a few nights ago, and a piece of it just resurfaced, as I was plugging my flash drive into the desktop.

All I remember of the dream is that I was pulling laundry from the washing machine and stuffing it into the dryer. And when I got the last of it out, my flash drive was in the washer, presumably destroyed. It would be bad for it, don’t you think?

It proves two things: that I’m too hung up on my stuff, and that Halloween is less than two weeks away.

Boo.

still has game. He was a very fine poet already, back in 1983, when my friend Mark and I went to hear him read in the student union at Chico State. And here, Garrison Keilor reads a poem from Snyder’s new book.  And proves the Zen poet – at age 76 – is still fine as frog’s fur.

Bush Aide Sees a Parallel Between Vietnam and Iraq – New York Times: “WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 — President Bush’s chief spokesman conceded today that the latest carnage in Iraq was somewhat reminiscent of the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, which helped to turn public opinion against the war in Southeast Asia. But he said the president still envisioned victory in Iraq.”

I wonder when we’re going to start seeing parallels with the last Korean War.

Dozens Of Iraqis Killed in Reprisals – washingtonpost.com:

“BAGHDAD, Oct. 15 — Militias allied with Iraq’s Shiite-led government roamed roads north of Baghdad, seeking out and attacking Sunni Arab targets Sunday, police and hospital officials said. The violence raised to at least 80 the number of people killed in retaliatory strikes between a Shiite city and a Sunni town separated only by the Tigris River.

The wave of killings around the Shiite city of Balad was the bloodiest in a surge of violence that has claimed at least 110 lives in Iraq since Saturday. The victims included 12 people who were killed in coordinated suicide bombings in the strategic northern oil city of Kirkuk.”

And Bush and Rummie still won’t call it a civil war.

Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.
      -Lewis H. Lapham

I haven’t blogged for a few days. I’ve been woolgathering . Has to be done. And I’ve been feeling a bit burned out and awash in all the crap that’s been going down. Sensory overload, you know? Three school shootings in less than that many weeks. How can anyone be so crazy as to be willing to shoot children, and still be sane enough to drive to a school? I guess I don’t understand insanity, not being a sputtering nutjob myself. But it seems like if you were that frijoles en la cabeza, you wouldn’t be able to tell a road from a wombat, a car from a crookneck squash.

Tonight I’m watching Tim Russert interview Bob Woodward , about the latter’s new book . He’s pointing out that Rumsfeld knew, in the fall of 2003, that there were a thousand attacks a month by the insurgency in Iraq. Rumsfeld ordered the report buried, because he was in denial. Now the country is in all out civil war, and we have lost the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraq. In terms of every excuse – including establishment of democracy – that the Bush administration has given at various times for bringing this hell on that country, America has lost the war altogether.

So, chaos over there and chaos over here, and the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense are asleep in their comfy beds. I guess I’ll tuck in too.

I really believe that the love we have for animals is good for us.  Being with your cat or dog settles the mind, defines the conscience, and heals the heart. My Mom sent me this little story today, about how a little Corgi helped save a woman’s life.

 Don’t you remember how the wind used to come up in the morning? Almost every day it would.

Yes, I remember, he says. It came up yesterday.

It blows in from the lake, cold, and the dogs lie down against the chimney at the back of the house, to be out of it.

Well it’s warm there, if the fire is lit. And it’s good shelter.

The wind did not come up today, she says.  But that’s not why I feel this way.

They stand in the center of the town, near the fountain, and wait for the bus to come.   She stands with one hand on her hat, though there is no wind. Then she looks up the street and says to him, I think you are going to hurt me.

No.  I never would.

I don’t believe you can help it; you are going to make me cry.

He looks away at pigeons in the sunlight, and says believe me, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Nothing is very far from everything, but the truth is that you will break my heart.

Please don’t say this. Don’t give up hope for love. You are hurting me, right now.

You see? – and now she turns to look at the side of his head – it’s inevitable. Just as every day the wind comes up and brings bad news.

No, sometimes good news, he tells her. Clear weather and the smell of fir trees.

Usually bad, though some days it’s just that the moon has lived another night and set, and left that dull expression on the lake.

You should have gotten more sleep.  Your mood is a tempestuous dark green. I tried to tell you, step away from the cello, stop chopping carrots and apples for the lunches of children we don’t have.

No fault of mine, damn it.  

Oh God, where is my peace? He slumps onto a concrete bench, beneath an ornamental pear.

Don’t bring God into this, if you know what’s good for you.

If I know what’s good for me? I will bring Him into it, by God. “My peace I leave with you,” God said. But all He left with me is you, and your bottomless melancholy. You dead moon. No drifting, lightless rock alone in space has more pity for itself than you. Why the hell do you need more pity still from me?

Now she does begin to cry, and bows her head and looked at her shoes. Dust. And the tears run down her face and drip from her chin and fall around her shoes and on the earth.

a lot about forgiveness from these Amish people. God bless them for showing mercy to the family of a killer.

But please God, teach the Amish puppymillers that pets are not a product to be manufactured.