Journal to a Muse

Post Pourri Plethora (That means LONG!)

I am SO tired right now... because I stayed up WAY late almost finishing Broken Window by Jeffrey Deaver. If you were worried about the Government keeping information on everybody before, wait until you read this. "Standard" identity theft is plenty awful, but malicious power mongering is would possibly require heavy sedation or a a brilliant team of forensic data specialists.

Darling Husband and I went to the local college campus branch of Barnes and Noble. Have you read any of these books?

David Attenborough has made a career of natural history, zoology and writing. Who knew you could make a living doing that?

When I browsed this book, I realized that now he's branched out to a narrow bit of art/illustration history.

Look at this early drawing of a snake and a crocodile!




I admit; I have been seduced by birds. Starlings amaze me by changing their plumage throughout the year. Common grackles amuse me with their spring courtship and exhibitionism. Discerning the difference between a House Sparrow and Purple Finch please me no end. Sighting a Scissor-tailed Fly Catcher makes me shout.

When the editor of Penguin Books writes about his avian seduction you know the writing will be good.

The blurb on the back says:

A Supremely Bad Idea is a supremely fun comic romp: an environmentally sound This Is Spinal Tap with binoculars.

That's better than good! It's on my wish list.

Then there is another book that tells us we are afraid of the wrong things.

If terrorists blew up a plane every day of the year, it wouldn't kill as many people as die in traffic accidents. Why do we overlook traffic fatalities but allow Homeland Security to make us nuts with NTS regulations when it comes to flying?

We bought this one!

If only there were a beach nearby. This seems like a good beach read. I'll see if I can buy it used.


I love the jacket comment on this:The perfect antidote to America's science phobia."

Heaven knows we could use THAT. but the cover is much more promising than the contents, which consist of non-copyrighted reprints of old texts explaining things like how cuttlefish can swim. Yawn.

The Writer's Brush is a book that crossed my consciousness a while back, but hadn't had a chance to really look at. I browsed it the way you'd eat a box of candy. One bon mot after the other. DH got it for me.


These watercolors are by Herman Hesse after he had a nervous breakdown and was in an asylum. His therapist (a student of CG Jung) encouraged him to paint. It was after that time period that he wrote Siddartha and so many other wonderful books.

Hesse wrote:

"I would have long since given up living if my first attempts at painting had not comforted and save me during that most difficult time in my life."

and later,

"When I paint my little pictures, it is not so much a question of competence but of privilege and probably of enormous luck, to be permitted to play with colors and sing in praise of nature."

"But painting is marvelous; it makes you happier and more patient. Afterwards you do not have black fingers as with writing, but blue and red ones."

EXACTLY!!

He painted over 3000 pictures, mostly landscapes.


This is one of Kurt Vonnegut's paintings.

He wrote:

You are supposed to it all. This is what it means to be human and to dance.

That is so much the way I feel. I want to write and paint and knit and dance and love and laugh.

I've decided I'd like to take walks -- with the cat. So we stopped at PetSmart.

This kitty, though intent on food in the adoption center, was especially photogenic.





My husband likes the birds.

I have now accumulated everything I can think of to "train" Puppy Cat. I don't care if she heels or not, I'd just like some company on my ambles through the neighborhood. At first I was concerned she would turn up her nose at the cat treats... but it turns out she really likes those! AND after a few gazelle like leaps and spirals around the living room, I don't think she minds the harness. Tomorrow I'll try the leash and a venture OUTDOORS.


She'll maintain her dignity because I refused to buy any of the leashes with rhinestones!

Last but not least

I want to be sure you know about Media Matters. (Click the side bar to see what they have to offer and to sign up for their news bulletins.) You can do the same at FactCheck.org. Both are media watchers who check to see whether what the news outlets say or print is true or not-- not to mention the current crop of politicians. Let's just say there's a whole lotta lying going on.

And lying in politics is CHEATING. It hurts all of us.

Sorry if your candidate gets criticized, but we all know what happened when we didn't check George W's so-called facts: a War, a Mess, and a huge Debt.

Over the past few weeks, and especially the past week, numerous news organizations and other neutral observers have debunked a series of false claims made by John McCain and his campaign.

FactCheck.org, for example, has called one McCain attack ad "false," said another contains a "false" insinuation, described another as misleading, called another "ridiculous" and added, "That's absurd, and McCain knows it." FactCheck said the attacks in yet another McCain ad are "oversimplified to the point of being seriously misleading," noting that by the standards of evidence the McCain campaign used in the ad, the Arizona senator himself could be criticized precisely the same way. FactCheck called criticisms McCain has leveled against Obama's tax plans "bunk," adding, "He's
wrong," and stating that McCain is using a "false and preposterously inflated figure" to attack Obama. They called another McCain attack "simply wrong" and "not true." They said yet another McCain ad "gets nearly all its facts wrong. ... Every number in the ad is wrong, except one. ... And even that number is rounded upward so generously as to flunk third-grade arithmetic." And FactCheck called yet another McCain attack trickery" based on an "inflated and misleading" number that was the result of "Double, Triple and Quadruple Counting."

And that's just in the past month.

The Washington Post has reported that "McCain and his allies" are accusing Obama of "snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true" and noted that the evidence the McCain campaign provided to back up the claim did not do so. The
New York Times reported that McCain's recent offensive against Obama has been
based on claims that have been "widely dismissed as misleading," which is actually an understatement -- they've been widely dismissed as false.

A St. Petersburg Times editorial denounced McCain's "nasty turn into the gutter," adding that he "has resorted to lies and distortions in what sounds like an increasingly desperate attempt to slow down Sen. Barack Obama. ... [T]hese baseless attacks are raising more questions about the Republican's campaign and his ability to control his temper."

The New York Times editorial board called another McCain attack "contemptible" and "ugly." On MSNBC, Time magazine Washington bureau chief Jay Carney called a McCain ad "reprehensible." MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell reported that a McCain ad is "completely wrong, factually wrong" and that it "literally is not true." The Cleveland Plain Dealer rated a McCain campaign ad a "zero" on its 0-to-10 scale of truthfulness.

All that -- and much, much more -- has come in just the past week.

In short, nearly every recent attack by the McCain campaign on Obama -- and there have been many -- has been debunked by at least one news outlet and in most cases by several.
So what's the problem? Sounds like the media are doing their job, right?

Wrong. (read more on their web site.