Colleen sends a poem and a do-it-yourself mutant snowflake.

Ode To Snow…

Pristine white there is no sun

No golden photon to emblazen

Absolute all color pure reflection

It blinds my every rod and cone

Blue cup clutched I step into that light

Crunched beneath the waver of my boot

Leaving broken edges no less bright

Behind me

Rustling snow from every branch

Hardly waiting for my retreat

The brave ones take the chance

Cardinal red splashed

Black grey junco

Cluster at the feeder

Shards of yellow bill

Eagerly pecked between snowflakes

I stand, breath white on white

As

Seed hulls scatter at my feet

I ponder thus:

St. Francis never had a plastic cup

Nor plastic sack of seed

Nor heated room to venture forth from

Still – when I fill the feeder

No less wonder makes my moment

Free from that disgust

That drains the living not connected

By the bridge of life

To Life

L’Chaim

The Foreclosures of the Apocalypse by guest artist Colleen Nelson

Funny how the housing crisis seems to have disappeared from the front page.  I suppose that means everyone’s back in their house, right?

Of course, “housing crisis” is a misnomer.  The houses were fine.  They just stood there, ready to keep people warm and dry.

If the houses were fine, where was the crisis?  In the made-up stuff.  We call it finance, politics.  It’s all belief, a collective agreement to imagine a binding web, a collective imagining that escapes our control, fantasy stuff.  We’d call it make-believe if we saw it clearly.  “Let’s play Capitalism!”  But it takes on a life of its own.  We don’t know how to stop it.  So every day, its consequences are no less than life and death.

Nation: Beware what you imagine.

“Dirty Laundry” by special guest artist Colleen Nelson.

A lot has happened since we first started bloviating about this.  Depending on your view of Obama, he either a) Tried to sanitize the situation by releasing the memos but promising not to prosecute CIA agents who tortured “in good faith” (!!!) or b) knew that once the memos were out, the shit would hit the fan wthout it looking like he threw it.  Regardless of his intentions, the shit has hit the fan, and a good thing, too.  We are, finally, a nation where this kind of shit will not stay swept under the rug and good for us!

I’d like to put in my 2 cents here: The anti-investigation crowd is framing this as “looking forward” vs. “retribution”.  This is pure spin.  If you like it, you call it “justice” or “accountability”.  If you don’t like it, you call it “retribution.”  The point is not retribution — as emotionally satisfying as that might be.  The point is deterrence.   And deterrence is “looking forward”.  It’s looking forward to 2017 or 2035 when some yet-unkown President is once again tempted to grab un-Constitutional powers.  I want him (or her) and his henchmen (or women) to stop and think.  I want them all to think, “Wait a minute.  We could go to jail for this.”  That, my friends, is looking forward.