One day Pokey, a beautiful, pleasant, and friendly dog sat on a step in my friends' garage, and I was petting him and talking to him. Their granddaughter A. joined me and hugged the dog and made kissing sounds above his black-and-white fur.
He gazed at us with sweet, appreciative, brown eyes. He tolerated or enjoyed our fussing. A. and I agreed we loved Pokey so much, and I said to her what a terrific dog he was, and on inspiration, I said, "We are Pokey's fan club!"
"Yes!" she agreed.
And I floated on -- "I'm the president of Pokey's fan club, & you're the vice-presi- or no, you're the president of Pokey's fan club, and I'm the vice president"...catching myself mid-sentence, thought, ("be generous, let the child be 'president'...!")
She was only 4 or 5, at the time. She looked at me calmly with serious, gentle eyes, and said, "You're the president of patting, and I'm the president of hugs and kisses."
!
She made us both presidents.
Sort of impressively complex thinking, for a child so young.
Even for some adults.
Power sharing.
Separation of powers.
She created a mini-democracy.
On the porch step.
Later when her father was making shish-ke-bobs (sp?) on a grill out on the driveway, I went & told him what she said. He said,
"She said that?"
I told him,
"Yes she did."
-30-
Friday, April 13, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
intensity packed
Janet [Lee Bouvier Auchincloss] lived by the credo -- shared by many women of her class and period -- that men disliked women who had their own intellectual interests and opinions.
{excerpt, Mrs. Kennedy, by Barbara Leaming}
Frequently she repeated that the worst thing a woman could do was permit a man to see she had serious interests.
...Certainly, Janet had been wrong in another respect. Far from being put off by Jackie's intellectual interests, Kennedy was delighted by them....Like Jackie, his great obsession was history. While her specialty was French history, his was English, but they shared a particular taste for the eighteenth century. He was thrilled that they seemed to fill in each other's intellectual and cultural gaps in dozens of ways. He was as curious to learn from her about art history and design as she was to share his knowledge of the movies.
While he had read every word of Churchill, she was an admirer of de Gaulle. They both loved poetry and competed in memorizing each other's favorite poems. His idea of a present was a book he loved, and he was much given to snatching away the books Jackie was reading if they looked interesting.
Jackie...was captivated when, early on, Jack gave her two of his favorite books as a way of explaining to her who he really was. None of the young men touted by her mother had ever done anything like that. One of these books was John Buchan's Pilgrim's Way (Memory Hold the Door in the U.K.), from which Jack had derived the credo that public life is "the worthiest ambition," politics "the greatest and the most honorable adventure."
...Jack, so much older, was clearly the more learned, worldly partner, but Jackie prized the fact that he sought information from her as well. With Jack, no part of her curiosity about the world had to be concealed. Fully accepting the superiority of her knowledge of France and prepared to trust the reliability of her reports, he soon asked her to read and summarize articles on contemporary French politics to assist him in his work.
...Jackie complained that in these years [1956 to 1960] she rarely spent two days in succession with Jack.
He would spend those years constantly on the road. He would speak to every group that would have him and charm the local political bosses in the hope that by election time he would have established himself as a national figure. ...
...During days and nights alone, she read rapaciously, stuffing her mind with information with which to divert and intrigue her husband when he came home. She consciously stored up her energy and excitement for the moment of his return, and the better she became at maintaining focus on those hours of his that belonged to her, the more intensity she packed into them and the more vibrant they became. Even as her visible participation in Jack's public life became rarer, she operated more and more as his secret weapon, a source of ... images and ideas....She translated portions of de Gaulle's memoirs and read them aloud to him. In his own speeches about America, he was soon re-working the general's marvelous evocation of the image of France. ...
----------- {end excerpt}
[Mrs. Kennedy, by Barbara Leaming. Copyright
2001. Simon & Schuster, New York.]
------------------
"She operated more and more as his secret weapon...."
secret.
weapon.
: )
-30-
{excerpt, Mrs. Kennedy, by Barbara Leaming}
Frequently she repeated that the worst thing a woman could do was permit a man to see she had serious interests.
...Certainly, Janet had been wrong in another respect. Far from being put off by Jackie's intellectual interests, Kennedy was delighted by them....Like Jackie, his great obsession was history. While her specialty was French history, his was English, but they shared a particular taste for the eighteenth century. He was thrilled that they seemed to fill in each other's intellectual and cultural gaps in dozens of ways. He was as curious to learn from her about art history and design as she was to share his knowledge of the movies.
While he had read every word of Churchill, she was an admirer of de Gaulle. They both loved poetry and competed in memorizing each other's favorite poems. His idea of a present was a book he loved, and he was much given to snatching away the books Jackie was reading if they looked interesting.
Jackie...was captivated when, early on, Jack gave her two of his favorite books as a way of explaining to her who he really was. None of the young men touted by her mother had ever done anything like that. One of these books was John Buchan's Pilgrim's Way (Memory Hold the Door in the U.K.), from which Jack had derived the credo that public life is "the worthiest ambition," politics "the greatest and the most honorable adventure."
...Jack, so much older, was clearly the more learned, worldly partner, but Jackie prized the fact that he sought information from her as well. With Jack, no part of her curiosity about the world had to be concealed. Fully accepting the superiority of her knowledge of France and prepared to trust the reliability of her reports, he soon asked her to read and summarize articles on contemporary French politics to assist him in his work.
...Jackie complained that in these years [1956 to 1960] she rarely spent two days in succession with Jack.
He would spend those years constantly on the road. He would speak to every group that would have him and charm the local political bosses in the hope that by election time he would have established himself as a national figure. ...
...During days and nights alone, she read rapaciously, stuffing her mind with information with which to divert and intrigue her husband when he came home. She consciously stored up her energy and excitement for the moment of his return, and the better she became at maintaining focus on those hours of his that belonged to her, the more intensity she packed into them and the more vibrant they became. Even as her visible participation in Jack's public life became rarer, she operated more and more as his secret weapon, a source of ... images and ideas....She translated portions of de Gaulle's memoirs and read them aloud to him. In his own speeches about America, he was soon re-working the general's marvelous evocation of the image of France. ...
----------- {end excerpt}
[Mrs. Kennedy, by Barbara Leaming. Copyright
2001. Simon & Schuster, New York.]
------------------
"She operated more and more as his secret weapon...."
secret.
weapon.
: )
-30-
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
even optimists...
[bifurcate:
to divide, or fork, into two branches]
-------------------------------
Yesterday by chance began reading some about industrial designer Raymond Loewy:
Never Leave Well Enough Alone,
(The Johns Hopkins Press)
autobiography of an industrial designer named Raymond Loewy, who moved to America from France.
[excerpts from the autobiography's Introduction, written by Glenn Porter]-------------
“The whole world admires and envies American products, American appearance, American quality.” The nation “should, and I believe will, take advantage of this receptive attitude,” he forecast. He lamented the fact that “no one has yet been able to make [democracy’s] high spiritual values of freedom, liberty and self-respect a ‘packaged’ item to be sold to the rest of the world.”
But consumer capitalism and American products offered “substitute solutions.” “The citizens of Lower Slobovia may not give a hoot for freedom of speech,” he asserted, “but how they fall for a gleaming Frigidaire, a streamlined bus or a coffee percolator.” Here was the key to victory in the Cold War, and to the extension of a democracy of consumption at home.
------ [end excerpt]
"The whole world admires and envies American products, American appearance, American quality." "...democracy's high spiritual values of freedom, liberty and self-respect"...
the idea of winning the Cold War -- and ending it -- and making life better here in our own country as well...those things he talked about there were familiar thoughts & ideas and beliefs we grew up with...The part about the gleaming Frigidaire meaning more to people than freedom of speech seemed a little harsh & cynical to me, but a person can see by reading the rest, where he was going with it.
"Lower Slobovia"...hmmmh. Who was he insulting with that phrase? I've heard that term before, but not much, or for a long time -- Wikipedia says,
Lower Slobbovia (also sometimes called Outer, Inner, Central, Upper or Lowest Slobbovia) is an imaginary nation used in conversation to denote a non-specific, faraway country—generally connoting a place which is underdeveloped, socially backward, remote, impoverished or unenlightened. First coined by Al Capp (1909–1979), the term has also been used by Americans to refer in an informal way to any foreign country of no particular distinction.
[end Wikipedia excerpt]
------------------------
The consumer-economy comments made me think of nyt book review this week:
[excerpt -- Jonathan Rauch's review of Time To Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent, author Edward Luce]
As was true of Japan a generation ago, only much more so, China's obvious strengths cover underlying flaws and weaknesses. Its government is corrupt, rigid and (of course) authoritarian. Its economy is rife with politically imposed distortions. Its schools, like Japan's, rely heavily on rote instruction, good for playing economic catch-up but not so good for taking the lead. Its infrastructure buildup, also like Japan's, feeds on an unsustainable diet of political cronyism and environmental depredation. And its message to the rest of the world is less "Give us your huddled masses" than "Give us your precious minerals." If I had to bet on one system being in decent working order a generation from now, it would be ours, not theirs.
No, this is not an argument for complacency. Luce is right: America's economy and political system are both in worse shape than they have been in a long time, and their dysfunctions seem to feed on one another. His more compelling case, and the country's bigger worry, concerns absolute decline.
True, declinism has been wrong in the past (and I was among those who said so). America has an almost miraculous capacity for self-renewal. Right?
This time, however, that's not so clear. In recent years, productivity improvements have decoupled from incomes, so that between 2000 and 2007, as the economist Robert J. Shapiro notes, "for the first time on record, the incomes of most Americans stagnated or fell through ostensibly good times." Men have seen their earnings drop and have been withdrawing from the work force. Inequality has grown markedly, with not only the incomes but the lifestyles and lifetime prospects of the top and bottom bifurcating. [Had to look up that word.]
No one is really confident of what to do about these things, any one of which would be a challenge. ...Even optimists need to wonder if this time America is entering its own lost decade, or two.
-------[end excerpt]
------------
------------
-------[excerpt from Jonathan Freedland's review of two books -- America and the Crisis of Global Power, author Zbigniew Brzezinski, and The World America Made, author Robert Kagan]
And yet the great surprise is how much they agree with each other, especially on what matters. They both insist that reports of America's decline are exaggerated.
["Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
-- Mark Twain]
Both note that the United States still accounts for a quarter of the world's gross domestic product, a proportion that has held steady for more than 40 years. Both note America's military strength, with a budget greater than that of all its rivals combined. As Brzezinski puts it, on every measure "America is still peerless."
Usefully, Kagan states that much of the current decline talk is based on a "nostalgic fallacy," imagining a golden past in which America was all but omnipotent.
There never was such a time, he says, not even during those periods now remembered as the glory days of American might. Still bathing in the flow of total victory in World War II, the country watched events in China, Korea and Indochina that, Dean Acheson lamented, were "beyond the control of the...United States." In 1952 Douglas MacArthur warned of "our own relative decline." Indeed, Kagan shows that declinism is as old as America itself:
in 1788, Patrick Henry was ruing the Republic's fall from the days "when the American spirit was in its youth."
Kagan's message is that America has been gripped by these fears before, only to bounce back: "Anyone who honestly recalls the 1970s, with Watergate, Vietnam, stagflation and the energy crisis, cannot really believe the present difficulties are unrivaled."
------ [end excerpt]
-30-
to divide, or fork, into two branches]
-------------------------------
Yesterday by chance began reading some about industrial designer Raymond Loewy:
Never Leave Well Enough Alone,
(The Johns Hopkins Press)
autobiography of an industrial designer named Raymond Loewy, who moved to America from France.
[excerpts from the autobiography's Introduction, written by Glenn Porter]-------------
“The whole world admires and envies American products, American appearance, American quality.” The nation “should, and I believe will, take advantage of this receptive attitude,” he forecast. He lamented the fact that “no one has yet been able to make [democracy’s] high spiritual values of freedom, liberty and self-respect a ‘packaged’ item to be sold to the rest of the world.”
But consumer capitalism and American products offered “substitute solutions.” “The citizens of Lower Slobovia may not give a hoot for freedom of speech,” he asserted, “but how they fall for a gleaming Frigidaire, a streamlined bus or a coffee percolator.” Here was the key to victory in the Cold War, and to the extension of a democracy of consumption at home.
------ [end excerpt]
"The whole world admires and envies American products, American appearance, American quality." "...democracy's high spiritual values of freedom, liberty and self-respect"...
the idea of winning the Cold War -- and ending it -- and making life better here in our own country as well...those things he talked about there were familiar thoughts & ideas and beliefs we grew up with...The part about the gleaming Frigidaire meaning more to people than freedom of speech seemed a little harsh & cynical to me, but a person can see by reading the rest, where he was going with it.
"Lower Slobovia"...hmmmh. Who was he insulting with that phrase? I've heard that term before, but not much, or for a long time -- Wikipedia says,
Lower Slobbovia (also sometimes called Outer, Inner, Central, Upper or Lowest Slobbovia) is an imaginary nation used in conversation to denote a non-specific, faraway country—generally connoting a place which is underdeveloped, socially backward, remote, impoverished or unenlightened. First coined by Al Capp (1909–1979), the term has also been used by Americans to refer in an informal way to any foreign country of no particular distinction.
[end Wikipedia excerpt]
------------------------
The consumer-economy comments made me think of nyt book review this week:
[excerpt -- Jonathan Rauch's review of Time To Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent, author Edward Luce]
As was true of Japan a generation ago, only much more so, China's obvious strengths cover underlying flaws and weaknesses. Its government is corrupt, rigid and (of course) authoritarian. Its economy is rife with politically imposed distortions. Its schools, like Japan's, rely heavily on rote instruction, good for playing economic catch-up but not so good for taking the lead. Its infrastructure buildup, also like Japan's, feeds on an unsustainable diet of political cronyism and environmental depredation. And its message to the rest of the world is less "Give us your huddled masses" than "Give us your precious minerals." If I had to bet on one system being in decent working order a generation from now, it would be ours, not theirs.
No, this is not an argument for complacency. Luce is right: America's economy and political system are both in worse shape than they have been in a long time, and their dysfunctions seem to feed on one another. His more compelling case, and the country's bigger worry, concerns absolute decline.
True, declinism has been wrong in the past (and I was among those who said so). America has an almost miraculous capacity for self-renewal. Right?
This time, however, that's not so clear. In recent years, productivity improvements have decoupled from incomes, so that between 2000 and 2007, as the economist Robert J. Shapiro notes, "for the first time on record, the incomes of most Americans stagnated or fell through ostensibly good times." Men have seen their earnings drop and have been withdrawing from the work force. Inequality has grown markedly, with not only the incomes but the lifestyles and lifetime prospects of the top and bottom bifurcating. [Had to look up that word.]
No one is really confident of what to do about these things, any one of which would be a challenge. ...Even optimists need to wonder if this time America is entering its own lost decade, or two.
-------[end excerpt]
------------
------------
-------[excerpt from Jonathan Freedland's review of two books -- America and the Crisis of Global Power, author Zbigniew Brzezinski, and The World America Made, author Robert Kagan]
And yet the great surprise is how much they agree with each other, especially on what matters. They both insist that reports of America's decline are exaggerated.
["Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
-- Mark Twain]
Both note that the United States still accounts for a quarter of the world's gross domestic product, a proportion that has held steady for more than 40 years. Both note America's military strength, with a budget greater than that of all its rivals combined. As Brzezinski puts it, on every measure "America is still peerless."
Usefully, Kagan states that much of the current decline talk is based on a "nostalgic fallacy," imagining a golden past in which America was all but omnipotent.
There never was such a time, he says, not even during those periods now remembered as the glory days of American might. Still bathing in the flow of total victory in World War II, the country watched events in China, Korea and Indochina that, Dean Acheson lamented, were "beyond the control of the...United States." In 1952 Douglas MacArthur warned of "our own relative decline." Indeed, Kagan shows that declinism is as old as America itself:
in 1788, Patrick Henry was ruing the Republic's fall from the days "when the American spirit was in its youth."
Kagan's message is that America has been gripped by these fears before, only to bounce back: "Anyone who honestly recalls the 1970s, with Watergate, Vietnam, stagflation and the energy crisis, cannot really believe the present difficulties are unrivaled."
------ [end excerpt]
-30-
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
global drift
I feel pretty sure that Bert Lance did not invent the phrase, "If it ain't broke don't fix it." I think it is much older than that.
One naturally thinks of a saying in the same "family" of phrases:
"Let well enough alone." Researched (well -- clicked) and discovered that this phrase apparently dates back to the ancient Greeks.
While seeking that info -- branched off to a book called
Never Leave Well Enough Alone,
(The Johns Hopkins Press)
autobiography of an industrial designer named Raymond Loewy, who moved to America from France.
[excerpts from the autobiography's Introduction, written by Glenn Porter]-------------
Industrial design extended well beyond merchandising, providing a unique link between marketing and production. It took into account not only appearance but also efficiency of manufacturing, quality and durability, new materials, ease and safety of use, and other factors. Later its concerns extended to the environmental impact of designs and how to make products usable by the disabled. When practiced well, industrial design made genuine contributions to a better life for consumers.
Loewy’s own designs sought those broader goals, and they combined engineering and artistic sensibilities. All his life he advocated simplicity of design, which he defined as reduction to essentials, the engineer’s commitment to minimizing the use of materials and combining parts.
A good designer, in Loewy’s view, should also smooth surfaces by removing or concealing protuberances, hinges, and other unsightly mechanical items such as motors, rods, wires, and the like. This would normally result in a simple, functional, modern solution that was beautiful as well as practical, and often less expensive to manufacture.
Although he was always identified with streamlining (the use of smoothed shapes that reduced air or water resistance), Loewy was never enthusiastic about that term, preferring instead to speak of simplicity. He praised light, airy, elegant, “thoroughbred” creations such as the bridges of Swiss engineer Robert Maillart. The worst design sin as he saw it was fussy, busy surface decorations, the principal shortcoming in the creations of the premodern era. If a form still looked disorganized or unfinished after simplification, he advocated encasing it in a shell for an appealing appearance.
...Loewy was well aware of the political punch in the American Dream. Speaking at the Harvard Business School in 1950, he noted that “The whole world admires and envies American products, American appearance, American quality.” The nation “should, and I believe will, take advantage of this receptive attitude,” he forecast. He lamented the fact that “no one has yet been able to make [democracy’s] high spiritual values of freedom, liberty and self-respect a ‘packaged’ item to be sold to the rest of the world.”
But consumer capitalism and American products offered “substitute solutions.” “The citizens of Lower Slobovia may not give a hoot for freedom of speech,” he asserted, “but how they fall for a gleaming Frigidaire, a streamlined bus or a coffee percolator.” Here was the key to victory in the Cold War, and to the extension of a democracy of consumption at home.
Never Leave Well Enough Alone concludes by placing industrial design in this broad economic and political context….
Loewy portrays their profession’s role in the nation’s consumer economy. Industrial design had the “social responsibility” of contributing to the “lowering of the cost of manufactured goods” and to economic growth. This would both “speed up employment and bring more essential products to the underprivileged classes.” “This,” Loewy concludes, “is democracy in action.”
Although it is difficult to gauge the true economic contribution of industrial design, there is no doubt that Raymond Loewy and his profession played a significant role in furthering the consumer culture of the twentieth century. First Americans and then many of the world’s peoples embraced the goals of endless growth and constant novelty in the material civilization of the modern era.
As much as anyone, Raymond Loewy symbolized the vast social changes implicit in the triumph of consumer capitalism. This autobiography gives a rare, fascinating, inside look at one of the major sources of the cultural transformation that produced the global drift toward the American Dream.
-30-
One naturally thinks of a saying in the same "family" of phrases:
"Let well enough alone." Researched (well -- clicked) and discovered that this phrase apparently dates back to the ancient Greeks.
While seeking that info -- branched off to a book called
Never Leave Well Enough Alone,
(The Johns Hopkins Press)
autobiography of an industrial designer named Raymond Loewy, who moved to America from France.
[excerpts from the autobiography's Introduction, written by Glenn Porter]-------------
Industrial design extended well beyond merchandising, providing a unique link between marketing and production. It took into account not only appearance but also efficiency of manufacturing, quality and durability, new materials, ease and safety of use, and other factors. Later its concerns extended to the environmental impact of designs and how to make products usable by the disabled. When practiced well, industrial design made genuine contributions to a better life for consumers.
Loewy’s own designs sought those broader goals, and they combined engineering and artistic sensibilities. All his life he advocated simplicity of design, which he defined as reduction to essentials, the engineer’s commitment to minimizing the use of materials and combining parts.
A good designer, in Loewy’s view, should also smooth surfaces by removing or concealing protuberances, hinges, and other unsightly mechanical items such as motors, rods, wires, and the like. This would normally result in a simple, functional, modern solution that was beautiful as well as practical, and often less expensive to manufacture.
Although he was always identified with streamlining (the use of smoothed shapes that reduced air or water resistance), Loewy was never enthusiastic about that term, preferring instead to speak of simplicity. He praised light, airy, elegant, “thoroughbred” creations such as the bridges of Swiss engineer Robert Maillart. The worst design sin as he saw it was fussy, busy surface decorations, the principal shortcoming in the creations of the premodern era. If a form still looked disorganized or unfinished after simplification, he advocated encasing it in a shell for an appealing appearance.
...Loewy was well aware of the political punch in the American Dream. Speaking at the Harvard Business School in 1950, he noted that “The whole world admires and envies American products, American appearance, American quality.” The nation “should, and I believe will, take advantage of this receptive attitude,” he forecast. He lamented the fact that “no one has yet been able to make [democracy’s] high spiritual values of freedom, liberty and self-respect a ‘packaged’ item to be sold to the rest of the world.”
But consumer capitalism and American products offered “substitute solutions.” “The citizens of Lower Slobovia may not give a hoot for freedom of speech,” he asserted, “but how they fall for a gleaming Frigidaire, a streamlined bus or a coffee percolator.” Here was the key to victory in the Cold War, and to the extension of a democracy of consumption at home.
Never Leave Well Enough Alone concludes by placing industrial design in this broad economic and political context….
Loewy portrays their profession’s role in the nation’s consumer economy. Industrial design had the “social responsibility” of contributing to the “lowering of the cost of manufactured goods” and to economic growth. This would both “speed up employment and bring more essential products to the underprivileged classes.” “This,” Loewy concludes, “is democracy in action.”
Although it is difficult to gauge the true economic contribution of industrial design, there is no doubt that Raymond Loewy and his profession played a significant role in furthering the consumer culture of the twentieth century. First Americans and then many of the world’s peoples embraced the goals of endless growth and constant novelty in the material civilization of the modern era.
As much as anyone, Raymond Loewy symbolized the vast social changes implicit in the triumph of consumer capitalism. This autobiography gives a rare, fascinating, inside look at one of the major sources of the cultural transformation that produced the global drift toward the American Dream.
-30-
Monday, April 9, 2012
we didn't know how good we had it
They began the task of updating a program in our computer, and...
we haven't had the program for five days, now...!
The word "update" sounds good, but now we are reminded of the traditional phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," attributed by one website to Bert Lance, of the Jimmy Carter administration.
I thought it must also be a song;
it is,
think I heard it years ago. ...
"If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It"
By John Anderson
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, if it’s mixed, don’t try to mix it
Think before you speak and look before you leap
And if it’s wound up don’t try to wind it, if it’s not lost don’t try to find it
It always helps to make it easy on yourself
Chorus:
Make it easy on yourself and do the best that you can do
Stay away from folks who try to make it hard on you
And if it’s wound up don’t try to wind it, If it’s not lost don’t try to find it
It always helps to make it easy on yourself
If it ain’t true, don’t tell it, if it’s sold don’t try to sell it
Search and you will find, keep an open mind
And if its short don’t make it long, if it’s right don’t make it wrong
It always helps to make it easy on yourself
...
-30-
we haven't had the program for five days, now...!
The word "update" sounds good, but now we are reminded of the traditional phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," attributed by one website to Bert Lance, of the Jimmy Carter administration.
I thought it must also be a song;
it is,
think I heard it years ago. ...
"If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It"
By John Anderson
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, if it’s mixed, don’t try to mix it
Think before you speak and look before you leap
And if it’s wound up don’t try to wind it, if it’s not lost don’t try to find it
It always helps to make it easy on yourself
Chorus:
Make it easy on yourself and do the best that you can do
Stay away from folks who try to make it hard on you
And if it’s wound up don’t try to wind it, If it’s not lost don’t try to find it
It always helps to make it easy on yourself
If it ain’t true, don’t tell it, if it’s sold don’t try to sell it
Search and you will find, keep an open mind
And if its short don’t make it long, if it’s right don’t make it wrong
It always helps to make it easy on yourself
...
-30-
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
to be secure
This week the Supreme Court gave us a Decision that said police can strip search everyone.
Commenters on the internet think it's a crazy decision;
some think it's to help lead us toward a Nazi-style fascist "Police State";
others think it's the wealthy elite (the "one percent") trying to get people who work for a living (policemen, + everyone else) to fight amongst themselves;
others say the Supreme Court is trying to discourage protesters.
That would be a "free speech" problem, right?
And -- it seems like they definitely took the Fourth Amendment and just --
er --
removed it.
(If they can do that, they can get the people's guns away from them,
"at the drop of a hat,"
"with the stroke of a pen."...)
The Fourth Amendment says,
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I got to thinking about it -- what kind of people would apply for jobs as policemen, under this type of rule?
I work with a guy who used to work in the police dept., & I wondered, after reading this news -- maybe that's why he changed careers, because he saw this coming, & realized there was a significant percentage of the local population that he does not want to see without any of their clothes on.
Yikes to the tenth power. ...
-30-
Commenters on the internet think it's a crazy decision;
some think it's to help lead us toward a Nazi-style fascist "Police State";
others think it's the wealthy elite (the "one percent") trying to get people who work for a living (policemen, + everyone else) to fight amongst themselves;
others say the Supreme Court is trying to discourage protesters.
That would be a "free speech" problem, right?
And -- it seems like they definitely took the Fourth Amendment and just --
er --
removed it.
(If they can do that, they can get the people's guns away from them,
"at the drop of a hat,"
"with the stroke of a pen."...)
The Fourth Amendment says,
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I got to thinking about it -- what kind of people would apply for jobs as policemen, under this type of rule?
I work with a guy who used to work in the police dept., & I wondered, after reading this news -- maybe that's why he changed careers, because he saw this coming, & realized there was a significant percentage of the local population that he does not want to see without any of their clothes on.
Yikes to the tenth power. ...
-30-
Monday, April 2, 2012
tell us one more time
Left a good job in the city,
Workin' for The Man ev'ry night and day,
But I never lost one minute of sleepin',
Worryin' 'bout the way things might have been.
CHORUS:
Big wheel keep on turnin'
Proud Mary keep on burnin'
Rollin'--
rollin'--
rollin' on the river.
Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis,
Pumped a lot of 'pane down in New Orleans,
But I never saw the good side of the city,
'Till I hitched a ride on a river boat queen.
Big wheel keep on turnin' --
Proud Mary keep on burnin'--
Rollin'
rollin'
rollin' on the river.
If you come down to the river,
Bet you gonna find some people who live.
You don't have to worry 'cause you have no money,
People on the river are happy to give...
Big wheel keep on turnin',
Proud Mary keep on burnin',
Rollin'
rollin'
rollin' on the river.
-----------------------
{"Proud Mary," written, John Fogerty.
Recorded, Credence Clearwater Revival,
Bayou Country album -- released 1969.}
When Tina Turner performed that song later,
the chorus was adjusted, energized to --
Rollin' --
rollin' - yeah,
rollin' on the river...
(Tell-you-one-more-time) --
Rollin'
rollin' yeah,
rollin'...[etc.]
-30-
Workin' for The Man ev'ry night and day,
But I never lost one minute of sleepin',
Worryin' 'bout the way things might have been.
CHORUS:
Big wheel keep on turnin'
Proud Mary keep on burnin'
Rollin'--
rollin'--
rollin' on the river.
Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis,
Pumped a lot of 'pane down in New Orleans,
But I never saw the good side of the city,
'Till I hitched a ride on a river boat queen.
Big wheel keep on turnin' --
Proud Mary keep on burnin'--
Rollin'
rollin'
rollin' on the river.
If you come down to the river,
Bet you gonna find some people who live.
You don't have to worry 'cause you have no money,
People on the river are happy to give...
Big wheel keep on turnin',
Proud Mary keep on burnin',
Rollin'
rollin'
rollin' on the river.
-----------------------
{"Proud Mary," written, John Fogerty.
Recorded, Credence Clearwater Revival,
Bayou Country album -- released 1969.}
When Tina Turner performed that song later,
the chorus was adjusted, energized to --
Rollin' --
rollin' - yeah,
rollin' on the river...
(Tell-you-one-more-time) --
Rollin'
rollin' yeah,
rollin'...[etc.]
-30-
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