short notes:
will brady's ruminations
SPACE | WEATHERSolar Flares
WORLD HISTORY"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
G W Bush ~December 18, 2000
72 years ago |
He was concerned about terrorists and immoral people pushing their decadent values on the populace | 72 years ago, the man who didn't get elected into power took over and implemented absolute rule | At the time, he enjoyed immense popularity, was rarely questioned by the media, and promised to usher in a new era of glory and pre-eminence for the Homeland | You may call me paranoid, but in so doing, don't forget that ~ sometimes ~ one can be both paranoid
and accurate | Food for thought | The burning of the Reichstag |
"To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero ... assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."
A World Transformed (1998) George Herbert Walker Bush
Do we suffer some collective amnesia about the past? Are we doomed to repeat the past for lack of knowledge? Others remember things differently and won't let us forget that past | We might do best to heed their calls:
Thom Hartmann When Democracy Failed
Infoplease Hitler and the Reichstag Fire
Oil Empire.US 9/11: The American Reichstag
Slimey Slug's the Reichstag and September 11th
G W Bush.net
ENVIRONMENT | WATERSHEDSThe Eight Mile River comes closer to Wild + Scenic River designation with the introduction of a bill, H.B. No. 6414, now before the Connecticut legislature | This is in keeping with the Nature Conservancy's Tidewater chapter
long term goals, the
NEMO initatives, and fits nicely into our town's open space planning goals which has long identified the Eight Mile River watershed as a top priority for preservation |
Language of the bill reads "
to preserve the portion of the Eightmile River watershed which is the subject of the authorized study by the Eightmile River Wild and Scenic River Study Committee as provided for in the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and, if passed, would be enacted October 2005 |
SOCIAL MORAYS | GAY MARRIAGEOne Connecticut Legislator speaks clearly while other slither about each trying to be more ingratiating or servile than one another | The clear voice is James Amann, legislator from Stamford | When asked by the Hartford Courant recently about the subject of gay people having their commitments to one another recognized as marriages, he had this to say:
When I was young, [I heard] my mother and a neighbor talking about -I must have been 6 or 7 years old, I remember it vividly- "Did you hear about so-and-so? She is marrying a Protestant" We were Catholic. The lady almost fell over. "You've got to be kidding me! How could she do that?"
I remember, a few years later, my father and a few others talking about a neighbor who had an interracial marriage. Oh my Lord, we thought the whole neighborhood was going to burn to the ground.
I [recently] went to Johnathan Moore High School in my town and I asked the question with a group of high school kids, "Is anybody here opposed to gay marriage?" None of them raised their hand.
I think it's generational. I think that for youths, they don't think it's a big deal.
The most amazing thing is that in my family we have interracial marriage now, we have Cathotics marrying Protestants and yeah, believe it or not, we have a couple of gay cousins. So it hits us all and we should really be aware that that's the reality of the world."
We've had this issue now three or four times before the Judicary Committee. I think that if there was a chance of civil union, at least for the Democratic Caucus, it would have been palatable and probably would have gotten momumentum, passed and gone onto the floor of the House.
OUTDOOR SPORTThe MSC Ice Fishing Tourney was held, now two weekends ago but it's not that I didn't cover it | Just that since the digital
camera died, I'm sometimes at a loss on writing and not posting the pictures | So I save the writing until later | Not a good thing, especially when some folks come to read and could care less about the images |
But enough already | Here's
the story of the Fishing Tournament | It did, after all, take up as much of my time as the visit to
The Gates |
NOTABLESHunter S. Thompson | 1937-2005 |
Yeah, I know, he blew himself away last weekend | I get the news | Just didn't get to
make note | Hunter Thompson's passing will be a great loss to all of us, no matter what one thinks of his drugs + guns + calculated insanity take on life | You could hardly call him dispassionate |
Known for his racous take on reportage,
Thompson was a private man dispite his oft caricatured way of life | He was a keen social critic and acerbic in his coments about people and causes he disliked | His voice will be a great loss, a great loss |
More cynically, do you suppose this means my first edition copy of Fear + Loahting in Vas Vegas will spike in value?
ART SCENE | CHRISTO'S GATESThe Gates are unfurled | Yes, it's a week later, but I've finally got to getting my pages up about the exhibit | Over the next couple of days they shalll all be up |
Here's the link to my experience with
Christo + Jeanne Claude's Gates Project as well as a side trip of interesting architectural visits through other parts of Manhattan that Bruce + I took later that day |