Thomas Paine

Thought for the day on PTSD. When I first began publishing on PTSD, I wish I'd known of this quote. Many will make fun of, misquote, harm those who suffer from this disorder through action and word towards sufferers. My truth just wanted the liberty of saying I have this disorder, please don't misinterpret it.

"But such is the irresistable nature of truth that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), England/USA


Thanks to PTSD Combat for the quote and wonderful blog.


Curiosity caused me to research Thomas Paine. I remembered his name but not much about him.

According to Wikipedia, Paine was an philosopher-

" Thomas Paine (29 January 1737 – 8 June 1809) was an English pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, inventor, and intellectual. He lived and worked in Britain until age 37, when he emigrated to the British American colonies, in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contribution was the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), advocating colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and of The American Crisis (1776–1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series.

Later, he greatly influenced the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), a guide to Enlightenment ideas. Despite not speaking French, he was elected to the French National Convention in 1792. The Girondists regarded him an ally, so, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him an enemy. In December of 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of The Age of Reason (1793–94), the book advocating deism and arguing against Christian doctrines. In France, he also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income.

Balthazar

It is a cold, late fall day, pre-Thanksgiving. Storms passed through the area and it rained leaves here for a several days. We have worked the last few weekends to get up wood for our stove and leaves from the gutters and yard. The weekend has gone and I am once again alone at home.

Today I pulled a book from the thousands inherited from Frank's parents, (they were no great great collectors of material wealth, but desired and respected scholarly knowledge) a novel by Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar. It has a great beginning; I hope it continues that quality of prose throughout.

For more information on Durrell, perhaps a visit to the The International Lawrence Durrell Society would be helpful.

The ILDS is a non-profit educational organization whose purposes are 1) to promote the study, understanding, and appreciation of the works of Lawrence Durrell; 2) to explore critically Durrell's position in twentieth century literature, modernist and post-modernist, and to help establish his place in the canon of world literature; 3) to sponsor meetings, seminars, and conferences worldwide dealing with Lawrence Durrell; 4) to publish a newsletter, The Herald, and a journal, Deus Loci: The International Lawrence Durrell Journal, at regular intervals; 5) to support scholarly publications; 6) to undertake such projects as may be decided upon by the Society.

Source: lawrencedurrell.org

Going through old diaries

Christmas, 1986

To accept love is not to require or demand of it. Love, in its purest form, is simply given and received.

Summer, July 1987


Reflections on a relationship that did not reach fruition

What have I learned?

To move slowly
To examine deeply
To search for clarity in my vision
To fill my own voids by standing still
To let my world, my path unfold before me- not to make them
To not be in charge, in control- to be as clay for transformation
To look inward for my answers
To be alone
To be OK alone
To trust when faced with uncertainties
To not make decisions when I am unsure- but be flexible (as the willow-wand) and follow my intuition
To say what I feel
To allow others to be who they are without (expressing) judgement as to right or wrong (if they feel differently than I)
To grow spiritually as the way is revealed
To show kindness and understanding to others as well as (to) myself
To not be bitter when faced with emotional upheaval- to understand and learn- to rise above (it)
To give devotion only to those worthy of it and only when I am sure of my own
To be honest- to live honestly- to love honestly
To be myself- believe in who I am and my convictions- to have faith
To understand confusion- that it is powerful- to avoid entanglement in other's confusion and in such times restore my emotional energies and love
To find wisdom and clarity of purpose

I've fallen short on these goals, and re-reading them helps give me perspective. Some may be too idealistic, but overall they are sound.

Fall Mornings

Fall has come to North Carolina and it's beautiful, absent the constant bickering and lies thrown from one candidate and political party to another, with the American people caught in the crossfire.

Fall is flounder, drum and trout season on the NC Outer Banks. Wind, weather, current and temperature all factor in the catch, or lack of it. Cape Lookout National Seashore is full of fishermen, men who will withstand weather, cold and harsh conditions to go home with coolers of flounder and drum.

What drives these men to pit themselves against the environment? These aren't your Hatteras Island fishermen, most of whom go back to their comfy houses after a morning or evening spent in search of that citation drum or flounder. These are Portsmouth and Cape Lookout men, who stay in primitive cabins or have their campers, or even tents, out on the point.


Sheer determination is needed to survive, to keep up one's strength in this environment. Conditions can be brutal and survival depends on mental and physical strength, and on will when storms come in, when that northeast wind blows 25 to 30 mph and the beach sand forms a driving fog. In tent, camper or vehicle it sounds like driving rain. It's hard to orient in conditions like these after dark.

But there are also days beautiful beyond belief, miles of pristine beach and open space, clear nights when the galaxies, constellations and stars are seen without artificial light lovely across the midnight sky. Meteor showers are incredible, sunrise and sunsets as lovely as can be found anywhere I can imagine.

I met a handful of wonderful people there this past week, who shared their simple but gracious hospitality with me. And I ate better that I have in while- gourmet meals in that environment! I won't name them, but to each who shared with me that incredible hard yet wonderful experience, for bringing me into the fold and providing an opportunity to share in return, I give and say thanks.


Elton John



Woke this morning back home thinking of Elton John and his album Tumbleweed Connection. Also thinking of religion, what it means to different people. These are random thoughts on different subjects. Wanted to hear old music, music I grew up on. Here's to those artists on the ablum repitroi this morning- Elton, Bob Seger, Paul Simon, Joan Baez.

Some favorite lyrics~

Bob Seger~ Till it Shines

Take away my inhibitions
Take away my solititude
Fire me up with your resistance
Put me in the mood.
Storm the walls around this prison
Leave the inmates, free the guards
Deal me up another future from another deck of cards
Take the chip off of my shoulder
Smooth out all the lines
Take me out among the rustling pines
Till it shines
Like an echo down a canyon
Never comming back as clear
Lately I just judge the distance
Not the words I hear
I've been too long on these islands
I've been far too long alone
I've been too long without summer
In this winter home
Still if we can make the effort
If we can take the time
Maybe we can leave this much behind
Till it shines
See the rich man lost and lonely
watch him as he dines
Sitting there just tasting all the wines
Till it shines.

Paul Simon~ American Tune

Many the times I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But its all right, its all right
We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we're traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
and I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking backing down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the ages most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But its allright, its allright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest.




Photographs of Cape Lookout property and courtesy of NCSU

Tumbleweed Connection Album Cover courtesy of The Elton John Fan Network

Ice-Floe International Poetry of the Far North

Randomly searching Ebay for poetry books, I came across and ordered a volume of Ice-Floe: International Poetry of the Far North.

Researching further, I became excited and intrigued by these sets of poetry, which I hope to collect and read in their entirety. Co edited by Shannon Gramse and Sarah Kirk, their selections offer "particular focus on indigenous languages and literature". The inaugural issue of Ice-Floe was published in 2000, on the Summer Solstice. It features international poetry in the native languages Dena'ina, Aleut, Yup'ik, Even, Sami, Greenlandic and Chukchi, with English translation for each poem published alongside. Each set of Ice-Floe is one complete volume with an issue released on each of the solstices. Ice-Floe press continued to publish these sets until 2004.

Submissions were limited to international poets who live in the polar regions of the globe, in the often frozen and inhospitable north, on the rock, soil, water, and ice above 60 degrees longitude they respectively call home. The editors, who wanted an 'independent international forum open exclusively to northern poets,' decided on the poems to be published after receiving submissions from volunteer 'foreign editors in various circumpolar nations'.

Apparently there was some controversy surrounding one of the journal's selected poems, "Indian Girls". I have yet to read it, but find the comments published on the same to be thought provoking and astute. Alan Charles Kors, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education weighs in as follows:

Linda McCarriston's exquisite, finely wrought, and deeply moving poem, "Indian Girls," sheds painful, and boundlessly empathetic light upon the experience of powerlessness and abuse. It speaks at once to the mind, the heart, and the conscience of readers.

Efforts to chill expressive and poetic freedom-the freedom from which the possibility of "Indian Girls" emerged- threaten the rare and immeasurable value of being fully human, a value that depends on liberty. Such liberty is under terrible assault at our colleges and universities, most often in the name "sensitivity." The first victim of repression and censorship, however, would be sensitivity. A society that silences expression silences thought. A society that silences poetry silences the human spirit. Freedom is fragile, precious, and indivisible, and we all enjoy only what the smallest voice enjoys.

Issues of race, sexuality, child abuse, and ethnicity touch raw historical, political, moral, and psychological nerves in American life. The very depth of those tensions, however, should lead us to want to know how individuals diversely think about, experience, and respond to the realities that we face. Repression deprives us of what, humanly and intellectually, we need the most: critical thought, insight, unfettered inquiry, open exploration, and mutual awareness. It protects no one's dignity to be sheltered from freedom, let alone from the freedom of poetry.

Liberty is the exception in human affairs, and once lost, in belief or in practice, it is simply gone. I salute President Mark Hamilton of the University of Alaska, who understood this, and whose ringing defense of the First Amendment and of its underlying value, individual liberty, was one of the richest fruits of these controversies. Above all, I salute Linda McCarriston, both for the humanity of "Indian Girls," and, a second gift, for the courage with which she defended the rights of all minds and sensibilities to freedom of expression, the freedom without which none of the others has protection or authentic meaning.

I look forward to receiving my first set and securing more of these works. For information on ordering Ice Floe contact editor Sarah Kirk at afsjk@uaa.alaska.edu

Image: Courtesy and property of Ice-Floe Press
Quotations: The Northern Light

'Just Say No' to John Edwards

I woke up this morning elated that Iowans' "Just Said No" to John Edwards. Googling the phrase that had come into my head, I found that he had a "just say no" campaign directed at voters against Washington lobbyists. I kid you not, I had never heard of this, unless maybe I saw or read some obscure sound bite somewhere containing this phrase and thought of it, guessed it to be in relation to him. I'd been to his site about a year or so ago. Previous exposure to the term? Was he promoting it then?

Even stranger, I woke up after going to sleep early last night and asked my husband who had won the Iowa caucuses, within minutes of when the winners were announced, which he had just watched. He was stunned enough at the timing to ask me if I had just woken up. Folks can say or think what they want, but something related to a kind of above the average perception, some prescient knowledge of things before they exist or happen seems to be at work here. No possible deduction from previous exposure present, though that isn't an idea that can be truly scientifically, empirically proven anyway, any more than can the existence of ESP. Was this just a coincidence, waking up at that time and asking that question? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.

I'm an independent voter who has supported Obama from the beginning, but one still not sure who to vote for in the end. McCain would be a wise choice in some respects; I like the work he's done in Congress and the causes he champions, but he's a bit rough edged and a definite hawk. I'm afraid if he's elected President we will, at the end of that Presidency, find ourselves entrenched even deeper in the Middle East, at war not only in Iraq but elsewhere, and find the draft reinstated.

Obama is somewhat a citizen of the world and I believe that under his guidance the development of goodwill towards our nation by others, and the prosperity it can bring to our country, so terribly eroded under the leadership of George Bush, will be fostered. I’d like to see him come out as strongly as McCain against lobbyists, whose position against money in Congress isn’t backed by great personal wealth, as Edwards is. It’s time for a change in American politics and I’m not sure who’s best equipped to bring it.

January 9, 2007

The Edward Rhetoric Continues in New Hampshire

New Hampshire also 'just said no' to John Edwards, resoundingly. Elizabeth Edwards
stood in a mill and noted on national television for those in attendance how 'fitting' it was to be there.

Yes, how fitting. They just 'happened' to drop by that mill and 'certainly' hadn't planned to be there, along with the television crew and all the people in attendance. John just happened to have the key to the door and let himself in.

It was scripted to the letter, just as the 'blogging builds community' address at Converge South in Greensboro was scripted, a show to build 'community' by Elizabeth Edwards, to generate more support for John's presidential bid. Never mind that the concept was full of hyperbole, that many of the folks promoting it were among those who tear down (through their words on their blogs) community, rather than build it.

John Edwards and Company- a semi-farcical look at the Edwards campaign

The consummate politician, slick and polished in presentation, stiff-haired and rich ‘champion’ of the poor, John Edwards is running his campaign in Iowa, a campaign that hasn’t ended since it first began in 2004, a campaign that most feel will never end. He has enlisted every cause he can dream up to support his position as the messenger of hope, including beginning his campaign in the Ninth Ward after Katrina struck. Indeed, when it was finished, he invited the displaced citizens of New Orleans to take up residence in his new 25,000 square foot home that occupies the entire eastern end of Orange County, North Carolina.

He promised them healthy nutritious meals at the fine dining establishments he frequents, including Sullivan’s Steakhouse in Raleigh, $400 dollar haircuts and a $25million dollar settlement, agreeing to represent them when he sues the hedge fund that he is heavily invested in and wins for supporting banks that repossessed their homes.

Nothing like hitting a man (or woman) when they are down, eh John? And then picking them back up and dusting them off. Oh, sorry. I let my love of money override my better senses and the ministry to the poor that I champion so well.

Elizabeth Edwards and Greensboro

His secret weapon in his championing of the downtrodden is Elizabeth. I’ve seen her in action. When I was jumped on by the blogging community in Greensboro for questioning- yes that’s right, daring stupidly to question the concept of ‘building community through blogging’ by people who I observed doing exactly the opposite, thinking I had a right as a citizen in our country to speak out against what I saw, Elizabeth sailed right in, good little southern girl she is, behind the scenes. She was set to speak at a gathering of bloggers called Converge South to promote the blogging builds community concept and was not open to the plain truth of what I had said, and what many others have observed about the core group of blogger organizers involved.

So much for the little guy and championing of the way of each soul, including mine, to fairness. So much for the Edward sound bites, his use of them in a complicent media oriented world and the concept of inclusion. Conversations ensued between her and Ed Cone, others probably, though I’m sure all in their highly educated (and lawyerly ways) these honest citizens of will will not admit what was said. However, the group of bloggers in question don’t build community unless your idea of community is a bunch of viscous, foul tongued rodents who enjoy chewing on each other and most anyone else they can find to gang up and feed upon, a fact that’s been noted by many in the exact same community in which they reside.

December 30, 2007

The Arrogance of Edward Cone and Company

Edward Cone is once again demonstrating his disregard for truth by continuing to promote Converge South on his blog, a promotion that I believe took place after the latest posts on the 'building community by blogging farce' in relation to Converge South were made on this blog on Thursday December 27, 2007. I may be wrong about this, perhaps he had the ad in place before I recognized it was there, but I don't think so.

Cone or any other person aware of my posts who decided to promote Converge South at this time are complicit and demonstrate that truth is of no concern to them; only what they want to present in lieu of it matters. History isn't what you or others want to make of it Ed, it only is what it is.

Equidistant

in the cold
the trees split and surrendered their limbs
from the base that divided them as they grew.
The sound traveled deep cracks within the mountain,
and the trestle did not sing.

A song of mourning broke across the back of the river,
a double digit wooden split. It began at root and ran
the distance to the sky. The stone did not speak of hardness,
as has been said, nor echo the voice of the wren.

It was not our stone, when an anchor of winter froze the creek
and snow polished clean tracks across the distance.
When such voices speak, am I not to listen?

The sign says caution- heavy truck traffic.
We are near the West Fork Trail, on the Middle Mountain Road.