Under the Snow Supermoon

February 8, 2020

February in the Georgia Mountains: Early today it appeared to be raining milk. The snow covered the land quickly. From our balcony we watched the fineness of the snow turn to flakes . I thought of Kate Bush and her son singing the fifty names for snow. Now that it is late afternoon, Dar and I are listening to Native American flute. Birds outdoors are singing as the snow gradually calms and halts, wild geese fly overhead, as clouds again reveal the tops of mountains. It could not be more mellow. I've been out hiking the ranch, photographing the horses, the trees, the snowscape...

50 Words for Snow (Kate Bush) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7qacpDu0zM&list=PLJ7QPuvv91JuUh2WOl-tqI0yFJIPxIpEA

Balcony View from
Our Room at
The Dillard House

Snow Supermoon.

 Rocking Chair Winter

Brunch

Valentine's Kiss

Jameson

The Choice in 2020

Gone with the wind. A Gust of wind topples Trump's Wall.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51307868 

Why voters should choose anyone but Trump.

Start with the facts. 

1) The  U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO) has stated that Trump broke the law when he withheld approved funds from Ukraine. 

2) Trump committed bribery and extortion of a foreign leader, illegally withholding nearly 400 million dollars in order to get personal help with his 2020 election. 

3) Trump has demonstrated racism repeatedly in his comments and policies. 

4) He ordered thousands of Hispanic children separated from their parents, and put in cages where they have been abused physically and sexually.

5) He has removed essential protections of our rivers, wetlands, air, and environment, allowing harmful chemicals to enter our water supply, raw sewage to be dumped into our rivers, and carbon emissions to rise.

6) He denies climate change, allowing worsening conditions to contribute to rising seas and temperatures that are heightening floods and wildfires throughout the country.

7) He is appointing judges that are right wing ideologues, who are not approved by the ABA, who want to perpetuate racism, homophobia, and the power of corporations.

8) All of his economic decisions and policies are based on helping the oil companies and corporations, not workers or the middle class. This includes his tax cuts for the rich, the very rich. 

9) His economic successes are based on removing regulations that protect us from pollution and boost the profits of corporations. He has also run up the largest national debt in our history.

10) He refuses to take the advice of his own cabinet, firing the people he needs to protect our national security, and run the country. He wants loyalty to himself rather than the country, firing people by tweet, and acting as if he is still a TV personality. 

11) He is a misogynist,  bragging about sexually assaulting women. Paying off prostitutes and mistresses to keep them from revealing his infidelities. He cares nothing for women's rights or for the rights of women over their own bodies.

12) He stole money from charities, including charities for children and veterans, for his own use. He was fined 2 million dollars while in office for doing this.

13) He has constantly tried to end the Affordable Care Act and take away our medical insurance. He would leave people with costly insurance most could not afford and with no protection for pre-existing conditions like cancer.

14) He almost started a war with Iran. Given 4 more years, there is great likelihood he could start a huge, destructive war with a host of countries. 

15) He appoints his family and those who give him large amounts of money to high level jobs in his administration and as ambassadors.

 16) He is a narcissist who claims that he can do whatever he likes. He is a megalomaniac who cares nothing for the country and the people, and everything for absolute dictators like Putin of Russia. His financial ties to Russia are still hidden from us, as are his taxes.

 17) He abandoned our allies, the Kurds, allowing Turkey to invade Syria.

18) He continues to spend billions on a wall the wind has blown over. He is taking money away from approved Pentagon Projects to do this.

19) Rather than making America great, he has made America hate. He is the most divisive President we have ever had. 

20) He is trying to end Medicare and Social Security which workers have paid for from their salaries. 

21) He surrounds himself with criminals. His personal attorney is in prison. His agents are connected to the Russian Mafia. He is undermining the checks and balances of our Constitution, turning the Presidency into a dictatorship.

2020

Not since Thanksgiving have I attended to this blog. It is easy to focus on Facebook or other sites and not this one. I did in fact write a few actual private journal entries. So much has happened that the day to day events have absorbed my thinking. Our short stay in Cloudland Canyon State Park over New Years Day was meant to be a meditative experience away from the Impeachment, from work, from the internet. I do think it important to share some of that lovely place here. 

As for the Impeachment of Trump and the presently ongoing "trial," there are no surprises. It is cynicism in action. Adam Schiff's persuasive prosecution of Trump's months long attempt to bribe and intimidate the president of Ukraine to make an announcement of an investigation of Biden and son fell on deaf Republican ears. Worse, the Republicans seem determined to have no witnesses, including Bolton, who has said he will honor a subpoena and testify to the Senate. There has never been an impeachment of anyone, president, judge, or anyone else with no witnesses... until now. I think we are slipping day by day into dictatorship. Worse, we are becoming a dictatorship of  cruelty to minorities and the minority children put in cages and traumatized, if not abused. A dictatorship of corporate pollution and development at the expense of what is left of the natural beauty and wildlife of the country. Even the National Parks are not safe. The programs many of us depend on, programs into which we have paid our working lives, social security and medicare are under attack and could be decimated if Trump is re-elected. Americans seem anti-intellectual, misogynistic, stupidly optimistic, and indifferent to the most important values and virtues of our brief history. This is how fascism begins, or in this age, corporate oligarchy. Climate crisis is worsening and people refuse to comprehend it. All praise to the companies and people who favor wind power and renewable energy; but they are not enough. We have only to watch Australia burn, the Amazon burn or be destroyed by developers, Jakarta fall into the rising seas, the deadly smog of India, the floods and fires everywhere to know that life on Earth and civilization itself is in trouble.

Thus,  I continue to be a pessimist. I am able to enjoy art, music, love, a little travel, a pleasant walk, a good dinner, Darryl's apple pie, friends. But I have no illusion that everything will be OK. So, as I said above, here are some photographs from our stay at Cloudland Canyon: the joy of nature.

One of the Trails. 

Our cabin.

Brooke enjoys the Cherokee Falls.

 

 Starr's new Home.

Darryl's 
Apple Pie

Savannah Thanksgiving

Morning in the Connor House.

Steamboat and freighter. Pretense and reality are the theme of this Thanksgiving here. If you want authenticity, you have to look beneath the surface facade of tour buses and buggies. Delve below the stories handed out by guides. Same with our pretense of a President, a man incapable of leadership or compassion. Isn't our own giving thanks for our "blessings" itself lacking in compassion for a world dying in poverty, war, pollution, and climate catastrophe? Our pretense of happiness is steeped in unthinking selfishness.

Dinner at the Flying Monk.

Returning to the Flying Monk for dinner with John and Darryl, there is a tad more to the pretense-reality dichotomy as turkeys turn into Santas, namely the notion of God. We all know the Good v. Evil aspects of religion. Marx and Freud hit the nail on the head with Thor's hammer. Buddha gave up all his possessions for the non-material way to enlightenment. Jesus, as I've written before, held socialist values. What grim reality that people were burned to death in his name. Religion is the greatest fraud of them all: control people by making them superstitious and crying for a make believe afterlife. Capitalism is the success story of rich masters who have made slaves of the rest of us while destroying nature and life in the process. My thoughts as I slurp those tasty Singapore noodles...

And Thanksgiving Dinner Wednesday at Mrs. Wilkes:

Great editorial about T'giving in NY Times, posted. I think of yesterday as our feast day. 8 of us at the table, 2 couples of color and 2 white couples. The woman next to me resembled Kamala Harris. Across from me a man in his fifties from Savannah with a polo shirt with a Ga Bulldogs logo. We all chatted. There was another teacher at the table. We talked of travel and Tgiving plans. We passed bowls of vegetables around the table. I thought it quaint how the polo guy, white, Ga man, kept saying " sir" to me. His wife was the elementary school teacher. The woman beside me worked for the air force. At the head of the table sat an elegant, middle-aged black woman, quite glamorous, lovely silver hair pulled back. When the owner, and my former schoolmate, Marcia T., walked over, I introduced my husband Darryl to her and wished I could read minds to know what everyone thought of that. All in all, I felt as if I were with family, or a great symbol of family. Did I mention how delicious the food was, almost an aphrodisiac. And those butter beans.

WILKES HOUSE

--Jameson

Lookout Chattanooga

Dar and I enjoyed a weekend jaunt to visit Starr at her house on Lookout Mt. I think we were all sad that she has sold the house and will move out November 15. It was a curious trip. Dar and I walked to Point Park. We watched the nearly full Moonrise near the Incline. Darryl bought some fudge to take back to the house.  In Point Park we watched the red, red sunset in the West. We both took photos. 
On our stroll home a police car pulled over beside us. "Are you Jack Miller and Darryl Gossett?" the policeman asked. He told us a lady had reported us missing!
All in all, we had been gone a little over an hour on our walk; it was not yet 8 PM. Starr then called and yelled over the phone that it was dark and where were we. You've been gone three hours, she insisted. A few minutes later we got to the house where the door was locked. Starr was angry and yelling. A bit later she was crying hysterically. I guess the move next month, the death of her brother, the senility of her mother, had all been too emotional for her. Eventually, we all settled down and had beef-vegetable soup.

On Sunday I went with Starr, Brooke, and Chris to the riverfront. We hiked over Walnut Bridge and along the waterfront across the Tennessee River. Then we had drinks at Edwin, the hotel named for the creator of the bridge. It was a gorgeous fall day and we sat out on the terrace overlooking the Hunter Museum and river.
On our Last night Starr and I watched the Durrells as Dar read in the living room. 

Moonrise from Point Park
--Jameson

911 revisited

Here is a short entry I wrote in 2006:

Monday, September 11, 2006

911, Savannah, and the Collective (Un)Conscious

Today, as the Multimedia news world attempts to gag us with platitudes about the horrors of 911 in New York, many of us are switching off the televised photo ops and political posturing that seems to be necessary for those in the public eye to maintain their status in the Collective Conscience of the nation. Maybe we should get more in touch with the Unconscious, the groundwork of far more than one catastrophe.

Bridge to New York

photo by Jameson

This blog contains plenty of images that ought to give us pathways-- the clay tablet from Uruk depicting tortured prisoners in Mesopotamia, the image of Saladin, defending Moslems from the horrors of the Christian zealots, Delphi, the Oracle of which should remind us of the irony of misleading predictions, Munch's Scream which transcends time and place... Or San Martin, horseback, the image of a leader virtually unimaginable among the world's puppet masters today.


Bridge to Savannah
photo by Jameson

In Savannah, over Labor Day, Dar and I read Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore (click). That novel spoke to the Jungian Soul, and portrayed a rich reality deeper than the holes left in New York. Read another review (click).

It is as tragic that those holes have become cliches as the lie that has linked them to Iraq. To the extent that we have given in to fear and yielded our freedoms and our common sense, the terrorists have won.

Thousands of people tossing tiny packets of shampoo into the bottomless trash of our airports-- that is the archetypal symbol of our defeat.

9/11/2019:

Today I would write more about capitalism and terrorism, both of which, in my view, are dreadful. The twin towers were not symbols of anything intrinsically valuable; nor were they beautiful. They were two monoliths of power and wealth. Take away the loss of life, and the destruction of the buildings poses no irreplaceable loss. Aesthetically, the loss of the Parthenon was greater. Americans, self absorbed, ignorant of history, lacking empathy for countless losses to terrorism of others, magnify their own loss as somehow more important than others. And therein lies the reason Americans are so despised. 

Jameson

Hawaii: Three Islands, Three weeks +, Three States of Mind

Kauai

The first reaction on landing on Kauai is euphoria. The hotel welcoming van whisks us along the Eastern shore of the island. Sea, mountains, and the ocean air lift our spirits. Our room opens to a balcony with a view of the beach and ocean, opens to sound and wind that signify healing, healing the soul, tired from hours of flight and whatever annoyances we have left behind. The euphoria comes again with the sunrise of our first full day. This is the time of recovery from jet lag, of acclimation, and of appreciation of the new environment.

The second day brought the additional joy of meeting friends again, giving them welcoming leis of real, fragrant flowers, and heading to our new abode on the Western shore of Kauai.

Morning Rainbow over the beach fronting our cottage. 

Our shared cottage on the shore of Waimea.

 Black Sand Beach

Waimea Canyon

The Na Pali Coast from land and sea.

The Big Island (Nostalgia)

After the two part flight to Hawaii from Kauai via Oahu, a flight right over Diamond Head, we acquired a car in Hilo, bought groceries at Safeway, and made the drive to Nihole, the town where our new home was. The house was an estate, gorgeous gardens, a wonderful view of the ocean, and a pool with a sign saying "closed." The house must have been a palace once, a luxurious mansion on the cliffs above the sea. Now it is deteriorating, left poorly cared for, as was the pool which had been one of its drawing points for us. The house had a gorgeous kitchen, three bedrooms, and all the necessities well supplied. For the closed, non-maintained pool, we got a one day refund. 

The Big Island has always been a magical place for me, the nights of singing, Caribbean  Coquí frogs, the two high mountains, the hot, living lava, and especially Kalani. Our friend Tiki, once the manager of Kalani, met us at the Hilo Bay Cafe for lunch, and we were all three: Tiki, Darryl, and myself, filled with nostalgia for all the time we have spent here. Nostalgia was the dominant emotion for me as I recalled times on the peak of Mauna Kea, the view of the stars, the nude beach near Kalani, and all the times I stayed there. Everything we did, even eating at Merriman's,  reminded me of past stays, including seeing the Waipio Valley.

Waipio Valley Overlook

Our Estate 

Tiki and Darryl

Hapuna Beach

Mauna Kea

Maui (Ataraxia)

The flight to and over Maui was easy and stunning. The drive to the Makena area where our B&B was located was also easy. The doors to our respective rooms were open and welcoming. The pool and gardens were a delight to behold and enjoy. Our hostess, filling in for the owning gay couple (Mark and Steve) did all she could to make us feel at home, including a demonstration poolside of how to carve and eat mangoes. The house and the subsequent visits to Lahaina for music, and a visit to the Buddha, Haleakala for splendor and a hike in the Hosmer Grove cloud forest, and Makena Beach, Big and Little, where I joined the drum circle and swam naked in the Pacific, all provided a rich sense of transcendence and tranquility. 

Pineapple Inn

Iao Needle

Makena Beach

Haleakala

Buddha of Maui

Aloha,

Jameson