A HURRICANE CALLED FETUS

Things change, but yet they don't. A Christian group called Columbia Christians For Life sent out the alert. God punished New Orleans with a killer fetus seeking revenge for the abortion clinics in the area. Albeit laughable, yet an eerie reminder of just how far we've not come in nearly 300 years.

No less strange is the response to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 that crumbled the town and killed a 100,000 souls. The nutty religous leaders at that time decided "that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible preventive of earthquakes." (Candide-Voltaire) The ensuing battle of philosophic differences fueled events that sparked revolutions all over the place; the French and American being two. Nature certainly does have a way of stirring things up in the ant hill.

(Note: Some claim roaming priests burning heretics after the Lisbon quake is an urban myth. The argument being this 'wild' rumor cannot be substantiated. While this may be true, the karmic fallout from the substantiated history of abuse from the hands of religious or political zealots will not be denied; karmic meaning violence begets violence. War begets war. Voltaire seized the moment so to speak, while he had everyone's attention.)
Refute this!
Catholic Torture - Inquisition
Puritan Torture - Mary Dyer
Plenty of pain to go around. Torture

And for those who view abortion as a violent act I ask, "Why is a collection of cells with the potential for life (regardless of the mother's ability to care for that life) more important than the 43 MILLION CHILDREN ALIVE who suffer daily in abject poverty, 11 MILLION of which die each year before the age of five.
Torturing Children

People who don't support birth control and safe abortion are part of the problem. Shame!

New Stratagem

It's a back-up plan!

Hey You

Hey you,
I send you kisses.
I send you my mouth –
full of a fine dry Italian wine.
The oak perfume lingers
around our lips touching,
while tongues search
soft insides of petals and stems.
I send you the heavy air from my lungs,
full of bright red blood,
as I write dull black lines
on a scrap of tree that will never
be seen by your epic eyes.
The pregnant air hangs all around with our dreams,
and our potent idea of two people locked arm in arm:
in that moment – safe,
in that moment – alive.
Hey you, I send you kisses,
and a piece of tile washed back to me
from the windswept sea. This piece
of clay, only less than the life we knew,
now holds my hand, and on an occasion such as this,
I almost hear the buried sound of you saying,
‘Hey you, there you are…’

On The Beach ©2005

Urban Guerilla Man

Concealing, Appealing
Stalking you.
Guerilla Man
Comanding, Expanding
Death defying
Guerilla Man
He could be standin' on your doorstep
On a date with your little girl
He may take her to the movie
Or a trip around the world

Urban Guerilla Man
Bite and Run
Urban Guerilla Man
Punish One
Urban Guerilla Man
Guerilla Man


He's charming, Disarming
Watch him
Guerilla Man
Seduce you, reduce you
To ashes
Guerilla Man
Napolm Rockets Mortars in his basement
Got an uzie in his briefcase too.
World movement against the Zombies
His next contact might be you.

Iran Oman Malta Chile Bolivia New Identity Bank Account in Switzerland


Urban Guerilla Man
K-G-B
Urban Guerilla Man
S-I-D
Urban Guerilla Man
Guerilla Man

C. S. Reeder ©1982

HELP! I NEED LAURA BUSH'S DRUGS!!!

Can anybody tell me what she's on?
I need them.

SMIRKING CHIMP

That's it. No more Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Niceguy-gal. Sheesh, this gender correctness messes with the meter.

SMIRKING CHIMP

Keith sez...

One can hope people will give a listen to Keith Olbermann

I BELIEVE

I BELIEVE in beauty
The fragrance of a flower
The color of a blue bird’s wing
I believe in music
The drum beating a rhythm
To the melody of voice and string
I believe in things that I touch and feel
I know I’ve been here before
And as long as the stars shine above me
Someday I’ll walk back through this door
I Believe

Kingdoms come and go
And in the name of God
Soldiers fight and die in war.
But wars are never won
And if the truth be known,
Love’s the only thing worth living for.
I believe that heaven is in the here and now
Not somewhere distant and far
No need to wait for another life to find it
I feel it right here in my heart
I Believe
I Believe
(In what I feel for you)
I Believe
VENUS A LOVE STORY


Reeder/Wolfe
©2004

Where's Bill?

And I thought my life was in a piss pot.
Will you marry me Bill?
I love you so and always will.
Cut the crap, idiot.
Talking to myself,
I wallow in a syzygy of self-loathing –
my inability to do things,
like fix the muffler on my car
or the hole in my roof
or save a drowning city.
Manmade malfeasance
trapped thousands of people
in Bill’s town when the water rose
suffocating my Jazzy Town, the whole world’s
Fatty Tuesday Town.
It’s hap’nin’ on the TV, death.
It’s hap’nin’ on the street, stench.
Is Bill a refugee or an evacuee
or just fucked-up?
I’m on your side, Bill,
when you are losin’.
I’d never scheme or lie, Bill,
there’s been no foolin’.
Wait! I found his picture
on the Internet,
a non-wedding event.
“Committed to a perpetually unmarried life.”
Bill’s words. We’ve never met,
but Bill and his non-wife look happy, in love.
Feeling voyeuristic,
I lurk around Bill’s party
on display to anyone with a search engine.
Tho’ uninvited I yell,
“Get all your stuff and get out!
The flood’s comin’!”
Pixel faces smile back mute.
My link to Bill sank
into a pestilential superfund swamp.
Bill must have got out before
THE LEVEES IN NEW ORLEANS BROKE.
Poor people diein’ – nothin’ new there.
Poor animals diein’ – nothin’ new there.
No way would I abandon my dog Winnie,
well, not on purpose.
Sure, Winnie runs off
every time the front door is open,
but that’s no reason to desert her.
My dumb dog doesn’t deserve to
drown in filth or die of thirst.
No one I know'd have anyone in their life,
if loyalty's based on bein' sharp 24-7.
Kisses and love won't carry me.
Come on and marry me Bill!
Not even six feet of shit can silence
a song or bury a city called New Orleans.
Seriously,
where the hell is Bill?


C. S. Reeder ©2005

The Problems of Eyesight

The eyes
deceive me.
I see color
water, flow’rs…
sunlight.

The mind
in a dank
mausoleum
of broken bodies
shatters.

My chest
Full of bitter
No in-sight
A picture perfect
Denied!


(On The Beach ©1978)

Third World

Why are you calling this the Third World?
I only know that it is my world.
Maybe someday it can be our world.
Can you imagine one world, one world yeah!
(John Denver)

This misconception that all humans are somehow not inter-related got started how?

John Denver, my friend, was a great humanitarian. He hit the nail on the head. We are all from the same tribe. All humans on this planet came from one group of individuals out of Africa. Surprise! Surprise! We're all cousins on this planet - all of us. Some I'd rather not claim, but, I'm stuck with it.

A study on human migration adds weight to a belief that John and I shared 25 years ago. Some enlightened beings have known it all along; the interconnectedness of all humans. John (and I) extended that list to ALL living things, plant, animal, and otherwise. Some are surprised to learn we didn't meet in a recording studio, but in a 'tent' in Santa Monica where this Guru was speaking. We both sought answers and found that within each of us dwells an in-sight or our Spirit. John found it, and I continue to explore, not some whacked-out mind-melt, but the realization that we are all from the same source. We are each other.

Before people's eyes glaze over the word 'Guru,' and dismiss everything else I'm saying, the word Guru simply means Teacher. This Guru flipped on a switch and opened up a channel for me and others like John, that's all. It was the switch-on I'd been yearning for my entire life. Some people experience this in-sight in an epiphany. Others find it in prayer. John connected to Spirit in many ways: Indian sweat lodges, music, words, nature... This is not some gobblygook New Age jargon. At least not in the way one might think. There is a method to this line of thinking.

The point is things didn't add up. Why was there so much human suffering on such a beautiful planet? For me (and John) the problem was the story, or rather the lie we were told. This is the lie about the evil other. Religion thrives on evil. Without evil there would be no need for the 'salvation' many of the world religions are selling. The dirty BIG secret is - we are not lost, forever doomed to hell if certain rules are not followed. We are here to enjoy this life and connect with what I chose to call spirit. We are here to connect, and enjoy each other. If the word 'spirit' is too woo-woo for you, then call it candy or styrofoam or whatever.

The only evil on this planet is what humans have created for themselves, and perpetuated on others. Greed begets poverty, poverty begets ignorance, ignorance begets hate… Oh I know my begets. I've researched and relished, not only the Christian Bible, but practically the creed of every religion on the planet. I might have missed something in Siberia, or some oral belief not yet written down, but the point is when a discerning eye compares all religions there are more similarities than differences.

Don't take my word for it. Others have already done the research. Joseph Campbell says it best. < It's main result for me has been the confirmation of a thought I have long and faithfully entertained: of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology, but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony, with its themes announced, developed, amplified and turned about, distorted, reasserted, and today, in a grand fortissimo of all sections sounding together, irrestibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge. (The Masks of God) >

Wow, what a beautiful thought - 'advancing to some kind of mighty climax.' Sign me up! Try imaging the entire human race as your family. Think it into reality. Breathe it into hardcore acts of kindness.

Mother Nature didn't allow a levee system to fail and engulf a million people in New Orleans. Mother Nature doesn't force us to kill each other for oil, money, TV's, or hate. Turn the word evil around and what do you see...LIVE. Take the word evil out of your vocabulary, and you will only feel love. Thank God and the Goddess for all the rescuers out there.

(Thompson DMN)

Unfortunately, the Third World exists in ALL of the countries on our planet. Cousins, we created this Third World. Let's un-create it.

I Believe

Day 6

Yay, troops, water and food arrived. Finally. The CNN pool photographer is throwing bottled water from the helicopter to people stranded in homes surrounded by chest-high brown, putrid water. Guys in hazmet suits are cruising up and down the streets of New Orleans on jet skiis. Pontoon boats follow behind to pick up any people they find. Surreal… I'm not sure it's a good idea to throw bottles into that scuzzy water. If people drink water from bottles picked out of contaminated water won't they die from dysentery? How do they get the water in their mouths without touching the plastic that touched the contaminated water? I guess, if you're dieing of thirst...

Stranded people are getting out of New Orleans. Only a crazy street person, thug, or blogging geek holed up on the 10th floor of a highrise building with his 'model' girlfriend would stay in that toxic soup on purpose. The old, infirm, and helpless are just stuck.

The budget for the money for the levees dried up. In 1965 after Hurricane Betsy Congress authorized the Hurricane Protection/New Orleans Levee Plan, which was to be a 10 year project, but ended up being a 30-year project that was never entirely finished. Mike Parker, head of the Army Corps of Engineers three years ago, was forced to resign by the Bush Administration over his opposition to budget cuts, one of which dealt with the levees. The interview is on CNN with Aaron Brown.

My favorite quote from that interview: "I don't think there are 10 people in Washington that know what's in the budget and how it's being spent." (Aaron Brown)

What protection do we American taxpayers get for $38 Billion?

New Orleans Sunk

Friday - September 2, 2005

Prayer - I do it.
Money - I donate it.

The suffering goes on…
People dieing at the convention center -
Patients need to be evacuated IMMEDIATELY
Bodies floating in the water: This is somebody's mother, father, sister, brother,
grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, son, daughter -
The smell gags.
UNO campus - 3,000 people waded there
When the water rose…
Through toxic sludge from the neighboring houses
And hundreds to the Vietnamese Church -
Thousands huddle in pockets of survival all over the city
Surrounded, trapped by an Urban Cesspool.
THE LEVEES BROKE.
Mall burned to the ground -
Fires all over town,
A chained dog floats lifeless.
Kittens, caged birds, fish in tanks -
All dead.
Pictures on a screen;
Two dimensional,
Yet,
I know that house,
I know that building,
I know that town.
I lived the Andrew aftermath,
And other Hurricanes,
Earthquakes…
I know
Pictures and words cannot tell the story,
Cannot smell the filth, the horror, the fear -
The DESPAIR.
The Big Easy is wretched.
Gunfire in garages…
Families separated.
Thousands trapped in their attics and upper floors.
A woman cries on a cell phone, "My elderly mother was left at the house."

Maybe this disaster could have been prevented by propping up the levees, maybe not. Now we'll never know.

Can the city ever be safe? This artcle from Salon.

< Is it inevitable that this will happen again?
Yep. You could sit down right now and say we're going to design a new levee system, which will be stronger and more powerful. But you're designing it based on the conditions for today. But all the conditions are changing. The climate is changing. The ocean circulation patterns are changing. The city is subsiding at about 3 feet a century, and if sea level is rising at about 3 feet a century, that's 6 feet. You tell me what the long-term prospects are.

At the same time, the geologist in me says you just have to live with natural disasters and you can't engineer your way out of them. Even so, we sure as hell need to take another look at how we can evacuate people in and out of New Orleans when we know a hurricane is coming. (quote of UC Geologist Jeffery Mount – “Why New Orleans is Sunk” Article - Salon.com by Katharine Mieszkowski)>

I can't imagine how the recovery could have been much faster, given that the area devasted in the gulf region is BIGGER than England. But why couldn't water and food have been dropped at locations around town? Also, the National Guard was where? If there was no shortage of troops because of the war in Iraq, then where were they for 5 days?

New Orleans Mayor Nagin on the radio - "No more goddamn press conferences. Get your ass down here!" Presumably to the US President whose ass did show up later in the day to 'look' at the deluge. The President's PR staff missed a photo-op by not putting some water and food in his hand to offer the pitifuls more than a 'hug.' Really, sometimes his handlers bungle it.

Our illiterate leader, or rather current occupant of the White House, and a product of the best education money can buy, offers these words of advice, "Don't buy gas if you don't need it."

I heartily agree. "Don't buy gas. Don't buy cars." The irony: people in poverty don't have cars or the means to leave town, but not because of consumer revolt. Cars cost money. Money these people don't have, or the education to get a job to pay for one.

I still don't know the fate of my professors at UNO. My instinct tells me they're alive anyway. I know Kay Murphy evacuated. James Winter? Bill Lavender

The fate of my much-anticipated collaboration with the UNO community is at this moment a dangling participle, sort of...
Of course, people in the throes of basic survival are not concerned with these mundane matters. I feel guilty as I sit comfortable in my air-conditioned, dry (for now) house built in a drained swamp in Florida. I find myself morbidly glued to the TV - immobilized by events. Vaguely, I am becoming aware of a rising commitment to participate in the resurrection of University of New Orleans. THAT will be something to party about at Mardi Gras.

ODE NEW ORLEANS

OK, I never supported going to war in Iraq…NEVER. Yet even with proof that this war was totally unnecessary, people are still blind to the elephant in the room. Greed. I have a birthright to back my opinion. This birthright is planted firmly in the soil of this country called the United States of America. My ancestors of Mayflower/Puritan/Quaker extraction bred and bred and bred for thirteen generations to produce me here. I am a Patriotic American.

Of course, while grateful for my life, my country, and my resilient genepool, the facts are this: my kind overran an entire race of people that occupied this ‘America’ for a period of at least 10,000 years before my Grandpappies sailed across the Atlantic in the 17th Century to carve out their Zion in the new land of promise. I guess squatter’s rights didn’t apply to the natives they met.

My cousins are a mix of warring/peace types, but anyone with a brain knows – WAR BREEDS WAR and WAR IS BIG BUSINESS.

This is a segue to my point. I hold the 'pass-the-buck' Bush administration more than partially responsible for wasting my nation's precious resources; people, funds, our elements, and for ruining whatever goodwill feelings my nation of many nations enjoyed throughout the world by invading another country for all the wrong reasons. One end result being, there is an even bigger target on my ass when I travel around the globe.

And now we face this preventable, apopolyptic flood in one of my favorite cities - New Orleans. As a graduate student at the University of New Orleans, my heart is broken for my school, and for the monumental loss of life and property. The power of raw Nature is humbling and unpredictable, but how can anyone with a conscience look at submerged New Orleans and not be ANGRY!

- Thursday, September 01, 2005
This morning, about 7:05 am Eastern time, George Bush was interviewed by Diane Sawyers on ABC's Good Morning America.

This is what he said: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

By Will Bunch August 31, 2005
(Click the above link to see the entire article)

<…When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the LEVEES SURROUNDING NEW ORLEANS CONTINUED TO SUBSIDE.

Yet after 2003, the flow of FEDERAL DOLLARS TOWARD SELA DROPPED to a trickle. The CORPS never tried to hide the fact that the SPENDING PRESSURES OF THE WAR IN IRAQ, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as FEDERAL TAX CUTS -- WAS THE REASON FOR THE STRAIN. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune (Bill Walsh) from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.>

I can't do anything about what my ancestors did or didn't do, but I can shed light on the current tragedy. My hope is that we learn from our mistakes and move forward. Eliminating greed should be a top priority for every human. To create our heaven here on earth, we must focus on the inner light we all share… I Believe

Not preventing the flood in New Orleans, and conducting war in Iraq is a tragedy for ALL Americans - dead or alive.

Martin AP