Tuesday, May 31, 2005

The Unheard Cry For Meaning: Part II

The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understand how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now.
Viktor Frankl

Monday, May 30, 2005

The Unheard Cry For Meaning


Viktor Frankl

Our will to meaning, not our will to pleasure or our will to power, is what illuminates our lives with true freedom.

True optimism is actually three choices, 1) we choose a positive attitude about the situation at hand, 2) we choose an attitude that supports a form of creative realization about what is possible and 3) we choose an attitude that generates passion for the action that makes the possible become a reality.

Viktor Frankl passionately warned us about an "unheard cry for meaning". He characterized this as coming from a combination of three things - depression, aggression and addiction.

Friday, May 27, 2005

Mercy


Lethal Injection - San Quentin

Justice is not truth. My mother believed, in her heart and soul, that mercy was truth.
Douglas Adams Richards

In 1982 , we hadn't executed anybody since the '60s. I never dreamed they were going to kill him in the end. I was telling him, "Patrick, when they do this thing, look at me. Look at my face." He had tried to protect me. We had known each other for two and a half years. "Look, Sister," he said, "you've been great and you've been with me. Just pray God holds up my legs, but you can't be there at the end. It could psychologically scar you." The love of him to me, trying to protect me, and then me knowing there was no way on God's earth that man was going to be killed and not have a loving face to look at. It's not like it was virtue, it's not like it was courage, it was just simply what you or anyone would do when you're with a human being who's about to be killed.

That was a transforming point in my life. You cannot be there behind a Plexiglas screen and see the scripted death of a human being, see him being led into the room, strapped into a chair, a mask put over his face, and being killed in front of your eyes--you cannot be there and be in the presence of that kind of blinding light, and walk out and say, "I'm not going to do this any more." Something ignited in my own soul, and I guess the basic thing was that I realized that I was a witness. I had seen the death penalty close up. I got conscripted.

I remember saying to myself, when I came out of that execution chamber, "If the American people could see this, they wouldn't choose this. They don't know what's going on." This was a practice of torture, this was wrong, it's against our whole moral tradition.
Sister Helen Prejean, With a Human Being Who's About to be Killed

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Neil Labute Part II: The constant test of being human...

I love to push and probe and mess around on the page. To create a set of fictional characters who can stand in for me or you or whomever and put them to the test. The constant test of being human. What little victories and failures make up who we are? Why do we as individuals or a group or a country support one cause but not some other? Pretty fascinating stuff, at least to me.

I think we live in a time that is completely accommodating to our many whims, be they good or bad. I mean, things like the Internet are given lip service like "Look how close it's brought the world together!" Well, yes, I can now speak to someone in Belgium in an instant, but we're both alone, sitting in the dark, off in some corner of our respective houses, and when we become bored, we don't even have to go through the formalities of saying good-bye. We just click a button and this person disappears. Even in a barroom setting, we'd have to make up an excuse, find a humane way out of the physical situation, but not with technology of this high an order.

It's like carpet-bombing Hanoi from 30,000 feet. It's a whole lot easier when there are no faces to contend with. We all sit around waiting for AOL to come up with 8.0, but we hardly ever walk the eight feet across a lobby to help someone who has slipped on a wet patch of linoleum. And I guess that's the failure I see around us today: the failure to connect. We're making things faster, easier, better. But nothing that brings us any closer. I can send you a picture of me over the Internet or even to your phone now, but do I call you up when I'm in town so we can see each other? Less and less, I'm afraid.

We keep trying to find ways that make it appear that we are nice and that we care, without really being nice or caring.
neil labute

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Just across the tracks from damnation.



If men posses genius for any one thing, it is the innate and uncanny ability to misread, misinform and misunderstand.

Some owe to this hopeless place that her heart has rented out for the summer. At the corner of despair and desperation. Just across the tracks from damnation. You know the place, or if you don't, you've heard of it.
neil labute

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Think what America could mean to the world.



What a responsibility we bear, in this country of ours! Think what America could mean to the world. Then see what it is. What a breed it might have produced. But look at us - at you, at me. Read the paper, if you can bear to!
Saul Bellow, Herzog

Friday, May 13, 2005

Oh-oh-ah - And I'm so happy...



It starts in the morning
When you're lying next to me
I'm rolling, I'm rolling
I'm rolling so quickly
Now I'm not a doctor
And I'm not a lawyer
I get a prescription and set it on fire
Blow me a kiss
I'll be happy the rest of my life
Found on:

Good Feeling

And I'm so happy cos you're so happy
I'm so happy cos you're so happy
I'm so happy cos you're so happy
And I'm so happy cos you're so happy
Oh-oh-aw
And I'm so happy

And I really shouldn't like it
But I love it
When I say I'm not excited
You're invited
And I think I'm getting older
There's this weight across my shoulder
It's a shame we're the same
Such a shame I'm to blame all the time


But early this evening
I wanted to be with you
I got on the blower
The next thing I know you're speaking
Now I'm gonna tell you what I"ve been thinking
And I got a hunch that you're thinking the same thing
And with some luck
We'll be lying together tonight

Oh-oh-ah
Oh-ah-ah
Oh-oh-ah
And I'm so happy
Travis

Find love...then give it all away...

Don't let hurricanes hold you back
Raging rivers of shark attack

Find love
Then give it all away

Wrestle bears bring 'em to their knees
Steal the honey from killer bees

Find love
Then give it all away

Don't be scared to connect the dots
Dig for gold in the parking lot

Find love
Then give it all away
clem snide

Friday, May 06, 2005

More proof there are now only two classes - upper and lower...


Rather Big

Washington — Obesity has long been a problem mostly of the poor, but new research shows that the more affluent are catching up quickly.

The prevalence of obesity is growing three times faster among Americans who make more than $60,000 a year than it is among their low-income neighbours, a study being presented Monday at a meeting of the American Heart Association says.

“This is a very surprising finding,” lead researcher Dr. Jennifer Robinson of the University of Iowa said.

It is paradoxical – for years doctors have known that the people most likely to be overweight have the lowest incomes. That is because fresh produce and other healthy fare are more expensive and less accessible in low-income neighbourhoods than are fast food and other high-fat options.

In fact, just last week a report criticized the government nutrition program that feeds millions of low-income women and children for, among other things, providing hardly any fresh produce and favouring high-calorie juice over nutritionally better fruit.

Even as U.S. obesity rates have ballooned since the 1970s, disposable income has too, and Dr. Robinson wondered what role the extra change was having on waistlines.

She and graduate student Nidhi Maheshwari sifted through decades of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, one of the government's prime health databases, to compare obesity with family income.

In the early 1970s, 22.5 per cent of people with incomes below $25,000 were obese. By 2002, 32.5 per cent of the poor were.

By comparison, only 9.7 per cent of people with incomes above $60,000 were obese in the 1970s, but that figure jumped to 26.8 per cent in 2002.

Money for good-quality food aside, higher-income people are thought to be better educated and have better access to health care, so why such a jump among them? Dr. Robinson cannot say, but she speculates that longer commutes, growing popularity of restaurants and possibly longer work hours since the 1970s are playing a role.

The poor still are the most likely to be fat, said Dr. Adam Drewnowski of the University of Washington, a prominent expert on the problem. Moreover, since the '70s, rates of extreme obesity – being 90 to 100 pounds or more overweight – have ballooned among lower-income groups, something the study does not address, he said.

Further complicating attempts to compare income and obesity are cultural factors. Certain racial and ethnic groups positively equate a man's girth with wealth – it is a sign of success, Dr. Drewnowski said.

“I would caution against any attempts to interpret these data to say social differences have disappeared,” he stressed. “It just shows that obesity is a general problem and it's now affecting pretty much everybody. ... But it would be very shortsighted to stop paying attention to the people who are most vulnerable.”

Dr. Robinson agreed. “I don't want to take focus away from the serious racial and ethnic disparities,” she said.

But, she said, it is likely that different factors play a role in spurring obesity among the middle class than the poor.

“We need to have a lot more research ... to tailor our interventions to specific populations.”

Yet today, the obesity remedies most often recommended for Americans in general – eat fresh salads, go ride a bike – are impossible for many low-income families, Dr. Drewnowski said

Exercise is hard in inner cities, where the streets may be too dangerous after working hours. Many grocery stores in low-income neighbourhoods do not stock expensive fresh produce. And people who work two or three jobs have little time to make home-cooked meals.
Associated Press

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

"A modern nation that deals in state-sponsored death, becomes, in part, dead in itself..."



As Sister Helen sees it, attempts to make the penalty more consistent have failed. Yet where defects are only procedural, they could be remedied; given political will and a bottomless public purse, possibly they could be fixed. If the bureaucrats were wise and the system fair—if the process met tightly defined legal criteria of objectivity—would it be all right to have a death penalty? Many would say yes. Sister Helen is clear in her view. "I don't believe that the government should be put in charge of killing anybody, even those proven guilty of terrible crimes." This is what the world would like to hear America say. You do not have to be a Christian, or have any faith at all, to support Sister Helen's basic position: "Every human being is worth more than the worst act of his or her life."

The death penalty is not wrong because it is inconsistently administered. If it were fairly administered, it would still be wrong. Finally, the issue is moral; a nation so God-besotted should be able to grasp that. When the government touches a corpse, it contaminates the private citizen. A modern nation that deals in state-sponsored death, becomes, in part, dead in itself; dead certainly, to the enlightened ideals from which America derives its existence as a nation.
Hilary Mantel, New York Review of Books

"What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics..."



In my early years, I spoke in many languages
Then I grew quiet
(This is not an obituary)

Some of my dreams faded,
if they could ever count as dreams.

I was a good friend,
though I mostly called
when there was no-one else.

I was truly in love once, at least as I remember it.

I learned to sleep in a hammock.
Lexi Rudnitsky

Monday, May 02, 2005

"...understand they’re bullshit!"

I think people, by and large, look at those reality shows and understand they’re bullshit, but it’s harder to understand Bush’s bullshit because he has so few press conferences. He only answers approved questions and he just lies about what his policies are.

People don’t know what’s actually going on in government. They don’t know the extent to which private companies are profiteering and churches are being used for a vote delivery system...

We still don’t have reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right like freedom of speech. We need to establish the principle that no government of right or left has the right to decide when and whether we have children. That’s up to us. We need to achieve equal pay.… We need to attribute a value to the work that women do that’s unsalaried (such as looking after children or elderly parents)…. We need to denormalize violence.
Gloria Steinem