The ideas below are a goal to strive for. PG does not claim to live up to this. The point is not to point out how others do not practice compassion, but to try to do so yourself.
Compassion is a practice thing, not a belief thing. It doesn’t matter what you believe, what you were taught, what your opinion is. What matters is how you treat your fellow human being. We are all G-d’s children, and worthy of kindness.
PG found the charter for compassion on facebook. Thank you Martin Isganitus.
The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.
It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.
We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.
We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

PG has always sensed something a bit off about Tiger Woods. The golf course dominance ( dynasties are no fun), the walking billboard/mr. nike routine, it is all rather boring. (He has the nike logo tattooed THERE?)The fact that PG heard a hateful co worker go off about Fuzzy Zoeller did not help.
The news of the car crash was not welcomed. No matter how annoyed by a person PG is, he does not want bad things to happen to them. But then the details of the wreck started to leak, and silly season started.
He runs into a fire hydrant at 2:30 in the morning. The police don’t think he needs to be tested for alcohol. If that had been you or me, there would have been a balloon blowing up.
The best part was the bit about his wife breaking into the rear window with a golf club. The rear windows of modern vehicles are tough stuff, reinforced and chemically treated. To break a hole in one would take a sledge hammer, and serious muscle. Yes, his wife is a Scandinavian hunkette, but this is still far fetched.
OK, so his private life has a few flaws, and the star struck police are enabling him. But what about his corporate super image? It seems there are a few flies in the soup there.
Mr. Woods is not participating in “his” tournament next week. The tournament is co sponsored by Chevron oil, the descendant of the Rockefeller line. Chevron is a multinational oil company, and its hands are not clean. Environmental complaints and shady deals with dictators are the order of the day. Yes, the oil needs to come through to drive our vehicles ( with or without a rear window). Companies like Chevron like to burnish their image by partnerships with groups like the Tiger Woods tax write off “Foundation”. For a price, Mr. Woods is happy to rent his good name to companies like Chevron.
The latest turmoil to the world financial markets is the prospect of a debt default by Dubai. The desert playground was built with exploited foreign workers, and has numerous skeletons in the closet. Dubai is the site of a Tiger Woods “designed” golf course. ( Blueprint runner PG has always wondered how much input these PGA guys have on these golf courses they “design”.) Here again, the pristine image of Tiger Woods is the public face of a squalid operation.

PG was walking home, when he passed the McMansion. These people just love Christmas, and have covered their house and grounds with festive lighting. But that is not enough…there are speakers playing canned Christmas “music” as you go by.
People are animals, and function best when their senses are not bombarded with messages non stop. There is a need for silence. Some people feel it is their duty to violate this silence with canned entertainment at all times. For some, Christmas means bad memories, and rubbing this in…to strangers…is not an act of kindness.
The punch line is the title of the song PG heard…”Silent Night”.

PG has read the autobiography of Mick Fleetwood. If this had been a made up tale of fiction, no one would believe it. Mick is not the manufacturer of enemas, nor the namesake of a Cadillac Model. The possibility does exist that he has used those two products.
John Mayall gave his guitar player, Peter Green, some studio time as a birthday present. “The Green God” used a rhythm section from the Bluesbreakers, Mick Fleetwood (drums) and John McVie (bass). At the end of the day, Mr. Green wrote “Fleetwood Mac” on the can holding the tapes.
Before long, Mr. Green started his own band, and named it after the rhythm section. ( Does anyone know the bass player and drummer of the Atlanta Rhythm Section?) Fleetwood Mac started as a blues band, and became popular in England. Mr. Fleetwood celebrated by getting together with Jenny Boyd, who became his wife. Miss Boyd is the sister of Patti Boyd, the wife of George Harrison, aka Layla.
The first Fleetwood Mac album in the USA was “Then Play On”. The first show in Atlanta was at the Oglethorpe University gym, and by all accounts was a wild night. PG saw the sign advertising the event, but did not attend.
About the time of “Then Play On”, Peter Green started to get a bit weird. He dropped out of the band, but Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwan were still playing guitars. For a little while. Jeremy Spencer took a walk outside a Los Angeles hotel, and got recruited by the Children of G-d. Danny Kirwan had some issues, and decided to leave the band. Bob Welch stopped by for a few years, joined by Christine McVie, the wife of John.
The band was managed at this time by Clifford Davies, who by all accounts was a nasty piece of work. A man named Bob Weston had joined the band, and lasted until he had an affair with Jenny Fleetwood. Mr. Weston was fired, and a tour canceled. Clifford Davies decided that he owned the name Fleetwood Mac, and hired a group of players to go out and do shows. Fleetwood and the Mcvies were not amused, and Mick Fleetwood took over as the manager of the band.
By 1974, the band was pushing along, and selling about 300,000 copies of each album. On Halloween night 1974, Fleetwood Mac played at the Omni with Jefferson Starship. PG was at the Municipal Auditorium that night, seeing Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.
In late 1974 Mick was looking for a studio. He came to a place, and an album came on the speakers, Mick was impressed by the guitar player. Soon after, Bob Welch felt the need to leave the band, and Mick thought the guitar player he heard at the studio was a good fit. (The band never did auditions, just asked people they liked to join). The guitar player was Lindsay Buckingham, and his girlfriend/musical partner was Stevie Nicks. This was the band that set sales records.
The first album with Buckingham/Nicks, simply titled “Fleetwood Mac”, became a phenomenon. The band was soon headlining in stadiums, and was on every fm radio station in the land. The band went into the studio to record a follow up. The second album took over a year to produce, and saw the McVies and the Fleetwoods get divorced, and Buckingham and Nicks split their common law arrangement. Out of the turmoil came “Rumours”, which has sold roughly thirty million copies.
On August 29, 1978, PG got to see Fleetwood Mac at the Omni. Mick Fleetwood was on top of his game, pounding the skins with a glee that could be seen from the cheap seats. Fleetwood was a highlight, standing two meters tall and creating havoc on the drum stand.
Reading the book tells the rest of the story. Fleetwood’s father had died earlier that summer, and Mick was devastated. The band was straining under the pressures of super duper stardom. Mick had attempted a reconciliation with his wife, which was a painful failure. There was an affair between Mick and Stevie Nicks at this time. The idea that Mick Fleetwood could perform like he did that night tells you what a trooper he was.
The story continues. The book was written in 1991, and could probably stand a volume two.

The race for mayor of Atlanta is going into a Tuesday runoff. PG lives 4k east of the city, but is affected by what goes on there. The choice between Kasim Reed and Mary Norwood is nauseating. Maybe we should say something good about the candidates. Neither is a felon.
Channell 36 has “Thelma and Louise”, which might have something to do with this election. Well maybe, seeing as how the gurls are in a honky tonk, and there are no dark faces in sight. ( A waitress in a coffee shop breaks the color barrier later.) The race factor is …”neither of those two is the murdering type”.
During the commercials for pringles and sudafed, there are a few things that could be said about this election. There is a bit of pandering going on, both for the gay community and the Jesus worship community. Kasim “I talked to my pastor about this” Reed thinks that same sex marriage is icky. Never mind that as a legislator he favored mandatory hiv testing for prison inmates. Never mind that the Mayor of Atlanta has nothing to do with who can get married in the state of Georgia.
Back to the real world. Louise and Thelma are driving drunk, killed a man in a parking lot, and there is not a policeman in sight. The police get involved before it all ends.
The product at the next commercial break was Mary Norwood. She wore a pretty blue sweater that covered her throat. The bottom of the picture showed the outline of her bosom. Mrs. Norwood would be the mayor of all the people, northside or southside.
There is dirt on both candidates. Some say that Mary Norwood has been useless as a city council person. There is a cached site ( Http://notkasim.blogspot.com) with lots of goodies on Kasim Reed. In addition to pandering to Jesus Worshipers, Mr. Reed is buddies with a lot of folks in the hip hop music industry. The phrase “next Bill Campbell” has been mentioned.
Channel 36 is following the time honored strategy of breaking for commercials every three minutes during the second half of the movie. PG knows how this is going to turn out, but wants to hear the dialog. As for the mayor’s race…” I’ve always believed that, if done properly, armed robbery doesn’t have to be an unpleasant experience”.
At the end , the teal Thunderbird/the city too constipated to hate goes flying into the canyon. The camera does not show the crash landing.

By now, many of you have heard about “climategate”. It seems like someone hacked into a computer at an English research institute, and found some emails. A few of the emails have been released, and people say curious things. With years of correspondence to go through, only a part of which has been released, there is lots of room for mischief. If the hackers are smart enough to steal those emails, they are also smart enough to fake a few.
PG is not a scientist, and these reports makes his head spin. There is a suspicion that a lot of the people making noise now don’t understand the science, but are creating a turmoil to support already held views. It should be noted that there are big money interests who would like to see talk about global warming go away, so they can work without interference. These interests have lots of money to buy off journalists, who then produce prose like this: “AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is about raising taxes; increasing state control; about a few canny hucksters who’ve leapt on the bandwagon fleecing us rotten with their taxpayer subsidised windfarms and their carbon-trading; about the sour, anti-capitalist impulses of sandal-wearing vegans and lapsed Communists who loathe the idea of freedom and a functioning market economy.”
The discussion has leaped out of the frying pan of science, and into the fire of politics. There is an international conference in Copenhagen soon, and the timing of “climategate” is curious.
Two words stand out in this discussion, believe and prove. PG wonders if they are appropriate. AGW is not really a matter of believe or not believe. Since the industrial revolution, man has made an enormous change in the balance of the atmosphere. This ecosystem has evolved to where it is over billions of years, either by accident or intelligent design. Man has made profound changes in the last two hundred years. As Chamblee54 crunched the numbers last July:
The atmosphere on planet earth is a marvel, quite possibly unique in the universe. It supports a wide range of life forms, from amoebas to Bruno. This blanket of gas evolved over a period of billions of years. Man has changed it more in the last two hundred years than nature did in four billion before that.
Those numbers don’t mean too much like that, so lets put them into another form. Comparing 200 years to four billion years just takes a calculator. That is like comparing one minute to 38 years. What G-d created ( or nature evolved, or however you explain it), what took 38 years to create, industrial man has nearly ruined in one minute.
In the interest of showing how we got our numbers, here is the breakdown. Divide 4 billion by 200 and you get 20 million. Divide 20 million by 1440 ( the number of minutes in a day) gives us 13888 days. Dividing 13888 days by 365 gives us 38 years. Even if the earth is less than four billion years old, the fact remains that industrial man has destroyed in almost no time what took a long time to create.
The second weasel word in the current blabberfest is prove. There is a difference between prove and indicate. If they emails are genuine, they would indicate that some scientists in England cooked the books on their research. As to the larger issue of what industrial man is doing to planet earth, they prove nothing.

On the day before Thanksgiving, there was a beltway hike. The adventure started at Ashby Marta Station, and went to the West End Station. It was a lovely late fall afternoon, without the rain and extreme heat that plagued earlier hikes.
For those with short memories, the beltway is a proposed series of hiking/biking paths and light rail. It is 22 miles long, and will go in a circle around the center of Atlanta. The beltway is in a preliminary stage currently, but is making serious progress.
Starting at the station, just a few minutes after noon, the first six hikers moved down Lena Street towards the beltway site. Walking past some recently built homes, a seventh hiker joined the crew, and completed the personnel. After a few minutes, the beltway corridor came into view. The original plan was to go left, towards West End. However, on the other side of the street was a recently cleared section of the beltway, and the crew went that way. The former rail line was a old, old freight line, that was in place before the neighborhoods were built.
The first part of the hike went right from Lena Street, until it turned into a tiny path through kudzu. The Marta west line was in the valley below the kudzu. How the paths on the two sides of the Marta lines will connect is one of the issues to be determined.
The crew turned around, and proceeded through recently turned over earth. The trees and vines were lovely. Many of the neighborhoods were built while the train line was in operation, and have been separated by this rail corridor. When the beltway is built, these neighborhoods will be connected.
The first two underpasses came along after a while. Westview Drive and I-20 were modern looking concrete structures. Neither one had any graffiti, which was quite a contrast to I-75 and Freedom Parkway. Next to I-20 was a triangle of wild land, slated to become a park.
The rail path continued its flat way a bit further, until the Lucille Street tunnel loomed in the distance. Some men were working at the tunnel entrance clearing brush, and there was some doubt as to whether the hike could continue there. After talking to the workers, the crew went through the tunnel. The Lucille Street tunnel did have some classic graffiti, with the deterioration of time adding a layer to the old paint.

After Lucille Street, the path got rough. Briers, thorns, and vines made the going tough. PG wondered how the slacks and argyle sweater of one hiker was holding up.
PG has an internet buddy with an intense appreciation of argyle. This was discussed with the hiker, who did not want his face to appear in this account. PG wanted a picture of the sweater, and mentioned his friend’s love of argyle. The hiker replied ” What’s argyle?”
After struggling with nature for a few minutes, a decision was made to move the hike up to Muse Street. A few minutes later, the hikers were in front of the Kroger in West End. A decision was made to find a way down to the beltway corridor, and look at the tunnel under Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard. More vintage graffiti awaited the hikers. The return to street grade was over a dead kudzu covered hill, and involved some careful stepping.
At this point, the rail corridor goes behind some warehouses, and becomes too narrow to support a pathway. The beltway moves up to street level, and a wide hike/bike path is in place. This path runs along White Street down to Whitehall Street. After a few blocks, there was a crossing for Joseph A. Lowery Boulevard. ( Which was formerly Ashby Street. Whenever the city renames a street the new name is always much longer than the old one). Lowery Boulevard is where the Ashby Marta Station is, a few miles due north of where the hikers stood.
The last landmark of the day was Brown Middle School. The gym was a lookalike for the gym at Cross Keys. There is a bit of land beside the school which is becoming a low maintenance park. The only thing left to do was walk down to Lee Street, take a left, and find the Marta West End Station.

Recently Uga VII went to the hedges in the sky. The little fellow was only a few years old, and should have been a hairy dog for a few more years at the very least. There are some tasteless rumors of inbreeding, which could have made his ailments worse.
The Uga dynasty is owned by Sonny Seiler. Mr. Seiler is an attorney in Savannah. He was a defense lawyer in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, and in the real life drama that preceded it. It is assumed that Uga VII was pampered from birth, with nothing more expected of him than running in front of the team on game day.
A “domestic terrorist organization” named PETA ( People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) has weighed in the Uga VII matter. An email was sent to University of Georgia (the other Uga) athletic director Damon Evans.
In the wake of the untimely death of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) bulldog mascot, Uga VII, PETA has asked the school’s athletic director, Damon M. Evans, to replace the mascot with an animatronic dog–or to rely solely on a costumed mascot–instead of using another real bulldog. Bulldogs are prone to breathing difficulties, hip dysplasia, heart disorders, and other congenital ailments, and acquiring a dog from a breeder perpetuates the animal overpopulation crisis while causing another dog waiting in an animal shelter to be condemned to death.
PETA knows that this is never going to happen. PETA also knows that breeding another white bulldog for Sonny Seiler is not going to have any effect on the lifespan of mutts at the shelter. PETA also knows that football is religion in Georgia.
But what PETA does know is obnoxious publicity, and planting seeds of doubt. A few more people are going to know about the canine population crisis now. As for using Uga VII to get publicity for its cause…this is the same dog that had the Nike logo on his sweater. UgaVII and the Bulldog football program are creatures of publicity and fundraising. Neither one is amateur.
The next time a wealthy antique dealer is accused of killing his boyfriend, he should get an animatronic attorney.

When PG was growing up, one feature of the summer was the trip to see his dad’s family in eastern North Carolina. In those days before air conditioning and interstate highways, this meant a long afternoon in South Carolina. PG decided that South Carolina was the biggest, hottest place on the planet.
PG saw two things there that he did not see at home. There was a restaurant in some small town with a sign in the window, “whites only”. ( Strange as it may seem, PG never saw a sign like that in Atlanta). The other thing was dozens of fireworks stands, often ramshackle affairs by the roadway.
These days, South Carolina gets a bit of bad press. Georgia should be relieved that some of this attention is diverted from our own perfect state. The latest item is a tax holiday friday on firearms purchases.
HT to JoemyG-d and the NY Daily News for the information in this report. New York is the ultimate destination of many weapons bought in South Carolina. It is part of the fun of states rights…when you have tight gun laws in one state, you created a business opportunity in states with less stringent laws.
According to Rep. Mike Pitts, the sponsor of the Big Bang Tax holiday, “It’s not our lax gun laws. It’s our high crime-rate that causes the problems,”. Pitts sought to illustrate his position by noting that a burglar had recently broken into his home and stolen “about a dozen guns.” “What’s happening is people break into my home, steal my guns and get a premium price by taking it to other states and selling them,”.
Pitts has a daughter, with the unique age of 19 or 20. “The number of gun sales is expected to grow ever higher thanks to Pitts, who also sponsored a bill that reduced the age for possessing a handgun in South Carolina from 21 to 18. “If my daughter were driving, as a 19- or 20-year-old, to Charleston, I could put my handgun in the glove compartment of my car and she could drive to Charleston without being a felon.”
The tax holiday on weapons sales “was first tacked onto a 2008 bill that provided similar breaks for energy efficient appliances.” Maybe a higher grade of insulation would make handguns more energy efficient. The State Supreme Court threw out the tax break, because South Carolina has a “one subject rule” in the state constitution, which prohibits multiple unrelated laws in the same bill. The energy efficient legislature dropped the appliance part, and kept the tax break on firearms.
It should be noted that hiking Governor Mark Sanford vetoed the bill that enables the tax break for firearms. The veto was overridden by the legislature.
The story at the New York Daily news had a link to another story. Dean Meminger was a player for the New York Knickerbockers in the seventies, when they won two NBA championships. He was in a fire sunday night in the Bronx. Crack pipes were found in his room. “The Dream” is in critical condition.

Ben Franklin thought the turkey should be america’s national bird. It is identified with Thanksgiving, the holiday in November before Christmas. Mr. Franklin would not recognize the old bird today.
Turkeys have a tough life these days. Raised in factories where the lights are on 24/7, their beaks and claws are routinely broken off early on. For more details, read this piece in the New York Times, or a tasteful blog, WhatWouldJesusEat.
PETA sometimes goes too far, and sometimes violates good taste. The commercial here was rejected by NBC. It uses the cliche of the little girl praying to call attention to the sorry state of the turkey. While annoying and easy to dismiss, the commercial does tell a tale. HT to JoemyG-d.
PG should fess up at this point, and admit that he is a party to these horrors. A full blown carnivore ( except for vienna sausages, which are gross), PG has no room to talk about the horrors of industrial meat production. It is Babylon…the government borrows trillions of dollars from the Chinese to pay for a war in Iraq, a book assembled by a Catholic Committee is called “The word of G-d”, and meat producing animals are raised in squalor.
A person, who is sometimes called a turkey, gave a press conference last year. The photo op was in front of a device that mutilates turkeys, and the meat processing continued while she talked. “At least this is fun”.