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Sunday, January 29, 2017

HOME ON THE RANGE.

January 29, 2017

My window to the outside world turns mostly on the stuff I read on Facebook.  Television news is in the mix and the mixture of the two is disturbing.  Rather than spouting off about the current surreal situation that is happening to the United States on FB where the choir is mostly in harmony, I'm going to spout off here and hope it goes a little further. 

It's about disparaging words.  "Home, home on the range.. where never is heard a disparaging word.."

Of course, the skies really are cloudy all day with the pall of unimaginable events unfolding daily, but I'm hoping to calm the waters by asking that we use more simple terms to refer to the president. Disparaging words tend to rile up his supporters.   

I think that sounding off about what's going on is a good idea. Gatherings to show our support of the good stuff that should be happening are very important.   Taking it to the streets, to me, should also be to mourn for our democracy.   Seeing thousands of folks with candles or even just standing as we did years ago and singing "All we are saying.. is give peace a chance." 
Silence speaks volumes, too. 

Anger is our fire.  Reason finds a way to keep it in check enough to stay peaceful.   

How can those of us in the popular vote majority find ways to embrace moderate others who may now be seeing the error of this election? Disparaging #45 with angry words stokes the fires of those who support him.  It's like insulting someone's mother.  

I truly believe that we may be wired to be predisposed one way or another: right or left.  Of course, upbringing and education may bend our wires, and some folks get bent all the way right or left.  That may account for the division in our country.. wiring and education or lack of it.  Bottom line is that there must be people who are not driven all the way red or blue. How can we find that purple zone to save us from ourselves?

I've written to Senator John McCain with the hope that the recent meme I've seen that disparages torture may mean that he sees what is happening and may be able to draw other Republicans to stop the madness that is currently ripping our Republic to shreds. 

Can letters to senators make a difference?  All I can do is to make an effort.  This from politico.com:

Sen. John McCain on Wednesday vowed to stand against reported efforts by President Donald Trump to ease limits on the treatment of suspected terrorists in U.S. custody, reminding Trump that Congress has passed an anti-torture law.
“The president can sign whatever executive orders he likes,” McCain said in a statement responding to a New York Times report that Trump has drafted an executive order paving the way for the return of George W. Bush-era detainee treatment standards. “But the law is the law. We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America.”

With all respect to FB 'friends,'  I hope we can calm the rhetoric and start finding positive ways to get the job of saving the nation done in a more peaceful way than is erupting with some angry people now.  Keep the fire burning, but let's not burn everything to the ground.

michaelsheehan
January 29, 2017
Watch The SAG Awards!

 

Friday, January 20, 2017

THE OPTIMIST



 A black banner hangs, partially obscuring the view that I made 366 images of from December 21, 2015 until December 21, 2016. The rain is appropriate on a day that is a sad day for me. The inauguration day of the 45th president of the divided states of america.

January 20, 2017

I started this long note on FB and realized that it's rather too long to continue there.  

How long to mourn? Please message me if you would like a black arm band to wear. Nothing fancy .. just black cloth to be tied like a tourniquet to stop the hemorrhage and pay respect to the death of democracy? Hyperbole?  Probably.

If you pray, think about healing. Staunch the flow of fear. Don't hate. Don't ridicule. Don't speak or write the name. Just mourn quietly for thirty days.. or as long as seems appropriate. In the Jewish faith they call that time period Shloshim. (Thank you Google).

I found that Buddhists set aside the 7th day (January 27th), the 49th day (March 10th) and the 100th day (May 1st) to mourn. Hopefully, we shall survive, but a palpable loss is upon us.

The story of the optimistic kid is appropriate here.

On the ranch, two kids were tasked to work in the stables.  The first kid looked into the stable that was knee high in the stuff that horses leave behind.  He took a couple of pitchforks full and quit.  It was too much work. 

The second kid disappeared into the stable and dung was flying out left and right.  His dad was impressed with his hard work and stood back as the stuff kept flying like anything out of the stable.  Finally, he stopped the kid and asked him to take a break.  
Curious, he asked the kid, "Why are you going at this job with such fury?"

The kid mopped his brow and said, "With all this shit in here, there's got to be a pony!"

January 20, 2017
Michael Sheehan

Monday, January 16, 2017

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MLK. // A HERO: CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS


  June 26, 1953.  
In a much more simple time, the world had royalty and a sense of glamor that is slip sliding away.  Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell were a part of that time. It used to mean something to have one's foot and hand prints in Grauman's Chinese Theater court yard.    As we launch into a new world not unlike the final scene of Ray Bradbury's "The Sound of Thunder"  it's time to take a deep breath.  Seeing these gals helps me a little.  Thanks to Robert Patrick Playwright for this photo.

//
 
My education has been limited in the land of politics and the goings on in the world. When the dust up between Congressman John Lewis and DT erupted, I learned more about Mr. Lewis.  

It's a fact that he marched with MLK, was beaten by Alabama cops to the extreme and now, a respected member of the United State Congress, has declared that DT is not a legitimate president.  I stand with Mr. Lewis.

I've made the analogy that the Ship of State is sailing into an ocean filled with peril: icebergs.  Evidently, even an interfered with election is legitimate and from the little I've read, this may be a done deal on Friday.  Thousands will march on the following day.. a day of mourning for our formerly United States of America.  
January 21, 2017.

The call to action in the sixties that awakened Congressman Lewis and our fallen Reverend Martin Luther King must not ever be lost.  More beatings and the rolling tide of fascism may be  upon us. Days of reason may be smothered by our new technology in ignorant rants of 160 characters.   Diplomacy by tweet. How in the world did this happen?

Taking to the streets is a time honored activity.  How the country will react to a call to action must make a difference.  Even though the handful of you who read this are probably like the choir that we all sing in.. if one person knows the next steps, I hope they will take them and the United States may have a shot at being united again. 

January 16, 2016
michaelsheehan

Sunday, January 15, 2017

JANUARY 15, TWOTHOUSANDSEVENTEEN

January 13, 2017 Another Debacle

January 15, 2017

Reading and writing on Facebook is preaching to the choir. Not that that is such a bad thing.. Most of us reading about art and the danged politics that has our country in turmoil as a fateful day .. the day of inauguration.. approaches..  we mostly agree that the debacle of the election is a real issue. It is viscerally an issue.  Democracy eviscerated?  Will we fall into fascism? How can this be prevented? Where are our saviors? 

An impending doom is not an overstatement.  I've decided to start writing here again in the hope that someone, somewhere, a middle of the road person?, our  savior?. will find an answer that will stop this feeling of doom.  Doom..  

This dark song by Shel Silverstein came to me when I was  typing 'Doom.'  Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp sang it in the sixties. 

"
Boom, ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-boom
Twelve riders in the gloom
Seven showed red and the rest are dead
But the first battalion's home

Boom, ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-boom
You can hear their hoofbeats boom
The drums are low and the pace is slow
But the first battalion's home

Bridge:
So run to your homes Virginia girls
Fix your hair with pins
Give them wine and kisses
But don't ask them where they've been

Boom, ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-boom
And Richmond is their tomb
There's a hundred dead at Richmond
Three hundred dead at Gettysburg
And a hundred more they never found
But the first battalion's home"

The loss of the election to the electoral vote is troubling because our country is now like the dog being wagged by its tail.  It's the "Law.."  our tradition that may have made sense in the past, but no longer does.. with Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by over 2.5 million votes puts our country in a divided state that echoes what was happening over a hundred fifty years ago .. There was a Civil War.  

With civility the furthest thing, evidently, from the mind of the winner of the electoral college vote, fear is palpable in educated and intelligent people.  Hateful jeers that I have personally encountered by those who voted not necessarily FOR the republican, but against Hillary Clinton are base and uncalled for. But.. they may reflect what's coming from those empowered by an election that is now under more and more scrutiny .. but .. where is our savior? Where is the President? What power does he have to reach out to stop the impending doom?  Where is the Democratic Party? Where is the Supreme Court?  

I really don't like politics.  Really and truly. I keep myself ignorant from the days when I was friends with a high school hero whom I ignorantly emulated from time to time when a question of "What would Tom do?" might come up.  It was never the right choice, but I was naive.. and probably still am, but learned that lesson too late.. My hero, two years my senior,  whose wonky analogies made him feel right and his ability to lead the unsuspecting me down the garden pathway to being wrong was naive of me...  He voted for the man who would be king.  

I have reluctantly divorced him and ending a life long friendship is not an easy thing to do.  But, it's like being in the middle of a deep lake .. treading water... and not being able to get back to the boat because of the dear dear anchor around my neck.  Dropping the weight to save my life?  Well. it's a wonky analogy.  Swimming with an anchor around one's neck has its problems.

We..  all of us who seem aligned in basic thought.. need to find a way to harmony and to embrace others whom we may even despise.. though I have a feeling that 'they' are the ones who are capable of despising.. We may be naive: those of us who strive for harmony and seek to find a kernel of good in anyone with whom we may disagree just to stop the rancor.. stop the meanness.. just please stop it and come to reason of some kind.  

Thank goodness for Saturday Night Live!  This is the antithesis of my plea in that last paragraph.. because Alec Baldwin and his skewering of the president elect just feels so good.  It's like the first time you may have seen The Producers and watched Springtime for Hitler.. Mel Brooks' masterpiece of skewering .. from a Jew.. just feels good to even remember it.   

And, so..  we must find a neutral space and as ironic as this reference may be from Lyndon Johnson..  "come, let us reason together..."  

The election debacle gets officially solidified in five days. The fate of the United States hangs in the balance. This is not hyperbole.  People much more intelligent and educated than I must find a way to mitigate the damage that we have done to ourselves and to literally save our nation.  

Reaching across an aisle is difficult for most of us.. but I would welcome any idea to do something that will stop this whole thing in its tracks and reason it out not so that my side would win, necessarily,  but that the coming trainwreck that we can all see happening be brought to a grinding halt.  

What is the matter .. not with them.. but with us? How did we come to this?  Evidently, about half of the eligible voters in the United States (and I now use this term "united" loosely) did NOT vote.  There's one problem.. and the voters who supported other candidates as a protest.. Wow.. and. now, January 20, 2017, a day that will 'live in infamy' and perhaps the collapse of our American democracy?..  looms.. 

Boom ba ba Boom ba ba Boom.. 

January 15, 2017
michaelsheehan
glendale, california

 

Big PAUSE..

There is a space here for cause. 

Michael Sheehan