The shootings here in the Springs, and then yesterday again, in a Virginia Walmart…So many families and communities torn open, devastated because of insanity with a gun in hand. The guns are a problem, but insanity is the bigger one. Sane people can manage their guns with safety and good sense. The biggest problem here …
Category Archives: Loosely Speaking
Purdah
I am not a tootsie rollwrapped up to keep off lint and dirt.I am a human being.I have personhood and dreamsambitions, likes, desires,yearnings and creative fires… I have a life to livethat is my own. I have just angers, I have boundaries, mine,not yours. How ignoranthow arroganthow mean of youto think me nothingbut your lollipop. …
Pioneer Cafe, Montana Morning
Ladies of a Certain Agegirls no moreexcept in the heart:What Life has givenyou have takendespite the dreams you had,despite intentions and resistance;Age acquiring resiliencefor survival’s sakewhen life is hardor dull beyond endurance. Power in the circlearound the cafe tableevery morning, every dayexcept Sundays, maybe:Ladies, old and agingsocializing despite,because of Life;finding, making, sharing power’round this table…and resilience,endurance,and amusement–even some days, …
Late October Morning
Morning has broken–its edges shattered by the wind;Dawnlight leaks through the torn hem of overcast;Tree boughs new-relieved of colorflutter and bounce and danceto the strains of winter musicof the coming of colder daysand slight rain considersriding down the windas snow. by CL Redding 10/22
Why Education in America Stinks
The root problem in American education comes from the fact that Americans don’t actually much like children. It’s a nation so young compared to one like Finland, that the relationship of authority towards children is more like older sibling/adolescent to younger child than parent/adult to child. Underneath the surface where, at the privileged end of the …
In Praise of Patience
I was cold in the morning, shivering,but I knew the day would warmwith the rising sun. Hearts broken by humankind unkind, humanity inhumane,we bear the meanessof our worldsplodding on, plodding on… between the shadows castby obstacles half-seen,mistaken,misinformed,misunderstood–we go on seeking truth with our broken hearts. Beset by grief,taught guilt and shameand fear by all its names, even so we …
Regarding the adoption of elder cats and grey-muzzled dogs.
I want to encourage considering them when you are seeking a companion animal. And also, maybe, to discourage, if you can’t actually meet its needs. This is all about what we can give them, where many of us think first of what they can give us. We want the cuddles, we want the soft fur …
Continue reading “Regarding the adoption of elder cats and grey-muzzled dogs.”
Aldous Huxley saw it coming.
Brave New World is coming… I am convinced, and have been for many years, that when our current dominant ‘civilization’ eats its own foundations out from under itself, the First Peoples of the Americas will still be here. And not just in the Americas: Indigenous peoples worldwide are stirring. They who have cherished and remembered …
The Life Civil
Since humankind began building and living in cities, we have claimed as our own the term civilized. The word describes the next stage of humanity, following from savage to barbaric to civic. It follows from family to clan to tribe and implies something beyond the stacking of bricks, the building of close housing and monumental edifices …
Bad Words
First of all, words are not bad. It takes emotional filters to make them seem bad. It takes intent on the part of the speaker, even of the listener, to make a word bad. Lenny Bruce said it well in his ‘Hard Words’ bit. It’s accessible in this article on the topic. George Carlin is …
LOOSELY SPEAKING... 