Thought for the day - December 5-99

Subject: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Dec 99 - 01:10 AM

In light of this week's momentous events in Seattle, I offer Meditation by Curly Fletcher, who also wrote the Strawberry Roan. This is from a book he published in 1931.

MEDITATION

The soft wind sways the whispering grass,
The sun sinks low o'er the Western pass;
As a coyote mingles his dismal howl,
With the sad, sweet notes of a lone hoot owl.

A hawk soars lazily up on high
A speck of black on a crimson sky,
As a nightingale croons his evening song,
A grey wolf slinks through the shawdows long.

The shadows deepen; then rising moon,
With its silvery radiance all too soon
Dispels the darkness and brings to view
The myriad things of the night anew.

A chuckling porcupine wends his way
To his feeding ground, 'ere the break of day;
A mighty stag comes browsing on,
With a graceful doe and a timid fawn.

Then a sadness grips you like a pall
In the silvery gloom where the shadows fall;
Then you wonder why you feel depressed;
Though you are alone, you have not guessed.

"Tis because you are a poacher there,
Unclean, where nature's breast lies bare,
And you would this spot so sweet, so grand,
Might remain untarnished by human hand.

But e'en this spot shall see the day
When it will fall the easy prey,
Of lust and greed, and in the place
Where yon pine sways in supple grace
An axe-scarred stump will stand, instead,
Bowing in shame its branchless head,
And down the rivers will float the spoils,
All helpless victims to human toils.

The drumming grouse will seek in vain
For the cozy coverts to nest again.
The quaking aspens will tremble ashamed
For the towering forests so torn and maimed.
The work of aeons will fall away
To the reaper's stroke in a single day,
Though the future ages may never mend
The scars of greed till the end of end.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 05 Dec 99 - 01:27 AM

And he couldn't have had any notion of how the rape of the earth would would accelerate: people are in a mad rush to exploit what is left before someone else beats them to it. We'll survive year 2K, but will we last for another century?

--seed

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: Night Owl
Date: 05 Dec 99 - 01:42 AM

Thank you Kat.....the writing captures why, when I drive around here, sometimes I just.....cry......for what was...once.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 05 Dec 99 - 04:21 PM

When I first move to California--to Vallejo--the drive to San Francisco was through hills that in winter and spring were green and covered with wildflowers and when they turned brown (golden) in summer were turned by the divine sculptor, the late afternoon sun, to beautiful voluptuous flesh--reminiscent of Edward Weston's images of green peppers, etc. Now they are covered with houses and shopping centers and the smell of the smog overpowers the lowtide smell of the remaining wetlands around the bay. Head northeast of Vallejo you can still a stretch of these hills until you break into the Sacramento valley at Vacaville: what was once glorious farmland is now Factory Outlets, more subdivisions, and highway businesses. Finally, when you pass Davis, the farms appear again--until you cross the Sacramento River into the state capitol where urban sprawl is so odious that it took the completion of the freeway bypasses to get rid of smog worse than that in Los Angeles. Your journey continues east for another fifty miles of the outskirts of Sacramento before you finally reach the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and its forests which will soon be recycled into newspapers and Christmas catalogs.

--seed

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 05 Dec 99 - 08:24 PM

moved, dummy. proughfrede.

--seed

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: Blue Moon Wilson
Date: 05 Dec 99 - 09:15 PM

After spending this week trying to call some attention to the side of the citizens, I got into some thought about this myself.

Gandi said "If you want the world to change, you must first model how you want it to change." Was this how the protesters want the world to be? For a lot, the answer's no! But I heard an interview today with a protester who replied to the queston of how he felt about the destruction up here that he was happy and he thought it was well justified.

I couldn't disagree with that more. I don't supprot the WTO in any way, but why should independant shops suffer for what has come down to nothing? I mean, nothing changed! The WTO just couldn't agree on an agenda for there next meeting! They didn't really need to have this meeting. That wasn't worth the ten thousand dollars it will cost the city.

Just my thoughts!

BMW (Benjamin)

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Dec 99 - 10:36 PM

The Wayfarer

The beauty of the world has made me sad.
This beauty that will pass.

Sometimes my heart has shaken with great joy
to see a leaping squirrel on a tree
or a red ladybird upon a stalk.
Or little rabbits, in a field at evening,
lit by a slanty sun.

Or some green hill, where shadows drifted by,
some quiet hill, where mountainy man has sown, and soon will reap, near to the gate of heaven.

Or little children with bare feet
upon the sands of some ebbed sea, or playing in the streets
of little towns in Connacht.

Things young and happy.

And then my heart has told me -
these will pass,
will pass and change,
will die and be no more.

Things bright, and green.
Things young, and happy.

And I have gone upon my way, sorrowful.

That is by Padraig Pearse. The poem at the top of the thread reminded me of it. And when I went to check the lines, from a suberb reading by Milo O'Shea on a record in 1967, I was reminded that it's one of the very few poems that can be relied on to bring me to tears.

And it makes it easier to understand how great love can lead to people doing terrible things - in Dublin 1916, or to a vastly lesser extent, in Seattle 1999, and that some of the roots of Yeats' "Terrible beauty" do not lie far away from ther concerns that moved people in Seattle.

We'd all better be very careful not to allow ourselves to be carried to places we don't want to go to.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Dec 99 - 11:59 PM

That is beautiful, Kevin. Thanks for posting it.

Benjamin, my initial posting of this thread was not meant as a comment for or against what happened in your city. It was merely meant to show that people have been concerned about what humankind does to the environment for a long time. That's all. Here's an old cowboy, salt of the earth type of guy, back in the 1930's loving the land and nature and concerned about human destruction and greed.

kat

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: Benjamin
Date: 06 Dec 99 - 05:41 PM

Sorry to try to drag that arguement from the WTO thread. I was thinking of what that ONE protester said in light to that Gandi quote and just had to vent my thoughts. I must admit I put a different spin on the topic. My appologies for that!

I guess that was my thought for the day. We ALL want the world in some way to change. In light of the Gandi quote ("If we want the world to change, we must first model how we want it to change!) How do we want the world to change?

BMW

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Dec 99 - 06:37 PM

This thread, if M'Catters Ruled the World should get us started on your question, BMW. Enjoy!

kat

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: Blue Moon Wilson
Date: 07 Dec 99 - 03:05 AM

Kat, thanks for bringing up that thread. But that doesn't answer my thought.

The Gandi quote says that we should model the way we want the world to be if we want it to change (sure, I rephrased it, but I believe that is what it means).

My queston (and this should be a separate thread probably) is in two parts I guess. 1) How do you want the world to change? 2) How are you modeling what you want to change?

It doesn't nesicarily mean what you would do if you were a political leader. Gandi wasn't, Rev. Martin Luther King wasn't, Jesus wasn't a political leader. They all changed the world. What do you want to do to change it?

Dec. 5 is getting old now, but it would be interesting to get some answers to this.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Dec 99 - 10:13 AM

Dear Blue Moon,

You are right, we'd get more answers etc. if you start separate threads. So...go ye forth etc.**BG**

Prsonally? I would somehow, in a Utopian kind of way, get rid of all the long-range weapons, that includes anything one can kill with, without being up close and personal. NOT that I want to preserve any weapons, either. I just can't see getting rid of all knives, umbrella sticks, etc.

What am I doing about it? Sold all the guns we used to have in 1983, except for an almost antique 22 rifle of my grandad's.

The other thing I would do and am doing, is work for acceptance of diversity. I am doing that by working through a non-profit human rights org. here and through them, reaching out to those who may feel fear and disenfranchised in the daily process of society.

kat

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: Peter T.
Date: 07 Dec 99 - 10:29 AM

Amazing poem by C. Fletcher -- I will use it. Thanks Kat.
I don't mean to be picky, but I can't imagine Gandhi said the quote as quoted. He would not have used a word like "model" (90's jargon). Are you sure it is right? (He might have said we should imagine it first). I have read many volumes of Gandhi in my time, and never run across language like that. I am happy to be corrected, but it is important not to smuussh (as my sister says) this stuff.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: Benjamin
Date: 07 Dec 99 - 01:16 PM

Peter, I don't know if it was said in english. I could be translated. However, imanginge would not work in the quote. The word model is used as the word do. What do you want to see people do differently? Are you modeling or doing it differently? Honestly, I found the quote on the wall of a practice room in my school. Some kid had written it down and colored a piture. It might not be word for word, but I think it gets the point across.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: Ringer
Date: 07 Dec 99 - 01:29 PM

And anyway, even if the quote is incorrect, does that invalidate everything said in this thread?

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: Peter T.
Date: 07 Dec 99 - 02:19 PM

Well, we have lived through a century of people who wanted to "remodel" the world. Modelling means, as far as I know, developing a systematic and dynamic structure of an alternative world. That is different from certain other kinds of imagining -- for example, considering ways in which people might alter their basic orientation (e.g. recasting their approach to nature or personal relations). That is also different from bringing people together to negotiate a better world together. Or changing the world person by person. I don't know which of the above I advocate, but I am a modeller, and I am wary of people who develop models and then set out to change the world. So (to me anyway) it is important.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Dec 99 - 07:43 PM

"Take your dreams for reality."

"Be realistic, demand the impossible."

"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly."

Three good guidelines.The first two are from Paris 1968; the third is Chesterton.

My favourite Gandhi quote, I think, is when he was asked what he thought of western Civilisation. He said he thought it would be a very good idea.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - December 5-99
From: Benjamin
Date: 08 Dec 99 - 02:58 AM

Peter,

I believe the word "model" in this quote means to put into practice and set an expample. ie. If you want to see the world feeding the hungry, you might put time in at local food banks.

BMW