At Home with the Dogs

Ellie and Harley

Wild Child sculpture and Harry Taylor owl and crow prints

Eclectic rhinoceros and figurine collection

As I've said before, I've been rearranging and clearing clutter from each room. The pictures featured here are from my living room, my new favorite place to hang out with the dogs.

Procrastination Tip #1

Instead of finishing the laundry last night I decided to click through as many cable television channels I could until I found something interesting. I landed on a program about Annie Liebovitz and her creative process. She was fascinating, her process and the images shown unexpected, but the laundry still had to be done, and watching a fascinating program can be an anxiety ridden experience, since watching is a passive activity. So, I grabbed my iPhone and started taking pictures of the program, Liebovitz, the commercials, and started flipping channels and taking pictures of whatever presented itself. The laundry could wait. Laundry can always wait.

The images turned out grainy like old pinhole photographs. Try this with your cell phone and see what you come up with.

The pictures featured above are from WWII in HD.

Occupy SLC - November 12, 2011

Pioneer Park November 12, 2001.

Gallivan Center November 12, 2001.

Occupy SLC has exactly fifteen minutes to decamp or the SLPD will begin arresting protesters. Since the death of a homeless man yesterday evening at the park, Cheif Burbank (on orders from Mayor Becker) issued an eviction notice, stating health and safety issues. In an official statement from the Mayor's office, Becker promised that free speech will be protected, but camping permits will no longer be issued.

I am watching local news waiting for news, but football wrap up shows dominate.

I was in the city earlier today taking pictures of the camps at Pioneer Park and the Gallivan Center. (I'll post the pics a little later). People were standing in groups outside their tents, the tent kitchen was serving food, and I saw numerous people coming and going, dropping off donations. It didn't look like the hundred plus protesters were planning on going anywhere.

On the way out of town I drove by the park I saw a few police cars and police milling around, a few officers speaking with small circles of people. As I left SLC, the snow had just begun to fall.

I was listening to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, possibly the most beautifully meloncholy piece of music, and burst into tears. It took to Bountiful to gather myself. Politics aside, I am moved.

4 News just reported that police are in force at Pioneer Park and intend to arrest anyone refusing to leave on their own volition.

The protesters have five minutes to leave.

Protesters are chanting, "We are 99 percent". Lights from the fleet of police cars lining 4th South are flashing. A policeman on a megaphone is instructing the crowd to disperse. Police are threatening arrests while journalists interview individual protesters. A young man says "they want their voices heard...that they're not going take it anymore". Chief Burbank said " the city is supportive of free speech, but that protesters will no longer be allowed to camp overnight".

What I know, is that Occupy is not going away. This movement reminds me of what I've read and the programs I've seen on the beginnings of the 60's protests. The groundswell started small, was disparate and seemingly disorganized, then as now. The political leaders dismissed and demonized the protests and protesters. The news barely reported the protests, until the voices were too numerous and too vocal to dismiss.

So far, the park looks peaceful.

Update:
CNN U.S. reported that Salt Lake City police arrested nineteen protesters Saturday night.

The Christian Science Monitor reported about police evicting protesters, Salt Lake City included.

The New York Times reported that protesters around the country are shifting from taking it to the streets to taking it to college campuses. Everybody, take your shoes off and get comfortable, Occupy is here for the long haul.

This Moment: November 12, 2012 6:52 A.M.

The porch chime clangs loudly. The full moon is shrouded in thick clouds. Shadows finger crawl cross my windows. Wind is a low rumble like voices heard through walls. Shadows fade as light slowly emerges from behind the mountains. The storm and it's snows will soon arrive, its coming has been announced, and will be greeted like an uninvited guest to a private dinner party. The dark days are here. I feel their cold grip on the back of my neck. Gunfire in the distance, probably near the lake's shoreline where wild geese bed down in the marsh grass. The small dog jumps to attention, but soon circles himself back into the comforter. I wonder why the geese wait so long to fly south for the winter months. It will not be long before the ground will freeze and the lake made of salt will glisten like crystal held to the light. The wind has ceased. The chimes sway gently in a leftover breeze, their music of metal on metal a reminder of entering the darkness of a Buddhist temple, the gong's deep voice reverberating along the wooden walls and across the golden surface of the Buddha. In the morning light, as the darkness takes its leave, I am drawn to a dream, not my own, of a ghost train train filled with the souls of my ancestors bearing down nonexistent tracks behind my home. I wonder at the meaning of this, and wish I could ask them the way forward. The chimes begin again. The old dog breathes heavily on her pillow. The ground, its cache of yellow orange leaves will be hidden away under a thick cover of white in a matter of hours. I hear geese call to each other as they pass over my house and I cannot keep myself from smiling, knowing they will find their way home safe.

Poem Therapy 11/11/11 at 2:37 P.M: Before the Deployment - Jehanne Dubrow

Before the Deployment
Jehanne Dubrow


He kisses me before he goes. While I,
still dozing, half-asleep, laugh and rub my face

against the sueded surface of the sheets,
thinking it’s him I touch, his skin beneath

my hands, my body curving in to meet
his body there. I never hear him leave.

But I believe he shuts the bedroom door,
as though unsure if he should change his mind,

pull off his boots, crawl beneath the blankets
left behind, his hand a heat against my breast,

our heart rates slowing into rest. Perhaps
all good-byes should whisper like a piece of silk—

and then the quick surprise of waking, alone
except for the citrus ghost of his cologne.

Artist of the Day: Home Safe - CAPow

Home Safe CAPow http://capow1981.blogspot.com & http://windshielddiaries.blogspot.com

I thought this image from Troy, New York artist CAPow's Hometown Heart series, a moving Veteran's Day wish for all our service men and women to come home safe.

Artist Bio:
Creating and crafting since birth, CAPow is formally trained in Audio Recording and Graphic Design. She has lived in Boston MA, Brooklyn NY, and currently resides in a 120 year old house in Troy, NY.

Veteran's Day: November 11, 2011

Today is Veteran's Day.

I listened to the news on the way to work this morning, and the topics reported focused on veterans, past and present: President Obama will lay a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier, there's a bill proposal to help returning vets find employment, suicide rates are alarming, two marines were seriously wounded at Occupy Wall Street protests, post traumatic stress disorder, homelessness, high divorce rates are the norm. What? I know the news focuses on the negative, but the state of returning vets and their families seems dire. Can this really be true?

Flipping from one news report to another, I realized there isn't an "on the ground" way for me to find out because I don't know a single man or woman currently serving in the military.

The only veterans I know personally are my father and his friends. They served in WWII, during the war, and as peace keepers after the war. From their stories, books and programs, I know the sacrifices soldiers, their families, and every American bore during the world war. I live near an air force base and see soldiers in uniform almost every day, but I don't know any of them or the sacrifices they and their families bear. I think this is true for the majority of Americans. We watch the news, read the paper or Internet, but the war, the service men and women and their realities, are not our reality.

All of us, me included, should realize that the men and women, who serve and have served, are our reality. They're our neighbors. We may not know them yet. There are 23 million veterans in our country. Who are they? How many do you know?

There are numerous ways to get to know our service men and women right in our own neighborhoods. Oprah aired a program last January on the US Wounded Soldier Foundation. This is one way.

I've posted veteran statistics from the Christian Science Monitor article from today. Click on the link below to see the images and to read more related aritcles.

Veterans Day: America's wartime vets, by the numbers
By Leigh Montgomery, Monitor Librarian
posted November 11, 2011 at 8:18 am EST
The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Veterans Day (US) and Remembrance Day (British Commonwealth) are observed on Nov. 11, the day in 1918 that an armistice ended hostilities in The Great War. Some 41 million Americans have served in the US military since 1775; 23 million of them are still alive, of whom 17 million served during a conflict.

Source: 2010 American Community Survey, Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs

1.Vietnam War
Vietnam War(1964-75): Many of the 8.8 million who served in uniform were draftees; 7.6 million are alive today.

2.Korean War
Korean War(1950-53): Often called "the forgotten war," it finally had a memorial dedicated to it in Washington in 1995. Of the 5.7 million Americans who served, 2.7 million survive.

3.Operation Desert Shield/Storm
Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm(1990-91): America's first encounter with Iraq's Saddam Hussein involved 2.3 million military personnel, of whom 2.2 million are still present.

4.World War II
World War II(1941-45): America's most massive mobilization involved 16 million men and women, of whom 2.1 million are still alive.

5.Global war on terror
Global War on Terror(2001- ): Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have involved 1.4 million military personnel.