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Protect the Ridges

To the editor,

President Glidden once again is failing to keep his promises to protect the Ridges, a state treasure of natural beauty in Athens with old forests, prairies and hilltops with grand vistas.

Local volunteer efforts to help our rivers

"Though people lack not wealth, they cannot afford to breathe clean air. Rain and streams cleanse not, but remain inert and powerless liquids. Human beings and countless beings that inhabit water and land reel under the yoke of physical pain caused by malevolent diseases. Their minds are dulled with sloth, stupor, and ignorance. The joys of the body and spirit are far, far away. We needlessly pollute the fair bosom of our mother earth; rip out her trees to feed our shortsighted greed, turning our fertile earth into sterile desert. As a noble being recognizes the kindness of a sentient mother and makes recompense for it, so the earth, the universal mother, which nurtures all equally, should be regarded with affection and care. Forsake wastage, pollute not the clean, clear nature of the four elements and destroy the well being of people, but absorb yourself in actions that are beneficial to all. Being attentive to the nature of interdependence of all creatures, both animate and inanimate,one should never slacken in one's efforts to persevere and conserve nature's energy."
 Bhikshu Tenzin Gyatso
The XIVth Dalai Lama

The Godliness of Dollar Bill

I. Learn to swim, or trust their life preserver around your neck…up to you It’s either sing along or
make new music,
get on your knees or
get aroused

I prefer standing to bowing
I like to see my reflection in lying eyes,
writing poems to reading prayers
I’ve got my own words for God,

he must get tired of hearing the same old
please pleas day after day
after all,
God’s an artist with a big dick
craving satisfaction
and evolution
like the rest of us,

divine spirit,
sexy morning sun,
I saw her reach out to me
her still burning ashes blowing into the breeze;

I sweat like I do in my sleep God,
I miss how you used to tuck me in at night
I always felt so lucky and loved
like a chosen soul, even though I knew
you fondled me and raided my wallet
while I slept,
at least it was something…

now here I stand whistling under cloudless skies,
the time to be an angel has passed,
thousands of thirsty flies spin ‘round
as I sever my wounded wings for cash.

The Evolution of an Animal

It’s a complicated organism,
Multi-celled, hairy
I find it quite sexy
With tits like missiles
An ass like man’s defeat,

I’ve heard it nurses it’s young
To full maturation
Without once feeding,

Sleeps on cliff tops
To dream of flying,

Darts through traffic
To sniff fresh bodies
Of squished squirrels,

It’s said to be extremely toxic
Eating wormholes in plush carpets,

It no longer fights by biting
It’s learned to eject poison for miles

Leaving a pregnant future
Prowling silent nights
For wheezing carcass’

Lungs bloated like cooked eggs,
Tongues numb and of no use.

Where At Least I Know I’m Free

When I met him I didn’t know
but he told me with clenched fists

how men’s heads explode like chicken bones
crushed by rocks
and how rubber bullets hurt worse than real ones,

how homeless was nothing
compared to nationless or
defenseless or

how tanks crushed his sister’s shoes
along with a star of David he had copied from soldier’s sleeves
while he, his father and brothers rebuilt the home
they lost during the previous occupation.

He told me without tears
of years and years of genocide
swallowing their blessed cities
inch by inch,

of soldiers with bloody gun butts
kicking aside dead boys
still clutching rocks,

of swarms of children with murdered parents
and stolen land
forming tiny armies in the sand,

of teenage girls with bombs
in their pants

of wars I’d never heard of
through my electric earplugs,

I was terrified
at these truths,
so raw and beautiful

I knew what I had to do
as an American,
it was my duty

Wounded Patriot

Countless crippled inches of soul crave release
     from civilization’s circular marching herd,
     metal shoed hooves pounding dirt and grass
     like ten-thousand Sioux drumming war
     punishing the silent ears of their enemies
     choking on screams for mercy as their heads implode;
     Under Bill Gates’ trance swarms of ants sit staring
     through monitored Windows stained
     waiting for God to appear on their computer screens
     via www.heaven.com …
         …Something’s gone so very wrong;
The truth is blurred and hidden
     lost in sounds and television
     masked by textbooks facts and proofs,
Look into the reflection pool at foolish eyes
     blind to the depths
     beneath the rippling wet portrait
     swept up in sexy sounds of water and wind;
Let Oprah spew her Harpo gospels to housewives from her studio altar,
     ‘Get rich quick with a diary of happiness’
     hypnotized with a daily helping of hope
     tuning in tomorrow every day
     their lives are over anyway;

Like a bridge over troubled waters

            AUSTIN, Texas -- "I said you were a man of peace. I want you to know I took immense crap for that." George W. Bush, diplomat extraordinaire, to Ariel Sharon, The Washington Post, June 3, 2003.

            The effort to find peace in the Middle East is something on which all Americans can support the president, whether we think he knows what he's doing or not. He has recently been getting some criticism for letting his religious beliefs into the process. According to the New Yorker, he told Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia: "I think God loves me. I think God loves the Palestinians. I think God loves the Israelis. We cannot allow this to continue." This is good news: It seems to me Bush's attention span is longer and more focused when his religious convictions are involved.

            But I was pleased to see that the Stagecraft Administration has already set up the "money shot" for this peace conference, whether any progress is made or not. The New York Times reports the Big Photo-Op is ready to go. The president and the two prime ministers are to appear together on a bridge over the swimming pool behind the King of Jordan's palace.

Support cleaner air

Power plant pollution is taking an enormous toll on public health and the environment. But the Bush administration's so-called "Clear Skies Initiative" would do more for powerful utilities than public health. Despite the name, the proposal relaxes key provisions of the Clean Air Act, including its mercury protections, and would worsen global warming.

Earlier this year, thousands of people responded to our e-mail on this issue in support of cleaner air, but now I need your help again.

The Clear Skies bill is expected to come up soon either in a Senate subcommittee or directly on the Senate floor. Please take a moment to urge your U.S. Senators to oppose the White House's Clear Skies proposal. Then, ask your family and friends to help by forwarding this e-mail to them.

Take action: www.pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=9&id4=OHFreep

David Horowitz gets it all wrong

Merely from the whines and howls of his numerous enemies on the right, you can tell that Sid Blumenthal has drawn blood in his book, "The Clinton Wars," within which many pages are spent detailing what his pal Hillary Clinton famously referred to as "a vast right-wing conspiracy." The only word I'd quarrel with here is "vast," since the prime players seem to have numbered under 20. And, of course, these days, Senator HRC rather strongly resembles a largish right-wing conspiracy herself.

            Blumenthal's is an awfully long book, but the chapters that I have thus far worked my way through do make a pretty good case in buttressing HRC's claim. Blumenthal's chapter on the Hitchens affair is vivid, too, on the latter's disgusting behavior.

            Prime among the whiners and howlers is the right-wing agitator (and, long ago, former leftist) David Horowitz, who lashes out at "Sid Vicious." I have to say that the endless claims on the right that Sid Blumenthal is some sort of heavy, or thug, have always made me laugh. I don't know him that well, but Sid has always reminded me more of Bernie Wooster's descriptions of Gussie Fink-Nottle.

The terrible truth (part MMCCXVIII): it's a stacked deck

   It's hard to choose which deserves the coarser jeer: the excited baying in the press about the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the wailing in the press about the 3-2 decision of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this week to allow corporate media giants to increase their domination of the market.

            Actually, they're all part of the same binding curve of nonsense, and if we meld the two, we're left with the following proposition, mostly promoted by Democrats eager to impart the impression that only greedy Republicans are serfs of the corporate media titans and that the Telecommunications "Reform" Act of 1996 was actually a well-intended effort to return the airwaves to Us the People.

            The proposition: Until the FCC vote this week, we the people, surfing through the TV channels or across the AM/FM radio dial, were afforded diversity of choice, the better to form those reasoned political judgments essential in the functioning of this democratic republic.

            In the run-up to the U.S./U.K. attack on Iraq we were afforded a

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