... woops- I started out in that title talking about changing the "painstream"- what a classic freudian slip. And of course, we have heard already about first how television and then the Internet and then blogs were all going to make possible the radical positive changes that are needed at the bedrock of our social, economic, and political Democracy. You know: the kinds of changes that are required if the vast majority of us... We the people if you will... are going to live in any sort of a civil society with much hope at all for meaningful work, secure career, safe communities, stable families, reasonably sane kids- in short, all the sorts of things that go into allowing an indidvidual a shot at much of a self actualized life.
And obviously, social networking as it can be applied to grassroots and progressive organizing in the direction of my old "EPGTDS" (Evolutionary Progressive Grassroots Transformational Democracy Solidarity) catch term... though, to be honest, it never caught on much cuz nobody hardly ever saw my, like, "work"... Anyway social networking combined with and used to enhance some new styled bricks and mortar boots on the ground movement that does a better job of mobilizing and articulating the positions on issues that will deliver on big ticket quality of life, social justic, peace and freedom, security and prosperity, and all around equal opportunity structure types of issues- that's what all my effort is to be all about addressing.
It's not all meant to be tweets and blogs and trying to monetize my work as a writer slash thinker poet philosopher adventurer explorer type of hunter and warrior fellah. I have to work up the gumption to combine that kind of New Media sort of advocacy to actually throw some events in the real world around the general notion of launching a real world activist organizational entity that promotes the ideas and positions that I articulate, propose, or call attention to in, like, the writin'.
Now that I have the new Credit Billing cycle to work with I will splurge for my new Web Space and domain registration and start the ball rolling. The readiness is all! That's write, I used an exclamation point.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Thinking about the phases and stages of life, man...
... Sometimes the personal just overwhelms the careerist secular side of the times we have. I will get going soon, I have faith- cuz you gotta have faith, eh? In any case the welling up of childhood memories and ongoing life reflection precipitated by the closure surrounding the loss of parents, the reconnection with the oldest and in some ways most fundamentally deepest and closest friends... who are dealing with many of the same or parallel kinds of things and wrenching emotions that me and my sister and brother have been dealing with really since our mother died suddenly and accidentally just over nine years ago- and we began the long slow goodbye with our father who could barely stand to "just hang in there" after his wife left but had to strong a constitution and life force and core will to live despite his deteriorating and shrinking self to get out any earlier than this past December.
And then, coincidentally, the passing of Miss McMillan- the elementary school teacher of all of us- who was one of the other majorly influential adults of our childhood- all four of us I'm mostly referring to in this post- it all leaves me feeling oddly still in my prime and profoundly alive and pretty strong pretty fast like I can still go two tree rounds with the world... but that this euphoric high is self aware of its own tenuous gossamer vulnerability like perhaps never before. I feel like it is an adrenalin surge i must take advantage of to finally make something of the ongoing work I have been dancing around doing for my entire adult life.
Onward... Farward and faiyaka. Minnotuh- and den goasaka...
And then, coincidentally, the passing of Miss McMillan- the elementary school teacher of all of us- who was one of the other majorly influential adults of our childhood- all four of us I'm mostly referring to in this post- it all leaves me feeling oddly still in my prime and profoundly alive and pretty strong pretty fast like I can still go two tree rounds with the world... but that this euphoric high is self aware of its own tenuous gossamer vulnerability like perhaps never before. I feel like it is an adrenalin surge i must take advantage of to finally make something of the ongoing work I have been dancing around doing for my entire adult life.
Onward... Farward and faiyaka. Minnotuh- and den goasaka...
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
So it turns out the hippies were right about just about everything...
...well that might be just a wee bit of an overstatement but I am intentionally hyperbolizing here. And I'm not really just talking about "the Hippies" in any official monolithic sense but rather those who by choice or otherwise have given voice to opposition to the PR hoodwinking voice of the mainstream: media, junk culture, chamber of commerce cheerleading for the beneficiaries of how the economy does or doesn't function. And of course that means in large part the overbearing industrial economy most extremely illustrated by the merger of Big G'uvment, Big Military, and of course- Big Corporation. It has been a menage a trois made far from heaven but that in general operates falsely as if it is indeed all things God and Country. When of course the results of its inevitable agenda (unless We the people insist it be stopped- and we haven't been able to do so effectively yet) have little to do with the best interests of most of the people, communities, ecosystems, critters- not to mention the very Democratic ideals, institutions, and potential of these United States of America.
Those of us who have bothered to notice this reality have got to find a better path to create a different destination to the one the fundamentalist business right neocon coalition have us railroaded toward. It's not to late- but hey, time is of the essence.
Obama's window of opportunity along with the hope and possibility his ascendancy on the political landscape has catalyzed will wisp away quickly if his being head of the Executive Branch of mainstream government (that is way too far right of center- so much so it makes my head spin- with apologies to old Nixon cronie John Mitchell) is allowed to gridlock its way to stagnation while being challenged too meekly by Obama. If he doesn't use his 12 or 13 million member mailing lists effectively to help him really deliver the truly significant liberal, progressive, radical- whatever you want to call it- change that he was elected to bring about then he will be abandoned to the apathy and genuine lack of political will and informed outrage that really seem to be the keys to the status quo of the last 40-70 years being able to run roughshod over the basic quality of life realities and opportunity structures of a huge and growing segment of the American people.
To help make sure that doesn't happen We the people... of the progressive radical creative and working class left need to build our own social network of lists and operatives both large scale and individual to help the President not get to comfy with the notion that him making it to the mountaintop is enough. He needs to lead us to the promised land of a more just, fair, egalitarian, and civil society. We need a more Democratic divvying up of the opportunity, wealth and power that our Nation and Economy can create.
Those of us who have bothered to notice this reality have got to find a better path to create a different destination to the one the fundamentalist business right neocon coalition have us railroaded toward. It's not to late- but hey, time is of the essence.
Obama's window of opportunity along with the hope and possibility his ascendancy on the political landscape has catalyzed will wisp away quickly if his being head of the Executive Branch of mainstream government (that is way too far right of center- so much so it makes my head spin- with apologies to old Nixon cronie John Mitchell) is allowed to gridlock its way to stagnation while being challenged too meekly by Obama. If he doesn't use his 12 or 13 million member mailing lists effectively to help him really deliver the truly significant liberal, progressive, radical- whatever you want to call it- change that he was elected to bring about then he will be abandoned to the apathy and genuine lack of political will and informed outrage that really seem to be the keys to the status quo of the last 40-70 years being able to run roughshod over the basic quality of life realities and opportunity structures of a huge and growing segment of the American people.
To help make sure that doesn't happen We the people... of the progressive radical creative and working class left need to build our own social network of lists and operatives both large scale and individual to help the President not get to comfy with the notion that him making it to the mountaintop is enough. He needs to lead us to the promised land of a more just, fair, egalitarian, and civil society. We need a more Democratic divvying up of the opportunity, wealth and power that our Nation and Economy can create.
"A people that has lost control of its food supply...
...cannot possibly consider itself free" Which is a quote used by Wendell Berry in either The Unsettling of America (http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780871567727/The_Unsettling_of_America_Culture_and_Agriculture.html) or What Are People For? http://books.google.com/books?id=qAgkGwAACAAJ&dq=Wendell+berry
These are both classics in the argument that how we use our land, resources, and people is in damage mode and needs adjusting. Makes me glad to be back to my role as all around cowboy at an organic garden center where producing the highest quality food is the top priority- cuz hell- there ain't no money in it. The agribiz model of disease and strip mining the topsoil and destroying rural communities and households sees to that. Corporate and shareholder profits yes- fair sustainable prices to real farmers and producers no.
And some dare call it a miracle of the modern age. Hah!
These are both classics in the argument that how we use our land, resources, and people is in damage mode and needs adjusting. Makes me glad to be back to my role as all around cowboy at an organic garden center where producing the highest quality food is the top priority- cuz hell- there ain't no money in it. The agribiz model of disease and strip mining the topsoil and destroying rural communities and households sees to that. Corporate and shareholder profits yes- fair sustainable prices to real farmers and producers no.
And some dare call it a miracle of the modern age. Hah!
Monday, July 13, 2009
“The world is so lacquered over with tendentiousness and cliché that to see with one’s own eyes for even a moment requires much work.”
Which is a quote from a Marilynne Robin
son Writer's Digest interview- I couldn't find it at http://writersdigest.com/GeneralMenu/ but her writing is truly lyric poetic prose if I ever seen it and can heartily recommend Housekeeping as a must read of modern fiction. http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780312424091/Housekeeping.html
son Writer's Digest interview- I couldn't find it at http://writersdigest.com/GeneralMenu/ but her writing is truly lyric poetic prose if I ever seen it and can heartily recommend Housekeeping as a must read of modern fiction. http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780312424091/Housekeeping.html
John Mellencamp: "Take some time to dream...
...'cause your dreams might save us all." This from a new song I guess recently recorded and performed at a minor league stadium concert Saturday night in Eastlake, Ohio where Mellencamp shared the bill with a couple of other guys I'm sure are gonna make it in the music bidness- Dylan and Willie.
So that's what any radical progressive democracy solidarity movement has to commit to: to be naively unrealistic enough to insist that we can dare to dream that Thomas Berry "Dream of the Earth"-
http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780871566225/The_Dream_of_the_Earth.html
And, staying for a moment with the Thomas Berry reference, the political activism and committment to the real core foundation sea change that is needed in our political, economic, and social democratic functioning is the first phase in "The Great Work" that is Berry's follow up volume http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780609605257/The_Great_Work_Our_Way_into_the_Future.html and delves into the nature of what our real job is once we do the simple little chore of profoundly changing our politics and our entire economic model as it relates to our relationships to the earth itself and then by extension all liffing things- including all us indiginous people and critters- that are now considered collateral assets, damage, or nuisance to the priorities of the corporate global "New World Order" that has emerged and evolved in the last 30- 80 years or so.
(and is the order that the Neo Con nut jobs of the ilk of Cheney, W., W's Daddy, Reagan, Nixon and their bosses and sycophant lackey knee pad Tories (sic) like to tell us is creating the best of all possible worlds for all of us and is the source of all our freedoms and opportunities)
So that's what any radical progressive democracy solidarity movement has to commit to: to be naively unrealistic enough to insist that we can dare to dream that Thomas Berry "Dream of the Earth"-
http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780871566225/The_Dream_of_the_Earth.html
And, staying for a moment with the Thomas Berry reference, the political activism and committment to the real core foundation sea change that is needed in our political, economic, and social democratic functioning is the first phase in "The Great Work" that is Berry's follow up volume http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780609605257/The_Great_Work_Our_Way_into_the_Future.html and delves into the nature of what our real job is once we do the simple little chore of profoundly changing our politics and our entire economic model as it relates to our relationships to the earth itself and then by extension all liffing things- including all us indiginous people and critters- that are now considered collateral assets, damage, or nuisance to the priorities of the corporate global "New World Order" that has emerged and evolved in the last 30- 80 years or so.
(and is the order that the Neo Con nut jobs of the ilk of Cheney, W., W's Daddy, Reagan, Nixon and their bosses and sycophant lackey knee pad Tories (sic) like to tell us is creating the best of all possible worlds for all of us and is the source of all our freedoms and opportunities)
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Health care crisis link... Howard Dean Interview...
Check this out http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/4452
All I can say is as We'd better get organized to demand single payer National Health Insurance or the whole window for hope and change that Obama symbolizes will slam shut. This, and total "money in politics" reform are bedrock issues. "Our" democratic government is not, in many instances and respects, working in the interests of the vast majority of the American people becuase "our" representatives are in the pockets of various large vested corporate interests at all levels of government.
Change will require much more than everyone having hope because Obama was able to make an amazing rise to the pinnacle of our Executive Branch.
All I can say is as We'd better get organized to demand single payer National Health Insurance or the whole window for hope and change that Obama symbolizes will slam shut. This, and total "money in politics" reform are bedrock issues. "Our" democratic government is not, in many instances and respects, working in the interests of the vast majority of the American people becuase "our" representatives are in the pockets of various large vested corporate interests at all levels of government.
Change will require much more than everyone having hope because Obama was able to make an amazing rise to the pinnacle of our Executive Branch.
Personal, political, and for lack of a better term "professional" blogs...
...soon to have all their own manner of descrete blogs on blogger. There's just no way to write all to the same single blog. So I will have a few blogs under tboneblogs (IE sports, general communications with my peeps, personal "journal of a madman adventurer explorer" etc..) and the whole gamut of more ambitious writing- like the political organizing and advocacy one that this blog is the "beta" version of- and all the others that seem to evolve naturally from really being on task with "the writin'"... this will proceed apace under my gskalsky blog dashboard.
Meantime, I see the window of opportunity for me as I show up and produce on the big major pro democracy movement that is at the heart of what I consider my serious writhing- oops what a major Freudian slip that there was- you see I meant to say writing and well no sugarcoating it "writhing" just about typed itself right out...
And as I get all this writing going on blogs of various kinds I get the big companion Web Site to all of them, all my writing and work and such like, up and truly operational as an organizing, fund development, and marketing/ revenue producing site on as many levels as I possibly can. And if I stumble into a "real yop" in the course of doing all this then I can decide whether or not to take it once it really is a bona fide option or choice to make.
Meantime, I see the window of opportunity for me as I show up and produce on the big major pro democracy movement that is at the heart of what I consider my serious writhing- oops what a major Freudian slip that there was- you see I meant to say writing and well no sugarcoating it "writhing" just about typed itself right out...
And as I get all this writing going on blogs of various kinds I get the big companion Web Site to all of them, all my writing and work and such like, up and truly operational as an organizing, fund development, and marketing/ revenue producing site on as many levels as I possibly can. And if I stumble into a "real yop" in the course of doing all this then I can decide whether or not to take it once it really is a bona fide option or choice to make.
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