March 2011 archive

Out of the Cave and into the Light

Out of the Cave and into the Light

Some people say they were brother and sister, Susano-O and Amaterasu. Other people say they were meant to be husband and wife. One thing, however, was clear. They rarely agreed on even the smallest thing, and so could never tolerate the presence of the other for very long.

    And yet, despite their many differences, there was a very close bond between them, which brought them together again and again. Here is the story of one such meeting.

   The shining sun Goddess Amaterasu had a brother, Susanoo, lord of storms and of the sea.

   Susanoo was an uncontrollable man, often given to violence. When he quarreled with his sister, Susanoo lifted up Amaterasu’s beloved pony and threw it at Amaterasu and her priestesses.

   Amaterasu was so angry that she hid in the cave called Iwayado, and there was no warmth or light upon the Earth.

   The other Kami, or Goddesses and Gods, tried to lure Amaterasu out of her cave, but her anger still burned, and she refused to come out. Ame-no-Uzume, the Kami of joy, knew what to do. She placed a mirror near the entrance of the cave. Then, she did a bawdy dance, which made all of the other Kami roar with laughter. Amaterasu was still angry at her brother, the Kami of the stormy sea, but she wanted to know what made everyone laugh. She crept to the edge of the cave and peeked out at Ame-no-Uzume and, angry as she was, Amaterasu had to laugh. In that moment, a ray of her sunlight escaped from the dark cave and reflected in the mirror. Amaterasu saw her own lovely face and could no longer remain angry. She returned to the world, bringing sunlight and warmth.

May the Japanese people be soon back under Amaterasu’s warm glowing light.

h/t Hecate

from firefly-dreaming 12.3.11

Regular Daily Features:

Rise in the spotlight in Late Night Karaoke, mishima DJs

Gha!

Six Brilliant Articles! from Six Different Places!! on Six Different Topics!!!

                Six Days a Week!!!    at Six in the Morning!!!!

Essays Featured Saturday, March 12th:

Popular Culture from Translator: The Zombies

Saturday Open Thoughts is a piggie update from Alma (welcome back Alma!)

Saturday Art! is a re-promotion of a little insight into the work from mishima‘s talented hands:

About The Pictures I Draw

Youffraita has a little something Just For Fun: Wanda Sykes

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactor Meltdown and

seriously stolen from RiaD

join the conversation! come firefly-dreaming with me….

The Week In The Dream Antilles

What a crappy, if prolific week:  A (hopefully temporary) set back in Wisconsin. Violence in Libya.  An earthquake and tsunami and nuclear emergency in Japan.  Bad, winter weather, flooding and power outages, in Eastern New York and New England.  Your bloguero is about ready to push back from the keyboard and run away to join the nearest circus.  Maybe he could be the elephants’ poopsmith.  Although there are signs of Spring’s arrival (redwing blackbirds, March Madness, the first buds), your bloguero’s seasonal affective grumpiness (SAG) continues unabated.  He needs to see the first crocus.  Not a green stem.  No.  An actual, honest to goodness flower.  And he needs it badly.

The week ended on Saturday with a sad memorial, For Mike, the husband of our sister Port Writers Alliance bloguera, Diane.  She and her family are in our thoughts and prayers.  She has our condolences.

The weekend also brought your bloguero the recognition that things aren’t over in Madison, Wisconsin.  No, not at all.  It’s not the end, it’s the beginning of movement.  And, of course, MSNBC got it all wrong.  Wisconsin: It’s Not Over Until It’s Over points out the Trad Media outlet’s folly of pessimism.  Stooges .

The devastation in Japan brought your bloguero to prayer.  There didn’t seem to be anything else that could be done.  Kyrie Eleison For Japan is Christian, Jewish and Buddhist, a prayer for those suffering in Japan in the wake of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear emergency.  Even if you don’t pray, please keep these people in your thoughts and do what you can to be of help to them.

Six Town Court Haikus, are as the title says, six haikus your bloguero wrote while wearing his lawyer clothes and sitting in an unnamed Town Court somewhere in Upstate New York, waiting for justice to be done.  For years and years, lawyers and politicians have tried to eliminate these small, formerly justice of the peace courts to no avail.  The New York Times has criticized them regularly.  Is there an outcry?  Crickets.

The night when Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate acted on their pronounced willingness to do the bidding of the Koch Brothers rather than the citizens and pulled a fast one on the electorate led your bloguero to write On Wisconsin!.  Your bloguero sees this maneuver as a temporary setback, and one that will lead to a real people’s movement.  Maybe your bloguero should thank the Wisconsin Republicans.  Not very forking likely.

Any time you can get an alligator and gerbil into the same poem, you’re doing ok.  Haiku For March does just that.

Your bloguero noted the passing of Moacyr Scliar, who invented the plot for Life of Pi, in which a person and a tiger are together alone in the same small boat, and Alberto Granado, who accompanied Che Guevara on his motorcycle trip.

And your bloguero reminded his six readers of that Saturday’s demonstration in Madison, Wisconsin in Solidarity With Wisconsin’s Workers.  At the time, your bloguero had no hint that Governor Koch-head had a plan to steal the cheese (and the workers’ right to bargain collectively) and would appear later in the week to be running the Wisconsin government as if it were a game of 3-card Monty.

And the week began with hope, the first sign that just maybe, Winter was on it’s way out. At Last: A Hint Of Spring noted the arrival of the first redwing blackbird.

Your bloguero also notes that this Digest is a weekly feature of the Port Writers Alliance and is supposed to be posted early Sunday morning.  Yes, he knows it’s still Saturday (again).  But your bloguero wants to go to the drum circle on Sunday morning and beat his brains out.  See you next week if the creek don’t rise on Sunday early.  No drum circle next weekend.  🙁

Prime Time

Rascal Flatts if you like that sort of thing.  Austin City Limits has Bettye LaVette and Pinetop Perkins.

White Heaven is for decent, good, God-fearing Christians who just happen to, well, hate everyone and everything relating to black people. That means no Muhammad Ali, no hip-hop music and no fucking Jesse Jackson.

Turns out that God really doesn’t have that much of a problem with racism. He doesn’t even remember slavery, except in February. Personally, I hate black people Ruckus. That’s why I did everything I could to make their lives miserable. Crack? Me. AIDS? Me. Reaganomics? C’mon. I’m in the name.

Later-

Now let us pray. Lord, I have spent my whole life hatin’ you for makin’ me black. And now I see I must hate myself and all those like me, and cause them misery just like your savior Ronald Reagan did. And if any of my words don’t come directly from the almighty God himself, then may I be struck by lightnin’ right this very instant!

SNL has Zach Galifianakis and Jessie J.

BoondocksThe Passion of Reverend Ruckus.  The Venture BrothersHate Floats

The lightning bolt that saved Shabazz’s life seemed to have struck Uncle Ruckus on his tumor. Doctors would find no remaining signs of his cancer. Some called it a miracle… And maybe there are forces in this universe we don’t understand. But I still believe we make our own miracles.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 49 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Blast at Japan nuke plant; 10,000 missing after quake

by Hiroshi Hiyama, AFP

1 hr 19 mins ago

SENDAI, Japan (AFP) – An explosion at a Japanese nuclear plant triggered fears of a meltdown Saturday after a massive earthquake and tsunami left more than 1,000 dead and at least 10,000 unaccounted for.

As workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the chaos unleashed by Friday’s 8.9 magnitude quake was an “unprecedented national disaster”.

The quake, one of the biggest ever recorded, unleashed a terrifying tsunami that engulfed towns and cities on Japan’s northeastern coast, destroying everything in its path.

In Memoriam

We note with sadness the passing of Diane Gee’s husband Mike last night.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire’s return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:-

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault

If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise,

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;

Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood,

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;

Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;

Along the cool sequester’d vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect

Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d Muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires;

E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,

Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

If chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, —

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.

His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;

Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

‘One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,

Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;

Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

‘The next with dirges due in sad array

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,-

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.

Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,

And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,

He gained from Heaven (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode

(There they alike in trembling hope repose),

The bosom of his Father and his God.

By Thomas Gray (1716-71).  

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Going Vegan

Photobucket

Baked Beans With Mint, Peppers and Tomatoes

Carrots and Lentils in Olive Oil

Cabbage With Tomatoes, Bulgur and Chickpeas

Fava Bean Stew With Bulgur

Wheat Berries With Winter Squash and Chickpeas

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Paul Krugman: Dumbing Deficits Down

Like anyone who writes regularly about what passes for economic and fiscal debate in American politics, I’ve developed a strong tolerance for nonsense. After all, if I got upset every time powerful people were illogical and/or dishonest, I’d spend every waking hour in a state of raging despair.

Yet there are still moments when I find myself saying, “They can’t really be that stupid,” or maybe, “They can’t really think the rest of us are that stupid.” And I had one of those moments reading about a recent conference on national health policy, which featured a bipartisan dialogue among Congressional staffers.

According to a column in Kaiser Health News, Republican staffers jeered at any and all proposals to use Medicare and Medicaid funds better. Spending money on prevention was no more than a “slush fund.” Research on innovation was “an oxymoron.” And there was no reason to pay for “so-called effectiveness research.”

Bob Herbert: The Master Key

The United States is not racked with the turmoil that is shaking the Arab world, or the tragic devastation that has hit Japan. We are not in a state of emergency. We’re in a moment when it is possible to look thoughtfully at the American landscape and take rational steps to ensure a better, more sustainable future.

But we’re not doing that. The big news out of Washington this week was Representative Peter King’s Muslim witch hunt. Policy makers at all levels of government are talking austerity – sometimes sensibly, but most often mindlessly. Creative ideas regarding energy, education, jobs and so forth have trouble even getting a hearing.

Robert Reich Emulating Clinton’s ‘Move to the Right’ Perilous for Obama

Why Obama Isn’t Fighting the Budget Battle

In the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take a more direct and personal role in that budget battle  – both for the economy’s sake and for the sake of his reelection. But will he? Don’t count on it.

Worried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democatic ranks, such as the ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires.

Most importantly, they’re worried the President’s absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year – large enough to imperil the fragile recovery.

But Obama won’t actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail.

On This Day in History March 12

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

March 12 is the 71st day of the year (72nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 294 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1947, in a dramatic speech to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S. Truman asks for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations. Historians have often cited Truman’s address, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, as the official declaration of the Cold War.

In February 1947, the British government informed the United States that it could no longer furnish the economic and military assistance it had been providing to Greece and Turkey since the end of World War II. The Truman administration believed that both nations were threatened by communism and it jumped at the chance to take a tough stance against the Soviet Union. In Greece, leftist forces had been battling the Greek royal government since the end of World War II. In Turkey, the Soviets were demanding some manner of control over the Dardanelles, territory from which Turkey was able to dominate the strategic waterway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

Truman stated the Doctrine would be “the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Truman reasoned, because these “totalitarian regimes” coerced “free peoples,” they represented a threat to international peace and the national security of the United States. Truman made the plea amid the crisis of the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). He argued that if Greece and Turkey did not receive the aid that they urgently needed, they would inevitably fall to communism with grave consequences throughout the region.

The policy won the support of Republicans who controlled Congress and involved sending $400 million in American money, but no military forces, to the region. The effect was to end the Communist threat, and in 1952 both countries joined NATO, a military alliance that guaranteed their protection.

The Doctrine was informally extended to become the basis of American Cold War policy throughout Europe and around the world. It shifted American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union from détente (friendship) to, as George F. Kennan phrased it, a policy of containment of Soviet expansion. Historians often use its announcement to mark the starting date of the Cold War.

Long-term policy and metaphor

The Truman Doctrine underpinned American Cold War policy in Europe and around the world. The doctrine endured because it addressed a broader cultural insecurity regarding modern life in a globalized world. It dealt with Washington’s concern over communism’s domino effect, it enabled a media-sensitive presentation of the doctrine that won bipartisan support, and it mobilized American economic power to modernize and stabilize unstable regions without direct military intervention. It brought nation-building activities and modernization programs to the forefront of foreign policy.

The Truman Doctrine became a metaphor for emergency aid to keep a nation from communist influence. Truman used disease imagery not only to communicate a sense of impending disaster in the spread of communism but also to create a “rhetorical vision” of containing it by extending a protective shield around non-communist countries throughout the world. It echoed the “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_Speech quarantine the aggressor]” policy Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to impose to contain German and Japanese expansion in 1937. The medical metaphor extended beyond the immediate aims of the Truman Doctrine in that the imagery combined with fire and flood imagery evocative of disaster provided the United States with an easy transition to direct military confrontation in later years with communist forces in Korea and Vietnam. By presenting ideological differences in life or death terms, Truman was able to garner support for this communism-containing policy.

Six In The Morning

Japan battles to stave off possible nuclear meltdown

Japanese media say officials have detected caesium, one of the elements released when overheating causes core damage, around reactor at Fukushima No 1 plant in Futuba

Tania Branigan in Beijing

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 12 March 2011 07.11 GMT


Workers are battling to stave off a possible nuclear meltdown at a plant in north-eastern Japan as the country struggles with the aftermath of Friday’s enormous earthquake and tsunami.

Japanese media said officials had detected caesium, one of the elements released when overheating causes core damage, around the reactor at Fukushima No 1 plant in Futuba, 150 miles (240km) north of Tokyo.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said it did not believe a meltdown was under way, but Ryohei Shiomi, an official with Japan’s nuclear safety commission, said that it was possible.

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