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ses but smaller families more conveniences but less time many of us know instinctively that happiness does not come with things but we also feel trapped in the hectic and seemingly necessary pace of our lives and we were quite literally trapped when the snowstorm came along and we were suddenly cut off from our normal routines yet a lot of us still yearn for something different than those routines that something different can come ironically from the very place we re so often trying to leave your place your little corner of the planet the place you live and the earth and land and neighbors right around you the new agrarian and local food movements talk often about developing a sense of place about a respect and responsibility for and enjoyment of the area and the earth where you live it doesn t have to be much earth as the growing movement of urban agriculture is proving it s just where you are although it can take some getting used to given how we ve been conditioned the pleasures and benefits of place are very real and provide a satisfaction and happiness a true contentment that are hard to beat it s not for nothing that dorothy in the wizard of oz got back to her heart s desires by repeating there s no place like home and it s no coincidence the words grounded and down to earth describe people we really like to be around people we d want to be our friends whether we like it or not everything from energy shortages to more frequent and extreme weather events will force us into this situation more and more in the future to live closer to home a little slower and a little more simply so why not learn to enjoy it now it really is a better way to live for as someone wiser than i once noted no one dies wishing they d spent more time in the office or in a mall for that matter posted in uncategorized leave a comment will rogers was right february 4 2010 the following article appears in the february issue of the takoma park silver spring voice i m not a member of any organized political party i m a democrat it s close to a hundred years since legendary american humorist will rogers uttered his famous remark but it has never been more true the shining pinnacle of the democrats disorganization was the loss last month of the late great ted kennedy s senate seat in massachusetts in terms of competence losing a filibuster proof majority in the senate in less than one year and doing it in massachusetts one of the most liberal and consistently democratic states in the union is the political equivalent of not being able to hit the broad side of a barn with a basketball true to form the democratic leadership didn t even see this one coming until a few weeks before the election since their candidate at one point held a 30 point lead in the polls how do you lose a 30 point lead in massachusetts well adding to the bitter irony was the fact that the loss was to a large degree the result of the democratic party s handling of health care the issue nearest and dearest to sen kennedy s heart republican scott brown campaigned vigorously as the the 41st vote needed to successfully filibuster i e kill any health care bill in the senate books will no doubt be written about the bungling of health care whether it was starting as democrats often do with a compromise even president obama acknowledged single payer made the most sense their inability to control the debate during months of tea party protests and town hall shouting fests the string of broken promises health care by august public option debate to be televised on c span or the backroom deals with drug and insurance companies the democrats managed to take a wildly popular and populist issue and turn it into a 2 000 page political albatross this is nothing against the many many democrats out there in the voice readership i ve voted for plenty of em as you have and most of my friends are democrats more than a couple of them elected officials but there is something about national level politics that turns democrats into the keystone cops just as it has turned the republicans into a party of rabid anti government global warming deniers who would rather see the country collapse than concede an inch of ground to the supposedly governing party again no offense to my republican friends remarkably george w bush never had the congressional majorities that democrats now hold during his 8 year reign of terror er i mean presidency but that didn t stop him from getting virtually everything he wanted whether it was wars supreme court justices or tax cuts for the wealthy why is it that the republicans can now thwart anything president obama wants or claims to want with only 41 votes in the senate could it have anything to do with the fact that many national democrats have more in common with republicans than they let on was health care reform really advanced by having democratic committee chairmen who take millions from the insurance industry or could it be that republicans have spent years purging members who didn t follow the party line while democrats have spent the same time diluting their platform by moving to a mythical center running any candidate they thought could win regardless of what they believed indeed many of them including the president are already toning down or shifting their legislative agenda in the face of this national referendum delivered in massachusetts the president s mild state of the union urging notwithstanding national health care reform is dead everyone understands that if the democrats couldn t pass a heavily watered down thoroughly compromised health care bill with a filibuster proof majority in the senate what is the chance they will do it without one and in the face of a highly disciplined republican party that has made clear its intentions to scuttle any major democratic initiative what are the chances now for a real jobs bill or for any semblance of a bill to address climate change could it get any worse well actually it could and it did when just a few days after the massachusetts debacle the supreme court made its worst decision since the dred scott case in citizens united vs fec the court summarily dismissed decades of precedent on campaign finance not to mention all common sense and followed the delirious fiction that corporations have the same rights as actual human beings in ruling as unconstitutional most restrictions on corporations ability to spend money on political campaigns this is great news for goldman sachs monsanto the oil and coal companies the health insurance industry pharmaceuticals or any other wealthy corporations that wish to further bend federal policy for their profit for the majority of americans who believed wealthy corporate interests already had too much influence in our government it s an unmitigated disaster personally i had long since grown tired of being dunned by moveon each time a new issue came up and they wanted my money to do battle with corporate lobbyists apparently asking democrats to pass a public financing bill for federal elections or to simply stop inviting lobbyists into their offices was too much like everyone else moveon and the democrats understand this new court decision will open the floodgates of corporate money in the 2010 election and most of that money will flow to republicans so only now a day late and quite a few dollars short they are ginning up some response to reign in corporate contributions ironically the democrats have put some of their own fundraisers in charge of the effort anyone want to bet this will turn out any different than health care it s hard to know what to do with the reality of a massively dysfunctional national government on some issues at least we can do for ourselves locally what the federal government will not for example we can invest in local credit unions if congress cannot control the wall st banks we can grow much of our own food if there is no federal alternative to the health and environment destroying practices of industrial agriculture in fact as small mart revolutionary michael shuman noted in last month s voice we could and should be producing many of our own commodities locally including energy which is all to the good because when it comes to depending on our national government to solve our problems well it s probably best to keep your sense of humor to quote will rogers again there s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you let s just hope we can all still laugh this time next year posted in uncategorized leave a comment howard zinn rest in peace january 29 2010 there is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people howard zinn one of the great progressive historians activists and human beings of the late 20th century died yesterday he was 87 years old many people know howard zinn or have at least heard of him in connection with his seminal work a people s history of the united states the book was a revelation to me in a world where we are taught about presidents and generals and business tycoons here was a book that set all of that on its head and told u s history through the eyes of ordinary and usually oppressed people women immigrants farmers slaves indians low wage workers minorities those living in poverty etc what quickly became clear and i can only assume this was zinn s major point is that history is not always what we ve been taught in school in fact it rarely is and that the great advances in human social progress have come about not because of the actions of presidents and generals but precisely because of the actions both individual and collective of the persons that our history books tend to ignore in their narratives confined to the rich and powerful howard zinn was an enthusiastic bombardier in world war ii only later did he come to understand and regret what he had done and to become a fervent and lifelong opponent of war but the struggle against war was only one of his passions he enthusiastically supported and joined in the struggle for civil rights he taught alice walker and other young black women in spellman college in atlanta in the 1950 s eventually being fired for supporting their activism women s rights workers rights you name it if it was a fight for equality freedom and human dignity you could count on howard zinn to be involved and as the stories of these struggles became intertwined with the history that zinn wrote it also became clear that he understood the law and it s relation to human progress more clearly than any other author thinker or activist i ve ever encountered the law he realized was not some holy writ it was written by people almost always men and white men in this country who were more often than not writing it for the benefit of powerful vested interests his opinion was that laws should be obeyed when they functioned in the service of human rights and dignity and that when they were not they should be vigorously opposed with one s body if necessary he was a vocal proponent and practitioner of nonviolent civil disobedience resistance noting in another quote hanging in my office protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy it is absolutely essential to it as you might guess zinn s attitude and behavior ruffled more than few feathers in academia some fellow historians considered him an undisciplined polemicist and agitator despite the well researched and primary source filled nature of books like a people s history and john silber former president of boston university where zinn taught and agitated for many years cited him as an example of teachers who poison the well of academe and so it should be that those clinging to power attack those who challenge that power and the status quo silber s comments remind of the saying that the greatest compliment old folks can pay to a younger generation s music is when your parents scream at you to turn that sh t off zinn was in a class by himself in the words of noam chomsky zinn s writings simply changed perspective and understanding for a whole generation he s changed the conscience of america in a highly constructive way i really can t think of anyone i can compare him to in this respect but above all for zinn it was always about the ordinary person fighting for dignity and human rights i still choke up and get a chill down my spine when i recall his account of one of many civil rights battles in the south he participated in and documented when a 9 year old black boy who had been arrested was asked for his name by the police and answered simply freedom may howard zinn be long remembered and may he be remembered as he would want to be by the activism of people fighting for a better world if you are interested in reading more of howard zinn he never wrote a bad book you can pick up any one of them and start reading in any place and your life will be enriched his autobiography you can t be neutral on a moving train is a great short read in addition you might want to check out this obituary in the boston globe or this short obit from the nation goodbye howard zinn which includes a few video clips of zinn speaking and in recognition of last night s state of the union speech here is zinn s concise and cogent analysis of president obama after his first year printed just a couple weeks ago in the nation magazine i ve been searching hard for a highlight the only thing that comes close is some of obama s rhetoric i don t see any kind of a highlight in his actions and policies as far as disappointments i wasn t terribly disappointed because i didn t expect that much i expected him to be a traditional democratic president on foreign policy that s hardly any different from a republican as nationalist expansionist imperial and warlike so in that sense there s no expectation and no disappointment on domestic policy traditionally democratic presidents are more reformist closer to the labor movement more willing to pass legislation on behalf of ordinary people and that s been true of obama but democratic reforms have also been limited cautious obama s no exception on healthcare for example he starts out with a compromise and when you start out with a compromise you end with a compromise of a compromise which is where we are now i thought that in the area of constitutional rights he would be better than he has been that s the greatest disappointment because obama went to harvard law school and is presumably dedicated to constitutional rights but he becomes president and he s not making any significant step away from bush policies posted in uncategorized leave a comment our silly silly war on terrorism january 8 2010 life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh george bernard shaw i thought of this quote while reading recent dispatches from the war on terror even during our holidays the horror of people dying and being terrorized often at the hands of our own government cont...