Date: 2009-03-05 12:23 Subject: The boy, the man, and the barn full of manure. Security: Public Tags: change, hope, humor, politics

Once upon a time there was a Boy who Wanted a Pony.

He really, really, really wanted a pony.

His neighbor, a curmudgeonly stingy old bastard who had very little good to say about anyone, but who did, once he'd given it, keep his word, overheard the boy talking one day, and said, "Come clean out my barn, and I'll give you a pony."

Well.

Everyone knew this man kept his word. And there were witnesses. So, that weekend, the boy's mother packed him a lunch, and he walked over the fields into the rising sun to the man's barn.

The man greeted him with a shovel, said, "I'll be up to check on you at noon," and opened the barn doors.


This barn. This barn was full of manure.

Side to side. Front to back. Floor to ceiling. Full of manure.

The boy sighed, pushed his hat off his brow, and set to work. The man went back to his house, certain he would get some of his barn cleaned out, and not have to satisfy his end of the bargain.

At noon, he came up with a glass of lemonade (a gift of pity from his wife), and found the boy leaning on his shovel, wiping his face with his kerchief.

Next to the barn was a HUGE pile of manure. HUGE.

"My God, sonny," the man said, handing him the lemonade. "This barn's half empty!"

The boy took the lemonade, saying "Thank you." He took a long, slow drink.

Then, with a straight face, he answered the man. "Well, Mister- With all this shit, there's got to be a pony in there somewhere."

Especially for thenotorious04, because- well, because there has to be a pony in here somewhere.

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Date: 2009-01-20 06:01 Subject: Change is gonna come, change is gonna come. Security: Public Music: Eisenhower: The military-industrial complex/MLK Letter from Birmingham Jail Tags: change, despair-work, hope, peace-work, philosophy, political science, psychology

So it's probably no secret that, once Kucinich was out of the race, I supported Obama.

And it's probably no secret that I've got some major disappointments about the Bush years, and that I'd like to see criminal proceedings against members of that administration.

That said (and don't defriend me until you finish reading- come on now, fair's fair)- that said, I think it's important to say this:

Someone had to be that President. It was gonna happen- someone was going to be the one who pointed out what Twain said, what Eisenhower said: if we let the military and the corporations own the country, then we don't. There's money to be made in fear, in hate, in anger, in war and raining pestilence, and corporations care about money. And corporations, Departments of Defense (War), are big, are impersonal, don't care on the individual level. They can't afford to.

But we can. We can, and we have to.

So. Someone had to carry the weight of showing just.what.happens when we don't. It was almost Clinton- he signed NAFTA, he signed GATT, he signed Don't Ask/Don't Tell- but he was too pretty, too charming, and the weight of that got slimed off him with impeachment-over-foolishness. He could have been nailed for Afghanistan, for Somalia- but the opposition let themselves be distracted by the sleazy side of him, and thus: the weight was still there to be carried.

So George did.

Not elegantly. Not intelligently. But he carried it, and his administration made sure that we, the people, learned all over again that it's our government, not the Department of Defense's government, not FEMA's, not General Foods' and Bechtel's and the NRA's and FMC's or whoever they are today, the corporations that make weapons and sell them to anyone (that's prostitution, not business), that destroy farmland in the name of mechaniculture and agribusiness (that's not dominion over the earth, that's just waste of what's been given to us in stewardship), that steal work a person can do for profits an entity that exists only on paper can reap.

Someone has to manifest the shadow- the Imperial America (Manifest Destiny, anyone?), the "Leader of the Free World" that can't free its own people from poverty, starvation-posing-as-affluence, from ignorance-induced fear. Someone had to, and George did.

I don't envy him. I think he could have done that more intelligently- I think he had criminal advisors and took the easy way out, and I hope he pays. I hope they all do.

I don't condemn him. The shadow was going to be manifested- it had to be- and now it's happened. I surely condemn what he let happen on his watch, just as I condemn Clinton- a Rhodes scholar, for fuck's sakes- for being a vain, pompous idiot and wasting glorious opportunities. Someone had to manifest that, too, and damn, but he did a good job.

So let's get on with the rest of it. Let's get on with educating our people, with sorting our differences, with making a real country out of this huge experiment called a Representative Republic. Let's each represent what we believe in- if it's that God's on our side, then be a representative of the most humane, most compassionate version of that you know (Mother Teresa said once, when asked how she did so much, that "I do what is in front of me. I trust to God to do the rest." He can handle the big scale. We need to do what's in front of us). George H. W. Bush said he counted on the 1000 points of light to carry this country through- isn't now a good time to light up, to come together and light up the shadow of America, and really let this country shine in a way it never has before- not by denying the worth of others, but by celebrating it and working together?

I like Kucinich, for all he says he saw a flying saucer. Hell, I talk to ghosts, and more than once told Death to wait for a patient of mine- better the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God (or as the Quakers say, "so I do affirm") than to lie. Before Newton and Descartes were the saints and the mystics; before Mao and Lenin the grace of poets and farmers; before the 500 years of planetary war and slavery and commerce we could claim to be separate, but we are all related now- your history is my history, and my planet is yours, and even though I can only live where and when and in relation to this now that I'm experiencing, I can acknowledge yours.

We're here, now. Obama's being sworn in today. Whether it's for four years or eight, change is gonna come. How do you want to be part of it? Where do you stand? It's not about him, although it is- it's about the arc of this country, this experiment, this dream- and it's about who you want to be, in that moment before you die, when you say "This is who I was, this is what I did." In that moment when the truth is all you have, what do you want it to be?

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