This Is How Freedom Dies

I am pasting in an email I received today that shows exactly what kind of stormtroopers are in charge of our precious freedoms. I never thought I'd live to see the day when there were "rainbow tribunals" set up to interrogate and punish those who did nothing wrong but try and attend this year's Rainbow Gathering. You are welcome to cut and paste it, link to it, tell people about it in any way possible. Some of my fondest youthful memories are of attending Rainbow Gatherings because I learned that we can live in peace and harmony if the desire is strong enough. We can make a better world. We can step lightly upon the earth. If this is what threatens Bushco, then I fear for us all.

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Dear Friends and Family,

I need your help to protect my family, the collective efforts of tens of thousands of citizens known as the "Rainbow Family." This week, near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, the U.S. Forest Service has taken illegal action to stop this annual assembly for _expression and prayer, in gross violation of the participants essential Constitutional rights.

The 'Rainbow' Gatherings have borne a legacy of spiritual & cultural pilgrimage to the National Forests since 1972, the purest exercise of open consensual assembly in our time. The annual 'Gathering of the Tribes' draws thousands over the first week of July, focusing on the 4th as a holy day of prayer for peace and freedom. In recent years small regional events in this mode have emerged, and such gatherings have taken place in many nations around the world.

THE GATHERING EXPERIENCE --

Some say the "Rainbow" Gathering is the continuation of the idealism of Woodstock. I think of it more as my annual spiritual retreat and family reunion. Since 1980, I have gathered with my family to compare ideas and pray for peace. I arrive loaded with the burdens of my work, depressed about the world situation. Each year I depart with my faith in humankind renewed and with the energy to fight the beast another year. The rainbow family is not organized in any way; it is an exercise in self-determination and cooperation in the public interest, without need of government controls. We understand that no matter what comes down, it is the respect and care for each other that win in the end. We have no leaders or leadership, we have no offices or officers, we have no treasurer or treasury. We sit in counsel, often for days at a time in order to make mutual decisions, but there is no power to enforce these decisions on any individual. In the end, just like in society, it works because enough responsible people make sure that what needs to be done gets done. We have been doing rainbow gatherings for over 30 years, each time in a different national forest across the country. We come in and set up a village in the woods. Cooperative kitchens pour out a wide variety of foods. Seminars on just about any topic are run by the hour. The Rainbow is known as a healing gathering; people with various ailments come for help. Here in one place they can receive healing, from herbalists, acupuncturists, chiropractors and masseuses working with place they can receive healing, from herbalists, acupuncturists, chiropractors and masseuses working with osteopaths and physicians. These healers work as a team and share their knowledge in a holistic approach that teaches all involved a lot about the roots of medicine. Religious groups, ranging from Christians to Hare Krishnas set up camps. It's truly a free society. We go pretty far back in the woods to get away from the ills of civilization like alcohol and hard drugs. We have our gathering and then restore any damage we cause to the woods. And we have a perfect record of restoration of the forest. It's great to walk through a gathering and see so many people but not a scrap of paper on the ground, not a cigarette butt in sight. Each year we train thousands of newcomers how to get along in the woods without destroying the place. Knowledgeable Forest Servide 'Resource' personnel love us; it's the Federal bureaucrats and police from Washington who are on our case.

REPRESSIVE FEDERAL POLICIES --

The Bush Administration has spent millions of dollars trying to stop the Rainbow Gatherings. They are enforcing a 'Noncommercial Group Use' permit regulation that is impossible for unaffiliated individuals to comply with 36 CFR 251.54 They require that that someone sign as an agent for a fictional group entity named as permit Holder -- which then must assume full liability from the Government and bind participants vicariously to its terms. By the creed of the gatherings, no one can appoint themselves to such a position. More importantly, such an ad hoc gathering has no legal capacity to designate agents or act as a group party in any way. As a result, individuals are denied personal standing in First Amendment exercise and subjected to harsh criminal prosecution for being anywhere near the area. The Forest Service requires that a permit be applied for in advance of the gathering. And they use any excuse possible to deny a permit application when we manage to submit one. This year their denial was based on the fact that a logging company had a permit to log in a nearby parcel of the national forest, even though there is no logging activity present whatsoever. The site is far remote from any inhabitants -- but still the Forest Service is all over our case. Millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to block this harmless gathering from taking place. The scariest aspect of all this is how Homeland Security is using these gatherings to perfect their techniques of martial law. Regulations written for the Federal Emergency Management Authority to deal with natural disasters are now being used to crush dissent in this country. Each year the Rainbow Gathering is declared a "National Incident" and federal military law ensues. A Special Agent is appointed "Incident Commander", with a Delegation of Authority, a large law enforcement "Team", and huge budget to control the gathering. Qualified Forest Service administrators lose their power, while the county sheriff and other officials are brought into targeted law enforcement actions by inclusion in the Incident Team and other inter-agency agreements. Each year Homeland Security gains more power over the individuals involved.

RIGHTS CRISIS IN COLORADO --

At this writing Forest Service law enforcement has issued over 500 tickets to the early arrivals at the gathering in Colorado. They have blocked the road and have prevented food and water from reaching those who managed to get into the gathering before the police roadblock was set up. The 500 people with tickets are being herded into trials like none anyone has seen before in America. These pseudo trials are prototypes for what Homeland Security will use in the cases of insurrection or even a plague. Defendants lose the right to a public hearing (this year these hearings are being held behind closed doors in a firehouse garage near the site. Attorneys and legal observers have been denied the right to even view these trials. The defendants are not explained their rights nor afforded the right to an attorney, the right to summon witnesses, the right to a jury trial, etc. Defendants ordered to appear each day at 9:00 a.m. and sit in the hot sun without water or sanitary facilities until their trials. Some have now been waiting for several days. These abbreviated trials only take a few minutes. Last year I tried to help a string of defendants defend themselves in these trials but felt helpless to do much as the system was clearly stacked against them. This year is especially frustrating to me as I have to watch this come down from 6000 miles away. Right now I am in Hungary at a medical conference for my employment. I am flying home on Thursday and plan on being in court Saturday, July 1st, to defend some of my best friends who got a ticket for illegally gathering as they drove down a public highway.

WHAT TO DO --

The confrontation this year is getting more intense by the minute, which is why I am asking for your help. The only way to stop a massive conflagration in Colorado in the next few days is to get thousands of people to contact their political representatives as well as the responsible administrators at the Forest Service to demand that this repression stop immediately. Please, even if you can never conceive of yourself at a Rainbow Gathering, you must understand that if these citizens lose their constitutional right to gather, we all lose such rights. This year the Rainbow Gathering is being used to set precedents that will be turned against drug policy, civil liberty, anti-war or other activists in the near future. Following are some instructions on who to write and/or call. We hope to start flooding the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service with complaints starting Monday morning and not stopping until harassment stops. It is especially important that we get a few Congressional representative and Senators concerned enough to write the Forest Service for an explanation of why so much money is being spent to keep people from camping in the National Forest set aside for exactly that purpose. Please keep the pressure on these bureaucrats until we are able to spread the word that the government has backed off and that the gathering can proceed unhindered. If you do not know the contact information for your Congressman or Senator, you can find this here. You can call your representative at 212-224-3121. Besides your representatives in Washington, please call and write the following people to voice your protest to this harsh treatment of people who just want to go on a camping trip in the woods. Keep the calls coming until word is passed around that the government has called off their dogs. Please forward this letter to your friends and feel free to re-post it on any listserv or website you wish. Email me if you have any questions.

Don E Wirtshafter
Attorney at Law
Box 18 Guysville, OH 45735
740 662 5297


USDA, Natural Resources & Environment
Mark Rey, USDA Undersecretary
1400 Independence Ave. SW, .. 217-E
Washington, DC 20250
202-720-7173 Fax: 202-720-0632


Kathleen Gause, Director 202-205-8534
USDA Forest Service
Civil Rights Staff
Stop Code 1142
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington., DC 20250-1142
Tel (202) 205-1585

Office of the Chief
NetZero Message Center 06/26/2006 01:52 AM
link Page 5 of 6
Dale Bosworth, Chief
USDA Forest Service
Yates Federal Building (4NW Yates)
201 14th Street, SW - Washington, DCÊ20250
202-205-1661; Fx: 202-205-1765

Executive Assistant...Karla Hawley, 202 -205-1195
Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests,
Mary H. Peterson, Supervisor
2468 Jackson Street -- Laramie, WY 82070-6535
307-745-2300 Fax: 307-745-2398

U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Region (R-2)
Rick Cables, Regional Forester
Mail: P.O. Box 25127 -- Lakewood, CO 80225-0127
303-275-5451

Richard Stem, Deputy Regional Forester, Resources: 303-275-5451

Steve Silverman, Office of General Counsel, Regional Attorney: 303-275-5536

Bill Fox, Law Enforcement & Investigations, Special Agent in Charge: 303-275-5253

Jerome Romero, Deputy Director of Civil Rights: 303-275-5340

Some resources to research these issues further:


The best Rainbow website: Welcome Home


A good article written before the feds came down hard: article


More recent coverage: Rocky Mountain News

and
Denver Post


thanks to
NEW WORLD ODOR STINKS and
AMERICA BETRAYED




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Design from Ursine Logic

This Is How Freedom Dies

Why YOU should care about Darfur

Sometimes I get asked why I care so much about a country so far away. I also hear people say it's too huge a problem, too far along, too beyond our control to do anything about. They view it as a hopeless cause, and goddess forbid we waste our time on hopeless causes! My answer is always the same: we must care, we must get involved, we must let people know what is going on there because if we do not, we lose another piece of our already frail humanity.

Throughout history, there are numerous examples of societies and cultures remembered by how they treated or mistreated those beneath them in power, how they defended or failed to defend the weak and powerless, how they failed or succeeded as human beings. Those who remained silent are judged the harshest because with their silence they implied consent. By not speaking out, they let their neighbors be dragged away in the night and killed. They let living, sentient beings undergo torture and abuse. They let entire generations be wiped out and the face of nations be forever changed.

Think about it. If you are walking down the street and you see a very large person attack a very small person, what would you do? Would you turn your head, walk away and say it wasn't any of your business? Or would you at least make a phone call as you were running away? That phone call, small and insignificant as it may be, could very well be the one act that saves a life.

Let's take it in another direction. You see a helpless creature such as a dog, cat, horse or other sentient creature being abused. What do you do? Do you run away? Do you say it is not your problem? Do you say there is nothing you can do? Or do you respond because everything in your heart tells you what you are seeing is wrong, that something weak is being abused by something strong? Do you see NOT responding as a condemnation of your own humanity, your own right to call yourself a human being?

What all those questions demonstrate is that we will be defined for posterity by the actions we take or don't take on issues like Darfur. Our humanity will be judged by how we live as a WORLD community. And most of all, we will be judged by the children who died because we didn't think they were any of our business. They are the reason I speak up. They are the reason I try and educate people about what is going on in Darfur. Children are not political. They are not policy makers. They are not armies. They are not militias. They are not the knock on the door in the middle of the night. They are children. And they are our conscience. They are why we must speak up and demand the rest of the world, the bigger reaches of our world community, look at Darfur and see what is happening. It is called GENOCIDE and with our silence, we let allow it to continue.

What you can do:

1. Get educated. I'm not going to provide links because there are so many and so much is changing day to day. I recommend typing "Darfur" in any search engine. There are thousands of people like yourself who have devoted their time and energy to educating the rest of us. Go read what they have to say.

2. Call your elected representatives. Most of us have cell phones with national plans, so it will cost most nothing but a few minutes of your time to call. Emails are easier and will do if you can't afford to call, but from talking to politician's staffers, it's the phone calls that get attention and not the emails or ten mile long petitions.

3. Get loud. Tell others what is going on. Donate to groups who are doing something to increase awareness. Write a song, poem, novel, or create a work of art as there are many ways to get loud. The image at the top of this posting is my contribution. I've made it available on t-shirts, buttons, and stickers in my store Darfur Items

I keep a supply of mini buttons on hand to give out at concerts, fairs, and other events where people of conscience can be found. I remind them it is about the children. I call my representatives and ask them what they have done lately to bring this matter to the world's attention. Some of them are tired of hearing from me. That is my intent because maybe they will act from their conscience so I won't have to call anymore.

Why YOU should care about Darfur

The Sickness of Hate

I've spent a good deal of my life trying to understand hate. I read about the usual representatives of particular hate cults throughout time--the sociopaths who turned one group against another for political and personal gain, the murdering bastards who preached from one side of their mouth as they killed from the other, the groups who existed only to target other human beings with their spewed hatred. I studied them as one studies a fascinating but disgusting piece of something offensive on the bottom of a shoe.

I don't understand them any better than when I began reading the first word about them. I have more information about them. I know who they hated, the words they used to fire up other haters, the lies and delusions they fed their minions. I know their victims. I wept for many of them. I despaired over the fate of our planet. I read more, wept more, and despaired more.

And then I noticed something: with each rock I turned over to learn more about these aberrations of humanity, the more I felt them in my own body. My heart began to physically ache. My stomach that clenched at the descriptions of horrible atrocities began to stay that way for days at a time. My head hurt from trying to understand. And my anger grew. My rage grew. And I began to hate them with the beginnings of a fervor they sought to foment in their own minions. I may not have believed what they believed, but the pit in my belly felt the same. I became physically ill, poisoned by the burning rage that had taken over my body.

I began to realize an awful truth : hate will kill you just as fast, if not quicker, than most diseases. It eats at you like a cancer. It fills your mind and heart with a rot so entrenched that it seems impossible to break free from it. You wake in the morning with the bad taste of it in your mouth. You stumble through your day from the intrusion of your dreams by fear and despair and disgust and all the ugly cousins of hate who take up residence each night, leaving you exhausted, muddled, confused--and ripe for the manipulation. Someone who hates is already more than halfway to total control by a McCarthy, a Hitler, a Bush, a Rove, a Limbaugh, a Fox News.

Against all that it seems almost absurd to fight back with love. It seems like such an inadequate response. It seems small and quiet and willing to step aside in the face of a stronger power. But that is a mistake because love IS the stronger power. It requires nothing to keep it going because it already exists in us. It is hate which must be fed continuously. It is hate which wakes up everyday and looks for a reason to hate. It is hate which devours all the morsels thrown to it by hatemongers with a ferocious hunger that is never satiated.

If you think that what I say is crazy, think of this, think of the last time you were in love. Think of how that felt, that moment of newness, those days where you existed on a little cloud of loveliness, of tolerance, of acceptance, of bliss, and peace, and total joy. You knew the world was a good place. You had room in your heart for everyone because love does that; it opens up your heart to everything and everyone around you. And remember how little it took to feed this feeling: you just opened your heart and it was there. This is why it is stronger than hate.

The only difficulty is remembering that love lives inside you, that it is a seed waiting only your blessing to emerge once again and help change the world into a better place. Draw from its strength and no amount of hate can touch you, but maybe, just maybe you can give something different to a planet and people in such great need of its healing power.

Peace.

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Design available at: Ursine Logic

The Sickness of Hate

Whispering For Peace

The other day I was talking with a woman who was disheartened that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were becoming background noise, that people were getting used to the idea of war. "I want to shout from the rooftops for peace," she said wistfully, as if the idea was so absurd she almost felt guilty for wanting it.

The soft tone of her voice made me realize that was at least part of the problem. When the Bushco warmongers wanted to get the Iraq war going without too much oversight and accountability, they enlisted the help of hate radio to hold "eat a hot dog for the warmongering jesus" cheerleading campaigns to build up support for the war. Those red, white, and blue balloon and flag infested cook-outs held in parade grounds stinking of bullshit, were very similar to the kinds of rallies other dictators and murderous heads of states held in their own countries to build up support for their hate-filled agendas.

The major difference is that many Americans were bought far more cheaply. They sold their country for a few bad hotdogs and corporate cokes. And for that insulting price, they then became propaganda soldiers in Bush's Armageddon army, spreading the word that war was good, that their god was bigger and better than everyone else's god and he wanted them to kill all the unbelievers in foreign lands. And anyone who opposed such madness was shouted down, had their books and records burned, had their reputations smeared and swift-boated by paid liars, were put on no-fly lists, were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to camps where no one heard from them again.

The few protest marches against the war were subdued affairs of respectability with the ever-present soccer moms holding professionally painted neutral statements of war not being helpful. Everyone was so damned polite. No one wanted to be too so out there they drew the attention of "the authorities." After all, everyone was so respectable now with mortgages they lived in fear would rise an interest point, maxed out credit cards, and big old gas guzzlers that they bought with incentives and tax breaks. They simply could not afford to speak up too loudly. So they marched quietly with neat clothes, perfect little signs, and then went home and told themselves they had done all they could.

Now, thousands of deaths later, those same people are talking wistfully about an end to war and killing because you know, it is just so damn barbaric and uncivilized. And to these people and to myself as well because as a Pacifist, I deplore confrontation and violence of all kind, I say the time has come to speak up and please, let's not be polite about it either.

This war and those to come were not started or kept going by people who were nice. It was started by mean, selfish, greedy liars without a shred of humanity or dignity. Do not worry about offending crap like them. It is your obligation to speak up loud and clear so they can hear you. It is your obligation to do what they do: call your congressional representatives and make some noise. Call those radio hate mongers and get your voice out there. Write a letter to the editor.

You don't even have to leave the computer. Everyone has email these days, even the letters to the editors section. Talk to people. Go out on the streets even if you have to go out there by yourself. It takes one brave and committed human being to bring out the humanity in everyone else. And it also takes a very loud voice. Let yours be heard.

Peace (loudly please)

Design from Ursine Logic

Whispering For Peace

How Are We Different From Them?

There is no clearer example of how much we have lost of our humanity than to watch the cheering squads of death celebrate the killing of the latest scary guy of the week. Leaving aside the politics that demand we live in constant fear so papa government can kill in our names under the guise of protecting us, and conspiracy theories that claim this latest boogie man was created in a Pentagon basement movie studio. Or that he was no better than a street urchin blown into mythic proportions by a government who needs big bad guys to continue killing in our name. Or that he was an umbrella man that all the Iraqis who want us the hell out of their country can be swept under when they dare to complain or criticize the occupiers of their land.

If you set all that aside, the question still remains, what the hell is wrong with people that death has become something to celebrate? Isn't that the kind of mentality our own troops are supposedly dying to stop? What separates us from the monsters if our own behavior is no different than theirs? Has it been that long that we were outraged by scenes on television (later rumored to be staged by our own government) of children dancing in the streets celebrating the destruction of the Towers?

At the time, before our sophistication grew enough to recognize propaganda, we discussed the social meaning of such a terrible scene. We were told these children were not raised in a democracy, they were some horrible splinter cult religion, their parents who danced along with them were blood-thirsty terrorists who cared nothing about human life. We were told how awful these people were we put on display to shame and humiliate, we were told they deserved to be tortured them because they did not deserve to be treated as human beings.

We were portrayed as the good guys while committing the acts and atrocities of the bad guys on television for everyone to see but not see. Because if we looked too closely, if we started to question what the difference was in how we treated them and they treated us, if we began to feel a bit queasy over it all, then we were accused of being traitors, of abetting the enemy, of being cowards.

And then so much time went by that our voices became useless. The time to speak up is at the first death because by the second the scabs start to form, the excuses start to form, the inner nausea becomes something that must constantly be pushed back.

We start to laugh at the obvious propaganda put out by the Pentagon instead of being outraged by it. We laugh over Bush the Idiot instead of paying too much attention to Bush the Religious Fanatic on a mission for the voices in his head. We look away from the blood, from the excuses, from the rising death toll. We stop looking because it hurts too much to see what we have allowed to happen with our silence, our fear, our misplaced patriotism and loyalty.

It grows in us, a giant and bloody fever. An ache that won't subside. A shame that lies between us but is never acknowledged. All feelings are pushed down. Denial becomes the word of the day.

And then a body is dragged before us. This is the face of the enemy, we are told. Go ahead, you can touch it. Just like that, give it a little nudge. Don't be afraid to kick it. Beat it a little. Let out sounds as you do so. Scream when it gets too close to tears. Cheer when the disgust threatens to bring up breakfast.

And then turn on the tv, read the newspapers, hear the radio hatemongers who know about your shame, your distaste over this whole matter of death. It is they who make certain the music gets turned up, the volume on the rhetoric becomes ear-splitting, the bands march and the crowds in the stadium cheer...for Nero, for Hitler, for Stalin, for Mussolini, for Bush, for all of them...all the killers who knew how to make the crowd cheer the killings so they wouldn't feel anything remotely resembling a conscience.

If we cheer these deaths, these government sponsored assassinations of monsters created and fed by our own government, how are we different from them? How can we continue to claim a humanity we no longer possess? How can we ever judge another for the crimes we have committed alongside them with our silence?

(One World design from Ursine Logic )

How Are We Different From Them?

My Neighbor Died

My neighbor died yesterday. I didn't know him. He wasn't a friend. We had little in common. We were friendly but indifferent waves of hello to each other. We came from different worlds even though we lived in the same neighborhood. We had different lives that just would not mix without something curdling.

And yet I find myself feeling a deep sadness over his passing because he was too young chronologically. He should have had many more years of life. He should have had a chance to know what it was like to not work at backbreaking labor for most of his life. He should have had a chance to know what it was like to live without the constant stress of bills and being a member of the working poor. He should have been rewarded with an easier life for working so hard, not condemned to live somewhere on the poverty line until the day he died.

The first inclination of many is to see such a man as insignificant, as someone who was a cog in the machine of providing goods and services to those who could afford to buy them. He was poorly educated. He listened to loud, bad music that he played on an old boom box. He loved that box. He fished it from the dumpster when one of the college students in his apartment building threw it away. There was nothing wrong with it. It just didn't fit in the one suitcase he was taking on the plane when he went home after graduation. He knew he would eventually have a bigger, better, and far more expensive music system.

But I doubt he would ever enjoy that music system as much as my neighbor enjoyed his discarded boom box. It went everywhere with him. He set it on the balcony as he drank beer after cheap beer until he was so drunk he forgot most the words. He sang loudly and incoherently to the songs of his youth when he still believed that life had something called a future, when love was something sweet and filled with promise, when he looked in the mirror and saw a young man ready to take on anything looking back.

When he was really drunk, he played it in his bedroom late at night with the windows wide open until the neighbors on the other side of him called the police to shut him down. He was on first name basis with all the police. It became routine to knock on his door and tell him it was time to close down the show. It went with him in the car because the radio in his old beatermobile quit working sometime in the mid 80's. He played it at work on his break.

But he loved it second best. His first love was always his only love--his wife that he married when they were both sixteen and pregnant. They both drank continually when they weren't working. And every day like clockwork, they would argue. They were never violent. They were just loud. Loud like the music. The words and the music and the arguments. It was so much a part of our neighborhood, just like the mating cats and the raccoons screeching at each other over a scrap of cat food someone forgot to take in for the night.

She is why he could never be dismissed as insignificant. She grieves for him in a way only someone who has had only one thing of value in her life can grieve. He was her boom box, her treasured possession that brought her joy and love and noise, constant, reassuring and wonderful noise. They had children. Young adults now who gave them their first grandchild last year at much too young an age. They all grieve for him. They all make him significant with the ache of loss in their hearts and the tears that keep coming no matter how many have already come. And he had friends. People who valued him, who counted on the certainty of his friendship as if it were the purest gold. They also make him significant. They also cry for him.

I didn't know him, but tonight I opened my window and turned up the stereo. I put on the loudest music I had, music he would understand, music I would have given him had I known him better, had I been his friend. No one called the police to complain because the only thing that bothered us today was the silence. It was too damn loud.

My Neighbor Died

Thoughts on the Gay Marriage Hysteria

This is an issue that I've thought a lot about in the last year. I have lots of gay friends and I am also one of those people who is pretty much anti-marriage in a lot of ways. I don't like the idea of being "owned," or of having the state certify my right to co-exist with another human being, or interfere in my personal sex life with intrusive legislation. It's no one's business but the two people involved. As long as it by mutual consent, it is no one's business what they do to and with each other. Period.

I also have many times felt my heart tug with sadness when my gay friends that are so clearly in love with each other, have no right to even hold hands in public without fear of bigotry and intolerance being directed at them. We heterosexuals don't even think about this, it is so much our right to do so. And yet, there are so many people right among us who can't even do this simple act of belongingness with each other.

I also went through that horrible period of time when so many of my friends died of AIDS and what made it even worse was that very often their life partners were not allowed to be with them because they weren't "legal" family members. This is so wrong, so heartbreaking, so cruel. For no other reason then this, I feel gay people should be allowed to marry with all the benefits and legal protections any other person in this country has to right to do.

For those of you who think this would require a separate amendment or new legislation, you are wrong. All it would require is removing the word "gay" from the discussion and make it marriage between two people as the law already stands. The definition of between "man and woman" is not the law. It is a religious tenet that should only apply to people who are members of that particular sect or cult. Personal religious beliefs are just that...personal. They should never be universally forced on people. That is quite simply UN-American.

I'm old enough to remember what it was like having all my accomplishments preceded by the word "female." It made me more sensitive to such adjectives. I fought for my right to be a poet and not a female poet, a web designer and not a female web designer, a human being and not a female human being. It always felt as if I was being demeaned to have my accomplishments adjectivized.

I also see this as just another Karl Rove hate tactic to divide people just in time for the election. If nothing else, that evil bastard has proven that the way to win is to divide us against each other. Those who jump on the anti-gay marriage crap he is spewing only feed the fires of his politics of mean. Don't fall for it again. We are better than that.

I wanted to make a design that took all this into account and yet wasn't mean or angry or hostile and I came up with the one at the top of the page. If you would like to buy it on t-shirts, mousepads, coffee mugs, and lots of other things, then do visit my store. My designs mostly focus on Peace, Pets, Pagans, and Politics. I really believe that art can change the world and that the first changes often are found on t-shirts. Come be part of this change. Enter the world of Ursine Logic

Thoughts on the Gay Marriage Hysteria

The Holy Wounds Of Love

I'm always astonished at the cult of the celebrity that feeds on famous people's lives with an insatiable hunger. I always preferred the more immediate satisfaction of speculating about, feeling sorry for, and lusting after those I knew personally. It always seemed boringly futile to go beyond my own life for those life and death moments that defined me and made me the eccentric and bizarre human I am today.

If my heart was broken I wanted my friends to know about it because they were the ones who could heal me. They could tell me I didn't fail, I wasn't worthless, it was his inability to love and not any inadequacy on my part. I needed these pretty lies to patch up the wounds in my heart so I could love again. I needed to know there were still people who loved me, people I could call at three in the morning and just cry into the phone until I was empty. It kept me alive to have this base of support. Without them I would have thrown myself off the nearest mountain.

And the same if I lusted after someone. I wanted it to be a person I had some realistic chance of connecting with or else it just seemed like worthless suffering to me. I saved my heroic worship for those who had truly inspired me--spiritual leaders like Gandhi, courageous examples such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr, musicians such as long dead composers who were so inspirational no one else has come along with the same power, the same awesome talent and ability.

And if someone I knew broke up, if a couple in my immediate circle's relationship ended, if through them I learned that everlasting love sometimes turns out to have a weak battery, then it was even more important that it be someone I knew intimately. The main reason for that is I am by nature a comforter. I can't imagine anything more frustrating to have that part of me floating free with nothing to land on because I didn't know the person who was drawing those instincts from me. It just didn't seem natural. It was impossible. I might as well weep at a wall's inner pain.

When you combine all that with my solid belief that what happens between two people is their business alone and it is rude and stalker-like to care about other people's lives so much, then you get the picture that I basically could care less what happens to celebrities. They are strangers. To care so much about their personal lives is the same to me as going up to some stranger on the street and demanding to know the intimate details of their sexual behavior and other intimate moments that are absolutely none of my business. It is saying to complete strangers yes, you can ask me about my own life, you can probe my privacy, dig into my love life, my successes and failures just because I entertained you at one time.

That said, I think I finally am beginning to understand with this latest focus on Paul McCartney and Heather Mill's relationship end. Let me say first of all that my favorite Beatle was George. I like my men to look like men. He had that lovely ruggedness that I adore. Paul was always too pretty for my tastes. But that aside, his sad life is making me understand something about this obsessive need in people to pry into his pain and Heather's. It has to do with the magnitude of the pain caused by love gone bad, the humiliation of love that didn't last, that allowed so many people into it, it never really had a chance.

If you think of the pain of love as something that can be measured, it begins to make even more sense to look for something larger than you are to hook your suffering to so you don't drown in your own misery. There's so many different levels of love pain. You have the small pain of a weekend fling that never called back. You have the distant high school ouch-relationship that warned that love and flowers and butterfly stuff in books was a lie: real love, true love hurt like hell. Especially in High School.

But to focus so much on these two celebrities tells me something about people that I know fairly well about myself : we've all loved that one person that brutally betrayed our blind trust in love. It was the life-changing moment we suffered through and whose memory continues to haunt us. The pain always seemed so much bigger than our own circle of friends, well-intentioned though they were, could possibly deal with. The pain was just too big. It needed a bigger stage than the limited area of a friend's shoulder. It needed more voices than your dear friends on the telephone. It needed more impact than the sympathetic emails. It needed a performance hall large enough to show off all the wounds so everyone would know the depth of your pain.

That is why we turn to bigger than life celebrities when they suffer. When our own pain is so big that it cannot live in a normal world, we turn to those whose wounds are bigger than life. It makes our own pain more tolerable to see that no one is immune from such wounds. We say if they can suffer, then maybe it wasn't our fault. Maybe we are not such bad people. Maybe it wasn't the end of the world. Maybe we can go on. Maybe we can patch our own hearts back together, no matter how many patches it already has.

And in a very sad and twisted way, it makes us accept our own lives, the limitations of having to work for a living, of being in debt, of never making enough to take that vacation, buy that beautiful home, that private getaway. It tells us that those things are not enough, that money is not the bandage we tell ourselves it would be. If the rich and famous can suffer over love, then we truly are equal, aren't we?

I wish Peace to us all in love and especially in war.

I made the rough draft of this image several years ago when I refused to let myself be defeated by a love gone bad. At the time I felt completely alone in my suffering. I felt no one understood me. And yet, I also knew I believed in love so much that I would patch up my poor, battered heart and try again and again and again until I got it right.

If you want to buy it on a variety of products for yourself or as a gift for a fellow suffering soul, just enter HERE

The Holy Wounds Of Love

The Worst Theft of All

By now most of us are over the shock and just stand in awe at the blatant destruction for personal gain of the Rapture Republicans. They live as if there were no tomorrow because that is what they believe: there is no tomorrow. Think about it. No tomorrow. If you believed that, if you believed that whatever you did would never be punished, never be accounted for, never challenged as wrong and selfish just because you did it while on your knees, would you do what these greedy and corrupt bastards have done and continue to do?

I think most people would not. This is a special kind of greed that was deliberately shaped in the past by such pre-indoctrination as burning down the library in Alexandria because the knowledge contained within was so vast and so contradictory to the christian brainwashing then in effect that it was considered heresy.

It is a particularly evil kind of ignorance that burned books like the Nazis did because they contained philosophies that did not take into account the rich, white, land-owning christian man ruling over everyone else. It is an especially moronic and manipulated idiot that continues to do this in the many small pockets of ignorance that continue to build " stupid people" bonfires in the present day for artists like Michael Moore and the Dixie Chicks for the imagined crime of daring to speak out against lies, war, and more lies.

Those who engage in hate and ignorance-spewing rationalize their twisted actions because the voices in their heads told them to, and their hate-spewing radio stations told them to. But especially because they learned crap in schools that were dumbed down by making education not something you learned but something you endured in the process of making social connections so one day in the future you could pat a totally inept, in way-over-his head moron on the back and say "heckuva job brownie."

These idiots are the manipulated fools who were bought with cheap hot dogs, marching bands, Chinese-made American flags to wave in the parades, and coca-cola to rot what was left of their teeth in order to support a war based on lies and greed. These are the used and abused who were fed hatred against groups of other human beings in mono-syllabic grunts they could swallow without any thought at all. These are the greedy and powerful who hired dominatrixes and prostitutes to "punish" them for their sins because they know what they were doing was so evil and so wrong, that nothing short of expensive humiliation would ease the burden enough to be able to look in the mirror and face unconscionable slime staring back in disgust.

And the worst sin of all is their combined rape and destruction of natural resources that any thinking, feeling, responsible human being would understand was the most precious legacy they possessed to leave future generations. This is what our grandchildren and their grandchildren will never forgive: the blatant theft and abuse of something left in their trust, an heirloom so precious it can never be replaced.

Truly, they will rightfully perceive this time as evil and as ignorant as the book and library and knowledge destroying fanatics. They will refer to this time as the dark ages of the human soul when greed, ignorance and outright hatred of anyone different led to the destruction of their heritage.

But within that sad history will be the small glimmer of hope that has always grown strong against the wave of such destruction: the tiny choruses of voices who spoke timidly at first, who were drowned out by the trumped up shouts of war, who were jailed, spied upon, punished, derided and degraded...but who continued nevertheless because they knew if they remained silent, the bad people would win.

These people are us. We can win because we have something more real, more precious, more alive than religious manipulation and hatred on our side: we have truth and honor and compassion. Those are strengths that return again and again to defeat evil.

Please add your voice to the growing chorus or there will be nothing left to leave our great great grandchildren other than a sense of shame that we could have done something, could have spoken up, could have stopped the madness...but did not.

Peace

note: I began my online store as a way to help in the fight for peace and justice in the world. Most of my designs help the silent and timid speak up. Yes, I do believe the world can be changed one t-shirt at a time. It is my way of fighting back without having to pick up a gun, a sword, a brick, a rock, a weapon of any kind.

You can visit my store by entering HERE

The Worst Theft of All

Nature As Teacher

One of the reasons religion and its limited concept of spirituality never found a home in me is because my soul has always been tightly woven with Nature. I've always felt myself in the flow of the river as it wound its way through canyons and valleys and lush, abundant mountain ranges. I've always seen myself in the depths of a lake's many layers--the silty gray of thawing ideology, the multi-hued greens of new growth and maturing spirit, the blues of ice and sky and blinding insight so intense that my heart found new heights to test its wings. I've gazed at the ocean as if it were an oracle with answers to all the questions worth asking.

I am not separate from Nature. We are one entity with many hearts all beating in a rhythm of different places in the same time. We are a breath taken one thousand years ago and reborn as the whispered sigh of a creek dancing through a break in the rocks. We are a drop of rain that falls one thousand years in the future as the tear of a love so profound, one can only weep from the intensity of emotion and feeling. We are the crash of a wave against the rocks as we ebb and flow and sweep over the man-made obstacles of being alive.

When I sit in silence in the depths of a forest, the soft rustle of scurrying feet mix with the song of birds, trees shake their leaves and whisper secrets with the wind, the scent of change dies and grows and evolves to a new form, a new reality, a new growth.

I change with the seasons. I die and I am reborn in harmony with the death and rebirth of Nature. I am the waves of the ocean forming new inroads into the shore of my understanding. I am the mist and the cry of the seagulls and the call of geese flying through the fire glow of a setting sun.

In all of Nature is a piece of my soul, a part of me that was shaped and formed and created by processes that are nothing less than a mother giving birth to a child.

Is it any wonder that I find religion and its unholy intermediaries irrelevant to who I am, who I am becoming, and who I shall be?

The Van Gogh quote and design is available HERE

Nature As Teacher

Breaking Free From The Herd

Have you ever noticed while driving along a highway that clumps of cars travel together, leaving empty spaces in front and behind them? It's as if everyone is afraid to be the lone car, the sore thumb raising it's damaged appendage to draw the highway patrol's attention. Ticket me! Ticket me! I'm outside the herd and therefore bad bad bad.

You see this same behavior while walking along the sidewalks of Anytown, USA. If you stop and look inside a shop, sure enough, within moments, there will be a sudden crowd of slack-jawed gapers joining you. Go for a hike on a public trail and people will slow down or speed up in order to not be left alone where they can be mauled by wild bears or the "authorities."

We have become a nation of puppies suffering separation anxiety from the collective feeding sacks. When you consider that one of the many traits America once prided itself on: rugged individualism, has virtually disappeared in the frenzy to look like everyone else so you won't be picked out of the crowd, it becomes more than a casual observance. It points to a fundamental change in character.

There are several places to focus on as being responsible for this herd behavior. Of course the easy ones are the churches. Dissent is frowned upon. You join a church because everyone thinks like you, acts like you, behaves like you, and most importantly, believes like you. The hive of sameness is comforting in this ever changing and scary world, and believe me, the unholy intermediaries know it is in their self-interest to keep you huddled together. It is easier to pick your pockets...and your souls when you are all in one convenient place, both physically and mentally.

The less obvious one is the growth of the politics of mean. It has no purpose except to divide people into groups that can be manipulated for personal and political gain. It works especially well if you implant the evil seeds of "us" and "them" to keep the different groups from co-mingling and finding out exactly how they are being manipulated.

So go ahead and hate people for their sexual orientation, their politics, their ethnic identity, their legal or illegal status, their religious beliefs--or especially their LACK of religious beliefs. And once you make all that part of your collective soul, give up language and just bleat bahhhhh bahhhhhh bahhhhhhh every once in a while because it is the only fitting response to how you've allowed yourself to be stripped of everything that makes you unique.

And once you no longer stand out in the crowd, once you no longer think differently from the herd, once you no longer have the will or desire to stand up for yourself or for what you believe, then your life ceases to have any special value. You become cannon fodder for the war party. You become a pawn in the game of death. You lose everything and never miss it because you no longer remember what it was like to have value as a human being.

This is how the revolution happens. Not by violence. Not by dissent. Not by fighting for liberty, freedom and democracy. It happens by mutual and blind consent. It happens because you sold yourself like some cheap whore to a political party, or a televised religious bigot, or the promise of things and money and glittery, shiny toys, and especially for the promise that no one but people who looked and thought like you would ever enter your gated community mind.

You might as well kick some dirt over yourself because you are pretty much dead.

Breaking Free From The Herd

Wiretap This!

Privacy is a strange thing. In many countries it does not have the importance it does in America. It is not unusual in some cultures to satisfy one's curiosity by opening someone else's purse or backpack and examining the contents. Privacy in such cultures equals secrecy and secrecy equals bad. Friends don't have secrets from each other, therefore they should not mind if one examines their most intimate items with total and complete interest. To claim the right of privacy is to immediately draw everyone's suspicion.

This uniquely American "right" is on an equal footing with individualism, the right to live free of government intrusion, and separation of private vs. public lives. This country has always prided itself on the lack of evil entities such as secret police, faceless spies who tracked every move of its citizens. It cherished such things as private property, private and personal beliefs, private time, private thoughts, private conversations.

These cherished rights were the fabric of an America envied by the world over. It was one of the things that gained us respect and honor and the desire to be America's friends and allies. It is what set us apart from those awful totalitarian regimes, dictatorships, and puppet governments we were told were very different from us. We were told they were very bad governments who SPIED on their own people, LISTENED IN on private conversations, and INTRUDED on every aspect of people's cherished lives.

Now we have become what we once opposed because of power-hungry and greedy bastards who care nothing about this country. They care only to enrich themselves, to steal what they can and control everything so they can continue to lie and cheat and steal without exposure.

This design is for them, those bastards who for years told us the enemy would break down our doors and steal our privacy. However, they neglected to tell us that enemy would be them.

---

You can buy this design at Ursine Logic

Wiretap This!

Green Bears Discuss Immigration

No matter what you think about the immigration issue, the impressive thing is the number of people who turned out who weren't immigrants, legal or otherwise. It makes me think what people really protested against was the disenfranchising of everyone who isn't part of the Stepford Elite that the Republican party has become. Most people in this country are very much like those of several decades ago who were not Fascists, Nazis or Communists. They are apolitical and never gave their vote or party affiliation much thought. Punching that card or screen became a tedious task that one had to do but that meant very little emotionally.

The Bush Theocracy changed all that. People woke up and realized the nuclear trigger is in the hands of a madman who thinks some imaginary playmate is whispering in his ear to nuke the world for jesus. If he wasn't president, he'd be heavily medicated and kept somewhere he couldn't do any harm except shout at ghosts occasionally.

But this is the leader of the country, the head of an administration that has cultivated fear, suspicion, division, and war for the sake of greed. And the congress is worthless either because they've had their silence bought through dirt uncovered in those illegal wiretaps of American citizens, or they are so stunned at the extent of the greed, madness and corruption that passes for the presidency these days that they literally cannot summon up the words to describe their outrage.

Either way, this country is moving closer to choosing a third party rather than the War Party or their accommodating minions in Congress. It's time to clean house, and the senate, and the presidency. It's time to open some eyes.

I made this design after the immigration rallies because I am certain the whole issue began as this election year's wedge issue, the gay marriage button pusher of 2006. It backfired on them. But they will keep trying because to lose any of the elections is to move closer to the jail cells that await them for being the thieves and war criminals they are. All they are left with are the cheap tricks of last year that fooled only the most moronic of their base: throw two dudes up on the tv during prime time, have them lock lips, and the screams of terror will propel the horrified populace to the ballot boxes to cast votes for more Republicans.

Only this time the lip-lockers will be Mexican because that way they won't completely lose out on the immigration issue.

Peace

Green Bears designs available at Ursine Logic

Green Bears Discuss Immigration

I Hear Stupid People

I'm beginning to believe the human species is too stupid to survive. Every day we are hearing the same old crap we heard about Iraq, and every day more and more people put their brains on hold and think well yeah, this crazy guy in Iran hates us and so we need to take him out. Hey guys, everyone hates us these days.

If that was a reason for war, then we'd be taking out Greece who just let Condoleeza Clueless know they weren't going to die in Iran for her. Or any other countries who think that Bush is a madman who responds only to the voices in his head. Read some of the crap he's been saying about those voices in something other than the state-run media.

It doesn't even have to be extremist to get a clear picture of what's going on. Here's some sites I read with my morning coffee: Huffington Post , Antiwar.com , Daily Kos , Raw Story .

These sites have a mix of writers who cover all sides with reasonable arguments, instead of the simpering White House Whores over at Faux News morons who wouldn't know a real news story if it snuck up behind them and yelled "Fascist!" to get their blood warm enough to reach their hearts.

And if you never read anything but crazy madwomen's blogs, at least stand up for peace. Let your voice be heard. Teach people that peace is strength, that peace is power, that peace is all that will save our stupid, warmongering asses of a species before it's too late.

Peace

and you can buy the rose peace design at my store on t-shirts and other stuff: Ursine Logic

I Hear Stupid People

The Lies of State

Back in the days when oppressive regimes were the enemy instead of our own government, every bad country had its own propaganda minister. He was eviscerated by American media and those who were our friends, back in the days when America had friends, as a symbol of oppression, as a tool of the political machine, a useful idiot whose only purpose was to spread and disseminate the lies of state. In other words, they did the job that Scott Mclellan did for Bushco.

Underlying the hypocrisy and gallows humor surrounding America having become everything it once opposed, is the pathetic fact that lying has become an American value. We no longer expect honesty from anyone. We expect people to lie, to manipulate us, to cheat us, to do us wrong in the name of politics, religion, making the sale, and love.

This is what the culture of lying that surrounds and permeates the current administration like the smell of rot and decay lingers long after the offending source of the stench has been removed, does for our country. It makes lying normal. It makes personal attacks on people and their loved ones normal. It makes going to war for oil and unresolved daddy issues normal. It makes being mean and cruel and arrogant and selfish normal.

If there is one legacy other than all the unnecessary, awful deaths caused by Bushco's greed, it will be the culture of lying. They will go down in history as the most dishonest, the most manipulative, the most cruel and selfish administration ever.

In light of that sad truth, the new Propaganda Minister for the White House should be our old friend Baghdad Bob. He, above everyone else, exemplifies what Bushco really is all about.

And this design, like many others on this blog, are available at my store: Ursine Logic

The Lies of State

My Kitty

I decided to go ahead and expose some of my stranger art to the world at My store And because I love my cat, I think she looks beautiful in whatever I dress her. :-)

I'm also working on more Green Bears as people seem to like them a lot.

My Kitty

Green Bears

I've been collecting bear-related stuff for Ursine Logic pages for awhile now, so it wasn't a problem of enough material, but rather one of choosing the best material for what I wanted to say and do. So today I finally settled on the green bears. They are where I've been putting my political stuff.

The reason I chose these guys is because I wanted to establish myself firmly in my political identity of Compassionate Liberal. I wanted a way to comment on politics and politicians that wasn't mean-spirited. I wanted humor, caring, and an honest sense of bewilderment that people are not as smart as the average bear when it comes to making up their own minds.

This was never made clearer to me than on Easter. I saw little kids running and crawling around in the wet and muddy grass after the rains of the day before. They were all decked out in miniature wedding finery--with ears and without, and they were engaging in some ancient fertility ritual of stuffing eggs into baskets as they hopped all over the damn place. And all this while their parents proudly filmed the whole thing.

It's a weird sort of kiddie porn when you look at it from one angle, the same angle that looks at religion and sees it for what it truly is--the biggest bucket of damn excuses for human behavior that was ever created. If someone commits a socially acceptable act, then god made them do it, the angel's hands (or wings, as it were) guided them, they were blessed by saints of all shapes, sizes, and stages of demented philosophizing. On the other hand, if the act was socially unacceptable, such as spending the afternoon seducing the neighbor's wife, or taking an ax to that annoying guy who insists on exposing himself every day...well, of course, that was the devil's fault wasn't it?

So the green bears will be discussing stuff like this in more depth over the coming weeks. Do check back often and see what they have to say.

Green Bears

Wild Creatures

I am a solitary creature who enjoys my own company. I'm not anti-social or overly weird or too scary. I do have friends, great friends, loving and loyal friends. But after a long time being together, we are like old married people who desperately need a break from each other.

And there are also times when I love my friends, but as people...well they let me down every once in a while. They reveal themselves to be mere mortals. They commit the worst sin imaginable...they reveal themselves to be ordinary! Just like everyone else on the planet...demented, weird, wanting, longing, and so damn needy I often feel bled dry by them at different times.

Because they've been my friends for a long time I am willing to step back, give us all some room, and then hope everyone shape shifts back to the charming, intelligent, witty, tolerant and accepting creatures they are normally.

But on some issues the cracks are exposed and I'm not sure they can ever be patched back together again so that no one notices too much. One of those issues is immigration. There doesn't seem to be a neutral ground in this argument. It's yet one more polarizing issue brought to us by politicians so infected by greed that anything human gets by them completely.

In a perfect world, one I dream about, one I hope to see in my lifetime, there are no borders. But the world is not perfect and the reality is that if this country shuts out immigrants we will not be any safer, any more secure, any more prosperous. The looting of our treasury and resources to fund a madman's war, has created a whole new class of poor and desperate people.

I live in a neighborhood where people's jobs are car prowling, identity theft, drugs, and stealing anything to survive to the next meal or next fix or next month's rent. How do you build a fence against that when all the money to do so has been stolen by our criminal government? How do you protect yourself against the next generation, the one that is fed Ritalin as if it were candy or are so tranquilized because overworked teachers can't cope with them if they aren't perfect little kids? Do you have perpetual wars and just kill them off as they get old enough to do serious damage at home to us?

I also feel that if someone wants to come here so badly they are willing to work crap jobs for less money than anyone legal would get for the same job, they deserve a chance to stay. They've demonstrated the kind of work ethic that built this country. They are willing to do the hardest, crappiest work and even die in our perpetual wars as green card soldiers. Isn't that the kind of resolve that made this country something special in the eyes of the rest of the world?

Sadly, I think immigrants are the new distraction for the failed Republican policies. As long as quack radio and whacko white people news actors keeps hammering home the idea that these people are the problem, no one will look at the real problem of those greedy, selfish, fanatical, lying, thieving, cheating, murdering war and hate mongers who have created conditions in this country that makes us all illegal aliens. They care about us about as much as they care about something on the bottom of their shoes. That is the real threat, not a bunch of Mexicans who work their ass off for shit wages.

Wild Creatures

Compassionate Liberalism

One of the sad mysteries that I'm trying to understand is what happened to make people so mean? Everywhere I look there is someone making life miserable for someone else for no good reason that I can see. Sure, life is hard for a lot of people. Just being alive is a challenge sometimes. But why has the mean quotient risen so sharply in the last few years?

Of course I can point to some obvious things such as "talk radio" that should more aptly be called "yell radio," or the equivalent on TV where highly paid morons insult each other with the most ridiculous of empty arguments on a daily basis. Or that this horrible war without reason creates an underlying sense of anger in people that drip drip drips from them on the roads where they scream and flip each other off, in the stores where they bump into each other's shopping carts with guttural grunts of indignation, and in relationships where love is slowly eroded by disillusionment, boredom, and outright hatred.

But what I suspect is the true reason is a mass feeling of outrage over being used, abused and manipulated by sleazy lawyers who stepped on and backstabbed so many people they finally made it to the halls of power in congress and the white house. Every day they prove that ethics and the legal profession are never uttered in the same breath. Every day they decide issues on what is legally permissible instead of what is morally and ethically right. All that hairsplitting and their consciences, the little they had to begin with, were lost in the trash heap of legally right but morally wrong manipulations.

When lawyers became so great in number that everywhere you looked one was running something or other, it became a matter of a very short time before our leaders would stop being drawn from the public servants who wanted to do good, and were instead drawn from the scheming hordes of absurdly wealthy and powerfully connected lawyers who sleazed their way to the top of the shit pile.

Think about it...all our vital decisions such as war and peace, death and dying, birth and life has been placed in the hands of those who know only how to lie, cheat and steal their way to a win in the courtroom. We only have to look at the decisions being made to know these people don't care about us, or about the planet, or about each other. They care only about winning, about accumulating the most gains, the most prizes, the most rewards.

And if you think this is bad, the group coming up behind them who are just as large in number and just as greedy? Real Estate agents. Whatever ethics and consciences were left will soon be up for auction.

Therefore, the only sane way out of this mess is to fight back with weapons completely unfamiliar to either groups: compassion, love, peace, caring about people instead of their incomes or places of residence or the labels on their clothes or the size of the cars they drive. That is why I created the design for Compassionate Liberal. It is one I plan on wearing myself quite often and giving as gifts to my friends and family who understand what it means.

If we are too nice to yell and be mean, at least we can still make ourselves read if not heard. And it is like people say...the dog you have to worry about is not the one who barks, but the one who sneaks up silently behind you.

Compassionate Liberalism

The Meaning of Friendship

Some days I end up feeling as if I'm a strange kind of alien creature that holds values far above what people can realistically attain. I tell myself that I am some kind of freak because I believe that friendship is such a valued and cherished part of me that I can't compromise on what I believe. I tell myself that I hold back until I am sure because I know once I give it, it is for life. I tell myself that friendship means acceptance and tolerance and unconditional love. Anything else, and it is NOT friendship. I tell myself this is the natural order of things and anything that falls outside those lines is a poor and unsatisfying imitation of the real thing.

This is why, when someone does something that tells me not only do they believe differently than I do, but something about my beliefs makes them want to cut me down, much as those who walk through a forest think only of which trees are the best to slam into with a chainsaw, I end up locking myself in my bear den in stunned horror.

I know there is evil in the world. I know there are bad people. I know there are sociopaths who can lie as easily as they speak the truth. I know there are people who live to take vengeance on others for reasons known only to them. I know such people exist. I just don't expect to find them among people who profess undying love and friendship for me. I tend to believe them when they say such things.

I also tend to believe that once you give your heart to someone, once you say the words I love you, then you can never hurt that person, no matter how the relationship ended. To do so would make a mockery of love. It would cheapen it. It would make it seem something weak and easily wiped away as if it were some meaningless speck of dirt.

I also believe that when people split up, neither has the right to put an extra burden on their mutual friends by demanding they choose sides. I have spent my life trying to be fair in such situations. I can always see both sides of the issues in every relationship. I can empathise, sympathize, listen attentively and respectfully...and still not take a side, no matter who I believe is at fault. This is what it means to be a friend. This is what it means to have friendship, once given, be non-negotiable.

That is why I am always so stunned, so deeply wounded when anyone goes against this, or worse, when they use it against me to get back at someone else. People know how I feel, and yet that doesn't stop them from demanding I choose sides. It doesn't stop them from taking sides in my own relationship paths. It doesn't stop them from going against everything they once said in such sincerity that I feel a fool for believing it now.

And yet, believe it I must. If I allow myself to take sides, if I allow myself to fall apart because I learn friends I cherished walked out of my life because an ex partner made it a condition of continued friendship, then I fall to the lowest level of the basest act.

That is the split in the human condition, the two sides of ourselves we are always trying to reconcile with being alive. No matter what we believe, there will always be someone who will try and take it from us. Strength is therefore defined as not letting them do it, no matter what evil and disgusting methods they use to do so.

The Doggess of Unconditional Love is another one of my designs from my store. My Store

I also started a blog over at myspace that is going to focus on things like the politics of peace and respect. I only have a couple entries in it so far and some of my more political art. I'd be honored to have people visit there as well.

My home at myspace.com

The Meaning of Friendship