About Me

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Los Angeles, CA, United States
I am a writer, photographer and musician living in Los Angeles. In the last few years, new written work--numerous plays, screenplays, and two novels--have demonstrated this to be the most productive period of my life. The journal I have also kept for thirty-five years has, of late, become a personal sounding board for my thoughts on peace and the state of the world...about which I remain hopelessly optimistic! My writing here will be in tandem to video "Peace Talks" I have recorded, and which will be released throughout 2011. You're welcome to visit my website, the "Studio 5" link, to see my photographs. As a classically-trained pianist, I have been composing music all my life. Two guitar re-mixes of piano music are attached here, as well as several music videos, including "Consider Peace" the title track of an up-coming CD. Balancing writing, photography and music has been a long and challenging path...not to be recommended! Yet this very Aries diversity reflects an enthusiasm for the modern world of which I feel very much a part.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Enough of the flag-waving!

Okay, a week of this is enough!  Am I the only one not crowing at how we murdered someone in their bed; how revenge can be called “justice”?

Certainly, we’re a free country.  We can kill anyone we want to, then call it any name we like (”defense”?)   All of humankind was given free will...to blow up Twin Towers, and to hunt down, torture and kill the masterminds.  
But both acts define us; they define the fanatic for what he is; and they define the nation so disturbingly gleeful at revenge.  I, for one, see no “justice” here.  
The flag-waving and talk of pride at being an American, as I’ve heard over and over again on TV this week, is simply distasteful.  There’s more than a hint of mob mentality going on here; not just the enthusiastic shouts of a lynching, but where even questioning our response to perceived wrong-doing could be tantamount to siding with the devil.
How does mirroring the action of a murderer make us any better?  Have we not been guilty ourselves of killing innocent people?  
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favor of coddling Bin Laden or any local thug on the street.  But the fist-pumping zeal I’ve witnessed this week; so-called Christian people conveniently deciding when “God’s Law” does not apply...if nothing else, it’s a lesson in the shifting sands which ARE “morality”.  
Ever notice how attackers never see themselves as the aggressors, but as defenders?  Something is “right”...until it isn’t.  It’s all good until something no longer suits...and then it’s bad. (Donald Trump said we should invade the Middle East and simply take the oil we need...and we're still worrying over Osama Bin Laden??!)
More to my point is this: how does killing--and celebrating--define us?  Who will we deem worthy next?   Do these acts really take us to where we say we want to go?  Hating war and loving peace are NOT the same thing.  
Let’s look at this and start re-thinking...and please, don’t kill the messenger!

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