Cut The Body Loose!

Several thousand unique threads of fact, opinion or thought, delivered in the form of emails, txts, sms, im, www, face, voice, video links come rushing at us every day.  Life is so much more complex this way than when our anscestors sat in trees or caves and grunted shreiked or grunted their joys and frustrations.

Takes hurricanes, they used to just whack us – we once had no forecasts or satelite photos.  No warning or even acknowledgement that it was only a hurricane was given  in the middle of the thing, our anscestors had no way to even know the storm would sometime end.

Todays ecomonic rush to the bottom is in my mind like droughts and pestulance must have been for our ancestors.  An attack on crops (income) or wealth (stored crops) to threaten securtity.  It is a problem that most of us did not really see coming, if we are honest with ourselves.  At least even the best of us did not know the timing.  How did our ancestors deal with problems they couldn’t forecast or predict?

So today the problems we solve are ones where we have no shortage of different opinions and ideas, forecasts, projections, pundits advice columns, etc.  We often today can even manage to understand and model the effect of solving one problem in different ways would have on the outcome of the other problems!  What has stayed constant is that some members of our tribe, party, clan or neighborhood have done well enough to help lift us all.

The thing I notice about Obama and other successful folks is that they are seldom found idle, usually they are busy working in every “spare” moment, especially when the work consists of thinking and communicating.  So this is how I feel I am motivated by our new President, to get busy and to do whatever small part I can towards fixing problems of the country.  All our ability to forecast and understand the future outcome of our actions will only move us forward if our leaders still continue to make a constant effort and not grow idle or get stuck on some single thing.

Incidently, I slept for 16 hours earlier this weekend, so NOW I am kicking into gear.  Yes, I see the irony in that.

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We must greaten Greater New Orleans, and it will take a lot of greatening.

Now we have a President who will keep the broken promises though, so I hope (pray) for first class levies and rebuilding wet lands.

I savor the idea that something might actually get fixed up here after people aren’t worried about the levies.

I find that it also motivates me personally to “greaten” a few things in my life, to do stuff and checki it off, to move forward.

What can we, you and I, do to help greaten Greater New Orleans?

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I had cause to sit for hours in a no cell phone, no laptop, no drink, no food, no television government waiting room yesterday all through the inauguration.  That was after dumping of pockets and being scanned.  Bathrooms needed persmission and a key.  No reading material other than a few government pamphets provided.

I’m not expecting luxurious waiting rooms, but in the name of security this is just not justified.  Airport flight gates are secure, and people there are allowed cell phones, computers, a cup of coffee or drink of water or a snack and unimpeded access to a restroom.  Thank goodness I quit smoking, other captives in the room were jonesing for a smoke bad.

This government waiting room was federal, and was serving citizens who had paid taxes supporting this office all their lives, had committed no crime or wrong doing.  Now we were also having to pay an expensive lawyer to do our business, in effect it was us in the waiting room that were having to pay for both sides of this process.  Why does the government have to go and lock us down like we are criminals or hostages, cut us off from the outside world, deny us a simple cup of coffee or soda?  The government employees at least got breaks and maybe even a glimpse of outside news, but the citizen clients did not.  In fact, I found myself making change so that civil servants could pay for the delivered lunch they took behind closed doors and ate at lunchtime.  All of us in the waiting room just had to forget about getting any lunch at all.

There were two classes of people in the room, lawyers and the rest of us.  The paperwork process had been made so confusing that even college graduates needed a lawyer to figure it out.  You could tell the lawyers from the rest of us right away as the lawyers all wore expensive looking shoes and clothing and sort of herded the rest of us through the system like cattle.  It felt like unless you were a lawyer or worked for the government, you were just a sack of meat being punished by the exceedingly long wait in a holding area devoid of any way to spend your time productivity while waiting for other people to reach some result.

So for the entire inauguration I had to sit and twiddle my thumbs while studying the photos of Bush and Cheney still up on the wall while the rest of the country gathered at computers,  televisions and radios even in many workplaces.

I remembered Reagan saying “Take down that wall!” and I wanted to shout “Take down those photos!” because after eight years it feels like we are toppling a wall.  The iron curtain has moved, no longer running through the middle of Germany.  Now days the iron curtain is in front of the entrances to federal government holding cells, err, waiting rooms for ordinary citizens.  When you cross that threshhold you are no longer an adult, a citizen, a person of free will.  Now you can’t even make a phone call or have a drink of water.

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Twice today I had reason to be walking a couple blocks West of the CCs Coffee House at 2800 Esplanade.  On the corner there is some sort of Indian place, a temple of some kind is my guess, followed by guessing an ashram, a community center  or perhaps just a house where many Indians in white robes live.  I remember occupants had long hair and beards starting to turn grey, and white robes.

So then the next thing is that this place is on a corner lot, and out at the corner in the middle of the sidewalk from both directions, carefully centered on a circular metal cover for I’m guessing a water main stood — wait for it — a half a jar on Dill Pickles looking fairly fresh and with the lid on tight.  And the smiling Indian gentleman in the white robe bobbed his head up and down at us and smiled each time we passed the pickle jar.

So here I am now, deciding what to make of the pickles over the flowing water main on the crossroads in front of the Ashram on January 2, 2009.

While searching for pickle ritual, pickle worship, pickle India and so forth I had cause to wonder, I know this will seem silly, but was teh smiling head bobbing man in white robes Indian or perhaps was he Chinese?  Was he Buddist?  I just don’t know, but its amazing how several witnesses to a scene will remember it differently.  I did find pickle rituals, pickle worship, pickle wate, pickle India links on the web of course, quite a time sink there.  Perhaps you’d be interested in The Pickle Water Festival?  http://pics.livejournal.com/frla/pic/000119a9/

Meanwhile I haven’t found any reallyt compelling information so I guess I will just assign the most likely scenario I can think of.  I’ll guess that the half jar of pickles centered over flowing water was an offering to some sort of Indian Deity.

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A lot of people would have blogged on Jan 31 about 2008.  A lot of people would have blogged on Jan 1 about 2009 and resolutions.  I waited until Jan 2 to do anything about blogging my thoughts, which says a lot about how quickly I accept change.  Its not so much procrastination as that it just takes me some time to process thoughts and feelings before I can write them.  So, since its already Jan 2, here is my take on 2009 version two dot Oh!

Well, the first resolution is that I just must get my bookkeeping done on time this year.  I used to always be caught up on that, but ever since life got put in the blender (back about the start of 2004) I have fallen way far behind and then made that a bad habit.  “Normalized deficiency” is when something is wrong for so long you stop noticing it.  Now I have noticed though, and resolved to clean up my act.  No more late fees, no more taking months to invoice people, no more holding checks for deposit, no more tax deadlines missed!  This story about how I need time to accept change just doesn’t apply to slow bookkeeping.

One look in the mirror tells me that I need a resolution about personal growth, actually about personal shrinkage.  Lets face it, I could loose a hundred pounds and still not look emancipated.  Lets resolve to go for 52 pounds lost in 2009, one a week.  Imagine if I was to strap two large paving stones on me every mor ning an walk around everywhere carrying them!  Imagine 52 ounds of butter in a bunch of Walmart bags to carry everywhere!  Makes me never want to eat again.

Hardly anybody makes only two resolutions.  That is only company for each other, not a crowd for the year.  the first two are about wealth and health, so number three ought to be about happiness.  I’m really pleased to report that after thinking about it I don’t need to resolve to be happier or change a whole bunch on this one.  Its more of a maintenance thing, to follow my heart and my head on the path already chosen (or fatefully put in front of me).  I’m pretty happy now.  I think I shall resolve to spread that around, to make others more happy in all kinds of ways, small and large.  Perhaps that is the secret to my own happiness anyway.

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