Posts
Saturday, October 13, 2012
MORE TREASON, MR. PRESIDENT?
Friday, January 20, 2012
Threescore and ten plus years on this planet, watching with dismay of the man’s plunging like Lemmings over the cliff, I have some thoughts to share.
Man is a silly, random, childish, beautiful brute. He is a pure, spiritual being, burdened by baggage of pain and misdirection accumulated over his existence which is eternity, making him reactive and stupid. He does stupid things constantly. Witness the worn stones and dreams of past civilizations, tilted askew in the sands and mud now long abandoned.
Having once attempted a run at politics I learned that politicians must please everyone which is impossible. Attempting this makes him a liar. Then lies become commonplace, and attempting the tricky balance of staying afloat in a sea of pleasing all leads to not really knowing or caring what it true. You have to have a phenomenal memory to be a politician. You have to say one thing in the morning to one group something different to another group in the evening. You learn to talk slick and really never commit, sounding like you are committing while saying with heart what you think they want to hear.
We are witnessing, in January 2012, the pre-selection of a Republican candidate that can beat the democratic president Obama this year. The candidates, in trying to each be positioned for nomination by crushing each other, are providing fodder for Obama in the big final race to come. In my life I have watched this happen several times, but never has so much depended on what happens in 2012.
Perhaps it doesn’t really matter who is elected, for I feel they are all puppets, with strings pulled by the same banker puppeteers. Their masters have pulled down each country under their control until finally they have the big one, the United States, postured to crumble in a few years, having taken over the money, the media, food, energy, shelter and transportation. Their objective is unthinkable. The existing puppets in congress and the high seat have closed their eyes and are diving over the cliff toward oblivion in every policy embraced---bankrupting this great experiment with unimagined velocity. Whether a Republican president can or will do different is questionable. Each will blame the preceding contingent. The previous boy president followed his daddy’s will who was following in turn his orders.
Do you think any of the viable lying candidates will make a difference? Only Ron Paul could. But he would have to get Congress to act to implement his plan, and each of them has sold his or her soul to get and stay in office. I love Ron Paul. He is incredibly honest and my dream president. But “they” will not let this happen. Only a miracle can keep Obama, the most arrogant and flagrantly incompetent president ever, from being re-elected because he has the blacks, Hispanics, democrats, and the media, and many just who love the way he reads a monitor. They do not wish to lose their something for nothing life. Who can blame them? Please, whoever is listening, tell me I am wrong.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
hitchhiking
Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac of today, January 13, 2012, had the following little poem that made me remember my hitchhiking days. When I was growing up in the country in Northwest Louisiana, about 50 miles south of Shreveport (close to Texas border) we either caught a Trailways bus or “caught a ride,” (hitchhiked.). The bus only came through once a day and went to Shreveport or somewhere southeast, so if you wanted to go somewhere you hitchhiked.
There was no danger. There were many on the road with their thumbs hiked in the air wanting a ride. I had many experiences, some great, some terrifying. Like the time my buddy Kenneth Brumley and I caught a ride with a couple of drunks. It was a two door car, and we were sitting in the back and couldn’t get out. He was all over the road and in the ditches driving 100 mph, sometimes sailing in the air, leaving the highway on the crest of a hill like you see in the movies, to crash down with a great bounce after a brief flight. Finally he stopped for gas, and both he and his passenger went into the station. Kenneth and I crawled out of the window and hid until they left. We had been taken many miles out of our way and were relieved just to be alive.
There were queers who reached out and touched my leg and I demanded to be let out then and there---wherever I was, even on a lonely stretch of road. Once a guy showed me a huge roll of hundred dollar bills while driving, then showed me a pistol to prove he was loaded but would blow anybody away that wanted his money. Most of the time it was a nice guy or couple. Caught rides on the back of pickups, or cattle trucks with plenty residue from their erstwhile bovine passengers on the bed of the truck and you took your chances on trying to find a place to sit, and more often than not, black people would be willing to help, needing help themselves most of the time.
We never thought much about hitchhiking. I would catch rides from my little town to Highway 80, which ran north and south from Shreveport all the way to New Orleans, through Baton Rouge, a distance of nearly 300 miles. I did this many times, without a single problem in the fifties.
I was a kid, still a teenager, and until I got a car this was my way of going places by myself. By the way, there were no speed limits on those two lane roads, and driving eighty and ninety was not unusual. No seat belts either or air conditioning. Probably no higher accident rate then than now. Mellow memories. I had a sense of freedom that I had forgotten. Of course, the couple hitchhiking in the poem that follows didn’t involve much freedom for them—it was a different kind of freedom. Then was Janis Joplin’s Me’n Bobby Magee a kind of freedom?. That kind of freedom feels quite wonderful as a memory.LDS
HITCHHIKERS
by Charles Simic
After a Walker Evans photograph from the thirties
Hard times brought them out early
On this dreary stretch of road
Carrying a suitcase and a bedroll
With a frying pan tied to it,
The kind you use over a campfire
When a moss-covered log is your pillow.
He's hopeful and she's ashamed
To be asking a stranger to take them
Away from here in a cloud of flying
Gravel and dust, past leafless trees
With their snarled and pointy little twigs.
A man and a woman catching a ride
To where water tastes like cherry wine.
She'll work as a maid or a waitress,
He'll pump gas or rob banks.
They'll buy a car as big as a hearse
To make their fast getaway,
Not forgetting to stop for you, mister,
If you are down on your luck yourself.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
America, Its Strength Is Its Weakness
The weakness of our country, which at one time was its strength, was flinging open our doors to everyone. “Give me your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” are the shining words at the foot of the lady whose torch held aloft is still a beacon for all to come and share the bounty of our land of plenty.
The diversity of all the lands coming to our shores enriched our culture and our economy. It is the answer to anyone wishing to be free and being a part of the great mixture of peoples we call America. But there is a downside.
“The reason a democracy or any wide-open group caves in lies in its extending its privileges of membership to those who seek to destroy it.”
“The idiocy of doing so is plain. When a person announces he is no longer a part of the group, he has rejected the group. He has also rejected its codes and rules. Of course he has also rejected the protection to which he was entitled as a group member.”
HCO Policy Letter, 17 March 65, Issue IV, HCO Div 1, Justice. Organizational Suppressive Acts. L Ron Hubbard.
I think this is the paradox of any experiment in democracy, an attempt to let the people govern themselves. We hold the door wide for anyone to enter and allow them the vote, the give-away programs, education, health, with no input. Yet tax the productive. What is the answer?
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
What Now America?
We Americans are feeling the wrenching disorientation wrought of change. Change is upon us. At the age of 77, born at the end of the depression, having lived through three wars, I have been fortunate to have had the best that America had to offer in this great experiment in democracy.
The white man, through being much more vigorous and aggressive because of having his blood origin in the cold climes of northern Europe, dominated the planet for generations. His blood has thinned and he, like the Romans before him, has weakened morally and spiritually. He now hasn’t the will to maintain dominance. Rome was sacked because Rome simply had rotted from within and their indolent senate died in their seats. Greece and Rome lasted hundreds of years. The great civilizations of the east in China, simply continued, ponderous with people, and are becoming the survivors because of sheer dominance in numbers.
We have come to this teetering point less than 300 years since our valiant overthrow of the yoke of English tyranny. Those men who signed the Declaration of Independence risked everything. Without the intercession of the French we would have lost, and they were involved to weaken England, their dire enemy. Immediately thereafter they had their own revolution which changed everything there.
We are in a crisis we cannot conceive as real, for we are living in a surreal world of false economy, having elected enemies of our own basic philosophy as leaders. It seems that we are just holding our collective breaths, for that last precious bit of air, before we all drown. We are like bewildered children---lost---without direction, trying to find a real voice, a real leader who can fight through the tangled thicket of laws and political commitment to the light of day, who has the moral strength to confront and win back our self respect and future that seems to be dissolving before our very eyes. He or she is there, somewhere.
Is this really happening? It is like dream, a creepy dream. We see all the assorted pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and separately they don't make sense--the trillions, the bail outs, the corrupt cronies, George Soros et al, immigration, Muslim incursion, the "the where the hell did he come from President," and they are not so ignorable, but ignored like a very unpleasant smell. Put them together and it all comes crystal clear. There is a reeking stench that violates all sense of goodness and propriety. It was all planned. In politics, like Wall Street, it is all planned. Nothing is coincidental.
We are beset in every direction because of a sold out leadership—puppets of those who would have America become at one with the rest of the world—under their control. A planned invasion of Mexicans from the south, illegally crossing our borders, taking jobs of working Americans for pennies a day, getting governmental benefits paid by taxes of working Americans, reproducing children who under the law of “jus soli" are American citizens, all to become voters who will support a regime willing to bankrupt our country to support them for their votes. Minorities within who do the same. A rabid, alien, Muslim culture integrating itself within with a declared intention to destroy America. A Muslim president, mysteriously placed into office out of nowhere (now clearly a pawn of people like George Soros---whose record of destroying nations is clear) whose skin color and professed philosophy galvanizes and coalesces all those who want something for nothing into a tighter voting block than ever; whose philosophy of tax the rich (productive) and give to the non productive fits the very scheme that has destroyed Greece, Rome and every other strong civilization.
Destroy the US from within by bankruptcy, and thus goes the rest of the planet into turmoil. America has become the planetary power, and though it is clear there has been anything but peace during her reign (wars are created by those who benefit and those controlling the money benefit—the bankers primarily) she has held out her hand of freedom for those who wish to come and play by our rules until the Mexican invasion.
Who will win? What will become of America? Will America, Canada and Mexico become one? Europe will dissolve into one and Asia into one, creating three great interplanetary powers, all led by someone. Some hidden leader, (tyrant of incredible power) or maybe not so hidden. There is no place to hide even now. Google has a picture of your house, a whole profile on everyone on the planet. You can be located by satellite at any time. Implanted chips will be the final end of man’s independence, will and freedom.
He tried, but is now an anemic, frail mockery of our forefathers and their will for a free America. How can we keep our integrity, our personal freedom, our ability to choose direction and life? It has disappeared during my short span on this small, but beautiful, planet. History shows great societies have always greedily destroyed themselves by the immorality of the dominant species. Over and over. The mysterious standing stones in the deserts and jungles profess to his huge ability to create, and his ability to destroy, and to his inevitable demise.
I am a dedicated Scientologist. I know we are spiritual beings, having meat bodies with limited lives we use for transport and communication. We are basically good, beautiful, immortal, creative beings. But we are stupid. We were put here because we were geniuses (stupid ones), miscreants, psychopaths, artists, and political dissidents. We didn’t fit and had to be disposed of. Dropped here, given amnesia implants (we really can remember but it is too painful to remember), and we spend our days trying to figure out what the hell is going on---developing philosophies, religions, to explain it. Never one that really explains, just requires leaps of faith.
We have tools to recover our basic abilities, our basic happiness, without any need for “faith in” or belief beyond knowing this is the way once it becomes clear. It became clear to me instantly once I saw the truth of it. Some take longer. No matter, the truth is there to be had by anyone, anywhere, of any faith, color, or religious conviction.
Thus we are attacked by those who wish to keep mankind in the dark, unenlightened as to man’s own spiritual power and ability. We are growing and have a huge hill to climb against those who wish to destroy us and control minds through drugs, fear or political estrangement. (Psychiatrists and drug companies—financed by those who eventually benefit from mental enslavement.) Those with low confront of evil will snort and say this is rubbish. Believe me, there is evil, and it is not “the devil.” There are a fraction (2%) of the population who are so terrified of others, who have learned how to look and act like others and have disappeared in the fabric of society, they will destroy everything around them. They are hard to spot, but everything around them is in a turmoil. Those they influence look crazy. They are usually the last ones you will spot. They are cowards, who use your power, for they have none. They are thus dangerous. We elect them to office, chairmen of boards, or they sit by the fire knitting while their family is in chaos. You need to learn to spot them. We have the means to do this.
We can win, but we must stand tall and do more than sit on our asses knowing we are the only way out of this prison planet. I solicit, and even dare, any man or woman who professes to be searching for answers to honestly take a look. Open your mind and see. Go to the source. There is much disinformation abroad. See for yourself. Think for yourself. You can help save us all by first finding the road out. It is this one. I know of no other on this planet.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Me and Ray Bradbury
I attended a talk by Ray Bradbury at LSU in the late nineties. Knowing he would be swamped afterwards, I ran backstage before anyone got to him and had some pictures made with him, including this one.
His family moved to Hollywood when he was around ten years old, and he started selling postcards and maps to homes of the stars. He spotted W.C. Fields standing on the corner waiting for a ride, so he asked him for his autograph. Fields scratched his name on the little piece of paper, held it for a moment before giving it to Bradbury, then scowled over his cigar and said, “There you go, you little sonofabitch.” From the way he described it, I know he thinks about it often. It’s like a stuck picture that he muses over—for it is funny as hell to me. His telling of it leaves me with a picture of an irascible old sonofabitch himself who somehow became a star and gave Bradbury an indelible impression of this as a highlight event.
I have used this as an example in giving talks on Affinity, Reality and Communication, and how we must take responsibility for our communication because of the everlasting results of what we say and do.
The following is today’s offering by The Writer’s Almanac, by Garrison Keillor, of The Prairie Home Companion.
It's the birthday of science fiction writer Ray Bradbury (books by this author), born in Waukegan, Illinois (1920). He's the author of many books of science fiction, including The Martian Chronicles (1950) and Fahrenheit 451 (1953). One of his ancestors, Mary Bradbury, was burned as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts, and he said he got from her his anxiety about fearmongering and thought control. He said, "Science fiction is a wonderful hammer; I intend to use it when and if necessary, to bark a few shins or knock a few heads, in order to make people leave people alone." He told Paris Review, "I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past — a combination of both." He didn't go to college, because the family couldn't afford it, but he did go to libraries ... at least three times a week for 10 years. He wrote Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library.
As a boy, he read Edgar Allan Poe and The Wizard of Oz. And when he was 12, a traveling carnival came to town, and he met a magician named Mr. Electrico, who believed young Ray was the reincarnation of a friend who had died in his arms in World War I. Later, at the show, Mr. Electrico touched people in the front row with his electrically charged sword, making their hair stand on end. "When he came to me, he touched me on the brow, and on the nose, and on the chin, and he said to me, in a whisper, 'Live forever.' And I decided to."
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Sick and Dying "R" US
My Dear Friends:
Dr. Tom Smith, one of those old time "real" healers, was our family doctor. He was always saying "you are what you eat." He went no further than that, but would have if we would have asked him what he meant. This was in the fifties, before GMO and adulteration of our food supply by pesticides, herbicides, growth enzymes in our meats, etc.
I called this blog "sick and dying R US," because that is what we Americans are.
I decided to learn about enzymes today, and watched this clear explanation of enzymes and how absolutely essential that we know about them and how they affect health.
In a nutshell, enzymes are chemical elements in foods that make what we eat useable by the body. They also can be used to make foods, such as cheese, wines, beers, and even to process such as curing leather and are the catalysts that nature supplies to transform substances into useable substances.
They are vital to every aspect of health, and account for ability to ward off heart attacks, cancer, ulcers, immunity problems, and most diseases and body problems. By the time a person reaches 70, the body produces 1/3 of the necessary enzymes needed to properly use foods we eat--add this to the additives for storage, color and increased production and we have a problem. Orange juice, with the container saying pure juice, not from concentrate. This juice has been stored in huge containers, with all oxygen removed, with fructose and sugar added. Each 8 oz glass contains the equivalent of 8 teaspoons of sugar. More than a coke. You are in trouble if you think you are helping the health of your kids by giving them other than fresh squeezed orange juice. These food additives for shelf life, taste and color account for the obesity in the US. Go to a cafeteria, Chinese all you can eat, Walmart, or wherever, and try not to ignore the disgusting Americans who can barely move, who simply know no better.
I went to Europe with my son Tom in 2003---I was shocked at the difference between the bodies of the Europeans and Americans--The Italians and French were trim, graceful and athletic compared to the wallowing obesity of most American tourists. Some English and German were also fat, but nothing like Americans.
At my age, I am concerned about feeling good, feeling energetic and pain free. I assure you the mid seventies have pain, stiffness, and digestive and other problems unless there is exercise and proper food.
Where do you get enzymes? Raw vegetables. Juice them, just eat them, or cop out and buy supplements. I am going to start using my juicer. It is a little more complex doing this, and cleaning it after, but I am going to keep it out on my counter and use it to make a two day supply. I want to feel good, still be hard and stay hard, in every way. Crawling out of bed in pain every morning before I walk the stiffness in my back off only gets worse with time, and I can imagine how it must be for those fatties who look like they have live animals in their clothes as they walk, and struggle to get up from sitting positions. It is enzymes, fructose, exercise (don't need much) and additives.
Watch these videos (the first one and the one on orange juice) and get smart.
I have to thank Mercola for keeping us informed. Why don't they have a required course in school beginning in lower grades with this subject, making it simple, with videos like this. The problem with most of these "instructional" courses, are they are too complex, giving misunderstoods, not going basic enough. This could easily handle America's stupidity.
LD
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/21/enzymes-special-report.aspx?e_cid=20110821_SNL_Art_1
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/16/dirty-little-secret-orange-juice-is-artificially-flavored-to-taste-like-oranges.aspx?e_cid=20110821_SNL_MV_1
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Memories of 9/11 by an American
Memories of 9/11 by an American
I was at home, staying away from the office, getting needed time and space to work on an upcoming jury trial, when my wife came into my office saying “the world trade center has been attacked.”
I had to shake the woolies out of my head and shift gears, for I was deep in the facts of the case, and had no clue what she was talking about. I carried my materials with me and sat down in my LazyBoy in front of the TV in the bedroom. One of the twin towers was smoking about two thirds of the way up, and the announcer frantically chattered about a plane running into the building.
I thought it was novel that an airliner had gone off course and hit the building. My legal mind immediately thought of the damage lawsuits of the people on the plane and those injured in the building---and the claim the building owner had against the airline.
There was lots of talk, but no knowledge of anything about what really happened. I continued concentrating on my case, interrupted from time to time by the announcer giving updates, with the picture of the buildings continued on the screen. At the time, there were no available photos of the plane approaching and striking the building. That came later.
Then another plane hit the other building. That got my attention, and I am sure it was then that those who should know about such things sat up in red alert. This was no accident!
I had most of my attention from then on riveted on the TV, watching the two fantastic buildings with ugly smoking wounds in their sides, trying to visualize what was happening there. This was not commonplace news!
There before my eyes, building number one seemed to shrink downward for a moment, then, in seconds, it simply folded in on itself and collapsed in a smoking heap. I felt something hit me in my gut. I couldn’t breathe for a moment. It was a physical shock within me. I had no idea what had happened, except that thousands were dying, all at once, and there was a simultaneous cry of the dying in that instant that hit me like a blow. It hit me spiritually, but it felt like a physical thing.
We are all connected whether we know it or not; our de-evolution makes us think we are lonely islands, but beneath we are joined. Not since Nagasaki or Hiroshima have so many humans lost their lives all at once. I felt an immense rush of surprise, fear then sadness coming from that crashing building. One person dying is one thing. Thousands dying at the same instant, not having a clue what is happening, is another. It was a cry of despair that could and should have been heard around the world.
Later, after the second building fell, when I felt the same thing, I realized what it was. I recalled Obi-Wan-Kinobe in the Star Wars movie, when the peaceful planet Alderaan was totally destroyed by the Death Star. He doubled over in intense pain, sensing the death of millions all at once---saying there was a disturbance in the force, instantly knowing that the planet was no more and all the beings on it were dead.
If I had not been totally convinced of the fact that there is a connexity in the brotherhood of man, of man the spirit, then this was ultimate proof. Many others felt it too, and had no name for it, and it generated fear and anger rather than understanding of the nature of the loss. It generated anger in me too, a gripping futile anguish of the descent of man into an abyss of despair.
Then there was a coalescing of the human spirit like I have never seen in my lifetime. Americans came together as one. Flags sprang up everywhere. There were marches. TV spectaculars with celebrities singing patriotic songs. I remember a stage filled with celebrities singing America The Beautiful, with Willie Nelson right in the front with his laconic nasal twang---and I could see America shining through, rising from the ashes, being one. I actually cried, and cry again in the memory of that coming together, which we should and can do even now.
We are approaching the anniversary of that horror. Again we should stand tall, we should come together and link our living spirits with a dedication to be one as Americans and know who and what we are. We are free yet. We can pull ourselves out of the despair that was born of this event. We sensed vulnerability for the first time as a nation. For at no time since the revolution have we had incursion on our shores of a foreign power, and in this case a totally foreign philosophy.
Once again I want to feel that surge of pride and power that I felt ten years ago when we came together and sang America The Beautiful. And this time I feel we can, and should, on the brink of a chance to change back to American values that we have lost during these past ten years, bow our necks and say “enough.” I am an American.
When I was in high school I had an after dinner speech that I won first prize two years in a row in speech tournaments called “I am Proud To Be An American.” I spoke with six different dialects and impersonated six singers---Vaughn Monroe, Billy Ekstine, The Ink Spots, Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine. I told how precious being an American was through the voices of those new immigrants. That was a time when being an American was a given. It was expected. We were all thoroughbred Americans in 1952. Over the past fifty years we have become something else, something that welfare and political expediency and political correctness have eroded our ability to speak, our pride and our patriotism. We must now rise again and hold our heads up as Americans with a grim determination not to lose our precious gift of freedom.
The polling booth is our weapon. Lock and load: Ready, aim, vote!
As an author I write about winners, American winners. Two stand tall, get in your face, make it go right, kickass American winners are Jack Chandler, of Dawn’s Revenge, and Riggs McCall, in Command Influence, heroes in two of my novels which will be available immediately in my website http://ldsledge.com. Read two chapters from each book free now. Plan to buy and read these books. They will make you proud you are an American.
Monday, August 15, 2011
It's All About Winning
It’s All About Winning
Ed Connelly lurched and stumbled along the marble hallway, grimacing at the effort of walking and holding the heavy books in his twisted and gnarled hands. He fell into a chair in my freshman law school class, his tongue between his lips, fumbled with his notebook and finally got it opened, then gripping a ballpoint pen in his fist made big jagged marks on the page for his notes. The whole class watched his struggles.
He looked up, his eyes shining at his recent victory at being able to make it from the parking lot, up the stairs, and down the long hall to the classroom. He was positively merry! My heart melted.
Ed was born with severe cerebral palsy, as bad a case as I have seen and still be independently mobile. You couldn’t watch him eat. Every move he made was headed in the wrong direction until he forced his rebellious body to somehow finally get the spoon somewhere near his mouth, or to stop one foot from ramming into the other as he fought his way along.
He smiled and laughed in a choking sort of way when he was not trying to rein his willful body into behaving. He barreled along life using what he had to work with, and made it very well.
He finished law school and set up his own private practice in 1960, and the last time I saw him was in the late eighties. He was still practicing, and seemed as happy as anybody else. Ed is a prince among men.
It’s all about winning.
Jim Girard, a fraternity brother, and one the most handsome men I have ever seen, had no use of his legs. They were literally rags. His upper body was Herculean, and he could walk on his hands faster than I could run. He overcame, married, has children and is and doing well.
Stephen F Hawkin, total body paralysis; President John F. Kennedy excruciating pain every day; Franklin D Roosevelt, crippled; Michael J Fox, Lou Gerig’s disease; Christopher Reeve, quadriplegic. None gave up. How many more could I list?
It’s all about winning.
William Ernest Henley was in the hospital for over a year in horrendous agony, having his leg removed from tuberculosis of the bone. He suffered all of his life in grievous pain, yet he wrote Invictus while he was in the hospital:
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
What is the difference between these men and others?
They deal with it. They ride over it. They know they are not their bodies and that they are spiritual beings. They have something to do and a reason to do it and will not let anything stand in their way.
There is a winner in each of us.
It’s all about winning. It is not about not losing. There is a huge difference.
Jack Chandler, in Dawn’s Revenge; Riggs McCall, in Command Influence; and Nimrod Woodbine, in Nimrod’s Peril, are faced with challenges that would cow most men. But they are winners and refuse to give up, realizing that win or lose, the only way out is the way through. To read about these three winners, check in at my website http://www.ldsledge.com, and read two free chapters each, and enjoy my site.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
BOTTOM OF THE NINTH
Bottom of the Ninth
Sure I struck out
More times than I hit
Some would say I was Minor league
Some say I shoulda played in the Majors
A bit light and short to get it over the fence
With the ninety mile pitchers
That would jar your spine if you could hit it
And I was fast, and I had a bitchin' slider
They just couldn’t see
Sometimes I wonder if this very game will ever end
And if the players are real
Early in the game I was confused
If I wanted to pitch or catch or play second base
Indecision benched me at times
But I played on, and now the bases are loaded
The game is tied and the pitch is three to two
They are all looking at me
My arm is hurting and I know I haven’t played
As good as I could have played this game
Always doubted if I was good enough, I was good enough
Been a pretty long game, with a middlin' record
In June 2011, I have played seventy six seasons this time around
And I have begun thinking of the next game
And how I won’t screw it up next time.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Quotes: Martha Graham and Pablo Picasso
Dear Reader:
Here are two quotes from two of the most creative people of our time, Martha Graham, dancer, and Pablo Picasso, artist. I am not so vain as to place myself in the company of these two giants, but I want to add my own, "A Song of You."
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others"
— Martha Graham
“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”
Pablo Picasso
Spanish Artist and Painter, 1881-1973
A song of you
A light that is not a light but a torch that burns forever with a brightness that illuminates all.
A song that is not a song but contains all the music that there ever was or will be.
A power that is not a power, but a potential of unparalleled exquisiteness.
A promise that is not a promise but a future certain waiting to unfold in the fullness of time.
A joy that fills every corner of the universe with incomparable beauty and exhilaration of life.
A knowing that is a knowing of all, past and future, and certainty beyond certainty.
A truth that envelopes the allness of all, that reaches beyond the beyond unto infinity.
This is a song of you, all of this and more, a thing of infinite beauty.
By L D Sledge, written May 17, 2007, upon hearing L. Ron Hubbard's lecture Decision: Cause and Effect, 20 May 1952, from Route To Infinity series, transcript pages 52-53.
Monday, April 11, 2011
The Seed That's In Me
The Seed That’s In Me
There is a seed
Within my breast
That cries for water
To be blest
A secret seed
Whose flower has blown
A blossom whose time
Has come and gone
And left behind
A seed forlorn
Awaiting now
To be reborn
I feel it’s heartbeat
Deep within me
Pulsing strong
To start, begin me
How I yearn
To let it grow
Burst it’s shell
And let it flow
Heed it’s need
A constant yearning
To sing its song
Set a burning
When I let it loose
And its gone a winging
Is that all there is
Or a new song singing?
There is a seed
A burning ember
In you and me
Something remembered
Of who we are
A thing unflowered
A majestic being
A thing of power
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Robert E Lee and Hugh Hefner on the same page?
Sometimes reading The Writer’s Almanac strikes a poignant or odd lack of alignment to me as did today’s vignette on Lee’s Surrender and Hugh Hefner’s birthday which were juxtaposed side by side. The two men simply didn’t fit on the same page.
Robert E Lee, reserved, stiff and formal, long suffering, was the antithesis of Hugh Hefner, who, for whatever reason, felt he had to loosen some of the screws so tightly jamming the minds of our social structure shut on the issue of sex.
Having hit my virile and hormonal teens in the fifties when the closest look at the female naked form was in the lingerie section of Sears and Roebuck catalog, seeing Marilyn’s boozums and other parts so openly displayed was a shock to me. But I have always felt that things were too tightly wound, having grown up in the oh so frustrating fifties trembling on the lip of the door flung wide open. I knew that once the straps were loosened something new would happen. Elvis’s gyrations offended the Baptists and white anglosaxon protestant mores, and tight lipped narrow eyed closed mindedness. Any images or motion that would serve to stir the reproductive juices had to be squashed. Then “boom” everybody was doing it but me. I was born too soon.
I wonder at the virtue of anticipation, if there is such a thing.. When I learned recently that teenagers in high school were having sex so freely, I was floored. We didn’t. A girl who had opened herself to the thing I wanted so badly but was afraid to try had to be somehow ruined once she had submitted. When I learned she had “done it,” she became a thing of wonder and fear for I hadn’t a clue. Smooching in the car was all there was, though the girl was pleading for something more and I did nothing, terrified at the thing before me I had unleashed. Wow did I miss out. Looking back I cringe at the opportunities lost. If I had had just a little courage and hudspah with my particular libido I would have drowned in excess, or maybe on the other hand, having established my position in the balance of things just normalized and no longer have hung up in mystery and become its willing slave which did eventually happen.
Maybe there was something good in that. When it all happened in the seventies and suddenly doors and legs and arms were flung open wide I was already married with children and felt that somehow life had passed me in its very unfair fashion, leaving me ignorant and unused. Why couldn’t I have learned about this earlier and not have wasted my life so nervous and agitated about it?
It has taken me all these years to finally control the compulsion that I think was created by those early years of self imposed frustration. Whew! I didn’t think I would live long enough to wrest free of the cloying interference with my life. Hugh banged opened the doors that were locked, barred, bolted shut on old Gen’l Lee and me---too late for Bobby and Me. At least I finally reached a point of control, more than a standoff or a draw, with my nemesis, the old 2D monkey on my back. Thank God for small (or amazing) wonders. It is sweet to be free of it—I won. Knowing what I know of Bobby Lee, I think he went to his grave gnawing on it.
Here’s the article.
On this day in 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the Civil War.
They met at a private residence in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. General Grant was reported to have begun the conversation by saying: "I met you once before, General Lee, while we were serving in Mexico... I have always remembered your appearance, and I think I should have recognized you anywhere."
To which Lee is said to have replied, "Yes. I know I met you on that occasion, and I have often thought of it and tried to recollect how you looked, but I have never been able to recall a single feature."
They talked over terms for an end of the war. Lee asked Grant to commit the terms to paper, which Grant handwrote on the spot. Lee accepted them on the spot. They shook hands. Before Lee rode off to inform his men, the two generals raised their hats to each other in salute.
The site is now a National Historic Park.
It's the birthday of Hugh Hefner, born in Chicago, Illinois (1926). He is the founder, editor-in-chief, and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy magazine.
He was brought up by strict Methodist parents. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he majored in psychology, where he reviewed Alfred C. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male for a student publication. He wrote: "Dr. Kinsey's book disturbs me ... our hypocrisy on matters of sex have led to incalculable frustration, delinquency, and unhappiness."
He was writing promotional copy for Esquire magazine when he got the idea for a new magazine that would be similar but more daring. He said: "What I was trying to create, quite simply, was a lifestyle magazine for single guys. There had never been anything like that before."
He financed the project with $600 of his own money and several thousand dollars from friends, including $1,000 from his mother. He produced the first issue out of his kitchen in Hyde Park, Chicago. It featured a nude calendar photograph of Marilyn Monroe, which Hefner bought from a calendar company for $200. The magazine reached the newsstands in December of 1953 and quickly sold out all of its copies.
He said, "Playboy was part of trying to make the case for a more liberal attitude ... suggesting that there was more than one moral purpose for human sexuality."
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Heart attacks and hot water
This is a very good article. Not only about the warm water after your meal, but aboutHeart Attacks. The Chinese and Japanese drink hot tea with their meals, not cold water.
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For those who like to drink cold water, this article is applicable to you. It is very Harmful to have Cold Drink/Water during a meal because cold water will solidify the oily stuff you just consumed. It will slow down digestion. Once this sludge reacts with the acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fat and lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal.
French fries and Burgers are the biggest enemy of heart health. A coke after that gives more power to this demon. Avoid them for your Heart's Health.
Common Symptoms Of Heart Attack...
A serious note about heart attacks - You should know that not every heart attack symptom is going to be the left arm hurting . Be aware of intense pain in the jaw.
You may never have the first chest pain during the course of a heart attack. Nausea andintense sweating are also common symptoms. 60% of people who have a heart attack while asleep do not wake up. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know, the better chance we could survive.
A cardiologist says if everyone who reads this message sends it to 10 people, we'll save at least one life. Send to a friend. It could save a life. So please be a true friend and send this article to all you care about.
I JUST DID
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Take charge of your health
I just bought and read "Over the Counter Natural Cures," Take charge of your health in 30 days with 10 lifesaving supplements for under $10.) By Shane Ellison. This is an easy to read and apply book that describes most of our problems and how they can be solved by supplements that are so cheap they are almost free. I have done a kind of summary which follows. But you should buy this book from Amazon, or wherever, and apply it if you value your health and life. Life is no good if you hurt, feel sick or just can't get up and get it done.Summary:
Sleep and rest: Spring Valley Valerian Root Extract—Walmart $4.17
Cholesterol: Lewis Labs. Folic Acid—or Nutritional Brewers Yeast, $7-$20 Whole Foods
Beat Illness: Soloray Garlic---or garlic raw.
Obesity, Diabetes: Spring Valley cinnamon Walmart – Reduces appetite
Prostate: Puritan’s Pride Saw Palmetto (I got 3 for 1) Great source.
Detox-Life Extension: Rite Aid—Milk Thistle. (A must)
Blood Pressure-cardiovascular: GNC Hawthorne
Vision: Jarrow Formulas Carotenall—Vitamin Shoppe.
Cancer (to avoid and cure) Jarrow Formula turmeric-circumin 95
Avoid cancer by: (1) Avoid inflammation causing foods. Eat omega 3 and Omega 6 foods in balance. (2) Avoid sugar and alcohol (3) Get sunshine (4) Fresh Vegetables every day. (5) Exercise
Rules: read the ingredients in every food.
Avoid food from boxes and cans.
Eat more good fat, not less.
If it tastes sweet, spit it out.
Totally avoid aspartame .
Splenda (sucralose) originated as an insecticide, 600 X sweeter than sugar. Contains a nasty form of chlorine. Maltitol raises insulin and blood sugar.
High Fructose Corn syrup (HFCS) Made in lab. Spikes blood sugar and insulin, causing to overeat and causes wrinkles and aging process.
Safe sweeteners are agave and Stevia. (Watch out only get Sweet Leaf---the others contain maltitol!!)
MSG—monosodium glutamate. It seems to be in every food you buy. Sold as a flavor enhancer. Created in alab to convert healthy rats into diabetic rats to learn more about diabetes. Once consumed, MSG sets into motion a ravenous chemical cascade that begins with spiked blood sugar and insulin and ends with feel-good molecules known as endorphins. The brain then demands more and more overeating.
MSG--This white, crystalline amino acid is made in the lab and added to canned or packaged foods to “enhance flavor.” It only enhances overeating. Check for the aliases in the ingredients---hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed plant protein, plant protein extract, sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, yeast extract, textured protein, autolyzed yeast and hydrolyzed oat flour. MSG under in disguise under other names.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
My favorite authors
Mes Amis
I love to share authors. Here is a list of my favorites, along with suggestions from others some of whom I haven't read. The order given doesn't necessarily mean order of preference, as they are written from random memory.
Historical and historical fiction:
Will Durant, my absolute favorite historian. His 100 page, Lessons Of History, an awesome little book, and of course his XI volume Story of Civilization, Story of Philosophy, and numerous other historical stories of famous lives.
Bernard Cornwell. Learned about him from reader Tom Cummings. The Grail quest in Sharpe series, Starbuck Chronicals. All about English history in the 17th century, Recent finished The Archer.
Recently read the whole collection of Martin Cruz Smith--mostly set in Moscow after the wall fell and there is a new Russia run by the Mafia. Senior investigator Arkeny Renkov is an out of favor investigator always in trouble with the bureaucrats, and he always seem to prevail but it is a cliff hanger. My friend Mark Gould calls it "turgid," and I guess it is. My favorite is Rose, set in the coal country in Northern England, Stallion Gate--making of the A bomb including all of the main figures...but there are other great ones: Gorky Park, Stalin's Ghost, Three Stations---there are others, and I recommend them all.
Mary Stewart. Her king Author series, The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last enchantement.
Jack Whyte: Series on Author is fantastic. Start reading the Skystone. It is all about the Camoloud Chronicles, in 400 AD the Legions left the British Isles, leaving the Romans who had lived there for centuries, and their confrontation of invasion from all directions. Bloody times, but beautiful real history woven with the Authorian legend---unexpected stuff, for Merlin was actually a Roman Soldier. And the sword was made of a meteor.
Wilber Smith. His stories of Africa are fabulous. Follow from the beginning when the Boers and English settled Africa through to present time. Men of Men, The Burning Shore, they are all delicious. Read them all. Oh yes, there are his mystical histories of Egypt in the Seventh Scroll, River God, Warlock.
Michener. A treasure. The Covenant, another great story of Africa. Caravans, the Source, my three favorites.
Charles Frazier. cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons, set in post civil war. I underline his great phrases and descriptions, noting the page number on the back cover, so I can go back and have a little word snack. I do this with all great writings.
Jeff Sharra---you gotta read his historical fiction on the Revolution, the Civil War, the First and Second World war. He puts you in the head of generals and privates alike, and you learn politics as well as how it was in the trenches. Wonderful stuff.
Bill Bryson. Please read A Walk In the Woods. He and a friend treck the appalacian trail. Funny. A short History of Nearly Everything---I learned more about esoteric and arcane stuff than I could imagine reading this very funny writer talking about serious tech stuff like relativity, etc. Others are The Lost continent, Mother tongue, I'm A Stranger Here myself. Many others. Funny bright writer.
Stephen Ambrose: Undaunted Courage about Lewis and Clark, Jefferson and the opening of the west. Band of Brothers, To America. Wonderful reading.
Alfred Silver. Canadian writer. I stumbled on him buying Red River Story, thinking it was about the US Red River, but there is another Northern Red River, a story of settling the Hudson bay area by the Irish and French. He also wrote Where the Ghost Horse Runs, Lord of the Plains, Arcadia, Colony and Keepers of the Dawn.I read these like a starved man--a harsh time lived by tough harsh men and women in a freezing world -- enough romance to sustain any reader, and enough action to hold any man.
Fantasy and Science Fiction
JRR Tolkein. Perhaps my favorite writer of all genres. You know about him and the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I think I read them all three of four times through before the movies came out. You just get into his world of wonder and become it.
Robert Jordan. So prolific. Wheel of Time, progress through hismany sequels.
Roger Zelazny. The Nine Princes of Amber.
Raymond Feist. Rift war seies. The Magician, Krondor. I read this guy dry.
Orson Scott Card, the Ender and Maker series.
Anne McCaffrey. Pern Novels
Terry Pratchett. Fancy. Discworld series. Funny fantasy. Where's my Cow, the Wyrd Sisters, The Color of Magic. One of his books started with: "In the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded." That is also my idea of the Big Bang silliness.
Neil Gaiman. I just got through Smoke and Mirrors, Stardust, (movie) Fragile things and am reading Good Omens where he collaborated with Terry Pratchett. He wrote the screenplay for Beowulf, American Hero. A real trip, this guy.
Tom Robbins. I put him into the fantasy category, because I can't categorize him anywhere else. I love his stuff. Totally random but makes wonderful sense all together. Jitterbug Perfume, my favorite, the story of a 1000 year old man. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (movie), Still Life with Woodpecker, Another Roadside Attraction. The others that followed weren't quite as good.
Larry McMurty Omigod I could not believe the extent of this guy's work known for Lonesome Dove, the Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment. I love his westerns---the Berryberry series of a wealthy aristocratic family on a several year jaunt into the american west in early 1800's, with their fine wine, servants and silver and outrageous standards---Sin Killer, Sorrow's River, The wandering Hill, The folly and the glory. Amazing prolific writer. I just finished Telegraph Days---hilarious story of an "Organized Woman," in the 1800's in the west during the days of Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, etc. He said that General Sherman, who paid a visit to the town and met her, said "an organized woman is a fright to the mind." Meaning, a woman who knew her own mind and was independent and did what she wantd.
Jim Harrison. Legends of the fall, the Beast God Forgot to Invent, True North, A Woman Lit by Fireflies, get his book of short stories, Just Before Dark. Tough, intellectual, sensitive, funny and a wordsmith who holds you page by page. A gourmet hunter fisherman with his main subjects always right there to discuss, women, love, sex, food, hunting. Oh yes Brown Dog can't be missed.
Gregory MaGuire. Wicked--life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Ursula LeGuin. Earthsea Trilogy
Agathy Christie--anything by her--specially the Hercule Poirot series.
Louis Lamour. I read every one of his books, the hayburner westerns as well as other real classics--The Walking Drum, 1700's adventures of a son's quest to rescue his father from Arab Kidnappers . Sitka, about Alaska. The Sackett series start with a man in Ireland falsely charged with a crime and he makes his way to America. The Hanuted Mesa is a great one also.
James Lee Burke. Great Detective stories set in Southern Louisiana and New Orleans. Tough ex alcoholic Dave Robichaux lives in a fishing camp near New Iberia with his wife and daughter, works for sheriff's office, ex N.O. Cop. Get his stuff, haunting, wonderful images and thrill packed pages--Neon Rain, Cadillac Jukebox, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.
CS Forester, Hornblower series.
Carl Hiassen. Set in Florida. Totally wild stories about wild people. Hilarious characters. Natuyre Girl, Skinny Dip, Lucky You, Hoot, Native Tongue. Always involve some stupid badass guy getting what he deserves.
James Patterson. Great mysteries. When the Wind Blows, books with nursery rhyme titles.
Bruce Wiseman---Mind Games. Bruce putme onto reading Sol Stein's Stein on Writing, the best book on writing I have read.
Jack Vance.
Eric Van Lustbader, the Ninja, White Ninja, The Bourne Legacy. Gutsy, great writing.
Ludlum. Bourne Series, Matarese Circle. Recently Lustbader took the Bourne series to a new level.
Michael Chrichton. Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Timieline, Prey,, Eaters of the Dead, the Thirteenth Warrior.
John Le Carre--Spy who came in frm the cold, the Night Manager, Constant Gardner.
Clive Cussler, Dirk Pitt series. Watch this one though, his name may appear on the cover, but another name in small print appears below his, who really wrote new stuff out there. I have been disappointed in these subliminal authors sliding in below the radar under his name. Clive is great though.
I have run out of authors as I sit here putting this together, but there are many others that I discover and read until I have "read him or her up." You can't miss reading these. I will supplement as I discover others.
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