Forgiveness, my final soul-ution to what ails America: the search for the heart of New Orleans, part IV

I spent the final paces of my walk back to the hotel with my head in the clouds, in awe of the city. I had gotten it. My spirit connected with the city and I found out on a very personal and internal level what makes this city important and great. It’s the people and the palpable spirit you feel here that makes this place like no other. The soul of New Orleans is absolutely enchanted. Imagine a modern day Stonehenge. The Druids and other mystical folk of yesteryear aren’t readily apparent on these streets, but behind the plain clothes of today’s average citizen the spiritual DNA is very close to those sages of times past, of that I have no doubt.

Easy way to help

An easy way to help the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio is to use GoodSearch as your search engine. No cost to you and benefit to NAICCO.

Go to http://www.goodsearch.com/. Find Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio in their charities list and put your search keyword in the search window.

Isn't that easy?

Every time anyone uses GoodSearch for the NAICCO we get money credited to our account! A no-sweat fund-raiser!

Volunteer opportunities at Stratford Ecological Center

Ed Guide Training Set for March

We are looking for dedicated volunteers for Education Guides to lead a small groups of children on adventures around our farm and nature preserve on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings. No experience necessary.   Location:  Stratford Ecological Center, 3083 Liberty Road, Delaware, OH 43015 (located just south of Delaware, OH, west of the junction of State Routes 23 and 315.  Contact Jane at 740-363-2548 or SECVolunteer@aol.com

Trail Maintenance & New Trail Building

We are looking for volunteers who would like to help in the maintenance, reconstruction and new trail building.  Location:  Stratford Ecological Center, 3083 Liberty Road, Delaware, OH 43015 (located just south of Delaware, OH, west of the junction of State Routes 23 and 315.  Contact Jane at 740-363-2548 or SECVolunteer@aol.com for more information.

Invasive Species Teams

Bangkok bombs

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's U.S.-backed military regime is warning that Islamist insurgent infiltrators will try to bomb Bangkok and escalate their war for independence, which has killed 2,000 people in the past three years.

American military forces have boots on the ground in this Southeast Asian "non-NATO ally," and are currently involved in a fresh series of training exercises for Thailand's army, which seized power in a bloodless coup last September.

Bangkok expects America's annual multinational, Thailand-based Cobra Gold military exercise to be held in May. Previous Cobra Golds included anti-terrorist strategies for protecting oil platforms in the Gulf of Thailand and other targets.

America's smaller Exercise Cope Tiger 2007, specializing in air force training, was held in northern Thailand Jan. 29 through Feb. 9, involving 600 U.S. service members, plus 600 from Thailand and Singapore combined, according to the U.S. Air Force.

"Intelligence reports said a group of about 10 rebels from the south had infiltrated Bangkok," the relatively pro-coup Bangkok Post

How about a little democracy for a change?

"Revolution is the Solution"

For several days I had been bedeviled by the recurring memory of a jingle from an out-dated television commercial. My recollection of the product they were promoting lay tantalizingly close to the edge of my consciousness, but remained stubbornly out of my reach.

So my "mind's ear" was left listening to, "It's time for a new beginning." ad nauseam with no tangible context. (If I had had that, I would at least have known which company to despise for etching such an inane little tune into my brain).

"Beautifully harmonized" by a group of sickeningly enthusiastic twenty somethings accompanied by music undoubtedly composed during the "Age of Aquarius", this little ditty molested my mind with more frequency than I care to recall.

At last I had an epiphany. Sometimes frustrated subconscious minds of Gen-Xers recovering from television addiction transmit their contents into our consciousness in markedly bizarre ways during our waking hours. Or to put it another way, if we ignore our dreams long enough, bad television forces its way into your unsuspecting brains. My hat goes off to Madison

Barbarians at the gate

These people truly are pathological, so comfortable are they at lying that they make no distinction between the mundane and the monstrous.

Crows are white; doves are black. Night is day. Day is night. The Bushvolk keep reinventing reality and revising history.

Why? Because they can. Because they keep getting away with it.

Scandals have become routine in the Bush II years -- so much so, that the response is formulaic.

You know the drill. Scandal erupts in the free press (not to be confused with Fox News, our very own state-sponsored medium.)

Bushvolk claim dubious deniability. The president robotically appoints a blue-ribbon panel. When really in deep poop, they pull out their favorite whipping boy, Bill Clinton.

That's the current defense of the political firings of U.S. attorneys known as the Gonzales Eight. Old habits die hard, fellow patriots.

Next, Congress holds hearings. After the hot air and histrionics, the legislature slaps the executive branch on the

Lobby your legislators for medical marijuana

Lobby your Ohio legislators on March 22, The Ohio Patient Action Network (OPAN) Ohio Patient Network - an MPP grantee - will hold a lobby day to generate support for medical marijuana legislation. Please join medical marijuana patients and health care advocates at the Statehouse in Columbus on Wednesday, March 22, to urge your legislators to sponsor medical marijuana legislation.

There are many new legislators in Columbus who are not familiar with medical marijuana, so we need to educate them about it. The most effective way to educate legislators is to meet with them personally.

If you are interested in participating in this vital lobbying effort, please contact Brandy Zink by e-mailing bzink@ohiopatient.net for details. If you or someone you know is suffering from a debilitating condition or if you are a medical professional, a member of law enforcement, or a public official, your presence during the lobby day could be tremendously influential.

Please remember to dress and act professionally; we want to engage legislators, not alienate them.

Four years ago today

Four years ago today, I was in Nablus in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement that supports the nonviolent movement among the Palestinians.  I was also supporting my friend Neta Golan, an Israeli woman and one of the founders of ISM, now married to a Palestinian, who was about to give birth. I had spent a strangely idyllic day in a small village outside Nablus, where a group of ISM volunteers had gone because we’d received a report that the Israeli army was harassing villagers. When we got there, the army had left, the cyclamen and blood-red anemones were in bloom underneath ancient olive trees, and the villagers insisted we stay for a barbecue.

We were just passing through the checkpoint on our way back to Nablus when we got a call from Rafah, in the Gaza strip.  Rachel Corrie, a young ISM volunteer, had trying to prevent an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing a home near the border.  The bulldozer operator saw her, and went forward anyway, crushing her to death.

No mo money for war

The Democrats in Congress are doing less to oppose the war now that they have the majority than they did in the minority.  While in the minority, Democrats in a sizable and growing number voted against funding more war.  While in the minority, Democrats pushed hard for Resolutions of Inquiry into the lies that launched the war.  While in the minority, Democrats in significant numbers signed onto a bill to create a preliminary investigation into grounds for impeachment.  While in the minority, Democrats raised hell about the Republicans' failures to investigate or to stop the war, and Democrats campaigned for reelection and election of a majority, claiming they would have the powers to subpoena, to place under oath, and to end the war.

Election fraud, my ass

They just wanted to protect the sanctity of the vote. That’s the administration’s pious explanation for why they fired eight U.S. Attorneys who were Republican enough for Bush to have appointed them in the first place. "The president recalls hearing complaints about election fraud not being vigorously prosecuted and believes he may have informally mentioned it to the attorney general,” explained White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. How could you question such a laudable goal?

Of course the justifications keep shifting, as with the Iraqi war. First it was the general performance of the prosecutors. Then a preference for specific replacements..  Now it’s concern for the democratic process.

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