Hurricane Isabel
NASA satellites have taken some remarkable pictures of Hurricane Isabel's North American landfall.

"A billion is - - - "

"A billion is - - - ",
as presented at the web site of Lydia Mancini
_______________________

From What Matters :
The Bush junta has spent $79 billion on the devastation of Afghanistan
and Iraq, and plans to spend another $87 billion in Iraq - of which
billions will go to U.S. corporations with which Bush and Cheney have
especially good relations.

How much is a billion?
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend. An advertising agency
has done a good job of putting the figure into perspective. In a 1991
release, it stated:

"A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

"A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

"A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

"A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate
Washington spends it."

Now, 12 years on from 1991, a billion dollars may be down to less
than 5 hours at the rate the Bush junta spends it.

WHAT DO WHITE BIRDS SAY

The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,
It fled from all my ecstasy,

Now like a singing air creature
I feel the Rose
Keep opening.

My heart turned to effulgent wings.
When has love not given freedom?
When has adoration not made one free?

A woman broken in tears and sweat
Stands in a field watching the sun and me
Trade jokes.

But never would Hafiz laugh
At your blessed labor
Of finding peace.

What do the dancing white birds say
Looking down upon burnt meadows?

All that you think is rain is not.
Behind the veil Hafiz and angels sometimes weep

Because most eyes are rarely glad
And your divine beauty is still too frightened
To unfurl its thousand swaying arms.

The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,
Illusion fled from all my ecstasy.

Now like a radiant sky creature
God keeps opening,

God keeps opening
Inside of
Me.

by Hafiz(c.1320-1389)


Bird's Eye View

Talk Like a Pirate Day!

September 19 is the second annual Talk Like a Pirate Day as invented by Dave Barry last year....and my sister-in-law Michele, a 7th grade Language Arts teacher par extraordinaire is going back
in there in her Pirate Persona - Captain No-Beard -and she's making those kids walk the planK, the scurvy dogs!
Avast, Ye Matey! Arrrrrrrrrr!!!

I've been out of the loop for awhile now, mostly because I got a very
nasty virus that snuck in from somewhere and disabled my computer
completely. I think it even disabled my virus software, and it tried hard
to kill my hard-drive. It was a great big shock to me, because I have not
done the back-up I know perfectly well I should have, and therefore I was
facing the terrible possibility that everything on there, all the years of
writing and research, photographs and memories, the Soul of my computer,
or at least the Psyche, was potentially wiped out, irretrievable.

This was not easily accepted and I was forced to realize that it was only
going to hurt for a little while, I'd get over it and move on - perhaps it is
time to leave behind the old puter-self and start over with a new, fresh
Me - like, maybe on a beach where I could forget about this whole mess.

I have to thank my dear friend Gayle Kinsey, who did a heroic job of saving
and salvaging my pathetic puter. She is amazing. She cleaned off an entire
gigabyte of crap - thousands of little files - off my hard-drive and wow, it sure
does work better now!

I am going to take this as a serious warning, however - and I pass it on
to you, dear reader - BACK UP your stuff and run that live update on your
virus software - there are some miserable bugs out there that seem to be
getting worse every day. It could be we are nearing the end of this whole
movie - That beach doesn't sound bad at all to me!