uninspired

I don't know what it is. I've been down and uninspired since coming back from India. I went there to get away from the U.S., hoping to experience a culture untouched and unbothered by materialism, greed, money, etc., where spirituality was real and powerful. But that's not what I found. I found people who wanted to be like Americans, who wanted to have all the "stuff", eat Domino's pizza, commercial pressure to turn from their healthy idlis to cornflakes, god-awful MTV-like music videos, and a spirituality that was much more superstition that heart-felt. I can't get the Love up anymore. I feel I need to be steeled and hard. I see a world gone to hell and nobody cares. I see evil politicians getting away with ripping off the planet and nobody can do anything about it. I feel like blowing things up. Like Hanuman destroyed Lanka.

Iron Man

I had a slow week, with docs gone to a convention, so I decided to go to the movies. I saw Iron Man. Dang, what a great movie! I went again the next day and it was even better. I ended up going five times and it was better each time. Robert Downey Jr. ought to get an Oscar for that one. Anybody see it?

record snow turns into record melt

equals huge, fat, rushing river! This is the highest I've ever seen the Spokane River.

floored by beauty

hoar frost © Louise McGilviray #3334109
Pictures just don't capture the beauty of hoar frost. I tried it with words after my morning walk a couple days ago:

* * *
Early morning sun on thick hoar frost
blinding brilliance from a thousand dancing rainbows
Glittering diamonds perched in every frosted crevice
transforming every bare branch, seed pod, and
every blade of dead grass.

The hawthorn tree's three children
hang close,
chickadees in their hair.

* * *
Here's hoping there something beautiful for you to experience today where you are.

XXOO
Malcha

Yes I'm back in the U.S.

Sorry for the lack of communication. Yes, I came back in September. I went around town and took a bunch of pictures before I left. Posted some if you want to check them out. On my last day I went and gave money to the widow ladies who sit in front of the Shiva temple. They never ask for money, so I figured it was okay. They wanted to touch my feet. I gave the security guards in my building a 500-rupee tip and they cried. I asked my friend Reyka how much they make a month and she said 1000 rupees. Guess I'd cry too if someone handed me half a month's pay. Made me feel thankful. Made me feel wealthy. It was only 12 dollars to me.

The trip home was very long. Singapore Air is great, but it's 13 hours from Singapore to San Francisco. With five screaming babies the whole way. I caused a scene in every airport for refusing to put my laptop through the metal detector. I said xray is ok--metal detector is not ok. They said see--everyone is putting their laptop through. I said I don't care, I"m not putting it through. They gave me a hard time, but didn't make me do it. It was kind of fun. The Singapore (Changi) Airport is certainly the most beautiful I've ever seen.

So, arrival in San Francisco. The first thing I see is something I hadn't even realized I'd been missing---lesbians! Yes, I'm home! Interestingly, the biggest difference, on being home, that took me the longest time to get used to, is the silence. No horns honking. I mean, ever. I go days, weeks, without hearing a horn honk. In India, there are horns honking every second of every day. The cars here seem to drive so slowly and orderly. And quietly. Amazing.

It was great to see my kitties, my daughters, my granddaughter, my sister, my friends. My house plants. My kitties didn't know me at first and I was very sad. I think I just smelled very different. But the second I fired up a doobie, they remembered me.

So I have a new hobby. Shooting handguns. I've been going down to the sharpshooters range, renting different guns and practicing with them. I want a sig sauer, but will have to save up for it. Meanwhile I have a S&W 357 revolver that I can play with. I don't know why. Must be the books I've been reading, where the guy really knows his guns and talks a lot about them (Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels). Got me interested. Plus the times, you know, and this *is* Washington. . . I'm also going to take a karate class with a friend of mine. I went to watch her at the dojo and it looked like so much fun that I signed up. I did karate about 25 years ago and really liked it. And I was pretty good too.

All the news for now. Hope you guys are all well. Sorry for not tribing for so long. Happy Thanksgiving!

"a lonely voice of clarity"

Folks, *this* is the man we need running the U.S. It could happen. Spreading the word. *No corporate ties*.

Kucinich Sounds the Alarm

Thu Aug 16, 12:53 AM ET

The Nation -- Dennis Kucinich may not be a front runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But the congressman from Cleveland has succeeded in distinguishing himself from the other contenders when it comes to speaking those truths that are self-evident.

And in an era of mass delusion and denial on the party of leaders in both major political parties, stating the obvious can be a radical act.

Such is the case with Kucinich's appropriate answer to the latest move by the Bush-Cheney administration to ramp up hostilities with Iran. That move -- the unprecedented attempt to label Iran's 125,000-strong Republican Guard as a "specially designated global terrorist" group -- is, as the congressman says "nothing more than an attempt to deceive Americans into yet another war -- this time with Iran."

No one who has paid even the slightest attention to the Bush-Cheney administration's approach to Middle East affairs can doubt that Kucinich is right. Yet, his is a lonely voice of clarity amid the din of Democratic obfuscation that aids and abets this White House's worst instincts.

"The belligerent Bush Administration is using this pending designation to convince the American public into accepting that a war with Iran is inevitable," argues Kucinich.

"This designation will set the stage for more chaos in the region because it undercuts all of our diplomatic efforts," he adds. explaining that, "This new label provides further evidence for Iran's leaders that there is no point to engage in diplomatic talks with the United States if our actions point directly to regime change."

Delivering the response that should be coming from New York Senator Hillary Clinton, Illinois Senator Barack Obama and especially from Delaware Senator Joe Biden, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he isn't campaigning for president, Kucinich argued that, "Our nation is better served by demanding sensible and responsible diplomatic foreign policy initiatives from the Bush Administration."

Kucinich, who has proposed impeaching Vice President Cheney for continually prodding the country toward an unnecessary war with Iran, may not get the political credit he deserves for calling out this administration. But history will recognize him as the man who sounded the alarm when the Bush administration moved America closer to the brink of disaster.

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John Nichols' new book is THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders' Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson hails it as a "nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the 'heroic medicine' that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to 'reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.'"

Month Three in India

This is why I love Mysore: Hanuman is Everywhere!

I've been in India three months now, the last two in Mysore. I'm feeling quite at home. I made a nice friend in the building where I live; her name is Reyka. She's from Calcutta but lived many years in Eritrea, in Africa, where her husband worked in a copper mine. Everybody is so friendly. Folks are used to seeing me around the neighborhood and smile and wave when I walk by: the mango man, the sabzi ladies, the clerks in the supermarket, the security guards, the flower ladies--just being friendly, no pressure to buy; they get a lot of business from me. The nice old man in the bookstore is always happy to see me (I buy a couple books a week) and helps me with my Kannada.

Couple of trippy things about Mysore: (1) I have never heard a police siren. (2) There are guards with shotguns outside the banks and ATMs. (3) We have 86 hours a year without electricity. I'm getting used to the power outages. I'm getting used to getting up in the middle of the night to start my work day (medical transcription, done over the internet, but the docs I transcribe for are all on Pacific time). I'm getting used to hand-washing my clothes and rather enjoy it. I know there are folks I can pay to do that for me, cheap, just like there are folks who will iron and folks who will clean my apartment and cook for me, like Reyka has, but I'm not comfortable having servants. One thing I'm *still* having a hard time getting used to is the fact that pedestrians do *not* have the right-of-way! Gonna get myself killed one of these days. . .

On a recent walk, I found a liquor store and bought a bottle of French red wine. I found a bakery that sells wonderful fresh whole-grain loaf bread and didn't realize how much I missed that soft doughy yeasty taste. I even found dark Swiss chocolate, but at Rs. 175 a bar I won't be buying it very often, or the wine which was a couple hundred rupees. I can buy two weeks' worth of groceres for less than that! Amazing. The cost of living is *so* low. In the U.S. I spent about $100 a week on groceries. Here I spend about 100 rupees, which is about $2.50. So although I can certainly afford wine and chocolate, the relative expense compared to everything else really makes them luxury items, to be bought infrequently and savored slowly. I imagine if a candy bar or bottle of wine in the U.S. was the equivalent of two weeks' worth of groceries, or $200, there would be a lot less obesity and alcoholism.

Anyway. That's enough for now. I hope you all are enjoying your lives and savoring the good stuff. Peace out.

Mysore's Molly Malone

This is my favorite sabzi wallah. I try to go to others too, spread the wealth and all that, but I like this one best. Then there're the ones who wheel their cart down the street, shouting "Sab-zeh! Sab-zeh!" and for the rest of the day my mind is humming "Sweet Molly Malone"! If you don't want to be humming it the rest of the day, stop reading now! ;-)

In Dublin's Fair City
Where girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheel barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying "cockles and mussels alive, alive o!"

Alive, alive o!, alive, alive o!
Crying cockles and mussels alive, alive o!

She was a fishmonger
But sure 'twas no wonder
For so were her father and mother before
And they each wheeled their barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying "cockles and mussels alive, alive o!"

She died of a fever
And no one could save her
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone
But her ghost wheels her barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying "cockles and mussels alive, alive o!"

Hope you're all eating your fresh fruits and veggies!

Mysore

(my neighborhood Shiva Temple)

I had to leave Kerala last week because of some difficulties with internet connection. Mysore is a wifi city, the first wifi city in India, so I came here. The drive over here from Kerala was fantastic. My driver didn't speak English, so it was very meditative. We came over the Western Ghats, which were incredibly beautiful, and came through a couple of wildlife preserves where I saw wild elephants and monkeys. The scenery on the eastern side of the ghats is different, less jungly, more spread out, farm lands and rice fields and tea plantations. Lots of banyan trees, which I just love, and a little bit of space between trees, not so claustrophobic. I really love Mysore so far. I stayed in the Hotel Dasaprakash, right downtown next to the big Devaraja Market, for four days waiting for my next paycheck before moving into the apartment I found the first day I was here, with the help of a friend (named Hanumantha!) who is a friend of the brother of my driver in Kerala--it's very helpful to have connections! So here I am, in the section of town called Jayalakshmipuram, and this beautiful Shiva Temple is half a block away from me! Everything I need, banks, grocery store, etc., is walking distance. I also brought my bicycle with me from Kerala and I'm going to go exploring today. The weather is milder here; I can go out for a walk or a bike ride and not have to change clothes when I get back! And the people here are super friendly.

More later. I hope you are all well.

Hanuman Temple in Makreri

This morning I visited the amazing, thousands-of-years old Hanuman Temple in Makreri. There is a lake there that Hanuman made with his tail! Hanuman Himself is the main pujari, the other pujaris work with His permission only. The energy there is truly amazing, indescribable really. It is tucked away off the main roads and away from towns and the drive to get there was fantastic, as we had a big rain last night and everything was fresh and clean and green. Here's a website that tells the story of the temple: www.makreri.com/index.php

Bolo Bajarangbali Hanuman Ki Jai!