Balance in Forward Motion

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Balance in Forward Motion! “Go faster, Daddy!” Bass Family Bike Ride, “Iron Horsie” Trail, WA. August 2006. Photo by Kristina Bass.

Balance is overrated. Balance achieved is motion frozen in time and space, all energy internalized to remain upright against gravity. Some speakers up on stage I’ve heard like to refer to achieving balance in your life as creating “homeostasis.” Which is supposed to be “healthy.” It’s a misuse of a cool word. Homeostasis is merely the biological process in which organisms regulates and maintains their physiological and chemical systems in a stable manner.

Homeostasis as a process can even be disturbed to exist and continue in a state of imbalance. It’s definitely not the same as balancing a stack of plates upon your head while standing atop a ball. It’s not turning the messy breakdowns and re-creations of daily living into a brightly colored pie chart called “Designing a Balanced Life.” Do you really want your “life balance” to feel as if you’re splitting down the middle like an amoeba about to reproduce?

Up in Canada once for a series of trainings I witnessed Bob Proctor in action. He’s a master trainer in the field of personal and professional growth and development and a highly successful entrepreneur. Well-dressed and about 70 years old, he popped out behind the curtains and raced across the stage leaping and shouting as if he was a superbly athletic actor in his 20s.

“Balance!” roared Bob. “Balance is waaay overrated! It’s boring! Boring! You cannot move forward standing still trying to stay balanced. I’m living my life OUT of balance!”

He stopped and spun around, stood perfectly still as a warrior poised to pounce, then jumped as high as he could with one arm pointing straight up into the air. And laughed, laughed loud. Continue reading

Twittering the Revolution to Facebook at the Occupation of the Washington State Capitol

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Monday 28 November 2011

Good Morning! It’s 5:43am here in Seattle, & I’m proud to announce my oldest daughter Morgan got her first letter of acceptance to college (University of Portland in OR), my middle one Kate made straight A’s on her rc, & my youngest Talia can make a violin sing. And I’m off to help Occupy the State Capitol & Legislature down in Olympia, WA today. 5:46 am.

Crowds roaring & more buses roll in & dropping people off from all over WA. OCCUPY our Capitol & Legislature! In Olympia. 11:17 am.

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Why the Hell Can’t We Grow Up?

American’s dislike and distrust of their government and their politicians is at an all time high. Such sentiment is echoed around the world against governments everywhere. Occupy Wall Street has exploded across the United States and across Earth. People are disgusted, fed up, mad, and scared. And we Americans are polarized between ourselves as never before, with the possible exceptions of the 1850s and 60s and a hundred plus years later the 1960s and 70s. Both were periods of intense civil strife and turmoil.

“The solution to the problem is pretty simple,” wrote Michael Scott Brooks as he expounded upon what I assumed to be his reference to our local, national, and global challenges, “People just need to grow up.”

He’s a friend and a local leader in the mythopoetic men’s movement. This is perfect synchronicity, I thought, as my wife Kristina and I had a similar conversation hours earlier. But I challenged him.

“We’re all at different levels of evolution,” I posted back. “Gotta learn to work together as we are with what we have. Now that’s hard work!” Remembering our shared love of poetry and its power through the ages to move sages, warriors, and common folk alike, I signed off with “It’s time for a Poem.”

“I think some of you are missing my point,” he retorted to all of us.

Well, y’know what? Scott’s on to something. Why the Hell can’t we grow up?

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What’s Your Purpose?

Hello, there! Ready or not, here’re a few questions to consider. And answer. Especially since life is what it is and doesn’t wait for us to feel ready.

Consider just what is your deep Purpose in Life? What drives you to do what you do, how you do it, who you do it for, and what you do it for? Without Purpose, how successful is your business? Your primary relationships? And with Purpose, thrive!

Are you clear what your Purpose is?

What is your Purpose? Your deep, life Purpose?

Are you on Purpose?

If you feel off, what do you do to get back on track?

Or did your “Purpose Train” derail and crash and the wreckage overwhelms you? Are you taking the crash personally?

Are you already on Purpose and you navigate through challenges not necessarily with grace but with clarity? What works for you?

What the heck is a “Purpose” anyway, and why is that “P” so big? Continue reading

Go Write! Write like a Dog!

 

William at Work, Home Office, Dragonfly House, Seattle. October 24, 2008. Photo by Kristina Bass.

 

William Bass, Guerrilla Writing. Always be Writing! Seattle. August 14, 2011. Photo by Kristina Bass.

I grew up writing like crazy. My Mom, a poet, encouraged me to write from the get-go. I’m told I could write my name by age 3, although I don’t know if anyone could read what I wrote. I learned to write with both hands and even with both feet. Never had the elegant cursive of my lettered ancestors, though. I was too impatient and liked to go … FAST! You should’ve seen the jagged sentences scribbled with a pencil gripped between my toes.

One sunny afternoon in October 2008 as I drove around the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Garrison Keillor came on the radio. One of his short, nap-time blurbs for NPR. He quoted another writer, Augusten Burroughs:

“The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.”

Now that kicked me in the ass. Ow! Continue reading

What is Deep Listening?

Are you a Deep Listener? If not, would you value learning the skills required to practice Deep Listening? And just what is Deep Listening anyway? You hear pretty good anyway, right?

Consider these:

  • What do you listen for?
  • How do you listen?
  • Who do you listen to?
  • Why are you listening?
  • Are you listening about something or someone, or are you listening for something or someone?

As you ponder these five questions to come up with your answers, below are several things to consider. There’s work to do and practice before we can answer those questions on a deeper level. Continue reading

Microwaving my Blog

Doing everything one isn't supposed to, zapping a tin foil hat & all.

Doing everything one isn’t supposed to, zapping a tin foil hat & all.

Goodness, my Blog must be a tinfoil hat. In desperation I stuck what I loved in the microwave. Gonna transmute tin and wool into GOLD! Maybe even transform positive influences from inspired dreams into birthin’ out some reality! Yeah! What a mess! A bloody, damn mess! Woo Hoo! Sparks arced from brain to computer screen. I channeled the dead but dreaded whatever it was as it wasn’t human, or worse than demons, a mad old blue-haired biddy floating up from her vacation lounge chair down in the Underworld to grasp my face with crooked fingernails and smother me with lipstick and bad breath. Ow. Horrors of childhood. Birth’s a mess all right, and I’m alive to add mine to make our world a more positive place.

I’m writing every day. But not posting every day. Back toward the end of October I attended a meeting of a Blogger’s Circle that met every Tuesday afternoon in Bellevue, Washington. I hadn’t been since my first visit back in August. I longed for the company of other writers and wanted to learn what actions do I take to publish and market and effectively do so at low cost?

Cuz I’d lost my job, investments, and homes in this Great Recession. After short-selling our homes, my family and I moved into a beautiful rental with what was left with the possibility of buying it someday. Three months later faulty wires in the wall ignited a blazing inferno in which we lost everything but our lives. So reeling a little bit still, just a tad here and there, if you will, so I turned back to writing to help heal my self. Continue reading

Original American Thanksgivings Redux: Lessons for Today and Tomorrow

 

Thanksgiving: What was, What happened, What's possible.

Thanksgiving: What was. What happened. What’s possible.

As an American one of my favorite holy days is Thanksgiving. Yes, Thanksgiving. And as much as I love the food and the sense of community I feel, for me it really isn’t about food, family, and friends. It’s more for being aware of and the expression of gratitude and appreciation. We give thanks on Thanksgiving.

It’s a time to pause and reflect, to slow down and be aware of what is. It’s a few moments to be thankful for all the things we take for granted.

Thanksgiving has a dark side, too. It’s often glossed over and forgotten in history books and magazine articles. For a short time Thanksgiving blended together Native American Indian and European-American traditions in celebrations rich with the fragile promise of two very different racial cultures co-creating a new, hybrid civilization. This failure ranks as one of the great tragedies of human history, and one of the greatest unsung ones.

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Collapse is a Choice

Collapse is a choice. We can choose to work together across Planet Earth for life, liberty, health, and prosperity or for global collapse and omnicide. Wait, let me say it plainer. We can choose to work together for life or die. Remember, wherever you live right now is on the same planet in the same biosphere as people in other neighborhoods on the far side of the globe. Except, of course, for a few spacefarers who hope to come back to their beautiful and precious world below.

Our species, as far as we know, originated in East and maybe Southern Africa and has spread all over Earth and walked on the Moon. We can choose to pull together or die. Retreating into your fortress with stockpiles of supplies or fighting other people over race, religion, nationality, language, geography, resources, and violent politics will not help anyone and shall make things worse. You, yes, I’m talkin’ to you, men and women and children, must get over your rage, your shame, your fear, especially fear that is all made up in your minds as False Evidence Appearing Real. Because there are real things out there to be truly afraid of but nothing to be paralyzed by.

Our news is full of doom and gloom, from the mainstream mass media to alternatives on the furthest fringes. In the midst of all the negatives the majority of politicians and their pet economists are saying what most people want to hear and wish could be true: “Folks, things ARE getting better. These trends prove it. See, this and that are going up while that and this are going down. It is a new day for another new beginning again! Yes, times are hard, but they don’t last forever, and this is proof they’re not.”

Meanwhile many of those who know better and know otherwise, regardless of their ethnicity or their political or religious beliefs, are shaking their heads “No, you idiots!” while stomping around in circles pulling out the remains of their hair then sighing in frustration. I confess to having done some of that myself before I remind myself to breathe and wiggle and breathe again then be still. Conservatives and Liberals, Socialists and Libertarians, Progressives and Regressives; across party lines you will find a rising tide of dissent, dismay, anger, and resignation. The magnitude and reality of Collapse simply overwhelms.

It does not have to be this way. Collapse is a choice. We don’t have to be automatons to our own reptilian and mammalian brains or even our subconscious. We don’t have to react with fight or flight or freeze to what’s coming at us right now. Engaging in blame games and one-upmanship is merely another way of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as she sinks forever into the cold North Atlantic.

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Empire of Bases for Wars without End

Hey, guess what, folks? It turns out the leaders of the United States don’t even know exactly how many American and Allied military bases exist. Furthermore, the number of wars the so-called, unofficial but still real Euro-American Global Empire is engaged in does not match the official count. Because there are more violent military and intelligence operations occurring simultaneously than Empire wants to admit. When Special Forces engage in covert hostilities behind enemy lines of a state or quasi-state we are not technically at war with, or when the CIA fires drone missiles into countries that we’re also not technically at war with, isn’t that “war?”

There are two ways the great, borderless superpower of today behaves in a similar fashion to empires of old.

During the height of many large, polyglot empires from the Roman to the Mongol to the British, the imperial Center, i.e. the homeland realms, were often in a state of prolonged peace.  Except, of course, for an occasional civil war for control of the state. The majority of the population enjoyed the illusion of a peaceful world of trade and commerce free of war. What they actually meant, however, were their cities and countryside were free from invasion.

The far-flung borders and colonies of these empires, however, were often in a state of chronic warfare. These conflicts included tribal wars, local ethnic rebellions, and frontier guerrilla wars. There were unique situations where off and on border wars raged between large empires without either committing fully to what would have been a Phyrric victory. Ancient History buffs may note one case in particular, the Roman-Parthian Wars. A Modern example would be the American-Soviet Cold War, although the Soviet Empire  collapsed at the end of it.

Today, the dominant region of the Euro-American Global Empire is called “the United States Homeland.” “Homeland” is a post-9/11 term that recalls a time not all that long ago when the Nazis emphasized Germany as “the Fatherland.” The Soviet Communists did the same with Russia as “the Motherland.” The focus has shifted from American liberties and protecting Constitutional rights to enforcing Homeland Security with domestic surveillance and militarization. The militaristic and ultranationalist “feel” these terms evoke is quiet different from the peaceful, loving reverence many feel for “Mother Earth and Father Sky” for example.

The second similarity is the vast number of military garrisons empires establish to maintain control of far-flung regions, whether it is political control, to promote and protect certain religions and corporations, to defend against enemies, to hold territory, or to allow for safe commerce to flow. These imperial frontiers and colonies were dotted with numerous forts, castles, and other fortifications. The First and Second World Wars destroyed the concept of “forts.” Now they are called “bases.” Forts became something preteen boys built back in the bushes from which to lob rocks and sticks at one another.

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Remember YOU are the Government! Where are you shut down?

One of my most influential trainers is Harv Eker of Peak Potentials out of Vancouver, British Columbia. He constantly reminded my fellow students and me that “Your inner world creates your outer world.”  OK. Thoughts and emotions lead to actions. The unconscious mind really drives the conscious mind to leverage the body to create and implement, or to regress and shut down.

Harv, dressed in black and highly animated up on stage, was dynamic. “Now stand up and say it out loud,” he urged. “Together!” We stood up from our chairs and all said together “My inner world creates my outer world.” It is as true for communities and organizations of human beings as well as for individuals. Harv went on to remind us with loud enthusiasm “How you do ANYTHING is how you do EVERYTHING!”

I live in the United States of America. A native of Virginia, I’ve lived almost two decades in the City of Seattle which overlays King County in the western part of Washington State. It is April 2011. Recently, close to midnight last Friday, April 8th, the American Federal Government narrowly averted a total shutdown. A partial shutdown was underway. The Republicans and Democrats, the two major parties that currently dominate U.S. politics, are more interested in bloodless civil war than in peaceful cooperation and bipartisanship. As large groups, they approach the art and craft of politics, including compromise, as schoolyard bullies with regressive, reactive emotional intelligence. Yes, individuals stand out for collaborative policy making, but they are run over by tsunamis of angry and divisive people more intent on destruction and ideological purity rather than creation and pragmatic innovation.

In my own state of Washington the financial warfare 3,000 miles back east has infected our state and local government. The state government is paralyzed with decisions regarding budgets, taxes, and services. The city and county governments where I live are engaged in unrelenting, neverending battles over mass transit issues and other services costing more than what is available to spend. Other governments in other areas of the world seem really shut down or in a state of warfare, from Afghanistan to Libya to Ivory Coast and elsewhere. The European Union is lurching from one financial crisis to another. The United Nations is bereft of power and agreement.

Back home Americans rail against the Government shutdown. Some even call for it, bring it on, they say; let it force us over the brink to see what happens, clean house, etc. etc. Others scramble to prevent it from happening and to maintain a status quo. Neither approach is healthy and neither is sustainable. The underlying issues, fundamentally who and what controls the Money Power, is barely recognized and not even addressed. And yet, we the people are at choice here.

We are the government, are we not? Have we abdicated responsibility to those with the money and the power and the media skills? Have we forgotten government is of the people, by the people, for the people? That the institutions of government from the global to the local are composed of fellow human beings? That “all these governments” are our governments? That the government is us?

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Electoral Reform is Urgent, Overdue, and Needed Now

Electoral reform is urgent. Many proposals have been presented in numerous countries including the United States over the years with few results. There is too much inertia within the Establishment. The political machines and the transnational corporations including the Big Banks controlling them easily resist such threats to their power.

It’s easy for them to do so as they control the voting: they simply vote “No!” when real change is presented. We jerk about like puppets on strings and deride one another as “sheeple” or  “bloodthirsty communists” or “capitalist pigs.” Aren’t you tired of that? I’m tired of it.

What will work? It will take noisy mass movements out in the streets combined with quiet and deliberate political actions to legally and openly infiltrate the Establishment by winning at the ballot box to initiate changes. If we can actually win power even when we win an election. And it seems too late as so many challenges demanding significant transformation, not just change, are avalanching down upon us all.

Electoral reforms are a must as it will allow us to more effectively and radically address our problems. Open, free, and fair elections under the eyes of impartial observers and vote collectors and counters are vital for any functioning republic. Elections are one of the cornerstones of Democracy. This is especially so for a democracy such as the United States of America that is a constitutional federal republic.

Yet we find our political parties and the electoral process corrupted by Big Money, i.e. private control of the money power. Two dominant parties, Republicans and Democrats, work together so much to control elections at all levels from the national to the state and local they are often detested as “the two-headed snake.” Together they accept financial support from the same corporations to such a degree many politicians are generally considered “bought.” Such corporations leverage this special relationship to finance powerful lobbying groups to advocate on their behalf.

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Abolish Political Parties from Our Elections

Yes, abolish political parties from electoral campaigns at every level. Ban them from lobbying on behalf of their agendas. Ban them from endorsing candidates. Ban them from organizing front organizations, shell companies, PACs, shell NGOs, and other rackets on behalf of candidates and party agendas. Ban political parties from giving money, assets, and even volunteer services to candidates.

The term “candidate” refers here to both human beings running for elected office or nominated for an appointed position as well as proposed legislation including laws, bills, referendums, etc.

Abolishing political parties and any similar organizations from the political process is a necessary, even urgent electoral reform. Many may view it as a radical reform. Which it is, especially when you consider one of the earlier meanings of the word radical is “root.”  Returning to our roots, in a sense, as the American Founding Fathers abhorred the concept of political parties.

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Turning Points? The Occupy Movement Keeps Spreading Amid Rapid Change

The Occupy Wall Street movement is alive and growing rapidly. It continues to expand and spread despite early cries of an early death. Even in the face of ridicule and dismissal the movement continues to defy predictions. The mainstream mass media and the punitive pundits among the 99% who’ve sided with the 1% continue to scoff at the protesters as “stinky hippies and punk rockers,” or “communists, socialists, anarchists,” even “racists.”

These lackeys for the 1% ignore the masses of families with children, middle-aged professionals, blue- collar workers, and just regular folks supporting OWS at their peril. This mass welling up of dissent and “I’m not gonna take it anymore!” protests has reached a tipping point where anything can happen.

People are pissed off! More and more people are getting pissed off! Yet they’re not retaliation in the form of mass violence and rioting. And the dismissive chattering harpies of the mainstream media reveal their own ignorance.

Several recent events are worth looking at as harbingers of change. These points of note are: Continue reading

Harbinger of Civil War? From Compromise to Conflict: America Gets Positional and Forgets How to Get Along With Itself

INTRODUCTION: This essay was first published in early August 2011. It is reprinted here with few changes such as “Harbinger of Civil War?” added to the title.

Occupy Wall Street had not yet erupted. The Arab Spring was in the throes of a Summer of Conflict. The UK was in flames and the rest of Europe was rumbling. Inside the U.S.A. disenchanted and angry people by first hundreds then thousands rallied and marched as the Tea Party in 2009, 2010, and 2011. That wave seemed to crest with rallies in Washington, D.C., some with over a million participants.

In Madison, Wisconsin in February 2011 an uprising among the workers, sparked by teaching assistants against the harsh cuts of Republican Governor Scott Walker, broke out that electrified America. It was primarily non-violent and was embraced by so many different groups of Americans including Police officers. This uprising lasted well into April and at one point over 100,000 people and then 185,000 poured into the streets. In many ways the Wisconsin Uprising was a precursor of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As “the Empire Strikes Back” against the Occupy movement with heavy handed militarized police, we see the current escalation of violence and intimidation. At the same time Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt erupts into days of at first peaceful protests against the military dictatorship with dozens of demonstrators killed by militarized police. In the following article we revisit the underlying tensions leading to the widespread protests we see today.

The Author

Wednesday 23 November 2011

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Several essays I read recently by different pundits and news analysts gave me pause. They addressed different points of the same view. Much has been written about the rising vitriol in American public discourse with the spread of far-right and far-left extremism to infect the great middle.

Note the resurgence of armed militias and racist groups with the rampant rise of violent hate groups first under President George W. Bush with many more under President Barack Obama. The tragic shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D) and others around her this past January triggered a national debate that went beyond passion to inflammatory rhetoric. We have become a nation polarized and divided that refuses to get along with itself.

There have been calls for a military coup, threats of martial law, and fears of riots. Even the specter of a possible civil war or revolution has been raised as our nation reaches levels of polarization not seen since the 1850s with the possible exception of the 1960s. The uprisings sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East with rioting and protests in Europe and elsewhere, including the American state of Wisconsin, have been hailed as harbingers of similar upheaval here at home. London burns as I write. So many cities across the United Kingdom are in flames the term “riots” has given way to “insurrection.”

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UFO witnessed in action from atop Mt. Erie, Washington

A group of six people, including myself, witnessed an unidentified flying object from the summit of Mt. Erie on Sunday 3 July 2011. We observed what we eventually determined to be a large, garbage-can lid type flying saucer shrink down into a bizarre high-speed orb. The other five observers were my then-wife Kristina (then age 42), my daughter Kate (age 12), and three men who appeared to be in their mid-to-late 60s. As I write this article I am 52 years old. Mt. Erie itself is a relatively short but steep mountain amid those scattered across the San Juan Islands. At 388 meters high (or 1,273 ft.) it is the most prominent in the area and dominates the Skagit River Delta region of northwestern Washington State. It also dominates Fidalgo Island and looms above a string of lakes near Deception Pass. The peak lies in the City of Anacortes park system. From the mountaintop we six saw a UFO engaged in unusual actions. Those actions were as if a machine ship or biological organism behaved as a subatomic quantum particle/wave.

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UFO Encounter in Virginia

Classic flying saucer image from the Rex Heflin Orange County case in Southern California, 3 August 1965, the same general time period the Bass Family encountered a UFO in Southcentral Virginia. Except their's wasn't saucer shaped. From: http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/1960s/Photo305.htm

Classic flying saucer image from the Rex Heflin Orange County case in Southern California, 3 August 1965, the same general time period the Bass Family encountered a UFO in Southcentral Virginia. Except their’s wasn’t saucer shaped. To their surprise, the UFO they saw was a sphere. From: http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/1960s/Photo305.htm.

My entire family of origin had a vivid UFO experience back in the mid to late 1960s. The event was exciting, even amazing, and also at moments terrifying. For years afterwards this encounter affected my family and me in unexpected ways such as the odd actions of the FBI and weird behavior among certain people involved with this incident including myself. Ever since then I’ve had a deep, personal interest in so-called “Unidentified Flying Objects” and the controversies UFOs generated.

Despite some apprehension I feel it’s time to tell my story and some of what I’ve discovered since then. My story is long overdue, too. As I stand for transparency and full disclosure, I feel strongly all of us Americans, indeed We the People of Planet Earth need to know the full truth whether or not others feel we can “handle it.” Indeed, I stand for full and immediate disclosure of all information from all organizations and institutions private and public regarding UFOs and the immense complexity of what’s alleged to have gone on in some cases for millions of years and what goes on in our current timeframe.

The list of what so many credible whistleblowers are claiming is long, overwhelming, unexpected, and goes far beyond flying saucers, claims of galactic empires, alleged free energy, and underground bases. They include numerous species of ETs/ESs/EDs/IDs (extraterrestrials, extrasolarials, extradimensionals, and inter- or intra-dimensionals), Majestic 12 and other hypercompartmentalized units within Earth nation-state regimes, various breakaway civilizations, ancient even prehistoric ET and human civilizations with ruins supposedly throughout the Sol System, the Secret Space Programs (SSPs), the alleged Inner Earth civilizations, secret societies, the mythical German role, the Cabal/Illuminati/Elitist crime syndicates and factions, black budget ops and other USAPs or Unacknowledged Special Access Programs, advanced and hidden technologies and scientific discoveries, global economic and financial manipulation and fraud on unprecedented scales, debunking and disinformation campaigns, grotesque medical and genetic experiments on many lifeforms including Earth humans, widespread human trafficking and slavery, Solarian bases, possibilities for a Star Trek-style civilization, exopolitical ramifications, orbs and plasma life forms, an apparently extreme intergalactic A.I. or Artificial Intelligence menace more omnicidal than nuclear weapons, new understandings about the nature and possibilities of consciousness, and considerations regarding densities versus dimensions and biological evolution with spiritual ascension. The claims are staggering. Many of the claims listed above simple feel unbelievable.

The lines between so-called academic research, mainstream mass media, alternative media, and so-called conspiracy theory first dissolve into murkiness before becoming clearer. Everything one thinks they think they know regarding consciousness, compassion, health, money, politics, religion, spirituality, war, genetics, science, energy, love, relationships, and the definition of life may well be turned upside down and inside out. No, shall be. Let’s return, however, to where and how my involvement in this labyrinthine entanglement began and back to what occurred.

Our family UFO encounter happened on a warm late afternoon after I was home from grade school following a long ride on a yellow school bus. It was dinner time. I think it was early Autumn, although it could have been Spring. I sat around the dinner table with my younger siblings. They were my sister Beth and brother Joe. Our mother bustled about in the kitchen. Our kitchen was a big farmhouse kind of kitchen, and the dinner table was pragmatically placed there off to one side of the room. Dorothy Ussery Bass was my Mama’s real name, but most people who knew her called her Dot. It feels strange to me the actual events of almost four decades ago were so dramatic I remember them in great detail, but, alas, I can’t recall whether it was Spring or Fall.

We had a table full of food, however, a big family dinner farmer-style. We kids began to shove food into our mouths, which annoyed Mama. We were supposed to say grace. My Dad, William M. Bass, known as Bill, was away where he worked up the hill at “the Barn.” As the large cow barn with the enormous hayloft dominated the center of our dairy farm as some Medieval Great Hall, we simply called it “the Barn.” The rest of the farm’s buildings circled around the hill and ridge. The family business had long been named Riverview Dairy Farm from the proximity of Big and Little Sandy Rivers as they looped around the estate. We were in the Rice – Sandy River – Green Bay belt of northeastern Prince Edward County. This area’s in turn is located in Southside Virginia, i.e. Virginia south of the James River, in the Piedmont of rolling hills, woods, ravines, and cultivated fields.

Mama was mad because we’d started chowing down before we said the Blessing. Dad wasn’t expected home until later. As we munched down into our dinner, we heard an unexpected ruckus. Daddy burst through the back door into the house.

“Come quick!” he shouted. “There’s a flying saucer out back!”

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Give a Damn! Occupy Seattle! My Impressions from a Few Hours on the Streets

William Bass @ Occupy Seattle! Rally & March. Foto by Syd Fredrickson, Saturday 8 October 2011.

William Bass @ Occupy Seattle! Rally & March. Foto by Syd Fredrickson, Saturday 8 October 2011.

For the first time in ten years I felt We the People had Purpose. Purpose with a capital P. And greater clarity than the mainstream mass media would dare admit. As zombies staggered down Wall Street chasing dollar bills recently, at least they gave a damn.

The mainstream mass media think it’s cute when crowds of otherwise “normal people” dress in bloody rags and paint themselves up as zombies to parade about setting new zombie world records. The same media, however, heap scorn and ridicule upon all those “crazy people” costumed as zombies to protest the insane gluttony of Wall Street and its cronies. Well, at least those zombies give more than a frakkin’ hoot. They gave a damn.

When elderly war veterans, middle-age White ladies hobble together down the street with old hippies, tattooed punks, the newly homeless, Native Americans, grizzled union workers, and white-collar office workers, all getting in the way of our fellow 99-percenters willing to slave away for the Puppet Masters among the 1% superwealthy, well, we have an insurrection, folks.

A young man in Downtown Seattle held up his sign and challenged us: “GIVE A DAMN!”

Damn right.

GIVE A DAMN!

Bright, blue letters blazed neon from cardboard on a wooden slat stick.

It’s time. Leave the Parties behind. Coffee, tea, water, and whiskey; milk and soy, almond whatever. It’s time. Time to get to get serious.

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Sleep Crash Chainsaw Legs

OWWW here it comes . . .
Restless Legs jerk as bad poetry
My flesh hums and crawls
As soon as I lay down
As soon as I lay down!
Restless Legssa misnomer
Cuz it moves everywhere
Like a bad Johnny Cash song
Ragged with non-stop hurtin’
As train whistles blow holes out my skin
Covering me as I slide naked beneath angels.

Spider fish swim up my insides.
Vibrating tendrils of smoke
Wrap around my blood
Squeezing tightening up tight
Reminds me of
School back in Second Grade
When all excited we kids spoke in whispers
Only to get taped silent by our Teacher
Yes, her with her grim grin and perfectly bloated hair
Who glared as she marched at our faces with a roll of tape
Wide yellow white masking tape
So as my legs twitch I remember
Masking tape tugging across chapped lips
Back when Missus Wells did it
Day after day week after week
While the principle laughed
With his red tie knotted tight
Against his wide collar white
Till enough parents banded up to shout “Stop! Hey!”
Damn that Teacher.
Good thing there wasn’t any duct tape back in 1968.
And Americans wonder what rilly led to Abu Ghraib.

Please please please let me sleep
Let me sleep
I’ll give ‘em to you
My legs, yes, my legs
They’re yours, all yours!
Stihl chainsaw oil & lubed
Each fanged link of metal
Sharp to rip out all flesh
Slice to the bone
Grip-ripped through the bone
Nothing stops ‘em, tho.
Spiders
Worms
Snakes
Beetles
Ants
I feel ‘em
Wiggling
Crawling
Even bouncing on tightrope wires sawin’ violins
Up inside my legs…

I don’t sleep. Much. Miss it, tho. Up all night sometimes. Only time I can get stuff done. Then I wake from my desk. Meditate. Go to the Gym. Sweat. Dripping wet. Soaked. But at least I don’t roar and grunt and slam dumbbells the size of Texas slapdown in front of spidercrack mirrors. Still no sleep. How’s my broken down body’s gonna heal? Aye ya…!

Sleep.

Got too much to do. When I lay down the tremors start. In my lower legs. My posterior lower legs and ankle region, to be exact. Both of them at once. Bilaterally. The vibrations began to flutter and dance and jerk in my flexor halluces longus, my flexor digitorom longus, in the tibialis posterior, and move around laterally to the peroneus brevis and longus. Then the creepy crawlies surface into my soleus and gastrocnemius muscles. The vibrations move around to the Tibialis anterior and other muscles, travel up the hamstrings. Damn.

I feel my glutes jerk next and my piriformis ripple, too.
Lats flutter
Trains of ants spasm up my spine
Ain’t no kundalini this time
Twitch beetles flutter in my triceps
My suboccipitals and sternocleidomastoid
Jerk my skull into an almost-Tourette’s
My pelvis jerks
Shoulders dance
My tongue refuses to heed
But I don’t cuss
Maybe it is Tourette’s
But as I’m already duct taped up with so many labels
I don’t wanna know

Deep down inside my legs I feel my muscles drum against my bones
Wild, spasm, taunt-fiber vibrations
I timed them a few times
I count over one hundred vibrations per minute
A thousand in less than ten
And it’s all night long…. sometimes.
Wears me out.

Too much exercise makes it worse
Too little makes it worse
Too much sitting or not enough
I used to climb mountains
And backpack for months at a time
And dance for hours holding my woman
Up in the air as she shouts and laughs
As we rain sweat upon wood, earth, and stone

Angel spreads his enormous wings
Then with stern visage
Wraps them gently around Grim Reaper
Who cries oily tears into white feathers
Outside the entrance to a merchant’s cave

Together with love we tack across the Straight Path
No arrow am I
For I dance all crooked with joy
As I climb beyond my rabbit hole
Upon ladders twisting to the stars
Atop between the legs of Giants
Great Gates swing open in mute invitation

I see everything I see
And more than most would even dare believe
With a nod of incineration
I let go of all belief
And surrender to submit
Into Divine jubilation

Ten thousand Gods
Twenty thousand Goddesses
And One Beyond All and Everything
The One Beyond Gender
The One Beyond the Sum of Many
The Namefree One for whom any name is limitation

I awake and launch upright
And by Dawn
In Mirror bright
I see myself
As clear as Light
With legs filled with snakes and worms and buzzing flies
For Ancient Gods who died inside
I wonder
If so blessed
How do I make
Those mountains yawn?

 

William Dudley Bass
19 November 2011
Seattle, Washington

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Occupy America: Let’s Dump the Term “Homeland”

“This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.”

(Words & music written in 1940 by Woody Guthrie, 1912 – 1967.)

It’s time to dump the term “Homeland” as a synonym for America and erase it from our vocabulary. What the hell is this word anyway? A gang of vipers in suits and ties dreamed it up after 9/11, that’s what. Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs working the Rep-Dem two-headed rattlesnake. Yes, I lost a family friend from Virginia and his wife in the plane that hit and disintegrated inside the Pentagon. But I don’t support this mutant Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security.

Never mind Benjamin Franklin, one of the American Founding Fathers, wrote back in 1759 “Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Or even earlier in 1738 when Franklin warned “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.”

Do mind security is an illusion even today. The term “Homeland” is an abomination and so is the despotic department named after it. Dump the name, abolish its Department, and reorganized the institution into a leaner, more integrated agency which stands for freedom rather than neo-fascist tyranny in the disguise of pseudo-democracy all dressed up pretty for the election prom.

Look what fellow monstrosities inspired such a grotesque abomination as “Homeland:”

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Occupy Wall Street? Occupy the Banks! Seize the Fed!

William Bass @ Occupy Seattle! Rally & March. Foto by Syd Fredrickson, Saturday 8 October 2011.

William Bass @ Occupy Seattle! Rally & March. Foto by Syd Fredrickson, Saturday 8 October 2011.

Occupy Wall Street?
Why stop at the door?
Occupy the Banks!
They made us all poor.
Seize the Fed!
Think we’re dead?
We’re far from beat!

The Occupy Wall Street protests are spreading across America. They’re growing in number. Other demonstrations for causes specific to different local and regional areas are merging into the national tapestry of Occupy Wall Street. Now protestors gather in the nation’s capital for Occupy Washington, D.C. A loose, leaderless web of networks with many different causes, there is one overarching theme: people are fed up with “corporate greed.” Even some individual military personnel, both veterans and those still in uniform, from different branches came out in support of the demonstrations. One old Army veteran posted one of his buddies from the Marine declared he “didn’t fight for Wall Street, but for America.”

The United States of America at its worse is a schizophrenic place. It is a constitutional democratic republic on paper with a once vibrant and prosperous economy. As such America is a beacon of hope and admiration for much of the world. The best aspects of America continue to inspire people. There is, unfortunately, the nightmare side of America with its muddied racism, genocide of Native American Indians, massive penal system, great economic disparity, out of control intelligence agencies, CIA torture in secret prisons, multitudes of military bases scattered across Earth, and gruesome clandestine medical and biochemical weapons experiments.

Our United States is also part of a growing global empire in the making. As such the U.S.A. is also the bastion of finance capitalism where corporations and big banks dominate and influence politics. The political machinery is deeply corrupted by the Corporatocracy and not just in the nation’s capital. The money gamers heavily dominate the so-called pillars of democracy, the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch. What results?

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Skin

Former slave Gordon after he escaped a Mississippi plantation to join Federal troops, March 1863. Unknown photographer, U.S. Civil War.

 

Skin
tells a story.
Only problem is
God Knows the Truth.
Come back, o scattered bones,
come back to me, I cry.
But only dust…and ash…
return.

 

William Dudley Bass
Sunday 11 September 2011
Seattle, Washington

 

NOTE: First published on 9/11/2011 on Facebook in Prezz Pressley’s Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.” Then published again later the same day on my blog “Cultivate and Harvest” as a “Poem from Spirit” at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/09/skin.html and is reprinted by me here. Thank  you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Changes

People don’t like change. Do you like change? To change? Most folks are just too busy trying to be disciplined with their own routines when they don’t really wanna to be distracted with having to change.

“Oh, no, not again!” Changing diapers is a mess, isn’t it?

Change seems to get people going, though. Galvanizes them.

What fires you up?

What inspires you?

What are you passionate FOR?

I don’t want to know what you care about. I want to know what you stand for. And what you’re gonna next. Continue reading

Boomerang Tree

Once upon a time when I was a brave and crazy fool I rode a tree like a dragon. Armed with a homemade boomerang, I was a pretty young lad somewhere in that transition between preteen to true teen. My exact age and even what grade I was in remain lost to memory. What I do remember is a gusty, late afternoon storm with cloudy skies churning the color of dark green moss. It happened in Virginia where I grew up on a farm, and I thought I was gonna die.

I felt proud of my boomerang. I’ve spent hours carving and sanding it from a piece of wood. When I whipped it through the air across the cow pastures on my parents’ dairy farm, my boomerang actually returned. It would spin away from me whirling like a helicopter propeller. As my boomerang spun it rose high and higher still, turned, and came zooming back to me. Sometimes it flopped and dug into grass and dirt and skittered off rocks. At other times, however, I had to duck as it zipped over my head. I dared not reach out to grab it. Those were the best!

My buddy Jerry Vernon and I were out in a huge cowpasture on the Gates Family Farm. Jerry’s dad worked for the Gateses milking cows and fixing fences, so we played a lot. My brother Joe, six years younger, also hung with us that day. Our dad ran the Bass farm for his uncle, who was cousins with the Gateses and further down the road the Bruces.

It was one afternoon after school, and I can’t remember if it was November or March. The weather felt heavy with a cloudy-late-afternoon-right-before-supper-time feel, and we had one eye out for bulls. Rumor had it the Gateses had turned loose a bull into the pasture to impregnate the cows, and he would snort, charge, stomp, and gore you all to bloody pieces if he discovered you simply existed. We were terrified of bulls.

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Veterans Day 11/11/11 – Remembering Horror to Stand against War for Love, Peace, and Light

Most of us, including myself from time to time, forget the significance of acknowledging today. This 11th day of November 2011 dawns as arbitrary numbers from an artificial calendar. Popularly transcribed as 11/11/11, it has become wrapped in New Age mysticism as if something prophetic is to occur simply because of how numbers line up and combine in people’s minds. It also marks Remembrance Day among the victorious Allies of the First World War (1914-1918). It began as Armistice Day and, certainly in the United States, evolved into Veterans Day. Much was lost in the process, including remembering much of the world once agreed to outlaw war.

The First World War was known simply as the Great War for many years. People simply didn’t know what else to call it. The term “world war” was used, but it wasn’t the first or the last. It didn’t begin in a vacuum either. As do many large conflicts, this Great War arose from a convergence of smaller wars. While the Armistice of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 1918 marked the formal end of combat on the Western Front, the war continued elsewhere around the world.

The Great War morphed into a viper’s nest of local and regional wars around the planet. They eventually converged into the Second World War with such violence many historians consider the period 1914-1945 as one war much as we look back upon prolonged and widespread conflicts of old as singular wars with multiple phases and theaters.

We’ve forgotten the horror of it all. As veterans and survivors die out our memories become those of old photographs in old textbooks. While the First World War wasn’t the first, it was the first global war of industrialized mass slaughter on a scale previously unknown anywhere in history. The horror of industrial combat shocked Europeans and the rest of humanity. Battlefields had mutated into vast human slaughterhouses filled with broken charnel.

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November Heart

November crawls out of my skin
Leaving my insides naked
And cold
At the bottom of old trees
Whose rough roots toil to keep warm
My soul as it burrows into mud.
Huddled on mountainsides
Bent crooked in wind
Under the first blast of snow
These trees, oh, these trees,
Oh, I hear them laugh and sing
As they shed orange-red leaves before blue-white snow.
Those old trees, they call my name
“Hey!” they shout
“Why are you so dark?
Open your heart!
We trees don’t have one.
How lucky you are.”
Ameen.

 

William Dudley Bass
9 November 2011
Seattle, Washington

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Envisioning Future Networks Now

With so many people choosing to become entrepreneurs, what does that look like? Especially during this Great Recession? What 3 trends may be developing? Trends you can jump on and drive?
Our Great Recession is far from over, and its trajectory continues to defy many experts and pundits alike. Why’s that? Many keep looking to the future while staying stuck in the past. Our current economic mess, and it is a mess regardless of what label historians will ultimately stick on it, is just as different from the “first” Great Depression as the Second World War was from the First.

Many changes are happening, and are happening faster and faster. Globalization, relocalization, sustainable economics, the linkage of environmental and social responsibility to economics and finance, integrated and mobile digital technologies, and the global long war on terrorism all squeeze the status quo.

Amid all this pressure, however, opportunities await and trends are discernable. As alchemists once believed they could transmute lead to gold and we do know intense pressure transforms carbon into diamonds, so too can you generate value from great change. Continue reading

Asteroid 2005 YU55 zooms inside Luna’s orbit as it zips by Earth for a Happy Birthday

Asteroid 2005 YU55, Radar Imagery from Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, CA, 7 November 2011.

Asteroid 2005 YU55, Radar Imagery from Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, CA, 7 November 2011. Wikipedia.

A big but small asteroid rapidly approaches Earth as it karooms around our solar system. And just in time for my wife Kristina’s birthday. On its merry way Asteroid 2005 YU55 shall pass inside Luna’s orbit as our moon revolves around Planet Earth. It’s a bit too close for comfort for such a large rock barreling through space, but all government officials and NASA scientists involved are calmly warning us not to worry. It most likely won’t hit us, “too close” is not the same as “direct impact,” and besides, it won’t wipe out all life on Earth. It won’t even smack the moon. I imagine them scampering back out of sight hunched over gnawing on their fingertips. Or blissfully ordering another cup o’ Joe.

YU55 only 400 meters across, darn it. Way too small for the excited little boy in me who revels in blowing shit up. That’s the size of about four football fields lined up side-by-side. Big American football fields, too. Scientists advise us to imagine a giant bowling ball the size of an aircraft carrier, which, of course, doesn’t look a thing like a bowling ball sailing through space. It’s that big. And there were bigger ones once upon a time. And many more still out there.

The one that smashed into what’s called the Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico today to exterminate most of life on the planet including the dinosaurs was about 25 times longer and over 15,000 times more volume. Still, I can’t help but wonder if today’s my last day on Earth. At least I got to wish my wife “Happy Birthday” this morning. As I’m still a mammal with a reptile brain, I got urges to satisfy later tonight! Especially before we go extinct.

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Iran, Syria, & Pakistan: Feint, Bluff, or World War?

Gold has shot up again and is close to $1,790 an ounce even as the U.S. Dollar strengthens at the same time. That’s somewhat unusual. Dollars generally go up in value as gold declines, and gold strengthens as the Dollar drops. (See http://www.kitco.com/ for details). In addition both Crude Oil commodity prices are up (WTI or West Texas Intermediary, the global oil benchmark, and the Brent from North Sea deposits, but see http://www.oil-price.net/ for details).

This is not simply because the European Union is tanking over the euro, anti-austerity rebellions, and internecine squabbling between its member states. There has been a parade of recent disclosures revealing much more regarding Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program, the covert war between the U.S.A./E.U./Israel/Saudi Arabia and the Iranians as well as mounting tensions between the U.S.A./NATO and Pakistan. The Libyan War winds down as Syria plunges into civil war as President Bashar al-Assad threatens to go down fighting and take the whole Middle East with him. It’s Monday, November 7, 2011.

While the mainstream mass media is preoccupied with riling up opinions over Kim Kardashian’s divorce from Kris Humphries or Justin Bieber’s alleged sexual dalliances with older young ladies, it ignores or whitewashes the massive military buildups currently underway across an expanse of territory and nations from Europe to North Africa through the Middle East into Central and South Asia. Not to mention Africa. Or East Asia. Or Latin America. Or back home on the streets of America and Europe and their Allies.

What’s going on? What’s really going on that is either being downplayed or ignored by the mainstream mass media? Or cast in a certain patriotic or threatening light?

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“Bobby’s shot! Bobby Kennedy’s been shot!”

When we first learned Bobby Kennedy was assassinated

Hot, muggy day in farm country Virginia. Late spring, not yet Summer. The Solstice was about two weeks off, but all practical purposes it was Summer with school soon to be out for the season. Humid with a hint of afternoon thunderstorms, the air was pungent with honeysuckle flowers and tree pollen and the promise of picnics in the shade and swimming in lakes.

I was outside in the yard playing. My little sister and brother were probably around somewhere, playing with me, but I don’t remember them this particular day. I just remember my Momma, and Daddy, too, a little bit.

We grew up on Riverview Dairy Farm in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Outside of the town of Farmville. Earlier in the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s the Civil Rights movement had swept across the South and into Prince Edward Country. Racial desegregation and integration efforts polarized whole communities, shut down the schools, and brought Mike Wallace to Farmville for the Evening News and Prince Edward County before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Vietnam and Southeast Asia burned overseas and riots and urban guerrilla warfare kept erupting all around the United States. We were still in the thick of it all, this second revolution or quasi-civil war or whatever you wanted to call these rock’n’roll times, with no end in sight. As time would tell, these Troubles would grind and rumble on till 1975. Though many in the Occupy Wall Street and Everywhere on Earth movement today claim to draw their inspiration as much from these turbulent times as from the Arab Spring.

The sharp staccato roar of the gasoline-powered farm tractor washed over us as Daddy drove it around and around the pasture out back. We were used to that awful mechanical racket, however, and other than a glance over now and then paid it no mind. It was a green and yellow John Deere 420 with a wide, adjustable-width front end manufactured back in the mid-to-late 1950s. Dad sat up in there turned sideways in the seat as was his custom, one hand on the steering wheel, the other gripping the big fin of the rear fender as he made sure the tractor and the mower and the line of hay and the lay of the land were in perfect alignment. He wore blue denim jeans, a white, short-sleeved T-shirt, and a khaki baseball cap. Back then he smoked Camel cigarettes, too.

I heard a shriek. Loud one, too. Momma! I stood up.

The back door of the house slammed open and Momma sailed down the stairs. I remember her in slow motion, dressed in white clothes, had on a white skirt or dress. Black hair thrown back. Her legs wide as a ballet dancer’s leap. She raced shouting toward my father as he rounded the side of the pasture closest to our backyard. By then I was running there, too.

“Bobby’s shot!” Momma yelled. “Bobby’s been shot!”

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Our Worldwide Economic House of Glass and Cards

 

As I write this November of 2011 as our pie-in-the-sky economy crumbles, the tallest building yet constructed on our planet by human beings is the Burj Khalifa. It is a stunning achievement of human engineering, beauty, perseverance, collective international teamwork, and magnificent awesomeness. This skyscraper tower also reflects the ultimate distraction of egoic pride, shortsighted and archaic nationalism, and cooperative stupidity and waste. The crowning achievement of building such a giant is the perfect example of Finance Capitalism at its finest worse.

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back when we welcomed the invasion of the first colored television

I’m in my early 50s now, just a little bit more than halfway to a hundred. I know, I know, those elderly gents snort and splash air at me with wrinkled old hands, grin a somber smile, and remind me “Young man, you’re still just a puppy! Only fifty some years outa diapers.”

Tho I imagine another voice cackling among fluttering pigeons not to worry “cuz you might find yourself back in diapers before you get to turn a hunnert years old.”

Once upon a time, however, way back a long, long time ago, long before old folks could depend on Depends,  (wait, little ® there, right?), I was a wee little bitty fella all excited because every Monday night I could snuggle up next to my Momma on the sofa across from the TV and watch “Lost in Space.” Then talk all about spaceships, alien planets, and monsters in school the next day. Especially with my buddy Eddie. I was in First Grade, and our television was black-and-white.

B & W was all I knew. Clear, crisp black, grey, and white. Unless zigzagging zebra stripes took over the screen.

One evening my parents were giddy with excitement and anticipation. They beamed at me with eyes like flying saucers. I looked around in wonder.

“Come on,” Dad said. “Get ready. We’re going up the road to Charlie Watt and Rosella’s new house.”

“What for?” I asked.

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Reticence

“OK, who’s in?” asked Deborah Drake for her scary, post-Halloween blogging challenge. She threw down yet another gauntlet to our delightfully strange circle of creative writers and business bloggers. “It starts next Tuesday, November 1st!”

Slouched in my folding chair with my legs flopped out from once sitting excited on the edge of my seat with my feet planted, I raised my arm. It was as a dead tree limb except it moved. It moved “yes.” My arm stuck up higher than I expected in spite of my reticence. And oh, I was reticent.

It occurs to me as I type we associate dead things as “heavy.” Dead weight. I think of death as lighter. If you’re an animal, well…uh…stuff drains out. Air expires. For a little bit, anyway, right, till decay generates more, uh … gas. Plants decay, too. In the water dead things float, become waterlogged, and sink to the bottom. Now that IS added weight, unlike the Lady of the Lake who turned into soap at Lake Crescent. But if there’s any spirit or soul, well, we’re a few nanograms lighter after bio-death, right? Hmmnnn…no more glazed donuts and Boston cream-filled shuga yummies adding to the scales. But a dead branch still jutting from a tree is dry and hollow, much lighter than a living branch heavy with water and life. Good Lord, see what happens with me living in my own ADHD? Everything relates. Oh, good, I’m now at 217 words.

That’s 117 more than the minimum per blog post. Deborah Drake is fierce in her advocacy for writing, or rather the discipline of writing every day even if it isn’t much or all that great. We return to the mindfulness of the practice of being mindful: we wash the dishes to wash the dishes to wash the dishes, not to hurry up and get out of the kitchen so we can rush off to the next distraction. We create to create. I write to write to write. Strip out the “because to’s” or the reasons why and all the “in-order-to’s.” We hone our craft with the presence of someone sharpening a dull axe or a big-bladed knife. I pay attention and drop into the flow of sharpening my edge whether it’s my axe, my writing, or, more challengingly, my children and my wife. Continue reading

Untangling the Octopus

Cartoon.02_Federal_Reserve_1912_Coming_Money_Trust

The Octopus as viewed in 1912 on the eve of the Bankers’ Coup of 1913.

Alfred Owen Crozier, an attorney and activist from Michigan, Ohio, and New York, drew the above cartoon in 1912. He warned the public of the banksters before the Bankers’ Coup of 1913 issued in the Federal Reserve System and the Internal Revenue Service. The Octopus was the first illustration to grace the interior of his 1912 book, U.S. Money vs. Corporate Money, “Aldrich Plan,” Wall Street Confessions! Great Bank Combine! In 1913, Crozier testified against the Federal Reserve System, originally proposed by the Aldrich Plan as the National Reserve Association.

The Octopus as viewed in 2011 in the midst of the worldwide Occupy revolt.

The Octopus as viewed in 2011 in the midst of the worldwide Occupy revolt.

The Octopus represented the art of 1912. Almost a hundred years later, in October 2011, three complex-systems theorists crunching algorithms determined 43,000 TNCs (Transnational Corporations), represented by all the dots in the 3D image, dominated the global economy. Among these are 1,318 core companies with interlocking ownerships. The collectively controlled 20% of global operating revenues and another 60% of global real (manufacturing revenues.) Of these 147 formed a supergroup of <1% controlling 40% of the total network. The majority were Big Wall Street Banks and investment firms.

See “Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world,” in New Scientist at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed–the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

and “The network of global corporate control” at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf.

Interlocking Relationships and Web of Control.

Interlocking Relationships and Web of Control in 2011. Capitalism, especially Finance Capitalism, now dominates politics, governments, academia, NGOs, markets, businesses, and finances locally, regionally, and all across the planet.

Over time we see a much more convoluted and intricate network of interlocking, non-democratic entities formed. This has grown to dominate politics and governments as well as marketplaces and businesses around the planet. Perhaps the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street and Everywhere movements can find common ground. Neither will they or anyone else, however, be successful in political, economic, and financial reforms unless we go straight to the hearts of the Beast. The foundation of radical reform is simple in concept and shall be challenging to execute: We the People of Earth must establish public control of the money power similar to civilian control of the military power. Such public control must be transparent and accountable with all information open to public audit.

NOTE: This is from a from a larger work in progress looking at the de facto Euro-American Global Empire, which may be more correctly termed a Postmodern and neo-feudal Empire of the Money Power.

William Dudley Bass
2 November 2011
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

Dancing at the Gates of the Underworld

“Celebrating the 13th Mortiversary of the best man I’ve ever known,” leapt from the glowing blue and white screen a few days before Halloween. The author was a gorgeous and stunning enigma who turned heads whenever she strode into a room, or in my case, a tipi during an all-night Native American prayer meeting. “Mortiversary?” I wondered in awe. “Oh, he’s dead!”

Then I felt the glow of shame for not getting it right away at my friend’s expense. Here was a woman honoring the life of a man who once moved her deeply by celebrating his death. From beyond the veils between worlds he continued to move and inspire her. In allowing her self to feel so moved she inspired me and my heart opened to the pain and the sadness and even the magnificence of death.

As storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade said about two years ago on a blustery November night in Port Townsend, “Welcome to the Endarkenment.” He felt the world has energetically moved away from a period of awakening, enlightenment, even bliss into a period of darkness and turmoil and chaos. It wasn’t all bad, either. Such dark times are often the cauldron of creativity and transformation. Our spirits fly away leaving our souls burrowing into dirt and filth, transforming both into rich soil.

It was Samhain, the Celtic New Year, All Hallows Eve 2011. This year it fell across a three-day weekend with October 31st falling upon a Monday with two more dark holy days following. Samhain (usually pronounced as ‘sow-win’), Feralia, Pomona, Halloween, Hallowmas and All Soul’s, Dia de los Muertas … it’s that time of the year to really celebrate Summer’s End and herald in the Endarkenment. I love how they mix and blend together like the blood and genes in our Postmodern flesh.

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