THE FRUITS OF THE NORTH

My great grandfather on his own land
had every kind of tart little berry
and trees full of green pie apples,
all the fruits of the north.
And he had a pond full of fish
and a boat to rent.
And after he saw
the groves of sweet oranges,
he was never happy again.

COMMENTS AFTER THE HEALTHCARE DECISION #2

Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, his contention is that the Affordable Care Act was only incidentally about health care.  The real point, he says, was getting that individual mandate into law, which would then establish the principle of unrestrained government control of our lives.  The problem with that notion is that, after the conservatives abandoned it, the IM was almost no one's preferred approach to the goal of universal coverage.   Certainly not Obama's, who advocated the public option.   Others of us lefties wanted single payor or even a national health service.  The IM was an unloved compromise.  And I think the hope was that the IM would be, for the right, the least unpalatable path to universal coverage, thus provoking the least opposition.  Well, that didn't work out too well.   But maybe it would have worked out better if we had remembered why the IM was a conservative proposal in the first place:  It was an anti-free rider measure.  That is, it was to prevent uninsured people from getting free service courtesy of taxpayors.  I see a lot of net posts raging against welfare recipients not having to take drug tests or people with food stamps buying cigarettes with the cash they don't have to spend on food.  If we'd played to that rage by promoting the IM as the way to stop crackheads from remaining recklessly uninsured, blowing out a couple arteries in their brains, and leaving us to pay for their stroke care, the tea partying in all those townhalls two or three years ago might have been in support of Obamacare.

COMMENTS AFTER THE HEALTHCARE DECISION #1

At the risk of sounding like Rush Limbaugh, I was right!  As my elder son and maybe one or two other people can attest, I said several months ago that changing the "penalty" that the individual mandate entailed into a "tax" for healthcare from which you would be exempted if you had health insurance for yourself would remove the constitutional question that requiring citizens to buy something raised.  It did surprise me that Chief Justice Roberts did the redefining himself.  But then I was reminded that the money was to be collected by means of your tax return.  And I heard that the administration's brief did include the point that the penalty could be regarded as a tax.  It just wasn't reported much.  So now I'm less surprised.

FAST AND FURIOUS GOOFINESS

I had wondered why the right was foaming so at the mouth about a story that seemed to me to be more about competence and judgment than about ideology or politics.

https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.msnbc.msn.com%2Fthe-rachel-maddow-show%2F47913857

Poppy, I guess, but a real earworm.

The singer is of Dutch-English origin and grew up in Thailand.  The song is from the Khmer people
living in Thailand along the border with Cambodia.  A performance with some gravitas.

Dewi Perssik, one of the most prominent Indonesian dangdut performers.  "Mimpi manis" is "sweet dream."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBEzfZt3UuE

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/she-luc-robitaille-armpit-tattoo-grew-him-natural-130153849--nhl.html

I SCORE REALLY LOW ON THE PURITY AND SANCTITY SCALE

http://billmoyers.com/episode/encore-how-do-conservatives-and-liberals-see-the-world/#.T9T59PkjWAU.facebookIf you find this interesting, you might also like to look into Albion's Seed, a book by David Hackett Fischer, in which he identifies four cultural strains in early America that continue to find expression in today's society.

HOW WE TELL ALIEN BURGLARS WHERE TO LAND

The difference in the photos is really striking.http://billmoyers.com/2012/06/10/how-to-spot-income-inequality-from-space-count-the-trees/

FAITH AND RELIGION ARE NOT THE SAME, #%^!

Now, the method of Buddhism, and this is absolutely important to remember, is dialectic. That is to say, it doesn't teach a doctrine. You cannot find out anywhere what Buddhism teaches, as you can find out what Christianity or Judaism or Islam teaches. Because all Buddhism is a discourse, and what most people suppose to be its teachings are only the opening stages of the dialog.
                                                                               --Alan Watts




"Faith" is more and more being used a synonym for "religion."  This works fairly well for those three religions of Middle Eastern origin, but not very well at all for many other religions.  Not all make a virtue of believing something for which there is insufficient evidence.  Not all have a absolute truth to have faith in.  This very parochial linguistic practice makes it even more difficult for us to make sense of unfamiliar religions.  And it drives me nuts.

Thought of a test for how much weight to give the in-order-to-provide for-a-militia part of the 2nd amendment: What if there were a part of the Constitution that included a statement of purpose that said it derived from something we now see to be factually incorrect, would that affect the prescriptive statement to which it was attached? What if there were something like this: "Tobacco being an especially healthful substance, Congress shall make no law abridging the right to produce, sell, or use it." Since we can see that the reason cited is based on a provable untruth, does that invalidate or modify the prescription to which it is attached? Or do we go with the prescription no matter the validity, or lack thereof, of the reason given for it? Would it make a difference if the reason were in the record of the framers' debate rather than in the text of the Constitution itself? 

WHAT I KNEW: RICHFIELD TOWNSHIP, 1980

In the grass,
hundreds of toads
hopping away
from the pool
in the old foundation:
the frogs I watched
as tadpoles.

SUNYATA

We are all past,
which is not present,
selves a continuous emptying,
vessels defined
by what they cannot hold,
clothes that leave their shape
as they disappear
with the body--and the others
who crowd at our elbows,
they are sensuous absence,
accumulated silence
after just having spoken,
period after period.

MOUNTAIN AND RIVER, FLOWER AND BIRD

Birds chitter tunelessly,
unseen in the trees.
Last night's rain
still dampens the gutter
as the road slopes down
to the daylillies blooming
in the ground between
where the sidewalks cross
and the corner.
Alle Natur ist gross.

A HAIKU BY BASHO, REPACKED IN A LARGER, TANKA-SHAPED BOX

Double Vista Bay.
Farewells at autumn's ending.
We part, opening

as these shells on tender flesh,
as eyelids upon the eye.
      --my translation