News.  It's a simple word--and not at all a new one.  The “new” has been with us for more than twelve centuries in English, and was a recognizable Sanskrit word six or seven thousand years ago.   And in its plural form, as “news,” we have     been using it in English since the fifteenth century to refer to tidings, happeningsor occurrences in time.

In our present, most of the news isn't new or news at all.  In the United States,  murder isn't news:  it's an hourly occurrence.  

And at this point in history the United States as a nation has been at war--          actively engaged in killing people--since George H. W. Bush decided to invade     Iraq for oil twenty-five years ago.  The only respite was during Jimmy Carter's
presidency--and Carter tried to start World War III with his attempt to free fifty CIA agents being held (with multiple passports each) by young Iraqis in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.  Carter's invasion would likely have caused a massive
Soviet response.  What saved the world was American technology:  all of            Carter's helicopters crashed in the desert, having sucked too much sand up 

into their engines while they were flying in below anybody's radar.

 In today's world, war isn't news.  Murder--even mass murder--isn't news.  Thirty years ago Detroit television stations quit reporting single homicides on the         nightly “news” programs because there were too many of them.  So they only     reported multiple homicides--otherwise known as mass murders:  they were still “news.”  Now American “news” programs are filled with stories of mass            murders and war-murders--which aren't “news” 

President Obama is horrified by his nation's violence.  Soon he will do somethingabout it.  He might start attacking American murderers with his drones.  Or      maybe suspected American murderers, or American murderers-to-be.  It won't  matter who his drones kill.  The President has experience saying “I'm sorry”      when he kills innocent people.  Maybe drones can be equipped somehow to         express  his apologies even as they explode.

I am not suggesting that we just ignore violence--or not report it.  But it should   be reported as BAD NEWS.  And MORE BAD NEWS.  And for good news, the    President could stop all of his wars, ground all his war-planes and murdering     drones, bring his military home from Germany, from Okinawa, and from his       torture camp at Guantanamo.  And the United States Congress could repeal the second amendment to the United States Constitution, and ban guns.                    

America should take down the Statue of Liberty--and replace it with a dedicationto Freedom and Justice.  Liberty is not a virtue:  it is not a social word.   Liberty  is a self-centered word; it is a libido word, a “what-I-want” word. Freedom and   Justice are both beautiful, good social words.  Freedom is a friendly word--free  and friend have the same Germanic root--and Justice is a word for joining           together.   

 But we have forgotten what those words mean, and what their value is.  We      chant “Kill, Bubba!  Kill!” at football games.  When we get a lot of money we       “make a killing.”  And maybe I say, “Oh, I would kill for a piece of my mother's   fried chicken!”  And athletic teams proudly call themselves “Warriors.”  Violence isn't news.

We could make news--real, good news--if we tried.  And if enough of us tried it,  we could spread our news--and broadcast it the way farmers used to broadcast  seed on their fields or corn for their chickens.

Happy New Year, everybody.  And Good News!!!

                                                                      Bert

YOU CAN'T IGNORE IGNORANCE

     Well, most people do ignore ignorance.  If they didn't--if we all paid attention and tried to make things make sense, the world would probably shut down.  At least what we call "the media" would shut down.

     I just scanned through the current Google news page.

     First, this headline:  "Nonfatal Opoid Overdose No Bar to Further Prescriptions."  This, from Medscape.  If you get a fatal overdose, your doctor won't renew your prescription.

     And this, from Huffington Post--which is usually thoughtful:  "Congress Pushes NASA to Build Deep Space Habitat for Mars Mission."  That "Habitat" in deep space is no doubt needed to house homeless Americans, but the Huffington Post failed to mention that.

     Or this bit of unqualified news, from USA Today:  "US says Iran tested rockets 1,500 yards from American Warships in the Strait of Hormuz."  Shouldn't USA Today have noted--just to keep us properly informed--that the very narrow Strait of Hormuz is the southern border of Iran, and that those American Warships were more than 12,000,000 yards from the nearest US border.  What are US warships doing 7,000 miles from the US?   

     What would happen to the USA if  people in  "the media" were thoughtful?  And at least tried to make sense of things?

                                                              Bert Hornback

SOME ISSUES AND SOME PROBLEMS WITH THEM


     I just read about a professional athlete in America who has an "issue" with his shoulder.  I have a problem with that.
     I realise that most Americans are afraid of problems.  They can't face the fact--not just an idea, but a fact--that gun violence in America is a terrible epidemic, much worse than AIDS or any other disease ever was.  Americans can't face the fact that the first Bush's greedy, arrogant oil-war against Iraq has been going on now since 1992.  They can't have bad news:  they are too insecure for such.  The closest Americans ever get to a problem is McDonalds--which isn't a problem at all.  It's not even an issue. Americans want McDonalds, all day every day.

       The U. S. Constitution guarantees that Americans can't have problems.  They can all have guns, and they can print as much paper money as they want to.  And God blesses America--and nobody else:  the U. S. Constitution guarantees that, too.

       Everything is all right in America.   Problems are forbidden.  The word has been removed from American dictionaries.  (That was needless; Americans don't read--they only watch commercials.)

      America is a land of issues.  There is nothing seriously wrong with anything in America.  Just a few minor issues:  national bankruptcy, guns, forever wars, guns, poverty, guns, murder, guns, pollution, guns.  No problems, just a few issues.

ON OPEN LETTER TO MR. OBAMA 

WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO HIS BOMBING A HOSPITAL

 Mr. Obama:

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  Don't go to church this morning; instead, STOP KILLING PEOPLE.

Stop your wars.  Ground all your war-planes--and your new favorite murder-weapon, the drone.

And if you don't have the moral courage to do that, then resign--and let a moral man take your place and call the halt to military murder.  (We can trust Mr. Biden.)

You are the person in charge.  You can stop it all, today.

Your "I'm sorry" is about as cheap and stupid as saying "stuff happens."

All your weapons were designed and built to KILL HUMAN BEINGS.  And they all belong to YOU.

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  

YOU are the president.  YOU are responsible.

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  

MURDER is not made legitimate by high office--or by U.S. citizenship.

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  STOP MURDERING PEOPLE.

Should I be polite and say "please"?  Of course not.  This is not a matter of your royal pleasure.
This is a moral, civilised command:  a human demand.

                                                                    Bert G. Hornback 

"OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM

     "The Star-Spangled Banner" is not really a very good anthem.  Not only is is too hard for
most people to sing--the range is to great--but it's a war song.  And we have had more than
enough wars. And more than enough boasting, too:  "the land of the free, and the home of
the brave."  Don't forget slavery, and what we did--and are still doing--to Native American's.
We have not only slavery in our past; we have genocide.

     "God Bless America" is not much better, though it is shorter.  We sure don't want "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," or "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" (borrowed from the unmusical English).

     How about "America the Beautiful"?  The first verse will remind us of how beautiful this
continent we occupy once was.  And what it asks--of God--is that he "crown our good / with brotherhood."  In such a murderous country as ours is, we could use more "brotherhood"--and "sisterhood."

     The second verse is even better--if you forget the racism of "pilgrims' feet"  which marked a "thoroughfare for freedom" across what our white ancestors saw as "wilderness" but the Native Americans knew as "home."  Of course "freedom"---the same word as "friendship," historically
--would not have let us massacre Native Americans along that thoroughfare.  But the last lines
of the second stanza of "America the Beautiful" are very, very good--and we need them:

                                America! America!
                                Amend thine every flaw!
                                     Confirm thy soul
                                     In self-control,
                                Thy liberty in law!

       That would be a wonderful anthem.  Even a prayer--a prayer I would be very happy to pray, fervently.
                               


                 

New Books!

Dear friends,

I do have lots of things to say--and a bunch of new essays that I need to post.  But I have been busy
with two new books, just out.

           ANEMONES MY FOOTSTOOL:  ESSAYS LITERARY,
               SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND POLEMICAL

                                               and 

                              OH, TO BE A 'CELLO!

The first book contains ten essays, mostly literary--but then literature is usually social, and both concerned with and a part of culture, and it is sometimes--maybe often--polemical.

The second book contains thirteen essays, variously "about" music, and thirteen poems--by
Yeats, Masefield, Lewis Carroll, Donne, Tennyson, Hardy, Wordsworth, and Mrs. Leo Hunter.

They should be available through bookstores and internet bookstores like Amazon.

And beware:  there is another book of Dickens essays in the offing, to be called  In the World to be of It.

                                                                       Yours,

                                                                       Bert Hornback

COMMONWEALTH IS A GOOD WORD

COMMONWEALTH IS A GOOD WORD

Commonwealth is a word that has been in use in the English language since the late fifteenth century. And it has been a good word: good being itself a social word, from the same root as gather and together. Massachusetts and Kentucky are commonwealths, not just states. As commonwealths, they are dedicated to the common good. The motto of the Commonwealth of Kentucky is “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.”

We have perverted the idea of wealth, however. Wealth these days is what every American is supposed to pursue for himself or herself--and to hell (or poverty) with everybody else. And thus we get Donald Trump.

Of course, Trump is a minor leaguer. His bragging about having $9,000,000,000 is silly, in the grand scale of American greed. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are each worth ten times that. They sit on fortunes of $90,000,000,000 each.

There are currently 45,000,000 Americans living in poverty. That's 15,000,000 households or families. Suppose Buffett and Gates gave each of those 15,000,000 families a thousand dollars. That would cost them $15,000,000,000 each--and they would still have $75,000,000,000 each, which would earn as much as the $15,000,000,000 that each of them gave away.

But neither Buffett nor Gates is going to live forever, so they can afford to give a lot more than 16.5% of their hoardings. Let's have them give away 90% of their hoardings--and they will each still have more than the bragging peanut-vendor Donald Trump.

Or let's give them three years. The first year Buffett and Gates can each give $3,000 per household to the Americans living in poverty. That will cost them $45,000,000,000 each--half their wealth. And those poor families will have an extra $6,000 each.

The second year, Buffett and Gates will have $45,000,000,000 each plus the $5,000,000,000 that their fortunes have earned for them--without their doing any work at all! So they can each give $2,000 per household to those living in poverty. That will cost each of them $30,000,000,000--and leave each of them with $20,000,000,000.

The third year they can each give $1,000 per household to those living in poverty. That will cost them $15,000,000,000 each--and still leave each of them with more money than Donald Trump has!

Of course, even this kind of giving won't eradicate American poverty. But if we use it as a model--for all American billionaires, and maybe even for millionaires, in threee years' time we could make the United States a commonwealth, and even a functioning society.

 And if we could do that, then maybe we could all turn in our guns!

HOW TO MAKE A HORSE RUN FAST?


When American Phaorah was just a colt, another horse bit half his tail off.  

Ever since American Phaorah has been afraid of other horses behind him:  It might happen again!  So he runs--and he runs fast, to keep them off his tail.

                                   

FEED MY LAMBS, BUT ONLY IF THEY CAN PAY

FEED MY LAMBS, BUT ONLY IF THEY CAN PAY

Aurora, Colorado is an American city of 345,000. It has a 5% unemployment rate. It has a six-week free summer concert program annually. Its best hotels have rooms for $500.00 per night. And at Dakota Valley Elementary School in the Cherry Creek School District, Della Curry was fired from her job in the school's lunch room for giving a free school lunch to an elementary school child who didn't have money to buy lunch.

Isn't there something ABSOLUTELY wrong with a city with a new “resort and convention hotel” and boasting of having a dozen colleges and universities, but which can't allow a city employee to give a hungry kid a school lunch?

Isn't there something ABSOLUTELY wrong with the school managers who fired
Della Curry at Dakota Valley Elementary School for giving a hungry kid a school lunch?

Couldn't the principal have paid for it? Or one of the seven vice-principals? Or even maybe a teacher?

Not to mention President O'Bama, who has billions of dollars a day to spent on bombs and drones and other weapons and surveillance devices.

Maybe President Obama should use some of his expensive surveillance devices to discover how ABSOLUTELY wrong this whole country is.

Maybe Warren Buffet could pay for a few school lunches. He could feed all the hungry kids in America, every day, and not spent even the interest he earns every day. And Bill Gates likewise.

Isn't wealth like theirs ABSOLUTELY wrong?

Instead of contributing to politicans and their election campaigns, Americans should give their money to feed poor children school lunches.

Why don't we just NOT ELECT anybody to office this year? As a nation, we would save enough money to bring everybody up out of poverty. And if we did away with high-tech weapons of mass destruction we could have mass assistance--and good instruction--for all of our school children, and for their parents as well.

If we actuaally need a president, let's have Donna Curry, formerly of Dakota Valley Elementary School in the Cherry Creek School District in Aurora, Colorado. She wants to feed the hungry. Let's let her lead us.

Or are we all too stupid--and too stupidly selfish and mean--to want to change? Are we as greedy as Warren Buffet or Bill Gates--or the person in Aurora, Colorado, who fired Donna Curry?

3 June 2015  

Academin Nuts

ACADEMIA NUTS

 

News from the Department of Nutritional and Intellectual Science

 at the Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought

 

            Saarbruecken, 2 June 2015.  Working in cooperation with Artificial Intelligence and Distraction scientists at MIT and Infectious Disease researchers at PSI, scientists in the Department of Nutritional and Intellectual Science at the Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought have discovered a potential cure for the most ravaging of academic diseases, Ismism.  In its various forms, Ismism incapacitates thousands of academics--mostly in the Humanities--every year.  Now there may be a cure for this debilitating and obfuscating disease.

            Severe acadismal academicism and exponentially infectious ismism among academismists lead to scholaritis, pseudoscholaritis, and acute pseudoscholarly ismism and ismitis. 

             Researchers wearing earplugs have developed a cure for these maladies by electroshock elimination of bollyglobs of fructifying ismgism and a simultaneous infusion of intravenous literature.

             Preliminary results indicate that this treatment results in more than 99.44% speechlessness among ismism-addicted academismists treated for more than thirty consecutive days.  Chief researcher Prof. Dr. Clarence Peach, though pleased by the general success of this regimen of treatment, says that the most seriously infected ismists may have to spend the rest of their lives in treatment. 

            Daisy-Belle Monitor at the World Air Pollution Control Center welcomed the news.  “Most academic speech can be classified as useless noise,” she said; “some of it is listed by the Bad Language Institute as grade one anti-communicational nonsense.” 

 

                                                                   -0-

SPEAKING OF TONGUES

SPEAKING OF TONGUES

            “Speaking in tongues” is an old trick.  The ancient Greeks must have done it, since they used the word:  a word for babbling with the tongue.   “Babble”  is either an onamatopoeic word like “blab” or “burble”—a nonsense sound—or it has as its source the Tower of Babel in the Western Bible.  Jesus’s apostles supposedly spoke in tongues when the Holy Ghost sat on their heads on Pentecost. In later Christian times, it has been associated with inspired talk, presumably in a language only God can understand, and is reverenced. 

            Religions often reverence things that can’t be understood:  like Athena being born out of Zeus’s forehead, or the virgin birth of Jesus, or the Christian idea of three persons in the one god.  Those are all imaginable, even if they are illogical or unnatural.  But speaking in tongues—babble—is well beyond that.  It doesn’t communicate anything, and nobody ever bothers to write it down.  Still, in some traditions it is reverenced.

            But speaking of  tongues, maybe we should think about the ways the animal world—not including humans, for the most part—speaks with tongues.

            Humans use their tongues to turn the noises that breathing and the voice box make into various different sounds, which become words and language.  And human have become clever enough to translate those mostly tongue-differentiated and tongue-controlled sounds into symbols, and sometimes to write them out.  Many children use their tongues—unconsciously—when they are learning to write, making lingual gestures which might be linguistic gestures

            Western languages share an “alphabet”—which, as a word, must be the most absurd bit of babble ever recorded.  It gets its name from the first two letters  for the ancient Greeks, alpha and beta.  There is no reason, of course, why they should be the first two letters.  “O”—or “OM”--has a long tradition of being considered the first sound, the original word of the God.  “I” is a straight line, a simple part of the circle:  it might have been a good place to start, especially as it is the me-word.  And all language comes from a self.  It isn’t a separate creation.

            The oldest of the Western languages, Sanskrit, from maybe five or six thousand years ago, has a very carefully logical ordering of sounds and the letters that represent them.  (In the West, with a nice blend of ignorance and arrogance,  we call the Sanskrit letters an “alphabet.”)  And the Korean language has a similar ordering of its sounds, thanks to King Sejong, a fifteenth century king, who learned the Sanskrit lettering system from Buddhist monks in China.

         But animals—or some of them, anyway—speak with their tongues, or with their wet noses.   Being kissed by a dog may be sloppy, but it’s reliable.  Dogs don’t do Judas kisses.  And though cats licking each other at bath time isn’t kissing, it is both friendly and seemingly pleasurable both for the licker and the licked.

            Humans say that snakes are not trustworthy:  they “speak with forked tongues.”  But snakes lie on their bellies, not with their tongues.  Snakes aren’t talkers at all.  Human tongues are the ones that lie—so why do we malign reptiles for having forked tongues?

            When humans say that someone speaks “with a crooked tongue,” they mean that the crooked-tongued person can’t be trusted.  Although there are untrustworthy animals of various kinds, we don’t identify them as being so by their having crooked tongues.  Even monkeys don’t use their tongues to play tricks.

            With the exception of humans, the animal world seems to have honest, trustworthy tongues.   Does our more elaborate intelligence enable us to misuse our tongues?   Sure.  It’s not just a matter of our giving false kisses.  Look at all the dishonest things we say!

            “I love you” frequently doesn’t mean what it says.  Indeed:  as saying go it’s about as trustworthy as     “I O U,”  among humans.   And the saying “Speak softly, but carry a big stick” doesn’t suggest that what we say is worth much, or to be trusted.  And “Telling lies,” we say, “is easier than telling  truths.”  Our language is so full of sayings that promote dishonesty that we should probably call tongue a dirty word.

             Speaking of tongues, perhaps what we should say is that maybe we would be better off if we didn't.

               

A FABLE FOR OUR TIMES

A FABLE FOR OUR TIMES

            A little boy was playing on the beach.  He decided to build himself a sand castle.  He would be its king, and its walls would defend him from invaders coming in from the sea.

            

            He started  scooping sand up around himself to build his castle’s  walls.  He built them well, packing them tightly so he could build them tall.

            

            As he built his walls he was also digging the moat around his castle.  But as the walls became higher and higher and the moat became deeper and deeper, he couldn’t reach any more sand to build with.  So he started scooping sand from the floor of his castle, and adding it to his walls.  Soon he was standing on his tiptoes, and stretching up as far as he could, adding more sand.

            When he had dug so far down that he couldn’t build his walls any higher, he declared his castle finished, and sat down in the hole he had dug, and looked up, admiringly, at his walls.

            And he sat there.

            Then some other kids walked by, and kicked it down, on top of him. 

            They weren’t bad kids, just kids.  And one of them wrote with his toes in the sand, “God Bless America.”

GOD BLESS AMERICA

GOD BLESS AMERICA!  GOD BLESS THE CIA!  GOD BLESS AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE!

Poor Americans go without food while the CIA funnels millions of dollars to middle eastern war lords.

There is no public transit for the poor (and Black) people in Detroit, but lots of money for diplomatic junkets.

We have no money for decent public schools, but billions of dollars for daily military training flights.

Obama can have a dinner party for fancy people, at a cost of several million dollars--which might have been spent on feeding starving American citizens one decent meal.

The United States of America is a strange thing.  In some ways it is like the United Cantons of Switzerland, in its catering to the filthy rich.  But Switzerland has neither an overwhelming national debt nor an absurdly expensive and infinitely dangerous military.

The United States thinks of itself as in some way like the European Union.  But the European Union is a society, and the United States is an anti-social competition.

I live now in Germany.  In the aftermath of the two world wars it had caused, and out of the ashes of its defeat, Germany built the European Union.  Not an empire, but a union.  And the union began as an economic union, and became a political and social union.  Not just a nation, and without any of the nonsense of "God Bless the European Union" or "the rockets' red glare," or now seventy-five years of constant war.

I was five years old when the United States entered World War II.  I am now eighty years old.  And the United States has been at war  for almost all my life!

Nations apply for membership in Europe.  It began with six states:  Western Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Italy.  Five economically stable states, and Italy.  Then it accepted Denmark, Britain, and Ireland:  a small but economically prosperous state; a large, proud (or vain) and economically weak nation; and a third-world state.  Then Greece, Portugal, and Spain:  all three states   which Europe would have to fund.  And now Poland, and the smaller Eastern European countries.  Maybe Russia will be next.  I hope so.

Europe doesn't have an army.  Or a navy.  Or an air force.

And the murder rate--not just in Germany, but in all of Europe--is almost zero!

Can there be a society in which everybody has a gun, and one half of the nation's wealth is hoarded by 10,000 rich people and the other half spent on what is called "national defense"?

I can't understand people--my friends, many of them--who "believe in" the United States--who accept, support,  identify with and emotionally or intellectually or morally defend the United States.

I don't ask for a perfect world--and given my moral, social, and intellectual limitations probably wouldn't be able to recognise a perfect world if I saw it.  But I know very well that this world we live in is not perfect, and that for all its self-glorification and self-praise and military might and murderous use of that military might, the United States is not in any way qualified to lead this world.  It is not qualified to lead anything more important than a bully's fight on a bad school's playground.

THE EUROPEAN UNION: A VOTE FOR THIRTY-ONE

A VOTE FOR THIRTY-ONE

The history of the European Union goes back to the dark days of 1939, when Winston Churchill began to plan what was to be the union of Britain and France. But in May of 1940 Adolf Hitler's Nazi army chased the British out of France, and six weeks later France surrendered. During those six weeks, the British had not even tried to help the French, though on 16 May Churchill--newly Prime Minister Churchill-- had flown to Paris, to encourage General de Gaulle to fight on. France surrendered, however, on 22 June 1940. And Europe was on the verge of being united by force, under Hitler.

After the war, the United States launched the European Recovery Program--usually called the Marshall Plan, after Secretary of State George C. Marshall--which was designed to rebuild a Europe badly damaged in every way by five years of war, and to rebuild it with fewer national barriers so as to encourage economic and cultural ties. And this was perhaps the real beginning of what has become the European Union. And the leader of the European Union--politically, financially, philosophically--is Germany.

In 1950, a freshman member of the British House of Commons made his maiden speech arguing for a “united Europe.” Winston Churchill was then the British Prime Minister. Churchill was so impressed by Edward Heath's speech that he made him a junior cabinet minister. And though Britain was Europe's most reluctant state, and was not one of the founding members of the European Economic Community in 1957, in 1971--with Heath as Prime Minister--it joined Europe, along with Denmark and Ireland.

Three nations joined Europe. They weren't conquered or annexed or adjoined. They applied for membership, and their membership was accepted. In the now nearly sixty years since the signing of the Treaty of Rome, what is now called the European Union has grown from a membership of six nations--Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Italy--to a membership of twenty-seven nations. And not a single one of these nations has been brought forcibly into this remarkable and unique union.

A unique union: yes. The United States, one must remember, were once thirteen British colonies. As that union grew in numbers of member states, some were bought, and some were won by war. And with the exception of Alaska and Hawaii, they were all taken from the indigenous population of Native Americans--many of whom still live of “reservations.” And many of the inhabitants of the United States were first brought there as slaves, and for more than a century after those slaves were “emancipated,” they were legally and forcibly “segregated” in much of that country, and a large percentage of those Americans still live in ghettos.

The union established in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome was a union of five economically sound nations and one poor nation. Of the next three members accepted in 1971, one (Denmark) was prosperous and stable, one (Britain) was economically troubled, and one (Ireland) was practically a third-world state economically. In 1981 Greece--another third-world European nation--joined, followed in 1986 by Spain and Portugal. None of these three new members was a “valuable” possession; they all needed economic assistance. In 1995 three economically sound nations joined: Sweden, Finland, and Austria. And in 2004, The European Union accepted eight nations from Eastern Europe--the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia, and the Mediterranean nations of Malta and Cyprus. In 2007 it accepted Europe's two poorest nations, Bulgaria and Romania.

Acceptance into the European Union for many of these nations is something like a poor child's being adopted by a rich family. “Empire” is an ancient Roman word, and history's great nations have all been empires, grown out of wars and conquests--until the European Union came into being. This union is a social union--and an economic one. It is not an empire.

“Economic” doesn't have to be a bad word. Etymologically, it is benign: it refers, descriptively, to how we live at home. So economic is a social word. And the European Union is a social union, dedicated to a common standard of living and a common social success.

Croatia, Macedonia, and Turkey have applied for membership. Once they have been allowed to join, the European Union will almost be complete. Switzerland won't apply for membership, and could not be accepted if it did apply. But Russia? Of course Russia should be a member, as should Ukraine. It is clear that Ukrainians want to join. And maybe Europeans--the united Europeans--should invite Russia. Having Russia in the European Union could be the making of world peace. It could eventually make this world a safe place in which human history may live on.

With Russia a member of the European Union, the United States would have to quit trying to undermine Russia. The Russian economy would benefit by its membership in Europe, and Europe would have less complicated access to Russia's vast natural resources as well as a significant protective military capability. With Russia in the European Union, Europe could negotiate with the United States for a reduction of nuclear arsenals and eventually for the elimination of nuclear weaponry world-wide.

The European Union was founded as an economic cooperation which would evolve into a political and social union that would guarantee peace among its member states. Two hideous wars had taught Europeans the need for such a union. “Never again” was the mantra of the war-weary and belatedly wise continent which undid the idea of nationalism without destroying nations.

Russia and Russians seem ready to join such a union. Why not invite them?

 And then?   

GENERATING LIFE

This planet of ours, that we call “earth,” has what we call life. What we usually mean by that is that this planet contains living trees and plants and animals—like us. But the earth itself has life. We need to realise that, before it is too late. And maybe we don't know what its life is.

In the plant and animal world, seeding provides for continuous life. Generation and regeneration keep what we call life going. We animals are still generating and regenerating, but the plant world with which we live and upon which we depend isn't doing very well. It seems, in fact, to be dying. And the earth itself? Is it dying? In what way or ways?

In the last fifty years we have been exploring what we call “space,” to discover whether or not there is what we call “life” on those other lumps of matter wandering around out there. We call those wanderers “planets.”

What we are looking for , out there in “space,” is our version of life. We are looking for what we already know. And we are thinking of the possibilities of our colonizing somewhere out there. That's what animal scientists call the “fouled nest” syndrome. Humans and some other animals live that way: when they have made a big enough mess of where they live, they move somewhere else.

But science isn't just a housing office, or Noah's dove looking for someplace to land. Science should be much more than that—and smarter than that.

What we call life—plant life and animal life--grows from seeds. Have we asked if this earth itself has seed? This earth seems to be dying; all things, we say, must die. But in our experience, generation is the companion of dying, which lets life itself continue.

But is there just one kind of life? And does it have to live by our rules?

In exploring space, we look for life on other planets: but we are looking for what we call life. Ego interferes with learning, even with understanding. Other is hard for us to accept. Our exploration of space is limited by our self-centered definition of life.

And thus we think of colonizing other planets. “Will other planets support life?” we ask. Of course, what we mean is will those other planets support us, and what we call “life.” Once we have made this planet, earth, uninhabitable, we will need someplace to go. We are like vermin, or maggots. And when we have killed our host we want to move on to some new body.

With our determined assistance, this earth may be dying. So we want off. We want another planet to go to. But maybe what is needed, in the larger order of existence, is for earth itself to “seed” another planet, not with us but with its own seed.

Of course, we don't know what earth's seed is. And we haven't even tried, yet, to find out. Or imagine. So we are stuck with the other scenario. Never mind a “seedling” earth--which is a natural image. We are the vermin who want to leave this carcass and find a new one to foul and kill.

Human ego would send us to other planets. But other planets may not want us. Other planets may see us as parasites. Parasites who have killed our own host body: this planet.

This world is—by definition—what we know. The universe is everything, or everything-once-around: an unmeasurable continuous ring. “Everything” is bigger than what we know, bigger by far than what we are or what we know or can imagine, even with our space ships and telescopes.

 And maybe nobody out there will want us. Maybe we had better try to save our world's life instead of exploring elsewhere. Let's spend our money on this world, not on leaving it. 

THEREON LYES

Theron Lyes was a mysterous man even before he came to town. People scratched their heads in wonder, even at his absence. When he arrived, nobody noticed. They were looking in all the wrong places. The police set their hounds loose, but they couldn't find him until it was too late to do anything about it. And so he disappeared into their midst.

It made everybody uncomfortable. There was somebody they didn't know somewhere in their town, somewhere among them, but they didn't know who. It could have been anybody. Everybody knew that much: and they even looked in their mirrors suspiciously.

The mayor ordered everybody fingerprinted. They all turned out to be different, and each set matched with somebody's fingers. And there were no left-overs.

The police ordered bugs put on everybody's phones. But nobody talked to anybody who wasn't there. Merchants all wrote down the numbers of credit cards used for purchases, and checked them against the names on the cards. In schools and churches, teachers and ministers called the roll. At Catholic Churches, priests started asking simmers to identify themselves when they went to Confession. Oaths of secrecy were forbidden. The lights were kept on in movie theatres. The local morgue started requiring identity cards, and all coffins had to be inspected by the police just prior to burial. All births had to be witnessed and attested to by two licensed observers. In public places. oaths were required for the use of first-person pronouns.

 But Theron Lies didn't show up. Nor did he get away.