Jack Pelham

Given how much a person can learn by experience in his lifetime,
Wouldn’t it really be something if some genius were to invent a way
By which that learning could be transmitted to the young?

He who thinks that believing is not a work
Has not worked at thinking about belief.

When man worships at the Shrine of Convenience
He becomes perfectly comfortable
In not knowing the nature
Of his god.

Let us all give thanks
For the Internet and email and text messages and TV and radio—
Those unassailable domains of the marketers,
Who, being the heirs apparent of all humanity,
Have brought our race finally to this glorious maturity,
Born again by way of the ever-gushing font of ads—
That life-giving stream, as from Eden itself—
Without which no one could ever know
What to think of himself
Or what he needs
Or how to find
His own way
To market!

You can think about whatever you want
And you can think about whatever I want
But no two people are going to think about all the same things.

I am dissatisfied with how my life is turning out regarding my involvement in the nature of this planet. I do little more outdoors than to walk for my health most everyday—mostly in a local cemetery in Laurel, MT, which is quiet and beautiful. And so I have decided to study the flora and fauna I see there. I decided to create this page in order to store what I have learned about what I have identified. This is a work in progress. I do not have a very good camera, so most of these photos are borrowed, and are linked back to their origins in the captions.

I have to quiet my mind
In order to aptly imagine
What this world would be like
If everyone wanted only enough
And no one wanted more than that.
And the difference I calculate is striking.

Is it the especial right of mothers
To kill their babies,
Denying that self-same right—
And every other—
To their own progeny?

Is there not more at stake
Than her own wishes?

Does not the baby belong
Also to itself
And to its father
And—if you can accept it—
To God?

By what especial right, then,
Is the mother privileged
To commission the irreversible deed
That abolishes the rights of others?

It was never supposed to be an easy ride. The various states, each with their own quirks and personalities and goals, had agreed to join together, but only for limited purposes—banding together mostly to protect their rights from violators within and without the Union. They were not signing up in order to give away their routine powers of self-rule to a central government. Each would continue to rule its own affairs, except when it came to those limited purposes behind the Union. As summarized in the Preamble to our Constitution, those purposes were these:

I would not want to live
In that constant fear
Of saying what I think—
As if keeping the peace
Were more important
Thank keeping the truth.

Why should any of us
Protect another
From the truth?