Wednesday, November 29, 2017

"War is never holy, just a greedy man's dream"



A friend brought this to my attention via Facebook, where there is an extraordinary video of Buffy Sainte-Marie singing 'The War Racket." There is an interview, too.

I'm recommending the biography of Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Still learning to play the autoharp



Several years ago I bought a used Oscar Schmidt autoharp (made in the 1970s) from a local music store and enjoyed trying to teach myself to play it, not realizing that it was too large for me to play effectively. Because I wasn't making much progress and felt discouraged, I stopped playing it.  A friend loaned me a smaller autoharp recently, and I have been practicing again, using the songs with chords from here (scroll down the sidebar on the left).

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Song!



Thanks to Beth, one of my first blog friends (our friendship beginning around 10 years ago) for bringing Virginia Mae Schmitt to my attention this morning.  The 11th anniversary of my blog is coming up on December 8.  When I started this blog, I didn't realize how much I needed the experience of worldwide community that has unfolded over the years through blogging.  It has enriched my experience of local community.  And today it has brought a new dimension to the voice of Walt Whitman.

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Morning Meditation 12 November 2017: Bob Dylan and his Heart and the Door / Warren Zevon (Heaven's Door, Your Heart)



FORGETFUL HEART
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN WITH ROBERT HUNTER 


Forgetful heart. 
Lost your power of recall 
Every little detail
You don't remember at all
The times we knew
Who would remember better than you

Forgetful heart
We laughed and had a good time you and I
It's been so long
Now you're content to let the days go by
When you were there
You were the answer to my prayer

Forgetful heart
We loved with all the love that life can give
What can I say
Without you it's so hard to live
Can't take much more
Why can't we love like we did before

Forgetful heart
Like a walking shadow in my brain
All night long
I lie awake and listen to the sound of pain
The door has closed forevermore
If indeed there ever was a door.

Copyright © 2009 by Special Rider Music and Ice-Nine Publishing




Update:  Just after posting, I found this about doors in Jewish tradition.  Coincidence?

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Veterans Day 2017



Although I've posted Jimi Hendrix' version of the Star-spangled Banner four times before over the years on my blog, I'm moved to post it again today.  My beloved veteran was a high school dropout who was drafted into the U.S. Army at age 19 in the spring of 1969.  He did his basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington, and was sent to Newport News, Virginia, for helicopter mechanic training school.  He and his buddies had a plan to attend Woodstock and see Jimi Hendrix, but it didn't materialize.  I am sure that there were veterans in the crowd at Woodstock.  Jimi Hendrix had been drafted into the Army and served in the 101st Airborne Division, which was the same division my veteran was in, although Jimi Hendrix did not serve in Vietnam.  My veteran loved the music of Jimi Hendrix.

In late January 1970, I drove R to Oakland Army Base on the day before he was to fly to Vietnam.  He asked me not to cry when I said goodbye to him.  I honored his wish but cried hard on my way home across the San Francisco Bay Bridge.  That night he called me and asked me to come back and pick him up and take him to a draft resistance office.  I sat in the hallway while he talked with a draft resistance counselor.  When he returned to the hallway, his heart was heavy.  He said, "I will meet the defeat of her challenge."  He didn't believe he could be granted conscientious objector status.  He didn't want to go to Canada and doubted that Canada would accept him anyway because of his lack of education or skills valued by the Canadian government.  He did not want to go to prison (although he ended up in prison later in his life). He made the fateful decision to go to Vietnam. He was against the war when he left and against the war when he returned home on December 8, 1970, but when he returned he was broken by his experience of war.  He struggled for the rest of his life. We separated for the last time in early October 1971.  In one of the last letters to me in around 2006, he wrote. "All we are saying is give peace a chance."

May all veterans and their families, all over the world, find peace.

Friday, November 10, 2017

Just because



With gratitude to an anonymous friend who brought Robert Desnos to my attention today through an article by Susan Griffin which included the following:

"Like artistic and literary movements, social movements are driven by imagination. I am not speaking here only of the songs and poems and paintings that have always been part of movements for political and social change, but of the movements themselves, their political ideas and forms of protest. Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope for the future emerges."

Le pélican

Le capitaine Jonathan,
Étant âgé de dix-huit ans,
Capture un jour un pélican
Dans une île d'Extrême-Orient.
 
Le pélican de Jonathan,
Au matin pond un œuf tout blanc
Et il en sort un pélican
Lui ressemblant étonnamment.
 
Et ce deuxième pélican
Pond, à son tour, un œuf tout blanc
D'où sort, inévitablement,
Un autre qui en fait autant. 
 
Cela peut durer pendant très longtemps
Si l'on ne fait pas d'omelette avant.

The Pelican

Captain Jonathan
Being eighteen years old
Captures a pelican one day
In a Far-Eastern island.
 
Jonathan's pelican
lays an all-white egg
from which emerges a pelican
Which looks just like the first.
 
And this second pelican
Also lays an all-white egg
from which emerges, inevitably
Another, who does the same.
 
This can last a very long time
Unless we make an omelet.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Remembering 1965 / Living Now



Set list taken from YouTube comment by Brinley Zhao:

0:17 I'm A Rambler, I'm A Gambler 2:35 There But For Fortune 6:26 Copper Kettle 9:22 Mary Hamilton 15:30 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right * 19:00 I'm Troubled And I Don't Know Why * 22:12 We Shall Overcome * 26:31 With God on Our Side 34:07 Plaisir D'Amour 39:37 Oh Freedom 43:32 She's a Troublemaker 45:48 The Unquiet Grave 50:35 It Ain't me Babe * 54:39 Isn't It Grand * 57:43 500 miles 1:01:10 Te Ador/ Ate Amanha

Images from mid-October to today (mostly taken in the morning during my yoga practice). I ended my final contract as a medical transcription editor on October 16 and am now finding out how to live on my Social Security check. I know it's possible to do. Several of my friends have been doing it for years. Anything is possible. My relief at being free from the pressures of being a medical transcription editor for pennies is immense.







































































































































































































(The unexpected early snow has melted. No snow in the forecast)

(Hard to believe that our generally unwanted president is still in the White House after this long strange year since Tuesday, November 8, 2016)

Here's Ursula K. Le Guin's version of #9 of the Tao Te Ching:

Being quiet

Brim-fill the bowl,
it'll spill over.
Keep sharpening the blade,
you'll soon blunt it.

Nobody can protect
a house full of gold and jade.

Wealth, status, pride,
are their own ruin.
To do good, work well, and lie low
is the way of blessing.

Here are The Roches. An appropriate song for today:




Sunday, November 5, 2017