Photo of the Day: Caught this house walking through an Atlanta neighborhood today. Obviously, they really get into Halloween.

Photo of the Day, Take 2: This is the inside of Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Atlanta. It is now a state park and they have a sermon by Dr. King playing while you sit in the pews. On the day I was there, it was about how someone can be free and still be a slave due to inequitable economic factors. Still timely after all these years.

Photo of the Day, Take One: If the US has a holy site, this is it. I am in Atlanta, GA, this week and I was able to take some time to visit Ebenezer Baptist Church, the home church of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In opposition

Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing inner forces: what they think they should do versus what the are doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are; whether they think they’re right and worthy or wrong and unworthy. The separate self is just the conglomeration of these opposing forces. When the self drops away, inner division drops away with it.

Photo of the Day: Nighttime in Sedona, AZ, Sept. 23, 2004.

Photo of the Day: Sahalee Falls, high Cascades, October 2003.

Perception

What more wonderful, glorious, miraculous, splendid thing can there be than this world?

Every winter the trees go dormant; it's almost like death. Then spring comes, and everything comes back to life. Flowers bloom, leaves unfurl. Then summer arrives and it's glorious! After that, fall comes with its vivid colors and tremendous beauty, then winter again, over and over.

Every day the sun comes up, giving light for us to see and to make distinction in color and form. Then daylight fades and the darkness of night follows, making things almost indistinguishable until dawn comes again.

Of course, we can choose to feel that everything is awful. Every day is a bad day and we are always suffering. Why do we suffer? Nothing ever goes the way we want it to go; we want more or we want something else; we want ourselves to be different or others to be different. We are losing our bodies; they are growing old, decaying, falling apart, and everything looks grim, terrible.

If we feel it is bad, everything becomes bad; if we feel it is good, then it all appears good.

The whole world is created from Mind. How we perceive it is the whole story.

Photo of the Day: Sunset reflected off the weight on the Hawthorne Bridge, Portland, OR, July 2003.

Photo of the Day: Sedona, AZ, Sept. 23, 04

US Blues

It appears as though speech began in Africa some time between 200,000 and 500,000 years ago. And not long after the legendary Garden of Eden—which historians believe was located somewhere in Iraq—written speech was invented. And as soon as it was invented, efforts to suppress it began.

Our own government regards as seditious speech the leaking of classified documents. As a result, it now tends to classify volumes of material which it formerly did not, especially materials not necessarily dangerous for the country so much as causing anger in the government on the part of its populace.

The current invasion of Iraq is the most literal example, of course. Information that ought to be published (was published in the last century during WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam) is not available, so journalists must get it through leaks. If they publish it, they can be subject to arrest.

This war is assaulting the reporter’s right to protect confidential sources. Under the Patriot Act, the FBI is serving warrants without court authority.

I remember back in the days of the civil rights movement, protesters marched in the streets, bringing the issues to the residents of the community, and to the authorities against whom they were protesting. Today’s protesters are put behind fences and barriers.

On Friday I listened to a nationally-respected judge regarding his abridgement of speech last year. He was chosen by the US government to lead efforts to rebuild the judicial system in Iraq. The judge, Gilber S, Merritt, US Court of Appeals, lives in Nashville and had agreed to write stories about his experience for his hometown newspaper.

Those Americans with whom he was working decided to create a web site so their families could see what was happening to them during their Iraq experience. Merritt admitted the web site was intimate, humorous, compassionate, and at times riské. Eventually, officials learned of the web site and told them what they were doing had not been cleared by the government and that it was “important for Americans to stay on message.” The web site was eventually taken down because the group feared US government retaliation.

Each and every dispatch this judge sent back to the Nashville newspaper outlining his experiences and not revealing anything of critical or confidential nature had to be cleared by the US government.

The irony is the government says it is liberating Iraq and is helping it create a constitution, which includes free speech.

Photo of the Day: Mount Washington, high Cascades, Oregon. winter, 2002. You can see how the devasting fire of the summer of '02 took out most of the forest in the foreground.

Photo of the Day: Blooming cactus, Desert Botanical Gardens, Phoenix, AZ, 9/21/04.

Photo of the Day: Okay a brief respite from the AZ vacation pics. This one is from Hollyhock Farm, Cortes Island, B.C., May 2003.

Photo of the Day: Sedona, AZ Sept. 23, 04. I climbed up about 200 feet up this rock and on the top found this tree growing out of the rock.

Photo of the Day: Sedona, AZ 9/23/04. If you click on this to enlarge, you'll be able to even see the craters on the moon.

Famous last words...

Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!
Last message from vulcanologist David Johnston on Mount St. Helens

This is funny.
Doc Holliday's last words

Why, man, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--
American Civil War General John Sedowick's last words at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse

Hey, where the hell are the parachutes?
Question asked by Glenn Miller as he boarded the plane to Paris, to which Colonel Baesell replied What's the matter, Miller, do you want to live forever?

I beg your pardon, monsieur. I did not mean to do it.
Marie Antoinette, after she had accidentally stepped on the executioner's foot while mounting to the guillotine

Oh, shit.
Last words on the majority of flight recorders recovered after plane crashes

There's another act coming after this. I reckon you can guess what that's about.
Thornton Wilder, "Our Town"

I declare to you: all conditioned things are of a nature to decay--work out your liberation with diligence.
Last words of Buddha

Moving farther on

Two monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

'Come girl,' said Tanzan at once, and lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud, put her back down and continued on with Ekido.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself.

'We monks don't go near females,' he told Tanzan, 'especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?'

'I left the girl there,' said Tanzan. 'Are you still carrying her?'

Photo of the Day: Cathedral Rock, Sedona AZ. Sept. '04. I guess this is the most photographed spot in the state.