Your Sunday Poem

This wonderful piece is from "Love Poems from God; Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West," edited by Daniel Ladinsky and is by Tukaram (1608 - 1649) who in the introduction is described as the most famous saint in Marathi India.  "His poems were playful and earthy, sometimes very innocent and sometimes thought-provoking, often changing from serious to comical within a few lines.  His poems in the vernacular are called abhangs, which are poetic songs of a teaching and devotional nature. Even today many children in India grow up hearing these poems (the milder ones) recited and set to contemporary music."

Landlocked in Fur

I was meditating with my cat the other day
and all of a sudden she shouted,
"What happened?"

I knew exactly what she meant, but encouraged
her to say more -- feeling that if she got it all out on the table
she would sleep better that night.

So I responsed, "Tell me more, dear,"
and she soulfully meowed,

"Well, I was mingled with the sky.  I was comets
whizzing here and there.  I was suns in heat, hell -- I was
galaxies.  But now look -- I am
landlocked in fur.

To this I said, "I know exactly what
you mean."

What to say about converstation
between
mystics?

The Children's Hour

Calhoun’s Cannons for June 22, 2012

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

                                                                                George Orwell

            The shocking thing is this:  How easily everyone turned away from the children and their truth.  They did not matter, but the institutions that their truth threatened did.  The Catholic Church, Penn State, the Boy Scouts, the dynamic was the same – deny, deflect, cover up, turn away, turn away.

            And how easily the mind deflected the children’s truth into euphemism – they weren’t raped, they were “inappropriately touched.”  Or “molested.”  Their rapists were “troubled men” who needed to be treated with understanding and compassion.  Or wrapped in the code of silence, for the good of the church, for the good of the school.  And the children were dismissed and turned away.  That made things much, much easier.

            And how quickly silence overtook everyone involved.  One didn’t discuss such things in public.  Not in polite company.  Not in the press or on TV.  And so the shadow world continued: lying adults, truthful children, the safety of an institution placed above the safety of a child’s soul.

            Year after year after year, all the lost children hidden from view, the sins piling to the sky until they couldn’t be hidden any longer.  And when they finally broke free, how easily the adults scattered –I didn’t know, I didn’t see, we thought it best to keep it quiet.  The Catholic Church stonewalled, withheld documents, fought with investigators all the way down the line.  They were protecting their institution, you see, not going hell bent for leather to get justice for their raped children.  Penn State initially diminished, dismissed, overlooked, and feebly did as little as possible, until Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky’s crimes couldn’t possibly be contained any longer.  Yet even then, vast crowds of Penn State students turned out to support their god, Coach Joe Paterno, when it was manifest that Joe had clearly guarded his school, not “his kids.”  And now the news that the Boy Scouts have for years covered up their own file cabinet of rape cases.  More denial, more lies, more turning away to protect a revered institution.

            And why not?  It’s clear that in our society, institutions are of value and must be preserved at all costs.  When it became clear that the Catholic Church had been involved for years in a conspiracy of protecting child raping priests and was even now actively involved in stonewalling investigations, every Catholic layman and woman should have walked out of the church door and refused to come back until the Church hierarchy had a thorough house-cleaning.  But that didn’t happen.  They stayed in their pews.  In a choice between their church and their children, their choice was clear. 

            And at Penn State, Jerry Sandusky is going to prison, but everyone else is happily ensconsed in  their cushy jobs and it remains to be seen how far the ongoing investigation of this mater will go.  I’m betting it will quietly go away, a few wrists slapped, nothing more.  Time to move on.  There’s another football season to prepare for.

            And I have yet to hear that all Scoutmasters across the nation are holding a national boycott until headquarters moves aggressively to open up those files and assist fully with a police investigation and then be held fully accountable for their years-long cover up. 

            But that’s the way of it in a society that gives lip service to children, while not really caring for them in real time.  Compared to other civilized societies, our child welfare numbers are abysmal; hungry kids, sick kids, poor kids, “at risk kids.”  The number of cracks they can fall through are endless because Americans don’t much care for safety nets, not even for kids.  The “village” needed to properly raise a child was ridiculed and blown away years ago. Now, they’re on their own, like their parents, to sink or swim, so they’d better just toughen up.

            And if sexual predators in the form of priests, teachers, coaches, scout-masters come after them, if the institution their rapists work for is rich and powerful and well connected, the children’s truth will go into a file cabinet, for the good of all, you understand.

            Unless we, as a society, decide that a child’s soul, a child’s truth, needs to trump a church steeple or an ivy-covered campus. And so long as euphemisms create a false reality, maybe it’s time to stop speaking about “molesting,” which is such a muddled, soft word, and start calling it what it is: rape.  Maybe that way, when a child speaks that truth, we’ll believe him.  

Bring the Salad Dressing

Sunday, June 24, from 1 -4 PM. the Morro Bay Community Organic Garden is having a BBQ fund-raiser and a chance to tour their community garden.  The garden is located at Ironwood Ave, South of the entrance to Del Mar Park.  The fund raiser will go to buy some more tools and maintenance equipment for this fabulous community enterprise.  Tickets are available at Coalesce Bookstore, Miners garden store in Morro Bay and can be purchased at the BBQ at the garden. Tickets are $12 for adults, Veggie lunch and Children under 12 are $5. For further information, call Susan Heinemann at 772-7828.

If you want to have a yummy lunch and a chance to see what a band of community veggie pioneers have been up to, stop by for a look-see. Then maybe think about starting your own community garden!

Ah, what's in a word?

Interesting story in Saturday's Tribune by David Sneed, about the Coastal Commission latest hearing of an appeal to revoke the sewer project's permit on account of claims that the commission's original approval "was based on false information from the county and state water officials."

The Tribune reported that Dan Carl, the commission's Central Coast regional director, said "he could find no evidence that the commission was intentionally misled."

Commissioner Jana Zimmer of Santa Barbara is further quoted as saying, of the revocation request, "I think it's really inappropriate to infer that the staff was bamboozled in any way." 

Does anybody but me find it deliciously funny that "unintentionally misled" is O.K. with the Commission while "intentionally misled" is a no-no?  I always thought misled was misled.

And as for Ms. Zimmer, I will have to presume she is unfamiliar with the infamous Coastal Commissioner who famously talked about "bait and switchy" at an earlier hearing.  When did "bait and switchy" separate out from "bamboozled?" I always thought if you had been bait and switched, you had been bamboozled.

Well, who knew?

Tuesday night, June 19th,  at the Los Osos Middle School from 7 - 9 pm. the county will be holding a public outreach meeting to begin to get information out on the construction schedule.

Chugga, chugga.  Bait and Switchy Train's now out of the station.  Unintentionally.  Woooo, Wooo.

Your Sunday Poem

This sly piece by Piet Hein (1905-1996), Danish scientist, poet, put together books of these short poems called "gruks" (grook)

Timing Toast

There's an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
Twenty seconds less.