One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey ( /ˈkiːziː/; September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie," Kesey said in a 1999 interview with Robert K. Elder.

Kesey attended the University of Oregon's School of Journalism, where he received a degree in speech and communication in 1957, where he was also a brother of Beta Theta Pi. He was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship in 1958 to enroll in the creative writing program at Stanford University, which he did the following year. While at Stanford, he studied under Wallace Stegner and began the manuscript that would become One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

At Stanford in 1959, Kesey volunteered to take part in a CIA-financed study named Project MKULTRA at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital where he worked as a night aide with Brian Samuels who later became his partner in a trip around California in a Volkswagen. The project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, particularly LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT, and DMT on people. Kesey wrote many detailed accounts of his experiences with these drugs, both during the Project MKULTRA study and in the years of private experimentation that followed. Kesey's role as a medical guinea pig, as well as his stint working at a state veterans' hospital, inspired him to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962. The success of this book, as well as the sale of his residence at Stanford, allowed him to move to La Honda, California, in the mountains south of San Francisco. He frequently entertained friends and many others with parties he called "Acid Tests" involving music (such as Kesey's favorite band, The Warlocks, later known as the Grateful Dead), black lights, fluorescent paint, strobes and other "psychedelic" effects, and, of course, LSD. These parties were noted in some of Allen Ginsberg's poems and are also described in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, as well as Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs by Hunter S. Thompson and Freewheelin Frank, Secretary of the Hell's Angels by Frank Reynolds. (read more)

what a long strange trip it's been

incongruous mélange

"Selected works of Diane Arbus"

my precious

it's the end of the world

Hieronymus Bosch

riddle me this, is there anybody out there ?

painted rust

The I-35W Mississippi River bridge (officially known as Bridge 9340) was an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge that carried Interstate 35W across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. During the evening rush hour on August 1, 2007, it suddenly collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The bridge was Minnesota's fifth busiest, carrying 140,000 vehicles daily. The NTSB cited a design flaw as the likely cause of the collapse, and asserted that additional weight on the bridge at the time of the collapse contributed to the catastrophic failure.


In the years prior to the collapse, several reports cited problems with the bridge structure. In 1990, the federal government gave the I-35W bridge a rating of "structurally deficient," citing significant corrosion in its bearings. Approximately 75,000 other U.S. bridges had this classification in 2007. According to a 2001 study by the civil engineering department of the University of Minnesota, cracking had been previously discovered in the cross girders at the end of the approach spans. The main trusses connected to these cross girders and resistance to motion at the connection point bearings was leading to unanticipated out-of-plane distortion of the cross girders and subsequent stress cracking. In 2005, the bridge was again rated as "structurally deficient" and in possible need of replacement, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory database.

fish

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

A stroke of insight

Or there and back again: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few neuroscientists would wish for: she had a stroke and witnessed the boundaries, set by the left cerebral cortex of the brain ..disappear. She experienced the ‘enormous and expansive universe’ where we live through the parallel portals of the right cerebral cortex, which was unaffected by the stroke. She returns to tell an astonishing tale.

Muto a wall-painted animation by BLU

Plastiki

The Plastiki is a 60-foot (18 m) catamaran made out of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and other recycled PET plastic and waste products. The craft was built using cradle to cradle design philosophies and features many renewable energy systems, including solar panels, wind and trailing propeller turbines, and bicycle generators. The frame was designed by Australian naval architect Andrew Dovell. The boat's name is a play on the 1947 Kon-Tiki raft used to sail across the Pacific by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, and its voyage roughly followed the same route.

(read more) (theplastiki.com) (video clip) (junk)

hush

Dumki Jacoba & A Carnival of Revolution

---

Wojciech Jacob Jankowski

Dumki Jacoba via Google translate - -

"Dumki" emerged in 1994 - 99th Then lived in the woods and mountains, away from the noise, crowds, politics itpodobnych attractions. Generally used to be that I could not sleep until they have shed intrusive thoughts down on paper. Most of these tales to keep printed by various newspapers: The Tri-City "Election", "Mac Pariadka," "Vegetarian World", "kayasa Ochi", "Green Brigade". In 1999 Warsaw Publishing Agency "Here," released them as a book. In 2005, Anarchist Initiative Beskidzka styrała paperback resume. And now opened Tezeuszkowa, ecumenical, virtual space.

With hindsight and experience some of these texts seem to me to be naive, wind, and sometimes "haunted". But yes at times earlier, even as you type. And sometimes, years later, the most "haunted" pieces are revived and embarrassing to me as a specific, life science, absolutely, "impersonally."

Being honest with oneself is bad art. Or perhaps the purpose of this journey? I'm glad I did not threw into the furnace of the "failed", bad stories. Because that's what happens sometimes they inspire, not only me, I guess.

Some time ago the phone rang. The guy thanked him, bought the book "accidentally" in a bookstore. I abandoned the thought of suicide. Thanks. On a larger prize, I could not count. Howgh!

... And I am carrying you
winter rose
I know the tricks of time
take it - for the moment
We will not ...
/ Andrzej Sulima-Suryn /

PROLOGUE
Red rocks, mossy paths, streams, rivers, streams. Increasingly rare, rachitic vegetation. The traveler looked around. He sat down.

Musin, Moon Mountain, from a distance looked inconspicuous. Now, when he rested in the middle of the road to the summit, he saw a powerful, autonomous world. Mountain and sky. In the distance, sharp, snow-capped peaks. Somewhere out there - hen! - Ribbon highway. With all the hustle and bustle of civilized - fragile ribbon.

He smiled. It was a strength. And this power was in it. He saw that human problems are only a delusion. Play it cool. The age-old, wonderful music...
> more Dumki Jacoba: polish original | english translation

---

"Jacob's Retreat"
- from A carnival of revolution: Central Europe 1989,
via Google books

A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989, Padraic Kenney

at Princeton University Press:
"This is the first history of the revolutions that toppled communism in Europe to look behind the scenes at the grassroots movements that made those revolutions happen. It looks for answers not in the salons of power brokers and famed intellectuals, not in decrepit economies--but in the whirlwind of activity that stirred so crucially, unstoppably, on the street. Melding his experience in Solidarity-era Poland with the sensibility of a historian, Padraic Kenney takes us into the hearts and minds of those revolutionaries across much of Central Europe who have since faded namelessly back into everyday life. This is a riveting story of musicians, artists, and guerrilla theater collectives subverting traditions and state power; a story of youthful social movements emerging in the 1980s in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and parts of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union."

---

more Dumki Jacoba: polish original | english translation

---

freedom riders

Freedom riders were civil rights activists that rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (of 1960). The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.

Boynton v. Virginia had outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel, but the ICC had failed to enforce its own ruling, and thus Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South.

The Freedom Riders set out to challenge this status quo by riding various forms of public transportation in the South to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses.

Most of the subsequent rides were sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), while others belonged to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "Snick"). The Freedom Rides followed on the heels of dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters conducted by students and youth throughout the South and boycotts beginning in 1960.

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Boynton v. Virginia granted interstate travelers the legal right to disregard local segregation ordinances regarding interstate transportation facilities. But the Freedom Riders' rights were not enforced, and their actions were considered criminal acts throughout most of the South. For example, upon the Riders' arrival in Mississippi, their journey ended with imprisonment for exercising their legal rights in interstate travel. Similar arrests took place in other Southern cities. (read more) (american experience)

NOOSPHERE by Tatiana Plakhova

NOOSPHERE from Tatiana Plakhova on Vimeo.

any day

Any day above ground...

is a good day.

(chinese fortune cookie)

The Battle of Los Angeles

(read more)

The Ino's Blog: Study Hall - Shobogenzo

---

...what you receive with trust is your one verse or your one phrase. Do not try to understand eighty thousand verses or phrases...   ~ Dōgen Zenji

Study Hall - Shobogenzo -
Friday, March 11, 2011
"Know that as there are many aspects within the treasury of the true dharma eye, you cannot fully clarify it. Yet the treasury of the true dharma eye is expounded. There is no way you cannot have trust in it. Buddha sutras are like this. There are a number of them, but what you receive with trust is your one verse or your one phrase. Do not try to understand eighty thousand verses or phrases..."

- The Ino's Blog (San Francisco Zen Center)

"Ino" means "director of the meditation hall; supervises, attends, and assigns staffing for all sesshines and ceremonies." The ino leads the chanting service and recites the dedication of service...

---

正法眼蔵
Shōbōgenzō

(lit. "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye") The term Shōbōgenzō has three main usages in Buddhism: (1) It can refer to the essence of the Buddha's realization and teaching, that is, to the Buddha Dharma itself, as viewed from the perspective of Mahayana Buddhism, (2) it is the title of a koan collection with commentaries by Dahui Zonggao, and (3) it is used in the title of two works by Dogen Kigen... (more @Wikipedia)

Photograph of the title page of the Edition Honzanban (1811) of Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō

Dogen's Two Shōbōgenzōs

In Japan and the West, the term Shōbōgenzō is most commonly known as referring to the titles of two works composed by Japanese Zen master Dōgen Kigen in the mid-13th century.

The first, written and completed in 1235, the Shinji Shōbōgenzō, also known as the Mana Shōbōgenzō or Shōbōgenzō Sanbyakusoku, is a collection of 301 koans (public cases) and is written in Chinese, the language of the original texts from which the koans were taken. In this Dōgen was content simply to record the stories without interjecting his own remarks. A few years later, however, he embarked on a major project to develop extended commentaries on many of these and other passages from the Ch'an literature. The fruit of this project was his masterpiece--the remarkable collection of essays known as the kana, or "vernacular", Shōbō genzō.

道元禅師
Dōgen Zenji (also Dōgen Kigen 道元希玄, or Eihei Dōgen 永平道元, or Koso Joyo Daishi) (19 January 1200 – 22 September 1253) was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto, and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after travelling to China and training under the Chinese Caodong lineage there. Dōgen is known for his extensive writing including the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma or Shōbōgenzō, a collection of ninety-five fascicles concerning Buddhist practice and enlightenment.

The later Kana Shōbōgenzō consists of an overlapping assortment of essays and commentaries written in Japanese; different versions of the Kana Shōbōgenzō contain different sets of texts. (See: Heine, Dogen and the Koan Tradition)
When referring to Dogen's works, the term Shōbōgenzō by itself more commonly refers to the Kana Shōbōgenzō.

---

Study Hall - Shobogenzo
Friday, March 25, 2011
'Face-to-Face Transmission', 'Menju', is a lot of fun; Dogen gets personal, both for himself, and with an ad hominem section in the postscript:

If you do not realize the fruit at this moment, when will you realize it?

If you do not cut off delusion at this moment, when will you cut off delusion?

If you do not become a buddha at this moment, when will you?

If you do not sit as a buddha at this moment, when will you practice as an active buddha?

Diligently examine this in detail...

---

TAG THIS PHOTO

ha ha - tag! - you are Buddha!

tag on facebook | buddha artwork by rc

---

see also -
• Shōbōgenzō @Wikipedia
• Shobogenzo links at "Hey Bro! Can You Spare Some Change?" (top of right column)
• diamond sutra at whats more blog
• dharma wheel at whats more blog
• more about Buddhism at whats more blog
• The Ino's Blog: Counting To Nine | Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind at whats more blog

---

I.Q. test - read aloud

I am Sofa King

we Todd did

I am Sofa King

we Todd did

Are you stupid ???

the spectacle

With the term spectacle, Debord defines the system that is a confluence of advanced capitalism, the mass media, and the types of governments who favor those phenomena. "... the spectacle, taken in the limited sense of "mass media" which are its most glaring superficial manifestation...".

The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which "passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity". "The spectacle is not a collection of images," Debord writes. "rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images." (read more)

journey of the bullet

where the sun don't shine

"Has it ever occurred to you...

that you might be wrong?"

Yellow Submarine

mother kisses

Mother and Child
Pablo Picasso 1922

"From woman, man is born;

within woman, man is conceived;

to woman he is engaged and married.

Woman becomes his friend;

through woman, the future generations come.

When his woman dies,

he seeks another woman;

to woman he is bound.

So why call her bad?

From her, kings are born.

From woman, woman is born;

without woman, there would be no one at all.

O Nanak, only the True Lord is without a woman"

......Guru Nanak......

Learning from the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster?

---

---

Miraho -Nie chcemy atomu (DiesProduction).avi
We do not want atom

what's on your mind?

---

self portrait, roseadjoa

Roseadjoa says waking up isn't easy when living a nightmare ♥

---

Physicians for Social Responsibility

---

Physicians for Social Responsibility Press Conference 4/26/11

---

Chernobyl. Fukushima. Indian Point?



A team with radiation monitoring equipment highlight the threat to millions of people from New York's Indian Point nuclear plant. 17 million people live within 50 miles of Indian Point, an old nuclear plant in an active seismic zone just north of New York City. If an accident or terrorist attack led to a catastrophic release of radiation, evacuation would be impossible. Nationwide, 1 in 3 Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. Greenpeace is calling for the shut down of the Indian Point nuclear plant, and the replacement of dangerous nuclear power with safe solutions like renewable energy and energy efficiency.

---

Put an end to the NRC's rubber stamp!

The NRC will decide the fate of more than a dozen aging nuclear reactors any day now. Write your letter to the NRC TODAY and tell them to halt all re-licensing!

TAKE ACTION

---

Unsafe at Any Dose
Op-ed by Dr. Helen Caldicott

In a stellar op-ed in the May 1st edition of the New York Times, renowned pediatrician and anti-nuclear activist, Dr. Helen Caldicott, calls on doctors to act against nuclear power.

As she writes: "There’s no group better prepared than doctors to stand up to the physicists of the nuclear industry." The article concludes: "Physicists had the knowledge to begin the nuclear age. Physicians have the knowledge, credibility and legitimacy to end it." Read the full article. Dr. Caldicott is the founding president of Beyond Nuclear and currently heads the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear-Free Planet.

Beyond Nuclear | Full article, PDF

---

NO NUKES | RE-TOOL NOW

---

"the fountain" - Nguyễn Văn Lém

Nguyễn Văn Lém (referred to as Captain Bảy Lốp) (died 1 February 1968 in Saigon) was a member of the Viet Cong who was summarily executed in Saigon during the Tet Offensive. The execution was captured on film by photojournalist Eddie Adams, and the momentous image became a symbol of the inhumanity of war.

On the second day of Tet, amid fierce street fighting, Lém was captured and brought to Brigadier General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, then Chief of the Republic of Vietnam National Police. Using his personal sidearm, General Loan summarily executed Lém in front of AP photographer Eddie Adams and NBC television cameraman Vo Suu. The photograph and footage were broadcast worldwide, galvanizing the anti-war movement; Adams won a 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his photograph. (read more)

think for your self

The truth is like pornography...

i don't know what it is but...

i know it when I see it...










think for your self...

cigar

Monsters And Brothers - Thoughts on the Death of Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden is dead.

A simple statement.  The new reality. 

Osama bin Laden is dead.  The boogie man is no more. 

Who was Osama bin Laden and how can I react?  Was he a monster as so many believe?

There are several sorts of monsters.  Some live in the dark.  You know the type.  They hide in the closet or under your bed – or in the deepest recesses of your mind – until the lights are turned off.  Then you must protect yourself by pulling the covers up over your head and lying very, very still.  These monsters disappear you pull the covers away and confront them directly and you find they were nothing more than creations of your own mind.

Then there are the monsters who are invisible, living among us, unseen.  Child molesters and rapists not yet caught, undiscovered  serial murderers, corrupt and dangerous politicians and cops, more that you can add to the list.  These monsters, unlike the first type are real and they know who they are.  I do not know whether they choose to be monsters or are forced by some inner compulsion  to do their evil deeds.

There is another type of monster, the kind that has no idea that s/he is a monster at all.  The next door neighbour who hates Hindus or Christians or Muslims or Sikhs or Jews is a very naive sort of monster. Perhaps the hatred is directed at black people or  brown people or yellow people or pink (white) people.  (Those called “red” are really brown.)  Maybe the prejudice is aimed at girl children and women, or at men.  Then, of course, there are the xenophobes, those who hate foreigners or indeed strangers of any sort.    For my readers specifically of Indian background, I would include caste prejudice in this unsavoury list.  I suspect that more of us are this sort of monster than would care to admit it.  Perhaps, even I sometimes am a naive monster. 

It is possible for the naive monster to act on her/his prejudices and become a full-blown bigot and a genuine, visible monster.

Then there is the monster who so deeply believes in a cause that s/he will do whatever is necessary to realise that cause.  No matter if civilians are killed by accidents (collateral damage) or on purpose (terrorism).   No matter the damage done because the cause is all.  The end justifies the means.  Was Osama bin Laden this sort of monster?

Or was he the worst sort, the most evil who cynically leads others in a cause – perhaps for power and glory – that he himself had ceased to believe in or had never believed in?

I have no way of knowing which of these monsters he was.

Or perhaps he wasn’t a monster at all.  Perhaps he was a soul who got lost in the swirling changing mass of stuff around us that we call the World or Maya. 

Whatever he was I am not sorry he is dead.  He was a scumbag and I think the world is better off without him.  My entire being, however, is repelled at public celebrations of his death.  I understand them.  I myself felt like celebrating when Indira Gandhi was killed.  I did not celebrate, but that might have been simply because circumstances prevented it.   I was wrong then, as people celebrating now are wrong now. 

However evil and vile his deeds, are we just mouthing platitudes when we say all people are children of the same Parent, whatever name you personally use for the Creator?   I have lost a brother.  A brother who did evil deeds, a brother I am glad to be rid of, a brother I did not love, but a brother nevertheless.   It is at times like this that I find it necessary to deeply examine my own beliefs and I find myself not without hypocrisy.  I know that Indira Gandhi is my sister, but I am not yet ready to feel it. 

John Donne’s immortal lines, which I have heard no one quote at this time, come to my mind.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

I must ask myself how does the death of this man, Osama bin Laden, diminish me.  I am not yet able to answer this.

OSAMA BIN LADEN in 1998

Repoublished from The Road To Khalistan