greenInk

Silence. Wind in high branches. A boy drinking water. Silence. Sound of my heart beating. Grasshoppers whirring. Silence.

Or something like that. Leaving behind the twisted mythology and fear-based power-over traditions can’t be a bad thing.

Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.

Local and national atheist organizations have flourished in recent years, fed by outrage over the Bush administration’s embrace of the religious right. A spate of best-selling books on atheism also popularized the notion that nonbelief is not just an argument but a cause, like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy.

Full story …

Well, well, well … look who showed up for Tax Day ‘09. Sure the usual suspects, Libertarians of all stripes who are against all taxes all the time, are regulars at April 15 demonstrations, railing against having to spend money on arts, Planned Parenthood and “critical non-game wildlife habitat restoration,” whatever the hell that means.

And they were out in force on Wednesday. But they were joined by a motlier-than-usual assortment of run-of-the-mill Republican types convinced that President Obama is the second coming of Lenin. Where were these fools when Bush was running the economy into the ground while running up a tab that generations of Americans can only dream of paying off?

The theme was catchy enough: Taxed Enough Already = TEA, playing off the Boston Tea Party and the whole taxation without representation thing.  (As an aside, did some groups really refer to it as a Teabag Party? Oy. Some of these people need to watch more porn.)

Nevermind that most of these people have been “represented” for the past eight years.

But I digress. I wonder is how many of these “Let Obama keep the Change; I’ll keep my dollar” numbskulls were jeering their neighbors for fruitless marches in opposition to the Iraq War over the past several years. How many of these people have previously dismissed marches and rallies as pointless and borderline treasonous when the object was the Iraq War

They are correct, of course. Marching and civil protest do little to sway the elites who set government policy. The bureaucrats know they have all of the firepower of the state at their disposal, should it be needed. That’s really the bottom line. Everyone — at least every sane person — knows the government is not about to change tax policy based on people marching on sidewalks. Give me a break.

When every person who participated in Wednesday’s demonstrations can bring 25 additional people to stand between the SWAT team and the people who actually refused to pay federal taxes (of which 40-55% goes toward military spending), then I will believe there is enough desperation, enough anger and enough courage to make real changes.

Not holding my breath.

It’s late. Really late. So late that it’s early. And I am so tired. But I am not sleeping. I am watching terrible comedies on Hulu.com and wondering why in the world I am not asleep.

I missed this verdict when it came out a few days ago, but Stanley Fish has a piece in the NY Times that adequately illustrates why a jury found that CU Prof. Ward Churchill was wrongly terminated for political reasons after he pointed out the obvious regarding 9/11.

Being an academic, Fish not surprisingly undercuts his own thesis by excusing the worthless tools that ran Churchill up the proverbial flagpole in the first place, but his column is a pretty good roundup of the arguments that led the jury to clear Churchill.

Bottom line is, Churchill was right. He was fired for political reasons, and that was obvious to the jury.

Actually, it was probably yesterday, but I felt no sense of urgency to post given that I haven’t posted a damn thing here since October. Another false start? Maybe. But who cares.

Fact of the matter is, life has been a frigging MESS since October. I have barely had the time or the energy or the motivation to write, and never all three at once. I have abandoned friendships, checked out of my marriage, struggled to maintain a strong relationship with my daughter, surrendered a half-dozen short-term goals that once seemed very, very important to me, and given up on my lifelong homestead dream. The house is for sale.

It has been a long, hard winter.

So even my rain-loving self was gladdened on some deep level yesterday when the temps broke 60 early in the afternoon and I was able to play catch with my boys on grass that was only slightly squishy. And today’s weather is a step beyond - 70-something and not a cloud in the sky, with spring blossoms bursting everywhere, and a hundred shades of green covering the earth.

Here’s the view from my desk:
 

Looks like it’s the old stand-by costume again this year: Pirate.

Suits me fine. I don’t have to buy anything new. All the gear is stuff I usually wear at various times anyway … blousy pre-Elizabethan linen shirt, baggy black pants, black sash, gold hoops for my ears, bandanna, the requisite eye patch and two-day growth of beard.  (OK, the eye patch isn’t really something I normally wear.) It’s comfy. I like pirates. And most importantly, the six-year-old digs my really bad pirate accent. Arrrgh, matey. Shiver me timbers

Halloween is such a weird ‘holiday’ to me. Of course it is the bastardization of an ancient pagan custom, but that’s true of most Western holidays to one extent or another. It’s strange to me because, more than any other holiday, it reminds me of my childhood, probably because as a parent, I have never really embraced the modern version of Halloween and replaced those childhood memories with adult versions centering around my own children.

Sure, we’ve done the trick-or-treat thing a few times, but it seemed like more often than not, the weather has been too cold, too wet, or both for the children to really be particularly interested. Candy isn’t a big deal in our house, so they have never been too into it. They actually seemed to like staying home and sipping warm cider and handing out candy to the other kids more than braving the streets themselves.

When I was a kid, it was a totally different deal. I grew up in a tiny burg (population 300-something) miles from anywhere, so by the time I was 10 or so, my parents would send me on my way, and my friends and I would roam the streets, hitting up the houses that served up the best stuff. My grandparents lived at the other end of town, so if our hands got cold, we could always stop there and warm up beside the fire (and eat a bunch of gram’s cookies) before heading back home.

As we got older, we got bolder, and the allure of free candy gave way to the simple pleasure of just being out after dark, raising hell. We knew which houses had big gardens, which were a source of soggy tomatoes. We snitched a roll or two of toilet paper from our homes. Someone inevitably got out with a bar of soap. If we were lucky, the County Sheriff would send a patrol car to town to patrol the streets. That would set off a whole evening of cat-and-mouse, with the mice having honed their skills all summer as members of a pretty good Babe Ruth baseball team. Once, one of my friends landed a tomato through the open window of the patrol car through which the deputy was trying to use a spotlight to find us.

Good times.

Now, of course, we worry about razor blades and melamine-tainted chocolate and child abductors and drunk drivers and all manner of real-life horrors. And Halloween has become as much an “adult” holiday as a candy windfall for preteens. Costume parties are all the rage, and more often than not, the kiddies aren’t invited.

In my case, Halloween itself will be a quiet affair. No trick-or-treaters wander far enough into the hinterlands to collect from our house. All of our ghostifying will take place tonight, at the “Harvest Party” at my son’s school. We’ll dress up and play silly carnival games and collect candy and tiny plastic trinkets and drink too much fizzy punch. And maybe someday when Halloween comes around, I’ll look back fondly on the pirate costume and the brightly-lit hallways of the elementary school and think “good times…”

I love long hair. I love having long hair. I love seeing people with long hair. No matter your gender, your age, your station in life … I just like long hair.

My hair right now is almost, but not quite, as long as it’s ever been. It gets in my face. It tickles my nose. It drives my wife crazy (and not in a good way).

I’ve had long hair in various guises since I was in high school. During my punk “phase” (christ, I really AM my father), I wore a rat-tail, bleached blond and hanging down my back. During college, I grew the whole mane out — perfect for head-banging at big stadium cock-rock concerts or thrashing about at smaller LA rock clubs. I cut it when I got married, and went with the mullet for a while, braiding the back and tucking it in my collar when I was at work — lame compromise gesture for lame-ass bosses in a conservative hole of a city.

Since moving to Cascadia, I’ve gone more feral with the hair. I used to let my wife cut it at intervals of her choosing, but she kinda likes the Hysteria-era Def Leppard look, and I’m more like Willie Nelson without the braids if you know what I mean. Fortunately, my day job doesn’t require a lot of interaction with “real people,” and I live in a place where there are more aging hippies, neo-hippies, Jesus freaks, and lazy college students than you can drive a VW bus over.

People ask me what the deal is.  After all, the crew cut (which I have also done) is way easier to take care of. I’m a runner. I ride my bike to work in the rain and wind. So it can get tangled. It can get in my way when I’m swinging a hammer or doing similar work in the garden or around the house. It’s not really in. Hell, even Metallica frontman James Hetfield is pretty neatly trimmed these days.

Frankly, until recently, I had never really thought about it beyond “I like it this way,”  which ought to be enough fucking reason for anyone anyway. (So then why are you writing in defense of long hair here, then, Mr. Defensive? I don’t know. Why does anyone blog anything? Because they have something to say, or they have nothing to say.)

Anyway, the issue came up again recently. I was dreading my twice-annual trim and I started wondering why I cared at all, and why I seem to care a little more as I get older. Part of it certainly is that I am, as I’ve written previously, becoming more emotionally brittle with age: less willing to compromise, less interested in conforming to others’ sensibilities. I’m becoming like those retirees in Florida who could care less how ridiculous they look in their stupid baggy shorts and Hawaiian shirts and Huarachi sandals.

A big part, I’m not ashamed to admit, is that I’m still channeling my inner 15-year-old. In many ways, I’m not much different than I was in 1985. I still love my music loud and fast. I still bristle at authority. I still feel incredibly alienated from so many of the public institutions that most people take for granted.

Vanity is part of it. I’m not sure if it’s because I think I look a lot better with long hair, or if the long hair just lets me hide behind the image that I just don’t give a shit what people think. Long hair both invites and diffuses attention. So pick your particular insecurity and go with it.

As I rush headlong toward the midpoint of the actuarial tables, I’m coming to a point in life that I first identified in my father at about this age, a crossroads referenced derisively in bad movies and worse television as a midlife crisis but as real and as logical as any milepost in a person’s life. It’s the point where a young man’s dreams begin to fall away, either realized and recognized as ephemera or chalked up as failures or unrealistic fantasy. I guess I really won’t ever play second base for the Dodgers. Maybe my kids aren’t perfect. Maybe I haven’t lived up to my own expectations as a father or a husband. Maybe early retirement isn’t in the cards. All that shit I talked about doing while my friends and I were swapping spliffs in the college dorm? Hasn’t happened, and probably won’t. The revolution is coming, but I might miss it. Did that barista at Starbucks smile at me like that because she thinks I’m cute, or because I remind her of her dad? (Neither, dipshit. She’s either trolling for tips or just naturally friendly.)

The choice then becomes clear: Surrender all of those dreams and take my place on the sofa, cold beer in one hand, TV remote in the other, or hold on to that rebellious anger, and that unrestrained joy for life that have marked my best days. Passion. Somehow, some part of me holds on to that passion. Having long hair in the face of advancing age keeps me in touch with that passion.

Philosophical considerations aside, I love having long hair because of the way it feels. I love the way it falls along the side of my face, the way it moves when I run, the way it flies behind me as I cruise down the bike path. It reminds me of something primal, something elemental and physical that predates stylists and SuperCuts and shears. Think of your lover hovering over you in bed, your legs entwined, her face framed in long hair falling forward as she lowers her face toward yours. Think of how her hair feels caressing your face as you feel her breath, how her long locks form a private space around your face, a place where only filtered light and the scent of her can enter.

And you know what? I don’t even bristle when people call me a hippie.

“Doxey told his friend: ‘God is on my side.’ And he jumped.”

Yeah. And then he drowned. At age 19.

What else to say about that?

Brief backstory: University of Oregon student and up-and-coming Duck football player, and a consensus all-around good guy, Todd Doxey, died after jumping from Hayden Bridge on the McKenzie Sunday during an outing with teammates. At Tuesday’s memorial service, a friend and teammate who was standing next to Doxey on the bridge recounted the young man’s final words.

Faith can be a powerful thing, but it’s no substitute for a good life jacket.

You learn something new every day. When I chose the name “greenink” for this blog, it was to symbolize writing (”duh”) with a bent toward fairly strident environmentalism, deep ecology, etc., with green ink being an analog for the blood flowing through my veins.

Turns out, the term “Green Ink” has been around for a while, according to the Wikipedia:

Sounds about right, doesn’t it?