The rest of the weekend was fun too. Going back a bit, on Thanksgiving day I took a walk in woodsy Carkeek Park in northwest Seattle and saw wild salmon splashing their way up little Piper's Creek. Chum Salmon. It was the first time i've ever seen wild salmon returning up their native creek. The salmon were actually reintroduced there a few years ago, but they are the real thing. So cool to see. Go nature!
Saturday i returned very briefly (about 10 minutes) to Portland then spent the rest of the weekend at a gathering of people at the home of an exceptionally nice pair of people named Dave and Heather on the Washougal River. There was lots of wonderful food and music making and talk. Great bunch of folks. It fascinates me the way various Portland social circles intersect, connect, overlap. Gets me to wondering, do I have a "crowd" that is "my" group? The social worlds of the Portland I live in are so big and multifarious (yet connected in various ways) that it is sometimes hard to get a handle on.
In my lower moments I wonder who among all these people are my "real" friends. But i mean no offense to you who ARE my wonderful friends. It's just the way my mind works sometimes. Wanting some sense of belonging when it is already as close as life.
Rode up to Seattle early yesterday with Kathy and Sue for Thanksgiving dinner at my folk's house in Ballard (Northwest Seattle.)
After dinner we played RummiKube, a tile game like gin rummy. Fun game.
Today we got a guided tour of Jackson Place Co-housing (east of downtown at the north end of Rainier Valley) and did brief walk-thrus of two others in West Seattle. Kathy and Sue are part of a major co-housing group that is forming in Eugene and are researching various ideas. It was fascinating to see and get a feel for co-housing places that are so much larger than our little Peninsula Park Commons. The common areas and kitchens were enormous and the units were generally townhomes that faced a pleasantly gardened pedestrian walkway. At Jackson Place (population of about 60) they share meals four nights per week. There are enough people participating so that you only have to be on a meal crew every few weeks. They order organic foods in bulk from a distributor named Azure Standard (based in Dufur, OR.) Perishables they order locally.
Anyway, it was fascinating.
If you still think a Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11/2001, read chapter 2 of "The New Pearl Harbor" by David R. Griffin. I was skeptical of claims that it was not an airliner but a missile until I read that chapter. Chapter 1 is good too (about the liklihood that well-placed high explosives are what really brought down the towers.) The author is not a wacko. In fact he is a professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Claremont School of Theology.
Very darkly grey again today, but a balmy south wind blowing.
We live in a civilization entering a time of terminal crisis. Every dystopian nightmare you can think of is now set in motion. But so is every utopia.
Today was very grey and lightly rainy.
Last leaves falling like giant snowflakes in a breeze, fall almost gone into winter.
Don't imagine that there are any limits to your world.
Tri-Met (the transit agency) offered me the job i applied for, Field Outreach and Customer Service (interacting with people at public events, 25 to 35 hrs per week depending on need.) They still need to check my driving record and have me perform a 50 lb. lift test.
The application process was very long but apparently I aced every phase of it.
Sing alongs are great. We had a little one in the PPC common-unit tonight. It was super fun.
The election was stolen. I know it sounds like sour grapes but I have no doubt of it. None at all. I knew something was fishy at the end of election night. Those exit polls that showed Kerry way ahead were not wrong. To be more precise:
The exit polls that showed Kerry ahead have been shown to be accurate in States with traditional paper balloting (and that Kerry did win) like Illinois, but mysteriously
innacurate in states with total or partial electronic ballotting (that he ended up losing) like Florida and Ohio. I noticed this myself immediately and many others have noticed it too. A couple of the Air America hosts (Randi Rhodes and Mike Malloy) are ranting about it now, and God bless 'em.
I can hear the rejoinders: anger and denial are stages of grief, etc. Yes, I know, but there is no doubt in my mind (and my intuition) that this election was stolen on a massive and unprecedented scale. The sheer unbelievable outrageousness of it is precisely what made it possible. It seems so crazily conspiratorial: thus they were able to do it right under everyone's noses, and call laughable anyone who points it out. The software aspects of it were probably quite simple. The Diebold and ESS corporations are both owned by Republicans. To put it starkly: the ballot boxes in States with electronic balloting are owned by corporations owned and controlled by money-bags Republicans. This is an astonishing travesty. A ballot box has for 220 years been a BOX, owned by a non-partisan local public election agency, into which one places a personally marked piece of PAPER, which is then counted. Electronic paperless balloting replaces this with proprietary (and easily manipulatable) software owned by a private (and partisan) corporation. Think about that for a second. It is a complete coup perpetrated upon the foundation of American democracy.
We live in post-America. Let's make the most of it and create something new.