Christmas Eve On the Levee

This clip illustrats an old, seasonal tradition on the Mississippi river in south Louisiana. On Christmas Eve, mostly in the "River Parishes" (St. James, St. John and St. Charles parishes) and on the east side of river, the residents of the small towns and villages along the River build, and then incinerate, elaborate bon-fire structures, preceded and accompanied by lavish feasting, drinking and celebrations. Folks come from MILES around. Gumbo, etouffe, jambalaya, you NAME it! chers...



Depending on who is explaining it, the fires are lit to point the way for Papa Noel (cajun french Santa figure). Others say it is to help guide ships on the river, during December fog in Louisiana, while others say it is to help guide the faithful Catholics to Midnight Mass on Christmas. The probable trueroot of the practices is linked to the Roman Catholic rituals around what's called "la Posada," lighting the way to a room for the so-called Holy Family when they sought shelter, and wound up bunking in a barn.

Whatever the belief, it is still a strong tradition, every year on Christmas eve. The River parishes are located between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. When we lived in Baton Rouge, groups of us went every year, to a different village, for the gumbo, beer, and good times. The bonfires can get quite large and really detailed and ALOT of work goes into them.

Ceremonies utilizing fire are universal, these longest nights of the year, nest paw?

So if you're ever in the vicinity, be sure to find a party, and laissez le bon temps rouller, cher...

John McCutcheon ~~ "Christmas in the Trenches"

Garth Brooks has bought his oh-so-sincere whine to a new release for Christmas called "Belleau Wood," about an alleged rapprochement between German and American troops in that famed forest. It must have been the winter of 1917, cuz the war ended in Nov. '18.

It's not that I doubt the tale, exactly. It's just that, well I'd never heard it before, but I had/have heard John McCutcheon talk about and sing his trenchant (sigh) ballad, Christmas in the Trenches, about a real event in the FIRST winter of the war, the first Christmas, in 1915, when it all might yet have ended.

"My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same...

"

The Greendale Experience (Cuz We're Prohibited From Calling It "Education")

This is funny, but 'for-profit' education, the pretensions of which this "ad" is a send-up, is not funny. When people talk about "student debt, they're not mainly talking about people who got loans to attend the local state college or university. The VAST majority of student indebtedness is owed to "proprietary" so-called "schools," like Kaplan, and Phoenix, and the rest, who sell credentials the same way GM sells cars...
With a financing plan!

The War On "X-Mas!"

War On Christmas PSA

Whaddaya Mean By "Work?"

Capitalism works AMAZINGLY well--STUNNINGLY EFFICIENTLY-- as the instrument for transferring wealth from the bottom to the top.
For "democracy?" Not so much. Capitalism is an intrinsically monopolistic program. Monopolies are contrary to democratic governance.
So wadda YOU think?

In Honor of Imaginary Beings

Probably the BEST thing one can say about peoples' devotion to"Imaginary Beings" is that it does produce some lovely and evocative imagery. Old Santa Fe friend María Móntez-Skolnik captured this image recently, around Thanksgiving, at the little "Santuario" in the village of Chimayo, in the mountains east and north of Santa Fe.

The Santuario has gained renown for the curative powers of the mud made from dirt of the Chapel floor. It's been regarded as a "healing" place for four Centuries, or so. And there started to be a problem, cuz LOTS penitents came to acquire the miraculous mud, and the floor of the chapel was continually being gouged out. So now they bring the dirt in from somewhere out in the hills, and the priest blesses it. I guess this 'works' just as well.

The lights with which the structures are festooned are called "luminarias." They're paper bags with the "novena" candles bedded in sand in the bottom. They are ubiquitous this time of year, out here.

Another seasonal/religious tradition is to build small "bonfires" in the streets on Xmas eve, for a pageant the call "Las Posadas," re-enacting the search by the Jesus family for a place to stay, ending at/in the manger. The faithful--and those playing along--light the "farolitos" to guide the "holy family" on its way.

Fyeieio: The tradition of the farolitos/bonfires is exaggerated hugely, and currently is outrageously misinterpreted, down in south Louisiana where I spoent 10 years in the '80s/90s: there, on Xmas eve, the Cajun folks spend weeks constructing HUGE, intricate, fabulous structures on the Mississippi River levees, only to set them alight, on Xmas eve, and dance, eat hugely, and drink and celebrate in the garish light of the flaming structures. It's in honor of the "Posadas" tradition, also, of course. But the (philistine) local media announce faithfully that they do it to "guide Santa" up to Baton Rouge.

Back at the Santuario: Every year, on Good Friday (before Easter), the faithful flock to make the pilgrimage to the Santuario from Santa Fe, a distance of some 20 miles, and even further. Throngs of pilgrims come from all over to visit the site and ask forgiveness for their sins. I have seen people on their knees, moving along the road-side, slowly, painfully. The SHOULDERS on the highways north out of Santa Fe and south from Espanola, and from the west, from the direction of Los Alamos, are always thick with folks walking alongside the traffic, starting on (Holy) Thursday, and going on through the night, and through the next day.

The State and local law, and the tribal cops from the Pueblos over which the pilgrims traverse (and there are several: Tesuque, Pojoaque, and Nambe', at least), keep EAGLE eyes on it. There has been violence associated with or linked to pilgrims, increasingly. One year--2002, iirc--there were even check-points with pat-down searches.

In addition to the "Santuario," the village of Chimayo is home to a large family of Hispanic weavers, the Ortegas, whose work is known and valued in folk art collections around the world. It is also the home of the renowned eatery, Rancho de Chimayo, established on the old (18th Century) family hacienda of the Jaramillo family, who once farmed the valley. They now operate a B&B there, too. My dad and the owner/proprietor, Arturo Jaramillo, were pals. The restaurant became the de facto celebration station for my family from almost the day it opened. The food is delicious (though not cheap), and available in varying degrees of capsaicin-enhancement.

If you happen to dine there, you may want to try the Chimayo Cocktail. I "invented" it, chatting with the owner (at the time), Arturo Jaramillo, after a family gatherning/meal there in the late '60s. It's basically a tequila sunrise with apple cider instead of orange juice, and a dash of creme de cassis instead of the Gran Marnier. Served up, with an apple slice garnish, and cinnamon-sugar around the rim.

¡Su salud! (y pesetas, y amor, y tiempo para gustarlos).

Something, Something, History, Something, Re-Live It

Cops are PIGS.

When did we forget this?

You coulda asked Woody...

I remember from the LAST time.

It's not true what they say...I DO remember...still bear a few momentos.

Cops are the enforcers of the Owners, the gunsels of the State.

A lot of 'em are former military. They love this shit.

They no longer 'serve & protect." Now it's "search & destroy. "

ops don't get into it for the money.

They LOVE what they do.

Mebbe not ALL are sadistic sociopaths, but enough are that tie mkes little difference.

I have said for the last 40 years that ALL citizens should have the experience of being rousted by cops who rezlly think you're a "perp," to see what 'rights' they give themselves to deal with you: a good cop (such as they are) on a bad day; or a bad cop (most of 'em) any day.

Lee Camp -- "Blowing Up A Car-ful of Clowns? Just Sport!"

Hot Realty: Selling Britain

A funny take on conquest, with a nudge at all the "flip it" and "home-buyer" cabloid shows around.

"The Web Of Debt," Parts One and Two

Anonymous, for Hemp

One acre of hemp creats the same biomass, with the same amount of resource use, as 4 acres of trees.

Eleven/Eleven: How About A National "PEACE" Day?

By
John Konopak (Sgt, USAF, 1964-68)

ARE YOU READY for the GINORMOUS "Veterans' Day" Appliance, Winter Clothing, Carpet and Flooring, Used AND NEW car SALE! happening THIS weekend at a Mall near you?

Whilst you're out there shopping to save the economy, I'd like to say little something about "peace." And the celebration of National--hell, why stop there--INTERNATIONAL "Peace Day!" Eleven Eleven, from now on...

Remember that November 11, 1918 (the "11/11" we now recognize) was the date on which the Armistice ending the "Great War" was signed, officially ending the carnage that had lain waste to the best parts of France, Belgium, Holland, a lot of Italy, the Balkans, and a good chunk Russia and of the Middle East.

Literally, millions of people--soldiers and civilians--perished.

But on Nov. 11, 1918, the guns--which could be heard in England, though they were fired in France--fell silent for the first time in more than four, long, brutal, bloody, ruinous years--and that kind of dying stopped, if only for a while...

It was a MOMENTOUS day. People were WILD with joy, in capitals and villages across the continent. NOBODY in all of Europe escaped the consequences. Everyone knew or was related to SOMEONE who'd lost a limb, or a lung, or had been carried off in some bizarre charge into the teeth of the first machine guns across some blood-drenched, decay-filled, shit-soaked trench. During those years, more people had died than in any comparable period of time since the Black Plague. It was, they fervently hoped, the end of all that.

From our perspective, almost a century on, it's probably well to recall, in all honesty, that the last veterans who actually did give their all for 'freedom, liberty, apple pie and Chevrolet, have mostly already left us. All the WW I vets are gone, long since; a majority of the so-called "Greatest Generation" have already signed out, too.

Since then, we vets have largely been participants in America's "wars of choice" in Asia--Southeast AND Southwest--as well as those military efforts to prop up friendly regimes in this Hemisphere. We've done what we were told. But such honor as there is in that is somewhat vitiated in my mind by the costs inflicted upon the murdered and mutilaterd victims we left--and still are leaving--in our neo-colonialist/Imperialist wake.

So I think, if 11/11 were going to be a date for commemorating and memorializing, then it should be celebrated as International PEACE Day, since it was the day the "Great War" ended and "peace" returned (to Western Europe, anyway).

And NOW is a good time to start. None Better!

We've got ALL kinds of holidays honoring and celebrating the glorious military past of our Nation and the sacrifices of its military: Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Pearl Harbor Day, and now, perversely, also "9-11," too is draped in military regalia. If we were going to remember "veterans," these should be enough.

But there is NO day in our national calendar on which we actually celebrate the sceuclar phenomenon of "peace."

And I, for one, think Veteran's day, with its echoes of those silenced guns, should be it.

It's the time of the year when the "poppies" appear on the lapels of folks of the (former) British empire, in commemoration of the hundreds of thousands of lives which were spent in so ghastly a fashion in Flanders' fields. It should be a day on which we pledge NOT to repeat those awful lessons.

That's what seems to me to be forgotten amid all the patriotic/jingoistic folderol, to say NOTHING of the commercial hype attending the "official" holiday.

* * * * * * * * * *
Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

That last line? The Old Lie?

"It is sweet and good to die for your County."

Bill Moyers On Ralph Nader: "Our FOREMOST Public Citizen"

As The Cookie Crumbles: No, No "Con-Con" Do, Dood!

Morning, hippies. Happy Weekend. Remember, if you HAVE a weekend, thank a Union!

As the desperation among the average citizens of the USofA becomes more palplable, cries for reform grow louder and more varied. Decisions by the SCROTUS such as Citizens United, which effectively turned Corporations into 'citizens,' and other set-backs limiting the range of legal redress through class actions, have l;ed people to propose a variety of theoretically possible but practicably impossible remedies, the latest being a Contstitutional Convention.

Y'r Ob'd't S'v't will vehemently oppose any proposal for remedying our current social ills and dilemmas which includes a Constitutional Convention.

I sympathize deeply with the sentiment, but, man, think about it!

Unless you want--or are at least prepared-- to see the ENTIRE Constitution scrapped, a ConCon is a really, terribly, terrifically, horrifically, horribly BAD fucking idea.

I understand the impetus to "do" something.

But in this hyper-mediated, public environment, direct democracy isn't a practicable alternative.

Why? Or rather, "Why not?"

Think "Prop 8." In California, a couple of years ago, amending the CA Constitution by initiative--direct democracy--to exclude gays from the rights accorded BY THE STATE to 'straight' couples. It passed, due in most part--most people rightly believe--to massive, focussed expenditures of disinformation cash by political interests OUTSIDE California. It was enough to sway the results, which are STILL being adjudicated, and the big outside money is still bankrolling the obstructionists, who may ultimately fail, but in doing so will have STILL have collected MILLIONS in donations.

Now multiply the influence of outside money in CA on Prop 8 expo-fuuking-NENTIALLY!

Then remember that, as influential as that interference has been, it is still WITHOUT the HUGE tidal-waves of cash the CorpoRats will be able to unleash through their wholly-owned, lap-dog CorpoRat/SCUM "press" to sway any such deliberations in the context of a Constitutional Convention or any other venue in the future.

And you cannot limit what may be discussed, reformed, or eliminated. You can't have a ConCon and say, well, we're only gonna talk about corporate citizenship. Everything's on the table. Every year, some Poli Sci class at Dear Ol' Siwash U conducts 'man-on-the-street interviews in which they translate the 18th Century diction of the COnstitution and rewrite it in more contemporary vernacular, and ask people if they'd accept it, or the Bill of Rights, and routinely about half of them are rejected by citizens today.

It's what the Greeks usta call an "apoeria," an irresolvable contradiction: The people cannot order their representatives to over-ride the power that placed their representatives in office in the first place. The CorpoRats, as "persons," have the "right" to expend ANY resources in ANY amount to secure the end they desire. And their resources are essentially endless and boundless.

The CorpoRats would/WILL have a fuuking FIELD DAY with direct democracy. They own ALL the media through which it would necessarily be conducted.

You do NOT think the CorpoRats wouldn't use the ALL power that CU gives them to defeat any effort to revoke or repeal it, by WHATEVER means?

And there would be no way to prohibit it.

Or do you really, truly, truly BELEEVE! there REALLY IS a difference between Miller and Bud?

See the problem?

We'll talk when I see ya at the beach!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's the vid in which Cenk Uygir leads the appeal for donations:

The Race To The Bottom, Chap. 22

To keep industries from forsaking frigid Illinois for wamer--and less unionized--climates, the State of Illinois has given certain big employers the authority to withhold "state income taxes" from workers' checks, but then to pocket those taxes themselves.

Could it fucking BEEEE anymore corrupt?

Andrew Breitbart: On The "Penis" Beat

Hi-Way Fucking Robbery!

The Daily Show
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Here's MY Idea of an "Oath-Keeper"!!!

The Sarge has 50 combat missions, a MESS of non-trivial medals and decorations, and the RIGHT ATTITUDE!
Semper FI!

Tom Hartmann Fucks Up "Anosognothously"

Anosognosia is the condition of being unaware/in complete denial about a given disability.

No, really.

"THE CONDITION IN WHICH A PERSON WHO SUFFERS ILLNESS OR DISABILITY SEEMS UNAWARE OF OR DENIES THE EXISTENCE OF HIS OR HER ILLNESS/DISABILITY; MAY INCLUDE UNAWARENESS OF QUITE DRAMATIC IMPAIRMENTS, SUCH AS BLINDNESS OR PARALYSIS."

Which perfectly describes the Rightard/Wackloon/Cristo-fasci­szt contingent as WELL as a majority of the remaining O'bots

The Front Fell Off--"This was a very unusual event."