Folk Music, Coffee, Wine, and Poetry

Today's message is short...too much going on today. Started the day at a quarter after five in the morning, got home about 7:00 pm.

So...back to the subject at hand. I listened for hours last night to a folk music radio station that's only available over the Internet (folkalley.com). By the time I finished listening, I'd decided I want to move to Kent, Ohio and open a bar/coffee house/poetry hangout. I'll call it Geezer: Proof of Adequate Age & Eccentricity Required for Admittance. If I don't open it in Kent, Ohio, I want to open it someplace. Am I regressing to a time before I was aware?

A Different Perspective

Lately, I've been concerned about my business...I seem to be spending way too much time getting far too little done. My staff are very busy, I'm very busy, but we're not getting enough done. More than that, we're not getting more business. I don't have time to market. I don't have time to participate in networking groups, give speeches, think about marketing strategies. I've allowed things to take control of me. I'm not running the business...I'm scrambling to serve clients and ignoring the business.

So, I decided I needed someone else to help me get a vision of where the company is, where it should be headed, and perhaps how to get it there. I have a strong sense that we could have much more business, be making more money, and be accomplishing more, but...how. Well, I have invited a group of people to spend the day with me early in November to give me their perspectives. I'm looking to them to be blunt and to offer a no-holds-barred assessment of what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, and what I should consider changing.

The people I've invited are a varied lot: a highly successful executive who runs a multi-million dollar service business; a Ph.D. who used to work for me, but isn't in to having his own business...but is doing independent contract work now; a couple of people who run fairly large and successful associations; an attorney who knows a bit about association work; a couple of entrepreneurs who used to be corporate types in an engineering environment, but now run a very succesful franchise business, and a scattering of others. I'd like more people from different perspectives, but I find I don't have a particularly diverse circle of acquaintenances.

I need someone with fresh eyes to look at what I do, what I could do...and offer suggestions. I want to either grow the business dramatically, or I want to sell it and do something completely different. The status quo is absolutely not an option. Maybe this experience will get me pumped up...or maybe it will convince me I'm not built for this business. In any event, I need to get shook up and I need to take action.

Blog Searching

I learned today about two search engines that focus on blog searches. One is beta test that is being conducted by Google (http://blogsearch.google.com/) and the other is Clusty's Blog Search (http://blogs.clusty.com/). I've only done a bit of checking on both of them, looking for "due process," the title of my blog yesterday.

Google listed my blog from yesterday as the third item on its list; Clusty did not list my blog in the first five pages of results; I did not bother to look further.

I did a search on the title and a phrase from my September 30 diatribe and it was unable to find anything.

Just found this stuff interesting...you may, as well.

Due Process

Some people argue that the liberal-leaning-left is using due process as a political tool. Those who think due process is being abused seem to believe that--by calling our attention to the fact that the current administration is holding U.S. citizens without charge, without trial, and without access to legal counsel--we are making an unpatriotic attack on the United States. They point to attempts to give Jose Padilla, the accused Al Queda sympathizer, access to due process; they say efforts to grant Padilla due process under the Constitution are purely political, motivated not by true concern about due process but, instead, out of concern for political gain.

Perhaps so. It depends on how one defines politics and how one defines inalienable rights.

If Padilla is, indeed, an Al Queda sympathizer and if, indeed, he intends to cause physical harm to the United States and its citizens, then he should be restrained and detained. The thing is, no one knows whether Padilla is guilty of a crime. Padilla has not had the opportunity to argue his innocence. True, he's a U.S. citizen. True, U.S. citizens are protected against unreasonable search and seizure.

But this is different. This is an attack on the homeland. Due process was never intended to apply to such situations.

It's not different. Whether an attack on the homeland or an attack on the President's wife, the person accused of the attack is guaranteed due process. Due process does apply to such situations; at least, it should.

The reason we are so protective of due process is that people and governments are fallible. Individuals and governments make mistakes. Sometimes, they lie. The government cannot be trusted with unchecked absolute power over our lives and our liberties; that is why the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, in their extraordinary foresight, provided the citizens of this country with protections...such as due process.

Admittedly, it's scary to consider the possibility that a terrorist could be freed, thanks to due process, and could then launch an attack on American soil. It's frightening to think that our system of government would ever let such a person free to attack us.

It's more frightening to me, though, to think that our system of government would be compromised to such an extent as to eradicate a key component of freedom that might protect us in the short term, but could destroy us in the long term.

If the President is permitted to call Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, an enemy combatant who is not eligible for the protections of due process, what is to stop the President from claiming his political opponent is an enemy combatant? What is to stop the President from claiming I am an enemy combatant simply because I am writing to protest the treatment of the "enemy?"

Excuse me, there's someone at the door...oh, well, I'll finish this piece if they release me from the U.S. Naval brig...

Ideas for Geezer-Based Income

I am a believe in trying to take advantage of opportunities by filling emerging needs...not that I've ever had the resources to actually invest the necessary capital to do so. However, if I ever find myself in a position of having resources to address some of these needs, I think it's a safe bet I could recover my investment and make a handsome profit. Don't you agree?

• Help aging people maintain their independence in their multi-story homes by installing personal elevators in existing homes...it's being done.
  
• Sell magnifiers, etc. for books, forms, websites, etc. for people whose eyesight is weakening.
  
• Create localized database of services of particular interest to older people, e.g., lawncare, house-sitting, handy-man service, errand service, general support organizations, etc.
  
• Publish Consumer Reports type assessments of investment companies, annuities, retirement communities, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, etc.

I'm interested in getting more feedback...more ideas. Where can we invest to maximize the likelihood of good return, while simultaneously looking out after the interests of geezers, would-be geezers, etc.?

Ninety Years Old

Yesterday, October 1, was my mother-in-law's 90th birthday. My wife and her sister flew out to the west coast to see her and to celebrate the occasion. Unfortunately, my wife reported that her mother was only vaguely aware that anyone was visiting her. She was certainly not celebrating.

Two or three years ago, my mother-in-law suffered a stroke and she has been only semi-coherent since then. It's hard to see a person just occupying space, her mind almost completely vacant.

If I ever reach a stage at which I am not conscious of the people around me, my surroundings, or the world at large, I hope to be able to quickly slip away. I would not want to simply exist, even if my existence is not painful in the traditional sense; simply existing, to me, would be painful enough.

What Are Moral Values?

One of my favorite sisters-in-law sent this to me. It's an excellent rebuttal to the Bush administration's claim that its extermination of civil liberties is based on its basic "moral values."


What Are Moral Values?
by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers
Mayflower Church, Oklahoma City


As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church
in Oklahoma City, a church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of
Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. But you would most likely have
encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been
a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most number of
angry letters to the editor.

Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched
as the faith I love has been taken over by those who claim to speak for
Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian.


We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having
swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in
moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country,
about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean what are we
talking about? Because we don't get to make them up as we go along,
especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited
tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does. Let
me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in
power who claim moral values are on their side:

When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your
deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that
your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some
of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who
believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral.

When you live in a country that has established international rules for
waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to
enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for
the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.

When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to
acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn
them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount, stuff like we
must never return violence for violence and those who live by the
sword will die by the sword), you are doing something immoral.

When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as
the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are
doing something immoral.

When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the
patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero,
you are doing something immoral.

When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says
that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test,
by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get
stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something
immoral.

When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemy
combatants" of the rules of the Geneva Conventions, which your own
country helped to establish and insists that other countries follow,
you are doing something immoral.

When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and
the evil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with you,
or with the terrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches your own
friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted, instead
of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something immoral.

When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a
war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous
deficit that hangs like a great m illstone around the necks of our
children, you are doing something immoral.

When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was
once the most loved country in the world, and act like it doesn't
matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have
done something immoral.

When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record
numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of
discrimination, you are doing something immoral.

When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of
Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the
kingdom, you are doing something immoral.

When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect
the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporations that
bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our
children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done
something immoral. The Earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.

When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our
killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble
the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the
enemy, and the enemy is us.

When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a
"compassionate conservative," using the word which is the essence of
all religious faith -- compassion, and then show no compassion for
anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to
you for help, you are doing something immoral.

When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but
do not hing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a
doctor, even if she doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are doing
something immoral.

When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will set women
back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers
who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.

I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be a
supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and
gay rights I must not be a person of faith.



I'm tired of people saying that I can't support the troops but
oppose the war.
I heard that when I was your age, when the Vietnam war was raging. We
knew that that war was wrong, and you know that this war is wrong --
the only question is how many people are going to die before these
make-believe Christians are removed from power?

This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of
this

administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who
can turn things around are people like you--young people who are just
beginning to wake up to what is happening to them.It's your country to
take back. It's your faith to take back. It's your future to take
back.

Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends begin
to tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be
wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut.
Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real
Muslims, and real Hindus, and real Buddhists--so do all the faith
traditions of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is
precious. Every human being is precious.

Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity.
And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a
deluded man, not a man of faith. And war -- war is the greatest failure
of the human race -- and thus the grea test failure of faith.


There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all: War, what
is it good for? Absolutely nothing! And what is the dream of the
prophets? That we should study war no more, that we should beat our
swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Who would
Jesus bomb, indeed?

How many wars does it take to know that too many people have died? What
if they gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find out.


Time to march again, my friends. Time to commit acts of civil
disobedience, time to sing, and to pray, and refuse to participate in
the madness.