When I said I would gladly vote for John Kerry I was referring to the general election. I plan to vote for Dennis Kucinich in the Oregon primary. He's still on the ballot, so what the heck. He has better stands on the issues and more integrity than the rest of them combined.
I do think it is rather amusing to watch the conniptions of the right-wingers who don't know quite what to do with the fact that the Democratic nominee has an actual real military record. Whereas we all know that the entire upper-level of the Bush cabal lacks any real military experience (with the sole exception of Colin Powell, and we've seen how much influence he yields.)
The emperor not only has no clothes, he is masturbating in front of the crowd.
And all that the official observers and commentators can see is "my, how leaderly, how wise." As if perhaps his lack of fitness for the job, and the scope of the disasters he has unleashed, is so great, so enormous, that a kind of instant denial sets in and discussion is immediately spun into a light froth of "President reiterates position" and other vanilla tautologies.
I mean listen, did a single one of the mainstream newspapers or media outlets report the obvious truth about the recent news conference? That Mr. Bush did not answer a single question, and in fact was embarassing to watch or listen to, a broken record with no apparent capacity for extemporaneous thought and verbalization (at least on matters more complex than the umpteenth reiteration of "evildoers" and "our brave young soldiers.") Folksy inarticulateness is one thing, but the sheer unfitness of this man for the office he holds is painfully apparent to anyone outside the Bush Kool-Aide Club. Is it not the hallmark of a bona-fide Jim Jonesian cult leader that they are absolutely incapable of admitting human error, even though anyone outside their circle can see plainly that they are leading their glazed-eyed throng into a long trainwreck of institutional breakdown, human tradgedy, and death?
Listen, I'll admit Kerry wouldn't have been my personal choice to challenge Bush, but for this reason alone it is vitally important that he become the next president: the Supreme Court and the ultimate fate of Roe v. Wade and other important matters. Whoever is president in the next several years will get to appoint possibly up to several new justices to the Supreme Court. To say nothing of other federal judgeships and the whole institutional culture and intent of the executive branch and all of its departments. The Bush presidency is such a godawful travesty that almost anything would be an improvement. America may now be an empire, but it is a lucky time in history when a citizen can cast a vote for emperor. This is a vote that could make a difference between disaster and renewed hope for decency. Call me naive, but I will very gladly vote for John Kerry.
In News of Me, nothing worldshaking. Last weekend was great fun. Among other things, helped at a garden work party, rode in the highly successful first annual Bunny on a Bike Ride (I played a role in helping scope out the route and transporting the carrots) and co-hosted with my housemate Babs a very nice Easter Potluck and party. It was also my sister kathy's birthday so I made frosted brownies and we sang. I also made two apple pies and a Risotto hotdish. My 40 day vegetarianism is over, though it continues to an extent. I'll write sometime about my non-absolutist philosophy of being vegetarian. Okay, here it is in a nutshell. Take 3 people: a total vegetarian (meat at zero meals per day and week,) a total American-style meat eater (meat at least 2 meals per day or 14 to 20 meals per week, not counting beef-jerky or slim-jim snacks,) and me ( meat approximately one meal every other day or about 5 meals per week.) Which of the first two people do I have more in common with? Obviously the vegetarian, even though I am not "a" vegetarian. People get so caught up in nouns and labels. The world is more than binary units. It is evident to me that I eat largely vegetarian (as an adverb) despite not being "a" vegetarian.
This is neat: I am the current Featured Tub Artist at the online Bathtub Museum, www.bathtubmuseum.org. The Bathtub Museum is the creation of Carye Bye, Portland artist (originally from Minneapolis) and among other things a collector of all kinds of images of bathtubs. Check out the site, it is a lot of fun.
Carye is the creator of the "Bunny on a Bike" image which adorns t-shirts and greeting cards. This coming Sunday April 11 (Easter) she is leading the first annual "Bunny on a Bike Ride" ride. It starts at 2:00 PM at the Community Cycling Center at 17th and NE Alberta, will last about 2 hours including a couple Bunny-related stops. Should be lots of fun, so come along!
The most interesting thing recently was last Saturday, for the first time I performed "professional" Tarot card readings. The occasion was a mini-carnival at Nocturnal (18th and SE Burnside) to benefit PEAR, a homeless youth advocacy organization. I'm not deeply experienced with tarot, but enough so that I am familiar with the meanings of most of the cards by sight. I did 3-card mini readings for 1 dollar, which is cheap compared to the pros but I'm still learning on the overall interpretation of a spread. It's a very long curve, but I enjoy it. Tarot cards are interesting things, the way they are so often dead-on accurate. I don't know how to explain it except to say that there are many unexpected connections between things in this world. Interior and exterior realities. The cards themselves are a fairly comprehensive catalog of human psycho-social reality, which is really why they are so useful and fascinating.
Somehow I havn't been to the coast since I bicycled away from it at Ventura last May, and although poetically it would have better to bike back to it again, my jones for the surf and sand and rocks was too hard to wait another day so I hopped into the Justy to give it a proper test and drove to Cannon Beach and Ecola State Park. My original plan was to spend a night or two at the walk-in camping at Oswald West State Park, but I've been there before and when i got to Cannon Beach I looked in the book and saw there is a hiker campsite 1.6 miles walk up into Tillamook Head. You start from Indian Beach and walk up along the ridge and cliffs and Sitka Spruce woods. At the hiker camp there are 3 newly constructed open-front shelters but i pitched my tent anyway, more airy that way. At the viewpoint I met my fellow campers, two guys named Richard and Robert who work in a printing plant in Wilsonville or somewhere. They were super nice, shared their campfire and fed me tons of great food, beer, told stories and Richard recited several hilarious poems. It's good to have rambling conversations with people who you might never encounter in your Inner Portland Bubble World.
The sunset scene was one of those scripted to perfection ones like last year at Pigeon Point, CA: perfectly clear, with (and i'm not lying) a bald eagle soaring a stones's throw out from us and a whale spouting simultaneously as the sun sank bright orange toward the horizon.
After hiking out I headed south and hiked up Neahkanie Mountain, which i've been meaning to do for ages. I took the 2 mile (each way) route from the edge of 101 just south of Oswald West park. The view at the top is of many miles of Coast Range and long sandy shore and waves south to Cape Lookout and beyond. Plus straight below at the base of the mountain is the ugliest scar of a subdivision i've seen in awhile. "Hey, let's F*#% with everyone else's view so we can see the ocean from our gazillion square foot trophy prisons!" But don't let that dissuade you from the hike, it is worthwhile.
Afterwards I scrambled down to a spectacular cliff-edge above the crashing waves and encountered a group of three eager-beaver young Christians from the Ecola Bible College in Cannon Beach. They were out enjoying nature but couldn't resist broaching the subject of where I might go if the cliff collapsed right now, Heaven or Hell. I engaged them in conversation for the better part of an hour, and if nothing else I introduced them to the word "tautology" and the idea that evolution, rather than contradicting the belief that God created the world, could be the means by which God continues to shape the world.