I marched with Dr. King on Monday.
He was wearing a Corporate Volunteer tshirt,
Committed to making Opportunities for all Workers,
Management and Laborer, Hourly and Salaried,
Investor and Freelancer, opportunities for All Workers
to Pursue Happiness.

I marched past Dr. King’s House on Monday.
He had Signs out front, not fancy mass produced signs,
He had Hand-Lettered Signs, Old Signs, Signs inked that very Morning,
Signs of Free Speech, Signs of Faithful Belief,
Calling, “Use well your Voting Rights
We fought too hard to win them for you to let them pass unused.”

I heard Dr. King speak on Monday,
Not on the Big Stage with its megascreen displays,
But on the Martin Luther King Freedom Bridge,
All the way down Martin Luther King Boulevard
Across the Pittman Sullivan fields,
100,000 Strong he was, People making use of the Banker’s Holiday,
Making their Stand One Step at a Time, Singing:
“Do what you must to us, take all the advantage you must, but
Freedom will Last, Freedom will Last,
Thank God All Mighty, Freedom will Last.”

- gary s. whitford

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,000 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 17 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Disregard recorded music for the moment, reserve it for an advanced discussion.

Live performance cannot be duplicated. Play it once, now play it again. Not only did the first iteration inform the reprise, but now is a different moment – each playing exists in a unique moment.

Consider, then, the judgement of a “bad” performance. Some critics can dis a rendition based on one flat note. Occasionally, a performance will completely fall apart, with one or more players losing their way, playing the wrong changes and the tune falls apart. Allow me, please to defend the worst and redeem the rest.

We are playing the song, in this moment, at this time, for this audience – sometimes only the players are present. We are using our minds to navigate, but we are playing with our fingers and feet, our lungs and throats, our mouths and shakin’ booties. This is the performance of this moment, coming from the understanding and emotion we hold for this song, this band and our own souls. It can be no less than perfect, just the way it is.

It is quite possible we could play it “better” – more mathematically accurate, more natural, more dynamic, whatever. It is equally possible that this performance is the apex, we may never play it better. But you know what?

It’s perfect, just like that. Every tune, every time, right on moment, oh yes.

unfinished gifts

don’t go back to sleep

MANIFEST your self, destiny, purpose

love without money is open to question

the door is round and open

take care of busine$$

now

I am

deserve

here

this

a minute is a terrible thing to waste

connect mind and action for positive result

in the arc of the mallet

you must ask for what you want

tao

the only way anything gets done is when you do it

work for a true living

plant more, till more, pay attention to the farm

the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you

people are going back and forth across the doorsill

d’etre

BE

get ‘er done

* – italics are excerpts from Rumi poems used in Philip Glass, Monsters of Grace

072411

No treasure more valuable than a person you can count on time after time

dance

long time comin…

perception

wisdom

joy

righteous fatherhood

some serve by knowing how it begins, how it ends and what song comes next

musicality

peace

God bless a soul who takes dreams seriously and does somethin’ about it

for John Whipple by noblsavaj 091711

life is all about what you value

for every kiss given and received from beloveds and babes, we give thanks.

for the privileges of work and parenthood
for a free country
for canine loyalty and feline appreciation
for coworkers and friends
for every good night’s sleep and every pleasant dream
for things that are free and things that are worth what you pay
for that fascinating woman in the mirror
for every clear breath
for every morning in its freshness
for entertainments both enriching and distracting
for today and tomorrow
for questions easy to answer and fulfilling to consider

for every lesson given that leaves us wizened but unscathed, let us give thanks.

for Kristi Kjendalen by noblsavaj 091911

espresso yourself

mocha loco

rock

better latte than never

time

dig

baristas on their best behavior

(baristas make the coffee,) people make the day

aroma

not too sweet, not too bitter

“I like coffee, I like tea…”

(a) clean, well-lighted place

cop a cappuccino, capice?

caffe rich and fair

enjoy

for olmos perk by noblsavaj 092211

no better use of a day

community

culinary science

singing in the shower

long conversation

reading

breathing

family

garden

a mighty fine walk with the dogs

music

for mark mason by noblsavaj 070811

This is a day when our tribe will gather throughout our lands to remember a day of great shock and shame. Zealous criminals seized control of instruments we use to transport freely around the planet we are given to live upon, and intentionally crashed them into the towers where we peacefully – if perhaps not always honestly or fairly – transacted trade amongst our tribes. We were rightly proud of these buildings, and they held thousands of innocent merchants and servants. Our tribe has never been struck with such an arrogant and cruel blow.

We reacted with shock, pain and fear. We are a tribe of great resources. We pooled everything we had available to seek our revenge, and borrowed more from neighboring tribes to mount a great crusade against the small congregation of insane devotees of a religion we do not recognize as anything valid or true. They were harbored by other tribes, and we took our mighty planes against the lot of them, followed by our soldiers and soldiers of our neighbors. We began wreaking such havoc against our enemies as to clearly demonstrate our intolerance of any such future acts upon us. We bombed, we shot, we killed and maimed in exponential numbers beyond our losses of that day. We imprisoned and terrified members of many tribes, including our own. Finally, 10 years later, at great expense to ourselves and our values, we killed the man we identified as the chief architect of that seminal act of terror.

While we regret the destruction, waste and tragedy of our response, the consequences of our revenge is not the sin we ask forgiven. We believe we have made our point, and hope against reason that our actions will prevent any such future act of hatred toward us. Some sense of logic you bestowed upon our composition, Creator, tells us that our hope is in vain, and we stand in vigilant fear against the next attack upon us.

What we must ask forgiven, divine force, is a miscarriage in our primal understanding and our failure to correct it. Our cognitive power is so great, we are able to plant and harvest, build and shelter, devise and produce scintillating beauty and understand abstract principles of justice, yet we cannot seem to bring ourselves to peace.

At some early stage of our development, we learned to fear. Our fear was so terrible, it taught us to intimidate those who were slightly different than ourselves. We formed an erroneous opinion that some of us had a right to a greater share of resources and power than others. Hard work to gather what we desired was in itself inadequate. We needed to protect ourselves and, when necessary, conquer and enslave others to get everything we need to be comfortable and happy. Nothing scares us more than the thought we might not get what we need this day, and we have never been able to escape the violent cycles that flow from our fright.

Please grant us credit, Creator, for forging mighty philosophical, theological, psychological and commercial institutions to resolve our fear and seek peace. From the first night of our consciousness, we realized that we are tiny beings in an incomprehensible universe. From the first death of a loved one, we understood the fragility and sacred preciousness of life. We have defined great understandings of love, compassion and peace.

But we’ve never quite managed to trust the higher understanding. As soon as we think we have found The Way, someone disagrees with someone else, a fist is thrown or a gun is fired or a bomb is dropped and we’re into another fight.

Creator, we ask forgiveness for our lack of courage. We are brave enough to face death, brave enough to send some of our own into foreign battles, brave enough to apprehend and question anyone who might possibly be a surreptitious actor of harm against us or our families in the cities we call home. But we have not been brave enough to effectively stand against our own violence.

We ask forgiveness for our lack of discipline. We are structured enough to create complicated societies that make sure there is food on the table, shelter for most of the families and individuals, and fuel for our mobility. But we haven’t quite figured out how to share equitably amongst ourselves or extend our level of comfort to less sophisticated tribes across the globe. And it seems that the means of our dominion may possibly be damaging the biosphere that created us.

We have been talking about the tragedy since it happened, and on this day many of us will gather – in concentric circles around those most directly affected – to keen our grief and bellow our determination that we will never be attacked again. Deep inside our souls, the overwhelming dread that such an attack is inevitable, that we are vulnerable to pernicious evil, our fear suppresses any alternative course to resolving our unbalanced way of life.

Great Creator of Life and Consciousness, we beg forgiveness for just not being smart enough.

• sustain tax cuts, maybe permanently for classes that use their income to build the economy
• keep interest rates near zero
• cut unnecessary spending
• end the wars and stop putting boots in unfunded, unfocused wars
• repair the infrastructure
• secure the harbors
• support healthy democracies and refuse to do business with despots

living in a secure nation with low taxes and low interest rates, incentives for positive behavior and a good attitude, American business needs to do its part

• borrow the cheap money, invest it in things that generate jobs and produce high quality products
• stop sniveling about regulations and develop profitable ways to exceed employment and ecological standards
• look at the problems in our cities, our farmland and our families – find a way to make money by solving these problems
• make a profit by trading fairly, practicing sustainable operations and fulfilling the promise of a capitalist democracy

everyone in the country needs to start thinking about making the country better. if we are who we think we are, we are the most powerful nation in the world. if that’s true, then we should have the ingenuity, the capability and the will to

• earn sustainable profits through this quarter and the next 200 years
• educate all of our children
• provide basic health care
• support democracy and fair trade around the world
• conserve and rebuild our natural resources
• have a real good time

to do this, you gotta do right. every man, woman and child. you gotta

• go to school
• work as long as you are healthy
• buy insurance
• drive safely
• respect other people
• demand good government
• play fair

if even one person gets greedy, cheats or harms, it gives other people an excuse to do wrong and the nation ends up

• polarized over meaningless issues
• locked in mortal combat
• defaulting on an unpayable debt

let’s not do that.