The Earth and moon as seen from Mars It has often been said that we are the universe gazing upon itself. We have made eyes and sent them to Mars, and beyond that. and we are able to hold the mirror a long way from our face and see a view of our planet that almost loses us in the blackness of the space between spaces. This photo is not just a photo of Earth from Mars, it is also a photograph of a sunrise over the island on which I live, off the west coast of North America. As …
Just discovered Les Murray, who is no stranger to antipodean readers and many others no doubt, but is new to me: Cotton Flannelette Shake the bed, the blackened child whimpers, O shake the bed! through bleak lips that never will come unwry. And wearily the iron- framed mattress, with nodding, crockery bulbs, jinks on its way. Her brothers and sister take shifts with the terrible glued-together baby when their unsleeping absolute mother reels out to snatch an hour, back to stop the rocking and wring pale blue soap-water over nude bladders and blood-webbed chars. Even their cranky evasive father is …
My friend Micheal Herman (who is new to blogging but not to wikis) has added a really interesting point in my comments about the god/human division and Pilate’s role in the whole matter: ..there are those who’ve suggested that mao tse tung was a very high tibetan teacher, come to essentially take the karmic hit for busting the tibetan practices out of tibet so that the rest of the world could get at them. god messing in lives of people seems only to extend the division between god and people, no? That is a very interesting perspective. I replied: Maybe …
Our little place-blogging community has shown up on this week’s Carnival of the Vanities. Thanks to all who made it happen. Now go over there and read what these really interesting people have written about. Scroll down to the bottom to see the place blogging entry.
There is an amazing thing happening out there, in this post-Easter world. I admit to being a spellbound observer of the whole thing. Here’s the play by play: Bellona Times started the ball rolling with a riff on a Francis Bacon essay that treats Pontius Pilate as a sympathetic colonial bureaucrat who had been tricked by Jesus into fulfilling a prophecy he wanted no part of: Pilate’s patience is remarkable. Like later totalitarian regimes, neither imperial Rome nor Tudor England held truck with silence; self-incrimination was their favorite evidence, and they had no scruples about getting it. In fact, the …