This past week-end I had the privilege of participating in what had to be one of the finest float trips that occurred on the continent this year. It was like fishing on Mount Olympus in the company of the fly casting gods – a week-end I will never forget.
Kyle Kosovich of Longboat Outfitters asked if I would serve as commissary for a trip he was hosting for Zach Matthews, a contributing writer for Fly Fisherman magazine. Zach is a world class writer, photographer, and fly fisherman. He wanted to write about fishing the North Fork of the White River, so Kyle called in Brian Wise, guide for River of Life Farm, Bryan Yates, a past flats fishing guide in the Florida Keys, and Randy Hanner, a member of the U.S. Fly Fishing Team who finished 22 in world competition last year.
My job was to paddle a 20’ longboat loaded with gear, set up camps, help cook and clean up, and play a little after-dinner guitar. When one of the guys asked why I wasn’t fishing I just told him that I wouldn’t pick guitar if Doc Watson was there and I wasn’t about to show my butt by fly fishing beside guys like him. All told, I did my best to stay in the background. My reward was watching those guys work.
Bryan and Zach dazzled me with their mastery of what to me is the mystery of fly tackle. They casually threw beautifully bending loops in 60 foot casts as handily as I can cast a spinning lure. Brian and Kyle wowed me as always with their abilities, too, but Randy was the man to watch if you wanted to see fish landed. A fine caster himself, his style, though personally more flamboyant, was in sum much more refined and subtle. It was as if he could catch fish on command.
Schooled in French and Polish methods learned during international competitions, his favorite method is nymphing upstream. Casting no more than a leader’s length and pulling the fly toward him in a drift of no more than three feet, he often set the hook and at the same time launched the fish into the air and whipped out his landing net to catch it before it hit the water again.
The stream is my religion. Standing in a running stream, the rushing roar of water dashing over cobble drowns out the concerns of the world while the line establishes a connection between the fisherman and the universe. There is no line of separation, only connection. It is all consuming, and people with skills like these fellows possess make the connection even deeper.
The first day and night were all about the spirituality of fishing. Then Saturday dawned and I went downstream to be out of their way. I waited near a popular put-in where the connection was shattered by hundreds of people putting in with their inner-tubes, coolers and boom-boxes.
I saw a kid probably not twenty kneeling on one side of a tube with a two foot plastic paddle. Draped over the front of the tube was a child under two years old. They were accompanied by a canoe containing another young man, a cooler and a dog - which says a lot about their priorites. Not two hundred yards from the put-in, the young tuber, tired already of spinning in circles cried out to his friend in the canoe, “What am I gonna do, Dude?”
I thought, what you’re going to do is kill that baby, DUDE, and I wondered how far they thought they were going to get before that child was screaming in pain from being draped over that raw, hot rubber inner-tube while burning in the 90 degree sun. I wanted to shout at him to get off the river before it was too late, but, stupidly not wanting to seem intrusive, I held my piece, but lost my peace.
The rest of the afternoon was a steady stream of rental canoes, inner-tubes, plastic blow ups, boom boxes and beer. Some people were competent floaters doing their best to enjoy a day on a wild Ozark stream, but the majority was out of their element.
Two girls passed by whining about the spider they found in their canoe and were answered by a woman in another canoe who said, “Well, I just saw a huge water snake”, her voice quavering to relay her contempt for the beast. And I thought – they live here folks. If you come out here wanting it to be just like your living room, why not stay home, watch some “Wild Kingdom” and drink your beer in air conditioned comfort?
The last straw of my day was the drunken woman who was floating by in a tied-together flotilla of blue plastic tubes while I was setting up the second night’s camp and letting the campfire burn down to coals for the evening’s grilled pork chops and baked cinnamon rolls. “Got any hotdogs for us?” she yelled. I said nothing. “Hey, you got any hotdogs for us,” she cleverly shouted again, and still I said nothing.
“He’s ignoring me.” She told her friends, “That’s so rude.” I’m rude?? I thought. I was enjoying the peace of the river and my work until you came along.
I had set up four tents and the others were all downstream fishing.
“Hey, you in the yellow shirt. Do you sleep in all them tents, just going from one to the other all night or what?” This lady was so clever.
“We have a party here,” I said, and went back to my work.
By then they had drifted far enough downstream that I suppose it was too much effort to keep trying to communicate with me, so she just said, “Oh” and then shifted her focus to whatever caught her attention next, and I, at last, was left in the peace and beauty of the river where I stole out to do battle with and lose to an over 20” rainbow who taught me that I might be able to fool him, but it was going to take more skill than mine to bring him to net.
The real fishermen came back, the stories flowed, the pork chops and cinnamon rolls disappeared, and we connected with one another in the peace and beauty of the river. The fishing gods, the river gods and the fly casting gods had all returned and all was well with the world once again.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
THE HEALTH CARE DEBACLE
Three times in my life I have seen the country at odds over health care. The first was over the creation of Medicare, and it was a quiet storm compared to what’s going on today.
Today’s battle is epitomized by this anecdote from an article in the Washington Post that told of a health care town hall meeting in South Carolina where ‘a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare."’ The Congressman tried to explain that Medicare is a government program, but heckler would not listen.
That would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, but it illustrates how successful the anti-insurance reform right wing has been in confusing their followers.
The argument isn’t really about health care reform at all. No matter what Washington does in the coming weeks, the kind of health care people get in this country won’t change. If it was about health care reform, the AMA wouldn’t be endorsing it because that would call for restructuring of physician and hospital incomes to European levels.
The Democrats are trying to take the power over and control of health care delivery out of the hands of the insurance industry. Given that we all are or know people who have gone without coverage due to cost or pre-existing conditions or been denied payment for services even if we have coverage, I can’t see why anyone including Tea Partiers wouldn’t want that.
The Republican counter-budget as written by Paul Ryan – R, Wisconsin contains their proposals, touted as the way to avoid “socialism” and a “government takeover of health care”. Here they are:
1. Significantly reduce benefits to anybody under 55 at the time of passage, and then privatize social security.
2. Replace Medicare with a system of vouchers for buying private health insurance.
Why in God’s name would I want to trade the Medicare I now have and which allows me to see primary care doctors for $10 a visit, specialist for $35 and hospital costs with a reasonable deductible for a voucher to get back into private insurance? That is insanity.
We have operated our own business for over twenty years during which I carried catastrophic insurance with a $5,000 deductible at a cost of about $3,000 a year. My wife couldn’t get that wonderful coverage because she had pre-existing conditions, so her catastrophic coverage – excluding those conditions – ran about $5,000 a year. Our average income over those years averaged below the $65,000 level, so on average about 12% of our gross income went to insurance we never used. Beyond that, if we had needed to use it, we might have found out, as several friends have, that our insurance would not pay for the services we needed.
I’m also pretty fond of my social security check, minimal as it is. I did my own saving for retirement, but social security is the hedge against loss of private investments in a shaky market. I wish they’d just expand Medicare and be done with it.
Today’s battle is epitomized by this anecdote from an article in the Washington Post that told of a health care town hall meeting in South Carolina where ‘a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare."’ The Congressman tried to explain that Medicare is a government program, but heckler would not listen.
That would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, but it illustrates how successful the anti-insurance reform right wing has been in confusing their followers.
The argument isn’t really about health care reform at all. No matter what Washington does in the coming weeks, the kind of health care people get in this country won’t change. If it was about health care reform, the AMA wouldn’t be endorsing it because that would call for restructuring of physician and hospital incomes to European levels.
The Democrats are trying to take the power over and control of health care delivery out of the hands of the insurance industry. Given that we all are or know people who have gone without coverage due to cost or pre-existing conditions or been denied payment for services even if we have coverage, I can’t see why anyone including Tea Partiers wouldn’t want that.
The Republican counter-budget as written by Paul Ryan – R, Wisconsin contains their proposals, touted as the way to avoid “socialism” and a “government takeover of health care”. Here they are:
1. Significantly reduce benefits to anybody under 55 at the time of passage, and then privatize social security.
2. Replace Medicare with a system of vouchers for buying private health insurance.
Why in God’s name would I want to trade the Medicare I now have and which allows me to see primary care doctors for $10 a visit, specialist for $35 and hospital costs with a reasonable deductible for a voucher to get back into private insurance? That is insanity.
We have operated our own business for over twenty years during which I carried catastrophic insurance with a $5,000 deductible at a cost of about $3,000 a year. My wife couldn’t get that wonderful coverage because she had pre-existing conditions, so her catastrophic coverage – excluding those conditions – ran about $5,000 a year. Our average income over those years averaged below the $65,000 level, so on average about 12% of our gross income went to insurance we never used. Beyond that, if we had needed to use it, we might have found out, as several friends have, that our insurance would not pay for the services we needed.
I’m also pretty fond of my social security check, minimal as it is. I did my own saving for retirement, but social security is the hedge against loss of private investments in a shaky market. I wish they’d just expand Medicare and be done with it.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Health Care Conundrum
Are you against a public option in health care because “government can’t do anything right”? If so, try this:
Walk into a senior citizen center and say, “Everybody who has Medicare and wishes they didn’t, raise your hand.” You’ll think everybody in there is an amputee.
Now go to a VA hospital and say, “I think the government ought to get out of the health care business. Raise your hand if you’ll sign this petition to stop funding the Veteran’s Administration.” The only hand you’re likely to see is some veteran’s just before it hits your nose.
Next, go to the Division of Family Services and say, “If you have Medicaid and wish you didn’t, raise your hand.” They’ll laugh you out of the place.
Let’s try another test. Drive to your nearest vehicle license bureau on a busy day. Walk in and say, “I’m sick of seeing my tax dollars spent on highways. How many of you will sign this petition to stop spending federal dollars to maintain the interstate highway system?” Or you could ask them to help you put a stop to state tax support for state roads. How many takers would you get?
Don’t like any of those tests? Try this one. Go to a library and ask for signatures on a petition to quit spending tax dollars on libraries, or ask the parents and teachers at any school to join your protest against using tax dollars to support education. Any takers? Not likely.
Here’s a question for YOU to answer. Be honest, now. Do you think tax dollars should be used for those purposes listed above?
If you said yes, then you don’t believe that the government can’t do anything right. Beyond that you don’t think there’s anything wrong with democratic socialism. That’s what pooling tax dollars for the common good is, and there is nothing wrong with it.
I know far too many people who are putting off health care until they can get Medicare. Not one of them is against a public option. They know that their private insurance won’t pay for the services they need, and they sure can’t afford to pay for it themselves.
Here’s the conundrum. How can people know something works and still condemn it? I know people who’d fight to keep their Medicare and/or VA coverage but won’t support making it available to everyone. If you fit that description, examine your conscience because you should be ashamed for not doing right by your neighbors.
The business of private health insurers is to prevent people from collecting on claims while administrators make huge salaries and the stock continues to rise. The business of public health insurers is to operate with less than 18% overhead while paying doctors for their services. Why would you choose the former if you could have the latter? It’s time we looked beyond the sound-bites and put some of our tax dollars to work getting the health care we need.
Walk into a senior citizen center and say, “Everybody who has Medicare and wishes they didn’t, raise your hand.” You’ll think everybody in there is an amputee.
Now go to a VA hospital and say, “I think the government ought to get out of the health care business. Raise your hand if you’ll sign this petition to stop funding the Veteran’s Administration.” The only hand you’re likely to see is some veteran’s just before it hits your nose.
Next, go to the Division of Family Services and say, “If you have Medicaid and wish you didn’t, raise your hand.” They’ll laugh you out of the place.
Let’s try another test. Drive to your nearest vehicle license bureau on a busy day. Walk in and say, “I’m sick of seeing my tax dollars spent on highways. How many of you will sign this petition to stop spending federal dollars to maintain the interstate highway system?” Or you could ask them to help you put a stop to state tax support for state roads. How many takers would you get?
Don’t like any of those tests? Try this one. Go to a library and ask for signatures on a petition to quit spending tax dollars on libraries, or ask the parents and teachers at any school to join your protest against using tax dollars to support education. Any takers? Not likely.
Here’s a question for YOU to answer. Be honest, now. Do you think tax dollars should be used for those purposes listed above?
If you said yes, then you don’t believe that the government can’t do anything right. Beyond that you don’t think there’s anything wrong with democratic socialism. That’s what pooling tax dollars for the common good is, and there is nothing wrong with it.
I know far too many people who are putting off health care until they can get Medicare. Not one of them is against a public option. They know that their private insurance won’t pay for the services they need, and they sure can’t afford to pay for it themselves.
Here’s the conundrum. How can people know something works and still condemn it? I know people who’d fight to keep their Medicare and/or VA coverage but won’t support making it available to everyone. If you fit that description, examine your conscience because you should be ashamed for not doing right by your neighbors.
The business of private health insurers is to prevent people from collecting on claims while administrators make huge salaries and the stock continues to rise. The business of public health insurers is to operate with less than 18% overhead while paying doctors for their services. Why would you choose the former if you could have the latter? It’s time we looked beyond the sound-bites and put some of our tax dollars to work getting the health care we need.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Our Ignored Crisis
It has been two years since I posted to this site. I was too burned out by my political focus. I'm back now to write more generally and less rigorously and more likely on environmental issues than political ones. I hope readers will enjoy the journals of my excursions into the outdoors.
Today's edition is a copy of a submission that should soon run as a "Voices" column in our local newspaper, The Springfield News-Leader.
***********************************************************************************
Our Ignored Crisis
While most of the rest of the world is poised to address a world-wide ecological crisis, we argue over whether or not Al Gore was blowing smoke. Tick talk.
Even ignoring climate change, evidence of planet-wide degradation is devastatingly clear, and if humankind doesn’t recognize and adjust, we soon will have poisoned our nest beyond the point of no return. Sadly, our nation is a primary polluting culprit as well as the biggest obstacle to correcting the problem. Tick talk.
The issue is STEWARDSHIP. We are now fishing out the last of the breeding stock of the cod, sole and haddock. Salmon have dwindled so that they may never recover. Rockfish and blue crabs once plentiful are almost gone from Chesapeake Bay. Coral reefs are becoming a thing of the past. The Marshall Islands and others like them are being submerged world-wide. Fresh water river sediment is loaded with heavy metals; the water with chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Streams and lakes everywhere carry warnings about the danger of eating the fish. Missouri’s mussels are disappearing, and our air is polluted, but politicians say all’s well – the stock market’s up. Tick talk.
Humankind’s record as stewards of the earth is abominable, and it doesn’t take a tree-hugger to recognize it - just common sense. The Bible recognizes man’s dominion over the earth, but fails to instill a sense of stewardship, and the world’s political and economic structures prevent humanity from fulfilling that responsibility. Tick talk.
The well-being of our corporations far outranks the well-being of the planet or its people, and most citizens seem to believe that nothing that will increase our cost of living is acceptable. Tick talk.
The cost of energy produced by any means other than coal or nuclear power is too high to consider changing sources or behaviors. Clean coal and safe nuclear power don't exist, but we aren’t about to do anything that would make our electricity rates rise, so we invent fables that allow us to keep them and ignore facts that will sooner or later become incredibly invasive realities. Tick talk.
Each American burns four to six times the carbon resources of the average citizen of any other industrialized nation. We do it with our cars, air conditioners, fireplaces, clothes dryers, night lighting and attitudes. We need to see that the clock ticks while we talk. We are citizens not just of America but of the world. Weapons and armies eat up our wealth in ways that neither we nor the rest of the world can afford. Nation states and their interests have gone the way of city states and dinosaurs. If we don’t realize that soon we may very well go the way of the dinosaurs ourselves. The environmental clock tick tocks while we tick talk.
Today's edition is a copy of a submission that should soon run as a "Voices" column in our local newspaper, The Springfield News-Leader.
***********************************************************************************
Our Ignored Crisis
While most of the rest of the world is poised to address a world-wide ecological crisis, we argue over whether or not Al Gore was blowing smoke. Tick talk.
Even ignoring climate change, evidence of planet-wide degradation is devastatingly clear, and if humankind doesn’t recognize and adjust, we soon will have poisoned our nest beyond the point of no return. Sadly, our nation is a primary polluting culprit as well as the biggest obstacle to correcting the problem. Tick talk.
The issue is STEWARDSHIP. We are now fishing out the last of the breeding stock of the cod, sole and haddock. Salmon have dwindled so that they may never recover. Rockfish and blue crabs once plentiful are almost gone from Chesapeake Bay. Coral reefs are becoming a thing of the past. The Marshall Islands and others like them are being submerged world-wide. Fresh water river sediment is loaded with heavy metals; the water with chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Streams and lakes everywhere carry warnings about the danger of eating the fish. Missouri’s mussels are disappearing, and our air is polluted, but politicians say all’s well – the stock market’s up. Tick talk.
Humankind’s record as stewards of the earth is abominable, and it doesn’t take a tree-hugger to recognize it - just common sense. The Bible recognizes man’s dominion over the earth, but fails to instill a sense of stewardship, and the world’s political and economic structures prevent humanity from fulfilling that responsibility. Tick talk.
The well-being of our corporations far outranks the well-being of the planet or its people, and most citizens seem to believe that nothing that will increase our cost of living is acceptable. Tick talk.
The cost of energy produced by any means other than coal or nuclear power is too high to consider changing sources or behaviors. Clean coal and safe nuclear power don't exist, but we aren’t about to do anything that would make our electricity rates rise, so we invent fables that allow us to keep them and ignore facts that will sooner or later become incredibly invasive realities. Tick talk.
Each American burns four to six times the carbon resources of the average citizen of any other industrialized nation. We do it with our cars, air conditioners, fireplaces, clothes dryers, night lighting and attitudes. We need to see that the clock ticks while we talk. We are citizens not just of America but of the world. Weapons and armies eat up our wealth in ways that neither we nor the rest of the world can afford. Nation states and their interests have gone the way of city states and dinosaurs. If we don’t realize that soon we may very well go the way of the dinosaurs ourselves. The environmental clock tick tocks while we tick talk.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
OpEdNews
I'm no longer blogging on MySpace, but have been granted Trusted Author status and Editor status with OpEdNews. If you'd like to read the first article of mine that they published, go to http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pivot-Point-by-Bob-Ranney-081215-841.html.
To see their website - where you could subscribe to the newsletter - go to: http://www.opednews.com
You'll see that they post a super-wide range of articles and other information every day. It's an amazing site.
Be well - Bob
P.S. If you go to the OEN site, you can check on my work anytime by entering my name in the search box.
To see their website - where you could subscribe to the newsletter - go to: http://www.opednews.com
You'll see that they post a super-wide range of articles and other information every day. It's an amazing site.
Be well - Bob
P.S. If you go to the OEN site, you can check on my work anytime by entering my name in the search box.
Monday, October 20, 2008
FAREWELL – One Last Blog
Regular readers will know that I have been absent from this space for about two weeks. There have been many and varied reasons for that absence, but the latest was the best.
I just got back last night from a four day soul-feast on the autumnal beauty of our Ozark streams. It was a constant reverie; a spirit lifting sip of nature’s nectar; and an exercise in cooperative effort that was as beautiful to behold as the grandeur of the surroundings.
We were an unusual group in many ways – a core group of three who work together appended a fourth who volunteers at their workplace, and by a fifth, known to one of the core through his church. The six and seventh members of our group are related to one of the core by marriage. The point being that many of us were new to one another – not a guaranteed formula for serendipity.
Another unlikely piece of the formula was our ages. We ranged in age from 15 to 65 with the ages 19, 25, 27, 28 and 42 spanning the middle. We also varied widely in our religious preferences – from devout fundamentalist to dedicated agnostic. And yet the central focus of this story is the way we meshed rather than conflicted.
Those who have spent some time camping and floating will know that trips like this can be completely undone by conflicts – no matter the cause. But this group allowed no possibility of such a thing happening. The nineteen year old was there because his little brother really wanted to go, but was obligated to play through the semi-finals of a basketball tournament that didn’t end until late the first night of the trip. Instead of letting his brother miss the trip, Ben left college, then drove an hour to pick Tommy up and bring him to the campsite. They arrived around midnight, bringing with them the spirit of giving and sacrifice that characterized the trip.
It was two days of boys being men and the men being boys. It was caring spirits at play. When it came time to fish, those in their twenties were in the water first, fly-rods swinging in the rhythm of the stream, catching and always releasing the beautiful trout they landed one after another after another; shouting back in forth with gleeful voices filled with awe for the beauty and wonder of their natural surroundings.
The boys weren’t as well equipped for fishing, but there was no sullen pouting. They spent most of their time together exploring the caves, bluffs and gravel bars along the way. At one point I spotted Ben casting from their canoe enabled by Tommy sitting on a large rock holding the canoe’s painter so that the boat was in an ideal fishing position. Earlier, Mike and Kyle had collaborated on a method of teaching this old man a couple of new tricks on line control and before that I had spent a little time with Pete helping him to understand how current carries food and why trout lie where they do. Meanwhile, Matt was quietly observing and enjoying and doing many small things to support the pleasure and well-being of the entire group.
It was people – in love with their surroundings and ultimately with one another -- each making sure that all were comfortable, all were enjoying themselves and each received some recognition and thanks for his contribution. It was men – unafraid of showing caring feelings for nature and for each other. It was boys – no matter whether 15 or 65 years old – at play in the midst of nature’s abundance.
The camp chores were shared – not by dint of lists of who’s responsible for what – but by the fact that whenever a need for something became apparent someone – anyone – would step up and take care of it. The evening meal, for instance, was a fine repast featuring fried river-caught catfish, grilled burgers, hush puppies, and cinnamon rolls hot from the dutch oven all cooked over the coals of an open wood campfire. Afterward, when you’d expect to see a couple boys lolling around in a sated stupor, the first thing I noticed was a fifteen year old washing dishes. No one had told him to do it. No one had even asked who was going to do it. He just did it.
In the heat of the afternoon, when we took a break from fishing (Kyle had slipped down to the riffle below camp and caught 20 to 30 fish single-handedly!), we gathered on the gravel bar to sit in the shade, sip a cold drink, weave cordage from some dogbane Kyle had brought along, and tell fish stories. We had a few less chairs than people, but I noticed that no matter what the activity there always seemed to be a vacant chair so that the old man could have one whenever he wanted it. Again, nobody said anything, but it was apparent that this caring sharing was a part of the group’s unspoken protocol.
There were plenty of occasions to laugh. We laughed at each other’s gaffes. We poked fun at one another. We laughed at each other’s stories, and, most and best of all, we laughed together. We laughed mightily over my fall into the North Fork River two days before this trip began. When I lost my balance again over the campfire on the Eleven Point River gravel bar that was our final home on the journey, we laughed so hard tears ran down our cheeks. The guy that laughed longest and most in concert with me that time was fifteen year old Tommy.
We laughed at one fellow’s flatulence; we laughed at another’s fastidiousness; and we laughed just with the joy of our surroundings and the pleasure of one another’s company.
We shared solemn moments, too – stories of past trips and old friends now gone. It was a group who listened raptly to quoted verses of song or poetry and nodded in serious contemplation in response to one another’s deeper thoughts. We shared songs. We shared stories. We shared a deep feeling of well-being, and we definitely shared a love and heart-felt respect for the woods, streams and wildlife which we had come to visit.
And, ultimately we shared individually in one-on-one moments and collectively as a group, a feeling that no matter what happened we could count on one another. That as long as everything was going well we could laugh, but that the moment a more serious need arose, someone would be there to meet it. We looked at one another across that campfire and bonded in the way, I suppose, that people have done since the first caveman figured out how to make a fire, and we realized that our fire was warming more than our bodies; that our hearts and spirits were being warmed, too, by the heat of the fire and by the warm glow of our companionship.
Ultimately, it led me to conclude that for the past few years, while I have been putting so much energy into my anti-war and anti-governmental degradation campaigns, I have been focused too strongly on negativity. And so I am writing this by way of notice that I am going to give myself over to more positive pursuits.
My career as a political blogger is over. I will no longer start my day – every day – finding something to write about in the political sphere. I will let those little people with their huge egos and their bulging bank accounts run this country into the ground as best they can without a comment, a whimper or an essay from this corner.
I will read the news and moan and groan and laugh with my dear Roberta every morning about it, but I will no longer spend an hour or so every day writing about it in this space.
So, my friends, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart if you have been following my thoughts here over the past couple of years and I want to reassure you that I will continue to care as deeply as I always have about your well-being and that of our society. But one of the great realizations I came to during the last four days was that experiences like that trip are of much greater importance to me than the bloviations of world “leaders” and that I, having so far used up more than six decades of my allotted years, would do better to seek out more of what last week-end’s respite from the world of politics offered than to delve into more what the "news" world offers.
I only have one more decade or at best two in which to enjoy the fruits of the natural world so in the future if you want my opinion on what the government is up to, you may have to come outdoors and find me. And whether I will have heard “the news” or not will be an iffy matter. But I’ll be able to tell you what the fish are biting on or, more likely, what they aren’t biting on, and whether or not we are able to solve any of the world’s problems, I guarantee we’ll have a good time, and when the sun goes down, we’ll be thankful.
May the rain fall soft upon your fields and the road rise to meet you and may your god hold you always in the palm of his (or her) hand.
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry
Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi
The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle
Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR
I just got back last night from a four day soul-feast on the autumnal beauty of our Ozark streams. It was a constant reverie; a spirit lifting sip of nature’s nectar; and an exercise in cooperative effort that was as beautiful to behold as the grandeur of the surroundings.
We were an unusual group in many ways – a core group of three who work together appended a fourth who volunteers at their workplace, and by a fifth, known to one of the core through his church. The six and seventh members of our group are related to one of the core by marriage. The point being that many of us were new to one another – not a guaranteed formula for serendipity.
Another unlikely piece of the formula was our ages. We ranged in age from 15 to 65 with the ages 19, 25, 27, 28 and 42 spanning the middle. We also varied widely in our religious preferences – from devout fundamentalist to dedicated agnostic. And yet the central focus of this story is the way we meshed rather than conflicted.
Those who have spent some time camping and floating will know that trips like this can be completely undone by conflicts – no matter the cause. But this group allowed no possibility of such a thing happening. The nineteen year old was there because his little brother really wanted to go, but was obligated to play through the semi-finals of a basketball tournament that didn’t end until late the first night of the trip. Instead of letting his brother miss the trip, Ben left college, then drove an hour to pick Tommy up and bring him to the campsite. They arrived around midnight, bringing with them the spirit of giving and sacrifice that characterized the trip.
It was two days of boys being men and the men being boys. It was caring spirits at play. When it came time to fish, those in their twenties were in the water first, fly-rods swinging in the rhythm of the stream, catching and always releasing the beautiful trout they landed one after another after another; shouting back in forth with gleeful voices filled with awe for the beauty and wonder of their natural surroundings.
The boys weren’t as well equipped for fishing, but there was no sullen pouting. They spent most of their time together exploring the caves, bluffs and gravel bars along the way. At one point I spotted Ben casting from their canoe enabled by Tommy sitting on a large rock holding the canoe’s painter so that the boat was in an ideal fishing position. Earlier, Mike and Kyle had collaborated on a method of teaching this old man a couple of new tricks on line control and before that I had spent a little time with Pete helping him to understand how current carries food and why trout lie where they do. Meanwhile, Matt was quietly observing and enjoying and doing many small things to support the pleasure and well-being of the entire group.
It was people – in love with their surroundings and ultimately with one another -- each making sure that all were comfortable, all were enjoying themselves and each received some recognition and thanks for his contribution. It was men – unafraid of showing caring feelings for nature and for each other. It was boys – no matter whether 15 or 65 years old – at play in the midst of nature’s abundance.
The camp chores were shared – not by dint of lists of who’s responsible for what – but by the fact that whenever a need for something became apparent someone – anyone – would step up and take care of it. The evening meal, for instance, was a fine repast featuring fried river-caught catfish, grilled burgers, hush puppies, and cinnamon rolls hot from the dutch oven all cooked over the coals of an open wood campfire. Afterward, when you’d expect to see a couple boys lolling around in a sated stupor, the first thing I noticed was a fifteen year old washing dishes. No one had told him to do it. No one had even asked who was going to do it. He just did it.
In the heat of the afternoon, when we took a break from fishing (Kyle had slipped down to the riffle below camp and caught 20 to 30 fish single-handedly!), we gathered on the gravel bar to sit in the shade, sip a cold drink, weave cordage from some dogbane Kyle had brought along, and tell fish stories. We had a few less chairs than people, but I noticed that no matter what the activity there always seemed to be a vacant chair so that the old man could have one whenever he wanted it. Again, nobody said anything, but it was apparent that this caring sharing was a part of the group’s unspoken protocol.
There were plenty of occasions to laugh. We laughed at each other’s gaffes. We poked fun at one another. We laughed at each other’s stories, and, most and best of all, we laughed together. We laughed mightily over my fall into the North Fork River two days before this trip began. When I lost my balance again over the campfire on the Eleven Point River gravel bar that was our final home on the journey, we laughed so hard tears ran down our cheeks. The guy that laughed longest and most in concert with me that time was fifteen year old Tommy.
We laughed at one fellow’s flatulence; we laughed at another’s fastidiousness; and we laughed just with the joy of our surroundings and the pleasure of one another’s company.
We shared solemn moments, too – stories of past trips and old friends now gone. It was a group who listened raptly to quoted verses of song or poetry and nodded in serious contemplation in response to one another’s deeper thoughts. We shared songs. We shared stories. We shared a deep feeling of well-being, and we definitely shared a love and heart-felt respect for the woods, streams and wildlife which we had come to visit.
And, ultimately we shared individually in one-on-one moments and collectively as a group, a feeling that no matter what happened we could count on one another. That as long as everything was going well we could laugh, but that the moment a more serious need arose, someone would be there to meet it. We looked at one another across that campfire and bonded in the way, I suppose, that people have done since the first caveman figured out how to make a fire, and we realized that our fire was warming more than our bodies; that our hearts and spirits were being warmed, too, by the heat of the fire and by the warm glow of our companionship.
Ultimately, it led me to conclude that for the past few years, while I have been putting so much energy into my anti-war and anti-governmental degradation campaigns, I have been focused too strongly on negativity. And so I am writing this by way of notice that I am going to give myself over to more positive pursuits.
My career as a political blogger is over. I will no longer start my day – every day – finding something to write about in the political sphere. I will let those little people with their huge egos and their bulging bank accounts run this country into the ground as best they can without a comment, a whimper or an essay from this corner.
I will read the news and moan and groan and laugh with my dear Roberta every morning about it, but I will no longer spend an hour or so every day writing about it in this space.
So, my friends, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart if you have been following my thoughts here over the past couple of years and I want to reassure you that I will continue to care as deeply as I always have about your well-being and that of our society. But one of the great realizations I came to during the last four days was that experiences like that trip are of much greater importance to me than the bloviations of world “leaders” and that I, having so far used up more than six decades of my allotted years, would do better to seek out more of what last week-end’s respite from the world of politics offered than to delve into more what the "news" world offers.
I only have one more decade or at best two in which to enjoy the fruits of the natural world so in the future if you want my opinion on what the government is up to, you may have to come outdoors and find me. And whether I will have heard “the news” or not will be an iffy matter. But I’ll be able to tell you what the fish are biting on or, more likely, what they aren’t biting on, and whether or not we are able to solve any of the world’s problems, I guarantee we’ll have a good time, and when the sun goes down, we’ll be thankful.
May the rain fall soft upon your fields and the road rise to meet you and may your god hold you always in the palm of his (or her) hand.
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry
Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi
The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle
Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR
Friday, October 3, 2008
WE NEED A "SAVE THE CITIZENS" BILL
We don't need to save Wall Street. We need to save the people of the United States from Wall Street's greed.
I hope you are doing your part to get that message across to Congress.
Immediately below, is the message I sent to Congressman Roy Blunt this morning.
We don't need a "Save Wall Street" bill. We need a "Save the Citizens" bill. Essential inclusions in a "save the citizens" bill are:
1. Initial rate mortgages available to families in trouble due to escalating interest rates.
2. No potential for brokerage executives to gain from bailout.
3. Possession of real assets (i.e. not CDSs or MBSs)in return for investment.
4. Timetable for or scheduled committee hearings for re-establishing appropriate regulatory controls over banks and brokerages.
There is also a petition available through which you can support a petition by Congressman DeFazio for a No Bailout Bill. You can sign it by going to: http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/better_bailout/?r=1698&id=1015-1178271-r5hsAEx
You can notify Roy Blunt of your position by going to: http://www.blunt.house.gov/Contact.aspx
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry
Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi
The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle
Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR
I hope you are doing your part to get that message across to Congress.
Immediately below, is the message I sent to Congressman Roy Blunt this morning.
We don't need a "Save Wall Street" bill. We need a "Save the Citizens" bill. Essential inclusions in a "save the citizens" bill are:
1. Initial rate mortgages available to families in trouble due to escalating interest rates.
2. No potential for brokerage executives to gain from bailout.
3. Possession of real assets (i.e. not CDSs or MBSs)in return for investment.
4. Timetable for or scheduled committee hearings for re-establishing appropriate regulatory controls over banks and brokerages.
There is also a petition available through which you can support a petition by Congressman DeFazio for a No Bailout Bill. You can sign it by going to: http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/better_bailout/?r=1698&id=1015-1178271-r5hsAEx
You can notify Roy Blunt of your position by going to: http://www.blunt.house.gov/Contact.aspx
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry
Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi
The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle
Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR
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