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Salmon: Need info
by William Salmon 29 Apr '13

29 Apr '13

Colleagues! For a brief paper I'm writing using the 9 Whistle Points I'll need a reference or two to authenticate this resource. What do we have that's been published or that can be used as a reference? Bill Salmon

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Lunch with Slicker
by George Holcombe 29 Apr '13

29 Apr '13

Wanda and I went to Dallas last weekend, and I had a chance to catch up with Joe Slicker. We had missed communication with Joe since the first of the year, only to learn that he's spent most of the last 3 months in the hospital and rehab. Got to have a good visit and lunch with him. He's trying to catch up on his communication. Still a bright spirit with great insight and excited about all you are doing and being. George Holcombe 14900 Yellowleaf Tr. Austin TX 78728 Mobile 512/252-2756 grholcombe(a)gmail.com "Whatever the problem, community is the answer. There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about." Margaret Wheatley

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Peter Whitney
by cla9ken8＠ecentral.com 27 Apr '13

27 Apr '13

Dear Colleagues, Peter has asked me to write to you in case you were ever in the same location with him during the years we were a community, and can remember any stories about him that you would care to share. Peter is in the last stages of Pancreatic Cancer – he is 48 years old, and we are with him and his family in Vermont. Please send any story you would like to share to me, Clare, at cla9ken8(a)ecentral.com and I will get them to him in the next few days. Thank you so much for your help as he summarizes his life for his family. Clare

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fossil fuel di-vestment movement
by Ellie Stock 26 Apr '13

26 Apr '13

Dear Friends, Exciting news: today, we’re partnering with the City of Seattle and the Mayors Innovation Project to announce that eleven cities have committed to pursue fossil fuel divestment! Can you take a minute to click on the image below to share the news on social media? Click to share this image on Facebook Let’s be clear: our work in these cities isn’t over. We’ll need to follow-up with these Mayors to make sure that they really keep their city funds out of fossil fuel stocks and push the pensions that provide for their employees to also divest. But today is a big step forward. The cities committing to divestment today extend coast to coast. From tiny Bayfield, Wisconsin, which has just 530 residents, to international icons, like the City of San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to push the city’s retirement fund to divest $583 million from the fossil fuel industry. In Richmond, CA, Mayor McLaughlin is committing to divestment because she’s sick of seeing the health and safety of her community put at risk by the giant Chevron refinery on the edge of the city. In Ithaca, NY, 26-year old Mayor Svante Myrick, one of the country’s youngest mayors and youngest African-American politicians, committed to divestment earlier this week after meeting with a group of high school students who asked him to protect their shared future. Click here to help spread the news. Today’s announcement sends a powerful message to the fossil fuel industry: if you’re going to try and take away our planet, we’re going to try and take away your money. We’re no longer just playing defense against dirty projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, we’re going on offense, too. It also sends an equally important message to other cities and institutions: if it’s wrong to wreck the planet, then it’s also wrong to profit from that wreckage. And with some of the most innovative cities in the country now firmly on board with this campaign, there should be no excuse for college trustees or other cities to keep dragging their feet on divestment. Together, we kicked off this divestment campaign last fall and have spread it across the nation to over 300 colleges and universities. Now, the effort is moving off campus: there are over 100 petitions up on the GoFossilFree.org website targeting cities, states, and religious institutions. If you haven’t already started or signed a petition, now is the time. Click here to find or start a fossil fuel divestment campaign in your community. If you’re already running a local divestment campaign, now’s a great time to use the excitement of today’s announcement to spread your petition far and wide. You can find the petition you created by clicking on the link above. When we started this effort, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping end apartheid in South Africa, told us this: “The divestment movement played a key role in helping liberate South Africa. The corporations understood the logics of money even when they weren’t swayed by the dictates of morality. Climate change is a deeply moral issue too, of course...Once again, we can join together as a world and put pressure where it counts.” With today’s announcement, that pressure is coming to bear in powerful ways. It’s still too early to tell if this new divestment movement will have the political impact necessary to weaken the stranglehold the fossil fuel industry has over our government, but thanks to your hard work, we’re off to an incredible start. If you haven’t already joined in this effort, visit gofossilfree.org to get started. Many, many thanks, Jay Carmona PS. If you’re a student divestment campaigner, don’t forget: we’re having a national strategy chat at 6:00 PDT/9:00 EDT tonight. Click here to join in. 350.org is building a global movement to solve the climate crisis. Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for email alerts. You can help power our work by getting involved locally, sharing your story, and donating here. To stop receiving emails from 350.org, click here. Dear Friends, Exciting news: today, we’re partnering with the City of Seattle and the Mayors Innovation Project to announce that eleven cities have committed to pursue fossil fuel divestment! Can you take a minute to click on the image below to share the news on social media? Click to share this image on Facebook Let’s be clear: our work in these cities isn’t over. We’ll need to follow-up with these Mayors to make sure that they really keep their city funds out of fossil fuel stocks and push the pensions that provide for their employees to also divest. But today is a big step forward. The cities committing to divestment today extend coast to coast. From tiny Bayfield, Wisconsin, which has just 530 residents, to international icons, like the City of San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to push the city’s retirement fund to divest $583 million from the fossil fuel industry. In Richmond, CA, Mayor McLaughlin is committing to divestment because she’s sick of seeing the health and safety of her community put at risk by the giant Chevron refinery on the edge of the city. In Ithaca, NY, 26-year old Mayor Svante Myrick, one of the country’s youngest mayors and youngest African-American politicians, committed to divestment earlier this week after meeting with a group of high school students who asked him to protect their shared future. Click here to help spread the news. Today’s announcement sends a powerful message to the fossil fuel industry: if you’re going to try and take away our planet, we’re going to try and take away your money. We’re no longer just playing defense against dirty projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, we’re going on offense, too. It also sends an equally important message to other cities and institutions: if it’s wrong to wreck the planet, then it’s also wrong to profit from that wreckage. And with some of the most innovative cities in the country now firmly on board with this campaign, there should be no excuse for college trustees or other cities to keep dragging their feet on divestment. Together, we kicked off this divestment campaign last fall and have spread it across the nation to over 300 colleges and universities. Now, the effort is moving off campus: there are over 100 petitions up on the GoFossilFree.org website targeting cities, states, and religious institutions. If you haven’t already started or signed a petition, now is the time. Click here to find or start a fossil fuel divestment campaign in your community. If you’re already running a local divestment campaign, now’s a great time to use the excitement of today’s announcement to spread your petition far and wide. You can find the petition you created by clicking on the link above. When we started this effort, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping end apartheid in South Africa, told us this: “The divestment movement played a key role in helping liberate South Africa. The corporations understood the logics of money even when they weren’t swayed by the dictates of morality. Climate change is a deeply moral issue too, of course...Once again, we can join together as a world and put pressure where it counts.” With today’s announcement, that pressure is coming to bear in powerful ways. It’s still too early to tell if this new divestment movement will have the political impact necessary to weaken the stranglehold the fossil fuel industry has over our government, but thanks to your hard work, we’re off to an incredible start. If you haven’t already joined in this effort, visit gofossilfree.org to get started. Many, many thanks, Jay Carmona PS. If you’re a student divestment campaigner, don’t forget: we’re having a national strategy chat at 6:00 PDT/9:00 EDT tonight. Click here to join in. 350.org is building a global movement to solve the climate crisis. Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for email alerts. You can help power our work by getting involved locally, sharing your story, and donating here. To stop receiving emails from 350.org, click here.

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4/25/13, Spong: Making Sense of Violence and Terror in Boston
by Ellie Stock 25 Apr '13

25 Apr '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Making Sense of Violence and Terror in Boston On Monday, April 15, Patriot’s Day in Boston, Massachusetts, the bomb blasts that occurred near the finish line of the Boston Marathon brought death, mutilation and injury to more than 200 innocent people. By Thursday, the perpetrators of this crime had been identified and the manhunt was on. By Friday, one of the two suspects had been killed in a shootout with police and the other was believed to be hiding in the small suburb adjacent to Boston called Watertown. The entire metropolitan area was under police lock-down for almost 48 hours and a house-to-house search was undertaken. On that same Friday, as fate or luck would have it, my wife and I were driving to Boston to give a series of lectures that weekend at an event organized jointly by Andover Newton Theological School and the Eliot United Church of Christ. The lectures were to be located in the facilities of the Eliot Church in Newton, Massachusetts, less than a mile from Watertown. The entire metropolitan area of Boston was totally caught up in the trauma of that event. Driving toward Boston, we kept the radio on wondering if we would be allowed into the area in general and into our hotel in particular. Thirty minutes before we arrived, the second suspect was captured, wounded but alive, hiding under the plastic cover inside a boat, parked on wheels in the backyard of a private house. So we were present to share in the corporate sense of relief in the community. The grief and the fear, which always come when terror removes the community’s sense of security and safety, were palpable. It was a tragedy in which the entire nation shared, indeed in which the entire world shared. Three stories out of this tragedy tore at my emotions and raised within me the same questions that gripped the people of the world. What is the sense and meaning of evil with which human life must cope and inside which human life is almost always lived? These three stories put a face on the presence of that evil. First, there was the story of a man named Bill Richard, who ran in the marathon. His wife, Denise, his eight year old son, Martin, and his five year old daughter, Jane, came to cheer their husband and father across the finish line. Bill, like most people his age, was not a championship runner. He crossed the finish line about two hours after the winner. He was, however, elated at his performance and his family, proud of him, wanted to share in his triumph. Before they could do that, however, there came, it seemed out of nowhere, an explosion. Eight-year old Martin was killed instantly, five-year old Jane was hurt so badly that one of her legs had to be amputated and Denise had received such a blow to the head from the projectiles loosed in the blast that she suffered brain damage, the full extent of which has not yet been determined. All of this tragedy was at the hands of two brothers, unknown to the Richard family, who were motivated by a cause in which the Richards were not involved. Yet in that insane moment, the life of this family was shattered, never to be fully repaired again. First, I tried to look at this tragedy through their eyes; it was enough to bring tears to mine. The second story came after the suspects had been identified as Tamerlan (age 26) and Dzhokhar (age 19) Tsarnaev, originally from Chechnya, but who had come to this country from Kyrgyzstan with their families about 11 years ago. When the names of the suspects were made known all links to this family were pursued by both the investigators and the press. It appeared that the suspects’ father had recently returned to Kyrgyzstan, leaving his brother, Rusian, as the ostensible head of the family. When this uncle of the suspects was located in Maryland, he agreed to an impromptu press conference on the sidewalk outside his home. It was for him a wrenching experience. Everything he had struggled to build up for himself and his family seemed to have blown up in this tragedy. He clearly was not in sympathy with his nephews’ new, radical religious stance. He referred to his oldest nephew as a “loser.” Almost at the point of tears, he began to speak, not to the press but to his nephews, “You have brought a shame on this family. You have brought a shame on all Chechnyans.” He knew life would never be the same and he and his family would be stained forever in the minds of all who knew them by this violent act, over which he had no control. So I tried to look at this tragedy through Russian’s eyes. The third story that gripped me was the narrative of the two primary perpetrators of this heinous crime, Timerlan and Dzhokhar. Sympathy was hard to muster at that moment, but questions cascaded forth. What motivated them? What cause was so all-consuming that it justified meticulous planning and the preparation of bombs made out of pressure cookers filled with nails and other metal projectiles that would become lethal weapons striking anyone near enough with maiming and killing fury? Why did they feel the need to destroy the lives of people they had never met? What demons possessed them that caused them to devalue human life so totally? What enabled them, when they thought they had escaped unseen, to return to their nearby home and to pal around with their friends during the evening after their deed had been done, as if life were still normal? What was it like for them when they recognized that their identities were known and that they needed to flee for their lives? In their frantic attempt to escape, they killed a 26-year old Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus policeman in cold blood and then carjacked a Suburban vehicle, forcing its driver to withdraw money from his ATM account to give them the cash they needed. Did they have a destination in mind or were they just fleeing blindly? What did they feel when they engaged in a gun fight with local police in which the older of these two brothers was killed, while the younger brother escaped in their stolen car by running over the body of his brother? What was going on inside this now lone fugitive when the man hunt finally ended with a massive police force surrounding the boat in which he was hiding in the backyard of a Watertown resident? While he was armed with an assault gun this nineteen year old, bleeding from his own wounds, surely knew that death or capture were the only options left to him. What was his state of mind? He was finally captured with no more loss of life and is today under heavy guard while a patient in a Boston hospital. All around him lives, including his own, were shattered. Human beings are capable of enormous evil. What is the cause? Is there some flaw in human nature, an inescapable “original sin” that causes some to victimize others mindlessly? Is there an alien or demonic power that takes over some of us from time to time, causing us to do things that, left to our own devices, we would presumably never do? Is there something about human life that we do not yet understand? All of these possible explanations have been offered in human history, but none of them seems adequate. Perhaps we are simply less civilized than we like to imagine. Perhaps the elemental laws of the herd are still part of our biological life and, from time to time, they must be served. A study of all living things reveals that survival is a driving force in biology. Every plant, every tree and every vine is programmed by life itself to maximize its chances of survival. That is the nature, the reality of living things. It is thus also true of every insect, every creature of the sea, every reptile, bird and mammal. Below the level of human freedom, nature drives all living things to seek survival. It is instinctual behavior. Human beings, however, are self-conscious decision makers. We can choose between love and hate, war and peace, cooperation and violence. What drives us to choose hate, war and violence? Is it not still survival? When life feels threatened, will human beings not act in such a way as to maximize their own survival? The Tsarnaev family has a history of doing just that. When life in Chechnya became so dangerous, they fled to Kyrgyzstan. When Kyrgyzstan became equally dangerous, they became political refugees in America. When they did not fit in, anger grew. When the United States was seen as hostile to Muslim nations in the Middle East, their fears were heightened. Inside Islam they sought protection and meaning in what appeared to them to be a rejecting world. Religion often functions that way. Radicalized religion is always a cover for justifying killing behavior and frequently religion becomes an acceptable channel through which rage finds an outlet. When the rage of being victimized is attached to religion, all manner of destructive behavior can be viewed by believers as acceptable. Islam is not the only religion to be used this way. Look at what the Christians did to the Jews from the days of the New Testament to the days of the Holocaust. Look at the innocent people burned at the stake as heretics by Christians. Look at the women hanged as witches in Salem, Massachusetts. Look at the religious torture employed by Christian believers against non-believers. Look at the Crusades, organized by the Vatican, which made a virtue out of killing Moslems in the Middle East because their very existence was thought be an affront to Christian sensitivities. None of this religiously sanctioned activity justifies violent and murderous behavior. What it does do, however, is to free us to see that our survival fears will always find expression in ruthless acts of killing another before those “others” can kill us and that through the ages religion has served to sanitize and perfume this killing behavior. If Christianity, Islam, Judaism or any other religion is to have continued life then its focus must be on enhancing life, building community and expanding the sense of what it means to be human. Religious devotees must also put an end to demonizing any child of God on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality or religion. Our world is a long way from that goal and organized religion still seems to be part of the problem, not part of the cure. Terror reminds us very painfully of just how shallow are the layers of civilization around us and just how empty is the piety of many of our religious words. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Rick Portillo, via the Internet, writes: Question: I would like to know if you believe the Bible is a book that should be used to guide one's life. I do not agree or disagree; I just want to know what you think personally. I am an Agnostic and I recently saw a video of you being interviewed. Answer: Dear Rick, I am not sure what you mean by your question. The Bible is a library of books written over a period of time between about 1000 BCE and 135 CE by a wide variety of authors, living in a wide variety of different circumstances. These authors also reflect a wide variation in what I would call spiritual sensitivity. For example, I would not choose to pattern my life after that of Elijah, who slew 400 priests of Baal with his sword after a showdown on Mount Carmel, or that of Samson, who slew hundreds of Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. I would, however, be willing to install as life values such biblical admonitions as: Jesus’ call to “love your enemies;” Hosea’s definition of God as “love;” Amos’ definition of God as “justice,” and Malachi’s definition of God as “universal.” I would also want to listen to Jonah’s story against prejudice and Jesus’ definition of who is my neighbor. So I would be more discerning and less blanketed in my response to you than your question seems to allow. Perhaps as a self-confirmed agnostic, you have simply not encountered the Bible on anything other than the shallowest of levels. I see three great principles that underlie the entire biblical story. The first is that all life and all people are holy. This is the great insight of the Hebrew Scriptures and is the essential meaning of the story of the creation. That is also why I refer to God as “father.” It is a sexist reference, but when this nomenclature was adopted “Father” meant the source of all life. The second great biblical principle is that all life and all people are loved. That is the essence of the Jesus story, which comes through the gospels and that is what we Christians are trying to communicate when we refer to Jesus as “the son.” The third is that the purpose of life is to discover the courage to be all that each of us can be within the unique circumstances of our humanity. That is what it means to me to believe in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is always defined in the Bible as “The Lord and Giver of Life.” There are many parts of the Bible that reflect primitive, tribal and destructive emotions toward those who are regarded as enemies. I am not impressed with the God who hates Egyptians as portrayed in the book of Exodus, the God who stops the sun in the sky in order to have more daylight to kill more Amorites as described in the book of Joshua, or the God who orders genocide against the Amalekites as recorded in the book of Samuel. The great tragedy of the church has been that by clinging to biblical literalism to the point of profound ignorance, we have made it possible for people like you to frame the question you have posed, which assumes that there is a single biblical point of view. There isn’t. Thanks for asking. John Shelby Spong Announcements Pluralism Sunday is being celebrated on May 5th all around the world. Click here for more information! Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

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Re: [Oe List ...] PLEASE READ
by Lee Early 24 Apr '13

24 Apr '13

> Winds of Change.... > > Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward > > this email to a minimum of twenty people on their > > address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. > > In three days, most people in The United States of America will have this message. > > This is one idea that really should be passed around > > *Congressional Reform Act of 2013 > > > 1. No Tenure / No Pension. > > A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office. > > 2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. > > All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. > > 3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do. > > 4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%. > > 5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people. > > 6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. > > 7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 12/31/13. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. > > Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. > > If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Don't you think it's time? > > THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS! > > If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete. > You are one of my 20+ - Please keep it going, and thanks. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

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Re: [Oe List ...] Dick West's Book Recommendation
by David Walters 24 Apr '13

24 Apr '13

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Re: [Oe List ...] Dick West's Book Recommendation
by David Walters 24 Apr '13

24 Apr '13

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Dick West's Book Recommendation
by George Holcombe 24 Apr '13

24 Apr '13

Thanks Dick for recommending Houle's The Shift Age (http://www.theshiftage.com) It is tremendous and I hope we all read it. It's in the lineage of Toffler and Naisbitt and strikes me as being on target. I'm reminded of some of the things we spoke of back in the 60's and 70's as being Global Citizens and the morphing of institutions, nations and social structures. It would be fun and insightful to track it through the Soc. Proc. triangles, if someone has not already done that for us. George Holcombe 14900 Yellowleaf Tr. Austin TX 78728 Mobile 512/252-2756 grholcombe(a)gmail.com "Whatever the problem, community is the answer. There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about." Margaret Wheatley

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Fwd: Monday OpEd from Jaime
by Jaime R Vergara 20 Apr '13

20 Apr '13

The usual caveat: interested, welcome; not, see you at the bend. j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jaime R Vergara <jrvergarajr2031(a)aol.com> To: jayvee_vallejera <jayvee_vallejera(a)saipantribune.com>; mark_rabago <mark_rabago(a)saipantribune.com>; editor <editor(a)saipantribune.com> Sent: Sat, Apr 20, 2013 9:12 pm Subject: Monday OpEd from Jaime Temarlan & Dzhokhar Tsarnaev With the reporteddeath of 26-year old suspect number 1 and the capture of 19-year old suspectnumber 2 of the recent Boston bombing blasts, the speculative field is ripewith both blooming spring flowers and wilted winter leftovers. Our interest is anarrow one, purely etymological in the attributive sense. 14th century “Timur” to the Wiki crowd, “Temarlane”is the Mongolian scourge of Central Asia, known in China as “Timudgin”. History is replete with his influence, atonce, artistic and destructive, from the Urals to the Himalayas, the Caucasusto the Khinggan Range of Heilongjiang. ChechnyanMoslems, forced to move to Kyrgystan when Stalin still cast his shadow on Moscow’scobblestones, named their offsprings in honor of the Mongol leader of mixed Turkicethnicity. Such was the case of suspectnumber 1, named Temarlan, reportedly a 2nd year Med student married to a Rhode Island girl, and father to a3-year old daughter. A media outletcould not help but blare a headline that Temarlan’s wife was from NK. Given the prominence of North Korea in recentnews, it immediately caught our attention. NK turned out to be North Kingstown in RI south of Boston. On his namesake forthe history buffs: Timur wanted to restore Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire. A devout Muslim, he called himself theSword of Islam. He wasgenerous in sharing war booty to members of his multi-ethnic armies. He became themost powerful ruler in the Muslim world, defeating rulers of Egypt and Syria, the Ottomans, and aDelhi Sultanate. He defeated Christianknights at Smyrna, and attempted to restore the Yuan dynasty inChina. Known for leading the GoldenHorde against the Cossacks, he is dubbed a “terrorist” in western history books. Younger brother suspect number 2was caught hiding and bleeding on a backyard parked boat in Watertown, MA,where the town literally had to shut down and stay indoors to accomplish thetask. He was named “Dzhokhar” at birth, presumablyafter the first President of independent Chechnya, himself meeting a violentdeath by laser-guided satellite missile in a 1996 assassination while he was onhis cell phone. Checknya’s desire to separatefrom the Russian Federation of States after the dissolution of the Soviet Unionmet with the strong-willed objection of Vladimir Putin who headed the KGB atthe time. Putin now presides overRussia. Other than setting a bad exampleto other States who might be inclined to seek secession from the Federation,Chechnya was also a hub for the Russian oil industry, an asset Russia couldhardly give up. It was also caught inbetween the definition of Georgia-Russian relations, and in an oil rich region,it can hardly avoid the violence that now mars north and south of the Caucasus mountainrange between the Black and Caspian Seas. The brothers’ family name is Tsarnaev. “Tsar” of the first syllable is to theByzantine what “Ceasar “was to the Romans, and “Kaiser” to the Germans. If one has not gotten the picture yet thatthe brothers might carry highly “political” consciousness just by their names,we’ve missed the billboard for the weeds. Of course, just because one isnamed Mohammed or Abdullah does not automatically stereotype one to a definite corner. Is our musing pertinent to figuring out the“why” of the Boston bombing? Nope. But the Press coverage, henceforth, willcover a lot of historical terrain unfamiliar to the regular reader. Four analytical results havealready emerged. There is the jihadist foreignintervention strain, the brothers being of the moralistic bent now ragingacross Arab Spring, beyond and distinct from the traditional division of theSunnis and the Shiites. Then there is the rightist/leftistdichotomy, irrelevant from our view, but dear to diehard ideologues. Given the suspects’ names, this is a difficultminefield to traverse, but there will be those who will find a way to mark thevarious blasts. We have the emotional stabilitycrowd that will armchair us to endless psychoanalysis till kingdom come. Culturally integrated and acculturated guys onregular baseball caps and backpacks have to be extremely schizophrenic to meritthe psychoanalyst’s attention. The fourth is the fraud claim,already aired by an aunt who testifies to the innocence of her nephews, andstudents at Dzhokhar’s school who swear that the Chechnyan was in school whenthe blasts went off. News that the White House isdeporting a Saudi Arabian is allegedly being espoused by no less than GlennBeck. The finger pointing, the smear onthe foggy mirror, is multi-directional and the media field day has alreadybegun. I’ve lit candles for theconfirmed dead: 8-yr old Martin Richard, 29-yr old Krystelle Campbell, and theBoston U graduate student Lu Lingzi of Shenyang. Their innocence reminds us ofthe global complicity of victimhood in our time. A fourth big candle goes to theWaco, Texas fertilizer plant explosion victims. A fifth is for those affected this week by the tremor that revisited thesame Sichuan area quaked in 2008. The tail end of winter is stillwith us. Our heart keeps company withthe cold. j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!

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