Author Archives: marileeandbarbara
Taking Time
taking time
taking time to see,
to clearly see, the tan
curling, swirling
stance and dance
of sunlit, windblown
winter grass
taking time to hear,
to note the chorus,
the lilt and line
of winds passing overhead
through a long-needled,
red-barked, ponderosa pine
taking time to read,
to carefully read the tangled
fractal calligraphy
of countless, leafless,
living branch and tree
taking time to let seep
deep within
the sweet fragrance,
the shadow and light,
this lasting breath
of earth and life
and taking time to never
let pass by unseen
the silvered gleam
of lingering ice
in a trickling, dancing,
softly singing stream
Humanitarian War
To the Editor
American history is filled with a long and almost continuous succession of wars. From the beginning we fought wars of independence, of unification and expansion. We fought a “War to End All Wars” and a “World War” against two powerful nations with ambitions of Empire and then embarked upon a “Cold War” during which we amassed a mind-boggling nuclear arsenal aimed at the Soviet Union, formerly an invaluable ally against Nazi Germany. During this time, despite the warning of departing President Dwight Eisenhower against the rise of a “Congressional military industrial complex”, the budget for the War Department , expediently renamed the Department of Defense, grew astronomically. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the vanished threat of nuclear war and spread of global Communism, a hope of beating our swords into plowshares briefly arose until the attacks of 911 elevated the threat level of a few thousand Third World radical Islamists somehow equal to that of Hitler. Mussolini, Tojo, and a possible nuclear holocaust. We have been engaged in “hot” wars in the Middle East ever since and our “defense” budget exceeds that of the rest of the world combined. We are also the largest exporter of military hardware and, sadly, we have no jobs available should we begin bringing our soldiers home. And now, despite Martin Luther King’s shining legacy of non-violence in the Civil Rights Movement and Barack Obama’s (perhaps only hopefully pre-emptive) Nobel Prize for Peace, in our “humanitarian war” in Libya we seem to have fully achieved the double-think mindset of George Orwell’s 1984 that, indeed, “War is Peace”. It is not a comfortable place to be.
RP
My name is Joe and I’ll be your server tonight.
To the Editor:
Just as a “modest” proposal, I would like to suggest that our so-called “Defense” budget could be covered by a heavy surtax on the profits of every international corporation currently investing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is time for the Pentagon to begin handing out invoices for “services rendered”, and the tips to their “servers” should be huge.
RP
Coon Hound Pups
Bob has a history of breeding his Coon Hounds, here are some of Shelbys pups we took to show!
Waiting for Cranes
Waiting for Cranes
For Tom Mangelsen
Waiting for cranes
In a cramped camera blind
We recorded the Platte River sounds,
Rippling water and the long evening songs
Of seeming countless unseen birds, focused
And scattered voices overlapping, counter-pointed, turning
Undirected vocal baroque tapestry, orchestral calliope,
Cacophonous, melodious, anonymous, stippled
Painting, water-falling poetry, holy offering,
The longing lilt of Spring, freely cast into
The ending day, into the coming night,
At once random and one,
Distant and near,
Song and ear
As one,
Enclosed
And clear.
That evening the cranes never came
Yet we tumbled forth, forever filled.
Damn those pensions!
To the Editor:
If I have this straight, in the Conservative eye, public employees who have worked for years at modest pay and have built up modest and hopefully comfortable retirement plans provided by their employers are the villains in the economic downturn. Who’da thought?
RP
Reinstate the Rebate
To the Editor:
Inexplicitly unreported in Colorado media was that during the Super Bowl Week cold snap there was a natural gas shortage that resulted in frozen water pipes and people shivering in their homes in Taos and northern New Mexico. Coming at the heels of record gas exploration and drilling, this should serve notice to those who see natural gas as the rescuing cavalry storming across the West to meet our energy needs: Don’t bury your heads in the (coal bed) sand. It is time for fossil fuel proponents to ride slowly off into the sunset. Excel Energy’s cutting off of rebates to those installing solar energy panels has more to do with serving its profit margin than being of public service. Hopefully the Public Utilities Commission will recognize this and reinstate the rebates.
RP
Note: This appeared in the Boulder Weekly a few weeks ago.
Social Security
To the Editor:
Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post is dead wrong. Social Security is not welfare. It is a public investment in a retirement account that is not subject to the whims, speculations, miscalculations, market declines, profit margins, bonuses, and criminal activity of the same financial class which created our current economic collapse and stagnation. Apparently not just content with sitting on their billions in profits and offshore accounts after receiving taxpayer bailout money, apparently in hopes of undermining a Democratic presidency, the financial industry wants to further tap in on the American worker’s paycheck. The chutzpah of these people is endless.
RP
Notes from the Provinces 