Jing-reed's Musings from Thailand

Liberating the spirit

It was shortly after my 16th birthday. I had some months before begun attending a Saturday morning Catechism class to compliment my public school education during the week.
Sister Mary Catherine had just whacked my outstretched palm severely. My hand immediately turned bright red and the pain was intense in that she really packed a wallop with her trusty and well-used ruler.

I had been so bold as to question her interpretation of one of the ‘mysteries’ as outlined in our small Baltimore Catechism text. She was really big on ‘mysteries’ and anything she didn’t want to, or couldn’t, explain was automatically labeled a ‘mystery’. It was not the first time that day I’d questioned her, and evidently her patience was on a very short fuse. A ‘mystery’, as she had informed us before, with her tightly-pursed lips, was to be accepted as an ‘article of our Catholic faith’. Obviously she felt my faith was lacking, and in addition I may have appeared to her to be a impertinent, provocative little shit with far too many questions, so . . . whack!

That night, as we sat outside in the warm California evening, I told my mother that I would not be returning to Catechism on the following Saturday, and then softly added, “or ever again”. I hadn’t yet gotten around to mentioning my run-in with Sister Mary Catherine earlier in the day.

After a few minutes of silence she quietly asked if I believed in God. I immediately imagined that this was to be the prelude to yet another of my mother’s long-winded, filled with “logic”, discourses. Then I nodded my head in the affirmative, and began to silently formulate an explanation as to my reasons for believing in a Creator. Should I parrot the rather simplistic examples in my Baltimore Catechism or attempt to explain how I personally encountered God on a daily basis within all of nature? She put a single finger to her closed lips indicating that I didn’t have to defend my position.

So, with no further fanfare, she smilingly concurred that my Catechism days were over.

And in that silent action, my mother had just presented me with the greatest gift a parent can bestow upon a child. The freedom to think — embodying the freedom to question, and the freedom to formulate personal decisions about life.

Have just finished reading “One Man’s Bible” by Gao Xingjian. A beautifully written book and I have it to thank for having triggered the remembrance of my mother’s gift.

From the Salon review:

“If Gao Xingjian, author of the fictionalized memoir One Man's Bible, worships at the altar of any god, that god is freedom: freedom to love, freedom to explore, freedom to express and freedom to live.

And also, the freedom to remember.

"It was not that he didn't remember he once had another sort of life," Gao begins. "But, like the old yellowing photograph at home, which he did not burn, it was sad to think about, and far away, like another world that had disappeared forever."

These remote, sepia-colored ghosts of another era — another self — grow increasingly vivid as Gao, now a successful writer and artist living in Paris, allows himself to surrender to the memories of his life in China just before and during the Cultural Revolution.
. . .
Yet fictionalized though this memoir may be, it rings true, pure and deep, revealing astounding insights about human nature under duress, the dueling urges to express oneself and preserve oneself, and the tremendous value of freedom, life, emotion and self-discovery. It is a frank, unstinting look at one man by that same man, many years and many experiences later.

It is as if the writing of the book itself is an act of defiance, an act of freedom. And it is this urge to examine and express to which Gao attributes his hard-won escape from oppression.

"It is this consciousness of your self, this awareness of your own existence, that is to be thanked, for it is through this that you were able to save yourself from your predicament and suffering," he writes. "A person cannot be crushed if he refuses to be crushed."

So perhaps, in the last analysis, the god of One Man's Bible is not freedom, but an awareness of self — and the urge to communicate it; this is what frees us. And if there was something liberating in the writing of this book, so too is there something exhilarating in the experience of reading it.”

They're in love. . .

. . .They're gay. They're penguins… And they're not alone.

Wendell and Cass, two penguins at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, Brooklyn, live in a soap opera world of seduction and intrigue. Among the 22 male and 10 female African black-footed penguins in the aquarium's exhibit, tales of love, lust and betrayal are the norm. These birds mate for life. But given the disproportionate male-female ratio at the aquarium, some of the females flirt profusely and dump their partners for single males with better nests.

Wendell and Cass, however, take no part in these cunning schemes. They have been completely devoted to each other for the last eight years. In fact, neither one of them has ever been with anyone else, says their keeper, Stephanie Mitchell.

But the partnership of Wendell and Cass adds drama in another way. They're both male. That is to say, they're gay penguins.

This is not unusual. "There are a lot of animals that have same-sex relations, it's just that people don't know about it," Mitchell said. "I mean, Joe Schmoe on the street is not someone who's read all sorts of biology books."

One particular book is helpful in this case. Bruce Bagemihl's "Biological Exuberance," published in 1999, documents homosexual behavior in more than 450 animal species. The list includes grizzly bears, gorillas, flamingos, owls and even several species of salmon.

"The world is, indeed, teeming with homosexual, bisexual and transgendered creatures of every stripe and feather," Bagemihl writes in the first page of his book. "From the Southeastern Blueberry Bee of the United States to more than 130 different bird species worldwide, the 'birds and the bees,' literally, are queer."

In New York, it's the penguins.

At the Central Park Zoo, Silo and Roy, two male Chinstrap penguins, have been in an exclusive relationship for four years. Last mating season, they even fostered an egg together.

"They got all excited when we gave them the egg," said Rob Gramzay, senior keeper for polar birds at the zoo. He took the egg from a young, inexperienced couple that hatched an extra and gave it to Silo and Roy. "And they did a really great job of taking care of the chick and feeding it."

Of the 53 penguins in the Central Park Zoo, Silo and Roy are not the only ones that are gay. In 1997, the park had four pairs of homosexual penguins. In an effort to increase breeding, zookeepers tried to separate them by force. They failed, said Gramzay.

Only one of the eight bonded with a female. The rest went back to same-sex relationships, not necessarily with the same partner. Silo and Roy, long-time homosexuals, got together (or pair-bonded, in official penguin lingo) after that failed experiment.

At the New York Aquarium, no one suspected Wendell and Cass were gay when they first bonded. Penguins don't have external sex organs, so visually there's no surefire way to tell whether they are male or female. But over time, people began to wonder.

In all the years they had been together, neither Wendell nor Cass laid an egg. This was unusual because the keepers knew they copulated regularly. They had often seen Wendell submit to Cass, the more dominating of the two. But one day, a keeper saw Wendell on top.
When penguins have sex, the female lies on her belly and the male climbs on top with his feet and puts his rump around her rump. Then their cloacas (sexual organs) meet, and the sperm is transferred into the female. It's called the cloacal kiss.

Wendell and Cass were clearly kissing both ways. So in 1999, the aquarium did a blood test to determine their gender. It proved they were both male.

Today, they are one of the best couples at the aquarium. "Sometimes they lie on the rocks together," Mitchell said. "They're one of the few couples that like to hang out together outside their nest."

Wendell and Cass have a highly coveted nest. During mating season, several other penguins have tried to steal it. Cass, a fierce fighter, kept them at bay. (Wendell, on the other hand, is "afraid of his own shadow," said Mitchell.)

The appeal of their nest is the location: high up, close to the water and the feeding station. Rumors that they keep the neatest nest at the aquarium because they're gay are not true.
"These are penguins," said Mitchell. "They poop in their nest. Nobody's got a clean nest."

[By Cristina Cardoze

Homeland Security Advisory

Best to be aware of the latest from that most necessary of all government agencies, Homeland Security, which no doubt gobbles up untold millions of your tax dollars annually publishing color coded drivel. And which any dolt with a computer and a paint program can do just as well, although the remuneration probably isn’t quite the same.

Well, as you can see, currently the advisory is sort of hovering between green and blue, so the official advice is to just VIGILANTLY VEGETATE, or to VEGETATIVELY BE VIGILANT. Your choice depending on how safe you feel with the ongoing battle between St. George and The Evil Ones.

However, if you feel more inclined to choose the RED button don’t forget to first hunker down and breath real fast before launching into a full fledged panic attack.

Tuning In . . .

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
 Do not believe in traditions, because they have been handed down for many generations.
 Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.
 Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in religious books.
 Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all then accept it and live up to it. “

— Buddha

Please note that this post is NOT a holy-book-thumping means of proselytizing, but rather simple observations.

Basic Buddhist teachings point to the benefits of looking inward for the answers to life’s underlying questions. Many years ago I spent time in a Japanese Zen monastery [long before the word or concept of ‘zen’ had entered the popular occidental lexicon] and part of our daily discourses was that no one ever ‘got it’ by listening to long winded speeches, studying the ancient texts, chanting the sutras or any of the other paraphernalia connected with the religious life. Sort of an oriental philosophy of ‘questioning authority’. It was continually reiterated that ‘Realization’ had to come from within.

You may consider it little more than eastern bullshit, but it has always made a lot of sense to me.

Preserve Your Right to Privacy

The traditions of liberty and freedom bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers are in danger.

Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act gives the FBI virtually unlimited access to bookstore and library records. Further, Section 215 makes it a crime even "to disclose to any other person that the FBI has sought or obtained tangible things”.

The Government NOW has the power to obtain secret court orders to learn what you read in libraries, and buy in bookstores. This power has not made one American family safer, and threatens the cherished freedoms American soldiers have fought and died for since 1776.
Laws to curb this threat are now before the US Congress, supported by more than ONE HUNDRED FIFTY US Senators and Representatives - Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Your Senators and Representatives truly WANT to hear from YOU today.

Add your name to a petition telling Congress to restore your right to privacy.

Begone !

More religious wrangling. This time it concerned a performance of Tibetan Monks in Grand Rapids. They were to perform in the Basilica of St. Adalbert as arranged by the Tibet-Michigan group. Seems that the traditionalist Catholics of St. Margaret Mary church in Allendale got all in a zealous dither and decided to put a stop to this ‘blasphemy’.

“The monks were performing at the Basilica of St. Adalbert in Grand Rapids when members of the St. Margaret Mary Church in Allendale started a protest.

Members of the St. Margaret Mary, who call themselves traditionalist Catholics [Hey, its Mel’s band of fanatics], but are not recognized by the diocese, were unhappy that people of another religion were performing in the basilica.

Now Tibet-Michigan, the group that brought the monks to Grand Rapids wants St. Margaret Mary to pay $300 in damages to make up for the concert’s advertising costs.

Local news talked to father McMahon on Wednesday who is a pastor at St Margaret Mary. He says his group has nothing to apologize for and that the monks performing in the basilica was offensive to God.”
_______
Oh yeah, sure. God probably gets real twitchy at the sound of Tibetan Monks chanting, especially in a Catholic Church, which is naturally his favored spot (of the 80 zillion squabbling Christian sects) for humans to pay him proper adulation. And presumably He much prefers some lugubrious, traditionalist organ ditties, or perhaps the angelic voice of some well hung choir boy.

Never ceases to amaze me how these pompous twits know EXACTLY what God likes — and doesn’t like. No doubt they have a direct line to Papa God and talk with Him daily about whose ass they should kick next (in His behalf of course).

Only in America . . .

Poor Mel and his buddy J.C. have been replaced by zombies and Aramaic gives way to grunts and slobbering. Still blood and guts, but of a slightly different sort.

As MTV pointed out, it was a scenario that only Hollywood could have come up with when a gaggle of zombies attacking humans in a shopping mall replaced Christ and the Via Dolorosa as the number one box office ticket.

Of course Mel and company, in their 3 week stint at the top of the U.S. movie heap, brought in more than 293 million smackers. And a bit of news surfacing, also befitting of Tinsel Town, relates that Papa Gibson is a bit left of center field since he:
    —denies that the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million Jews ever took place
    —vehemently claims that the Catholic church has been abducted by anti-Popes
    —and Osama bin Laden wasn’t responsible for 9/11 . . .
Along with, no doubt, other choice bits of patriarchal wisdom.

The Guardian presented it well.
“For Gibsonologists the key cine-text is his romance of the American revolution, The Patriot (2000). The film certifies Gibson's loyalty to the fatherland (America) and to the father generally. It's the fifth commandment in celluloid. Mel plays a ferociously patriotic patriarch, Benjamin Martin ("Mad Dad"), father of many children (Gibson's father, incidentally, had 11; Mel he has seven, and is still going). The patriot's sons disobey him only to realise that their father, at the end of the day, is the fount of all moral wisdom and temporal power.”

And in a related bit of information, Mexico [where the Pope reigns as King] has finally decided to allow viewing of the 1988 “Last Temptation of Christ” which has been outlawed South of the Border for the last 16 years. When I moved to Mexico in 1990 I arrived with my video copy of “The Last Temptation”, which I felt was a beautiful and very humanistic film in that it sees Christ's struggle as a human struggle, and showed it to all of my more liberal Catholic friends at the University where I taught. None of them could understand why it had been banned by the government.

Elementary. Religion and politics just don’t mix. Simple case of oil and water — holy or otherwise.

Happy Vernal Equinox !

That special time when the day and the night are of equal length. The herald of spring in the northern hemisphere, and of autumn south of the equator. A bit late in celebrating this year, and getting out my greetings, since the Spring Equinox arrived a day earlier than usual, as it does every four years. Calendar magic and Leap Years. Then too I seem to have become infected with T.T. [Thai Time], similar to the Mexican “Mañana Syndrome”, only more pronounced.

Big holiday amongst the ancient, and probably even with contemporary, ‘Pagans’. But like most pagan holidays the early Christians usurped them. With a bit trickery on the part of those busily inventing the New Testament, they managed to get Jesus born right next to the Winter solstice on December 21st and then crucified right after the Vernal Equinox. Not especially clever since nearly all the religious groups in the Mediterranean had already been using those dates for millennia.

Now how the Easter Bunny and his eggs got mixed up in the action is related to the Saxon goddess of Eostre. Seems that at one time she was saved by a bird whose wings had become frozen by the icy cold of winter and in the process was turned into a hare. But no ordinary bunny this one since it could also lay eggs. Although curiously the Christians didn’t officially recognize the date until the Council of Nice decreed in 325 AD that Easter was to fall upon the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox.

“Shinbun no hi” is the Japanese version. An official national holiday and time to visit the family gravesite and do a bit of spring housecleaning. Here in Thailand it heralds the arrival of the coming New Year’s Celebration [Songkran, on April 13] which was originally celebrated on the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox.

This home that we share

“Ten years after the ratification of a United Nations treaty on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming are still on the rise, signaling a "collective failure" of the industrialized world, according to the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI), a leading environmental think-tank.

"We are quickly moving to the point where the damage will be irreversible," warned Dr. Jonathan Pershing, director of WRI's Climate, Energy and Pollution Program. "In fact, the latest scientific reports indicate that global warming is worsening. Unless we act now, the world will be locked into temperatures that would cause irreversible harm."

WRI researchers estimate that greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide rose 11 percent over the last decade, and will grow another 50 percent worldwide by 2020. Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement that sets out specific targets to follow up on the treaty, 38 industrialized countries were supposed to reduce their emissions by an average of seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The administration of former President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, but President Bush withdrew the U.S., which currently emits about 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, from negotiations over Kyoto's implementation. The Bush Administration has refused to sign it.

. . .

“Even the Pentagon recently issued a warning that global warming, if it takes place abruptly, could result in a catastrophic breakdown in international security. Based on growing evidence that climate shifts in the past have taken place with breathtaking speed, based on the freshening of sea water due to accelerated melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps.

Given enough freshening, the Gulf Stream that currently warms the North Atlantic would be shut off, triggering an abrupt decline in temperatures that would bring about a new "Ice Age" in Europe, eastern Canada, and the northeastern United States and similar disastrous changes in world weather patterns elsewhere--all in a period as short as two to three years.
Wars over access to food, water, and energy would be likely to break out between states, according to the report. "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life. Once again, warfare would define human life."

Despite all of Washington’s rhetoric it would appear that they really aren’t concerned that our home planet, the place where we all live, is in danger. All other problems, personal and political, pale in comparison — and yet . . . the Bush Administration has refused to sign it [Kyoto Protocol]. ‘IRREVERSIBLE’ in the context of planet-wide climate change is not a pleasant concept, nor one which can be ignored.

Tidbits

Ever wonder what is really in those frozen fish sticks? Recycled cardboard with a bit of fish oil — carefully blended pig, cow and fish guts? Since the unholy matrimony of the chemical industry with the food industry and the added imaginative prowess of the advertising industry’s artfully disguised ‘list of ingredients’, what you are eating is just about anybody’s wildest nightmare.

Beefed-up Chicken“Ever wondered whether your chicken has been bulked up with beef or pork extracts? Or if your burger contains mice or even bits of people that fell into the mincer? Thanks to a single test that claims to reveal the presence of meat from 32 different animals, these questions can now be answered. The test is based on a DNA chip called the "FoodExpert-ID" chip and its main use would be to ensure that meat products are what they say the are and don't contain anything they shouldn't. . .”

And then there is news of some really fresh feline food:

Grinning Grimalkin“Our delicate nature forbids us from reading the grisly details of US patent application 4150505. The title, as reader Dave Woolf points out, already says it all. It's "Bird trap and cat feeder" . . .