Rosa Parks - February 4, 1913 - October 24, 2005

For more pictures click here.

Happy Samhain

Samhain is the Celtic New year, officially marking the end of the summer (or light) months. It is a time to celebrate the harvests. It is also the most sacred time of the pagan year, high psychic tide. The wall between the living world and that of the dead is at its thinnest, so spirits are supposed to be able to visit us on that evening. That is where the idea of scary masks came from.
Jack-o-lanterns (originally more likely made of turnips) were used to help keep bad spirits out of the house.
Nightshade, moonflower and wormwood were used as incense for that night.




People often drank wormwood infused hard cider. They also drank red wine.

For more information see Celtic Spirit.

Today, most of us just call it Halloween. It doesn’t hurt to know the original meaning of the holiday.

The three rays

Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita helped galvanize the Million Man March

This years hurricanes and the pathetic response by our government galvanized a lot more people to attend the Million Man March. As their website said:
The Millions More Movement: Repairing Ourselves and the World
WILMINGTON JOURNAL
The catastrophic disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina and aggravated by Hurricane Rita of necessity forms a central focus of our concerns and active commitment as we continue to organize the Millions More March and build the Millions More Movement.

There were also a number of non-Muslims who made an appearance including The ReverendJesse Jackson who said: “We march this year because there are two Americas, where gaps continue to exist”
Another was Dr. Dorothy Height who said: "I am so honored that women are responding so well. I know the strength that comes when we come together."


Also on the Million Man website are recorded messages from
Kayne West


and Min. Louis Farrakhan.

New DVD on the Nepalese “People's War"

“Our comrades of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) have recently released a DVD titled 8 Glorious Years of the Great Nepalese People's War. This unique documentary presents numerous aspects of the ongoing Nepalese revolution, from cultural events to mass meetings and military training. The DVD length almost 3 hours and is subtitled in English and includes over 30 audio visual songs of Revolutionary music”.

For more information contact by e-mail: lal_rpg@yahoo.co.uk.

High Across The Prairie

Steve Otto's latest novel takes an honest look at 1970's Kansas.

Memoirs Of A Drugged-up, Sex-crazed Yippie ---Tales from the 70's Counterculture: Drugs, Sex, Politics and Rock and Roll.

By Steve Otto
Authorhouse Press/2005

Reviewed by Tim Pouncey

Kansas in the late 1970's was so different from today; the Sunflower State might as well have been located in Holland. Remember what it was like to share drugs with close friends and complete strangers? Remember when casual sex was so casual you didn't even know your partners name? Remember when the political climate of Kansas came down squarely on the side of tolerance?
Remember when your personal philosophy of life was defined by rock lyrics and not a mission statement?
You don't?
Well, Steve Otto does. In his latest semi-fictional novel, Memoirs Of A Drugged-Up, Sex Crazed Yippie (Authorhouse Press/2005), Otto excavates 1970's counterculture like an archeologist loving dusting off a Mastodon tusk. In a brisk 349 pages, Otto gives us a lucid look at a Kansas few people remember --- or can't remember due to a plentiful supply of "controlled substances" that were constantly and cheaply available. Characters romp through Wichita, Lawrence and even Sedalia Missouri when a cheap thrill was worth what you paid for it and pleasure was just the flipside of danger.But to dismiss this book as just another nostalgic stoner reminiscing about the last days of the counter-culture would be a major mistake. Although there is a certain "back-in-the-day" wistfulness about the time before political correctness was a mantra, Otto tempers his dreamy history lesson with brutal honesty.
The narrator of the story --- a composite of just about every old druggie you ever met --- may graphically describe the bliss of mainlining MDA, he also reminds us that brief moment of pleasure most often occurred in a squalid apartment at broken kitchen table next to sink full of dirty dishes.Like all good storytellers, Otto takes the reader places they've never been before. Like William Burroughs and Charles Bukowsky, Otto sometimes takes you to places you've never really wanted to visit. Yet, Otto makes it worth the trip by including generous portions of political discourse, Cyrenaic philosophy, post-adolescent lust and near-suicidal thrill seeking to keep the narrative moving along like a junkie careening through a police roadblock.
Otto's work is always provocative and this book will undoubtedly draw the wrath of both solid conservatives and neo-feminists. Otto's characters never mask their contempt for the right-wing agenda and Otto's narrator never hides his obsession with female anatomy. However, criticizing Memoirs because it baits conservatives and objectifies women is missing the point. Filtering 1970's Kansas counterculture through the sensibilities of a naive middle-class, catholic school educated, twenty-something is no easy trick but Otto mostly pulls it off. He has a good ear for times-past and tries --- often successfully --- to make his prose read like it would have been written by someone experiencing these situations 30 years ago. Trying to be simultaneously innovative, entertaining and honest is a juggling act on a unicycle, but Otto is generally at his best when everything's up-in-the-air and he's peddling frantically. When the narrator's budding Marxist politics and his discussions with Iranian nationalists clash with his dawning awareness that Kansas politics has taken a sharp turn to the right, Otto makes it work.
Is Otto's look into the rear-view mirror a true reflection on the 70's, or do the objects simply appear bigger than they were? Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Memoirs resonates with characters buckling under the weight of the America Dream with redemption harder to find than next snort of Cocaine.

The following book stores also have Memoirs:
Amazon.com,
Powell's books,
Abe Books,
Amazon.co.uk,
Amazon.de(GER),
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SuperBookDeals,
Sexual Astrology,
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Dungeons & Dragons Books,
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Books A Million,
Alibris,
Country Book Shop,UK,
Biblio,
Buy.com,
Losti Pods.com,
BiggerBooks,
eCampus,
Amazon.co.jp,
Barnes & Noble.com,
Direct from the publisher.

LONSOME WASHINGTON COWBOY

I'M JUST A LONESOME WASHINGTON COWBOY,
HANGIN' OUT, HANGIN' ON
FROM MY WINDOW LEDGE, PROTESTERS CALL MY NAME
FROM MIDNIGHT UNTIL DAWN

I BEEN SMOKIN' DOPE, SNORTIN' COKE,

TRYIN' TO WIN A WAR
FORGETTIN' EVERYTHING I KNOW
‘TIL THE NEXT WAR COMES ALONG
FORGETTIN' EVERYTHING I KNOW
‘TIL THE NEXT WAR COMES ALONG

THERE WERE SO MANY PREPPY PEOPLE IN MY FRAT CLUB,
I SWEAR SOME OF THEM WERE GIRLS
I MEET'EM DOWN AT A KEGGER PARTY
I BONG BEERS AND SMOKE WITH THE BEST
I BUY'EM DRINKS, WE SMOKE OUR HOPES
TRY TO MAKE IT ONE MORE NIGHT
BUT WHEN I DIDN’T HAVE A REAL JOB
I FELT LIKE I'D DIE FROM FRIGHT

REPEAT CHORUS:

WELL, I KNOW CHRIS AND RITA, AND MARTY MULL
WILL MEET AT THE PETROLIUM CLUB
WE'LL GET IT ON WHEN OLD SPARKY COOKS A CROOK
WHILE THE CROWD CRYS OUT FOR MORE
‘ROUND SIX O'CLOCK THIS MORNING
I'LL BE GETTIN' KIND OF SLOW
WHEN ALL THE SHOWS ARE OVER, HONEY,
TELL ME, WHERE DO YOU THINK I’LL GO?
Music from LONESOME L.A. COWBOY, By New Riders of the Purple Sage, Released: 1971.

Teaching in Kansas? Not for long!

Bob L. Corkins has proven that there

still are less intelligent species of humanity

and many of them migrate here to Kansas.

I made a decision several years ago to go into teaching. I like government and history, so I knew right away what I wanted to do. I spent two and half years and more than $20,000 going to a private school to get a certificate to teach. When I started they kept telling us that there was a shortage of teachers and we’d have no problem getting a job.
But that was before the elections held right before I got my certificate. Now, it’s as if the IQ of the average Kansas has dropped like a rock and only incredibly stupid and ultra-conservative people can now get elected to office. We are talking about people who literally don’t value education. Some want to see public education gone and want vouchers to help eliminate all non-religious education. They definitely don’t want to spend money on teachers and the first year I had my certificate, they had a freeze on hiring teachers.
Maybe things would change after the election? – I thought. Only for the worst. The people in office now are the worst ever.
Today’s Kansas Legislature has made it clear they have not intention of raising any more funds for education. For teachers, such as my self, it pushes us to consider moving somewhere else. This year, the Kansas Legislature made no increase in state aid. Meanwhile, a decline in the state's overall student enrollment has brought reduced federal funding. The district's local option budget authority has been maxed out. Expenses, in general, have increased.
How are teachers, who spend years and money to get certified as I have, supposed to find work in a state as this one?
According to Alicia Henrikson, of the Journal-World, July 12, 2004:

"Sam Rabiola remembers school funding in the 1990s.
“There were tough times,” said Rabiola, an English teacher for the Lawrence school district and president of the Lawrence Education Assn., which represents the city's teachers.
"It would be rough for a couple of years," he said. "But there always was time where it was better."
But that was then.
In the past three years, district officials have substantially cut spending.
Between the 2001-2002 and the 2003-2004 budgets, Lawrence school officials reduced overall spending by $5.1 million, according to Kathy Johnson, district finance director.
This year, the Kansas Legislature made no increase in state aid. Meanwhile, a decline in the state's overall student enrollment has brought reduced federal funding. The district's local option budget authority has been maxed out. Expenses, in general, have increased.”
And:
“Rabiola laughed when asked if he had confidence in the Kansas Legislature.
He said though he trusted the Douglas County legislative delegation to vote for better school funding, most of his hope for increased state aid was with the Kansas Supreme Court.”

The Kansas Legislature has labeled the Kansas Supreme Court judges as “activist judges” who make their own laws. Maybe these leaders have forgotten that this country has mandatory education for all and it cost money.
Meanwhile, they have spent their time making fools of the people of Kansas by trying to dumb down our science standards. The whole country, by now, is aware of the controversy of evolution in the state of Kansas. For those who aren’t up on the situation, the Kansas State School Board is still trying to either include more criticism of evolution from required science or insist on the inclusion of Intelligent Design (ID).Intelligent design sounds innocent enough, at first. The process of creation is too complex to be random. That doesn’t sound controversial since evolution could be argued to have a pattern and intent. But the ID people are creationists. Their view of creation is that a big invisible man in the heavens did a magic show, said a few magic words and the universe was created 6,000 years ago.These people, with totally ridiculous arguments, ridicule studying fossils, carbon dating and all manor of physical science.
For their next trick of stupidity, these people now want special permission for every student to take sex education. And there’s the usual here-say conservatives like to throw around:

“I hear they demonstrate how to put on a condom and beds are used.”

Yeah- Right!

Now enter Bob L. Corkins, selected as the state's new education commissioner by six of our 10 state board of education members. It would be hard to find a less qualified person and less anti-education than this person. Even The Wichita Eagle has been critical of him.
Mike Marlett of our local weekly F5, October 6, 2005, said it best:
“And he's a twit.
Now when I say twit, I really mean he's a guy who has no experience at all, whatsoever, in the job that he was just appointed to. I haven't dug into his background enough to say if he's a twit on his own merits, but the early evidence is strong.
His only claim to education fame is that he is one of the loudest conservative critics saying that public education costs too much, that the Kansas Supreme Court had no right to force the legislature to spend money and that school vouchers will save the world.
He is currently the executive director of the Freestate Center for Liberty Studies and Kansas Legislative Education and Research, and has been since 2001. Prior to that, he was also the director of the Flint Hills Center — that conservative think tank that was so stupid that I actually wrote a column about how stupid they were — for three years before that.”
He added:
“Now, if you think I'm one loan liberal having a knee-jerk reaction, you're right. Let me give you the knee-jerk reaction of a Republican:
The Lawrence Journal World had this gem:
"I almost ran off the road when I heard it," Senate Education Chairwoman Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, said Tuesday after hearing the news.
The Wichita Eagle quoted her as saying this:
"I'm appalled that they would hire someone with no — capital N-O — education experience."

So there it is. I now have no reason to stay here in Kansas. So now I must consider moving next year, out of state, to find a real teaching job. States such as Texas are actually looking for teachers, eve history teachers. Yes, despite all the bad things I’ve heard about Texas, They tell me they value their history. St. Louis, Missouri hires a lot of teachers, so that’s another possibility.

So how do I feel about leaving Wichita? Not much different than I did when I moved to Lawrence back in the 1970s. As I stated in my book Memoirs Of A Drugged-up, Sex-crazed Yippie ---Tales from the 70's Counterculture: Drugs, Sex, Politics and Rock and Roll:

“Neither one of us would miss Wichita very much. It was extremely conservative, a very hostile environment for freaks. It was also just plain boring. There was a real lack of culture. The politics had always been dominated by the right-wing religious cults who continued to control it for years.
Janet once said during one of our many conversations at the Flask:
“Wichita is just a small town that suddenly got real big and the people who live here still think of it as a small town.”
She was right. Culture-wise, no one expected much out of the town and didn’t get any more than expected. For a town that big, the city government couldn’t even see the need to keep their buses running after 6 p.m., as if no one were out or awake after that time.
Local law enforcement spent much of its time chasing after petty vice. Local city commissioners often spent a lot of time trying to sensor movies and plays. The play “Hair” had to cut out a short nude scene before it could be shown in Wichita. Conservative religious coalitions, using words like “concerned” and “decent” in their constantly changing names, attacked anything to do with nudity or homosexuals. Sheriff Starr spent a lot of time trying to regulate massage parlors.
The John Birch Society and other right-wing fringe groups routinely came here to raise funds and gain supporters. Wichita still did not have fluoridated water, which the John Birch Society believed was a communist plot. In short, Wichita was a magnet for right-wing kooks.
The scenery in Wichita is flat and nearly treeless. In the winter it is brown. During the summer it also gets brown and as hot as 107. During the spring and fall, it can go from 20 to 80 degrees in one day. But the weather and scenery might be overlooked if the town wasn’t dominated by right-wing crackpots.”

It’s unfortunate that things have actually gotten worse since I have returned in the 1980s. The town continues to slide to right-wing politics, combined with escapist views on religion. For many people here, religion has replaced reality and they live in a fantasy world. Unfortunately these people have voted for the politicians who have made the mess we are in and I won’t miss it.

KANSAS: KISS MY ASS!

Art work of the FARC-EP Guerrillas of Colombia

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People´s Army (FARC-EP)

The Rainbow Family still knows how to have a party

Each year the Rainbow Family has a number of gatherings. According to its homepage:
“Some say we're the largest non-organization of non-members in the world. We have no leaders, and no organization. To be honest, the Rainbow Family means different things to different people. I think it's safe to say we're into intentional community building, non-violence, and alternative lifestyles. We also believe that Peace and Love are a great thing, and there isn't enough of that in this world. Many of our traditions are based on Native American traditions, and we have a strong orientation to take care of the the Earth. We gather in the National Forests yearly to pray for peace on this planet”

October is for Absinth

It’s October and this is a good time to drink absinth, a drink that carries the magic of wormwood.
In ancient times, wormwood was considered of medicinal properties. The name comes from the belief that it could kill worms. The ancient Druids, according to Douglas Monroe , author of The 21 Lessons of Merlyn: A Study in Druid Magic and Lore, the ancient Druids had a drink for Samhein, or Holloween as we know it today. They made an apple cider wine using heaps of wormwood and melon pedals.
By the 1800s Absinthe was the drink of choice among artist and writers in the mid to late19th century. It inspired poets and appeared in works by Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh. It was drank by the scandalous playwright Oscar Wilde, the eccentric Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the poets Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe, and the famous 20th century author Ernest Hemingway, just to mention a few.
Absinthe was also drunk in San Francisco, Chicago and New York, which had a popular restaurant called the Absinthe House. Up until 1912, many of the more exotic bars in New York would serve an absinthe cocktail. One can imagine a piano player at one of these watering holes singing this Victor Herbert melody with lyrics by Glenn MacDonough:

I will free you first from burning thirst

That is born of a night of the bowl,

Like a sun 'twill rise through the inky skies

That so heavily hang o'er your souls.

At the first cool sip on your fevered lip

You determine to live through the day,

Life's again worth while as with a dawining smile

You imbibe your absinthe frappé.

But on July 13, 1907, Harper´ s Weekly noted, “The growing consumption in America of absinthe, 'the green curse of France,' has attracted the attention of the Department of Agriculture, and an investigation has been ordered to determine to what extent it is being manufactured in this country." Just five years later, on July 25, 1912, the Department of Agriculture issued Food Inspection Decision 147, which banned absinthe in America.
Today absinth is making a comeback. It is being ordered from overseas or it is being made through many recipes on the internet. The wormwood is probably harmless and the hallucinogenic qualities are probably urban legend. I’ve drank it and nothing unusual happened. Since the drink was high in alcohol, it may have been alcohol poisoning and not the wormwood that caused people problems.
Besides drinking it straight, people often hold a special spoon or fork over a glass, put a sugar cube on and pour cold over it. Some people put the sugar cub in the drink and light it on fire, cutting the alcohol content and caramelizing the sugar. All these recipes are good if done right.

If you can get it, try it. The 21 Lessons of Merlyn has a good recipe that can produce a fine variety of tasty beverages for the Samhein parties and holidays.

Worm wood