Eyes of the World

Eyes of the World - Grateful Dead (studio version)



According to the invaluable ANNOTATED GRATEFUL DEAD (linked above), by way of Deadhead Scott Robertson:

"You are the eyes of the world" is a translation of the noted Buddhist practitioner Longchenpa's practical guide to the tantra (The Jewel Ship: A Guide to the Meaning of Pure and Total Presence, the Creative Energy of the Universe, byang chub kyi sems kun byed rgyal po'i don khrid din chen sgru bo). It was translated by Kennard Lipman and Merrill Peterson and published by Lotsawa of Novato, CA. I believe the change in name occurred after the last publication date of 1987. The song itself obviously held importance for the folks involved in its production for part of [Robert] Hunter's lyrics are printed opposite the title page. After reading the text the relationship becomes very clear since it instructs the reader how to experience pure presence. How many times at a show did I feel that...

I chose the studio version for the multiple sweet, sublime guitar solos. Just like a mountain breeze.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

I have a big announcement coming on the radio show Saturday, so stay tuned! I have been FAR too excited to blog about it, and also don't wanna spoil the surprise. I will be announcing it here on Saturday, after the show.

By the way, it is also our 25th wedding anniversary! We went to Atlanta and back, and have been taking it easy this week. It's been a very nice holiday for us both.

I made him a Deadhead and he made me a fangirl. Good trade!

~*~

I also transformed my spouse into a confirmed cat-person... or maybe he always was one, just waiting to emerge? I just introduced the cats, and the rest happened naturally.

Time for Simon's Cat! In attempting to find boxes to ship Christmas presents, I experienced the following, as most cat-owners have:



~*~

And I really love this one. My younger cat has perfectly imitated all the habits of my older cat:



~*~

Hope your holiday is good too!

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Albino Skunk Music Festival 2012

We went skunkin up near the state line... and it was awesomeness, pure awesomeness.

Photos below. As always, you can click to enlarge. Bands include: Darby Wilcox, Donna Ulissee, The Honeycutters, Elephant Revival, Darrell Scott, The Steel Drivers. (I attempted to list these photos in order, more or less... but finally gave up, since each band played more than one set.)

And a splendid time was had by all!

We start our photo gallery off with Lucy, the three-legged dog, who sat by us and greatly enjoyed the show.

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Wave that flag

US Blues - Grateful Dead (studio version)



Summertime
done come and gone
My oh my...

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That's right, the women are smarter

Man Smart, Woman Smarter - Grateful Dead (Live 1985)



Music starts at about 1:25.

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Girl Scout cookie time!

Four years ago, I posted this lovely photo of a DEADHEAD BROWNIE, and I have been getting hits from hopeful hippies looking for stoner-recipes ever since. No, not those kinds of brownies, you reefer-heads! I mean GIRL SCOUTS!



Yes, it's time for Daisy's beloved CARAMEL DELITES, which have more calories than candy. Munch, munch.

I assume you have all heard about the recent Girl Scouts controversy over the transgendered Girl Scout, which has been all over the news. Short version: the Girl Scouts of America are FAIR and we can be PROUD of them:

A group calling itself HonestGirlScouts.com has posted a YouTube video calling for a boycott of Girl Scout cookies in response to a Colorado troop's decision to allow a 7-year-old transgender child into its troop. Gay rights and transgender rights groups have reported a grassroots LGBT movement of supporters buying Girl Scout cookies in response to the video.

...

After an initial burst of publicity around the nearly 8-minute video featuring a teen Girl Scout wearing a Girl Scout sash, the video has been made private on YouTube. However, it's still available for viewing elsewhere on the Internet.

"I ask all fellow Girl Scouts who want a true, all-girl experience not to sell any Girl Scouts cookies until GSUSA (Girl Scouts of the USA) addresses our concerns," says the girl, identified as a teen named Taylor, a troop member from California, in some news reports. "I ask all parents who want their girls to be in a safe environment to tell their leaders why you will not allow your girls to make any more money for GSUSA."

The video was prompted by the case of Bobby Montoya, whose mother told a CNN affiliate in October that a troop leader initially told her that Bobby couldn't join the troop because Bobby "has boy parts," even though her child identifies as a girl.

The Girl Scouts of Colorado blamed the initial decision to exclude the child on ignorance of the scouts' policy. The state scouts said Bobby was welcome to join Girl Scouts. "If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout," said the Colorado Girl Scouts, in a statement to a CNN affiliate.

I bought extra boxes. To be supportive and all, of course. Glad to do my part, she said, her mouth full...

And I made sure to tell the nice middle-class, bright-eyed, suburban Girl-Scout-troop-leader-mom WHY I was buying extra cookies this year. She looked totally stunned. This IS upstate South Carolina, after all.

Do your part! EAT EAT EAT! How often do we get to eat and feel great about it! SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY!

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Rosy red and electric blue: I bought you a paddle for your paper canoe

Deadhead peace symbol at left is a lovely metal design from Mountain Metal Arts.



An eventful weekend, during which our plucky heroine studied Shantideva like a fiend, and nonetheless failed miserably at all her spiritual assignments. Deja Vu all over again!

Alas, Jesus, Mary and Joseph shake their collective heads at me, as I extend my various temperamental shortcomings and personality disorders to Buddhism. For his part, Buddha wonders (understandably) why HE is left holding the bag, and handed me off to Shantideva, which at first, I didn't readily comprehend. Now I do. Shantideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra is the fire-and-brimstone version; "Shape up or be reborn as a moth, you ridiculous, unenlightened fool!" (It actually reads like the Gospel of Mark, in segments.)

I'm trying, really, but moth-rebirth remains a distinct possibility, if not inevitability, at this point.

Especially when I deal with ... (dramatic pause) sexual harassment.

What?--say my regular readers. "Aren't you a fat redneck grandma? You sure do talk like one!"

Yes, sports fans, Daisy is a short, dumpy redneck grandma... but still, the men keep coming, you should pardon expression. I am currently dealing with a stalker. A weird one, a left-wing stalker who doesn't like what I say. And left-wing men often feel entitled to harass women in misogynist ways, since they think their pro-feminist politics put them beyond the pale and place them above criticism. (Considering the tepid response to this person, maybe they're right.)

Since I fancy myself "the Anti Ann Coulter" (particularly after I learned she was a Deadhead), this made me wonder what kind of misogynist harassment is directed at Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and other popular right-wing female commentators. The idea makes me cringe, since many left-wing men clearly feel no hesitations about such behavior. By contrast, many right-wing males will not openly sexually-harass women (under their own names; they will troll anonymously, of course), since it isn't Christian and makes them look lustful (that is to say, their reticence isn't about feminism or women, but about Christianity).

But you know, as long as this makes them act decently, I don't care about the reasons for it.

It is therefore ironic that the net result might be: Right-wing men do not sexually harass the women in their midst with the same regularity left-wing men do. Or if they do, it's in secret, not openly, all while making a "joke" out of it. As is currently happening to me.

No wonder Coulter gets nastier with each passing year, and obviously despises liberals more and more with every book she writes. Considering what has been directed at me lately, I can only imagine the filth she has read from left-wing men, and it makes me ashamed.

~*~


At left: Daisy speaks at Occupy Columbia, South Carolina Statehouse. (As I told my Facebook friends, I didn't realize I was pointing my finger.)


Right after my radio broadcast, went to Occupy Columbia (see Saturday photos), where I rabble-roused right after the amazing Tzima.... talk about a hard act to follow! She is talented and incredible, and I am ready to vote for her if she ever runs for anything. As it is, I will simply link to her radio broadcast, EVOLVE WITH TZIMA, which is on WOIC-AM in Columbia. You can listen from the link, too!

~*~

Nobody has any money, but if you do: my radio show needs advertising, I need a job and so on and so forth. (Deadhead voice: Hey mister, got any spare change?) The unemployment-benefits clock is winding down. I am nervous about this, as of course, millions of other Americans are also. I feel their pain and they feel mine.

The smug Republican element who joyfully-yelled at us to "Get a job!" on Sunday (as we marched through Fall for Greenville), are simply cruel. What do you think brought people to the streets, at long last? Losing homes, losing jobs, losing faith in the system.

If you still have faith in capitalism, this means you must still have money, so ante up. Pay pal button is at right! :)

~*~

Those Ancestry.com TV commercials just kill me... I have done a good bit of genealogy, and so I imagined an alternative version:

I knew when I started hunting for my ancestors, I might find some wild characters... so when I got to Ancestry.com, I found this little leaf and it took me to ANOTHER leaf and well... I found out that one of my great-great grandfathers went to prison for holding a man's feet to the fire! And you thought that was just an expression!

Daisy beams at the camera for emphasis: "You don't have to know what you're looking for, you just have to start looking!"

~*~

Half of the internet entries are spelled Charley and the other half Charlie. I confess, I forget which is correct. Regardless of spelling, courtesy of lyricist Robert Hunter, it's where we get today's blog post title.

Little bit quicker and we might have time
to say 'how do you do?" before we're left behind


Cosmic Charlie - Grateful Dead (studio version!)

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Odds and Sods - Rightwing Deadheads Revisited

Yes, I stole that title from Highway 61 Revisited.



In this fascinating, educational thread from three years ago, Daisy is enlightened and meets up with her very first Rightwing Deadheads. Granted, I have met all kinds of Deadheads with all kinds of opinions, but none who actually categorized themselves as consciously right-wing. Thus, I was skeptical. Notice, Ann Coulter is mentioned on the thread.



Riiiight, Ann Coulter.



I put that little piece of info on my (already overloaded) back burner, and did not remember it until flipping channels a few weeks ago and landing on C-Span's THREE HOUR INTERVIEW (!) with Coulter. (Note to C-Span: She isn't Harold Bloom you know.) I guess since Ishmael Reed recently fulminated for three hours, equal time for the Right. (Which annoyed me considerably, since Reed is ostensibly of the Left and yet was careful to trash feminism and gay rights for a sizeable portion of his allotted time.) The interviewer presented a list of reporters "allowed to interview Coulter in the future"--which contained both liberal and conservative names. Explanation? Coulter humorously replied that these were the reporters who "actually brought tape recorders and transcribed what I said from the tape." Apparently, legions of reporters have put all sorts of words in her mouth she didn't say. (Again, I took that into account as a future radio commentator; I'm sure it's going to happen to me, too... since it already happens here in Blogdonia.)



Interestingly, Coulter's list included a reporter from JamBands.com.



What?



Oh, dear Lord.



So, it's true. Rightwing Deadheads. Like, at the very TOP. Not just grunts in the mailroom of the Weekly Standard, but Deadheads among the theorists (I use the term loosely) and popular media personalities themselves. I suddenly recalled when a Deadhead friend claimed he had a photo of Ann Coulter from an old east coast show, and threatened to bring it to work and SHOW ME. He never remembered to bring it (these are Deadheads we are talking about) and so I never had to face the music: that he had a shot of Ann in the front row. NOOOooooOOO, say it isn't so.



Ann reckons she has attended at least 67 shows, which puts her in a rarefied class. Holy shit, an advanced case, and she never caught liberal cooties from Deadheads? How did she manage that? Ann even flew out to attend Jerry's memorial in Golden Gate park. Like I say, an advanced case. Coulter also claims she never used drugs at a Dead show, which I am not sure I believe. Of course, she really didn't have to, since even the "passive" pot smoke at Dead shows could slay an elephant; she does mention the clouds of smoke, and jokes about it. I think Ann may have enjoyed her passive high and it might account for some of the starry-eyed bullshit she offers in the interview, which is from back in 2006. (Two years before "Deadheads for Obama"--and I wonder how she felt about THAT?)



Here is an example of the possibly passive-marijuana-smoke-induced, starry-eyed bullshit:

Moreover, I really like Deadheads and the whole Dead concert scene: the tailgating, the tie-dye uniforms, the camaraderie, it was like NASCAR for potheads. You always felt like you were with family at a Dead show-- a rather odd, psychedelic family that sometimes lived in a VW bus and sold frightening looking “veggie burritos.” But whatever their myriad interests, clothing choices, and interest in illicit drugs, true Deadheads are what liberals claim to be but aren’t: unique, free-thinking, open, kind, and interested in different ideas. Also, excellent dancers! Watching a Deadhead dance is truly something to behold.

Ann doesn't seem to realize that 90% of the Deadheads she has met are liberals, just not very articulate ones... I ask you, does Coulter's description (in the paragraph above) sound like a description of cultural liberals or cultural conservatives?



Many Deadheads shun politics (which we might say is an anarchist belief, possibly the long-term influence of the Rainbow Family, which had a lot of Deadhead-crossover membership); their political ideas are inchoate and unformed ... and many prefer that they stay that way. Just as Deadhead religion is all over the lot and the woo is fairly thick, Deadhead revolutionary ideas tend to be gonzo, unworkable, back-to-the-land stuff, like the Diggers specialized in. (Note: I am talking about the pre-1987 era, after which the Dead went "mainstream" and the general "Deadhead" term tended to lose its former countercultural meaning.) The Deadheads Ann admires put collectivism into practice, which is liberalism personified. But to maintain her useful fiction that liberals are "Godless" (the name of her book) -- she has to separate the lovable dancing bears of her past from those nasty liberals who have ruined the country.



(sigh)



~*~



And I got more links, too.



A huge and shocking baby-selling scandal has rocked the surrogate world, and yet the leaders in the field (the reproductive-pimps making all of the money off of women's uteri) still don't support additional legal controls on surrogacy. (It is particularly notable that this scandal INVOLVES one of the so-called respectable leaders in the surrogacy business.)



Short version: They make me sick.



~*~



Anonymous plays hardball with BART, posting naked photos of San Francisco BART spokesman Linton Johnson all over the net, as part of their ongoing protests. Their statement reads: "If you are going to be a dick to the public, then I'm sure you don't mind showing your dick to the public."



Daisy applauds and laughs: The Yippies would be so proud of yall.



~*~



At left: My friend Ginger Wilson sings one of my favorite songs (with the Shannon Hoover Band) at the Reedy River Concert Series on Wednesday night: "I put a spell on you"--yeah! It was a great night and I had a lot of fun, meeting all kinds of unexpected old friends at the show. (More photos here.)



As I have said so many times, if I ever move away from Greenville, I certainly WILL miss knowing everyone in town!



~*~



Rick Perry made money off of porn! Woooo! Wonder what his new Dominionist (and K Street) friends will think of that?



Movie Gallery used to be across the street from here, and was well-known for its popular "back room"; at my old video-store job, I worked with several Movie Gallery-refugees, and quickly learned the score. I find it hard (excuse expression) to believe Rick Perry didn't have a clue.



~*~



Marion writes of the death of Canadian politician Jack Layton:

To me, he was like a Terrier or a Bulldog, worrying and tearing at the Conservatives without restraint. With a four year term of a majority Conservative government, I felt so much better in knowing Jack Layton was the leader of the Opposition. I felt, if anyone could, he was the one who would hold the Conservatives to account.

Rest in peace, Mr Layton... we need more like you throughout the world!



~*~



How a Radical Leftist Became the FBI's BFF (Mother Jones)



Boy Scouts of America removed mother from troop after discovering she is a lesbian (Think Progress)



Katha Politt: Michele Bachmann, Wife in Chief? (The Nation)



Nice title, but I am partial to STEPFORD Wife in Chief... (mean giggle)

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US Blues, update

What does one make of people who are poor and aging, yet apparently don't believe they will ever need health care that is currently priced way beyond their means? Is this garden-variety old-age denial or Tea Party-Republicanism run amok? Why would people be against their own interests? Is a party principle really more important than your life, or the lives of your loved ones?



As I see it, this is the crucial difference in the political debate right now. We are now arguing over our own lives, not some hypothetical situation that may or may not arise. And yet, here in the conservative south, poor people who consistently vote Republican continue making all manner of theoretical right-wing noise instead of fully comprehending that the wolf is at the door.



Example: I used to get out there and protest other people being unemployed, and now I am the one who is unemployed.



And maybe tomorrow, you will be.



This isn't academic. Not for me. It was, once, and now it is an immediate reality. What to do with people who refuse to see it that way? Who smugly believe they will stay employed, and receive the Social Security that they don't want other undeserving people to receive?



For instance, two people who made money off the GOVERNMENT, now say nobody else should: Michele Bachmann, ex-IRS stooge fattened off of farm subsidies (i.e. welfare) and our congressman, Trey Gowdy, who made his living as a prosecutor (with starring roles on FORENSIC FILES and DATELINE, for catching bad guys). How can Trey have a career in government while railing against the government that has fed and clothed him very well? Why does Michele want to cut off welfare for actual poor people, but she is allowed to rake in $251,973 of OUR hard-earned money? (screams)



I think this is called, talking out of both sides of your mouth. As Rand Paul treated patients funded through Medicaid, and made MONEY off of Medicaid, but now wants to limit/abolish it for others. (He's made his money, so now he's through with it. Nice work if you can get it!)



And Michele Bachmann wins the Iowa straw poll. (screams again for emphasis)



I'd love to hear some opinions about this rather twisted southern phenomenon, if you got any. For one thing, I'd like to know, is this sorry situation a purely southern one? Do any poor people besides southern whites consistently vote against themselves?



It's enough to make you tear your hair out.



~*~



Great introductory animation on this one! Enjoy!



US Blues - Grateful Dead







~*~



And just listen to this! I have no idea where or when it was recorded, but I would say from the looks of their hair (touch of gray, ha) that it was late 80s/early 90s.



Star Spangled Banner - Grateful Dead







Jokey comments about how they couldn't let Phil sing for this one, LOL.

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Ben Masel 1954-2011

Lots of other people have memorialized Ben Masel, most of them far better writers than I am. But I was unsatisfied. There is a word missing in these obituaries, from Daily Kos, to NORML, to TalkLeft and everyone in between.

That word is YIPPIE.

Ben was a YIPPIE.

Why are the lefty honchos avoiding the word in the obits? Because the "serious" leftists never liked us, that's why. But they loved Ben, who was extremely lovable. So, they avoid the word. It's their way of being polite.

Ben would say, hey, you gonna mention that I was a Yippie?

I can hear him now. And my reply to him, is to write this.

He sure was. He was THE Yippie.

~*~

At times like this, I wish I had a scanner, and I wish I was more organized. Somewhere in all the detritus, I have several photos of Ben, including one of us together on a skanky old couch, looking particularly wide-eyed and paranoid. This photo has someone's thumb in the corner of it, and I remember: peyote and lots of it. We are looking at the camera, but not really. I was wearing a Jeff Beck t-shirt, and Ben is holding a cigarette. (Now that we know his cause of death was lung cancer, I dearly wish he wasn't holding it.)

Ben looked exactly like Cat Stevens when he was young, and I had a ferocious crush on him. He was witty as the dickens, and I loved provoking him to see what kinds of funny things he would say.

I have a couple of Ben-stories to add to the collection.

The first one involves an endless journey, and I am not quite sure where it began and ended, but it took us through most of the Midwest, Madison and on into the Dakotas, to the Black Hills Alliance Survival Gathering in 1979. I do remember a van breaking down in the dead of night, leaving us stranded in what seemed like a vacant moonscape, as we had just left the Badlands. We walked or hitchhiked (a little of both?) to the rest area, which was designed as a giant cement teepee, appearing quite formidable from a distance.

After using the restroom, I come out of the giant cement teepee, and some clean-cut fellow approaches me out of nowhere. "Hey!" says this strange person good-naturedly, "Ben is already in the van!" The van? Which van? And so I follow the stranger to a gleaming new van with Missouri plates, where Ben is already sitting in the passenger seat, holding forth, talking to the other passengers about the Black Hills Alliance.

Okay, what!? Who are these people?

So, I go ahead and get in (glad they weren't serial killers or anything), and it comes together: these are friends of Ben's. Well, of course they are. But... damn, in the middle of South Dakota? He has friends at a rest stop in the middle of South Dakota????!!!

Yes, he did. Ben had friends everywhere, all over the place. When I told other Yippies this story, they just shrugged: "Ben knows everybody." And I think of all the other people I've known who supposedly "knew everybody"--and it usually meant they only knew a lot of people. I can't imagine them getting picked up by strangers at a rest stop in God-knows-where.

But Ben knew everybody. I mean, he really did.

~*~

Unfortunately, my next story is somewhat garbled, since the two principals are no longer with us.

I can't remember who was in jail, Steve Conliff or Ben. This was during the Republican National Convention in Kansas City in 1976, and one of the two (often known as the Glimmer Twins in Yippie parlance) was in jail for some silly traffic violation (and probable possession of marijuana) in Raytown, Missouri. If memory serves, it was Ben who was in jail, while Conliff took to local talk radio to threaten to bring a thousand Yippies to Raytown, to spring Ben. (Of course, there were never "a thousand Yippies"--which was the inside joke.)

"We aren't gonna let a punk town like Raytown get away with this!" Conliff bellowed over the airwaves.

And so, magically, the authorities let Ben go. That afternoon. And they specifically told him to tell his friend on the radio: "This is not a PUNK town!"

Ben assured them he would pass the word along. He then repeated the charge later that night to a reporter for the Kansas City Star: "I got busted last night in some punk town called RAYTOWN!" he pointedly said.

They quoted him, too.

~*~

A young photo of Ben; I told you he looked just like Cat Stevens!



And finally, THIS colorful and insane event, the Republican National Convention in 1980 in Detroit, wherein Ben was busted and Conliff miraculously avoided detection by shaving his head.

In the Detroit courtroom where about a dozen Yippies were arraigned, one Yippie was given 10 days for contempt of court. Ben spoke up: "Your honor, you have to give me 20 days, because I have twice as much contempt for your court as she has!"

They obliged.

Ben went to jail a lot, and sued them all later for arresting him. He won, too, frequently joking that it was a good living if you could wait forever to get paid.

~*~

This is the obit that gets quoted here on DEAD AIR, since it dares to use the dreaded word YIPPIE:

"Ben knew the laws better than the police did," explained his longtime friend Amy Gros-Louis, echoing a sentiment shared by judges, lawyers and the many police officers who came to regard Masel with a mix of frustration, awe and, eventually, respect.

So it was with Masel, whose death Saturday at age 56 robbed Madison, Wisconsin and the United States of one of the truest champions of the Constitution, the rule of law, and the founding faith that the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights are not just ideals; they are practical tools to be used on a daily basis to challenge the powerful, to offend the elites, to tip the balance toward some rough equivalent of justice.

These commitments made Masel a supreme annoyance to prickly policemen, prying prosecutors and pretenders to the presidency. Before he reached the age of 18, Masel made it onto the list of Nixon White House enemies, and he would later earn national headlines for mocking segregationist George Wallace and spitting at conservative Democrat Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who earned the wrath of Masel and his Yippie compatriots for his steady service to the military-industrial complex.

In later years, the exuberant agitator would express a measure of remorse for some of the more extreme acts of his youth. But he never apologized for exercising every right afforded a citizen.

No one pushed harder against the limits on dissent in what was supposed to be a free society. That pushing earned him dozens of court dates. But Bennett Masel, the New Jersey native who came to Madison as a UW undergrad and remained to become a local icon, was never merely a provocateur. He was, for all the theatrics, a serious believer in a left-libertarian analysis of the individual liberty that lawyers and judges came to understand as a credible extension of the thinking of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the longest-serving justice on the high court and a hero to 1970s radicals such as Masel.

Goodbye Ben, and thank you for teaching me to be a Yippie. It was the major lesson in civil disobedience that I never forgot.

~*~

More:

Ben Masel, an activist's activist

Activists and Visionarys

Ben Masel - Professional Activist

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