Montag ...

I am Warren Bluhm

2010-09-29T05:58:00.002-04:00

The book is done. Ready. Out there for a "soft opening." And I decided to put my "real name" on it: I am my alter ego, Warren Bluhm, and it's time to merge my personas.

Many of the thoughts in this book began here, as blog entries I wrote using the name B.W. Richardson. B.W., of course, is my initials reversed, and my father’s name is Richard, so the pseudonym came easily.

I started blogging as B.W. in part because I was afraid to use my real name, for reasons that no longer seem relevant. You see my problem, of course: Who wants to read a book called Refuse to Be Afraid by a guy who fears the consequences of using his “real” name? B.W. does feel “real” to me in a sense, but for this book to mean anything, he had to go — or at least he had to come out into the daylight.

So why should you read a book about not being afraid from someone who let fear delay this project not for weeks or months but years?

Because we both know I’m not alone. Because I know some people never pursue their dreams. Because the manipulators will always try to use our universal fears to control us. Because clever marketers and wily politicians will always be willing to tap those fears for their own purposes.

Because I found my way out of that mess — and so can you.

Adjustments in the order of things

2010-02-22T06:49:00.004-05:00

I posted a more direct statement along the following lines yesterday, then took it down after about a half-hour. On reflection, there are still some lingering reasons to be circumspect.

The bottom line is that B.W. Richardson is going to move into semi-retirement. I think it's time.

But if you enjoy visiting here from time to time, let me recommend the gentleman you know as my collaborator. He'll be writing and creating on a more frequent basis in coming days, weeks, etc., and if you like my stuff I think you'll like his.

Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me and commented over the four-plus years I've been scribbling away at Montag. Every ending is a new beginning.

What happens next

2010-02-18T06:29:00.004-05:00

It's kind of amazing how even some successful people, or people on the verge of success, still don't get it.

One of my guilty pleasures is the American Idol show. I've always loved music, always tinkered around the edges of being a singer-composer but never gotten deadly serious about it. So I'm a sucker for struggling musician stories — and here on this television show are thousands of them.

This week was when the winnowing process produced the big final 24 — the two dozen folks who will sing for votes live in front of millions. Fewer than 75 were left from the original tens of thousands who had first auditioned.

And yet at least two of the singers said, while waiting to hear the judges' verdict, something like this: "I can't control what happens next."

But they surely can. And everything that had happened to that point was proof.

They had made the decision to show up for the audition. They had waited hours to perform for a few minutes, and they performed well enough to move on. Then, for several days and nights they worked hard to rise to the top of the group. Now they were on the verge of being among the magic final 24.

Sure, part of making that 24 was dependent on the judgment calls of the people make the selection. But every step of the way, each of those performers had made conscious decisions to be the best they could possibly be. Many more than 75 people had the talent to be among those two dozen, but these people made a conscious decision to get there.

And even when they were not selected, they still control what happens next. A few of the contestants had been this far in previous years but failed to make the final cut; they made the decision to work on their talents, to get better, and to start over in the next year's group of tens of thousands. One of this year's final 24 had made the top 50 last year, only to be told they didn't make the final cut. Twenty-five other people got the same message and went home; she dusted off the disappointment and aimed a little higher. And she made it this time.

Some things in life are indeed out of our control, but one thing is certain: When the unexpected happens, when you're confronted with a roadblock or a challenge, you control what happens next.

It's all right here.

2010-02-12T08:31:00.002-05:00

If you think
you can do a thing

or

think
you can't do a thing,

You're right.

— Henry Ford

A glimpse of the future

2010-02-10T08:29:00.002-05:00

I think Audi meant this to be funny, but stuff like this is happening in legislative chambers everywhere. You don't need armed thugs when you have a statute-writing pen in your holster.

What planning a grocery list and setting life-changing goals have in common

2010-01-12T07:05:00.006-05:00

Hello to everyone who is visiting thanks to the lovely mention Wally Conger gave me in his encouraging and informative new Web site this week. Wally is the best friend I've never met and always has some intriguing ideas to offer.

I established this blog to chronicle my thoughts as we move into the world George Orwell envisioned when he wrote Nineteen Eighty Four, and I still visit our growing dystopia from time to time. As time goes on, I've become not so distracted by exterior impositions on liberty as I am by the myriad ways we can still live in freedom — because no one can enslave you without your permission. In fact, as writers like James Allen point out, it's the self-imposed limits that stand between each of us and the lives we want to live.

The transition to a new year is often seen as the time for reflection, goal-setting and preparation, but every day begins as a blank slate — every day is a good day to set goals and embark on new journeys. If the idea of setting a big life-changing goal seems too daunting, start by planning out your day.

We do that anyway. Every day has a to-do list attached. ("Call the plumber, buy eggs and milk.") I find that the days when I remember to take a couple of minutes and write it down keeps me focused. Otherwise inevitably something will be lost in the shuffle. ("I've got the eggs — what else did I need?" "Why is the kitchen floor wet?")

If it works for a day, think of the advantages of making a longer-term to-do list. Sit down Sunday night and map out the week. Now you're doing stuff on Monday that will make it easier to finish that project that's due Friday, because you took a few minutes to look beyond today and understand the big picture for the week.

Now lift your eyes a bit further and plan out the month, and then a year. Then cast out the line and think about where you'd like to be in five years. All of a sudden you're setting goals. The same concepts apply whether you're setting goals for a drive downtown or for a decade.

Discouragement contributes to breaking New Year's resolutions or abandoning goals. That's because we forget those words of wisdom attributed to John Lennon and others: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. So what if you didn't make it to the gym three times this week? Just make plans to get it right next week.

If a tree has fallen on the road downtown, you don't shrug your shoulders and abandon the trip; you just find another route. If your favorite grocery store is closed, you find another store to buy your eggs and milk this time — and maybe you discover that store is even better. If you have really latched onto a goal that lifts your mind to a better place — starting a new business, getting healthier, living debt-free, all of the above — expect that there will be bumps in the road and detours, but hang onto the dream.

Living life on purpose

2010-01-08T06:41:00.005-05:00

In the first song of his valedictory album Brainwashed, George Harrison caught me up short with a line I've since come to realize is an old one, but it was the first time I'd heard it.

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

All of the self-help books I've ever encountered seem to come down to a few basic truths, and that's one of them. Expressed more positively, it's simply: Know where you want to be, set a goal to get there, and act on the goal.

The Earl Nightingale and James Allen pieces I referenced the last couple of days, use agrarian examples to make their point, Nightingale referring to a farmer and Allen to a gardener. Their point: If you want to grow flowers, or corn, you till the land, plant the seed and do what's needed to bring the plant to fruition — weeding, watering, etc. And you'd better plant in the spring if you want the food by the end of the summer.

Their point is that the mind is like the soil, and goals are the seed. You set the goal and do what's needed to bring it to fruition. And you'd better set a deadline if you want to reach the goal. Without a specific timeline, you have no way to know whether knee-high by the Fourth of July is a sign of coming success or of impending failure.

The farmer analogy works well because most people understand how hard farmers work, with a single-minded purpose — grow the corn, keep the cows milked. Setting your mind and going for a goal is not easy. As my friend John Newman reminded me the other day in an e-mail, have you ever tried to think about just one thing for two minutes straight? It's pretty much impossible; your mind has a will of its own and will skip off on a tangent. Keeping eyes on the prize is a simple concept, but not an easy task. If it were easy, everyone would reach the goals they set.

Allen takes it a step further, however, suggesting that everyone does reach the goals they set — and because most people don't set goals, they reap what their minds sow (or failed to sow). "If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." Allen says:

Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.

And on a subject that recurs frequently here:

The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step. He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.

We all face doubt and fear on a daily basis, and manipulative men and women encourage us to be afraid so they we will buy into their self-serving solutions. Refuse to be afraid — that is, refuse to let doubt and fear control you — and you're on the road to freedom.

As I wrote during the last election season, "Freedom is not about having the right ruler. Oh, wait, yes it is. Freedom is understanding that I am the boss of me." You can live a life without doubt and fear weighing you down; you simply have to live it on purpose.

'You will be what you will to be'

2010-01-07T16:47:00.002-05:00

Yesterday's excursion into Earl Nightingale led to today's excursion into James Allen and As A Man Thinketh, as nice a summary of basic truths as I've found in a long time.

Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts. For out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.

Read it all.

Earl Nightingale's 'Strangest Secret'

2010-01-06T18:56:00.003-05:00

An oldie but goodie to share today — because it's brand-new to me. Dan Miller mentioned on his podcast that "The Strangest Secret" by Earl Nightingale is one of the most influential pieces of writing he's ever encountered. I did a quick search and found it, and it's as good as Dan made it sound. The article sums up well a simple truth we've all heard thousands of times — that we become what we think about.

A sample:

A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that's what he's thinking about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing ... he becomes nothing.

Simple advice — so why is it so hard to follow? Nightingale has some insights into that, too, in this article worth reading.

3 men who made a difference to me in 2009

2009-12-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

If I live my life differently from this general time onward, the credit should be shared with three men whom I encountered for the first time in 2009, one in person and two via their writings and podcasts.

Barry McGuire is the one I met in person, and technically I "encountered" him for the first time years ago, but it was meeting him that turned my mind and life around. His tale of teetering on the eve of destruction and finding his way to a new place is inspiring; he's the one who pointed me toward the book The Sacrament of the Present Moment; and listening to and speaking with him ignited a creative spark whose fruits I will be sharing with the rest of the world in 2010 and beyond.

Dan Miller is the author of 48 Days to the Work You Love, a terrific guide to discovering the job/work you want to do and how to go about getting it.

Dave Ramsey is the author of Financial Peace and The Total Money Makeover and host of a daily radio program that is condensed into a podcast five days a week. I think I understood his principles years ago, but he made me finally pay attention. Or perhaps I was finally ready to act on the principle that debt is dumb.

I heartily recommend all three men's body of work to anyone and everyone. To the extent that my body of work is more focused and productive in 2010, I owe it to their influence.

Happy New Year, all!

Roddenberry wins?

2009-12-21T09:04:00.002-05:00

Gene Roddenberry in Star Trek envisioned a world with no money and an Earth government that worked in harmony with alien races from other planets.

No sign of the alien races yet, but there's lots of talk these days about that Earth government.

Before you get too carried away being afraid of the one-world government, remember: There's always someone who wants you to be scared. Don't be. Figure out what their agenda is, avoid it and go live your life in peace.

What if they gave a blockbuster and nobody came?

2009-12-16T00:56:00.001-05:00

Man, I want to be jazzed about Avatar, the big new multimillion-dollar epic written and directed by James Cameron.

Now, James Cameron has done some mighty incredible work in his lifetime. Blew me away with Terminator and Terminator 2. Great, great flicks. I was surprised to see him try to do a sequel to Alien, which didn't need a sequel, but darned if the thing wasn't bigger and better in some ways to the Ridley Scott original.

True Lies was a pleasant surprise, a delightful romp, and The Abyss simply blew me away. Both versions of it. I'm probably the only guy on the planet who thinks The Abyss was Cameron's finest hour, but there ya have it. (In fact, I think the reason I was so disappointed by Know1ng is that it was basically the same story as The Abyss, only above the surface and not as well done. Oh, maybe it's more like The Abyss meets Cocoon, but the point is both source materials were a helluva lot better.)

So if those were the James Cameron canon, I would be in line NOW to see Avatar when it debuts at the local theater on Friday. But there's one other little notation in Cameron's filmography, and that's why I am just not jazzed about the new flick.

It's this gawd-awful thing called Titanic. Man, I wanted to be jazzed about Titanic, it's such a great real-life story, a modern epic of hubris completely humiliated. The supposedly invincible ship that can't even finish its maiden voyage. An enormous human tragedy, so many dreams dashed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

But instead Cameron spent oodles of money to deliver an unbelievably trite story about two unpleasant characters who fall in love despite the machinations of her unpleasant mother and unspeakably clichéd rich-guy fiancé, a boring tale that takes half of a three-hour movie — 75 minutes in I was fidgeting in my seat wondering where the frack is the damn iceberg?! — the terrible CGI effects, I didn't for a minute believe I was watching anything except a computer illustration or a giant movie set, and last but not least the old lady has the multimillion-dollar gem that could help the struggling explorer pay his bills AND SHE THROWS THE DAMN THING INTO THE OCEAN! WITH A BIG SMILE ON HER FACE!

As great as every James Cameron film was that came before Titanic, that's how bloody terrible Titanic was. It was the worst time I have ever had in a movie theater. Absolutely the worst, and that includes the time I wasted watching the jaw-droppingly bad First Family, the biggest waste of a brilliant cast ever captured on celluloid.

Now, of course, Titanic is by far the biggest-grossing film of all time. And therein lies the dilemma. Was Avatar made by the feisty and creative genius who made all of those terrific movies in the 1980s and early '90s, or will it be as bloated and overrated as Titanic? The money's on Cameron following the money, trying to capture lightning in a bottle twice. But I'm afraid he will find you can't go home again, no matter which direction he tried to go.

So I'm going to sit this one out, folks. Tell me if Avatar is any good, if you decide to go. Maybe if I hear enough "I didn't expect to love it, but it's incredible I tell ya, incredible" then I'll check it out. If it's still in theaters by then.

Messages from God

2009-12-15T07:59:00.002-05:00

Last summer I wrote:

When you set your mind on a vision that fires up your dreams, it's as if the forces of the universe align to make it happen. Try not to think too hard about why that's true, but understand it is true. Maybe it's simply that people sense your enthusiasm and are drawn to help. Maybe it's that catching the fire of your inner passion generates an energy that makes you do what's necessary. Maybe it's God; yep, that's how I envision it, but if you have issues with the idea of supernatural power, don't dwell on it. The important thing is overcoming the illusion that you might fail.

Last month I wrote:

Refuse To Be Afraid, a book based on the themes of this blog, and The Imaginary Revolution, a novel that embraces the Zero Aggression Principle as its theme, are the creations that will scream "This is what I believe. This is how I try to live my life." As such, I have embued them with too much significance; I have been reluctant to pull them together, for the same primal fear we all share: What if we were to say "This is true and important," and the vast mass of folks out there sniffed at it and said, "No, it's not. You're a lunatic. Worse: You're irrelevant."

Maybe I am. But you know, books that are never published touch no one. So I plow ahead.

Sunday, my pastor preached on the theme "refuse to be afraid." This morning, I find on Sunni's blog a dialogue that contains insights into the themes I'm exploring with The Imaginary Revolution. The conversation spins from a beautiful insight from Bill St. Clair.

The forces of the universe aligning to assist my work and encourage me? Messages from God to help me now that I'm on the right track?

Who cares? I am grateful for the insights and plow ahead.

Still here

2009-12-10T07:38:00.002-05:00

Still thinkin' - still planning - still working - still here.

It's just not "soup" yet.

Pardon the radio silence - more to come soon. No, really!

2010 will be intriguing.

Beat the fear

2009-12-06T22:24:00.002-05:00

When the fear paralyzes you, the important question to ask is "What am I really afraid of?"

In other words, what's the worst-case scenario?

You could fail. You could go broke. You could lose the job, the house, all your stuff. You could die.

Two things you need to realize. First, your worst fears probably won't materialize. Second, even if they do you'll be OK. Well, if you die maybe not. But you probably will not die, at least not from this.

Throttle your fear. Refuse to be afraid and unleash the power of your dreams.

Re: The course of human events

2009-12-03T07:43:00.002-05:00

Every so often I scan the Declaration of Independence to see how we're doing about avoiding a repeat of the "repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states" that led our forebears to cut the chains forged by King George III.

I have to say we seem to be locked in not-knowing-history-doomed-to-repeat-it mode.

Check this one out:

"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."

Is that our modern federal government in a nutshell or what?

Among the truths those folks found to be self-evident was: "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

The bad news here? I really get the feeling that that's exactly what happened: People exercised their right to alter or abolish their constitutional government, and they instituted new government, organizing its powers in such form as to them seemed most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

They just overlooked essentials like principles and, of course, independence.

On to Afghanistan

2009-12-02T06:44:00.003-05:00

Still listening to: "Won't Get Fooled Again," The Who

In his farewell address to the nation Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Assuming these next words are correctly attributed, I think Benjamin Franklin said it more succinctly:

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

The beauty of the military-industrial scam is the way the thought has been mashed so that giving up essential liberty ("temporarily," "until this crisis has passed," mind you) becomes a requirement for security (there's always a crisis at hand, isn't there?) — or, as Mr. Orwell phrased our modern state's philosophy so well:

War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Ignorance is strength.

Text of President Obama's speech tonight

2009-12-01T08:24:00.004-05:00

Listening to: "Won't Get Fooled Again," The Who

A wag on Facebook declares that Tuesday night's presidential speech regarding the troop buildup in Afghanistan has been leaked. A sampling:

We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure.

This kind of world will never be built by bombs or bullets. Yet the infirmities of man are such that force must often precede reason, and the waste of war, the works of peace.

We wish that this were not so. But we must deal with the world as it is, if it is ever to be as we wish ...

We hope that peace will come swiftly. But that is in the hands of others besides ourselves. And we must be prepared for a long continued conflict. It will require patience as well as bravery, the will to endure as well as the will to resist.

I wish it were possible to convince others with words of what we now find it necessary to say with guns and planes: Armed hostility is futile. Our resources are equal to any challenge. Because we fight for values and we fight for principles, rather than territory or colonies, our patience and our determination are unending.

Once this is clear, then it should also be clear that the only path for reasonable men is the path of peaceful settlement ...

We will do this because our own security is at stake.

But there is more to it than that. For our generation has a dream. It is a very old dream. But we have the power and now we have the opportunity to make that dream come true.

For centuries nations have struggled among each other. But we dream of a world where disputes are settled by law and reason. And we will try to make it so.

For most of history men have hated and killed one another in battle. But we dream of an end to war. And we will try to make it so.

For all existence most men have lived in poverty, threatened by hunger. But we dream of a world where all are fed and charged with hope. And we will help to make it so.

Read the whole thing and weep.

Living in all dimensions

2009-11-30T06:33:00.005-05:00

The news brought word of a man from Belgium who was injured so severely doctors concluded he was in a vegetative state. His family and their new doctor say he really has been in a "locked-in" state for 23 years, able to perceive his surroundings and communicate — which he now does using what little movement his condition permits.

Some question whether Rom Houbens is actually "locked in" and communicating, and you can find that argument out there. It's not why I'm writing this morning.

In the ABC story where I found this news were some quotes from neurologists who explained the difference between being in a "vegetative" coma and being here.

For example, a person who is in a vegetative state and a person who is "locked-in" would both be paralyzed to some degree. Both patients would likely open their eyes and look around.
But, as Dr. James L. Bernat of the American Academy of Neurology explained, these two individuals would be considered to have two different definitions of "consciousness."
"One is called wakefulness; eyes open, eyes moving -- that element is conducted primarily by the brainstem," Bernat said. "The second dimension of consciousness requires self-awareness -- they're aware of what's going on, they can feel, they can think.
"People in the vegetative state have only the wakeful dimension," he said.
A coma would be a state of full paralysis and full unconsciousness similar to the experience of going under anesthesia. Neurologists even define a third state in people with brain injuries as "minimally conscious," which is a state of semi-wakefulness and limited self-awareness.

So ... Consider whether these descriptions apply to those of us who have not been physically paralyzed. How much of life do we spend in mere wakefulness, and how much do we spend in self-awareness? How often are we just looking around and functioning, and how often are we aware, feeling and thinking?

A few years ago I visited an optometrist because my once-20/20 vision now required reading glasses. During the course of the examination, he discovered one eye was doing most of the work for me. As a result my depth perception was very limited. He gave me a pair of glasses with a prism that forces my eyes to work together.

After a few days of adjustment, my world opened up. My eyes still regularly fall into their old habits, and often it takes a bit of concentration to see the world as it is. In my most self-aware moments, the depth perception kicks in on its own. If you have always seen in three dimensions, you may not realize how incredible it is to see from here to there, front to back, not just left to right. My left eye is the lazy one, content to let me live in two dimensions. When it's fallen back into old habits nowadays, all I have to do is say to myself, "Left eye," and the world opens up again. It just takes a pause to reorient myself.

Not long ago I felt paralyzed sitting in the day-job office, staring at a computer screen with several writing projects waiting for my attention. The office is not far from a mighty river, so I took a walk and sat down on a park bench along the water with a pen and pad. On that calm day I absorbed a peace that surpasses understanding. My mind and soul unwound and woke up.

In 45 minutes I wrote two days worth of notes and the genesis of this essay. That's the power of simply being self-aware, a power within each of us if we simply pause to look for it.

Everyday life can beat us into a state of simple wakefulness. We turn off our consciousness as we drive the same route twice a day; we surf aimlessly around Web sites; we park in front of an entertainment center to watch people play games or act out stories for us.

Self-awareness is a little daunting — you get in touch with realities like your own mortality — but you reach out for a sense of purpose. When you find that purpose and that passion, you cling to it and work toward fulfilling that purpose, often to slip back into wakefulness, which so reseumbles self-awareness but is so much less.

Assuming the doctor's claims are true, what was it like to be Rom Houbens, wanting to jump up and say "I am here! I have a life! I have purpose!" The same struggle occurs inside our minds as the merely wakeful entity wanders about, looks around, walks and talks but does not notice the sentient, paralyzed soul inside.

Sitting on that park bench, I resolved that one purpose in my life will be to stay awake and aware, to awaken and empower others. This walking-about, zombie-like existence does not have to be as good as it gets. Each of us has the spark to be more, and the spark contains the seed of true freedom, authentic liberty.

The world is an astonishing place when we focus our senses. How much more astonishing are our minds when we do the same.

Live the probabilities

2009-11-16T07:57:00.004-05:00

"Most things I worry about never happen anyway." — Tom Petty.

You could die from swine flu. But you probably won't.

You might get killed this morning when a drunken idiot runs a red light or cuts you off on the highway. But you'll probably make it home safely tonight.

A terrorist might be on board the plane you're taking today. But probably not.

You might be laid off and replaced by an illegal immigrant. But the chances are almost zero.

In fact, the world might come to an end in 2012. But most of us very likely will live to see 2013 — and those of us who don't won't perish in a planetwide catastrophe.

Every intrusion on our freedom begins with politicians planting the seed of an improbable fear, and then cultivating it until it becomes so irrational a majority is ready to surrender a piece of liberty.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." — H.L. Mencken.

As you peruse your newspaper or Web sites, as you listen to and watch newscasts, be mindful of the percentages. Remember the truth of Petty and Mencken. Refuse to be afraid, refuse to be led to the safety of a cage — in other words, free yourself.

Life is what happens to you ...

2009-11-15T08:10:00.003-05:00

Many of us who gather here had a friend named kyfho, who died at the end of April 2008 after a life of thoughtful reflection in the name of liberty. He comes to mind of late as I kick-start projects that I originally intended to complete in time for him to read them.

Kyfho said it's important to have a philosophy of life — perhaps paraphrasing what Shepherd Book says in his exit lines of the brilliant film Serenity: "I don't care what you believe — just believe!" I haven't necessarily completely embraced his urgency — I don't mind a little fuzziness and uncertainty — but his point was, in part, that your life will reflect the principles you believe, so it's probably important to know what those principles are.

Refuse To Be Afraid, a book based on the themes of this blog, and The Imaginary Revolution, a novel that embraces the Zero Aggression Principle as its theme, are the creations that will scream "This is what I believe. This is how I try to live my life." As such, I have embued them with too much significance; I have been reluctant to pull them together, for the same primal fear we all share: What if we were to say "This is true and important," and the vast mass of folks out there sniffed at it and said, "No, it's not. You're a lunatic. Worse: You're irrelevant."

Maybe I am. But you know, books that are never published touch no one. So I plow ahead. I've provided a taste of RTBA in an ebook (go ahead, click over there), but there's much more to say. I've gotten a podcast of the first two chapters of I-Rev done only to turn around and start over, but the arc of the tale is now in my mind and it only needs to be written down. They were going to be ready by Christmas 2008, and now I expect to offer them up in 2010. Two years too late, or right on time.

And wherever kyfho is, I hope he'll somehow enjoy the final products.

The art of doing it

2009-11-09T06:03:00.002-05:00

Gems that caught my eye today while browsing Do It! Let's Get Off Our Buts, the best book I've ever read about getting stuff done and following dreams:

... the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.

- Robert Heinlein

Quit now, you'll never make it. If you disregard this advice, you'll be halfway there.

- David Zucker

Stan, Ollie and Carlos

2009-11-06T07:04:00.002-05:00

The footage is a delightful interlude from Way Out West. The soundtrack reinvents the sequence nicely.

Remember, remember

2009-11-05T07:57:00.002-05:00

Happy Guy Fawkes Day.

The joy of making books

2009-11-03T07:32:00.007-05:00

At this stage in its existence, Richardson & Bluhm book publishers is not doing well enough to allow its principals, or anyone else, to quit the day job. But it's sure fun making books, and fun has something to say for itself.

Given a choice of things to do Monday, I spent part of it tinkering with the existing product. I added a couple of introductory essays to our edition of Tom Paine's Letters to the Citizens of the United States, letters from 1802-1805 that are surprisingly relevant, as the young republic struggled with the pull between individual liberty and federal power.

Next I fiddled with the book that started it all, The Imaginary Bomb, a short novel that has drawn nice reviews both as a free podcast and as a stand-alone book. I've punched the package up with the (in)complete text of the unfinished sequel, The Imaginary Lover, and a sneak preview of the new novel of freedom and nonviolent resistance, The Imaginary Revolution. The revised I-Bomb becomes a great way to get up-to-date on the events of the Imaginary Era and whet your appetite for things to come. And folks who enjoyed the podcasts of the first draft of the first two chapters may be intrigued by the changes — especially the identity of the new narrator.

In the last month or so, I've branched off into the realm of classic science fiction, with an edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal tale of exploration and dinosaurs, The Lost World. The plan is to whip together two more editions that collect the other four stories of Professor George Edward Challenger. Sure, it's been done before, but not by people as nice as the Richardson & Bluhm menagerie.

The newest addition is 6 Monsters, a half-dozen of the scariest tales conjured by the great literary minds of the 19th century, including "Frankenstein," "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and Henry James' intriguing ghost story/psychological drama "The Turn of the Screw." You might find these out there, but not under one roof.

The marvelous folks at Lulu are standing by to print these gems on demand for you, whether you want to buy single copies or stock up and get all of your Christmas shopping done in one place. Thanks for clicking through and taking a look and, if you find something you like, snatching it right up. When Richardson & Bluhm becomes a name to be reckoned with, you'll be able to say you have some of its earliest editions. Imagine that!

Links

2009-11-02T08:35:00.004-05:00

I've written before about how each of us is a time machine from the past. Here's another one.

It's the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963. Our fifth-grade class has a substitute teacher that day. She's a very old lady from my 10-year-old perspective. It's a sunny fall day and we're not concentrating very hard on whatever the day's lesson is. (Oh, and half a world away in Great Britain, kids are checking out the newly released, second LP from that nifty new guitar band The Beatles. It won't be long ... but I digress.)

The principal sticks his nose in and announces that President Kennedy has been shot. Now, this part is fuzzy in my brain because I didn't know what the word "fatal" meant at the time - but my memory insists that the principal said the president had been fatally shot, and the old substitute teacher said, "Well, let's certainly pray that he lives ..."

In any case, after we'd settled down a bit, the old teacher started talking about the day when she was a little girl, and she was passing the train water tower when someone called down, "President McKinley has been shot!" Perhaps that's where my memory's circuits have been scrambled - perhaps the old teacher went on to talk about how everyone was praying that McKinley would survive. As it was, he lingered for eight days after being shot in Buffalo, N.Y., and then passed to the ages. President Kennedy, of course, died that afternoon. We were released early — I remember the sun shining off the face of the old Little Falls, N.J., library as I biked away from the school.

And now I pass these images secured somewhat faultily from one time machine to another — images of a New Jersey fifth-grade classroom, a railroad water tower 62 years earlier, and a feeling of children's shock and surprise to link them together. One image survives 108 years later, the other a mere 46. What intriguing time machines we are.

Norman and Merle — Happily ever after?

2009-10-29T07:07:00.002-04:00

A long time ago in eastern Wisconsin, I purchased a ragged copy of a book called The Life of William McKinley, which was compiled not long after the 25th president of the US of A was assassinated in 1901. During my brief sabbatical the other day, I started paging through the book. What I learned about McKinley is a tale for another day. This is about a small discovery.

Between page 303 and the adjacent photo of "sailors from the battleship Illinois in the funeral procession, Washington," I found a note, written — in pencil, I think — on a piece of small notepad paper:

Sawyer, Wis.
April 9, 1926

Dear Merle:
Am writing you a few lines
to let you know, I might
come down Sunday with my
old bus. There isn't any news
around here, so I will close.
As Ever,
Norman

I presume Merle was a woman. Was she thrilled to receive these short words from Norman? Otherwise why did she keep the note? Did he and his old bus arrive with a marriage proposal? Or was the little slip of paper merely a handy bookmark, long forgotten (much as Sawyer is today — I understand it merged into Sturgeon Bay a few years later.)

What stories could be told from this little note, a bit of mysterious poetry from eight decades past: What went through Norman's mind and heart as he composed — how long did his emotions tarry after he wrote, "my old bus," and before he decided "There isn't any news around here, so I will close"? Did the postman who carried the note call out, "Hey Merle, you have a letter from Sawyer here"? What did Merle think as she saw she had a letter from Norman, and as she opened the envelope?

And how did Sunday afternoon go? If, as I suspect, preserving the note had more meaning than as a bookmark, I imagine it may have been a magical day, the lives of Merle and Norman were henceforth intertwined, and they lived ever after — happily, we would hope.

There isn't any more for me to add, so I will close.

Give more than you take

2009-10-28T06:15:00.004-04:00

A man named Wallace D. Wattles once wrote a book called The Science of Getting Rich. It's filled with much wisdom and good advice. To read it well is to skew your world viewpoint a bit. When I read it, a few things fell into place — some of which I codified here and collected in the ebook Preserve the Embers; Stoke the Fire. (Click on its picture over there on the right to get the ebook — then click the Richardson & Bluhm box to have someone print you a handy-dandy copy for a modest fee.)

Here is a thought that helped the tumblers fall into place and unlock my brain: "Give to every person more than you take from him," Wattles wrote. A corollary is the famous (I think) Zig Ziglar promise, "You can have anything you want in life if you will help enough other people get what they want."

Much has been written and spoken about finding happiness and fulfillment. Most of it boils down to: Locate your passions, then follow the dreams they give you. Cast aside negative emotions, or rather recast them in a positive way. Peter McWilliams writes about moving out of your comfort zone and channeling the fear into an excitement for the new adventures.

Once you've brought the fear under control, which begins the process of freeing yourself, Wattles' principle is a sound one for following your dreams: Give to every person more than you take from him. Make sure you have created something of value and quality that satisfies beyond the investment. The other person will notice and be grateful, and some will express their gratitude with more business, or by giving back, in whatever coin you gave to them. Consistently give more than you take, and eventually you will have enough — and sooner than you think.

Creativity break

2009-10-24T05:39:00.003-04:00

Not that you'd notice from the amount of activity on this page recently, but I'm going to do something now that makes me a little nervous and tentative. I'm turning off the computer and walking away for a few days.

I spend a large portion of my day sitting in a chair staring at a computer screen as part of my deal to sell a certain corporation 40-50 hours of my life every week. Before work and after work, I come home and spend time sitting in a chair staring at a computer screen.

I noticed something months ago: Many of my most creative moments involve sitting in a chair, or on a park bench, with a pencil and pad of paper in my hands. And I enjoy being creative.

If my creative well has run dry sitting in front of the computer screen, it's time to turn off the 'pooter and recharge. See ya Wednesday.

Talk amongst yourselves. Download an ebook or two. Browse the Richardson & Bluhm box; I can always use the FRNs and you could use some of the new and vintage literature in there.

Above all, of course, refuse to be afraid. Free yourself. Dream.

B.W.'s Shameless Book Plug: 6 Monsters

2009-10-15T23:42:00.004-04:00

Getting a degree in English can be tedious at times. The classics of literature do not always make the most compelling reading. But every so often you'll come across a terrific bit of writing that is still a page-turner after a century or two.

For the scary season, the vast staff of Richardson & Bluhm print-on-demand books has compiled a half-dozen of the best page-turners in literature, from names you might have caught a time or two before like Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson and such.

Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" is a matter-of-fact tale told by a fellow who'd had enough and decided to bury a (presumably) former friend alive behind a brick wall. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" is about a man who builds himself, well, a daughter. "The Turn of the Screw" is a ghost (?) story that leaves readers guessing 100+ years after Henry James wrote it.

Anchored by "Frankenstein" and "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," 6 Monsters is a lovely little pile of classics. Click here to learn more and be among the first to order your very own copy. Act now — it's only two weeks to Halloween! And feel free to explore where it says "More from B.W. Richardson and Warren Bluhm, editors."

They wait to change the world

2009-10-12T09:32:00.003-04:00

An abandoned book cries out to be read. From time to time I'll find a book at an antique store that I never heard of, and it speaks to me:

"I have the idea the world needs now. I tell the story that could change someone's life. And in changing that person, I change the lives around him/her. In changing those lives, I change the world and alter time. Read me ... please read me ..."

I'll often take them home, and sometimes dive in and read. But many still wait on my shelves, calling, pleading ...

Housecleaning

2009-10-08T06:51:00.003-04:00

"A piece of paper defines my rights. My acts of defiance enforce them."

OK, let's get a few things straightened out here. A couple of things have fallen off the shelf, and I ought to pick them up, do some vacuuming, straighten this place up a little.

First off, a stopped clock is right a couple of times a day. Glenn Beck appears to be a fraud, but I like what he wrote that I quoted. I really get the feeling that he is like many Obama supporters: An administration I dislike cannot violate the Constitution with impunity, but I am blind to the violations done in my guy's name.

He did write, "Our collective experience since the Founding has taught us that all governments of every stripe are fascist in nature. They will gobble up as much money, resources, and people as possible unless adequately checked ... All these 'isms' simply reflect the mistaken belief that progressively larger governments are needed to address our problems." Whether he understands that this was true prior to Jan. 20, 2009, is unclear. But at least he appears to grasp truth at the moment. Sadly, I expect he will rediscover his blind spot the day a Republican president is inaugurated, just as most Democrats will have the scales fall from their eyes that day.

A number of simple truths here. The vast majority of US of A citizens are comfortable with "progressively larger governments," as they know of nothing else in their lifetimes. The federal government, however, long ago passed the point where it can sustain its sheer bulk with the ~~seized assets~~ resources available at its command. Its fiscal and moral bankruptcy are obvious to an increasing number of people; sadly, most of these people are pinning their hopes on some sort of revived Republican Party.

"... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness ..."

A number of things are clear. Much about the U.S. government and its subsidiaries is destructive to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — beginning with the notion that the smaller units of government serve the federal government, and not vice versa. Or perhaps beginning with the notion that the governed have consented to all of this. Or perhaps beginning with the notion that the powers being exercised by the government are just.

In any case, an altering or abolition is in order. However, in the immortal words of Macolm Reynolds, "I got no need to beat you, I just want to go my way." How does one go about altering or abolishing a tyrannical government while adhering to the principle of non-initiation of force?

A housecleaning is in order. But you do not clean a house by demolishing it with explosives and other implements of force. Nor, recent history shows, do you clean the house by clearing it of one sort of vermin and allowing another sort to move in.

Wednesday morning I indulged in a writing exercise recommended by the legendary Ray Bradbury: I compiled a list. As ideas and fragments of ideas and images came to my mind, I wrote them down. It began with simple ideas: "The generous thief. The dinosaur lover." Then I progressed to concepts: "Mudslides as weapons. Sacrificing for an ideal. Future events, seen now in past tense."

And then this:

"A piece of paper defines my rights — my acts of defiance enforce them."

I believe that Thoreauvian statement contains the seeds of how one goes about altering or abolishing a tyrannical form of government while clinging to the Zero Aggression Principle.

More on this as the cobwebs clear from my mind. Your own insights are always welcome; click on the word "comments." See it? Right down here:

Successful capitalist Michael Moore: 'Capitalism did nothing for me'

2009-10-02T06:03:00.005-04:00

The irony of film entrepreneur Michael Moore is that he seems to have trouble recognizing that his skills at playing the game of capitalism would be useless in the heavy-handed totalitarian system he advocates.

In this interview with CNSNews.com, Moore talks about how his fellow capitalists tried to fight his previous works ...

“In fact, in Fahrenheit 9/11 if you remember, capitalism, the Disney Corporation, tried to kill that film--tried to make it so that people couldn’t see it,” said Moore. “My book Stupid White Men--Harper Collins tried to kill that book so that people couldn’t see it. It's only because I put the light of day on it and told people what was going on did people get the chance to see these things.”

Does he understand that there is no light of day to shine in systems where something resembling the free market and capitalism don't exist? There, if the Powers That Be want to kill a film or a book, it gets killed and that's the end of it.

The system Moore detests, of course, is not a free market; we live under more of an amalgam of capitalism and government force, where political and corporate types do favors for each other with our cash. To that extent Moore does a service by shining his light. It's just a shame his proposed solutions all seem to end with the government types crushing the corporate types and taking full control.

In Michael Moore's perfect world, Michael Moore doesn't exist. He misses the point.

'Your favorite Beatles song'

2009-09-28T07:26:00.003-04:00

Better late than never - I wish I'd thought of this suggestion before all the big Beatles hype surrounding their video game and discography re-release earlier this month:

If you consider yourself someone who believes governments in general are too intrusive, consider answering as follows should anyone ever ask you what your favorite Beatles song is:

TAXMAN

Let me tell you how it will be,
There’s one for you, nineteen for me,
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah yeah, I’m the Taxman.

(If you drive a car car), I’ll tax the street,
(If you try to sit sit), I’ll tax your seat,
(If you get too cold cold), I’ll tax the heat,
(If you take a walk walk), I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman.

‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.
Don’t ask me what I want it for
(Ah Ah! Mister Wilson!)
If you don’t want to pay some more
(Ah Ah! Mister Heath!),
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeeeah, I’m the Taxman.

Now my advice for those who die, (Taxman!)
Declare the pennies on your eyes, (Taxman!)
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.
And you’re working for no-one but me,
(Taxman).

'All government of every stripe'

2009-09-25T05:33:00.003-04:00

I'm not that familiar with Glenn Beck the radio/TV host, but if the stuff he's quoted as writing in here is any indication, not wonder TPTB are working to destroy him.

Our collective experience since the Founding has taught us that all governments of every stripe are fascist in nature. They will gobble up as much money, resources, and people as possible unless adequately checked. Governments are never static; they always grow. Communism, fascism, socialism, imperialism, and statism are all different ends accomplished through the same means: totalitarian, absolute government control over the individual. All these 'isms' simply reflect the mistaken belief that progressively larger governments are needed to address our problems.

Thoughtful insights.

Mortgage on my life

2009-09-24T08:15:00.000-04:00

"Ramble Tamble" is such a great rock song that I never bothered to look up the words until this morning. I mean, its purpose was to blow out your speakers, get the juices flowing and otherwise dive headlong into the best album Creedence Clearwater Revival ever delivered.

It's full-bore rock and roll for seven minutes, jangly guitars and John Fogerty shouts and all, wrapped around an extended slowed-down instrumental bit in which Fogerty wrung every inch of pathos out of his guitar. Who cared what he was shouting?

Got curious this morning after I clicked on the "Play" arrow to get my juices flowing. Googled "Ramble Tamble lyrics."

Move! Down the road I go. Move! Down the road I go.

There's mud in the water, roach in the cellar, bugs in the sugar, mortgage on the home, mortgage on the home.

There's garbage on the sidewalk, highways in the back yard, police on the corner, mortgage on the car, mortgage on the car.

Move! Down the road I go. Move! Down the road I go.

They're selling independence, actors in the White House, Acid indigestion, Mortgage on my life, mortgage on my life.

Move! Down the road I go. Move! Down the road I go - ramble tamble, ramble tamble, ramble tamble.

Now here's the thing: It's not great poetry, but the words fit the music perfectly. For 40 years I've been listening to this song, and the jangly guitars convey a pent-up frustration that needs to be released, a conviction that there has to be more to life than this. Now, I realize, that was the point.

Most men live lives of quiet desperation, the man said. Fogerty said the same thing in seven minutes of abandon. Ramble tamble, indeed.

B.W.'s Book Report: The Lost World

2009-09-21T06:42:00.004-04:00

If Professor George Edward Challenger was the only memorable character he ever created, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle still would be a mighty figure in the field of adventure literature. Instead, of course, Challenger is — rather than being the main achievement of Doyle’s career — simply further evidence that the man who invented Sherlock Holmes was a creative genius.

The Lost World introduces this remarkable amalgamation of bombast, persistence and confidence and conceit with a flair: He engages the narrator, reporter Ed Malone, in a fistfight, largely for no other reason but that Malone is a reporter. The altercation leads to the street, where a police officer breaks up the fight. When Malone chooses not to press charges, a friendship of sorts begins. Doyle brings Challenger, Malone and two other adventurers — Lord John Roxton and Professor Summerlee — to South America in this first and most well-known of five tales about G.E.C.

Creators of the film versions of this tale usually feel the need to introduce a woman into the cast of four men in pursuit of Challenger’s fantastic tale of dinosaurs living in the South American jungle. In the fabulous 1925 film we are introduced to Paula White, daughter of the late Maple, played by the charming Bessie Love. She adds a point of conflict, as both Roxton and Malone have their eyes on her. But as you’ll see if you’re encountering the story for the first time, there’s hardly time in this lost world for such matters.

The scenes of a brontosaurus walking the streets of London and creating general havoc have inspired countless films ever since, but the filmmaker’s reinterpretation of a brief moment in the story’s climax marks another departure from Doyle’s original vision. That one might have been necessitated by technical realities, as the group’s return to England does have a lot of talking in it, and “talkies” were a couple to three years away.

The modern reader needs to make a few accommodations to Doyle’s era, as the author introduces a supporting cast that includes a loyal, friendly and simple-minded “negro,” as well as shady and “swarthy” foreigners. These references date the narrative a tad, but there’s a good reason The Lost World has remained a legendary tale for nearly a century now, generating at least three more film versions and even a television series: It’s a wonderfully rousing adventure story.

You may have noticed that the book cover pictured does not match any of the editions that have been available over the years. That's because I've been reading The Lost World as I prepare it to take a place next to the other print-on-demand publications in the growing Richardson & Bluhm stable. It will be available within a few days.

The other side of 'Refuse to be Afraid'

2009-09-18T08:45:00.001-04:00

I admit it, I laughed.

More of this demotivation at Despair.com. Where else?

A better dream of freedom

2009-09-16T07:58:00.004-04:00

It's amazing how often you'll hear an idea for a new law from someone who claims to be in favor of freedom. Of course, usually these self-proclaimed sons and daughters of liberty have already been elected to office, so they've already made some adjustments to their views of what freedom is.

It's still true that the US of A is a place where you can criticize The Powers That Be without being shot or imprisoned — most of the time. Of course, you can't do it in the presence of the Big Boss. Yikes, shouting "You lie!" to the emperor while he was giving a speech. That sort of thing just isn't done.

America is the place where your rights are fully protected as long as you don't infringe on other people's rights — like the right to smoke-free air, the right to free health care, and the right not to be exposed to someone else's religious beliefs. Your property is your own to do as you please with it — as long as you get the proper permits and inspections and pay the property tax. You can travel at will all over this great nation — after your person and luggage have been examined and ransacked. Unlike past empires, we have no ambitions to impose our will on conquered territories — pay no attention to the hundreds of military bases established all over the world.

Some of us have a better dream of freedom: "No one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being for any reason whatever; nor ... advocate the initiation of force, or delegate it to anyone else." I know, good luck with that. I still think a society based on that principle would be a lovely one to live in. The tricky part? By definition no one can be forced to live that way.

For some time I've been working, in fits and starts, on a novel about the creation of such a society — even put out a couple of chapters I have since set aside. The novel is starting to come together at last. No promises, though — I've done that before and missed the target.

That's not my main point today, anyway. Rather, it's just a reminder to beware of anyone who proclaims a devotion to liberty while advocating for a new restriction on liberty. Yes, I know I'm reminding you to beware of people you encounter pretty much every day. That's how pervasive the assault on freedom is. That stuff about "eternal vigilance" isn't far from the truth.

But in the end, the Zero Aggression Principle is about a very personal kind of freedom. You don't have to wait until some utopian society is created. You simply live it. And no one can take that away from you.

Information is freedom

2009-09-14T06:37:00.002-04:00

In the opening pages of our eBook Refuse to Be Afraid (Why haven't you downloaded it yet? Just click on the little blue cover and it's yours), we tell the story of a "big cliff" along Lake Champlain and a little boy who went over the edge screaming with fear, only to collapse in laughter at the bottom because he discovered the drop, invisible through thick brush, was only a few feet. He landed, unharmed, on the shore below.

Information is freedom. Fear kept little Warren from simply relaxing his grip on the side of the hill and sliding to safety. He'd have been off that cliff very quickly and avoided several minutes of sheer terror. Of course, he wouldn't have a lesson that has stayed with him for 50 years, either.

Fear of the unknown keeps us paralyzed. It makes little drops seem like huge cliffs. It turns an annoying little speedbump into an unclimbable mountain.

Afraid because you don't know what might happen? Educate yourself. Find out all you can about the path ahead, or the potential obstacles, and they will shrink in your mind — more important, you will discover ways to get around or plow through the obstacles. That's because information is freedom. The truth will ease your fear and set you free.

Still free, eight years later

2009-09-11T07:35:00.004-04:00

"They can take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom." - William Wallace, in Braveheart.

You can give away your freedom by acquiescing to draconian security measures and other personal intrusions like those that have been added to our lives over the past eight years. Actually treating everyone as a potential criminal or terrorist was nothing new in the US of A; the events of Sept. 11, 2001, merely provided an excuse to accelerate the process.

I always found it ironic that these anti-liberty measures were enthusiastically implemented by those who, with a straight face, said the attacks were staged "because they hate our freedom." If crushing freedom was the motive, the attackers succeeded to a point.

But your freedom is so hardwired into you that no one can take it from you without taking your life.

"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way," Juan Ramón Jiménez wrote, memorably quoted in the opening of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. When everything else is in restraints, you can still think free.

"You can't take the sky from me." - Joss Whedon, "Ballad of Serenity."

5 step plan to help America's youth deal with the real world

2009-09-10T06:45:00.003-04:00

1. Go to the medicine cabinet.
2. Grab the Ritalin and any other mood-altering medicine.
3. Dump pills into toilet.
4. Flush.
5. Deal.

The last president

2009-09-09T20:53:00.003-04:00

So his agenda is finally made clear ...

"I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last."

For some time it's been clear this guy is hellbent on steering the U.S. of A. into bankruptcy, and now he says it out loud: He's determined to be the last president of the U.S. of A.

At least now we know what we're dealing with.

The first hour

2009-09-08T07:09:00.006-04:00

From Dan Miller's 48 Days to the Work You Love:

Be very careful how you start your morning. You are planting the seeds for what the day will hold. If you get up late, grab a cup of coffee and a cigarette, fume at the idiots in traffic in your rush to work, and drop down exhausted at your desk at 8:10, you have set the tone for the day. Everything will feel like pressure, and your best efforts will be greatly diluted.

Miller writes about getting a good night's sleep, spending the first 30 minutes of the day on reading and reflection, then working out while listening to an audio book that involves "mental input and expansion." "I carefully protect that first hour of the day, making sure that all input is positive, creative and inspirational. Many of my most creative ideas have come from this protected hour of the day, often when I am in a full sweat."

You may have a different way to clear the day out in your mind and get started. But get the first hour down, when the mind is newly clear and a blank slate, and the rest of the day will flow more smoothly.

Almost ... TOO quiet!

2009-09-03T08:38:00.003-04:00

Almost all of the bloggers I regularly check out have been not writing much of late. I almost feel as if everyone agreed to move out and forgot to mention it to me.

Should I join the Facebook crowd and the Twits, and ease out of the blogging bit? Or should I buck the crowd and keep on sharing my odd thoughts with the dozen or so who have stayed with me on the journey? Why is there air anyway?

Perhaps railing against the fear mongers and tyrants has become old and repetitive, and some find it fruitless. I could insert a cliché here, like "it's always darkest just before the dawn," or that nugget about good people failing to act, but I have no magic words to restore hope and freedom.

(Huh. I always thought hope and freedom were the words that went together. I knew "Hope and Change" sounded a little suspicious ...)

Everyday life may have sidetracked a bunch of the folks along that there right rail, but I'll keep coming back with a word or two of encouragement. See ya next time. Oh, and the fear mongers and tyrants? They're just scared little boys and girls who can't handle concepts like liberty that expect people to be responsible grownups. Don't take them so seriously.

Comics worlds conglomerate, and Vin tackles Teddy

2009-09-01T07:09:00.003-04:00

Growing up with comic books, Marvel Comics and Disney Comics were worlds apart. Rather, Disney was what little kids read, and Marvel was what you grew into. It was much later that I discovered there was some sublime work being done by the Disney creators, too. But they were two different worlds.

No more. In this era of greater and greater conglomeration, Disney and Marvel are now conglomerated. Howard and Donald under the same web-footed roof. Cinderella meets The Thing. Of course Walt's heirs sucked up Pixar some years ago. Buzz Lightyear? Hulk smash! Emperor Zurg versus Dr. Doom for domination of the universe ...

It's about the movies and the theme parks, though. As Mark Evanier put it so well Monday, "the publishing of comic books (those things on paper with staples in them) at that company is a few notches less important than it was last week. And it wasn't all that important last week."

Oh, and thanks to my curiosity about Sen. Harry Reid's latest display of arrogance, I wondered what Vin's been up to, and I browsed my way into to the best single article written about Sen. Kennedy in recent days — or perhaps ever. Enjoy.

Royalty is unAmerican

2009-08-30T09:26:00.002-04:00

As the long national mourning period for Ted Kennedy continues, a frequently heard observation is that the Kennedy family is the closest thing to royalty that the United States of America has.

It is a statement made without irony, usually in a fawning manner, and clearly with admiration.

And of course, the speaker usually lacks complete understanding what an indictment that statement is.

The United States of America was born in a complete rejection of the concept of monarchy. In creating a government theoretically divided into three equal bodies of power, the Founders turned away from the concept of a ruler governing by divine right, or placing a family dynasty in charge.

To describe the Kennedy clan in terms of "royalty" is to suggest the Kennedy clan stands for all that the Founders did not intend this country to be — which, given Ted's record over 46 years of consolidating power into the federal government's hands, may actually be an appropriate view.

B.W. At The Movies: Know1ng

2009-08-30T07:42:00.000-04:00

To me the wheels started coming off Know1ng when Nicolas Cage's character stalks a young woman and introduces himself under false pretenses. He could have called her up and explained that he was an MIT professor with some questions about her mother, and that would have avoided some awkward moments later. But no, he has to present himself under circumstances that would convince any normal woman she needs to get herself and her daughter away from this psycho.

If that was the only hole in this film's plot, however, it might have been forgiven. If only.

Cage's character's wife died a year earlier; his bitterness leaves him talking about how life on Earth is either predetermined or a series of fantastic, chaotic coincidences — and he chooses to believe in chaos. The movie turns out to be about how he finds out the truth.

I will say no more. The only value in seeing this movie is to be surprised by its journey away from its promising premise — a strange little girl in 1959 produces a series of numbers that correctly predicts major disasters over the next 50 years, and the last three are yet to come — and into a, well, into what it becomes.

OK, I have one observation that may spoil the surprise for those intrigued enough to spend two valuable hours of their lives watching Know1ng: In some ways this movie's finale reminded me of James Cameron's marvelous film The Abyss, which I consider the man's true masterpiece. (I gagged on a titanic spoon enduring his more famous water movie.) The main difference is that The Abyss is a really good movie.

The consent of the enslaved

2009-08-28T07:31:00.006-04:00

The only way you can become a slave is with your permission.

"All men are created equal ... endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights ... among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ... to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Those are carefully chosen words, and today I'm thinking about the last 10. Governments tend to claim as much power as they can, but their just powers — those that are appropriate and (dare we say) legal — those powers can only be exercised when "the governed" approve or consent.

The reason government can only function with the consent of the governed is that we are created equal: No one can enslave you without your permission.

This idea is a radical departure from the status quo of 1776, which held that George III was in charge because the fact of his birth into the royal family made him more suited to govern than the rest of us commoners. From the Declaration of Independence onward, the caretakers of government were to be hired by all of us as equals, wielding only the powers we allow them to wield.

Ever since then, a large percentage of those hired caretakers have desired to seize the reins that George III once held. But they can't claim that authority by divine right; they have to obtain consent.

And that's where the concept of the political advertisement came from.

By the time a well-crafted campaign is done, you are so full of fear about what may become of you as a free man or woman that you're practically begging for a particular man, woman or program to take the liberty you've had since birth. How can you, an educated man or woman, make decisions for yourself about your own life? You must elect someone to handle the controls of your life.

It's all for the noblest of purposes: To feed the poor, to protect the land, to provide for the common good. Slavery is safe and secure and easy. Liberty is hard work. Next thing you know, you're ensnared.

Listen carefully when these charlatans promise to make life better for you — ask yourself, at what cost? What are they asking you to surrender in exchange for better health care, safer borders, energy independence, a full belly, cleaner air and water? There's always a price.

Concerned about our increasingly totalitarian world? It's happening because the architects of the police state have your permission — the consent of the governed. Solution? Start acting like you're free.

The blood of patriots and tyrants

2009-08-26T23:52:00.000-04:00

... the people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

We have had 13 states independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion?

& what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them.

what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it's natural manure.

— Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Smith, Nov. 13, 1787

I've thought about Jefferson's words a lot lately, as it dawns on more and more liberty lovers that tyranny is taking hold in the land of Jefferson. It's been developing slowly for more than a decade, this bipartisan cloud of tyranny, and pushback seems inevitable.

But I absolutely believe watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants in these times would not be healthy for freedom. Violent revolution against a brutal regime can only result in more violence and more brutality, and a revolution on those terms would require greater brutishness to be victorious, the ultimate "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

No, the revolution must be grounded in the Zero Aggression Principle and the principles of nonviolence espoused by Gandhi and others. Yes, ZAP does not prohibit the use of force; it prohibits the initiation of the use of force. Sufficient force defend one's self is acceptable under ZAP. But I believe forswearing violence is likely the most effective means of ensuring that whatever replaces this brutal regime is itself nonviolent.

Easy for me to say that in the abstract. It would get much harder as the tyrants begin to spill the blood of patriots in greater quantities, especially if it happens to be my blood. But there has to be a difference between the oppressors and the oppressed. When Gandhi's forces of peace allowed themselves to be beaten by British troops, doing nothing more than keep trying to exercise their freedom, they spoke volumes about who were the soldiers of liberty and who were the uncivilized thugs.

I suspect the time is not far off when living free, as most people conceive of liberty, will be illlegal and dangerous. We will need to make some decisions at that time. My choice is to live free in peace.

Live Till You Die

2009-08-24T06:43:00.004-04:00

Song lyrics I wrote a long, long time ago ...

Nobody said that it would be easy,
Everyone said it could not be done —
But nobody said it would not be worth it,
So go for it now; you've only begun.

There's no shame in failing before the end comes;
Where there's life, there is hope you'll get done.
It's better to try, give it all that you have,
Than aim for nothing and hit it dead on.

There's just too many people out there
Who don't care if they live or they die;
There's just so much to find out there —
You can't laugh if you're afraid to cry.

Here's what to do: Live till you die.
There's no reason you should give up now.
Today is a blank page; write what you wish —
The rising sun will show you how.

3 political epiphanies

2009-08-21T07:00:00.004-04:00

From a Warren Bluhm talk to a small group Thursday - hence the Wisconsin-centric references ...

Here are three moments in my life that stuck a light bulb over my head and made me say, "Yes, this is what I believe ..."

+ When, sitting in the bleachers at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in the fall of 1978 listening to gubernatorial candidate Lee Sherman Dreyfus, I heard him say the now-legendary words, "Government has three duties: To deliver the mail, to defend the shores, and to get the hell out of my life."

+ When, watching the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in January 1981, he said, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." I have since come to realize that statement goes far beyond "this present crisis" and applies to virtually every crisis imaginable.

+ When, covering a talk by Libertarian Party presidential candidate Andre Morreau at St. Norbert College in 1992, he said, "Both parties want to be your parent. Democrats want to be your mommy. Republicans want to be your daddy."

Both major parties are The Party of Big Government - they just have different priorities about what Big Government should achieve. And by attempting to accomplish goals for "the good of the people," they miss a basic point: Government is an instrument of force, not social justice. Its only tool is coercion - taxation eventually enforced at the point of a gun.

You are where you are

2009-08-18T05:43:00.003-04:00

It's not at all unusual for people to have a sense of dissatisfaction about their circumstances. "I really don't have a peace that I'm where God wants me to be." Or: "This is not where I envisioned being at this stage in my life." Or worse: "I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I know it's not this."

I think the question to ask is: What can you do where you are, while you're there?

A small bit that is good news and bad news: I suspect every life ends with something left unfinished. If you're living life to the fullest, you'll always be doing something until you can't anymore. So if you have a nagging feeling or a firm conviction that your life's mission is something else, don't fret too much about it, just start working on getting to that something (or somewhere) else. And if you're not too sure what your purpose is, well, start thinking (and, if you're so inclined, praying) — with a little self-examination, you'll find that mission, or you may discover you're already doing it.

And for better or for worse, you are where you are now. See what's possible under these circumstances because, for the moment, this is what you have to work with.

What I'm saying is not the old cliché "Bloom where you're planted." You have a huge advantage over a plant: You're mobile. You don't stay planted. You're on a journey. Not only are you not required to stay in one place, that's completely opposite of who and what you are.

To a huge extent the journey is the reward. The downside is if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. OK, those are both clichés, but they're better clichés and more to the point than "Bloom where you're planted."

And even more to the point, you won't make any progress if you spend too much time moping about being at this particular spot on your journey. Much is made in Christian theology about how Jesus worked with people where they were — he mingled with people his society despised, even (gasp!) tax collectors. If he worked miracles with those folks in their circumstances, he can work miracles with you in yours.

You are where you are. What can you accomplish while you're there? And if you're dissatisfied with where you are, what can you do — now — to get where you'd rather be? There's enough time in every day to do what you're doing and work on the things that will get you elsewhere, even if you can only find time for just one tiny step.

If you're sure you want to be somewhere else, taking those steps will make you feel better. And even if you're not sure, taking steps in one direction will help you clarify if it is, indeed, the direction you want to go. Sometimes exploration reveals you actually are where you were "meant" to be. More likely the uneasiness is a signal to get moving.

But you are where you are. This is what you have to work with. "What next?" is a decent question. A better question: What now?

Suggested reading: 48 Days to the Work You Love, Dan Miller; Do It! Let's Get Off Our Buts, Peter McWilliams.

Refuse to Be Afraid: The eBook

2009-08-17T09:31:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned the other day, this is more of a Smiley Smile than a Smile, but better that than nothing - for now. Thank you to all who have responded positively when I wrote about these themes.

Click on the cover or this link to download your free 40-page eBook.

B.W.'s Book Report: Alongside Night

2009-08-16T07:19:00.003-04:00

Reading J. Neil Schulman's Alongside Night last week was a surreal experience. I found myself unable to distinguish whether I'd heard about certain world events from the news media or if they were plot points from Schulman's novel.

It is an undetermined near-future. The U.S. government's policy of printing money to pay its debts has resulted in rampant inflation and political unrest, and the entire economy is on the brink of complete collapse. A well-known economist who opposed the policy and warned of the collapse learns he is on a list of dissidents who will be arrested shortly, and he makes plans to take his family into hiding.

The novel is told from the perspective of the economist's teenage son, who is separated from the family and has a series of adventures and coming-of-age experiences before various matters are resolved. I'm being vague because I've already told you more about the plot than I knew before I picked up the book. All I knew was its reputation as perhaps the only purely agorist novel ever written, and so it was on my to-do list to obtain a copy someday. Schulman helped that process along by making it available as a free download — click here for more information and to get the .pdf (top of the page).

It's a terrific page-turner that portrays how a vibrant countereconomy might work. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good yarn that portrays where today's economic politics are inevitably leading. And hey, it's free. A Prometheus Hall of Fame honoree at that price is, well, golden.

Not to worry

2009-08-11T10:00:00.004-04:00

For the next week starting today, I will be somewhat distracted by a happy family reunion-type event, so be assured: If my writing tails off for a while, the dread quotidian has not reached out and seized me back into the everyday drudge. I'll just be enjoying a visit from someone we haven't seen for a significant length of time.

Download the Tom Paine eBook, browse the archives, talk among yourselves, or whatever you need to get your Montag fix. Oh, knowing me, I'll probably keep posting anyway, but I'm tossing this note up as a "just in case."

In the meantime: Don't let anyone frighten you. Get free. And follow your dreams!

An unexpected life

2009-08-10T07:14:00.002-04:00

I'm not entirely sure what draws me to visit The Unexpected Life of The Green Frog on a regular basis. It's certainly not the insightfully insightful insights into the politics of the day or the human condition.

I just like to see where Frog is today.

The blog is simple but hypnotic. Maybe that's all it is.

Trying men's souls all over again

2009-08-08T07:44:00.009-04:00

Writes Thomas Paine in the eighth of his Letters to the Citizens of the United States:

The independence of America would have added but little to her own happiness, and been of no benefit to the world, if her government had been formed on the corrupt models of the old world. It was the opportunity of beginning the world anew, as it were; and of bringing forward a new system of government in which the rights of all men should be preserved that gave value to independence.

Even as the ink began to dry on the Declaration of Independence proclaiming a break from the tyranny of European-style government, a faction began plotting to re-forge the chains and re-establish Europe in the new world.

When Thomas Paine returned to the United States in 1802 after a decade and a half abroad, he saw the leftover effects of a presidential administration who didn't trust the people to exercise the blessings of liberty appropriately. The ongoing influence of that thinking was evident 20 years later when that president's son was elected president himself, as if one family had the right to the keys of power like a European monarchy.

Into the 21st century the tug-of-war continues. Some find it altogether appropriate to eye a candidate for leadership simply because he or she bears the name of Kennedy, or Bush, or Clinton. Senators and congressmen's sons and daughters, wives and husbands, succeed to their position as if it were a family heirloom. And each succeeding administration finds new ways to clutch remaining bits of liberty from the hands of the people. But that's not the new style of government Thomas Paine and his fellow patriots envisioned.

These Letters to the Citizens of the United States, and Particularly to the Leaders of the Federal Faction strike me as more relevant than ever — and so I offer them as a free eBook or, should you prefer someone else to do your printing and binding, as a book for sale.

Click on the eBook image to download these important words — and see the context of what I wrote about here and there and again of late. Click on the words book for sale for more about the dead-tree edition or click on the Richardson & Bluhm logo for our full line of lovely editions.

On the current national quarrel

2009-08-07T07:49:00.004-04:00

Whoops. She's right — lewlew, that is, when she remarked on the last paragraph in yesterday's musing about the current health-care quarrel.

If the insurance companies, over the past several decades, only had shown some inclination toward helping people meet their health-care expenses as opposed to building shrines for themselves and their employees, perhaps the power-grabbers would not have sensed an opportunity.

Aren't you supposed to grab your audience with the lead in the first paragraph? =)

In a nutshell, this is the largest shell game shilling the consumer in need of medical care. You hit the issue spot on in that one lovely sentence. I wish solving our need for medical care without nannyship and red tape were as eloquent. Harrumph!

I have long been of the opinion that the goal of an insurance company is first to keep your premium in its possession for the longest possible time. I have watched mighty edifices constructed along highways, gleaming architectural tributes to the insurance industry. I have taken tours and seen the expansive fitness centers and tasted the delicious food in the cafeterias where the insurance company minions went when they were not in their cubicles — or, in the case of the executives, when they were not in the well-furnished offices that were larger than the modest offices where I and a dozen other people toiled.

And I knew these luxuries were provided with money that should have been used to more fully reimburse the expenses of customers who were told the policies they purchased only covered a certain percentage of the cost, leaving them with bills for thousands of dollars.

The current quarrel regards whether this status quo is acceptable, or whether the process should be placed in the hands of a non-productive class of greedy souls who seize the income of the producers by guile and force, then redistribute it for a variety of bribes and acts of violence, saving a significant chunk for themselves.

The insurance industry has generally failed its customers while executives bask in personal and collective luxuries, opening the door for the fear-mongers to grab a piece of the action.

At the root of the problem is that we have become to believe in a system where I make a token investment in my own personal health but someone else — either a private company or Big Brother — should pay the bulk of the cost, leaving me free to purchase video-game systems and iPhones and other pretty toys.

It seems ensuring my healthy survival should be a higher personal priority — especially when the third party I hire insists on making judgment calls (as it has the right under the golden rule — "he who has the gold makes the rules") regarding how my doctor and I wish to spend the money it is providing for my medical bills. In a perfect world, the doctor tells me a reasonable price to cover his/her costs and an appropriate profit, and I hand over the cash or arrange installments.

Instead the medical payment system is as convoluted as any Internal Revenue Service process, and the simplest medical procedure comes with multiple bills and fiscal surprises. However, to reinvent the system to give more power to the creators of the IRS seems foolhardy to the maximum.

I don't have the answer. Well, no, I think I do: Give me the responsibility for the cost of all of my routine care, and I'll buy some of that insurance for catastrophic medical needs. Eliminate the middlemen and -women and the lawyers and the politicians from the process, and perhaps the doctors won't have to charge me as much as they do now.

Some people, economically wiser than I was in my youth and early middle age, already fund their health care like that. It works so well for them that the politicians are crafting a bill that would take that choice away, penalizing those who choose not to purchase a basic insurance policy and prohibiting the purchase of individual policies.

The lack of squealing from the insurance lords tells me that they'll still receive an adequate piece of the pie to keep the comfortable edifices they built with our premiums. And the politicians will keep their limousines and private planes and expensive suits; perhaps they'll even exempt themselves from the monstrous system they're creating for the masses.

People are raising their voices and objecting because it's clear they're watching a shell game. Almost everyone agrees medical decisions should be made by patients and their doctors. Neither the status quo nor the proposed solutions addresses this basic agreement.

Regarding the grand argument over health care

2009-08-06T08:38:00.003-04:00

Let me see if this tin-foil hat fits ...

The news is abuzz with reports of how Republican hooligans are hijacking Democratic politicians "listening sessions" on the "health-care reform," which amounts to seizure of what remains of the "free market" insurance industry similar to the previous seizures of the banks and auto industry.

Democrats allege a GOP conspiracy to disrupt the proceedings. The GOP denies this. The people who come to these events with doubts about the congressional plan are insisting to anyone who asks that they were not contacted by any community organizers in advance and they weren't taking orders from any national organization.

Attach tin-foil hat to B.W.'s head. Thank you.

So who benefits when critics of the "health-care reform plan" look like thugs? Correct: Supporters of the plan. Are supporters seeding the crowds with agitators disguised as angry taxpayers?

Remove tin-foil hat.

I don't know what's going on. However, I am encouraged that citizens have serious questions about giving any more power over their health decisions over to Big Brother.

If the insurance companies, over the past several decades, only had shown some inclination toward helping people meet their health-care expenses as opposed to building shrines for themselves and their employees, perhaps the power-grabbers would not have sensed an opportunity.

Ripples of positive action

2009-08-05T08:12:00.004-04:00

These reflections have borne what to my knowledge is the first poem inspired by "Montag ... etc." The eloquent PintofStout left this comment with "Rinse. Repeat.":

I'm not sure if you allow pingbacks or anything, but I thought you'd like to know this post (and the many before it) sprouted a subconscious seed in my brain that has burst forth to life. A poem hath bloomed: Shipwreck (link goes to the intro blog post). Thanks.

Follow the links and you'll find an intriguing little creation about, well, let him explain. I'm tickled to have jarred something loose in PoS's brain — thanks for letting me know!

When a person starts taking positive action, it has a ripple effect. The series of posts that jogged PoS's poetic prowess was a ripple of its own. Not long ago my longtime long-distance pal Wally Conger tossed out a mysterious Facebook entry in which he wrote something to the effect of "That's it! I'm going to get started on some longtime Web business ideas." I recall thinking, "Hmm, I wonder what that's about," and kept my eye out for the results.

A few weeks later Wally sent me a bulk e-mail — from a new e-mail address — announcing his new eBook, Fire-Up Your Cash Flow Over A Donut and Coffee in 10 Minutes — Or Less! It's a quick read packed with thought-starters and ideas and led me to Wally's new Web site. In his site's introduction, "Let's Smash Wage Slavery," he describes the place as "a storehouse for ideas, comments, discussion, and even products targeted to free you from the ugliness of tyrannical work structures."

Positive action yields positive action: I resolved to write. And not just write, but to jump in the way Ray Bradbury put it in his wonderfully inspirational book Zen in the Art of Writing:

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me.

After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

Now, it's your turn. Jump!

So, every morning since July 20, I've been stepping on a landmine every morning. And I've been reading, too. Wally's eBook led me to other eBooks and free stuff out there in the ether. The concept of the free eBook especially caught my attention: It looks fun and and easy to produce, and I've learned a lot from a handful of the eBooks I've found. Some are original like Wally's, and some are repackages of interesting public-domain stuff.

Sunday, I noticed how those first two weeks of writing kind of flowed together thematically. Just for fun I tossed them together into an eBook — you may have already noticed the link to Preserve the Embers; Stoke the Fire sitting up there in the upper righthand corner of this page.

And it was fun, too — so much fun that by the end of the week you should start seeing more eBooks in that corner. One is a convenient edition of Tom Paine's Letters to the Citizens of the United States, which I've written about these three times of late. I figure you might want to see what got me so excited.

And another is a scaled-down eBook version of Refuse to be Afraid, the book-book I announced with some fanfare before getting sunk by the dread quotidian. Think of it, for now, as my Smiley Smile, the bits of a big project that got bogged down, a glimpse at what may eventually emerge later.

The eBooks are free; you can print them out (as I do, old-fashioned tree-killer that I am) or read them on screen. And I'm also converting them into print-on-demand mini-books. It feels counter-intuitive that people would spend money for a physical version of something they can have for free, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. And it gives me a chance to remind folks of the other Richardson & Bluhm products that are out there.

Reactions like PintofStout's (and Sunni's shout-out a few days earlier) are evidence of the ripple effect and momentum that positive action produces. Now, I wonder what it was that inspired Wally to get off the dime and launch his venture? What splash caused the ripple that is Fire Up Your Cash Flow?

'peace, moderate taxes and mild government'

2009-08-04T06:29:00.005-04:00

Being as woefully ignorant as most of my fellow citizens of the history of the country where I've spent all but a few days of my entire life, I was fascinated reading Thomas Paine's eight Letters to the Citizens of the United States, and particularly to the leaders of the Federal faction.

I was vaguely aware of the onerous Alien & Sedition Acts that were passed to suppress free speech, or more specifically the free speech of the Adams administration's political adversaries, but wasn't aware that some folks (like Paine) continued to call for investigation and prosecution of Adams for years after he left office — or that Adams snuck out of the White House early in the morning of March 4, 1800, not waiting to witness the inauguration of new president Thomas Jefferson.

And it seems that many debates we occasionally hear today already were raging when Paine wrote these epistles, in 1802 and 1803 (the eighth letter is dated 1805, but the first seven came in a November-to-April flurry).

Paine accuses Adams of wishing to dissolve the new republic and replace it with a monarchy-style system of succession much like Britain's, where the king's sons or daughters were destined to reign. (That may explain why John Quincy Adams later felt motivated to run for the office his father once held.) A Quasi-War against France was ginned up and Adams' Federalists clamored for the raising of an army of 50,000 men, ostensibly to defend against the inevitable French invasion. Paine felt this standing army was more likely to be used for some other, more sinister purpose.

The suspicion against the late Administration is, that it was plotting to overturn the representative system of government, and that it spread alarms of invasions that had no foundation, as a pretence for raising and establishing a military force as the means of accomplishing that object ...

Of the Sedition Law, which levied a $2,000 fine and two years in prison for anyone who dared write or publish "any libel (without defining what a libel is) against the Government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or against the president ..."

... it is a much greater crime for a president to plot against a Constitution and the liberties of the people, than for an individual to plot against a President; and consequently, John Adams is accountable to the public for his conduct, as the individuals under his administration were to the sedition law.

The object, however, of an enquiry, in this case, is not to punish, but to satisfy; and to shew, by example, to future administrations, that an abuse of power and trust, however disguised by appearances, or rendered plausible by pretence, is one time or other to be accounted for. (from letter VI)

Except for the changes in names and language use, Paine could have been writing after any recent administrations had been put to bed, for it appears the federalists eventually won the argument. It is now common "for a president to plot against a Constitution and the liberties of the people" and to keep the populace generally alarmed over the threat of invasion and all sorts of other alarming notions.

The Revolution had been fought to secure liberty and separate from the violent world and machinations of the British Empire.

It requires only a prudent and honest administration to preserve America always at peace. Her distance from the European world frees her from its intrigues. But when men get into power, whose heads, like the head of John Adams, are filled with "strange notions" and counter revolutionary principles and projects, things will be sure to go wrong ...

The independence of America would have added but little to her own happiness, and been of no benefit to the world, if her government had been formed on the corrupt models of the old world. It was the opportunity of beginning the world anew, as it were; and of bringing forward a new system of government in which the rights of all men should be preserved that gave value to independence. (from letter VIII; Paine's emphases)

It's fascinating to read the thoughts, 27 years later, of the man whose Common Sense framed the intellectual basis for cutting ties with old England, to see how he thought the young nation was fulfilling the dream. He clearly believed that the United States had dodged a bullet and that the election of Jefferson had preserved and re-established the principles of the Revolution.

The characters of the late ad of the present Administrations are now sufficiently marked, and the adherents of each keep up the distinction. The former Administration rendered itself notorious by outrage, coxcombical parade, false alarms, a continual increase of taxes and an unceasing clamor for war; and as every vice has a virtue opposed to it the present Administration moves on the direct contrary line.

The question, therefore, at elections is not properly a question upon persons, but upon principles. Those who are for peace, moderate taxes and mild government will vote for the Administration that conducts itself by those principles, in whatever hands that Administration might be. (from Letter VII)

Peace, moderate taxes and mild government continue to be ideals Americans believe in, judging from the campaign rhetoric that accompanies every election. Although Paine clearly believed Jefferson had delivered the goods in that respect, I can't think of a single modern president of whom the same could be said. Oh yes, peace and moderate taxes and mild government are promised — but the purpose of campaign rhetoric is to get elected, not to deliver the goods, especially not those particular goods.

If freedom were something granted by government, or a constitution, we would be in a heap of trouble. Fortunately we were born free. Governments can and often do obstruct freedom, but they are powerless to absolutely extinguish it. As long as liberty exists in a corner of a free man or woman's mind — and it always will — there's a glimmer of hope that common sense will prevail at last.

Rinse. Repeat.

2009-08-03T07:25:00.000-04:00

Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself. Dream.

Rinse. Repeat.

I've found the little three-step exhortation at the top of this page has multiple applications. Longtime readers know that I started saying "Refuse to be afraid" because so much of modern communication seems to be about raising fears. Terrorists are lurking in every dark corner of the land, most of the food you eat may give you cancer or make you obese or both, and termites may eat the foundation of your house unless you treat it with a certain product.

My advice was simply not to fall for it. Refuse to be afraid. OK, you're nervous and/or scared, but don't let it control you. Refuse to be controlled by your fear.

Then I realized not being afraid was only the first step. You're not afraid, fine. Now what? "Free yourself." Get loose of what you were afraid of. Resist the solutions offered by the politicians and the salesmen and create your own answers. Fly.

But free yourself to do what? Fly where? That's where the dreaming starts.

Releasing the fear makes you free — free to dream — dream of doing something amazing.

How do you apply this advice? It depends on what you're afraid of, or what someone else is trying to frighten you with. But it seems to me the process is the same in most cases. Refuse to be afraid. Now that your fear is under control, you can free yourself to consider many options or take the action you feared. Once free, you can set goals, objectives, dreams ... and go for it! (Whatever "It" may be.)

And then move on to the next fear ... rinse, repeat.

Resolving a contradiction that isn’t

2009-08-02T08:36:00.002-04:00

An old friend perusing these thoughts the other day admitted to some confusion about what appear to be some contradictions in my recent writings about consciousness.

On the one hand, I wrote about keeping your mind focused in the moment, because you certainly can’t control what happened yesterday and tomorrow literally doesn’t exist and never will. At any given moment there’s only now.

Then a few days later I wrote about asking what you would do if you knew you could not fail, and then I added guess what, you can’t fail — move on accordingly.

If we should live in the moment with no thought of a future goal, he asked, what’s the point of a to-do list or dreams or goals or the other stuff I’ve been writing about lately?

Good question; the hiccup is in coupling “live in the moment” with “no thought of a future goal.” (P.S. I think he grokked this, as his e-mail was titled “I’m confused...not really.”) Making a conscious attempt to stay in the moment is not the same as “going willynilly all over the place,” as he colorfully put it elsewhere.

In fact, staying in the moment can be a cure for willynilly syndrome. Often the moment has several demands — a conscious, constant attention to priorities can keep the mind focused. This electronic toy full of bells and whistles, on which I’m typing these thoughts, is a great example.

While I’ve been composing, it’s been playing the great album John B. Sebastian, and my mind has wandered to a variety of places that could have sent me to the search engine. (Whatever happened to the young lady who shared my passion for Sebastian and accompanied me to a couple of his concerts when we both were in high school? What was the story again of how the album was released on both MGM and Reprise records? Where did I put my Woodstock album anyway?) Meanwhile, my e-mail dinged; there’s a new message waiting.

But the current goal is to finish these thoughts. The needs of the moment were for me to stay on this page, typing. Staying in the moment is not incompatible with having a goal. I have started developing specific goals for where I hope to be in six months, a year, five years — but life is still what happens to you, moment by moment, while you’re busy making other plans.

My friend concluded with some great advice: “... if you are consciously trying to live in the moment, it is taking your mind away from its natural course, wandering, picking up, sorting and filing other ethereal information it meets in its travels.”

I agree that a little mind-wandering is necessary to maintain one’s sanity. A sense of direction helps prevent the wandering from being out-of-control willynilly; a sense of the moment helps the goals from being so rigid that we miss a sudden or subtle shift in priorities.

All of this navel-gazing boils down to this, however: I am here in this place now, and I control only my actions and reactions now. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I just heard a sound coming from the puppy’s direction that may need my attention ...

Delighting in serenity

2009-08-01T08:21:00.003-04:00

Another gem from Letter III of Tom Paine's Letters to the Citizens of the United States, in which the great freedom advocate sounded the alarm about those who wanted to convert the US of A into an Old World monarchy/dictatorship in 1802-03 (and later, some might say, succeeded beyond their wildest dreams):

There is a general and striking difference between the genuine effects of truth itself, and the effects of falsehood believed to be truth. Truth is naturally benign; but false-hood believed to be truth is always furious. The former delights in serenity, is mild and persuasive, and seeks not the auxiliary aid of invention. The latter sticks at nothing.

It has naturally no morals. Every lie is welcome that suits its purpose. It is the innate character of the thing to act in this manner, and the criterion by which it may be known, whether in politics or religion. When any thing is attempted to be supported by lying, it is presumptive evidence that the thing so supported is a lie also. The stock on which a lie can be grafted must be of the same species as the graft.

What's especially striking about Paine's letters is that, although the specific circumstances are different, the tactics of those who would assault individual freedoms haven't changed a whit. This is another example.

It seems to me that when you've touched on the basic truth of a thing, you experience the serenity Paine mentions. Any anxiety you might feel is more like an excitement of wanting or needing to share the truth. Truth does indeed have a "mild and persuasive" nature to it.

"Falsehood believed to be truth" is a different beast altogether. An intensity and even rage accompanies the demeanor of those who know they're right but maintain a sliver (or even a plank or two) of doubt. In its extreme, this is the anger of "We gotta round up them illegals and ship 'em back to Mexico before they finish ruinin' our country" or "That smoker over there in the corner is poisoning my air" and "The fight against climate change requires you to submit to the state, and how can you even doubt?"

Self-evident truth settles into the heart and takes up residence. Falsehood believed to be truth is the proverbial resounding gong or clanging cymbal. Again, it's Malcolm Reynolds and "I got no need to beat you; I just want to go my way."

The holder of truth knows that at some point, the truth will become self-evident even to the hardest to convince. The holder of the falsehood-believed-to-be-truth needs to convince, because maybe if he can find enough other people to believe the falsehood it really will be true. But a falsehood believed to be true by a vast majority is still false; that's the underlying frustration and the root of the fervor.

The truth "delights in serenity." What a wonderful phrase!

Letters to the Citizens of the United States

2009-07-31T06:29:00.002-04:00

The Jerome L. Wright essay to which I linked yesterday sent me scurrying first to my search engine and then to my library and a work I didn't realize I already possessed: Thomas Paine's Letters to the Citizens of the United States and Particularly to the Leaders of the Federal Faction. These are on pages 908-957 of The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume 2, which I obtained through the wonderful online archive of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

This morning I read carefully and joyously through the first two letters, the joy a result of the encounter with an unapologetically free mind. Paine wrote to remind the citizens of the new United States of the principles behind their revolution 26 years earlier, and to call out the faction that he saw as turning back those principles in the name of "federalism."

One of Paine's observations gave me a small modicum of hope:

There is in America, more than in any other country, a large body of people who attend quietly to their farms, or follow their several occupations; who pay no regard to the clamours of anonymous scribblers, who think for themselves, and judge of government, not by the fury of newspaper writers, but by the prudent frugality of its measures, and the encouragement it gives to the improvement and prosperity of the country; and who, acting on their own judgment, never come forward in an election but on some important occasion.

When this body moves, all the little barkings of scribbling and witless curs pass for nothing.

Do these people still exist, and are they "a large body"? It's difficult to say, given the results of the last several elections — indeed, given the results of most elections — although much may be concluded by examining how many people don't participate in most elections.

Our days are filled with "little barkings of scribblings and witless curs" who advocate chains for all but their anointed rulers — scribblings, and their electronic equivalent in this modern age. Do those who think for themselves still exist in sufficient numbers to make a difference?

And by "make a difference," I mean nothing more than to make the witless curs and anointed ones irrelevant. Freedom means the ability to say, as the great fictional Independent Malcolm Reynolds once said, "I got no need to beat you; I just want to go my way." Reynolds was a great example of Paine's people "who attend quietly to their farms, or to their several occupations."

Two hundred and seven years have passed since Paine wrote his letters, and the barkings have continued unceasingly. The embers of the flame he started with Common Sense still glow, often just barely.

The halls of government are filled with men and women anxious to extinguish those embers. They have grown fat and sassy on the backs of those willing to allow them to hold the reins of power; a little more Thomas Paine in our intellectual diets may be the cure.

But you are free after all

2009-07-30T07:41:00.004-04:00

There are a few ways to react when you read suggestions like "The Dark Years Are Here," which predicts: "Starting in the next 6 months and culminating in 2011-12 the world will experience a series of tumultuous events which will be life changing for most people in the world. But 2011-12 will not be the beginning of an upturn in the world economy but instead the start of a long period of economic, political and social upheaval that could last for a couple of decades."

And it would be easy to fall into dismay when you find a historical review that says, essentially, that if the words of the Declaration of Independence light a fire in your heart, the flame was extinguished when the Articles of Confederation were abandoned in 1789: "The assertion that Americans gained their freedom through the War for Independence (War for Sovereignty) is a myth, one that is highly useful to the federal State. The assertion that Americans have remained free is one of the bigger frauds in history."

The main things to avoid are discouragement and fear. As George Herbert eloquently put it when he wrote his Dune books, "Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration." And if we are indeed at the beginning of a long period of upheaval, if we have indeed bought into an illusion of freedom, the first thing we need is our wits about us going forward.

Herbert's Bene Gesserit chanted a litany against fear, of which the quote above is part:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

It's a sound process for cleansing the mind of fear's effects. Of course the future is scary; the unknown always is. But get your mind clear in this moment, and ideas about how to prepare will present themselves.

The rulers of this country have not been especially interested in maintaining citizens' political freedom — certainly not in recent years, by some accounts not for a couple of centuries and by this account not ever. And yet hearts and souls continue to jump at the idea of freedom, and millions of people have come to these shores over the years in pursuit of the relative political freedom afforded here.

I use the qualifier "political" freedom above, because the Declaration was correct: We each were born free. Free will and expression are the default settings of the human soul. Governments may be formed with an idealistic goal to "secure" those freedoms, but what governments do best is inhibit and crush free spirits.

But no government can change your mind. No government can make you afraid without your permission. Yes, a government has few qualms about interfering with your life, your liberty and your peaceful pursuit of happiness.

But you are free.

B.W.'s Book Report: They Thought They Were Free

2009-07-29T06:49:00.004-04:00

Milton Mayer's book subtitled "The Germans 1933-45" is a remarkable bit of work. Mayer lived in Germany for a few years after the close of World War II and wanted to know how ordinary folks could have allowed the oppressive regime led by Adolf Hitler to seize control of their country and their lives.

The title of the book says it all: They thought they were free.

Mayer writes about his friendship with 10 men and his conversations about their everyday lives in a relatively small town. He paints a plausible portrait of people only tangentially aware that their government was descending into totalitarianism and tyranny — because they were busy living their lives and it usually didn't affect them directly.

He is at his best when he compares the slow, insidious progress of the Nazi regime with everyday events of the early 1950s in the United States, when he wrote the book — always with the caveat that "not that we're as bad as Germany was getting in the 1930s, of course." For example, introducing the question of how millions of Jews could be spirited away without most people understanding what was happening:

When people you don't know, people in whom you have no interest, people whose affairs you have never discussed, move away from your community, you don't notice that they are going or that they are gone. When, in addition, public opinion (and the government itself) has depreciated them, it is still likelier that you won't notice their departure or, if you do, that you will forget about it. How many of us whites, in a white neighborhood, are interested in the destination of a Negro neighbor whom we know only by sight and who has moved away?

After a spellbinding couple of hundred pages in which Mayer outlines precisely how it may have happened — and writing around the edges of the similarities to, say, McCarthyism — he then spends the last portions of the book theorizing about how something in the German character made that country more susceptible than other cultures to the emergence of a Hitler. The writer is less convincing at that stage of the book.

But it's interesting to hear the Kronenbergers' descriptions and explanations of what life was like in the 1930s and early '40s, and to imagine how a free people could be drained of their freedoms without losing the sense that they were still free.

Standing in line to have their persons and property searched before they can proceed, answering questions they are forbidden by law to refuse to answer, applying for permits that will allow them to build on their own land, and standing in the rain smoking a cigarette, Americans can be heard to proclaim their country is the symbol of freedom around the world.

Someday, perhaps, a Milton Mayer will befriend 10 of us and write a book about everyday life in these times.

Dream: You cannot fail

2009-07-28T07:00:00.003-04:00

"Self-help" is an entire category of book; an industry has grown around materials that give people advice about how to live a more successful life. I think the reason more people don't find success is that they spend more time studying the principles than putting the principles into action.

One question I find frequently in such materials is: What would you do today, right here and right now, if you knew you could not fail? A corollary of the question: What would you do today, right here and right now, if money was no object?

The point of posing these questions is to remove obstacles to your thinking process. Too often creativity is held back by fear of failure or by the perception that a great deal of money is required to launch whatever endeavor you may be considering.

Therefore it's a liberating and exciting exercise to set your mind free by imagining you can't fail and/or that you can afford everything you need to succeed. But one more step is necessary to pop your dream over the top and into reality.

Imagine this: You're not imagining things.

You cannot fail. Money is no object.

I need you to ponder that carefully, I need that to sink in, so I'm going to repeat it.

You cannot fail. Money is no object.

When you set your mind on a vision that fires up your dreams, it's as if the forces of the universe align to make it happen. Try not to think too hard about why that's true, but understand it is true. Maybe it's simply that people sense your enthusiasm and are drawn to help. Maybe it's that catching the fire of your inner passion generates an energy that makes you do what's necessary. Maybe it's God; yep, that's how I envision it, but if you have issues with the idea of supernatural power, don't dwell on it. The important thing is overcoming the illusion that you might fail.

Just know that dreams are contagious. When you set your mind on a vision that fires up your dreams, something makes it begin to happen. Understanding that you cannot fail ignites the dreams.

Most people — if they even bother to go through the exercise and answer a question like "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" — feel a burst of creative energy, get in touch with their dreams and inner passion, and then step back and think, "Well, that was an interesting exercise. Too bad for all the reasons why I can't do that stuff."

The people who succeed find a way to stay in touch with that inner passion. They discover that it wasn't just a mental exercise.

What would you do today, right now and right here, if you knew you could not fail? Hang onto that thought, because here comes the kicker: It's true. You cannot fail. So you may as well get started.

The power of the to-do list

2009-07-27T06:37:00.005-04:00

Not long ago I put myself on a daily schedule, more or less. Frustrated by the frequency with which I allowed myself to divert from the routine ("Holy cow, I forgot to clean the kitty litter" and even "Doh! I was going to make myself breakfast"), I made myself a checklist of the things I want or need to get done every day.

I also availed myself of the calendar that came with my computer, mapping out my day in increments of time. I print out these two lists and keep them on a clipboard with me at all times.

Job one is to stay in the moment and keep focused on what the needs of Now are, and so I don't begin to panic when something distracts me from the task I set for, say, 8:30. But because that 8:30 task is on the list, I have a reminder in front of me to ensure my distracted mind is brought back to that particular thing to do. Except for those times when I'm scheduled to meet with someone else, the numbers are simply numbers anyway. As I write this and the clock says 6:09, 8:30 does not exist. The times I attach to the tasks are not as important as the reminder of the tasks themselves.

Yep, it's nothing but a daily to-do list, but checking off a list does add to a positive attitude. Making the list, and conquering it on a daily basis, puts me in control of the quotidian, not the opposite.

Modern conveniences, especially our powerful computers, do a marvelous job of fissioning our attention span. The ability to multitask is considered an admirable trait; indeed, we even invented that word, multitask. Sinking one's full attention into a single task, devoting all of the mind and soul and heart to one thing even for a little while, seems to be a lost art.

Keeping a list of the day's required tasks helps to screen out the unnecessary and bring the mind back to the important — especially when the important is not always the urgent. I have written down reading, prayer and meditation at the start of the day simply because my awakening mind cannot always remember exactly how I wanted to start every day, even when I have been doing it daily for some period of time. There are tasks that ought to be tended daily at the office, but I left them untended in favor of tasks that had to be done — and the less urgent but still important tasks piled up until they became urgent.

The list is a tool, a guide to focus my mind. Each check is a little success, a little mission accomplished, a little bit of the quotidian conquered. I am not a slave to the list, but neither am I free to ignore it. The mind needs a clear vision to keep moving forward, onward and upward, and the day so assails the senses that it's easy to get off the path. The list is a little roadmap made when the vision was foremost in my mind, and regular consultation with those two pieces of paper keeps the vision clear.

And I prefer the paper list to having it in electronic form. When I'm reviewing the list, it won't beep and remind me of something else that needs tending. Sometimes you need to pay attention. In fact, let me revise that thought: At all times, you need to pay attention. For me, for now, the list keeps me in the Now. You may find a tool that works better for you — but my humble advice is to find that tool.

Flowers for B.W.

2009-07-26T08:30:00.003-04:00

After admiring Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon since my sixties teen-age years, it finally struck me the other day why this story of a mentally challenged fella who becomes a genius and then falls back again is so compelling. (By the way, Keyes apparently posted Charlie Gordon's story in blog form - very cool!)

It's so simple that it took around 40 years for me to figure it out. We're all Charlie Gordon, except for the part where our brains are boosted in a scientific experiment.

We all begin with a childlike innocence and feel our way towards knowledge. We all fall in love with the teacher and gain knowledge and confidence and wisdom (hopefully) along the way.

And, of course, we all lose bits and pieces of our abilities as time inexorably takes its toll on our finite minds and bodies. In the end we are mentally challenged and childlike again.

So no wonder we (OK, I can't speak for you) - so no wonder I choked up and tears flowed as Charlie's mind slips away. Even as an all-powerful teen, something somewhere inside me sensed this was Every Man's Fate.

Great story. Fine movie, great performance by Cliff Robertson. And most of all ...

Uhh - where was I going with this again?

Free yourself: Be a puppy

2009-07-24T07:03:00.005-04:00

The puppy to whom I introduced you briefly a couple of months ago has three times the mass she did on that day, and all of this mass is in her legs. She is a 25-pound bundle of energy on her way to the 70-ish pounds of a typical golden retriever.

Dogs are intelligent creatures, and they can teach us some things about living with limits on freedom. Most of all, especially as pups, they live to test their limits.

She will run at breakneck speed as far as she can across the yard until Sweetie or I calls her name. This is how she learns it is that far, and no farther, before the property line is breached. A cat would not stop at that line: That is why the cats stay indoors 24/7, but we have given the dog the freedom to explore the property with us. (Gotta admire the cats' attitude, though.)

Much is made of dogs' desire to please their masters, but I detect a mischievous streak. All of the sitting and staying and coming when she's called seems to have a purpose — to win back more freedom, to expand the territory she can explore when she's not required to sit or stay or come. In the end, then, the ultimate goal is not to please me but to secure as much liberty as she can.

Of course, keeping me pleased also preserves her regular supply of that tasty and nourishing alternative to munching grass and sticks — I'm her main food source. But the default setting on her soul is freedom — just as it is with humans and every other creature.

Some consider the goal is to "break her spirit." Oh, no. What joy does a being possess or offer whose free spirit has been broken down and suppressed? Better that we reach an agreement where we respect each other's property ("Don't chew that, girl!") and follow our own needs and desires, cooperating when they intersect.

So while I am teaching her to sit and stay and come, she is teaching me something about living as free as possible in an unfree environment: Be a puppy. I pant with giddiness.

Gojira and the cuddly monster factor

2009-07-23T08:07:00.005-04:00

From time to time I wonder about the process that converted Godzilla into a series of movies that appeal mostly to children.

The 1954 Japanese film Gojira is a remarkable drama. Nine years after the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a creature emerges from the depths of the seas, shaken loose by the vibrations of nuclear bomb testing and mutated to unnatural proportions by the bombs' radiation.

A scientist has created a weapon even more terrible than an atomic bomb, one so horrible that he refuses to share the process he used to discover the technology and resists efforts to use the weapon against the giant creature, even as Japan's largest city comes under siege.

It's a movie about war, peace, violence and nonviolence, technology and the simple ongoing question: Just because something can be done, is it right and just to do it? A very thoughtful and important movie with fantasy and science fiction elements.

Gojira was repackaged as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, for distribution in America, and each and every one of its more than 20 sequels has been mindless child's play. One almost has to wonder: What was so dangerous about the ideas in Gojira that it had to be so trivialized?

But then — scary monsters are often transformed into cuddly children's toys. Look at the stark and poignant story of the man built from parts of other men by Dr. Frankenstein. The iconic image of Boris Karloff in his monster makeup eventually became Herman Munster.

Perhaps it's simply a natural reaction to looking into the depths of the soul and finding darkness. We step away, we dress up the darkness with childlike innocence, and we look the other way. A person can only spend so much in the dark before needing a little sunshine.

Conspiracy to suppress dangerous ideas didn't turn Gojira into Godzilla. We just need to be reassured that things that go bump in the night are just bumps.

Action and reaction

2009-07-22T06:24:00.004-04:00

This week is the anniversary of perhaps the most horrific moment of my professional career. I was working for a small family operation that fought for years against a competing firm owned by a huge corporation. The owner of my company passed along to us his deep distrust and perhaps even hatred of our big competitor. I believe I was a good soldier in his little army; in many ways I still consider that huge corporation a blight.

This week a few years ago, the owner drew us all together to tell us he had given it all he had and it was time to sell the company — to the huge corporation.

What they say about fight-or-flight is true. It did feel like the room was spinning. I was torn between fleeing the room in anger and disillusionment or staying to defend the remnants of the family company that was my home-away-from-home until, it turns out, a few hours earlier when the sale was finalized.

As I stood along the wall, I glanced down at a woman who was taking notes: At the top of her pad were the words, "In 100 years, none of this will matter."

The words settled me down dramatically. I didn't exactly laugh, although the moment suddenly felt more humorous, but I did grasp that although I had no control over the action that had just been announced, my reaction was entirely under my control. The situation still seemed untenable, but calm reason started to flow back into a corner of my heart.

Courage to change the things I can; the serenity to accept the things I can't; the wisdom to know the difference. At least I had the serenity down. Mustering the courage is always the dicey part of that equation.

Looking back over developments since then, I have mixed feelings. I could have and perhaps should have mustered the courage to turn over a few money-changing tables in the temple. If I had indeed fled, I would have worked through the consequences of that action by now. But again, those moments are past and today presents its own challenges.

From the news of the world to our own backyard, we will be presented today with actions that no doubt will challenge our core — on the grand scale, tyranny is afoot in the world and nation; on the smallest of scales, no matter how we plan to spend the day, something unexpected will divert us from that course. For the most part you can't control those actions, only your reactions.

A practical example: My coffeemaker malfunctioned and the day began with brown liquid all over the kitchen counter instead of in the pot where it belonged. As I sopped coffee off the floor, I found the seeds of this little essay. Now, let me see if I can find a way to tackle that tyranny ...

Tend to this moment; it's all we have

2009-07-21T06:56:00.006-04:00

Sitting by a window at this house in a small woods on a cool summer morning, naturally the main sound outside is the call of a bird — several birds, of course. Sinking into the moment, one is suddenly struck by the realization that the moment is all there is.

There is no time. Yesterday is a collection of moments like this. They cannot be retrieved; what's done is done. Tomorrow will be another such collection; it cannot be accessed, not yet, not ever.

A joke I heard from Barry McGuire, who tonight (according to his Web page) plans to be across the country in Port Townsend, Washington, home of Liberty magazine and a town I would like to see someday:

Guy walks into a bar (as so many guys do in jokes) and sees a sign: "Free beer, noon tomorrow." All right, sez he, I'm coming back to this little gin joint.

The next day right before noon, he walks in, plants his hands on the counter and says, "Line 'em up. I'm ready for the free beer." Bartender looks at him as if he's nuts. "What are you talkin' about? There's no free beer today." To emphasis their arguments, they both point at the sign: "Free beer, noon tomorrow."

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow doesn't exist. Only this moment is real.

What does this moment require? Consider the needs of the moment, and act.

When Barry talked about this, it reminded me of the cover of a book, years ago when I lived in the 1960s (oddly, I now see it was published in 1971): Be Here Now. It has always sounded like as good a good philosophy of life as can be summarized in three words. He talked about encountering the idea in The Sacrament of the Present Moment, written 350 years ago by a priest named Jean-Pierre de Caussade. I ran out and found the priest's book; it is slow going but it is amazing if a person is so inclined.

Here's the gist of it: Only this moment is real. You have control only over your actions of this moment. What do you need to do? Do it. Do you have a task that appears too much for you? Do you think you can handle it just for this moment?

Barry spoke in the context of a man who was trying to stay sober. He asked the man, Do you think you can keep from drinking just for this moment? "Sure, that's not so hard." OK, How about this moment, now? "Yeah, I can do that." And now this moment, can you keep from drinking for this moment? Great. You're doing it.

Each day is a collection of moments. Stay in the moment at hand, do what the moment requires. Don't fret over past moments; you cannot change what happened then. Don't fret over tomorrow; tomorrow doesn't exist yet — and if you tend to the moment, the needs of future moments will become self-evident. Stay in the present moment.

Preserve the embers; stoke the fire

2009-07-20T06:36:00.006-04:00

The beginning of the wage-slave week often brings a fresh fire and a sense of resolve. The past two days have been filled with quiet moments, away-from-the-quotidian moments, active moments, refreshment of personal goals, and thoughts of reinvention and renewal. Then one enters the quotidian pace, and the clock must be tended. ("Or must it?" your soul cries from its rapidly diminishing quiet place.)

The trick, often not accomplished, is to maintain a hold on that fresh resolve. Too often it's abandoned by noon Monday. There are deadlines to make, papers to push, soil to be turned, clock hands to turn. During the course of the day, the resolution becomes a quaint memory; what began as a confident shout of joy becomes a faint, desperate whisper. Morning triumph leads to evening defeat. No wonder so many medicate themselves to sleep.

Essential to success in living, then, must be finding that Monday morning optimism and drive on Tuesday morning. I find mild success by posting little reminders on the face of my computer, brief sayings from two of my favorite outlaws.

One is a resolution I have written about before: "Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: I shall not fear anyone on Earth. I shall fear only God. I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering."

The other is from an outlaw I haven't quoted often because I don't claim or desire to be an evangelist and don't want to be confused with one; however, it's foolish for me to pretend I am not influenced by these words, so take them simply as an explanation of my motivations: "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

Renewal is an everyday task. Stoking the fire requires a constant vigil. Life is an endless struggle against forces that will beat you down, but only if you let them. Your greatest power is control over your own personal actions and reactions.

These two writers spent their share of time in prison cells for holding beliefs that transcended the politics of the day, and for putting those beliefs into action. Perhaps the memory of those cells helped them maintain that Monday-morning confidence; no doubt it also left them sometimes in despair. But they maintained long enough to make a difference for the ages.

Preserve the embers of resolutions you made when you had a clear vision of your dreams. Some nights the embers are all that's left, but they contain the seeds of an ongoing fire.

R.I.P. Walter Cronkite

2009-07-17T20:58:00.003-04:00

Inevitable as it is, it's a shame when a great one passes, and in many ways the death of Walter Cronkite at age 92 today is the passing of an era. I doubt there'll ever be a TV news person with the influence Cronkite had — or at least the trust that he wielded with the audience.

Not many news readers nowadays qualify as bona fide journalists — not meant as an insult, it's just not part of the skill set. Cronkite was a journalist.

Appropriate perhaps that this comes as people are marking the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, a moment when Cronkite's boyish enthusiasm got the best of him and he crossed over from the serious reporting of the news to just enjoying the marvel.

Life is either ...

2009-07-15T06:56:00.001-04:00

“Security is mostly a superstition.

"It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

Helen Keller

Happy 40th anniversary (shameless plug)

2009-07-14T00:01:00.003-04:00

I sat on my bed and listened to the big Hitachi transistor radio that my parents had bought me for Christmas 1968. An announcer at NASA ticked off the altitude as the craft drew closer to the moon, then a pause, and then: "Uh, Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed."

What better way to mark the 40 years that have passed since July 20, 1969, than to get your own copy of a fabulous retro science fiction novel that includes some key scenes and, um, earthshaking events on the moon itself?

Yep, it's a shameless plug for my first novel, The Imaginary Bomb. Ain't I a stinker?

In the beginning ...

2009-07-13T08:09:00.004-04:00

When I started this blog, I thought that with a name like "Montag" and a subtitle like "and the clocks were striking thirteen," I should make a minimum commitment of posting every Monday at 1 p.m. It's not 1 p.m. yet - oh, sure it is. It's always the 1300 hour somewhere.

In my introductory note, I mentioned libertarian themes and lists of pop culture stuff, so I'd already set the parameters.

I find a good way to introduce myself to people is to give them lists ... my favorite books, favorite movies, favorite TV shows, favorite musicians.

Of course, if a mind is engaged those "favorites" tend to shift and change. Billions of people live here, and millions have made books, movies, TV shows and music. Funny, though, a person keeps going back to the old and familiar.

Radio once gave music lovers a way to explore new territory. Now I'm finding Internet streamers are where the adventure is. I recently found Folk Alley, and I have their stream going as I type this. Mark O'Connor is playing "October Impressions." Very tasty. Highly recommended.

No, I'm not reflecting on the beginning as a way of saying this is the end. Au contraire. It's a bit of a renewal. Glückicher Montag.

Greetings from 1966

2009-07-12T15:20:00.005-04:00

I am standing in the cashier's line at a discount store. There is a new Beach Boys album in what today we think of as the impulse-buy rack. I'm excited — if the album contains that wild new song I'm hearing on the radio these days, I will gladly slam that thing down on the counter and pay the $2.74 for this thing.

But I'm disappointed. Sure, the album has "Sloop John B" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice" from last spring and summer, but there's no sign of "Good Vibrations." And the cover photo, of the band feeding a bunch of animals at a petting zoo, is pretty lame. No sale today.

I love the new song, but I haven't been a hard-core Beach Boys fan before this. They're my older brother's band. Maybe someday I'll buy this one, but it's not going to be high on my priority list unless they have a string of tunes like "Good Vibrations." It never occurs to me that it might be 35 years before I actually purchase and hear this album in its entirety and recognize how cool it is. My next album purchase will instead be "The Monkees." Not that there's anything wrong with that!

It occurred to me the other day that each and every one of us is a time machine, carrying sights and sounds and smells and tastes of a long-ago time on the biological hard drives that are our brains. From time to time we access that drive and do our best to communicate what it is we see, hear and smell in our storage device. That communication gap is the main problem: I can't just upload my first encounter with "Pet Sounds" to YouTube. But it remains one of those watershed moments nonetheless.

2009-07-08T07:43:00.002-04:00

"It is one of the great jokes of existence. When people take the courage to journey into the center of their fear, they find — nothing. It was only many layers of fear, being afraid of itself."

— Peter McWilliams

what so proudly we hailed ...

2009-07-03T08:43:00.001-04:00

... at the twilight's last gleaming.

When they turn off the Web, the man with pencil and paper will rule

2009-07-02T07:22:00.002-04:00

Every so often I wander over to jomama's regular compilation about the end of civilization as we know it, for a reminder that the government is broke and eventually we will need to invent new ways to earn our daily bread — or return to old familiar ways.

Perhaps I'm naive or vaguely insane, but it almost sounds like fun.

The great relief of having sudden dancing

2009-07-01T18:17:00.000-04:00

I needed this today.

Teeny little Hitlers

2009-06-30T09:23:00.003-04:00

For tyranny to exist, sometimes you don't need one big despot like Hitler, when thousands of teeny little Hitlers are willing to be petty tyrants.

Officials at Chicago's O'Hare airport told 17-year-old Jon Meier the chewed-on document was fine, but authorities in Miami rejected it and wouldn't let him board the southbound aircraft.
His family's 1-year-old golden retriever, Sunshine, chewed a corner of the document, obscuring some numbers.

And thus was Peru spared the terror of another high school Spanish student invading its borders. I feel so much safer with these sentinels of liberty patrolling our airports.

The coming universal health care

2009-06-29T08:23:00.005-04:00

"How will we pay for it?"

We will pay for public sector health care coverage same way we do for private sector health care coverage: Those who can afford to pay will be billed for the expenses incurred by those who can't afford to pay. And the more expensive care will be rationed.

The only difference will be that the government will collect the money and ration the care by force, as opposed to insurance companies performing those tasks on a more-or-less voluntary basis. Many people think this will be an improvement; they will be sorely disappointed.

Peter Townshend summed so much of life and government up in the triumphant conclusion of "Won't Get Fooled Again":

Meet the new boss;
Same as the old boss.

The only caveat I might add is that the new boss is almost inevitably worse than the old boss, especially in matters of government.

Meanwhile, in Washington and state capitols everywhere ...

2009-06-25T19:45:00.002-04:00

"Quick! While the world is distracted by Michael Jackson ... pass that bill, raise that tax, strip those liberties — they won't notice until it's too late!"

How many egregious laws will be traced to legislative action of June 26, 2009? I bet lots.

Freedom's more than just another word

2009-06-25T09:18:00.004-04:00

As our rulers huddle behind closed doors, hammering out their plans to confiscate more of our money and set down more rules they expect us to follow, it's incumbent on us to remind ourselves that freedom is the default position of human beings.

One of the most electrifying documents in human history asserts that it is "self-evident" — true beyond any reasonable doubt — that we are all "created equal ... endowed ... with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," and that governments derive their powers "from the consent of the governed."

Governments do not grant freedom; they can only restrict the freedom we have from birth.

To be continued ...

Let's get several things straight

2009-06-23T21:59:00.002-04:00

1. Pitchers should take their turn at bat.

2. The only time an American League team plays a National League team should be in the World Series.

3. Hank Aaron is the all-time home run king. Roger Maris is the single-season home run king. Records "earned" by mutants injected with bovine growth hormone should be expunged from the books.

And one more thing ...

Life imitates art

2009-06-20T21:02:00.000-04:00

And then NEXT summer ...

2009-06-17T19:18:00.002-04:00

I'm sorry, I can't imagine a story better than the second one ... but it sure was fun to hear the aliens go "Ooooooo" again ...

In the news

2009-06-16T06:02:00.002-04:00

It's a small moment in a big picture, but I remember being thrilled and surprised at the point in To Kill A Mockingbird where Atticus Finch leaves for a couple of weeks for the annual meeting of the state assembly, of which he is a member. Two weeks out of fifty-two: Now that seems a reasonable amount of time for elected officials to gather and discuss how they will meddle in their constituents' lives.

I am one of those increasingly rare persons who is paid to follow, report and comment on the news. So much of the news has become monitoring and reporting on the actions of the government. Now, I'm not saying that the government doesn't need monitoring, but I'm increasingly convinced that the most important news is usually not what the government is doing.

In fact, the government is generally powerless to do anything beyond throwing a monkey wrench into the natural course of human activity. And so bodies like the state assembly gather regularly to assemble their monkey wrenches and determine where to throw them.

What if the news gatherers looked for evidence of worthy human activity beyond the confines of the village hall or the state capitol? At some point they, and we, might reach the conclusion that the best of us happens despite the government and that, in fact, those who would run our lives are little more than a nuisance to progress.

B.W. At The Movies: Up

2009-06-07T18:22:00.004-04:00

Love makes us do astonishing, amazing things.

Things that surprise even us.

Things that push us past what we thought were our limits.

Things that are utterly, literally fantastic, i.e., things that exist only in the realm of fantasy.

Love ties us together; it makes us understand ourselves and how much we need each other.

With themes like that, Up qualifies as the most, er, uplifting story in many a year.

It's the story of an old man, his absent late wife, a young boy, a dog and a bird — and what they're willing to do for love. It's hysterically funny, heartbreaking and heartwarming.

It's made by the folks at Pixar, which has put out so many great stories that it must be considered the contemporary corporate home of master storytellers. Another home run into the next county.

And I always try to remember the short at the beginning of the evening; the Pixar folks remember how much fun it was to have a cartoon with Road Runner, Bugs Bunny or even Pepe LePew before the main feature. Partly Cloudy is a sweetly creative turn on the old myth that storks deliver babies — it probably started with the question, OK, if storks deliver babies, where do they get the babies from? As always, the short warms up the audience with a healthy dose of bellylaughs and sentiment, softening us up for the story of Carl, Ellie, Russell, Dug and Kevin.

Refuse to be afraid of mistakes

2009-06-03T08:33:00.000-04:00

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

— Elbert Hubbard

The best miracles ...

2009-06-02T08:28:00.002-04:00

Suddenly, when he least expected it, came a burst of beauty from the small patch of prairie flowers he planted last summer.

This little white flower inside the purple star is a columbine. Last fall he considered the columbine one of the season's small failures; now he realized that those August plantings had come after this particular flower's blooming season.

The best pleasures in life are the unexpected delights that you had to reason to suspect was coming. Or the ones you shoulda know were coming ...

Would you buy a car from this guy?

2009-06-02T08:07:00.006-04:00

Associated Press said it best:

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a defining moment for American capitalism, President Barack Obama ushered General Motors Corp. into bankruptcy protection Monday and put the government behind the wheel of the company that once symbolized the nation's economic muscle. The fallen giant, the largest U.S. industrial company ever to enter bankruptcy, is shedding some 21,000 jobs and 2,600 dealers. Sparing few communities, the retrenchment amounts to one-third of its U.S. work force and 40 percent of its dealerships.

"A defining moment for American capitalism"? Under what definition of capitalism does the government own 60 percent of one of the largest corporations in the country? Don't worry, I know the answer; it's a rhetorical question.

As Mr. Obama assumed the reins of General Motors and touted the smaller, more environmentally sound cars that the new GM will bring to the people, I couldn't help but recall the grainy film images of another powerful leader who coaxed automakers into producing the People's Car, or as they said in his language, the volkswagen.

Maybe it's because I'm currently plowing through Milton Mayer's brilliant book, They Thought They Were Free. No, I'm not saying Mr. Obama is a 21st century version of Mr. Hitler. Yet.

Checking in to say hello

2009-05-28T09:01:00.002-04:00

I got nothing to say today.

I got lots to say today.

Much has been going on.

Not much has been going on.

The dream spigot is turned on and overflowing.

The "where do I start?" blockage is clogging things up.

I am my own plumber.

I'm working the plunger.

Stay tuned.

Ecclesiastical moment

2009-05-19T08:16:00.003-04:00

To everything there is a season. A time to say goodbye to an old friend, and a time to greet a new one.

She's adorable. She's a bundle of energy. She's exhausting.

Everyone should have a puppy. (Click on the photo for a closer look.)

Staying focused

2009-05-15T07:26:00.002-04:00

I'm going to pull dare2befree's comment from Thursday out of the comment section because it's so perfect (and this software makes you click one more time to find comments so you may have missed this) ...

Thank you. Your post had wonderful timing for me today.

Allowing yourself to be paralyzed is a choice. It can be hard to stay focused, but it is easier when you are able to recognize the fear as what it is. See it, analyze it, learn from it, and move on.

refuse to be afraid - dare to be free

The interesting thing is that dare2's post had perfect timing for me.

I've been a little scattershot lately. The lure of the Web is that you can be in the middle of a project and, if your mind wanders, you can be reading about something else in seconds. Why focus on the task at hand when you can be somewhere else entirely?

In the sense that procrastination can be an expression of fear, this wild wonderful Web (like any other instrument!) can be an instrument of fear. The next time I'm paralyzed by another review of Star Trek or even a worthy essay about freedom when my task is to finish my own writing, I'll think back to that thought: "Allowing youself to be paralyzed is a choice."

Everything is a choice, even the choice to make no choice. That's why freedom is our default position — every moment we are faced with choices and free to make one. Choose to be free — dare to be free!