85th Birthday

Our neighbors, Angel and Yoli in black on the left, planned a surprise 85th birthday for Angel's dad, Leelo. It was a lovely gathering of friends and family. Many of their friends are musicians. Sam played some ballads on the guitar. Joe from Lucern didn't perform but made the music selections. As for Wayne, any story told with a British accent and hand gestures is funny.

Wailin' Sarah Palin

Photo Credit: We For Animals

D. A. Kolodenko's column, Presently Tense, in this week's San Diego Citybeat is titled, "Animal rights and wrongs -- Sarah Palin's Hypocritical Speechwriter." Matthew Scully wrote speeches for many Republicans including Sarah Palin's turn at the Republican National Convention. It's amazing that a person who penned a book (in 2003) titled, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy could pen a speech for a "lifelong animal killer."

Read the entire column here: Animal rights and wrongs

Sarah Palin's disregard and abuse of animal welfare has been reported by U.S. New and World Report, The Los Angeles Times, and the Huffington Post. Let's expose this wolf in sheep's clothing and the senseless violence she embodies.

I also want to share this email I received:

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following. Please read.

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler, September 5, 2008

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COMMENTS:

Thank you for publishing Eve Ensler’s letter and informing me about Sarah Palin vs animals. It has always been a mystery to me how one can say he loves God, yet hurts his creation.

End of Summer

Labor Day traditionally marks the end of summer and back to school. Here in San Diego, summer goes on for a couple more months. The pacific ocean and the land has warmed up to bring us many more days of warm summer-like temperatures.

So what did you do to mark the "end of summer"? Cynthia and I took a ride down to Mission Gorge and the old dam. Except that she took me "the back way" and I was whining as I am know to do when faced with a little endurance test and warm temperatures. We stopped at a trail head where a lot of mountain bikers were heading across this bridge. There's a number of trails out there for rugged bikes and their peddlers.

The San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park ended their summer hours on Labor Day weekend. Since we hadn't been up there in a few years, we drove to Escondido to the wild animal park. They've since added a balloon ride and extended their train ride, charging $20 and $15 respectively. Since we've been on the old train ride (when my sister was out visiting in, wow, 2005?) we passed on this one. Later in the day when we went, the temperatures were cooler and the lions were more playful. We also visited the elephants and gorillas. Was the gorilla thinking what I was, "when will this heat break?"