My God Joe, how sad, how dolorous, what a lament. Another one from Mary Oliver: Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that they have no tongues, could lecture all day if they wanted about spiritual patience? Isn't it clear the black oaks along the path are searching as though they were the most fragile of flowers? Every morniing I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead. Every morning so far, I'm alive. And now the crows break off from the rest of the darkness and burst up into the sky--as though all night they had thought of what they would like their lives to be, and imagined their strong, thick wings. ****** One or Two Things I Don't bother me. I've just been born. 2 the butterfly's loping flight carries it through the country of the leaves delicately and well enough to get it where it wants to go, whereever that is stopping here and there to fuzzle the damp throats of flowers and the black, mud: up and down it swiings, frenzied and aimless, and sometimes for long delicious moments it is perfectly lazy , riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk of some ordinary flower. 3 The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so masny wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, crow voice, frog voice,now, he said and now, and never once mentioned forever, 4 which has nevertheless always been, like a sharp iron hhood, in the center of my mind. 5 One or two things are all you need to travel oveer the blue pond, over the deep roughage of the trees and through the stiff flowers of lightening--some deep memory of pleasure, some cutting knowledge of pain. 6 But to lift the hoof! For that you need an idea. 7 For years and years I sturggled just to love my life. And then the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind, "Don't love your life too much," it said. and vanished into the world. ****** And there are so many more from a book inscribed to a woman with love, respect and admiration...from some guy who thought she was walking the spiritual journey beside him. Perhaps she was, and wearied of his slow pace, or she needed the money she could get from selling this slim volume or the poems rankled or...but it is mine now and I'm glad of it. I most regret the loss of friends I shared poetry with. la

Where are all the postings from other people? Okay, I have another idea... Send him on a Scavenger Hunt the day of the party. It will get him out of your hair for a while and give him something to do. You will have to do some work to put this together. If you live in a small town it will be easier for you as the shop owners will probably know you and will help you out. Before the party, make up clues to send him to each pre-arranged location and eventually back to wherever his party will take place. If he is leaving from home give him a beautifully wrapped box with the first clue in it. The first clue will lead him to his favorite garden shop where he will find his next clue near his favoite flower, tree or some garden tool he has been drooling over. Have one of his friends meet him in the row with the flower, tree or tool he is looking for to present him with his small gift (the favorite flower etc.) and give him the next clue. That friend can join him in figuring out the next clue that will lead him to his next favorite place. Give him a funny word to say to someone from the store who is aware of the game you are playing. That person will give him 2 clues one to find his gift in the store and the second to his next location. The next clue will lead him to a coffee shop where a few of his buddies will be waiting to have coffee with him. They will buy him a coffee and each give him a piece of the clue which will lead him to the next destination. All the friends will join him to the next location, perhaps his fav. place for lunch where he will meet more friends for a light lunch and more clues. Some of the gifts can be pre-arranged to be gag gifts given at lunch or coffee. You know what he likes so you can plan his destinations and gifts. The final destination will be where his party will be held and the rest of his friends will be there to join in on the fun. You can meet him with a stop watch telling him if he wasn't as old as dirt he would have figured out the clues faster and been home hours ago. The rest of the party can have the garden theme but how about a ho-down (don't know if this is spelled correctly) but you get the idea. Have all the things you mentioned along with a big bowl filled with water and apples for dunking for apples, hire a Caller and have square dancing if you have the room or someone to do line dancing and other (I'm going to have to call it country dancing because the name escapes me right now). You can also rent a floor to lay down in yr. yard if you don't have a deck or patio to dance on. Okay, I'm done for the night. If I think of something else I will post again. Eyerish PS sorry if I spelled anything wrong, I need Spell Check!

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers? Full Service gas stations? Old High School yearbook photos of girls with pixie collars, pearls and a circle pin? Guys with sideburns or slicked-down hair? Old travel posters with passengers dressed to the nines, flying on prop planes? 'Malt Shoppe' jukeboxes? This sort of depends on the era you want to evoke. The Parthenon is classic, but that's not what you're looking for.

I'm commenting on this EC thread because I'm pretty passionate about American political thought. I'm hearing a lot about abolishing the EC from my democratic friends (I'm a dem too) but I dont know if they've thought it all through. I studied PS in school and took a class on voting behavior as well as many on the Constitution. Abolishing the EC wouldn't suddenly make your vote count more, because voting is part statistics and demographics, and part the art of persuasion, and part economics. Huge blocks of voters DO shift due to all of those factors. George Wallace started as a dem and finished his run as a republican and later kind of evened out as did the whole South. The New Deal, loved by us libs was forged in an alliance between working class northerners and poor white southerners. Then demographics changed, the civil right movement hit, and the Great Society was brought to us by a coalition of working class people of many races. Then the Republicans discovered race and religious politics and the South flipped into a reliable voting block that put them in the presidency several times, and now that and exploiting white people's insecurities about their economic station, has propelled the republcan party into quite a national powerhouse, if you look at where the democrats stand. We don't have the broad coalition needed to govern the whole country. All that is reflected by the EC, love it or hate it. So yeah, think you might be happy if the NE and CA where most people live got to rule the country. Maybe today. But watch this scenario--we get into a war with Iran (you heard it here), the economy tanks even more, and the Republicans play the fear and hate card into an even larger win in the next election. All your EC energy just got totally wasted. Less than a million votes in a few areas of the country means you've got a lot of work to do if you are going to conince the majority of people in the US that you represent their interests. And calling them dumb ducks isn't going to work, I don't care what they called you or worse. That's not what motivates people to vote. And if we abolish the EC, then you'll see even less attempt made to accommodate any type of minority ideas coming from the hinterlands, so yeah, the ones you hate, AND the ones you love. And believe me, not everyone loves my far out ideas, I get that! America is not liberal or conservative demographically, and everyone knows that, it is middle of the road. It can swing either way, and controlling the swing is the art of winning elections in the US. So I'm not going to get all excited because our nation's popular vote swung ever so slightly away from a demogogue because I know next time this country might sway even farther towards him if we don't make a more convincing case. Abolishing the EC aint' gonna happen and it is wasting time arguing something that might not make much difference anyway. I'm going to spend my time figuring out how to turn the US economy around and make it work for a larger section of the population. The reason I am so skeptical that it will under DT is (see same old same old thread), I saw the economy TANK under the last marginally competent son of a rich man who was in office. Obama was the classiest and most policy astute President in my lifetime, but he was also quite unsuccessful IMHO in turning out policies that benefitted the working class, due to republicans blocking it, and that should have been pointed out more strongly to the working class, not how DT gets to grope pretty women. I think that behavior is disgusting, but it's not my problem the way paying for health care insurance is. I think DT's working class supporters have been sold a line of goods by a flim flam man, but I could be wrong when the republicans open up the coffers again and start the pork flowing to their constituents, (that's what's going to happen my conservative friends, lots and lots of deficit spending, and I base this on what I lived through during Reagan and Bush). DT took a page out of the New Deal and put a xenophobic spin on it and rode it into national power. Me, being an actual New Dealer, think it is time we took it back. If we get all bogged down on race and religion we are not going to beat them at that nasty, nasty game, (not that I don't care deeply about those issues, but if they are all you have it's not going to bring the national coalition that you need). Cubbies won the penant by bringing THEIR game to Cleveland, and my party needs to bring OUR game, which is about helping the many achieve SOME parity with the few, back to the national stage. That's why I voted in the primary for an old guy with nothing to lose.