Sick of China's aging, paranoid and dangerous Leadership

The United States is guilty of stupidity from Conservatives and Liberals alike but really . . .

Chinese Communist Party official Zhu Weiqun said there would be
"corresponding action" if the meeting went ahead.

This from the BBC. The Chinese leadership is stupid and ignorant if they think they can prevent the US from doing many things. They do not have that type of leverage yet . . . but perhaps in a hundred years. I can hardly wait - too bad I won't be around to see all the rednecks and conservatives have their precious America changed before their ignorant, fascist and exclusive eyes. Rant and rave I will.

Better yet, once again China emulates the emperors of old, be the Tang Dynasty and beyond by erecting the so called 'Great' Firewall and coming up with the 'Ghostnet' to maintain the stifling subjugation and enslavement of the Chinese Spirit. This same spirit of opression that murdered one of my best friend's brothers, shot in the back at Tianmen Square that fateful June day.

I am not a China watcher or expert. For that I recommend James Fallows who writes for the Atlantic Monthly. China will become a greater world power than the United States. We have spent our way into the greatest debt in history and there is nothing to respect about a country that has done that. A once bright shining beacon of hope (yeah, right) and possibility spent into oblivion of multiple wars and a conservative movement that just wants more of the same they got under Bush. Conservatives whose last best hope is Sarah Palin, god help us from the likes of this complete and dangerous idiot who I would personally lock up and starve that stupid wench till she was dead. She will kill ever more Americans with no health care and new wars to protect our right to buy whatever we want and screw the rest of the world.

I apologize for our behaviour to the rest of the world.

Getting help to Haiti

Here is a list of organizations involved with helping Haiti. I have signed up with Interaction.org and CIDI.org in my own attempt to get over to Haiti. Finally I really know (besides just a feeling) that I have very solid skills to be able to help in the rapidly changing situation in Haiti.

http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti

If you are looking to donate to an organization working in Haiti and other parts of the world check the link out.

What I am sick of is people who do not donate because they state that the money will not get to Haiti or be diverted. Most organization do not divert funds anymore - especially after the debacle the Red Cross faced after the World Trade Center was attacked on 9/11/2001. I heard someone say today they would rather 'give money to a bum on the street' then send money overseas. I wrote this idiot/jerk off right away as a know it all ignorant American.

Do something people, anything. I donated money to Partners in Health and the Red Cross. Now, I am trying to donate my skills and time. Lets hope I find a taker.

Thanks for reading,

David

Trying to get to Haiti after the Earthquake

I have applied to at least three organization to go to Haiti and assist after the earthquake hit last week. I have Emergency Room experience (not to mention hospice, pediatrics and PTSD experience) and am a Firefighter/Rescue and EMS responder in a remote area. In short, I have many many skills, medical and otherwise that I can put to use. I have cross-cultural experience and generous amounts of cross-cultural experience.

It is frustrating but I hope in the next month that I am able to find a way to help even if it is for a short time.

Aloha Mrs. Walsh upon leaving the planet at 0155. Malama pono, a hui
hou. Rest in peace, safe journeys, thanks for so much love and wow,
Morris is one of the greatest sons for you and my friend. Thank you
Mrs. Walsh, thank you. You are missed.

I'm currently in Sacramento, California sitting with a friend of mine
whose mother is dying. Death is a reflection of life. A friend sent me
an article awhile ago and the title was something like . . . we are
born towards dying. Here is the link.

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/01/born-toward-dying

Very thoughtful. I'm not religious in any conventional sense. I like
to think I live an ethical life but then again so did Uncle Joe Stalin.

So I sit shiva with my friend. His mom closer to death then life but
comfortable, loved and pain free. The things we endure as humans! How
lucky I am and it is just enough to have clean water, food and
shelter, to not be hunted or tortured or have my land and business
surrounded by checkpoints and walls.

An honor to sit with my friend and his dying mum, his girlfriend and
simply be together in death and in life.

Professor Tony Marsella, PhD Psychology and David McCullough, RN, MA
Psychology. Tony was my thesis advisor at the University of Hawai'i. I
had not seen him till today in over 10 years. His wit, intelligence
and empathetic understanding are writ large. I miss working with him.

ER Warriors

So they come to us in pain and agony.
Shorn of their boyhood John Wayne dreams of glory, mud, battle.

These warriors, these few mighty warriors,
Reduced in their age but still to fight,
In their dreams,
their daily lives.

Pierced by hot velocity lead,
Claymores spit their scars of money for the profiteers of war
Who cloak themselves in the guise of patriotism and protection of the
motherland.

Yet no innocents these my fine young men. Killed or killing,
Died or dying,
They know the crack and thump and hiss of life and death and war.

These are my comrades,
Though I know not of war
But all too much of their pain.

David McCullough

Is aviation security mostly for show? - CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/29/schneier.air.travel.security.theater/index.html

In the air at 38,000 feet over Memphis and found this great article
when reading a Twitter post from Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly publishing.
Thoughtful and I found myself in agreement.

Happy New Year to all.

David

Memory

Visiting my brother, his wife and son this Christmas I chance upon my
grandfather's old brown leather bag holding all of his old marbles
from childhood. The grandfather I never knew, who, because of my
mother's historical memory editing, is far more perfect in death then
any of us are in life. Despite this, the old brown leather bag
inscribed with "The First National Bank, Bagley, Iowa" lures me in
with its promise of memory, the colored handmade jewels of childhood
spilling forth a sea of my own childhood memories in a rush of history
and longing for a never known grandfather murdered by the cigarette
corporations, longing for my father murdered in his own turn by the
same carnivorous bastards and so it goes.

So they spill upon the table for me to weigh in the palm of my beating
heart, listening to the whack of marbles, echoing. Suspended now in
time, those children's voices merge into our own.

I see the broken marbles, the ones who are whole, glass and ceramic.
Uneven in their magnificant beauty, they are the bearers of ancestral
memory and I hear the voices of who we were, are and will be. Cracked,
yet unbroken they were made for a time and country much less
interested in perfection then practicality. They betray themselves
with simplicity of purpose, in being rather than just appearences.

I long for family, family that never was, family that died too early
from corporate greed, and I long for the faint promise of what has
been and might be.

I roll the marbles.

David

I'll cease thinking
Just to remain in your orbit
To do what's feeling right
To watch and feel you
Slide through fantasy.

Oh yeah baby.
It's you I want
Ain't got no reservations
I love you baby.
Full speed!
No brakes!

You my fantasy baby
Knowin it's not real
I'll take shelter in your cove of delights.
The hell with life preservers
I'll throw it away
For a night with you.

Be gentle with me
But rough in your love
Oh yeah baby.
You the one I want.

John Gibbs from Hawai'i one of my closest friends on the planet. At
the Russian River Jazz Festival, September 2009.

Ocean Beach reminding me of Hawai'i home looking across thousands of
miles. How I long and miss it and Fiji!

I'm listening to a Fijian musician named Saikiusa Bulicokocoko and it
carries me back. Nice to be alive to have those memories.

With recent visitors from Hawai'i and Fiji I find that familiar
tugging of my heart and mind for the warmth of the islands and people.

What is to be done when my heart is split in half? Whither shall I
wander?

David

Data Points

We are nothing but streams of data,
analog in life,
digital in death.

I've come across your life,
in its digital glory.
Black and white
attempting dispassionate exclamation of loss and gain
the color of personality
drained and forbidden
in the realm of zeros and ones.

we thought we knew you
the color and smell and vividness
swirling round you.

then your data stream abruptly terminated,
your records, data, zeros and ones, a life
liberated, flushed, set free, erased.
Hard disk Full,
reformatted to live again.


David McCullough
August 26, 2009

Random Thoughts

I have always wanted to be or at least somewhat fancied myself as an aspiring writer. However, the discipline required for constant output appears daunting to me much of the time. Even more important is whether or not one has anything important to say and then the skill to say it well. At least now (in comparison to the past) I have the experiences, knowledge and 'time under my belt' to actually have something to say.

I am not sure what prompts these musing this day. In part this is due to the sudden death of one of my coworkers. Not known well, he was patient, polite, very considerate and a good worker. I will miss him as will many of us in the Emergency Room. We see people die or heal every day but when one of our own goes it hurts more than usual and sadness pervades for a time.

I will be writing more often and I hope of value to at least someone besides this writer.

Thanks for reading,

David

California Budget Woes? Raise our Taxes

I might be among the minority but since I am not holding elected office (and hence do not have to worry about being re - elected) I think that the California Legislature should raise taxes. For years we have listened to the drumbeat of the Republicans chanting big government, no new taxes, cut taxes and so on and so forth ad nauseum.

Yet Californian's and people in general, continue to expect the services they have become accustomed and in some cases feel entitled to. The populations continues to increase but the services decrease and public infrastructure continues to erode.

This is not justifiable. The business of government is the people, not as big brother but rather, in service TO the people. I do not advocate just blindly raising taxes but the careful implementation of taxes to serve the people.

This would include a public health care plan option in addition to private health care plans. It would include rebuilding the public infrastructure, making education the best in the nation and adequately funding police and fire companies.

Raise our taxes for if we are to survive we must do the right thing and be willing to pay.

Mum and son

Mom and I just after I returned from a false alarm fire call at Fort
Ross.

Write my Heart

It is in the sadness of the night
that I write my heart
to set down the clean, clear lines of my love for you.

although you my love, leave my love unrequited,
discarded upon the shores of your soul,
beached, waiting, hearing the hiss of tonal silence
in the water upon sand.

Wordlessly (for I long ago became speechless),
I sing my heart
to the stars of people's eyes
the stones in their hearts.

Yes.
I was blinded by you.


David McCullough
Sometime in late 2008

Untitled Plea

I may not be able to write music for you.
I will write this poem and more upon your heart,
if only to hope they will find their way upon it,
and you to them,
to guide your song of love for me.

Love you once did know.
Fear of loss
whether I or another,
I want to comfort and tell you that love is not yours to lose,
but only to gain, to lose and gain again.

We encounter love upon our travels and travails,
only to hold and cherish while it takes up temporary residency in our heart,
unconcerned over which borders it violates,
love cannot be owned.

Love refuses to be bought,
while as ants upon their teeming home,
we seek to buy the impossible
love cannot be bought.

It will only be granted in full measure,
to those who know themselves,
and in that, can begin to know others.
Love may come to those who are true, honest and virtuous.

Nevertheless, while we think we know this in our mind,
it must be lived in our heart and soul and blood,
before and if it is to have true deep meaning.
To live love, hearts must be gently loved and hurt, love torn in half
and lives turned inside out.

Then, then we shall see what remains, Yes?
The true unconstrained pure hard fire of love, honesty, truth and virtue?
Or a shadow of what could be,
faint echoes restrained by a restless unknowing heart
wandering upon sandy storm beaten stones.

I have walked many such coves,
stumbled over such hardened stones and beaten my head upon them!
Across the world I have wandered,
in search of love and all its attendant pluralities,
and all along I had it in my hands.
I thought I could own it.

In the end.
It owned me.
Taught me what it is and is not.
Showed me for a fool to have thought at all.

David McCullough
Copyright June 2, 2009
Rewritten from a March, 2004 poem.

Mountain bike ride - Pacifica Beach State Park. What an incredible
day, reminding me of Hawai'i Nei! Aloha.

Sunrise @ 0630.

Updates

Aloha, a brief update - I am still living on the Ridge Ranch on the Eastern side of Salt Point State Park. I finally bought a 1994 Ford Ranger Pickup from my forester (who is a personal friend and I have great regard for so that is nice). Just in time, as my 1992 Volvo 740 Turbo wagon finally 'blew' the heater core all over the inside of the car - I had an inch and a half of coolant on the front and back floor. I bypassed the heater core and since I was very luckily in town was able to get to the auto parts store with help since I could not drive my car. So now it waits for a rebuilt engine and a new heater core.

I may be up for a part or full time job at the San Francisco VA in which case I may be down here more. I continue to look for housing on a boat in exchange for some maintenance or slight rent if combined with the maintenance.

Till I get my debt paid, the Volvo paid off and the house rehabbed and everything put away I don't plan on leaving the country. After that I will leave.

Summer waits, long days beckon and sometimes, joy abounds.

Thanks for reading,

David

It is in the dark of night
by this warm fire
I look up.

These stars are endless I think,
like staring into the eyes of a lover.

I track a satellite
which I cannot see when I stare right at it,
but shifting my gaze to the side,
follow its path across heavens heart.

What will it take to track my love across the universe?
Must I avert my eyes from my heart to know where it leads?

Flames and wood crackle,
their own starry explosions of liberated carbon
floating above
warming my bones and toasty toes.

I'm not alone in this universe - that is a for sure statement.
So while I feel close to humanity in sharing our essential humanness,
I feel alone or lonely in this star filled night.

I wanted to be with a lover but this night,
too busy with her own life to think of me and what I need, want and desire.
Ha, I am so shallow a fellow of a man though . . .
I always think I know what I want yet in the end my action is louder
than the tears of lonely man's heart can ever be.

David McCullough
April 18, 2009