Today is the anniversary of the birth of Merriwether Lewis. In 1804 he set out on a mission that was the Apollo program of his day. He and William Clark would travel across the North America continent, covering some 8,000 miles from St. Louis to the Pacific coast in the Northwest and back.

On the anniverary of his birth in 1805 he wrote:

This day I completed my thirty-first year, and … I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought, and resolved in future to redouble my exertions to … live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.

Lewis died only four years later he died under mysterious circumstances.

My Soundtrack: So Begins Our Alabee by Of Montreal on WOXY.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

The Box

Now we walk at the wall very fast
holding hands and trying to act as if
we believe in an opening.
If we come through the stone
we come through
in an unknown place.

From Living In The Open, Poems Of The Early Seventies.

My Soundtrack: Phoebe’s Song by The Caulfield Sisters on WOXY.

My paternal grandmother understood and valued the franchise. When she turned 21 in 1915 the nation of her birth did not consider her worthy of the right to vote. It would not be for another five years that the 19th Amendment to our Constitution would declare that she and all other American women were full citizens.

Another 51 years, three wars and a bloody Civil Rights movement passed before we again addressed inequality in our Constitution as regards the franchise. In 1971 the 26th Amendment extended the right to vote to a cohort that had sacrificed its blood with no voice in how that blood might be shed. Three years later, in 1974, I cast my first vote.

I haven’t missed a vote since.

There is no more important right than the franchise. A democracy in which citizens do not vote is a democracy in trappings only. A nation in which even the trappings of democracy are reduced to 15-second sound bites is no democracy. And a people who willingly allows the vile theft of the franchise are less than sheep.

I was pissed by the 2000 election, but I didn’t do anything because I trusted the system. I was outraged by the 2004 election, enough so to take part in the re-count. I have lost all faith following our 2006 primary election here in Ohio.

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Have I guzzled the Kook Aid? Is my aluminum-foil hat wrapped too tightly?

Read all 234 pages (not just the executive study or the Plain Dealer’s 722 word newstory) of the Election Science Institute’s report: DRE Analysis for May 2006 Primary Cuyahoga County, Ohio

How can it be that anyone in a position of responsibility at the Cuyahoga Board of Elections who took part in the last two elections is still employed? Anyone in elected office who has not called for the firing and criminal prosecution of officials complacent in the perversion of our most sacred right is themselves either an accessory or a dupe.

If we cannot have faith in our franchise, we are no better than the worst of the dictatorships in the Third World.

We are lambs before the slaughter willing trudging down the chute.

My Soundtrack: Lost Woman by The Greenhornes on WOXY.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

Two Higher Mammals

But we are woman and man,
other and murderous brother,

[snip]

Loving leaves stretch marks.
Thinking clearly still hurts.
To be good for anything
is furious struggle

From Living In The Open, Poems Of The Early Seventies.

My Soundtrack: Too Many Kims by The Tyde on WOXY.

Henry Gomez has re-entered the NEO blogosphere. There were people who thought Gomez was being punished when he announced the new gig covering commercial real esteate at the Pee Dee. It makes most peoples’ eyes glaze over, but anyone who follows the money knows better. And, of course, Gomez can’t resist blogging it.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

River Road, High Toss

thorniest blackberries grow
in languid arches studded with spikes
trussed with long berries dripping juice
like a parable of pleasure and pain.

From Living In The Open, Poems Of The Early Seventies.

My Soundtrack: Don’t Go Down by Elliott Smith on WOXY.

This post has been removed following a personal request from the individual involved. If you feel you have good reason to see what was originally written, you may contact me for access to the archived post. JH

The Irish Hungerstrikes: A Commerative Project provides a single-source gateway for a time that I do not know enough about. Bobby Sands was just 17 months older than I. In 1981 when he was dying for his cause, I was enjoying the college life at Ohio University and serving as a staff seargent in the Ohio Army National Guard.

In America, where we allow Congress to become involved in feeding tubes, Sands would have been strapped down and force fed. Where is the Human dignity in that?

If you own a Dell computer assembled between April 2004 and 18 July of this year, pay very close attention. Your computer’s lithium-ion battery has a nasty habit of spontaniously combusting, bursting into flames and Dell has recalled it. To find out what to do about your battery visit the Dell website.

According to the New York Times:

The recall raises broader questions about lithium-ion batteries, which are used in devices like cellphones, portable power tools, camcorders, digital cameras and MP3 players. The potential for such batteries to catch fire has been acknowledged for years, and has prompted more limited recalls in the past. But a number of recent fires involving notebook computers, some aboard planes, have brought renewed scrutiny.

Insurance companies are going to love this. Will the next big panic item be fireproof boxes to store your personal electronics in when you’re not using them?

Could be.

My Soundtrack: Pockets by Four Tet on WOXY.

…from USA Today’s Tech_Space by Angela Gunn. When I talk about my blog and what I write here I like to say that I model it on the dinner time conversations that I knew when I was growing up outside of Marietta, Ohio. So, welcome again and I hope you find a place at the table where you feel part of the family. And remember, no toothpaste!

My Soundtrack: Pictures Of You by The Cure on WOXY.

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

0359 Child’s bare shoulders=passport rejection

My Soundtrack: To Repel Ghosts by Manic Street Preachers on WOXY.

A Daily Dish reader responded to Andrew Sullivan’s assertion that, There is something terribly sick within the Muslim mind at this moment in history. It is Nietzsche’s ressentiment, but with God re-attached. We should indeed fear these people for the hideous carnage they can wreak for the sake of their God by writing:

You are correct in saying that the Muslim mind set is that of Nietzsche’s ressentiment. However, you err in saying “but with God re-attached.” We all know that Nietzsche had his Zarathustra declare that god is dead (god was dead, at least in those days). But the Nietzsche death of god followed the advent of ressentiment by many centuries.

In fact, god was historically and conceptually attached to the concept of ressentiment from the beginning. Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment was meant to describe historical circumstances that preceded the “death of god” by around two thousand years.

For Nietzsche ressentiment was the emotional sensibility that motivated the rise and triumph of Christianity. In Nietzsche’s moral philosophy “moral values” and rules are simply interpretations of deep emotional and aesthetic sensibilities, not transcendent objects.

But it is in the reader’s conclusion that I found the most thought:

No one is talking about coercion. I am talking about the obsolescence of god, not the outlawing of god.

How can one group demand that another abandon it’s faith system of superstition and ignorance without doing so itself?

Because it’s right and all the rest are wrong?

That’s how we got where we are.

My Soundtrack: The First Song by Band Of Horses on WOXY.

The Purge in Connecticut has its share of twists, but none as bad as the double-negative games played out between White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and the press corps yesterday. When asked if President George Bush supported his party’s candidate in Connecticut’s senate race, Snow gave a non-answer.

This has been interpreted to mean that President Bush will support the Independent candidate Joe Lieberman in the Fall.

It was obvious that some Republicans crossed over this month to vote for Lieberman in the primary. There’s nothing new there. I did much the same thing in 2000 when I cast my primary vote for John McCain. But anyone who thinks that in the general election those same Republicans will cast their vote for Lieberman instead of their party’s candidate — Alan Schlesinger (D-Conn.) — is living in a different dimension.

And while President George Bush is a lame duck president with an approval rating so low that only presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter knew what it was like to try and govern in that territory, he is still the leader of the Republican Party. He has a good chance, if Lieberman splits the ticket, to see a Republican in the Senate seat and he’ll do everything he can to make that happen.

Anything else is just blogosphere gotcha ball.

My Soundtrack: All Hands On The Bad One by Sleater-Kinney on WOXY.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

Make Me Feel It

My poetry and my politics have come unstuck
Goddess, I am down to the brief hassles of the body,

[snip]

Sweet mama, a life is as far as I can walk on it.
I have been lazy and lax,
I have been wanton and wobbly,
but take me up. Strop me.
Frighten the too easy wits out
till I leap and chatter and flash green,
let your hairy lightning blast me open and quaking.
I fear nothing like this silence
filled with the satisfied nibbling of myriad teeth
of the little appetites.

From Living In The Open, Poems Of The Early Seventies.

My Soundtrack: Can’t Stand Me Now by The Libertines on WOXY.

I’ve always liked Irish and Celtic music. Recently a friend gave me a two-CD set by the Wolfe Tones. I’d never heard of the group, which is no great surprise, but neither had I heard the songs they sing. And that’s a pity. The group is flagrantly Irish nationalist and its opinions of the British are palpable and raw.

Listening to two songs in particular — The Men Behind The Wire, above and The Broad Black Brimmer — led me to think of events in 1981 when Bobby Sands and nine other political prisoners in H Block starved themsleves to death.

My friend sent me the following article by Denis O’Hearn. It appeared in the 1 March 2006 issue of Z Magazine, but that issue is still not available for non-subscribers. The article appears in its entirety below.

Bobby Sands and Britain’s Own Gitmo, 25 Years On

by Denis O’Hearn

“The British government”s obstinacy, intransigence, cruelty and insensitivity to the international community in the face of the problem of the Irish patriots on a hunger strike to the death, are reminiscent of Torquemada and the barbarity of the (Spanish) Inquisition in the depths of the Middle Ages.” Fidel Castro, Havana, September, 1981.

Why should we be surprised at this violation of the Magna Carta when the nation that wrote the document threw it out a quarter century ago?

The name Bobby Sands is emblazoned on the Irish psyche, 25 years after he began his hunger strike on March 1, 1981. He died 66 days later, on May 5. Nine of his comrades followed him to their graves. It is an irony of history that as we arrive at this anniversary, men have been on hunger strike in Guantanamo, being cruelly force-fed and artificially kept alive. No one wants another Bobby Sands.

Some memories fade, others remain. It was not that long ago that I arrived in Kingston, Jamaica. The first person I met was a combi-taxi driver.

‘Where you comin’ from, brother?’

‘Ireland.’

‘Ah, Ireland, Bobby Sands, the IRA is fighting for their freedom!’

I’ve heard many similar stories over these 25 years. Most have one thing in common: they come from people who have themselves been in struggle in places like South Africa, Palestine, Turkey and Latin America. The example of Bobby Sands still means a lot to such people. When Turkish political prisoners went on hunger strike five years ago, their secret codeword for their plans was ‘Bobby Sands’.

But few people know who Bobby Sands really was, and how he and nine others could endure such a slow and painful death. Until recently, with the unfolding of the Irish peace process, his comrades were either in jail or unwilling to talk.

Please keep reading…

My Soundtrack: Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above by Cansei de Ser Sexy on WOXY.

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

1047 Goals
0842 When Will We Stop Killing Each Other?

My Soundtrack: Civil Sin by Boy Kill Boy on WOXY.

So, the hair-gel terrorism plot was another lame attempt by the administration of President George Bush to — please god just a few — scrabble for approval points. How many times does this man have to cry wolf before people ignore him, and a real attack comes? We live in a dangerous world. banning gel-filled insoles will not make us safer.