Damn, it’s been too long. The show’s taking up more time and energy than I ever would have imagined; otherwise I would have responded a lot sooner. There are just not enough hours in the day. I won’t bore you with all the sundry details but sometimes I flash back to something I think was attributed to Santayana: "A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort after losing sight of the original goal." The galling, niggling, persnickety details are enough to drive you out of your ever-loving mind. But, I’m working myself into a lather already, and, since I’ve already shaved, it’s completely superfluous.

Anyway, I’ve been reading your stuff in Faultline. It’s great. No, really, the way you describe the natural world makes me think I can almost dig my toes in the loamy earth and get some of it under my nails. It’s great stuff. Kind of a cross between Thoreau and Ed Abbey.

I was sorry to read about you encounter with the wall. Broken toe, huh. Well, join the club. I’ve had two in the last fifteen years. The first one was the product of blind, dumb rage. I kicked something. It got me back though, a little on the spot Buddhist satori on the futility of rage. Well, my body learned it; sometimes I’m not so sure about my mind. The second was just shy of a month after moving into a new apartment, only the second in eighteen years of marriage. Believe me, the rental market in Westchester county, indeed, the whole of Metro area New York dictates that if you’re paying anywhere near a reasonable amount for rent you stay right where you are until the "deal from heaven" presents itself, then you move fast or someone else will grab it up. Damn, it’s so Darwinian. Where was I? Oh yeah, the foot. So, just short of a month in, I thought I was at the point of "I can walk this place blindfolded". Hah! One short trip to the john without benefit of the hall light and "WHAM!" I slammed right into the doorjamb. You know those cartoons when someone gets slammed in the dark? All you see is inky blackness and a profusion of stars, comets and abstract squiggles? Surprise! That’s exactly what I saw! It would have been a sight worthy of the golden age of Warner Bros. Cartoons. In fact, I could see Daffy Duck playing the part. He’d be a natural. Yeah.

But what the hell am I going on about? Hell, I’m alive. Sometimes, especially with George W. Bush in the White House, that seems to be the cruelest joke of all. Yeah, we’re all going to miss Johnny Cash. Warren Zevon too. Man, they’re dropping like flies. I thought I’d stop counting after Jerry Garcia, but I must bear witness. Just one of the many benefits of not dying young, I suppose. You get to see a whole bunch of good people being followed by a whole lot of their friends, all walking with them, walking very slowly. It’s good that it’s that way. That last walk should last a while. After all, you’re coming back alone, and that can be a real downer.

The real problem I have with it is I don’t get to see a more deserving class make that long processional. Like some ultra piggie CEOs for a starter. Ah, hell. Maybe I should take it up with the man who lives in the clouds? Yeah, let’s show some of these religious zealots (all of them, not just the usual suspects) and their good pals in the business world a little taste of Almighty Judgement. A few well-placed lightning bolts might just do the trick. Hey, you know what? Most of these planet despoiling bastards spend a lot of time on the golf course, closing deals and hatching their nefarious plots to carve up the world just a little bit better for themselves and their rich buddies. I read somewhere that the biggest percentage of people hit by lightning is GOLFERS!

Come on Big Guy, do your part for Mother Earth! SNUFF A FEW OF THE BASTARDS! THEY HAVE IT COMING! It’s happened before. I remember reading of a case where some clown from one of the big utilities out west had just attended a big convention of power company jerks. The whole point was to figure out ways to unsell the public on the reliability of natural power generation (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.) He just made this big speech where he said something like "The next thing these hippies will try is to harness lightning. Who can count on that? It’s just not feasible." He jumps in his limo, he’s on the golf course and "WHAM"! Not feasible, huh? Har-dee-har-har!

A little bit of Old Testament medicine, huh? Well, somebody’s got to take these bastards down a few pegs and it can’t be me. Seriously, I’m allergic to prison. Especially conjugal visits from some big guy named Bubba, Goober, or ‘The Grand Imperial Wizard’. Well, the way I see it, we’re down to one of three choices as to what can be done to clean this thing up: One, through some miracle the jerks wake up and say, "Gee, maybe I shouldn’t be making 250,000 times as much as the lowest paid worker in my company. Maybe I should quit raiding their pension and medical care funds. Maybe I should invest in technologies that actually work with the planet instead of against it." Yeah, when pigs fly. No, wait, that’s not unlikely enough, how about when the Mets, no, let’s really up the ante, when the Boston Red Sox win their next World Series (by the way, why is it ‘The World Series’? Outside of the occasional Canadian team it’s US all the way. Oh, those wacky Americans, they still think they’re the whole damn world) So, I guess we can rule out the ‘Satori scenario’. Two, and history’s on the side of this one, a good old mass uprising. The people have enough of getting shafted and just plain ‘snap’. Andrew Lloyd Webber get out your notebook, ‘cause if this one gets off the ground there’s "Tony Award" written all over it. It’ll make "Le Miz" look like a grade school pageant. There are two things working against this one. The first is the simple fact that although we’ve got a lot of guns out there in this gun-crazy country of ours, an insufficient number of them are of a high enough caliber and magazine capacity to do the job effectively. Like George Carlin said, "The Army has all the flame-throwers." I’d say we’re fucked if we have to go up against the Army, wouldn’t you? I would tend to agree. And let’s not even discuss Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Abrams A-1 Tanks. Yes, I know those SUV’s you tool around in look like tanks but trust me buddy; the real deal will crack them like eggs. Another factor is the fact that the average citizen is so damn tired from working his two part time jobs (to make up for the one good one that went overseas for about one fiftieth of the going US wage [NAFTA and the WTO be praised] that he’s just too damned tired) Then there’s the information/misinformation overload provided by our wonderful media. Despite what the right wing troglodytes on FOX and MSNBC tell you, there is no "liberal media" anymore. The major new outlets in this country have been bought and paid for by the rich and influential and they’re not about to let them go without a HUGE fight. This information management keeps the heat ratcheting up so slowly that the average person won’t know he’s being boiled alive until there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.

It’s a rough parallel to the "frog in a pan of water" urban legend that says if you throw a frog into a pan of boiling water he’ll jump out. He knows it’s not good for him. But, if, you put him in a pan of tepid water and raise the temperature gradually, he’ll just sit there and be boiled. I’m afraid too many of us are like that poor frog. So, I don’t see armed struggle happening here (at least not until after sweeps week, too much good stuff on the tube. Wow, look at that! "Ben and J-Lo" are at it again!) So, lacking armed struggle what’s left?

Divine intervention, that’s what. Unless we pull ourselves out of our collective lethargy and vote the bastards out of office. At minimum, they’ve got another year and three months left (if we send them packing in Nov. of ’04) the earth’s pretty damn resilient, but I don’t think it can take much more. I’ve been leaning towards the "Greens" myself, but after last time I keep thinking "Damn, if just ten lousy percent of the Greens went for Gore, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. Perhaps we should concentrate on Greens in state and local races until they build up enough push to be taken seriously on a national level. I know it’s sort of like history repeating itself (there were those who thought the civil rights struggle should have gone ‘slower’ too) but if we don’t get these bastards out now. We might just say goodbye to the whole deal. Once these right wing bastards have two terms back to back we can say goodbye to the constitution (as we knew it) and the same thing goes for the environment. Forget about the ANWR, if these bastards smell oil in the Black Hills, they’d sink a shaft right through Teddy Roosevelt’s head to get to it.

Damn, but I’m rambling. If any of this screed has a place in "Faultline" feel free, you’ve got carte blanche

I’ll be in touch,