Dying to experience

I tolf domrone recently I no longer ;intend to music. Thinking of dying, thinking of someone picking out Christian music sent me to you tube today for a sampling of the music I loved deeply once upon a time. I found I still like it and prefer it to that other alternative.



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What price health>

Now that I am part of the big C club I have accelerated appreciation for this Joel Salatin quote.  My cancer (s)aren't food related.  In fact, I believe my conscious efforts to eat better in the last decade is helping me fare better in this end stage.

My feeling is; hell, my advice is - what have you got to lose to try this?

Adjowah Redux

She came back! Adjowah arrived last Monday, shortly after the anniversary of Angela's death. I had a wonderful time for 2SOLID days of being with her in good health.  What a relief.  You'd never know I was dying (most of the time.  She's now back in Oakland.  She sent me links to her friend, Blair's several selected spoken word performances below. He is yet another best friend who died young. (2011)
I asked for links. Adjowah emailed . .. On 6/6/13 10:02 PM, adjowah b wrote:
Kate -


I'm back in Oakland - I had a great time visiting you, Kate! I'm so glad I came.


Here are a few videos that showcase Blair's best work:

Into Darkness, my favorite:

I watched, I replied . . . Wonderful work. I love Blair postumously.

Your visit chsnged me, and I'm grateful.

Beginning of the End



Found out I have terminal, non-operable lung cancer. So, this blog represents a kind of autobiographical journal from a brief period of my life. I'd like to say I am going to add posts about what matters to me now, but decline is coming so fast I may not be able to pull that off.  

Why do you hate America?

I found an apt response to the above question in a post by Fred Branfman about Noam Chompsky's new book, "Hopes and Prospects".

It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. ... [Doublethink is] to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it. ... [Continuous] war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly trained specialists. … The fighting … takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at. …

—George Orwell, “1984”

[The treatment of the] hapless race of native Americans, which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty, [is] among the heinous sins of this nation, for which I believe God will one day bring [it] to judgment.

—John Quincy Adams, cited in Noam Chomsky’s new book, “Hopes and Prospects”
The really strong response to the charge of hating America for me (a fierce critic of the USofA and Myths America) come with these lines from the Banfman piece:

Chomsky’s explanation of the American system’s imperial mentality also illuminates a seeming mystery: How could decent people like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama commit so much evil? Our concept of evil is shaped by such paranoid psychotics as Hitler, Stalin and Mao, who all hated their victims and openly lusted for power. We do not yet understand that in today’s American system the problem we face is not so much inhumanity from the mad and evil as “ahumanity” from the sane and decent.

U.S. leaders have nothing against those they regularly kill and impoverish. On the contrary, they often exhibit compassion for them, as when Jimmy Carter supported human rights. But they are products of a system that is indifferent to the fate of the unpeople, whether in the shah’s Iran, Somoza’s Nicaragua, Suharto’s Indonesia or the many other dictatorial regimes that enjoyed President Carter’s support.

Chomsky denies the oft-heard charge that he is “anti-American,” noting his criticism of the crimes of many other nations’ leaders, and saying he focuses on U.S. leaders because, as a U.S. citizen, it is the government he can most affect; because it is the government that has done more harm than any other since 1945; and because the United States’ behavior today poses so much danger to human survival. He might also add that there are so many others eager to catalog the crimes of America’s enemies, yet relatively few Americans willing to document their own leaders’ misdeeds.
This is a really good read at Truthdig.com. Check it out. Really.

Quote of the Day

 From Zappa to Zinn . . . the message is the same.

"I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers"
--Howard Zinn

Quote of the Day

If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on tv telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it — Frank Zappa

Via