Random Moleskine notes...

Greetings,

Here's some random musings from a recently completed Moleskine notebook.

After a long steady heavy rain a pregnant woman propped her mop made of strands - discarded rainbows - as her solemn dispassionate husband shucked peas and removed garlic shells from their protective casing, after the sky finished crying to wash student street where

parades of disenfranchised youth sought shelter from the storm and well after open windows released cello notes as a child practiced sitting upright tuning their eyes to black notes on white pages with a determination to master the instrument as another music student hammered piano keys behind locked doors, flies gathered around brown sticky paste slowly dripping off a cracked plate with their feelers extending their hope toward a thin white butterfly lifting off a green leaf.

Peace.

And now, a word from our sponsor

Greetings,

A conversation in Spain.

"Readers may find your story interesting. I used to work in an area where there was a nuclear reactor and I knew many physicists there. They were working on re-cycling nuclear fuel, others developed hydrogen fuel cells for alternative energy sources. I’ve never met a physicist working with detergent.”

“Yeah it’s pretty cool. And now we’re here. Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? Well, the remaining particles of atoms, a very small part, is life and then inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.”

He laughed forever. “The amazing thing is how many people don’t know it or get it. The natural law is for things to get messy. That’s why people clean, rearranging the molecules in some form of order. They think they’re in control of it. They’re afraid of the change. Things happen which are outside their control or plans of the creator. It expands the evolutionary process.”

Peace.

Morocco's Spell

Greetings,

Travel rearranges your cultural furniture and Morocco is one amazing country.

Here's a fine article by Rachel Donadio in the NYT on her journey to the Atlas Mountains south of Marrakesh. She really captures the essence of people and place.

"The Berbers, or Imazighen as they’re called in their own tongue — Berber implies barbarian in Arabic — resisted the Arab conquest of the seventh century and still practice a less rigid form of Islam today. The women we saw all wore bright kerchiefs, not burkas."

Peace.

Under Morocco's Spell

I am so hungry

Greetings,

In Ireland, they say when you shudder, it means someone's walking over your grave. It's happening with increased frequency. As the blues lyrics say, "Black is the night and cold is the ground."

The 77,000 black body bags shipped to southern Italian U.S. military installations prior to the Iraq invasion are not collecting dust. Casualties on the foreign occupier side approach 3,000.

A recent medical journal published an Iraqi death count over 500,000. This was denied by some guy from Texas when the puppeteer pulled his string.

"Bag em' and tag em'," is the tune. It's a free download.

Nickel and dimed down all the days which explains why images of bodies being unloaded stateside are forbidden by the authorities. It's a slow, steady bleeding process.

No one has the courage to admit it's a full blown Civil War and past Prime Time to leave and allow the tribes to settle their ancient struggles. Maybe we need to thank the British for carving Iraq up in the 20's. Some people never learn.

Happy Holidays! Looks like Tanks-giving is right around the corner. Mind your head. Pass the stuffing and sterilized medical tools will ya' so I can extract all this fragmented ionized shrapnel from the sucking chest wound of some poor kid who was in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.

The mess hall closes soon. I am so hungry.

Peace.

Tee up the socially elite

Greetings,

From the "It Could Only Happen Here," file.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese university aiming to produce "socially elite" graduates is to make golf compulsory for students, state media reported on Tuesday.

Golf was once reviled in Communist China as a symbol of western decadence, but has become hugely popular among the newly affluent since the first golf course opened on the mainland in the early 1980s.

Students majoring in management, law, economics and software engineering at Xiamen University in China's southeastern Fujian province would be required to take a course in golf "to achieve their elite ambitions", the China Daily newspaper said.

"Golf is not only good exercise, but will teach students communication skills and benefit their future careers," the paper quoted the university's president Zhu Chongshi as saying.

"The highest embodiment of the education system is producing socially elite people with the best education."

Zhu said a bachelor's degree used to be respected but that higher education had grown into "an industry designed to fulfil market demand" and that there was a "need for elite education".

The university, which according to Zhu would open "a most beautiful" driving range in two months, had drawn some fire, the paper said.

"To try to make golf compulsory is rather vulgar," Alex Jin, president of the Centre for International Education Group, was quoted as saying.

"China can ill afford golf," Jin said, adding that some regions in China needed investment in better primary health care.

Peace.