What If...

So... If you'll allow me to pontificate (as if you haven't already), what if...

Heaven WAS Earth?

Four Things You Can Do Right Now To Celebrate Mother Earth (via "Environmental Defense Fund")

1) Climate: There is no environmental issue more urgent than climate change. And the Senate is poised to bring up new legislation as early as next week, giving us perhaps our last, best hope to solve the climate crisis.

Please take action now: Tell your Senators to support a strong climate and energy bill.

2) Health: America's toxic chemical standards are outdated and weak. Of more than 80,000 chemicals that have entered the market, only about 200 have been required to be tested. Every American alive today, including newborn babies, has hundreds of these chemicals flowing through our bloodstreams.

Please take action now: Tell your members of Congress to support stronger toxic chemicals standards.

3) Oceans: America's fisheries are in trouble – Overfishing, wasteful bycatch and other threats are pushing our fisheries to the brink and endangering our marine ecosystems. But an innovative fishery management tool called catch shares offers hope.

Please take action now: Tell your members of Congress to support funding for new catch shares.

4) Wildlife: Thanks to hard-won conservation funding in the 2008 Farm Bill, ranchers, farmers and other private landowners can be rewarded for helping protect America's endangered wildlife. But a new Senate proposal would cut these critical conservation resources.

Please take action now: Tell your Senators to protect conservation initiatives in the Farm Bill.

And if you just don't know what else to do? How about planting a tree...

It'll give us a place to hang out. And we can be ourselves...

How You Live Matters.

*** Earth Day: No more burning rivers, but new threats

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Old Man Leaves Party

It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body. The moon shone down as it will
On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath.
And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree.
Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt.
The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads.
I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods.
Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more.
How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body.

I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now
With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and
Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not
Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

~ Mark Strand (b. 1934)

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Dudes... Where's The Love? And President Obama Likes To Ride Unicorns Naked Again...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and televangelist Pat Robertson are being scolded for their comments in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake in Haiti that has killed tens of thousands, according to early estimates.

Critics from both the left and right are denouncing their remarks as insensitive to the disaster and attempts to score political points off human tragedy.

Speaking on his radio show Wednesday, Limbaugh said the earthquake has played into Obama’s hands, allowing the president to look “compassionate” and “humanitarian” while at the same time bolstering his standing in both the “light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.”

He added: “We've already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.” (source)

"I suspect the vacant, purposeless lives you both live now are hell enough already." - Keith Olbermann

I couldn't have said it better myself.

So, I must now invoke the power of a naked President Obama and his UNICORN to justice and topple fat-ass Limbaugh once more.

GET HIM, BOYS!! CHAARRRGGGGEEEE!!!

And NAKED President Obama AND HIS UNICORN SAVE THE DAY BY BLASTING

BLIMPY LIMBAUGH INTO THE AIR!!! YYEEAAHHH!! TAKE THAT, ASSHOLE!!!

And again, after so much work...

They went on vacation to Hawaii. Or maybe Tahiti, but I know how much my baby's Daddy likes Hawaii. So, he's probably there with that slut Unicorn. Both of them. Together. The Unicorn and President Obama. Naked. And the Unicorn put sunscreen on the President's back. Or lubed his hole. I'm not really sure which. Maybe both.

Paintings by Dan Lacey

*** Original Post Where Obama Rode His Unicorn Naked And Topples Blimpy Limbaugh.

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REAL Estate

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

(Thanks for the quote, Don! It's a keeper.)

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Celebrating Gauguin

Femmes de Tahiti [Sur la plage] (Tahitian Women [On the Beach])
1891 (150 Kb); Oil on canvas, 69 x 91 cm (27 1/8 x 35 7/8 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris

- Gauguin, (Eugène-Henri-) Paul (b. June 7, 1848, Paris, Fr.--d. May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia)

The Cleveland Museum of Art "is staging a major international exhibit -- an "exhibition about an exhibition" covering artist Paul Gauguin's early years. The exhibit opens Sunday and runs through Jan. 18, 2010. (The only stop in the States before it moves on to Amsterdam.)

Before his Tahiti paintings made him famous, Gauguin was snubbed by the 1889 Paris World's Fair.

Instead, he and other artists staged a rival exhibit in a Paris cafe.

Those Gauguin paintings that were in that exhibit will be featured at the CMA exhibit.

After Jan. 18, the exhibit goes to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The exhibit is entitled "Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889" and includes more than 75 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by Gauguin and the artists of his time.

It also has the first reinstallation of works from Gauguin's 1889 exhibition in Paris.." (source)

Arearea (Joyousness) 1892; Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Tehamana Has Many Ancestors (Merahi metua no
Tehamana) (oil on canvas, 30 x
21-3/8 inches) can be found at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Vision after the Sermon (oil on
canvas, 28-3/4x36-1/4 inches) hangs in the National
Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Paul Gauguin went against the grain of his time. And I rather like that. In fact, I encourage it. He died all alone in his hut savaged by a morphine addiction, but still.

Okay, now that I think about it, maybe skip that last part.

*** 36 Hours in Cleveland from The New York Times

*** Master works get room to breathe with Cleveland Museum of Art expansion from USA TODAY

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