11 September 2011. Yesterday, We Recharged Our Batteries

Caprilands Herb Farm in North Coventry CT… from an old postcard…

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Nicky and I were in need of some serious “recharging”. Times have been “tough” for us… Nicky’s been out of work, and all that… but I have to say that we’re still getting by; there are many worse off than we are, we still have our apartment, and we still have our dignity. We set off on a “quest” yesterday… we were on the search for Caprilands Herb Farm in Coventry… Nicky remembered going out there some thirty years ago. It’s down in Connecticut, past Hartford, so, we motored out east, and got on the Mass Pike. At Springfield, we turned south on 91, then, the fun stated… we missed our turn onto 84, so, we had to backtrack, and we got the proper exit. It was simple going onwards to 384 and 44, but (of course) you know that “chance” had its inevitable hand in things. I’d left my written instructions home (natch), so, we were at sea how to make the final connections (thank God, I remembered that the final turn was at “Silver Street”)… we asked at two locations, got the right intel, and fund ourselves at the Farm. There had been damage from the recent storms, and (later on) the fellow there told us that the power had been out for four days.

There were two vintage Jaguars parked in the driveway, and a beat-up Land Rover (that had been used in the First Gulf War by a news correspondent), too. When we got behind the house, the smell of herbs was heavy in the air. Two orange cats greeted us, and, finally, an older fellow and two dogs showed up (along with Ludwig, a black cat). I must say that we had a pleasant conversation for nearly an hour… we shared some common interests. For instance, I found out that Adelma Grenier Simmons, the late owner of the farm (she died in 1997) was a lover of Russian opera. She named some of her dogs “Natasha”, “Ivan”, and other Russian names. In fact, Eddie (the fellow I talked to) told me that when a tree in front of the house leaned over in the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, he said that she told him that she thought that it looked like the peasants in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina marching forward. To say the least, a pleasant time was had by all… one of the things that we laughed about was the “Holy Trinity” of Vienna… Richard Tauber, Johann Strauss, and Franz Lehár. Eddie said that the Viennese would dance through the End of the World… isn’t that a fact!

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Here’s some music of the Viennese “Holy Trinity”… Richard Tauber…

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Johann Strauss II “the Waltz King”…

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Fritz Wunderlich singing Franz Lehár…

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with a bonus piece by Johann Strauss I, Radetzky Marsch, which is the concluding piece for every New Year’s Gala of the Wiener Philharmoniker, here conducted by the late great Herbert von Karajan in 1987…

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It took us about two hours driving time each way… what with stops on the way and an hour spent at the farm, we were away for eight hours. To say the least, “home” looked very good indeed! It was a lovely motor through green and lush countryside… it’s a joy to drink it all in… I was hungry for such, I’ve got to say. You’ve got to connect with the “really real”… it keeps you grounded and centred. You can tell the people who only “live in their heads”… they believe in the oddest notions and they REFUSE to accept reality… reality is like a storm… you can try to ignore it, but you can’t hide from its effects. If you don’t take shelter, you get swept away, and that’s that. Think on that.

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 11 September 2011

Albany NY

11 September 2011. Reflections from an Operative Who Left the Cult

Hope

John de Rosier

2010

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I got the following link from a well-spoken friend whom I respect, even though we don’t agree all the time… that’s the best kind of friend to have, by the way. DO read:

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

Note these:

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant. …

John P Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:

“Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today’s Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery”. …

It was not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors’ looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At “Washington spending”… which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade’s corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest. …

As for what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:

1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors.
2. They worship at the altar of Mars.
3. Give me that old time “religion”. …

It hardly seems conceivable that a Republican could have written the following:

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labour laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid”. That was President Eisenhower, writing to his brother Edgar in 1954.

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I hope that the snippets above motivate you to read the rest… it’s a good read. I know that God is good… He’s sent me good friends who, often enough, are the spark for more than one of my inspirations.

Thank You…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 11 September 2011

Albany NY

11 September 2011. The East African Famine… It’s Not Just in Somalia Anymore

Somali refugees bury a young famine victim in a camp in Ethiopia…

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Here’s a young victim in Kenya…

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The famine in East Africa‘s still raging… the US still insists on spending billions for bombs and peanuts for famine relief. Both sides of the political/media duopoly are involved… but the Republican Party is on record as favouring spending on bombs rather than for peaceful social-justice projects. This should tell you what to do next November…

BMD

11 September 2011. Here’s “Jayzuss”… the “God” of Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin… NO Orthodox Christian Should Have ANYTHING with Those Who Worship Such “Strange Idols”

This is “Jayzuss”, the “God” of the Sectarian “Evangelicals“, “Pentecostalists“, Mormons, and all the other Radical Sectarian groups. Any Orthodox Christian who cooperates with such godless and shameless blasphemers is in need of a long rest. If you support or vote for the “Tea Party”, you support such blasphemy and you deny Our Lord Christ… there’s no other way of putting it! May God have mercy on you for such!

BMD