Something borrowed

A friend pointed me to this, and I share it with you.

"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take "everyone on Earth" to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these " to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D

The whole of it is Me estimados, do not lose hope.

Something blue

I took part in a dissolution today.

A Friend died recently. She was a friend of Maia's, and tried to include me, when others seemed to leave me out. Regrettably we never got much chance to spend time together, and in the last few months, I didn't intrude (though I don't think Anne would have minded much, but Maia needed the together time, more than it seemed I needed to spend time with Anne, who was dealing with her own concerns).

Today her children started selling off her things. A three story house, small in dimension, large in quantity off stuff. Wonderful stuff, 71 years worth of a life, collected under her roof. Books, glasses, widgets, model firetrucks (she was a great can of fires and firefighters) musical instruments, furniture, jewelry, rocks, tarot cards, games, toys, kaleidescopes, camping gear, art and I know not what else.

My fmaily owns a bookstore. I've been selling books since I was thirteen. I have been a, sometimes more; sometimes less, ative SF fan for the past 25 years. Anne had a a lot of SF. Names I know, people I know. Series I didn't realise I had read so many of (all the Peter Whimsey stories, most of the Darkover stories (up until about '82 anyway). Familiar names; friends. Some of those friends are authors I know well, some are authors of whom I have merely made acquaintance. Lots of those friends were books I know and love. Some of which are hard to find.

Picking through the leftovers of a life tells one a lot about someone. The passions which drove them, the heat of their youth, the mellow coals of their elder years (taken from the age of the books, which is where I spent most of the day, sitting in an upstairs drawing room, reading a Nero Wolfe novel (Father Hunt)and watching people picking over treasures, for sale at 50 cents a piece.

And I saw something ugly. A third year law student, from across the street, was trying to persuade her sons to keep the house, or sell it to him, so it the neighbourhoods demographic could be taken advantage of. There is rent control, but a lot of students. He wanted to manage the house for them, as an upscale tenement. This is a beautiful house, twenties, sort of Calif. bungalow (the area is the West Adams District of Los Angeles) and he wants to get 12 boarders into it, at $750 each, per month.

He spent hours (as he picked through books to resell them, it annoyed me that he got a copy of the Rumpole omnibus before I saw it. I was dealing with SF and didn't get to the mystery room until later) talking this up. Again, and again, from every angle he could see to pitch it.

But, for all that Anne's goods are going to the four winds (which would, I think, not bother her much, so long as they go to people who will appreciate them; and the songs her children were asking were a sort of charity... a futon couch bed for $25) she left a legacy... after he left, they washed their hands of him, not quite shaking the dust from their feet, as Chris put it, "I couldn't do that, I have mirrors in my house."

Something angry. olitical, personal embarrassing.

Feel free to comment, but be aware you do so at your peril.

I just lost my cool. It's been a hard couple of days. I am pondering a couple of major changes in my life, which is stress. I was drafted to the estate sale at the last minute, and did it out of duty, not real desire.

I've had little sleep, for the past two days and then...

The guys here (I came down to do some gaming) started talking about the Marines shooting injured people in Falluja. I happen to have stong opinions about it. There are mitigating circumstances, but that is all they are. Fear, anger etc. don't give one a by. A crime of passion is still a crime.

The response to this was people who accuse me of having a lack of moral fibre, because I disagree on things relating to religion, engaging in moral relativism. See, the Marines were scared, and some people had been faking dead, when they were only injured, so they could kill attack Marines, so that made it not only understandable, but correct to shoot anyone who looked funny.

That sort of thing irritates me. Having this soft, civilian fuck, who has never had spent any real time in a place where life and death were actualy at stake tell me, not once, not twice, but three times, that I didn't understand what it was like, well I lost it.

Screaming at him that I most certainly did. No content. No reason. No explanation that he was being relativistic (he'd already discounted the facts, and was saying that if the men hadn't left before the Marines stopped letting them (some three weeks before the attack started) then they deserved to get killed, even though if the situation were reversed, he'd be shooting at people who acted like we did.

Nope. I was just yelling that I had been there. I had to be shut up. Told to chill. Which was right. I was over the line in the level of my reponse.

I don't think I was wrong, and I'm not sorry for laying into the him. I am sorry I blew up. I am even sorrier that I am in that contained mode I was in when I was fresh out of theater.

Terry is not a happy camper right now.

Politics: at a slight remove

Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo pointed me to this

"Hereinafter, notwithstanding any other provision of law governing the disclosure of income tax returns or return information, upon written request of the Chairman of the House or Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service shall allow agents designated by such Chairman access to Internal Revenue Service facilities and any tax returns or return information contained therein."

It seems this was added by Rep. Istook(R-Oklahoma). The Dems caught it right at the wire.

Designee. That could be me, it could be the political opponent in the next election (because this isn't just your last return, it's any and all)

What could he have wanted it for? I don't buy the argument that it was slipped in by mistake. These things have to be written by people.