One Ring At A Time...

in

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

~ John Ruskin

After all, a mighty oak tree doesn't grow overnight.

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stupid thugs and the silence that allows them

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A 15-year-old teenager was caught on video being severely beaten in his high school class room for being gay. The attack occurred at Union-Scioto High School in Chillicothe, Ohio, and was caught on camera as fellow class members watched one teen wait for the victim to enter the room, push him to the ground, and continually punch him in the face. The victim suffered broken teeth and a possible concussion. The perpetrator was suspended for just 3 days.

Union-Scioto has no policy in place that specifically protects students from being bullied or attacked based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Union-Scioto Local School District does have a policy that prohibits harassment based on sex, race, color, national origin, religion, disability, among others, but it does not specifically protect against harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Tell the Union-Scioto School District to protect LGBT students by prohibiting harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity and to send a message that this beating was unconscionable by expelling the perpetrator!

Sign The Petition

Our schools and classrooms should ALWAYS be safe. ALWAYS. It should be considered hallowed ground.

As a society, we've allowed this ignorance, this violence, this savagery of decency and rape of civility to happen. We've become use to not just bullies in schools, but guns. Oh... Another school shooting... We shouldn't be used to it. It should be unacceptable. And when it occurs, we, as a community should be swift in our intolerance of such inane behavior. But, more than bandages for symptoms, we should be looking for the cause; the root of the evil.

Silence is compliance.

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Poppin' A Wheelie

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Tenacity over excuses. Passion over pretense. Love over lethargy. You are strong beyond measure... and though you may break, though you may falter, you may fall and flounder, you can never fail, for your heart remains invincible. Never quit. Get up. Get UP. GET UP!

~ Scott Sonnon

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Corporatocracy

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Stop The Police Repression Of Occupy Oakland

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Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

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"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

~ Steve Jobs, Commencement Speech, Stanford University, June 12, 2005

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"Shared Sacrifice"? Where...

in

Greed has never brought anything good. Not ever...

How you live matters.

Silence is compliance.

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The Scene of The Crime

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"Occupy Wall Street": Thousands March in NYC Financial District, Set Up Protest Encampment Demonstrators are marching on Wall Street today on the third day of a campaign dubbed "Occupy Wall Street," which began on Saturday when thousands gathered in New York City’s Financial District. Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have slept outside near Wall Street for the past two nights. We play a video report on the protest by Democracy Now!'s Sam Alcoff and get a live update from the streets from Nathan Schneider, editor of the blog "Waging Nonviolence." We also speak with David Graeber, an anthropologist who participated in the activities. "If you look at who showed up [in Egypt and Spain], it was mostly young people, and most of them were people who had gone through the educational system, who were deeply in debt, and who found it completely impossible to get jobs," says Graeber. "The system has completely failed them... If there's going to be any kind of society worth living in, we’re going to have to create it ourselves."

Apparently, our voices need to be LOUDER.

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Poets Needed. Please Apply Within...

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"Of all nations the United States with veins full of potential stuffmost needs poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man... He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the key. He is the equalizer of his age and land... He supplies what wants supplying and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine out of him speaks the spirit of peace... If the time becomes slothful and heavy he knows how to arouse it... He can make every word he speaks draw blood."

~ Walt Whitman

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Some Sunday Worship (of our time here)

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So recently, when we were walking the dogs over at a nearby lake, we came across a granite rock that had been placed as a memorial to someone named "Michael Robert Tucker". It turns out he was a Cleveland lawyer who spent more than a decade rock climbing around the world, and he died in a rock climbing accident on April 24, 2010. He was 27 years old. And he died way too soon. As though it's not always too soon... The memorial had a quote on it from William Stafford... It got to me, as I'm sure it should. I took a picture of the tribute, but I can't seem to get it to the right size for the blog. Here it is nonetheless. I hope it inspires you like it inspired me.

"Tasting all these and letting them have their ways to waken me. I shiver and resolve: In my life, I will more than live."

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Magnanimous To The Greedy, No Decency For The Sick

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AIDS-Afflicted U.S. Citizen Urges Obama Admin to Reverse Deportation of Australian Husband The Obama administration’s enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act is threatening to tear apart the seven-year marriage of a binational gay couple in San Francisco. Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, and Anthony John Makk, an Australian national, have lived together for 19 years and were among the first same-sex couples to legally marry in Massachusetts. Anthony is also the primary caretaker for his husband, who has HIV/AIDS. Makk is facing deportation this month after the Obama administration denied them the same immigration benefits routinely given to opposite-sex couples. The decision is based on the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law known as DOMA, which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples. The Obama administration has said it would no longer defend DOMA in the courts, but the law still remains in effect.

And these fucking politicians have the nerve to ever bring "god" into anything they have to say. What they actually do is a different story. They couldn't be farther from grace. "God Bless"...? Fuck you. Stick that god bless clean up your ass, "mr. president".

I know, I know... He's a "politician". But, it doesn't mean we should sit still for the redundancy. Maybe we should start with altering our expectations... We should expect MORE. We should DEMAND MORE. Because we deserve more. And at the very least, we should expect decency...

Am I angry?

Absolutely.

If you'd like to sign a petition speaking out on behalf of Anthony Makk and Bradford Wells, you may do so here.

Silence is compliance.

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Bee Good

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Since 2006, the American bee population has plummeted from 4.5 million honey-producing hives to a scant 860,000. Worse, that number is still dropping. Rampant pesticide use is a major cause of bee deaths. In 2011, the EPA found that the use of neonicotinoid pesticides is both widespread and catastrophic to bee populations. Neonicotinoids are on average 7,000 times more toxic than DDT, which was banned in 1972.

Despite this, the EPA has not banned the manufacture or use of neonicotinoids, choosing instead to put the products "under review" for the next five years.

Conservation biologists report that when the bees begin to die off, their surrounding environments are sure to follow. Tell the EPA to halt the production of deadly neonicotinoids now.

Everyone's acting like we have time.

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Those Voices...

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“What is this self inside us, this silent observer,Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us, And urge us on to futile activity, And in the end, judge us still more severely, For the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?”

~ T. S. Eliot ******

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Sweeping Snakes

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Just LOOK at girlfriend. He's all grabbing and throwing COBRAS like they're pixie sticks. Will and I just about had heart-attacks watching this. Actually, just Will... His eyes just about rolled back into his head at the thought. I'm not really afraid of snakes. Although, that doesn't mean I won't stand completely still in one place for 45 minutes on a trail in the Santa Ynez Mountains of California waiting for a rattle snake to cross the path, which I did. But, THIS? I find it hysterical. Especially because I'm not in the pit with him.

After he TOSSES them aside like they're completely in his way, which I suppose they are... They all just stand there with their Cobra-swooping-ear-crazy things all flared out staring at him like, "Hhhheeehhhh! Dude? WTFsssss? You are SSSOO lucky we're kind of ssscared of you right now."

And he's all, "Outta my way, bishes. I gots me shit to do. I don't care you be Cobras."

If only I could grab the demons in my way and toss them aside like that and do what needed to be done...

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(On a different note, bishes, I feel kind of sorry for these snakes...)

(Thank you for this contribution, Suebob.) *************************************