10 Things the Media Should Stop Saying

1. Stop saying “Small d democratic.” We’re not morons. We know the difference between the Democratic Party and democratic institutions. I even heard Rachel Maddow go so far as to say, “Small d democracy,” which makes no sense whatsoever.
2. Stop confusing anarchy with chaos. Anarchy is an social system without leaders; it is not necessarily synonymous with chaos.
3. Stop confusing fascism & xenophobia with populism. Marine Le Pen is not a populist. Pandering to and stoking of people’s bassist fears is not populism.
4. Stop saying,”Both sides do it,” when you’re talking about something terrible one side has done. You don’t have to protect yourself from accusations of partisanship by flimsy attempts at false equivalency.
5. Stop calling the country the Homeland when reporting on national security. It sounds quasi-fascist and it sprang from the Bush Administration’s attempt to delegitimize domestic dissent after September 11, 2001. Call it, “the nation,” or “the country,” like we did for the first 230 years.
6. Stop calling ISIS, “the so-called Islamic State.” It’s not your job to editorialize about enemies of our state. Just call them whatever they call themselves.
7. Stop calling famous entertainers “legends.” They are not.
8. Stop stating national statistics as if they were world statistics. If 8,500 Americans died of something in 2016, don’t just say, “8,500 people died.” There are people outside our country.
9. Stop using adjectives that refer to women in the news by their social roles. If a 70 year old woman is arrested for possession, don’t say, “70 year old grandmother arrested.”
10. Stop assuming that you and every poll in the country were wrong about the election. Sometimes there’s just fraud.

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And now this (click flower):

Wakescape

There’s some kind of leak between my dreams and my so-called reality. It used to be one way, the normal way: bits and pieces of my life show up randomly in dreams. You know, your dog is in your dream, giving you advice, and she’s also your mother. But ever since April 13th, dream-stuff has been appearing in my waking world. For example, as I am writing this, I’m sitting in a café in Vermont, and on the chalk-written menu is raisin-flavored kombucha. Yes, Vermont is full of the hippy probiotic drink kombucha. But nobody really makes raison-flavored kombucha. It’s something I dreamed last night, along with the kombucha-flavored, vegan, raw chocolate cream pie, which I just noticed is also on display here in this café. It makes me wonder what else I’m seeing that I forget I dreamed up.

Thoughts on Love and Compassion

Let’s say you’re in a room doing something, perhaps meditating on universal loving kindness, perhaps just writing a blog post, and there’s a puppy right outside the door crying. And let’s say that you know this puppy and you know that all she wants is for somebody to pet her.

Reality Split

I am standing on a very sharp ridge overlooking reality and despair. I could fall either way. In any case, I am dead, and about to start a new life. My heart is pulling me to a new beginning of peace and love. Dark forces that I set free are pulling me to the other side. I think there is a split in the universe here. I think that both realities are barreling forward. I want to determine which stream I enter.

God and the Meaning of Life

Let’s start with the premise that the universe was created by God. If so, in the beginning there was only God. Everything, therefore, came from God; everything in creation is of God. Because God comprises all that is, we can say that God is infinite. And, since everything that exists is a piece, as it were, of the infinite source of all being, it follows that everything – from the largest system to the smallest single particle – is infinite. This means that all possibility exists within all of us, and within all things that make up the universe. If an apple tree is the universe and from itself that tree creates thousands of seeds, in each seed is the potentiality of the entire tree. In the end, we have to conclude that, as in the beginning, there is only God, and God is us.

This brings up a strange conundrum.

Darall’s Story

Darall stood alone in the crowd, listening to the political speech. The speech was sprinkled with words that he had heard before but whose meaning he couldn’t quite place his finger on. Words like “ineffable.”

Spleen

I attended a writing workshop, at which the participants were given 12 minutes to write in response to several prompts. The prompts, given to us during the course of the 12 minutes, were to be incorporated into our writing. These prompts were:

• I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry
• Chinese take-out food
• A slipper
• A train whistle

The following story resulted:

Farm Me

The dentist says I have to have my wisdom teeth extracted. She says there’s all sorts of bone loss and infection and if I don’t have them out I will lose my other teeth and probably die. But I have started an alternative therapy. I have been cultivating fly larvae. I grow them in buckets of stagnant water on my porch. When they hatch into maggots, I scoop out handfuls and fill my mouth with them. The maggots are small enough to crawl into the tiniest crevices surrounding my teeth, even down under my gums through any cavities. They eat all of the bacteria and infected flesh. I am very careful not to swallow them, or too many of them; it’s impossible not to swallow a few.