Autumn, Guggenheim, Iraq, Hope of Man

Friends and Kin:

It’s

six a.m.

,

26 August 2005

, promising another steamy impossible day, but promised also is some relief in the fall which is not too far away. Unfortunately the weather in our fair part of the planet stays irreconcilably hot until the end of October most years.  There is something about reaching September that relaxes the taut nerves that have been resisting the heat over the past months. I think of cool mornings, sweaters, change.  We really don’t have great seasonal change in this part of the South, as enjoyed in other parts of the country.  The change is subtle with maybe a freeze or two in the winter, but invariable choking heat in the summer.

There is a change in the light that takes place about now; a mellowness that is barely perceptible, but a subtle difference in the shadows and the hues of things as the planet tilts just so away from the harsh blaze of the sun. I once wrote a poem about it:

Autumn

I felt the season change today.

There was a quickening.

The air and spaces seemed to move and tighten.

The landscape became more remote, more compact

   as  through the wrong end of a telescope

There is a slight drawing inward.

A semi-sweet contracting welcomed introspection

Like coming home to a snug house, warm clothes,

        after being too long abroad.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Probably the most joyous time of my life was when I was painting. While at L.S.U., from 1953-57 before going into Law School, I bounced around grasping at whatever came my way, trying to make sense of things, trying to learn the world like a blind person trying to feel everything with his hands.  Still am.  With seventy years of feeling about I have some insight thanks to having stumbled upon a few major truths.  I know now that I could have developed my artistic side and been a professional painter, for everything I see is a tableau of beauty that should be shared through a canvass.  The dozen or more oils I created were more satisfying, though not great by any means, than any other effort I have ever made. 

I am certainly not an art critic but some art that I saw in the museums of Paris, Florence, Venice, Washington, were absolutely breathtaking for the artists saw what I see every day in the world around me, frozen in time, poured through the artist’s brush through his soul for me to see.  I didn’t think that Mona Lisa was so great, though Napolean is said to have kept it in his bedroom for years. If I can be so stunned and enthralled by a painting as to sit in front of it in a mesmerized state and have to be pulled away by the demands of the physical universe, something fantastic has transpired---an event has occurred in my universe that may not have been planned by the artist, but I was able to somehow join that long dead artist in his connexity to what he was perceiving. I think that is called nearly perfect communication. It is near to being a physical phenomena for me, it is so intense. So my lack of appreciation for Mona doesn’t mean she isn’t fantastic---it just means that I don’t feel it. But I do have, and have no hesitation in sharing, my own views of certain modern art. Some “modern” art, aesthetic patterns, color collages, arrangements of symbols are pleasing and delightful, creating emotions or feelings that transport and deliver from the ennui of the day.  Some are just downright stupid or even disturbing. I can and will comment on modern art, though. 

Dr. Richard Levy, a neurosurgeon in New Orleans whose proclivity to make sure the insurance company always won by testifying that the injured plaintiff was not hurt, made a fortune in helping insurance companies make their stockholders smile.  In spite of this, he and I became friends. He had a half dozen paintings on his office walls that he said were done in

Russia

, and would be extremely valuable. He bought them for some outrageous price for the investment.  They were white canvasses with broad strokes of black, done in a very disturbing manner, as if the artist may have been either insane or fooling.  If Art is designed to stick in your memory, these pieces did, and if I wanted chaos, these would do the trick. Whew!

What started this rant was the following little morsel in The Writer’s Almanac this morning.

It's the birthday of art collector and patron Peggy Guggenheim, (books by this author) born in

New York City

(1898).

My son Tom, who was then seventeen, and I spent nearly three weeks in

Europe

in August 2003.  We caught one of those fabulous European trains from

Paris

to

Venice

, a sleepless overnight adventure I won’t soon forget. While in

Paris

we met a lady who was the curator of the Guggenheim museum on the

Grand Canal

in

Venice

.  She gave us a special invitation and I decided to go see what it was all about.  Evidently Madam Guggenheim, heir to a diamond fortune, appreciated modern art for she spent a bunch on the museum, considering the prices I saw on those smears, lines, scratches, splatters on canvasses in that museum at the water’s edge. I couldn’t believe how cold and utterly ridiculous the whole thing was, and how in my own humble opinion this very rich lady had been bilked out of lots of her fortune by these fortune hunting “artists” whose incomprehensible efforts were no more to me than meaningless dobs on a board, or a dot in the middle of a white canvass or visa versa---all in the name of Art.  Finally, as we listlessly wandered through the sterile halls I spotted a door leading to the relief of open air on the Canal, and there, finally, was a piece that made some sense.

My friends:

I don't think I am confused, but I would like to have some stable thinking ground to stand on about

Iraq

. Before the invasion, I was on Jim Engster's "

Louisiana

Live" call-in radio show, which broadcasts to the four corners of the state via around twelve stations. I questioned the invasion because there was talk about Weapons of Mass Destruction, and I simply asked for proof.  I was pummeled by callers who were offended by my temerity in questioning our Cowboy Emporer's motives, when I said that it  was all about oil, Cheney's interests, etc. If it was to end the reign of a tyrant, why not invade Zimbabwe, and there was no doubt that North Korea had weapons of mass destruction and the lunatic there was rattling sabres, and Iran had smoking guns everywhere in their attempt to build a bomb.

So why are we in

Iraq

?  The logic I hear is we are keeping the terrorists from our shores by spending the lives of 1800 American boy and unthinkable amounts of our tax money to military-industrial interests. Has this effort stopped or slowed Al Queda?  Why can't we find Ben Lauden? (spelling).  Don't we have the finest and most well financed and state of the art intelligence in the world?  What have we achieved by destroying and now having to rebuild an entire nation?  How sweet the picture of those ragged little children being able to go to school, and women being treated better.  Hooray. But the true story is about corruption, waste, and all the horror stories that the press evidently doesn't disseminate.  I am sure things are "better" in

Iraq

because of our monstrous expenditures of life and resources to make things better.  But is this logical? 

So help me here, my friends, in thinking about this. I am serious.  I love my country. When I hear

America

The Beautiful I cry.  When I see the stars and stripes waving in the breeze I feel proud and straight up and feel taller. I spent three years serving my country in the

U. S.

Army. I just want to feel good about what my country is doing, and would like to have a real reason we are there, as I haven't been given one. Maybe that is not required, as a citizen of this Republic, but I want a reason so I can feel great and say this is the right thing to do. Yes, I know, these terrorists and the entire craziness of the insane religious militancy cannot be dealt with as we have dealt with any of our previous enemies for they use heaven as their reward to kill us. I know it is a mess and I am sure, not being privy to the inside think and political machinations that proceeded the invasion, that there must be some logic other than curtailing terrorism.  If it is shown that terrorism in this country is born in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by taking over those countries we are saving American lives here---yes I am for it. I haven't read enough, watched enough TV, or been convinced that it is working or is the real reason for our presence there.

My humble opinion, through these limited views gleaned from limited study of the news, is that the Saudi family, which is only a small part of the biggest oil producing country in the world, is on our side. That is the source of much of our oil. They were teetering, as

Iran

and the other neighbors were integrating efforts to topple the Saudis from power.  That would be devastating to this country.  So we just went in to get a base, a foothold to protect our energy source and in the meantime rid the world of a bad guy, all the while fooling the gullible American public by proclaiming the existence of weapons of mass destruction, etc., knowing all the while the public would buy what was sold. Lagniappe was more oil in

Iraq

and control of the area.

With

China

’s exponential growth, its hunger for oil will soon match ours, and the price will continue to shoot up to six dollars a gallon.  We cannot compare our need for oil to

Britain

,

France

or the continent, for we are accustomed to driving long distances in our transport and personal vehicles, and there, as in

Italy

, they get around in public transport or Vespas.  This could be devastating to our already overburdened people whose air conditioning goes all day, Sequoia’s gobble at 10 miles a gallon and eighteen wheelers burn it at incredible rates racing along the highways. Americans, spending 102% of their income monthly, with no savings, no reserves, and loaded with credit card debt, cannot stand another hit. So as an imperialist, I really don’t mind our being in

Iraq

if this is the reason---to protect our ravenous population to continue with this energy source and not really seeking alternatives.  Why not natural gas?  It is in abundance.  We better get smart. So why didn’t the president and his cronies just admit that we are going there to protect us in other ways than militarily, for we are Americans and deserve to continue to consume and use up the world’s major fossil fuel supply at the enrichment of that few.  That’s OK. Just keep our cars running, our people placated and fairly happy economically for a while as we teeter on the edge thinking that somehow financial salvation from some other source will be there, smiling, like Angels with gifts, and we won’t have to take responsibility for our constant irresponsibility. The mortgage and financial planning business gives me insight into people’s personal finances like I had never had before, and the scene is grim indeed.

My sister Susan, and her husband, Stan, were with CONOCO, in the sixties and seventies, and were in

Dubai

when the first well was drilled and the first barrel of oil was extracted from those desert sands.  Here is what she had to say about this:

Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and many, many of the other little countries in that area love us, I have friends that live there, you just get the VERY Liberal Press coverage that tell us what they would like for us to believe.  The Iraqis like us,

Iran

young people wish we would do the same for them as for

Iraq

, on and on and on.  Just very, very, bias and liberal press coverage, as I do have friends in some of those areas that can not believe as to how things are covere

Here are some responses to my query about

Iraq

. I like Neil Ferrari’s eval. He’s my fearsome CPA.

Some thoughts on why we are there:

1. The United Nations has no balls. Had they had the guts to enforce their resolutions we probably would never have bombed

Iraq

.

So, in order to make sure the renegades of the world get the message, we invaded to make them think twice before ignoring future resolutions.

2. Despite the UN, had the major nations stood behind us and helped us call

Iraq

's bluff, we probably would never have invaded

Iraq

. Those nations also have no balls because they wilted to threats of "bombings" and terrorism from a hand full of bandits.

Britain

is the exception.

3. The Arabs have never learned how to behave like civilized people down through history. They keep making the same dum ass mistakes. Always have and always will. If they would just calm down we would probably leave or never show up. However, they have a few who like the "power" and the ones that are in the money over there and want to keep their money, so they"accommodate" the ones that want the power, which keeps the merry go round going.

4. National security and indirectly world security. They have people crazy enough to blow you up in the mall and in doing so set off a chemical bomb that will have big time economic devastation. So, knowing they have idiots like that, I'd wipe them out too. But I would be more like General Patton. In fact, had he been involved this deal would have been over very quickly.

5. If we have a presence in the area, then they can't mobilize like they could if we were not there. Plus we can infiltrate them better and head off the bandits at the pass.

6. All this

Iraq

stuff is just a minor piece in the big scheme presented in the Book of Revelation. I don't hold myself out as a Billy Graham, but I do know that

Iraq

catches a load of shit as prophesized in this book. So, maybe all this shit is supposed to go down like this irrespective of the politicians.

I am sure there are plenty of other reasons, but these are the ones that came off the top of my head.

However justified in attacking them, which I think was deserved along time ago (I'd have done the job the first time we went there), I personally think we are not there to be policemen which is what we are doing and getting our men killed unnecessarily. If the politicians would back off and let the army do its job, we probably would have suffered fewer deaths. For example, why do we let them drive cars around and blow up people. I'd tell them no one drives if any car bomb goes off. The first time a bomb went off, I'd have them walk or ride camels. As to the roadside bombs, I'd grab a bunch of the prisoners each day and have them form a line a half mile long and walk in front of any of our vehicles. They will step on the bombs and blow themselves up first. We are not imaginative enough to get them to cut the shit out. I think we should get out of the police business. The army did what they were trained to do.

So as you can see, I can understand the motive but I disagree with the current method of attending to them after the major conflict.

If we leave, no big deal. The first time they step out of bounds, send the big bomber over them to remind them that we are still in the neighborhood.

Hope this sheds some light.

Neil Ferrari, CPA

-----Original

LD,

Nice to here your pen. We are there because there are mass quantities of oil and the

US

now has access to them and our ecconomy does better with a war as a distraction.You have to put on that red neck tee shirt and give war a chance.  Realize this is one * up government.We need to raise the Tone and show that there are other ways to prosper.fc

All I can say is what I believe. Though there may be shades of reasons in
all, I believe we're not there because of oil. We have plenty from other
sources.

We are not there because of bad intelligence though that could have been a
piece of the puzzle.

We're not there because Hussein is a bad guy who murdered his own people -
unless we have an unequal foreign policy which will pick on one tyrant and
ignore another. there have been much worse men and greater atrocities in

Cambodia

and

Africa

.

If we're there because 9-11 (a true act of war) required a hard, definable
target, it's backfired PR wise.
If we needed a place to demonstrate our overwhelming strength in a 'standard
war' we did that with precision ordinance but demonstrated that guerilla
warfare cannot be stopped by standard military action.

If we went to war to demonstrate that we are not paper tigers, the
prevailing thought in the Arab world after we did next to nothing after
decades of attacks from the bombing of the barracks in Lebanon onward, we
did that, and perhaps gave other countries pause to think, as with Libya and
possibly Iran and Syria, (not to mention the first real election shaping up
in Egypt)

I believe Iraq cannot be understood without looking at the global picture.
But, as warfare is international psychosis, I don't believe there is a
rational answer, only justifications, and that conspiracy theorists are
mainly engaged in figure-figure.

My two cents, LD, for what it's worth.

ML< Thom

Two things:

1.  If you were Bush and you thought there might be WMD in

Iraq

what would you do?

     a.  Hope for the best and do nothing?

     b.  Go in as soon as possible to stop what might well be a bomb, small pox, nerve

         gas that would be used against us?

2.   Oil.  Like it or not this country runs on it.  If we control

Iraq

we control a huge supply of

      oil we may well need.

      

Perhaps Bush was trying to show

Iran

that this might be how they  will wind up if they don't get in line.

Unlike

Vietnam

I don't think we can "cut & run" now.

I enjoy you wisdom

In friendship...........Ben Taylor

---------

I don't think any sane person wants his fellow countrymen, parent, son, daughter, friend, to be killed at any time let alone in a war.

I suppose the only way that I can answer your question is to simply state that I do believe that we are all ready in WW3 against Muslim extremists.

While in the military, I spent a year in

Turkey

which is one of the more "progressive and modern" Islamic states.  I met many people there who sincerely told me that one day, the flag of Islam would fly over all of the earth and then there would be peace for mankind.

I don't think that I will change your opinion no matter how strongly I feel about the matter.  Nor do I see you being able to change my mind.

I do not think that a fanatic can be bargained with.  He doesn't give a hoot whether I agree with him/her or not.  The killing of any number of people in the name of Islam is completely justified, no matter how many of those people have nothing to do with the backward medieval state that so many of those countries stay in, because their leaders siphon off the wealth for themselves and the military, and blame all of there woes on the West and the USA in particular.

I do not doubt your love of country.  I feel that it is your right or mine to speak our different opinions. 

I also believe that the war on terror is similar to the war on crime.  I don't think that it will ever end BUT I do beleive that this country is better off fighting the terrorists who have flocked to Irac.  I also think some perspective is in order.

Yes, we've lost 1,800 of our finest in

Iraq

over the past few years.  We also lost approx. 3,500 of our people on 911 in a matter of a few hours. 

Kindest regards,

Jim

LD,

    You are right it is the same illogic that was used to get us into

Vietnam

, i.e., to stop the domino effect of countries going Communist. Lest we forget we put the rascal into power in

Iraq

, he was in exile in

Egypt

at the time, and was brought back by the CIA and given a list of Communist sympathizers to eradicate, which he did in his ruthless fashion. He was Bush seniors friend in the

Middle East

and given billions of dollars to build his army, but the plan backfired as usual. You know its amazing to me that our politicians can get an SP into power and then wonder why he becomes our enemy  later.

We must always remember that it is not Muslims against Christians it is simply and always SP's on both sides creating havoc. I love this country too, and what it stands for but we have to differentiate one thing. As we know from the PTS SP data, the 

US

has between 6 to 7 million SP's within our borders, and they are doing everything they can to do us all in and so we find similar numbers on the Muslim side. That is the real enemy, not something simple and obvious like a difference of religious beliefs or skin color.

Its is not logical for these reasons above, in this particular case I feel it is about oil, with 70% of the world's oil reserves in the Middle East, our leaders are PTS to this fact and know that if the Middle East stops pumping oil, within weeks we have anarchy in the US as nothing will be moving and people will starve.

Alex

L.D.

The decisions that the President makes are based on information that we do not have access to. It is secret. It is impossible to even have an opinion without knowledge.

The little knowledge that we have is propaganda and distorted by the media. There could be a good and justifiable reason for us to be in

Iraq

. But I can't tell you what it is.

A friend of mine suggested that the anti-American sentiment is being instilled into generations of youth over there. If we don't change that (perhaps by creating an American-friendly deomocracy in the region), we would be doomed by the future generations of suicide bombers.

It could be as simple as that. It this were the truth, it might be an acceptable reason (our future survival), but would not be supported by the public. It is a lot easier to get people to rally against weapons of mass destruction.


Scott Menaul

StarWorks Photography

2820 Chelsea Place

 

North
Clearwater

,

FL

 

33759

Yes, I agree.  It wasn't as purported.  I figure it was to win in one of the following main games these days:  arms, drugs or oil.  Maybe it was all of the above.

Hans Eisenman

So that is a long overdue Rant.  If I can get up early enough I will do more.  These days, I arise and am in my chair by

7:30

and that is when the wheels begin to roll.  I have, with the help of my goodwyfe Amelia, whose excitement about our new business equals mine, created a whole new business.  I was approved to take my life/health insurance exam this week. Amelia has her originator’s and Life/Health license and will be taking her securities exam soon.  So will I. Mine was held up by

Louisiana

politics but now is freed thanks to good legal representation and the testimony of good men who know me well as to my character and worthiness to be an insurance producer.

I pay for and we have a mortgage seminar at the Comfort Inn every three weeks, then one on one presentations of it plus one on one presentations of our business plan during the interim plus training, etc. We sent out 500 or more letters about the meeting next Tuesday on the 30^th of April, and I have ads in the paper with a testimonial. I am hoping it will yield a big crowd who will want to talk to us about our services. The last meeting on the 9^th gave us a very satisfactory return. We are growing incrementially and I anticipate, in a year to be a major force in the area in financial planning and mortgage originations.

Here’s a quote from L. Ron Hubbard.   “Where the public at large turns away from religion, they don’t really know what they’re turning away from. But where they turn away from it, they are turning away from its impracticality and that’s all they’re turning away from.”

This comes from his lecture, The Hope Of Man, where he praises the great religious leaders of the past, such as Dharma,

Krishna

, Lao-tzu, Buddha.  “Whatever trappings have been hung upon their words, we don’t care.  Whatever technology they had, has certainly been lost.  Nevertheless, they did hand on this message to man. They said, ‘There is hope, you can be better. This life is not all there is, and somehow or another it is all going to come out all right in the end.’  Without that hope, I do not think man could have survived this far down the track.”

Have a fabulous, unserious day.  This is only a spot on the great graph, only a thread in the woof and warp of the great loom, and you are the weaver, the loom, the thread, and the floor it sits on.  So you can make it beautiful.  Make it beautiful.  You are beautiful.

I have been putting some rants onto a blog, www.sledge.typepad.com.

L D Sledge

Yarnmaker

Rantor