my windshield splattered with yellow spots from their fragile bodies as I drive heedless and full of wonder through these little colorful denizens of the fields and vales.
They make their yearly pilgrimage from Old Mexico to the hills of the American West at this time. And this year with the huge amount of rain and the recent warm weather their numbers that have survived the trek this far are beyond any I recall ever seeing.
At this moment the world waits as a Pope lies dying in a dark room in the Vatican. This Pope, a deeply committed man, the idol of my deceased grandmother is soon to pass from this world. He will come into the arms of a loving Creator and will sit at the feast tables of the New Jerusalem. My thoughts and prayers go out to him, and to all who regard him with the high level of respect he has accrued throughout his papacy. He is a refined man, yet a common man, one of the men of the earth. Born into a common family in Poland, he worked with his hands as a young man, and never lost his touch and connection with the common man. On the wall in my grandmothers room to this day is a photo of the Pope. A photo of a strong man, firm of face and rugged in body and spirit. His connection to the peasants of Eastern Europe is perhaps what drew my grandmother to him. She was also of common peasant people of Eastern Europe, and the Nazi and Communist invasion of her homeland was the same as what the Pope encountered. Yet from both families, triumph from the ashes and smoking ruins of a devastated Europe was the end result. True, none of our family made it to the height of power and influence of the Pope, but when you come from starvation and nothing, to get to the point of even a warm house and plentiful food is a high achievement.
And now, with butterflies stuck in my grill, and the sad news on the radio, I travel these lonely roads; alone, but not lonely. I am surrounded by the awesome beauty of these coastal hills, the verdant green, rolling on in wave after wave of velvet-lining over geologic formations squeezed and folded by seismic forces. The Pope came as a seismic force into our lives through Poland from God, and the butterflies come with the soft flutter of wings through Mexico from God. And my tires roll on, through the day, a continual succession of miles eaten up by rubber as my life continues, and the butterflies and the Pope die.
Our hopes and prayers go out to those who’ve lost their homes and had their land razed by the fires. We’ve known several people who’ve lost all they had in brush fires in the past. And while they bemoan the loss of ‘things’, they are happy to have lived.
Looking into the eyes of someone who’s lost every single thing they own, and have them tell you they are just happy to be alive…. it brings to-home that we come into this life feeble, toothless and helpless…. and we’ll leave it that way also. What you have doesn’t count so much as what you’ve experienced… the life you’ve led, and the hope that next year you can go on living. It’s sad to lose your ‘stuff’, but a real tragedy is to lose hope in the future, to lose hope in humanity, and to lose hope in yourself.
‘One Way Donkey Ride’
~Mary Black~
There you may stand in your splendor and jewels
Swaying me in both directions
One is the right one, the other for fools
How do I make my selection?
The city lies silent in the warm morning light
The sand is as golden as saffron
Oasis of love, sweet water of life
God bless the poor ones who have none though they have tried
Someone is drowning down there in the flood
But this river will dry by tomorrow
Is it ocean or stream, this love in my blood?
Bringer of joy or of sorrow?
The end of the journey must soon be in sight
Birth is the start of the swansong
Oasis of love, sweet water of life
God bless the poor ones who want some, but are denied
No one is given the map to their dreams
All we can do is to trace it
See where we go to, know where we’ve been
Build up the courage to face it
While we fumble in the darkness where once there was light
Roaming the land of the ancients
Oasis of love, sweet water of life
God bless the poor ones whose patience never died
While we stumble in blindness where once there was sight
Searching for trees in the forest
Oasis of love, sweet water of life
God bless the poor ones who have none though they have tried
God bless the poor ones who want some, but are denied
God bless the poor ones whose patience never died
God bless the poor ones on that one-way donkey ride
‘Sadeness’
~Enigma~
Lyrics to Sadeness :
(Curly M.C./F.Gregorian/David Fairstein)
(Latin) Procedamus in pace
In nomine Christi, Amen(Let us go forth in peace
In the name of Christ, So be it)(Latin)Cum angelis et pueris,
fideles inveniamur
(We shall find the faithful in the
company of angels and children)
(Latin)Attollite portas, principes, vestras
et elevamini, portae aeternales
et introibit rex gloriae
Qius est iste Rex glorie?
(Lift up ye heads o ye glorious gates,
and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors,
and the king of glory shall come in.
Who is the king of glory? )
(French) Sade dit moi
Sade donne moi
(Sade tell me
Sade give me)
(Latin)Procedamus in pace
In nomine Christi, Amen
(Shall we proceed in peace
In the name of Christ, Amen)
(French) Sade dit moi
qu’est ce que tu vas chercher ?
le bien par le mal
la vertu par le vice
Sade dit moi pourquoi l’ ‘evangile du mal ?
quelle est ta religion ou` sont tes fide`les ?
Si tu es contre Dieu, tu es contre l’homme
(Sade tell me
what is it that you seek?
The rightness of wrong
The virtue of vice
Sade tell me why the Gospel of evil ?
What is your religion? Where are your faithful?
If you are against God, you are against man)
(French) Sade dit moi pourquoi le sang pour le plaisir ?
Le plaisir sans l’amour.
N’y a t’il plus de sentiment dans le culte de l’homme ?
(Sade tell me why blood for pleasure?
Pleasure without love?
Is there no longer any feeling in man’s Faith?)
(French) Sade es-tu diabolique ou divin?
(Sade are you diabolical or divine?)
(French) Sade dit moi
Hosanna
Sade donne moi
Hosanna
Sade dit moi
Hosanna
Sade donne moi
Hosanna
(Sade tell me
Hosanna
Sade give me
Hosanna
Sade tell me
Hosanna
Sade give me
Hosanna)
(Latin) In nomine Christi, Amen
(In the name of Christ, Amen)
[ Sadeness Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ ]
