WIBCI we were as CONFIDENT as Dr. Seuss?
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If we thought like this?
You have to be odd to be number one.
-Dr. Seuss
… more “WIBCI Post #130”Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.-Dr. Seuss
WIBCI we learned from HISTORY?
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If we learned instead of repeated?
Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ is a no holds barred, curt, straight forward, brutally honest, account of the founding of this country. While skimming through it recently I was struck by how many phrases that were describing over 2.5 centuries ago ring so very true today.
(Circa 1839) “Certain men in the farm country became leaders and organizers: Smit Boughton, a country doctor on horseback; Ainge Devyr, a revolutionary Irishman. Devyr had seen monopoly of land and industry bring misery to the slum dwellers of London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, had agitated for change, had been arrested for sedition, and fled to America. He was invited to address a Fourth of July rally of farmers in Rensselaerville, where he warned his listeners: ‘
If you permit unprincipled and ambitious men to monopolize the soil, they will become masters of the country in the certain order of cause and effect’….”
What do YOU think?… more “WIBCI Post #129”
WIBCI Public Service Announcement:
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If we warned more?
To children of all ages, if anyone physically or mentally makes you feel uncomfortable in any way, shape, or form, and tells you not to tell.
TELL.
Tell every fucking person you come into contact with. Tell your parents, your siblings, your teachers, friends, friends’ parents, that weird old lady always watching you out her window, your neighbor, that boy you like, that girl you hate. ANYBODY.
If someone does something to you and tells you not to tell, it is because they know they did something wrong. So TELL.
If they name someone specifically not to tell, agree you won’t do it, promise if you have to, and as soon as they are out of your sight you break that promise and tell that very person and everyone else in between. This is a promise everyone will be okay that you break. Go on telling until someone makes it stop happening.
TELL. TELL. TELL.
WIBCI: We Knew WHERE THE MONEY WENT?
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If there was some trust?
Per the Federal cuts that have taken place in the US…. I’m all for a good tightening of the belt, but the disassembling of departments necessary for our future seems a bit aggressive no? According to squared compass.com:
“Taken together, these actions — alongside other forms of attrition and in the face of an extended hiring freeze across most of government[17]— were expected to drive the projected departure of 317,000 federal employees (roughly 50 percent more than the annual average number of separations during President Trump’s first term) and reduce the federal workforce by about 249,000 employees overall after accounting for new hires by year’s end, OPM Director Kupor announced in November.[18]“
ON TOP of the salaries of over 300,000 people, the Fed pulled back 24.95 Billion dollars from just the top 10 agencies. This includes the Departments of: Ed, Energy, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Housing/Urban Development, Agriculture, as well as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and The Environmental Protection Agency.
In other words, the Federal cuts for 2026 ‘saved’ the US Federal Government the salaries for 317,000 people and for JUST THE TOP TEN AGENCIES ‘saved’ the US Federal Government 24.95 BILLION DOLLARS.
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If we were told where the money went?… more “WIBCI Post #127”
WIBCI We Knew Our Rights?
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If we knew what could/couldn’t be done to us and our communities?
Per my State’s official website:
When can ICE enter people’s homes and other private spaces?
Under most circumstances, ICE agents cannot legally enter private spaces—such as homes, private
offices, or the non-public areas of a workplace—without one of the following:
• A judicial warrant signed by a judge or magistrate; or
• Voluntary consent from someone who has actual or apparent authority over the property (e.g., someone who lives there).
*Note that an ICE administrative warrant (Forms I-200 and I-205 described above) is not a judicial
warrant and does not authorize entry into a home or other private space without consent. A judicial
warrant is one that is signed by a judge.
If ICE agents are seeking to enter a house, a person has the legal right to speak through the door to:
• Ask to see the warrant before opening the door;
• Check whether the warrant is signed by a judge; and
• Deny entry if it is not.
ICE OUT… more “WIBCI Post #125”
WIBCI we appreciated what was different?
We all accept that all snowflakes are unique, but I was thinking about it and looked it up. Here is what I found:
Per Wikipedia:
Wilson Alwyn Bentley (February 9, 1865 – December 23, 1931), also known as Snowflake Bentley, was an American meteorologist and photographer, who was the first known person to take detailed photographs of snowflakes and record their features. He perfected a process of catching flakes on black velvet such that their images could be captured before they either melted or sublimated, and elaborated the theory that no two snowflakes are identical.
He got interested in snowflakes as a teen on his family farm in Vermont:
He tried to draw what he saw through an old microscope given to him by his mother when he was fifteen. The snowflakes were too complex to record before they melted, so he attached a bellows camera to a compound microscope and, after much experimentation, photographed his first snowflake on January 15, 1885. He captured more than 5,000 images of crystals. Each crystal was caught on a blackboard and transferred rapidly to a microscope slide. Even at subzero temperatures, snowflakes are ephemeral because they sublimate.
Apparently these photos were so good that no one really took photos of snowflakes for 100 years. But is 5,000 really an exhaustive study? And as this sounds like a rather difficult and cold way to spend your time, not many people are out there trying to prove him wrong me thinks. But as I kept reading I came across Kenneth Libbrecht, a snowflake scholar from this century, he is also a professor of physics at California Institute of Technology. I found his way of backing up Bentley’s theory illuminating:
Libbrecht thinks that the question of whether there have ever been identical snowflakes is just silly. “Anything that has any complexity is different than everything else,” even if you have to go down to the molecular level to find it.
Sounds to me like different than everything else is what makes something special.
If you want to learn more, check it out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley… more “WIBCI Post #124”
WIBCI we represented ourselves better?
I was watching a pair of pale and wispy Olympic ice skaters from a newish country, bedazzled up with aggressively bunned hair, frozen smiles, heaving for breathe, anxiously awaiting scores for the pinnacle of a lifetime’s worth of hard work and achievement.
The only thing blighting this moment is the U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A chant obnoxiously drowning out the commentators attempts to make the down time interesting.
Poorly played Emma.
Albeit the timing for this particular moment was less than classy, to me, chanting this in public places no longer rings of patriotism, it seems more like a bully mantra, more likely to color my cheeks with embarrassment than pride. Maybe if you were there in the stadium, surrounded by countrymen, it might be catchy, but from my couch, it wasn’t the best look.… more “WIBCI Post #123”
WIBCI we embodied separation of church and state?
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If when the new POTUS was sworn into office that he/she/they placed their hand on the US Constitution?
Here are the words they say:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Nothing against the Bible but if we truly are tolerant of all religions and not supposed to cross the streams per Thomas Jefferson, than why not swear on the actual thing you are supposed to ‘preserve, protect and defend’?
WIBCI
Wouldn’t It Be Cool If: once in a lifetime experiences were given to the deserved?
I have seen, many, many ads for a show featuring the fresh prince where he traverses the globe and experiences life altering moments, no other human has probably combined in a single lifetime.
and I find myself full of resentment.
Why does someone who slapped away a charmed life get to experience such things?! So an actor and corporate conglomerates wish to profit off of this guy’s reality TV moral comeback? Why does such a person deserve such an honor? Why not give this opportunity to a special ed teacher? Someone who could never afford it and actual has lived a life that doesn’t need to be forgiven/forgotten? Someone whose ego doesn’t desperately require our forgiveness for the despicable things they have done?
Boo.… more “WIBCI Post #121”
WIBCI we knew what the word TYRANT means?
In the Prologue of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he describes how in Greek Mythologies Daedalus had done the Gods dirty by NOT sacrificing the bull he was supposed to:
“He had converted a public event to personal gain, whereas the whole sense of his investiture as king had been that he was no longer a mere private person. The return of the bull would have symbolized his absolutely selfless submission to the functions of his role. The retaining of it represented, on the other had, an impulse to egocentric self-aggrandizement. And so the king “by the grace of God” became the dangerous tyrant Holdfast – out for himself.”
Joseph Campbell goes on to describe the characteristics universal to TYRANTS:
“..the individual cuts himself as a unit off from the larger unit of the whole community: and so the One was broken into the many, and these then battled each other-each out for himself-and could be governed only by force.
He is the hoarder of the general benefit.
He is the monster avid for the greedy rights of ‘my and mine.’
The havoc wrought by him is described in mythology and fairy tale as being universal throughout his domain. This may be bo more than his household, his own tortured psyched, or the lives that he blights with the touch of his friendship and assistance; or it may amount to the extent of his civilization.
The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world-no matter how his affairs ay seem to prosper. Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world’s messenger of disaster.“
Remind YOU of anyone?!… more “WIBCI Post #120”
WIBCI humility and class mattered?
I tried to find a historical example of a political leader renaming an already named thing in honor of themselves that remained so named one they were inevitably no longer in power. (Such things appear historically not to have staying power).
WIBCI the only individuals publicly honored had to have done something honorable for said public?
Seems to squish out all the honor if you put the crown on your own head. Just me?… more “WIBCI Post #119”
WIBCI there was a stage past blame?
It appears to me, in my limited experience, that people are currently quite proficient at diagnosing why they are mentally the way they are. They seem to have hit the nail on the head, figured the cause of their woes, and psychoanalyzed themselves, their ego, Id, and their super ego, exhaustedly.
Oddly enough, this seems to have been the finish line. Love the self awareness, but are you sure you are done?
Is the goal identification or fixing?
If an engine broke down and you discovered the issue, you wouldn’t just acknowledge the issue and then get a snack, right?
Very cool that the time was spent on really thinking about your past, nothing wrong with that. Just saying after you discover that little truth about you, after the ah-ha-reflection, spend time thinking about how to fix it/not do it anymore/make up for lost time/stop resenting/try to like kale/stop thinking so many judgy thoughts about your co-workers…..etc.… more “WIBCI Post #118”
Suddenly it wasn’t only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn’t believe you if you did. It was too vast a problem to just be a personal thing.
-SE Hinton The Outsiders
I thought about how selfless this thought is. How anti-narcissistic it is. Thinking like this takes time, quiet, reflection, and consideration.
If you could, would YOU tell them there is still good in the world? How much?
… more “WIBCI Post #117”
WIBCI there were more Bob Weir’s?
The co-founder of The Grateful Dead died yesterday.
For anyone unfamiliar with Bob Weir, I urge you to listen, read, and think about all he experienced.
He was a part of the Merry Prankster’s, he lived with Neal Cassady
… more “WIBCI Post #116”Escaping through the lily field,
I came across an empty space,
it trembled and exploded,
left a bus stop in its place.
the bus came by and I got on.
that’s when it all began.
There was cowboy Neal
at the wheel
of a bus to Never Never Land.
-Bob Weir
The bus was named Furthur and ‘Neal’ was Neal Cassidy….a major figure of the Beat Generation. Bob weir wrote this ng, un beknowst to him, the night Neal died of exposure on train tracks in Mexico. Bob Weir has said that he felt that Neal came to him that night while he was writing the above song ‘The Other One‘. At a televised memorial his wife said that he believed souls stay around for 59 days after they die and pointed out a hawk that kept circling above the crowd of thousands and said ‘Hello Darlin’.
Mr. Weir, the Boy Wonder, The Other One, thank you for the music, memories and hours spend forgetting about all my issues with myself and the world…and just swirl.