Birth:
Tobin Robert Strong
9:54 am CST - Omaha, NE
July 8, 2007 - 7 lbs, 13 0z.
to Ariana and Jody Strong
brother to Noah

We are thrilled to welcome
our new grandson, Toby

Birth...and Death...

Lolly and Harley at the Valle Caldera, Jemez NM

First, death.
Washington Post - obituary
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/25/AR2007072502280.html

We were stunned to hear of the sudden passing of our dear friend, Harley Daniels.
He was an attorney and civil rights activist, author of a book on the true story of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, and was currently working on a collaborative screenplay for a movie about it. Harley was a counselor, a character, a philosopher and a friend.
He will be greatly missed.





HARLEY JAY DANIELS, 64, born in Detroit Michigan, lived in New Mexico, and Washington, D.C., died June 27, 2007.

He is survived by his daughters, Lauren Daniels of Annapolis, Md., Jessica Harrison of Plantation, Fla.; granddaughter, Rachel Harrison; mother, Lila Daniels of Las Vegas, Nev.; sister and brother-in-law, Marilyn and Larry David of Marlboro, N.J.; brother and sister-in-law, Bill and Laurel Daniels of Los Angeles, Calif.; mother-in-law, Yvonne Simpkins of Annapolis, Md.; companion, Sharon Patten of Washington, D.C.; several nieces and nephews and a host of friends. He was the husband of the late Lorilyn Simkins Daniels.

Services in his honor were held at New Bethel Baptist Church, 1739 9th Street NW, Washington, D.C., Saturday, July 21, at 11a.m. Contributions may be made to New Bethel Baptist Church on behalf of the Harley Jay Daniels Memorial Fund.

On Being Fifty-Something


after Po Chu-i

From thirty to forty, you are distracted
by the five lusts, which I don't need to go into.
From seventy to eighty, you're prone
to a hundred diseases or more.

Who can remember their names,
or the ones of friends who've gone
and died on you? But, from fifty to sixty,
you're free of all that.

Grief doesn't know where you live yet,
only gravity, the body starting to sag
under the weight of memories that,
like extra pounds around the middle,

you can't seem to lose. At the theatre, you doze,
your eyelids curtains that refuse to stay raised.
Suddenly, you're the director of a play
about to begin. Time: no time like the present.

Place: a room you think you recognize.
On the desk, a typewriter squats like a toad,
waiting for a tasty word to devour.
The wall's the wrong color, too cheerful,

but its painted muslin quivers:
from backstage someone tries the door,
which refuses to give. How young you were
when such bright shabbiness was yours,

how like a desert full of dream.


--Debora Greger
The Atlantic Monthly, December 2006

Photos from a Cell Phone

I have been receiving email Photos from My Cell Phone, from this guy David Gallagher - and while not all of them interest me, he occasionally sends a stunning image from the big world out there.


I like this view from NYC -

Check it out for more photos:

http://lightningfield.com/

I took this shot in Saint Augustine, Florida -

It says, Your Husband Called - He Said to Buy Anything You Want

Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?
...does anyone really care?

 

This volcano sunrise over the Sandias was just past peak. It was like 7 am - but isn't it really 6 am? I am so confused. Why did they have to mess with the time again? What time is it, really now? 

Noah is getting ready for summer...
Omaha, Nebraska

Life On the Plantation

VIDEO | Bill Moyers: Life on the Plantation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011807B.shtml
Bill Moyers, speaking to the National Conference for Media Reform, states: "Our democracy is now put to a vital test, for the conflict is between human rights on the one side and on the other, special privilege asserted as a property right. The parting of the ways has come."


>>So I'm back now where I started - with you - and will travel where the movement is headed. The greatest challenge to the plantation mentality of the media giants is the innovation and expression made possible by the digital revolution. I may still prefer the newspaper for its investigative journalism and in-depth analysis, but we now have in our hands the means to tell a different story than big media tells. Our story. The other story of America that says free speech is not just corporate speech, that news is not just chattel in the field, living the bossman's story. This is the real gift of the digital revolution. The Internet, cell phones and digital cameras that can transmit images over the Internet, make possible a nation of story tellers ... every citizen a Tom Paine. Let the man in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue think that over. And the woman of the House on Capitol Hill. And the media moguls in their chalets at Sun Valley, gathered to review the plantation's assets and multiply them. Nail it to their door - they no longer own the copyright to America's story - it's not a top-down story anymore. Other folks are going to write the story from the ground up and the truth will be out, that the media plantation, like the cotton plantation of old, is not divinely sanctioned, and it's not the product of natural forces; the media system we have been living under was created behind closed doors, where the power brokers meet to divvy up the spoils. <<

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can't walk, can't remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can't stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

From The Moon Is Always Female, by Marge Piercy
Copyright 1980 by Marge Piercy

RELATIVITY


Our lives will not flash before our eyes.
Light travels the curved walls of time
like a train whistle that lowers
in pitch while diminishing.
But when the train doesn't swerve
at the turn, or a girl, sleepy, looking for
the bathroom door, falls between cars - the light
does not intensify. There is no inward curve, no
illumination.
Her parents hope she didn't see,
didn't feel the bare rail, the clutch
of wheels. Still, they wish
they'd kissed her again, pressed
every bone to their hearts,
like a fern making a fossil in sand.

They store her suitcase
in an upstairs room, an atom, intact.
Below, the clock sounds like the clack of ties.
For those on board there is no
relativity: the shriek
of the whistle does not fade.


Jane Hilberry
Body Painting
Red Hen Press

  

TREE GHOST


There's a rush, a rustle
among branches of a conifer,
& then mutable silence rushes in
like after a fight or making love.
The wings settle. The third eye
blindfolded. Hunger always speaks
the same language. Branches shudder
overhead, & the snowy owl's wingspan
seems to cool off the August night
with a breathing in & breathing out.

I close my eyes & can still see
the three untouched mice dead
along the afternoon footpath.
The screeching nest is ravenous.
The mother's claws grab a limb.
Now, what I know makes me look down
at the ground. I can almost feel
how the owl's beauty scared the mice
to death, how the shadow of her wings
was a god passing over the grass.


Yusef Komunyakaa
TriQuarterly 121

Native American wisdom about waking up

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.


Navajo Proverb

It's so cold! But so beautiful.


"Frost at Midnight"
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)


The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud - and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings, save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering _stranger!_ and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
>From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book;
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the _stranger's_ face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But _thou_, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags; so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Veteran's Day - Remembrance

NEWS
Wichita, Kansas - July 1945

Vivian dashes in from thunder,
newspaper soaring over her head.
She stands in the kitchen, dripping,
laughing. She kisses me.
Her fingers are inky, her face printed
with news.

REST
Ardennes - January 1945

The hardest thing
was sleep - that cold.
Cold enough to crack stone
You couldn't lie down
in it - or even sit.
Even the springs of the rifles
slow.

MORNING
Ardennes - January 1945

You wouldn't believe how beautiful
it was. In the night the fog would freeze
and in the morning everything
was soft with it - ghosts of trees.
We advanced into open fields
the colour of apple blossom,
delicate with blue shadows.
Against that snow we stood out
like deer.
And then
the shelling would start.



WINTER WHITE
Ardennes - January 1945

Midafternoon in some nameless town
a door bangs, a woman comes running,
arms full of folded white. One sheet
flies out behind her like a banner, and
they understand. She's giving them linens,
winter camouflage. With no language,
he thanks her, and she presses to him,
weeping. When she runs he lifts
his hands and finds
a table cloth. Not lace, but that stiff stuff,
cutwork. He cuts it
with his bayonet.
Pulls it over his head. Inside,
he smells the starch, the ghost of iron.

-- Erin Noteboom
http://www.enroutemag.com/
e/archives/february02/archives05.html

via Gary - elemming blog

 

(photo by Rich Jamison)

We are stunned to hear of the passing of a
dear old buddy, colleague, amazing chiropractor
Gary Horwin. In the waves of Cancun, he crossed
over, at 56, too soon. I still hear him laughing!

It is with heavy heart that we must share with you news of the unexpected death of Gary S. Horwin, D.C. on Tuesday, October 31, 2006.

Gary was the immediate past president of FSCO, serving from 2001-2005 in addition to having been a member of our Board of Directors, and a past treasurer. He has also served as president of the Chiropractic Fellowship of PA since1999. Gary graduated from Sherman College of Straight Chiropractic in 1978, and has practiced in Lansdale, PA since 1979. He was named Sherman College?s Chiropractor of the Year in 2005.



RELATIVITY


Our lives will not flash before our eyes.
Light travels the curved walls of time
like a train whistle that lowers
in pitch while diminishing.
But when the train doesn't swerve
at the turn, or a girl, sleepy, looking for
the bathroom door, falls between cars - the light
does not intensify. There is no inward curve, no
illumination.
Her parents hope she didn't see,
didn't feel the bare rail, the clutch
of wheels. Still, they wish
they'd kissed her again, pressed
every bone to their hearts,
like a fern making a fossil in sand.

They store her suitcase
in an upstairs room, an atom, intact.
Below, the clock sounds like the clack of ties.
For those on board there is no
relativity: the shriek
of the whistle does not fade.


Jane Hilberry
Body Painting
Red Hen Press 

SYLVIA PLATH

Ennui

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.

The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger.



http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/plath_s/ennui.htm

 


We have returned from a week in southeastern Pennsylvania, visiting friends and relatives, enjoying the beautiful fall colors and the scenery, and finally attending a family wedding.

You can check out the pics under "Pennsylvania Visit" in my new Picasa web albums:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lindalupowitz