Loosely Speaking

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Everything Else

Monday, October 12, 2020

"When you know better, do better." Maya Angelou

It's Indigenous Peoples Day, and I for one am glad to see old myths being pushed aside by truer memories, truer histories. People are coming around to a better understanding of humanity, of the whole Us/Them thing. The circle of Us expands to embrace cultures not our own, that we have lived with side-by-side for generations, managing never to understand that there is only one race of all humans, and the rest is culture, programming, habit. Traditional 'Heroes' are coming off their pedastals and... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Aldous Huxley saw it coming.

I am convinced, and have been for many years, that when our current dominant 'civilization' eats its own foundations out from under itself, the First Peoples of the Americas will still be here. They who have cherished and remembered their cultures, who have fought to retain identity and values even as they have acquired knowledge and tools from Western cultures, will be the teachers and leaders. Their cultural values will move in over those imposed by European colonizers. There will be a... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, October 4, 2020

A bit of Pacific Northwest history...

The first white American settlement north of the Columbia was in Tumwater, WA. The wagon train which arrived at the DesChutes River in the 1840s was led by George Washington Bush, a free black man from Pennsylvania. George Bush settled his family on a stretch of land southeast of what became Olympia. It is still called Bush Prairie. But as a black man, when Washington became a US territory in 1853, he was not allowed to own his land. It took two more years, but the territorial government got... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, September 18, 2020

RBG, RIP

After the first shock and the sorrow for a lost champion, now I am thinking, what would she want of us now? She can't do any more for us, but she showed us what to do: Stand up to power when it's wrong, never give up on the ideals and values we honor, never quit fighting just because we've taken a hit. Cry, but don't moan. Speak out, but not just to complain. Stare injustice in its beady little eyes... And don't blink. Thanks, Ruth--You can rest now. We've got this. Sign in to see full entry.

Talk like you mean it.

"Socialism" and "Capitalism" are words thrown around carelessly as if they are whole, complete and meaningful notions, as if they are in that one word, enormous problems for one mindset or another. They are not. "Socialism" is a boxful of ideologically distinct notions, and when Conservatives use it as a curse, they are thinking of "authoritarian socialism." Progressives are talking about "democratic socialism,"of course, and the problem lies in the pretense that both sides are railing about the... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Of Governments and Coups

I read a thing that said we are living in a fast-running fascist coup in the US, that has been going on since this current maladministration began. I disagree. The coup has been a slow-moving thing, a long game put in motion back in the Reagan years if not earlier. It is the corporate 'persons' and the oligarchs who hoard money like lonely old people hoard cats who have been running it. It is the money behind ALEC that points to the gamers of the coup.... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Where to live in this wide country

Will the devastating effects of climate warming change where in the world you plant yourself? This article offers an answer to that question on a large scale: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200915&instance_id=22199&nl=the-morning&regi_id=59481346&section_index=1&section_name=big_story&segment_id=38090&te=1&user_id=8608bdb29cfaa859469ba5cd238706d8 In fact, I think about this now and then, and looking at... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

I'm just going to leave this here...

An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars. • A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly. • A bar was walked into by the passive voice. • An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening. • Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.” • A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing,... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, August 31, 2020

What if...? Language edition

What if we dropped the words Good and Bad, and all their variations, from regular use? What if we required ourselves to be specific, to actually communicate more than I like or I don't like? What if we had to give reasons for what we like or not? What if we found real words where we're in the habit of using those handy little four-letter ones that are, essentially, cheap short-cuts for expressing feelings. We use them and hear them expressing emphasis, too. But what if we made our brains work a... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

the towers of babble

I'm done with all the talk: I hate being lied to, especially when it is so blatant and obvious. I hate watching theories, speculations and opinions presented at truths, especially when they are absurd and so totally misinformed. I hate the cheap insults and smears that actually do more for the opposition support than for whoever they mean to boost. It's like watching the black cloud of flies that swarm out of a loaded garbage can that's been kept lidded a long time. My vote was decided after... Sign in to see full entry.

Headlines (What is this?)