I've Been to the Mountain

- - - or as John Lennon would say, "I've been the Mountain" because if you look at the cover of "Mind Games" John's face looks like a Martian landscape. I like 'Mind Games because of the love it shows between John and Yoco. Such lyrical references are notibly absent from "Walls and Bridges", which I never bought for a lot of reasons. I just "wasn't feeling the vibes". It would appear that John and Yoco were indeed soul mates. If you asked me whether I think me and Laura Hammil were or are soul mates I would say I sure thought so at one time. But sometimes the "cares of this world" get in the way of pursuing a relationship to the full that may have been in God's will (for you NON Calvinists out there) but just didn't pan out that way in the here and now. In indeed John is now in enforced isolation from Yoco on Sirius A, this is indeed a sad thing, especially is he has been enjoined from talking about it and revealing his true feelings. I like the Christian allusions on that album, and also the Christian or spiritual allusions on Harrison's album, "Living in the Material World", which I own.

New Evidence about Global Warming, or the Lack Thereof

Thom Hartman is holding a global warming debate right now. One thing Thom Hartman is good at that most talk show hosts aren't is that he's able to present his beliefs in an intelligent, systematic matter and gives you a clear bottom line. He's done a good job of summarizing the truely beneficial attributes of religion being reduced to "Love". John would like that. Thom speaks of love of nature and love of the Universe and love for our fellow man, and anthropoligists point to religion in times past as a unifying force for cultural unity and mutual advancement.

But there is new troubling evidence that perhaps Global Warming isn't what it's cracked up to be. This "alarming trend" may be coming to an end as people point to new polar ice in the north pole regions and also a cold winter in North America. Apparently this myth that polar bears can't swim and thus will drown is being debunked as there are now record numbers of polar bears in the Hudson's Bay region. Some facts and trends can't be explained. For instance we know that the Sahara Desert has been moving steadily south. It's been doing this for decades and thirty years ago I was reading how the desert has been encroaching on the jungle and how plants and animals find it hard to find water. But if global warming is true, shouldn't climate patterns be moving north rather than south? Hartman says that in the forties and fifties there was an increase in particulate matter in the air that has a cooling effect. When I was a kid all the rap was how the winters were getting colder and colder, and Bob Dylan even mentions this in "Talking New York Blues". Constantly I was regailed with talk of big blizzards in late March. By the mid 1970's this "cooling" trend had reached a crechendo. But now there began to take effect new polution regulations passed, oddly, during the Nixon Adminestration. This is what started global warming when more sunlight was allowed to get through. Now India and China are where we were back in the forties and fifties of the last century and these nations are industrializing and sending particulate matter out into the air thus generating a global cooling. Some will say that the sun itself is getting hotter because of "Martian warming". But nobody can explain the eight hundred degree weather on Venus. CO2 is clearly the culpret here along with the "carbon footprint". What if we blanketed the Mojave desert with solar pannels generating electricity and split oxygen and hydrogen apart and shipped the hydrogen for fuel around the world and released the oxygen back into the atnosphere? What if we found new ways to "sequester" carbon in coal production in places like Montana, where it is viable? There are solutions for most every problem once we know what questions to answer. Asking the right questions to begin with is the first step tword progress. It can be said that I stopped BASIC programming less because I ran out of answers, but more because I just ran out of questions. Any suggestions?

April Fourth - - - "Free At Last. Thank God I'm Free At Last!"

Tomorrow we salute the death of Martin Luther King. It's been my feeling that we should move Martin Luther King Day to the date of his death rather than the date of his birth, which to me and most people is more relivant, especially if you're Catholic. As you know King's final speech was relivant and prophetic where he says "Like others I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I want you know that I've been to the Mountain and I've seen the Promised Land. And I may not get there with you but I want to say that we as a People will get to the Promised Land". This speech has its scriptural antecedent in the book of Exodus where Moses was allowed by God to climb this high mountain in Jordan accross the river and gaze upon the promised land. It says "Moses' was 120 years of age and hisvision was not diminished nor had his moisture departed" The Lord would not let Moses enter the promised land because he had commited a minor "typology" error (as theologians refer to striking the Rock a 2nd. time) and as such this was a misdomeanor Jehovah could not pardon. There are certain times when the Lord gets fed up with an individual and starts balking at even minor sins. Certainly Martin Luther King was a visionary and a spiritual leader for people of his race. In 1968 certain cosmic forces seemed to be conspring from allowing liberalism to truely flower the way it should have. We need to "keep the vision alive" and not lose sight of the goal of Freedom within and without. When Bono of U2 sand the song it was actually early morning of April 5th. when he got the morning paper bearing the sad news. But sometimes song lyrics are more real than fact.