Return to Earth

Man, what an excellent weekend!



The part on Saturday was a riot! Drums, Barbaras cooking, more drums, nice people, food, coffee, the nice weather, it was most hoopy! I have never played my bodhran so much in one setting. I started playing in ways I had only read about. More than one drum had the living daylights played out of it. I played till I now have a blister on one finger from my tipper. Then I played till it became two. Who cares, I will heal. It was awesome. I got to renew some old friendships and reconnect with people I drifted away from for a while. I also re-met Morgana. She's Barbaras daughter and quite a character in her own right. Barb should be very proud of her. I do not think Morgana fully understands our ways and us yet. The concepts of you are the child of my extended family and therefore an extension of my tribe seemed foreign to her. She will always have a place at my fires as long as she wishes. Dan and Heather celebrated their first anniversary as well. One year down of happiness and hopefully eons more to go! Sunday was recovery day. Needed LOTS of sleep and rest. I packed in a lot of hours to a very few days. Thanks to Tom for coming up and for the stimulating conversation on the way back from Mayapple. Made the 1.5-hour drive seem like 15 minutes. I love those conversations that seem to mess with your perception of time.



Now, for my rantings.



We have been watching Season 3 of Babylon 5. It is one of the greatest stories I think has ever been told on the small screen. Judi and I enjoy it to no end, but I have begun to find it disturbing in a way. I am seeing too many parallels between the story and our world right now. If you have not seen B5, this rant will make almost no sense to you. There are things where you can supplant one name for another and feel like your watching the news. Nightwatch and the idea of it scares me. Think Homeland Security. Clark is Bush. An unseen enemy is used to rip away our basic freedoms in the name of greater safety. ISN as CNN. Media that spews the party line. I think it is even worse after watching the episode where ISN comes back on line after being hit by the presidents forces. They begin to spew propaganda a lot like I see now on TV. They were talking about how much people enjoyed the lower crime rate since Martial Law had been imposed. This is fiction, I keep telling myself. Then this morning I was reading thru CNN as part of cup of coffee number one. I saw an article saying how the crime rate is the lowest it has been since 1973. This is mostly due to the /Homeland Defense/ measures. The one thing that bothers me is I have yet to see any form of resistance to this. Anytime anyone speaks up, the body politic wraps itself in the American flag and begins chanting nine–eleven. Better fall inline or the terrorists are going to get you. They are out there, lurking in the shadows and hidden alleyways planning and plotting. But, if you will just do what your told, we will save you. In truth I am scared, not of the terrorists, but of the government. Sometimes I feel my friends and I are the lone voice crying out in the night, but no one listens. We have no political agenda per-se. We just see what is happening. We decry evil stupidity where we see it. We are ashamed of what America has become. In a way I think we keep looking for the patriots of old, not the media patriots you see in info bites with more spin than a top. I think if Thomas Jefferson were alive today he would cry from what we have become. Perhaps it would turn to rage when he saw where we are going. America today is quite different from when I was in high school. I want my freedom back; I want to give it to the next generation. The present one does not deserve it for allowing this.