Nurse Jackie | Edie Falco

A new Showtime series, starring Edie Falco. I download episodes to my computer. At first I was initially interested in Edie Falco. She is an interesting character herself and through her character is really an exceptional actress. A good actor takes us on a journey, and compels us to come with them. I was in the medical profession for some years, though now many years ago. This is a series where Edie Falco portrays an emergency room nurse. The rich complexities of her characters life are balanced by her direct and take no prisoners response to her responsibilities and vices. I am really impressed by this new medium for a gifted artist to use the acting arts in this interesting and powerful way. The stories are interesting. The central figures of the cast are women, each a jewel in their own right. The central men are an interesting mix of fools, gay men, heroic and poetic heterosexuality. In this sense the inter-social weaving of this setting is as artful as the acting. Nurse jackie shows us the system…the medical system, the insurance system, the uninsured, the immigrant, the pompous, the noble dead and dying. This is a matrix one could easily surmise of all the best elements for art and talent to flourish. The window we have moves from humor to horror to sarcasm to revelation to mediocrity that comes from gifted staff and crew efforts. The whole effort is very satisfying….and goes by quickly. Episodes run about 55 minutes, but it goes by so quickly I had to check to be sure.

The acting arts and film making are great tools and refuges in the mystery life, in a good life, in an open society. A good film is one of societies treasures. I have not written many reviews of film. I do watch films and really enjoy the experience sometimes. Most of the time I am disappointed or unimpressed or just nonplussed by what is made available. I really like Edie Falco. I am happy to see her take on a new project, be recognized, and invite us to come with her. If you watch television or download video from your computer, I would check this new series out.

Hopefully within the year there will be subtitles and local language versions of this show available. I have been watching the English episodes, now in the 5th episode of season one.

I do not have a television, not for some years now. I do enjoy films and video and have followed a few of my favorite shows using the internet, which is now pretty easy to do. I invested in a good 24 inch monitor for my computer and this makes a good viewing experience for two people.

I find I like using the Internet to find films and videos more and more. With high speed internet you can get what you want, even experiment if you like. In recent years the whole experience of selecting for yourself what you want to watch in the media has made a huge impact on the take what we give you network system that I grew up with for nearly sixty years.

I found this new show just by word of mouth in Internet reviews, so I am doing the same and passing along the news. If you like real life served up with spice, character, wit and just an edge of the forbidden, Nurse Jackie is a gem.

Breaking || Republican Party Reorganizes

"WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Troubled by dwindling membership and numerous setbacks, the 155 year-old Republican Party filed for financial, intellectual and moral bankruptcy and announced its reorganization as a tax-exempt church. The new GOP will be officially called The First Church Of Jesus Loves America And Latter Day Lower Taxes Anti Foreigner Old Time Heterosexual Do As I say Not As I Do Affluence Ministry Hoop N' Hollerin' Revival Gun Lovin' Banker's Club Outreach Hootenanny, Inc but will still use the name "Republican Party" for most functions." (Lee Stranahan). Find out the details here....

(Departure) the Faithless Void ||

The Faithless Void || Murdering the Truth

The tremendous reception and importance of the words of Obama, June 4th, are having around the world are one thing : clear evidence of how strongly the citizens of the world are hoping for change of the status quo, in every direction. People at the top to nameless dogs at the bottom of society are all hoping everything will change. To change the world you need to just stand up and move forward, taking responsibility for yourself and the powers of choice that you posses. To the right the foaming dogs of discontent wring their hands and throw shit at every word. Their poison is their drama, and they are the queens of the anal empire which we see on Fox news. Such cowards thrive on good news and hope, something they can poison. The most popular television in the ameriKa. Elsewhere the police say they are looking for an assassin who has written Obama’s names on the righteous bullets. They say they can’t find him. Nearby Dick Cheney tells us that he saved the world by torturing muslim criminals. I wonder when someone will erase him, or at least arrest him. The last eight years of rule by white texas trash leaves a lingering odor in the world.

Often, in the middle of the night I am unable to sleep. All around my life are the fruits and jewels of the sacred life, the promises of those distant beginnings when all life was sacred and there was peace in eight directions, the history of the beginning of my tribal ancestors, of the original life. Once I was sustained by these things, carried by them into the unknown world.

I rise sleepless in a wide world of cowards and liars, murderers, thieves, liars and people without souls. Some of the people are American Indians, some of them are Jews, others are catholics or Republicans, or Muslims, or workers, sometimes the idle rich. Sleepless in a land of Italian corruption, dominated by communist police and absent the human rights we once dared called freedom. I sleep dreamless in a land without leaders and eat at the table of poisons and garbage laid on a plastic table by yet more thieves and profit-mongers and liars. We voted them into office.

I walk streets of the world paved with emptiness, carrying people without lives or hope to places that never existed across lands stolen in blood from those who passed here before me.We are the children of the lies, the crimes, the blood and terror of those soulless dogs who made our world in their image. People of conviction, education and opinions. They dress very well and all of them have iPhones.

I no longer believe in tribes, religions, communities, governments, churches or leaders. I don’t believe in eyephones. I believe only what is before me, what I can lift with my two hands and sense with my own eyes wide open.

The modern media continues to create the fear which they pass over as truth. They are professional, well paid liars and thieves, deranged people who know nothing acting out in front of cameras to tell stories about the American Indian on PBS. People who know nothing see this trash and think it must be true. When you look at who the writers, producers and money people are, you see only white people…white people who willingly allow themselves to elevate liars and cowards, lonely desperate poor people, into a light which has no illumination and which casts longer and longer shadows onto the lives of real people. They do this with every American Indian issue, with issues of the Mexicans, Gypsies, Jews women, and all the other struggling minorities who have lost control over their own histories, languages and lives. The main stream media has never once told a true story about the American Indian. Ever. It seems an accident if they tell us the truth about anything.

Like many of the Old Indians I have imagined some way to avenge the murder of our tribal ancestors. Like many American Indians I find it difficult to forgive modern society for its crimes against the sacred, against the ancestors, against the land. I have known, however, all along, that there is only one way to fight back. I know my anger and pain must be directed into the sacred. I know my revenge must be made entirely of love. I know the sacred of the sacred pipe and the mystery life teachings of compassion are the only weapon at my disposal. I have known this all along. In the darkness I have only the power to reach for the light or close my eyes and be still inside the darkness. I am learning to fight back without fighting. It is not easy, but it is more satisfying.

Sleepless again that night I dreamed I had a big red cadillac which I drove around into the countryside, the wild desert of california. I drove all night, drinking beer. The next morning my wife told me I sang indian songs all night. I watch the sun come up, out of the corner of my eye I see the full moon setting over the emerald sea and make pasta. This dream has replaced the dream I had for many nights when I did sleep where I had a big 18-wheel truck and in the back was a small sacred fire, which I was driving around the world. I miss the truck.

Vecchio Mulano

The Old Cantina || Founded 800 A.D.

In the last few days I went to Tuscany. there we met a so-called famous Alchemist who gave us a feast and later we drank an alchemical extraction in alcohol of pure gold, as a shared meditation. This was quite interesting as a meditation. The so-called famous alchemist was more or less an empty bag of mostly water. A man apparently incapable of listening to anyone, interested in nothing but the sound of his own voice. I found him shallow and false in every respect. He seems to be one of those people, so numerous on this earth, who really knows not much but is good at the BS behavior. He is very famous in Italy but his name is hardly worth mentioning. It was quite tedious listening to his diatribe about how great he is. He offered our small group the magical gold extract in plastic cups. I alone refused. I told him I do not believe the truth can be served in a plastic cup. He got up and found me a wine glass, and so I alone had the magic drink in glass. He seemed to have no idea at all about how to present such an opportunity. The dozen or so other people present were all doctors, potential clients of his famous extracts- So I learned it was not so much a ceremony (which is what i thought it was) as a sales pitch for his products. Sometimes even fools do something good by accident, in the same way that a broken clock is right twice each day for a moment. I was not surprised at this broken attempt at pretending to the sacred. It is something i have seen more often than I can count.

The real fruit of the journey was that we stayed in a charming historic old hotel for several days in Tuscany. Tuscany is a magical place. The food and wine are legendary and deservedly so. On the last day of our trip we went driving into the high mountains around Tuscany. These mountains have the famous white marble and we saw magnificent white marble mountains, the very place where Micaelangelo gathered his stones for his masterpieces of sculpture.

In one small village we stopped at an interesting old cantina. A place where you come in and sit down and they serve you little bites of the local food in fruit, cheese, meat and vegetables. It was quite a magical place. We ended up meeting Andrea Mulano, the owner. He tells us the cantina has been in the same building, serving this food and wine since the year 800. He is the man in the photo above. Next to him is his sister, Cinzia. Their family has operated this cantina, this house of wine and food for 1,200 years. Think of that! This big man was everything the famous alchemist will never be. His blessing was worth more than all the gold we consumed in the plastic house of plastic knowledge of the famous wise man. His sister was charming. Together, in this small cantina in a tiny village in the mountains they offer the true sacred magic of Tuscany, of the ages, of the true divine spirit of great humanity. What a contrast. Andrea has some good English. He says he picked it up some years ago when he visited Napa Valley. I was very impressed and touched by his kind and loving spirit-

Sometimes when you look for what is wisdom, and what is a treasure, you find it in the most unlikely and humble place....and almost never in the golden tower where everyone says it is. I enjoyed drinking the gold, even though I had to endure three hours of bullshit from the stuffed shirt wise man. I will treasure forever my two hours drinking wine, eating the treasures of Tuscany, drinking the wine and talking to Andrea Mulano and his sister Cinzia.

We are thinking to move away from Pantelleria and feel Tuscany would be the perfect new home for our sacred work. It was a rewarding trip.

PBS Propaganda Archives "white"-washes tribal history (again)

The American Experience || We Shall Remain
PBS Series, airing in five parts. Check your local listings.

With enormous fanfare, abundant grants and the absolute hype of the white-controlled media, a nasty series of propaganda fantasies about American Indians has been rolled out onto our televisons to praise, awards and accolades of the “true” story of the American Indian. This highly speculative, and largely manufatured fairytale is presented as if it is truth. Though few to no real facts are available on these subjects, the series unfolds from the beginning, middle and end as if everyone knows what really happned, even though it is cerain they did not.

They tell no stories of the medicine society people, of the keepers of the sacred, of the Kiva or the Sacred Pipe. Once again they go to the well of sensationalism and perpetuate the lies of criminals like Rusell Means and sensational killers like Geronimo. While pretending to tell some sort of true story about the American Indian, they draw up the same old chiches, sterotypes and pointless bullshit which the white media has been spewing for 400 years. Nothing has changed. It has just become more slick, better produced and presented in such a way that a reasonable person who knows almost nothing about the American Indian will accept as “true”.

One would like to say kind things about such a lavish and well-connected effort to tell some sort of story about the American Indian. The list of sponsors, grants, consultants and donors is truly impressive. There is even a dual cast of actual American Indian people. On one hand there are the actors who act out for us the narrative. On the other hand there are present descendants and relatives of the American Indians being talked about adding their scripted comment. There are scripts, producers, wardrobe and many “reenactments”. It all has a lot of polish and is a highly professional presentation. The scripting, however, is the problem. There is a lot of conjecture and guessing (and imposition) of historical events posing as facts. People who are not very well versed or knowledgeable in tribal history and information will think what is being said represents truth. There are no disclaimers that it is all speculation. This absence of clarification is a serious shortcoming.

Given the credentials and resources of the production professionals, one can wonder why the focus Is so narrow. The rich diversity of tribal lives and history is ignored entirely. Whole geographic regions of long tribal histories are just not mentioned.

Tribal people and communities continue to drown in a deep ocean of really bad information. This series does nothing to help this problem…in fact it only compounds it. Many of the segment directors and crew are American Indians, which gives the errors and weaknesses of this series a decidely odd flavor.

There are to many unidentified white people commenting as “experts” who clearly have no demonstrable way to illustrate how they know what they claim to know or any history to allow the viewer to understand who they are or how they arrived at their speculative points of view.

The good that can be here is thereby eclipsed by the omissions and errors of presentation. The very act of scripting reenactments of largely undocumented events and histories is itself highly questionable.

Is this yet another ongoing example of how shallow, contrived and unable to muster a clear view of reality which seems to be an epidemic in the mainstream media? Yes, it is.

When historians must manufacture and act out a narrow view like this, something is lost. Perhaps what is lost is the truth. All this scratching around the bleeding earth to tell some sort of American Indian story is covering up the real story, the story the world continues to wait to hear and see.

Given the noble historical context of “preserving” the history of heroic leaders like Tecumse, one can only imagine why at the end they felt it relevant in that context to focus on the lies and criminality of the so-called Wounded Knee incident? What about the struggle of the Navajo against the uranium industry or the long and noble history of the Hopi? Two million American Indians and over 600 tribes wait for the real story. This is not it.

This is worthwhile viewing and recommended. Just be forewarned that this is yet another variation of revisionist and highly selective, manipulated, speculative history. It is great to see the Wampanouag get their due credit for the salvation of the Pilgrims. It is great to see innovative and brilliant leaders like Tecumse receive historical recognition.

America, and the world, has yet to take any honest steps towards truly seeing the American Indian history that rests half-buried in the shadows of the truth. For what it does accomlish one can be appreciative. For what is missing, we tribal people continue to wait. As we have for 500 years.

My rating for this series. 3 out of 10. Best regards.

A Sweat Lodge in Parabiago Italy

For the fifth year, I go to Parabiago to conduct the ceremonies of the four directions unity bundle. We will build a new sweat lodge and go through the dream ceremony. A small group of people coming from all over Italy will attend these ceremonies. These will be the first ceremonies since I have finished writing the book Roots of the Sacred Tree…as well as the first since turning 60 years of age.

We are started working some ceremonies in a new community near Farrara. However, the space and the principles organizing this work have proven to be unsatisfying, requiring that we postpone and rework what may or may not be future possibilities for work in this region.

This has been a winter of pretty strong changes and challanges. My health continues to be a problem. It has gotten better on some fronts, only to present new problems on others. The biggest one at the moment seems to be in walking. I cannot walk very far before my left leg cramps up with a great rigidity in the muscles and great pain as well. My movement has become restricted, perhaps in a dangerous way. Other more subtle problems persist. At the moment my spirit is quite ready to get around the world but for my body it may in fact be impossible until there has been a stronger change for the better.

Lately my dreaming has been dreams inside the regular world. The world we see inside modern life. The most unusual development has been the arrival of a large 18 wheel truck which has had various parts in my recent dreaming.

Realizing so much of my dreaming has been inside modern society, I have asked my dreaming to change this. The results so far have been interesting. A few nights ago I was in a regular sort of house. My late father arrived and changed into a loin cloth and a big feather bustle. The bustle was a unique design. It had many very large feathers, with small feathers, like dongles, one hanging from each big feather. He actually started dancing and said to me “now I get it”. I actually started dancing with him and happened to mention to him that the old Indians figured these sacred feathers were just as important as the King James Bible he had so much affection for when he was alive. Well, this ended the dancing straight away and the dream became a big argument that woke me up. His dance was very good, a traditional style that really set off his feather bustle in a good way. This may be first dream I have ever had where my father presented himself fully as an American Indian man. In terms of the inner emotional journey I have made with this man, it was perhaps even a breakthrough.

Friday night. One man who has arrived early has settled into a very strong yoga practice that involves strong vocalizations. As I sit and listen to it I am not disturbed or irritated but not entirely comfortable with it. I will have to enter an instruction once the fire is made that only the practices we are here to share can be conducted. At the moment he is on free time. Once the fire has started he needs to go on Indian time. I have had encounters with strong yoga students who behave rather competitively or who seek to impose their schools of practice into the ceremonial work. The American Indian elders have always believed when you arrive in their lands, that you place yourself under their direction. This is all together a curious question which must sometimes be considered when working with people from diverse cultures and experiences. In these mystery life teachings I usually consider everyone present a white belt beginner.

This round we need to make a lodge for 14 people or so, or at least that is the rumor. (Ended up being 11-ed)

This round I will seek to bring forward the rule of silence in a strong way. `Much of the ceremonial space is an opportunity to clean out the back of the brain. `If there is to much talking, the noise of that prevents the subtle energy from getting to the back of the brain. The silence has a great power, between the singing, putting tobacco into the fire and the other elements of ceremony…properly these things can be tied together in a powerful way in the rule of silence, and kept from linking entirely by to much frontal brain noise…so, creating and maintaining that opportunity is always a big burden of the work.

I recently gave my wife an Eagle Feather. In this ceremony, I will ask her to be the one who touches the people with Eagle Feather. This will be the first time she takes her eagle feather into a ceremony in this way.

We are building a new sweat lodge this season. We have found a good group of hazelnut trees which have given us the wood for the frame. They are very fresh in the spring season, flexible and willing to work for us. We had to sneak up on a public park in the night to get these saplings. That is how it is in the city life. You have to make an expedition to find what you need, and you have to be careful doing it.

12:30 we have finished making the sweat lodge. The unusual angles of wood growing in the city creates an unusual shape this time. By the time we were finished it resembles an egg somewhat more than a circle. The wood has a fierce energy. Some of the saplings have many little flowering branches which I did not remove. It gives a great sweet sense of life to the completed frame. The egg-shaped frame.

1:30 before we have the lunch, we are covering the sweat lodge. I tell the Italians we have transformed a place on the earth into the womb of a sacred woman, that it is up to us now to understand this and make it true.

3 pm. We begin by seeking agreement. I am old, you are young. You are over there, I am over here. We cannot agree intellectually or culturally. We define ceremonial space in terms of where it is possible to agree. We can agree at the level of breathing together. We can agree using the rattles, using our silence. We can agree to enter the sweat lodge together. We can agree to dream close together. So we begin by standing together at the fire. In this round I will have them go one by one to the fire where they will see two fire keepers, women. One will touch them with an eagle feather and the other will show them the tobacco and the way to make an offering into the morning fire. They will come from there to the sweat lodge stones waiting for the fire. As they return each will will take a rattle and start shaking it. When the group is completed, we will al go together to the tobacco fire and place in tobacco all together. I will take fire from the morning fire and use it to start the sweat lodge fire and we will have started in the formal way. The sky gate will be open at that time.

8:30 pm. We talk about putting something in. I tell them if they put something in there, if they open up and put something in that ceremony they will get something back. This was just after asking two men who had traveled a long way to go away, without any explanation to anyone, even them. I did not even ask my brain why I told them to go. If after all this time I cannot trust my instincts and my spirit I am in the wrong line of work. I believe you should do the best you can. If you do that and the answer is no, even so, you should be ok. Though we do not speak the same language I told them that was unimportant. I do not need language to understand what is going on with people inside a ceremony. Once they cross the line of the sacred morning fire they pass under my direction and I see them clearly. Language at that point means nothing…at least not anything important…it does not have to stop our progress.

Fragment ends.

The Most Ignorant Pope || A Monkey's Ass

This new beady-eyed Pope is one of the most intolerant and uneducated leaders the Catholic Church has yet to produce.

Every time he opens his mouth only the garbage of intolerance gushes out. As he parades around in his gay clothing, he has managed so far to insult everybody. When I see photos of him, his smile is like that of a badger and his eyes are dead little stones with no light, only rage and judgement. Of all the people in the world who need to shut the fuck up, this is the number one guy.

His latest tirade of racists supremacy and Nazi ideals is directed at the tribal spiritual practices of Africa. He tells the world that these people who believe in and practice their traditional tribal religions are bad people who need to be converted to the faith of this enshrined Nazi bigot parading around as a religious leader.

Many indigenous people had hoped we had long ago passed the point where traditional tribal spiritual practices were being condemned and judged by a Christian majority. However, since he crawled out from under the dark rock the old Pope kept him under, this new Pope has renewed the war against traditional tribal belief systems.

This is a retrograde philosophy at its most dangerous. His smug finger pointing should be taken as a personal insult to every person of reason and intelligence.

The world has so many ineffective world leaders. Clowns and punks who disguise an agenda of intolerance and hatred in educated words and phony appeals to unity. So far, the career of this mousy little man has managed to insult everybody. It is perhaps the strangest ascension in my lifetime, this rise of this ugly and hateful man.

Tribal people have their own religions. After many lifetimes of trying to get the language used to talk about indigenous religions cleaned up, we have this new international voice which has dragged the discussion back into the gutter.

This Pope is a sorry, sorry human being. I am 100 per cent against him. How much damage will he do in the free world before real justice catches up with him? The Church appointed a Nazi to head the Church. And he is moving right along with the supremacist views and racial hatred promoted so destructively by the Nazi culture.

He is a dangerously out of touch clown in red slippers. I ask no forgiveness for speaking in a harsh way. Sometimes polite language has no urgency or emotion sufficient to express the outrage society should feel to have this monkey's ass on the world stage. I am 60 years old. I can count the decent and effective world leaders we have had in my lifetime on one foot.

I have had, for the last several years, an experience of living within a Catholic culture. What i have learned here in Italy is that nearly every sensible adult working man and woman could care less what the Pope and his talking ass have to say about anything. On Pantelleria the head priest thinks his job is to tell people what to do. He thinks he is some sort of godfather or boss on this tiny island. He is so out of touch and closed in his mind that some of us wonder if he even has an asshole. He sticks his stinky assless face into every detail of daily life where the answer is almost always no. As in the rest of the world, sensible people pay him zero attention. The problem is the children and the innocent. There are so many kind and innocent people who just know no better and should not be blamed for looking to the church and its leadership. these are the one who are being betrayed. I could care less what Pope and his talking ass have to say, but I see the harm that it does to people unable to muster up a judgment against an office they consider sacred. It is the hope and hard work of the most innocent among us, perhaps, that holds the daily work together. the cynical truth is the Pope and his talking ass know this very well. they know to a certainty, a cynical, drug-dealers certainty, to whom they speak. Didn't they use to drive wooden stakes into the hearts of vampires? Now they make them Pope.

I have looked now at many photos of this Pope. Examine his eyes and hands in particular. His hands always look like claws, like they are trying to grip your throat and choke you. His hands are never open, they are always claw-like, threatening and filled with anger and tension. His eyes are the same. He has beady, unsmiling eyes, regardless of what the rest of his face is doing. Those are not the eyes of a man at peace, or of a man who believes in peace.

The innocent are being betrayed.