The Mother Tree of Life – Kihei, HII am a tree–felled by ax, thunder storms or bad ideas.
Mainly boys, carve into my bark. Ouch!
Don’t they know I bleed?
The uncut tree numbers are less each year,
leaving no bark to carve.
The shade is disappearing.
So, plant me in a well-stocked sub or pod
with all the tress I love and we will float away.
A(wo)men.
Like a lotus–opening….
Lead singer/songwriter Conrad Reeder’s band from 1986 – 1992. Various members, with songs written by Conrad & Sandra Kaplinsky/Garszva.
Mixed/Mastered by Roger Nichols.
Buy the track “Wildlife” by Reeder/Garszva here: 
Around 7AM I spotted these Zebras clumped sleeping together on a dead palm bloom. They love this one woodsy area of my yard and seem to prefer dead branches–must not be slippery. The temperatures dipped in the 50s. Maybe they are cold.
I love these little guys.
It is astounding how little the ordinary person notices butterflies. — Nabokov
Is this adult Zebra drying wings, activating pheromones, signaling for mates, or all of the above? Not sure, but I love to watch them in my yard in Jupiter, FL.
At any time of day, dozens of these Zebra Longwings are luxuriously fluttering around the yard in Jupiter near their favorite spots. Zebras are considered to be brainy butterflies; Heliconius being the only known butterfly species to eat pollen. They live 4 to 6 months and forage along the same route every day, as if following a trap-line.
Their caterpillars feed on Passion Vine
and Milkweed Plants that produce a cyanide from which the Zebras derive their nasty taste–a neat trick to keep the birds from snacking on them–hence their leisurely flight.
Nervous Clouded Sulphurs must fly erratic, streaking straight up and criss-crossing the sky in a yellow blur to avoid being lunch for a Scrub Jay, but Zebras sip their nectar and nibble on pollen like lazy tourists nursing a daiquiri.
WARNING! The following text uses improper punctuation, bad English and useless metaphors, and should not reflect on the writer’s ability to write well.
I really, really shouldn’t watch TV, especially cable news. The Big Bang Theory is laughable, House, oh House is gone, Weeds lost me two seasons ago, but I missed a lot of TV over the last couple years. Long story.
To: TV Network Shareholders, CEOs et al
From: Me. I find the Drug Company ads scary, offensive and possibly an attempt to induce subliminal messages to not even the sub-conscious part of our brain, but to the awake brain. Regardless, who wants to hear words like diarrhea or suicide or renal failure in the same sentence?
And, the political Super PAC Ads are misleading, generally amateurish and just plain annoying. How much did that ad cost? Isn’t the treasury gone? What’s left to grab? Redundant? You betcha!
Lately, life has been one big pain for me, and many others I know. 
And, since this is a blog and not an academic paper I can insert hyperbole at will with a Huzzah or saturate this entry with quotations, alliterations, fragments and all the gd-dmn elipsae I please… … … … … … .
Anyway, Cable News finally FRIED my brain. 
I knew this addiction would get me in the end. Now there are video war games that look and sound real, but in 1990 I watched a “live war”–the prequel to the decades of real war to follow. What was I thinking? It just seemed cool in a weird sort of SHOCKING way that this war, the first Iraq war in 1990 was live on the “new” satellite TV.
And, the “new” company that brought this war into my living room, my kitchen, my bedroom…was CNN—created by Ted Turner in 1980. That’s a longer, bigger story.
But why did my head explode? From sheer disbelief and disgust at the amount of crap on cable news. Most of FOX news is truly nauseating, but on CNN, in less than one hour tonight, I listened to an interview with Dan Rather and Jack Welch. Dan thinks the 2012 Presidential Election will bust another bank and sink our glorious nation. I like Dan Rather, but come on…is he kidding? Did he have his head in a bubble during the 1968 election?
And heeerrre’s Jack! “Private equity creates quality jobs.” What quality jobs? Where’s all my (our) money?
What a world, ooohh what a world; I’ll getchyou my pretty.
Politics was my sport, my game and at times a passion. Then my husband died. And, so much of this seems meaningless to me now. I guess I’ll stop watching cable news…for the sake of what’s left of (my) head.
Hey ho…
CONNIE ACCEPTING ROGER’S AWARD
Such a bittersweet day for our family…just like the word in poor Whitney’s song. Life is so very, very short. All future plans are just a possibility–take note young people. A cliché, but so true, “live each day as if it’s your last.”
The girls (really women, but they will always be my girls: Cimcie & Ashlee) and I feel such gratitude for Roger’s award, but…so many buts.
Many thanks to Jeff for helping us get through the day.
As I watch all the political hype and tears (on both sides) the day after an election that will spell total gridlock for yet another two years…
(Is John Boehner crying because of people suffering and dying in senseless wars–or is it more likely he’s relieved that he can now pay back the $50 million he pledged for ads in this midterm election?)
I am amazed and appalled at the total lack of discussion about the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, as it is ALWAYS on the proverbial budget table to cut social services, there has NEVER (and I mean never in my lifetime) been any meaningful, substantial discussion about cutting the cost of the humongous U.S. war machine.
The answer is obvious. The people who are not making any of the $48 BILLION do not have a voice.
Where the money flows:
| * |
Unidentified Foreign Entities | $20,435,870,190 |
| 1 | KBR Inc (formerly known as Kellogg Brown and Root) | $16,059,282,020 |
| 2 | DynCorp International (Veritas Capital) | $1,838,156,100 |
| 3 | Washington Group International Inc | $1,044,686,850 |
| 4 | IAP Worldwide Services Inc (Cerberus Capital Management LP) | $901,973,910 |
| 5 | Environmental Chemical Corp | $899,701,070 |
| 6 | L-3 Communications Holdings Inc | $853,535,680 |
| 7 | Fluor Corp | $736,853,200 |
| 8 | Perini Corp | $720,859,110 |
| 9 | Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) | $617,089,510 |
| 10 | Parsons Corp | $579,265,450 |
| 11 | First Kuwaiti General Trading And Contracting Company Wll | $495,404,500 |
| 12 | Blackwater USA | $485,149,590 |
Earth Day 2010.
The pathway to bliss…my butterfly garden in Jupiter, Florida. Come hurricane-force wind, come monsoon rain, come killing dry weather…through it all, the garden has survived.
I feel such joy and peace among flowers, butterflies, birds, dragonflies and yes, even the lizards and other reptiles that live in the crevices.
Amid crisis and grief, the healing power of the natural world refreshes my soul and cheers my heart. No gathering of humans or words on a page can compare to a magical moment watching caterpillars eat every leaf off of a milkweed plant.
But don’t worry. The plant returns to be eaten again and again and again.
Mother Earth takes care of her own, including you and me. I am reminded of this every morning I wake to a sun-kissed swath of green punctuated with red Tropical Sage, flying Zebra Butterflies and purply-blue Phillipine violets.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that our habits may be harmful to the air, the water and the soil? I doubt Mother Earth will be destroyed, but humanity? I hope not.
And so, a passionate Happy Earth Day to us, and many, many more.
It seems the 8.8 earthquake which rocked Chile in the early AM hours is offshore near the Maule Region where Noble Prize winner and one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), was born.
My heart is saddened for the region and the lives lost.
How many poets or bright souls have been lost due to this tragedy?
In honor of Neruda and his country of birth, I post the following brilliant example of his particular genius.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, “The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.”
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
(En Español)
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo : ‘La noche esta estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos’.
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La beso tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo tambien la quera.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oir la noche immensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos arboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto al amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como Ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque ésta sea el áltimo dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los áltimos versos que yo le escribo.
By Pablo Neruda
The long-suffering fans of the New Orleans Saints can celebrate tonight for their big Super Bowl win 31-17 over the Indianapolis Colts! Hallelujah!!! Special send-out to all my UNO buddies….
(And “geaux” is a cajun nod to “go”– AHHHEEE.
Conrad Reeder 