Tuesday, January 13, 2004

 

Recent Revelations
and some kind albeit anymonous feedback

I AM doing considerably better today, thank you. Let me kick off tonights meanderings by responding to the rarest of correspondence to Brahmas World, fan mail from an anonymous seeker of information who happened upon Thoughts of the Brahma. In the left side-bar there is a way to send anonymous (if you wish it to remain so) feedback to an address that I check but once a week or so, brahmasworld@hotmail.com , which is why it was only noticed today:

Message:

I was reading the Atlantic's bicentenial celebration of Emerson's birth - it referred to his poem, "Brahma," and just out of curiosity, I googled the word and found....you. I do not have time for blogs, but did want to express my agreement with everything you say, and the way you say it. Also, I am old enough probably to be your grandmother. Anyhow.... Keep the faith


~* Dear Anonymous web traveler;

Thank you so much for taking the time to send me those very kind words. I'm glad fate has seen fit to send you over here, if only for a moment. I'm not sure what part of my writing suggests a youthful innocence, but I'm reasonably assured you've under estimated the chronological reality.



Thoughts of the Brahma, aside from being a cry for help, is an attempt to reach out to whomever may arrive here, regardless of the reason. As it happens, most people who are curious enough to explore our sites are doing a search on "Brahma", in some form. Aside from the obvious religious connotations of the name inadvertently attracting internet pilgrims seeking the answers to life, there is a computer of the same name, there's a boot company, a rock group in upstate N.Y., a minor league hockey team in Texas, and an independent music label. There are ranches that deal in Brahma bulls as well as farms selling Brahma chickens. I don't know how many people search the word Brahma during any given day, but at least a dozen or so (sometimes twice that) people find their curiosity directing them over here, if only for a brief visit. We've had visitors from all over the world and I'm most grateful for this opportunity to communicate with them at any level.


I hope you (seeker of Emerson knowledge) decide to take time from your busy day to check in here occasionally and eventually share your "grandmotherly" wisdom with us. At least, I hope you see this response. Receiving your positive acknowledgement was a high point of my day and is much appreciated. It's words like yours that encourage voices in the wilderness such as mine to carry on.


And carry on, I must. While we're still in the letters department, let's take a look at some responses to the article condemning the Grateful Dead:

Editor -- We live in a drug-saturated culture with every other TV ad touting some pharmaceutical or other, often for some mysterious, unnamed ailment. The single most abused drug in America -- even by teenagers -- is alcohol.

If Plunkett were as quick to condemn a country western concert where hip flasks of Jack Daniels were going down, I might take his professed concern with less of a grain of salt.
DENNIS GREEN
Alameda

~* Dear Dennis; An excellent response sir! Fact of the matter is; there is more harm done by the sodium in that grain of salt you're so eager to take than in all the weed consumed at any given Dead show. Here's another:

Editor -- Regarding Chris Plunkett's shrill article ("The Dead's free ride on drug use," Open Forum, Jan. 9): Blaming the Grateful Dead or pop culture for people using drugs is uninformed and silly and paranoid.

I dare Plunkett to go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting anywhere and find someone who will say he started using drugs because Jerry Garcia said it was cool. Drug use and addiction are too complex to be dismissed as being simply a result of our pop culture.

Why doesn't Plunkett throw a gasket over the six-hour beer commercial called the National Football League that airs for 20-plus weekends? Alcohol kills more people and does more damage every day than all the stoned Deadheads have ever done.

MANNY GLISSON

Napa

~* Could this be the once infamous, "Manny the Hippie", of David Letterman fame?


There were two revelations this week that should have invoked worldwide outrage. Most recently, former Bush administration Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neil, provided a rare glimpse inside the secretive Bush administration.

"O'Neill's most startling charge is that the administration began its planning for regime change in Iraq almost immediately upon taking office and well before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

When coupled with the report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analysis released earlier in the week, you might expect people to start feeling deceived or something! Here's San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ruth Rosen, asking the obvious question; Where?s the Outrage?


"The Carnegie report -- a serious indictment of the Bush administration's credibility -- instantly became the lead story on the British Broadcasting Corporation report and front-page news in newspapers around the world. Not so in the United States. On the same day, at a State Department news conference, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded that he had no "smoking gun, concrete evidence" that Saddam Hussein ever had any ties to al Qaeda, the terrorist network responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Powell's admission contradicts Vice President Dick Cheney's frequent statements that have sought to link Hussein with al Qaeda terrorists.

So now we know that the U.S. government misled Congress and the American public.

What will it take for the American people to realize they've been betrayed?

Have we grown so jaded that we no longer expect the truth from our country's leaders?

War is a serious matter, perhaps the most consequential decision ever made by elected leaders. Yet the Bush administration manipulated intelligence and then sent tens of thousands of young people off to war for reasons that have yet to be revealed. As a result, hundreds of soldiers have died and thousands more have been injured, and for what purpose? Some will greet all this news with a yawn. "Haven't we heard all this before?" they will ask. "We know there weren't any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We know there never was an imminent threat. So get over it." But I won't. And neither should you.

E-mail Ruth Rosen at rrosen@sfchronicle.com.

~* Please note: As of this writing, the Bush administration has not denied anything from either accounting. They put the spin doctors to work instead. Page 1 in the Conservative playbook; discredit the sources. Even if he was one of your own. Paul O'Neil...? What a bum! He's just a disgruntled former employee trying to sell some books. What does HE know anyway? Carnegie Endowment for Peace?? Wide-eyed radicals! You can?t believe that, can you? Just believe the same people who are being accused of deceit. Why would THEY lie to you? And just to make sure we're too preoccupied with survival to question their motives, let's keep that color-coded security alert turned up.

Those colors just don't work for us out here on the edge of the continent. Here's some suggestions for a makeover that includes some good insights:

"I don't mean to question our leaders on matters of such seriousness, but it sometimes seems that the Department of Homeland Security is little more than a marketing tool for terrorists. After all, the whole idea of terrorism is to frighten people. How can busy people remain scared if the terrorists are denied a marketing apparatus to get the message out?

Speaking for myself, I would be utterly clueless about how frightened I should be if I didn't have a friendly government agency with this fear gauge. Without the hardworking fearmongers at the Department of Homeland Security, I might even be unafraid, and it's hard for terrorism to function when people are so inconsiderate as to not be terrified. Without Ridge and his people, I might even be leading a life of relative calm.

So, overall, I'm grateful to a benign government for keeping me informed of my appropriate fear level."

~* Thanks again to any and all readers of and/or contributors to this space. Feedback is ALWAYS welcomed, regardless of ones agreement or lack thereof with the general ambience or political persuasions contained within

I bid you good night
~Brahma*

posted by ~Brahma 4:25 AM