The last century was truly the century of the United States of America. When WWI broke out, we were a relatively small military industrial power. Y2K found US as the most powerful and dominant nation on the planet. Then it all hit the skids. By the time my nephew is middle-aged, America will be tied in a wheelchair with a bedsheet.

Sorry you had to read it here first. But you needn’t have; you could’ve read it here first.

There you have it: a country living beyond its means, heavily reliant on an overstretched military, which flinches from imposing tax sacrifices to get its accounts in order. History has not been kind to great nations that get themselves into this position.

A new blog appears on the metaphor blogroll tonight: http://www.dooce.com/

Spotted at Buzzstuff. It’s so good that I’m sitting here reading it, even though I should get up and turn off the heater in my office, ‘cause I’m starting to cook. It’s nicely written, funny, with great photos. And a really cute little kid. And she’s got a dog – can’t beat that.

My Mom sent me this photo today. Christmas wreaths at Arlington …

Rest easy, sleep well my brothers.
Know the line has held, your job is done.
Rest easy, sleep well.
Others have taken up where you fell,
the line has held.
Peace, peace, and farewell…

The e-mail she forwarded lists these sources

http://freedomfolks.blogspot.com/2005/12/christmas-at-arlington.html

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004127.htm

and explains that the 5000 wreaths are donated each year by Merrill Worcester, owner of the Worcester Wreath Co. of Harrington, Maine.

You know where I stand on this, so maybe just a moment of silence …

Well, I gotta tell ya, this “storm” was pretty disappointing here.  We were warned to expect a gullywasher.  A real toadchoker.  I was prepared to spend the day indoors, longing for a shot at a decent walk in the fresh air.  I got my walk, and I even went over to my folks’ place and walked Happy.  ‘Cause the punishing midday rains they warned us of – like Tim the Enchanter warning the knights of Arthur about the rabbit – turned out to be just intermittent rain.  Occasional showers.  Hmm.  

“That’s no ordinary rabbit!”  … Ha ha haha.  … run away!

It’s a rainy day here. I guess everybody knows it’s our turn to have a storm, here in Southern California. We really look forward to them. It’s basically a coastal desert, and we go months without significant rain. So I’m enjoying the sound of water running down the pipes on the side of my house. It’s a good sound — like the end of the year is circling the drain, and flushing away.

Thinking about 2005, as it finally crawls off to find a place to decompose, isn’t easy for me. It will always be the year that I lost the comfort and company of my very best friend. I can’t help that; the pain is very real.

So I spent some time yesterday writing a letter to my Tasha, recalling happiness, bright loyalty and abiding friendship. I know she isn’t dead, because love can’t die. But I miss her so much, and every day I think about where she is. Sometimes, the Rainbow Bridge, sometimes a star in the infinite firmament of Being; beyond Thought and Not-thought, between the shadows and the light, between the notes and silence of a music which eludes my comprehension. In other words, God.

I’ve been told that there are three relevant and important questions in a person’s life: Who am I? Where did I come from? and Where am I going? I told Tasha that she is love, she came from God, and she has gone home to Him. Does that make sense? And do you see that cannot die?

For the people generally, I think it’s been a year of storms and war, of national leadership so steeped in fear that the sour smell of their malfeasance has circumscribed the globe. I pity them their myopic judgment and their cruel and gory sins. I pity every person caught up in their world of tiny thought.

I don’t want to miss the chance to say this in 2005: Bushie, you’re doin’ a heckuva job.

Did we ever get a conclusive body count in Hurricane Katrina’s wake? And did we ever calculate how many died not from the storm itself but from neglect, abandonment and incompetence? I don’t think so. God knows.

On the other hand, two of my friends served as volunteers for the Red Cross, and went to help. Thank you, so much!

2005 has also been a year of hope for me. I started a weight loss program in August, and I’ve lost almost 60 pounds so far. So I enter 2006 with a lighter heart; when something changes, things are bound to change. And that’s good.

Said the king to the people everywhere,
“Listen to what I say!
Pray for peace, people, everywhere,
Listen to what I say!
A Child, A Child sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light,
He will bring us goodness and light.”

This was today’s quote on my Google homepage:

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

— John Cage

No doubt Mr. Cage forgot more about music any day before breakfast than I’ll ever know. But I have to challenge the premise here. I note that Mr. Cage passed away in 1992, before the rise of the vacuous thumping which is known as rap or hip-hop. Smart lad to slip betimes away; he got out while the gettin’ was good. I think that in today’s context, a musical ego cuts one off from a good deal of mindless suffering.

A lot of the unmitigated crap I hear limping through traffic and booming past my home isn’t music at all. It’s just mindless, guttural chest thumping, without melody, and with a canned rhythm. And don’t even try to tell me it’s “street poetry.” That’s like saying my driveway, which is 12 feet long, is the road to Ohio. It’s part of the process of a trip to Ohio, but hardly significant, just as the lyrics in such expression bear some distant relationship to English. Poetry goes somewhere … my driveway, and rap and hip-hop “music” don’t go very far at all. It ain’t art.

A friend sent me an article recently, clipped from the New Yorker, about the glories of Fall and the stomping of acorns.  I enjoyed it very much, and promptly misplaced it.  I’m happy today to find it available on their Web site, so I can pass it along.  

• The people who are starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1987.
• They are too young to remember the first space shuttle blowing up on liftoff.
• Their lifetime has always included AIDS.
• Bottle caps have always been screw off and plastic.
• The CD was introduced the year they were born.
• They have always had an answering machine.
• They have always had cable.
• They cannot fathom not having a remote control.
• Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.
• Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.
• They never took a swim and thought about Jaws.
• They can’t imagine what hard contact lenses are.
• They don’t know who Mork was or where he was from.
• They never heard: “Where’s the Beef?”, “I’d walk a mile for a Camel”, or “de plane, Boss, de plane”.
• They do not care who shot J. R. and have no idea who J. R. even is.
• McDonald’s never came in Styrofoam containers.
• They don’t have a clue how to use a typewriter.

* * * * *

I don’t know where this year’s list originated, though I found it posted here. Beloit College used to do a yearly Mindset List, but it looks like they stopped a couple of years back.

Thanks to my friend corewell at Life’s Terms for passing this along.

I’m sending you off again, to read another poem; a very good, a very simply brilliant poem – 56 – by Philip Schultz.  You’ll be glad you did.  So follow this link to the poems for Wednesday, and read 56.  

“…Because I expect nothing and what I expect defines me.
Because the world exists without us but without us it is nothing.”