No. 103 – June 26, 2014 – July 4th, 1776 - Make us a fair copy, Mr. Jefferson

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Thomas Jefferson produced a 'fair' copy of the document now known as the Declaration of Independence for the Draft Committee on June 28, 1776. Jefferson had been asked by his fellow committeemen, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to perform this service. 

 

The drafting and signing of the Declaration was another step on the road to a new form of government, one which removed sovereignty from the person of a monarch, investing autonomy in individuals who, together, became the government.

The Declaration was then, and now, America's Mission Statement.

The American Revolution began with a dialog on ideas about government which took place through the Committees of Correspondence, the 1700's version of the Internet. These committees brought about a common understanding and determination. Some formed through legislatures of the respective colonies, others by extra-governmental associations, such as the Sons of Liberty.

The Sons of Liberty was formed in the summer of 1765 in Boston following the violent reaction in that city to the Stamp Act erupting on August 14^th.

The Sons of Liberty carried out the Boston Tea Party, tossing crates of tea into Boston's Harbor on December 16, 1773.

The Shot Heard 'Round the World, of April 19, 1775 was only one of several confrontations between the British military and colonists. These confrontations were possible because colonists were armed and familiar with the use of weapons. Militias for the defense of their towns and communities had begun by order of their legislatures over a hundred years earlier. All men were members of the militia, required to have weapons.

Aware they would need arms to defend their homes and fight for their freedom patriots in New Hampshire stormed the colony's arsenal on December 14, 1774 to be met by gunfire. The raiders hauled down the British flag, making off with around 100 barrels of gunpowder. The next night the fort was raided again. Patriots came away with small arms, military supplies and, 16 cannon marked as the property of the King.

24 hours after the shot at Concord Bridge it is estimated 10,000 armed men were marching toward the site of conflict which would not end until after the surrender of General Cornwallis, surrounded by land and sea, on October 30, 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia.

Fireworks came later. Early celebrations of the 4^th focused on a public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

No. 102 – June 19, 2014 – The Cult of the Vampire and Ashtabula

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Ashtabula nurtured one of the 50's most popular vampiric icons of the mid-20^th Century in the person of Maila Nurmi, born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi in Finland in 1921. When Maila was two her family moved to the US, settling in Ashtabula, home to the largest Finnish-American community in the state.

Nearly everyone has seen Maila's image, even if the late night television show she hosted, The Vampira Show, no longer runs and was never aired outside the Los Angeles area. In later life Maila supported herself by selling pictures of her self as Vampira.

We are attracted to vampires, according to the gauge available through our willingness to shell out money to read about them and view them on TV and movies. Themes which persistently generate a stream of income raise questions to be considered.

Many agree vampires are perceived as entities who, though beautiful and sexually attractive, are dangerous. Another recurring belief is that they are, “excluded from society and light and warmth.” According to David Dvorkin there was a religious aspect to this. Vampires, “were deprived of the light created by God and of the sight of God's creation.”

Biblically, this puts them in the same category as Lucifer and his legion of Dark Angels.

History places the first mention of vampires in ancient Persia. Myths also place vampires in ancient Babylon. In the Bible "Lilith," was reputedly the first wife of Adam, according to old Hebrew texts later removed from the Old Testament. Lilith supposedly had, “left her husband due to his sexual ineptitude, becoming the Queen of Demons and Evil spirits.”

Across nearly all cultures, and times, the mythos of vampires, exhibiting very similar characteristics, persist. These characteristics are startlingly similar to those ascribed to psychopaths today. Lack of conscience, violation of social mores, and perversions are associated with these entities, who also drink blood or suck the life energy out of their victims.

Vampires have fascinated us for as long as there has been history, but never more so than today. The number of movies, books, and hit television shows, for instance Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, or True Blood. Vampiric books, movies and TV is its own genre.

The wise-cracking Maila remains a contrast to the far less satiric images of vampires which proliferate in print and film today. But the question remains. What unconsidered part of us is fascinated, and terrorized, by vampires?

No. 101 – June 12, 2014 – How ideas impact us – Meet the Homunculus

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

It started with philosophers sitting around observing the world around them and extrapolating on how things worked, which they could not actually see. Anything related to sex was naturally of extreme interest, the profession of philosopher being entirely male.

Theophrastus, Hippocrates, Aristotle and Aeschylus, weighed in with theories of how babies came about. Then one of them, likely, in 458 BC, who must have had very good eyesight, looked closely at some sperm, which he reportedly held in his hand. He deduced that sperm were tiny human beings, homunculi, which would be planted in the womb of the woman. He then proposed the interesting theory that the male was the only real parent of the child, the female carrying out the role of "nurse for the young life sown within her".

In the 1700s this interesting theory received more attention and back up through the work of Dutch microscopist Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723). Anton discovered what he called "animalcules" in the sperm of humans and other animals. You can imagine these fellows peering intently into the lens of their microscope.

These scientists started a school of thought known as the "spermists" repeating the original contention of Aeschylus that the only contributions of the female were to provide the womb.

The Theory of the Homunculus was noted by legal sages who were writing law and became the justification for giving fathers the entire legal control of the children born to his wife.

Naturally, this ignored the room and board, so to speak, the woman had provided for nine plus months and the related services of nourishing and caring for the child after the often painful and dangerous process of birth was completed. 

 

If you calculate the entire biological capitalization needed to produce a baby, conception to birth, ownership, or liability, would be viewed very differently, of course. 

 

Sperm generally have a negative value since men must pay to give them away. Human eggs cost around $8,000, ready to be fertilized and implanted. Payment for gestation services runs up to $100,000. Therefore, the capitalization of the baby making, calculated monetarily, is around: Male 1 Share, Female 99,000 Shares. 

 

This example of using theory to make law without thoroughly thinking through the ramifications and objectively assessing each contribution to the entire process is a useful exercise today. 

 

It gives us a moment to pause and consider many other issues which need rethinking.

No. 100 - May 5, 2014 - Discover Your Body's Largest Organ

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Not long ago your skin was believed to be your body's largest organ. Advances in medical science have changed this.

In his book, “The Genie in Your Genes,” Dawson Church reveals the recent understanding of how a previously overlooked organ functions, linking this to the potential for each of us to take direct control of our health and happiness through prayer.

Any system with complex functions must have the means to coordinate their action. We are no different.

In your body this takes place through the much overlooked system of connective tissue encasing your organs through a complex including tendons and ligaments. Running through every part this matrix, made of collagen fibers, built from molecules arranged in highly regular arrays, are the lines through which energy and information pass.

The system functions as a liquid crystal semi-conductor.

These lines of fibers are the system on which Eastern medicine has been based for thousands of years, called meridians. Chinese healers discovered points along the meridians could be stimulated to achieve the balance of energies, restoring health. These practices were memorialized in the reign of the Yellow Emperor, Huang-ti, who reigned from 2697 to 2597 BC and is viewed as the initiator of Chinese civilization.

This knowledge also existed in Europe thousands of years earlier, but was lost.

Tattoos found on the body of the Ice Man, dated from 3300 BC, discovered in the summer of 1991 in the Alps, correspond closely with the same meridian lines used by the Chinese.

In Western medicine pacemakers are an example of the return to the use of energy for health and healing. The use of energy in medicine is expanding rapidly.

Western scientists had to be able to see the microscopic structure of this system to accept how it functions alongside the chemical system they already understood. Now, this is happening.

The communication/energy system in your body works with your body's chemical system, synchronizing the whole. It also reaches into the cell nucleus, and into the DNA, turning your DNA on, and off. No part is separate from this internal matrix - and these communications take place much faster than can be accounted for by traditional physics.

Scientific experiments confirm prayers from the faithful can heal - even when the afflicted don't know someone is praying for them. The power is in our hands. With faith, nothing is impossible.

No. 99 - May 29, 2014 - Isla Vista Memories

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Passersby are now sharing their thoughts on large sheets of plywood, painted black, an ad hoc memorial wall to the victims of the Shooting, standing on Pardall Rd., near Anisq’oyo Park. The name is Chumash for the area just north from Goleta and Santa Barbara. Translated it means, Paradise of Gold.

People pause to read, think, then write, coping with grief and shock. Also present is hope and promises to remember.

Violence has touched this beautiful area many times.

10,000 Chumash lived there when the Spanish arrived to establish Mission Santa Barbara around 1786. The Chumash were a peaceful people, putting serious thought into customs to moderate conflict and violence.

The head of a village, called a Wot, was a very different kind of leader. Chosen by consensus, the person was expected to help everyone who was in need along with providing advise and leadership. They remained Wot as long as they were respected.

A woman could be a Wot and we know the local village's leader was a woman when the Spanish arrived.

A hunter-gatherer people, there has been intense study of Chumash customs through studies of historians and anthropologists. Astonishingly, it appears nothing became extinct during the thousands of years the Chumash occupied the area.

The Chumash themselves are reticent about sharing today.

They were an easy target for the arriving Spanish. In just a few years there were few Chumash left, though today the several Bands still keep their memories and traditions and are relearning the original Chumash language, the oldest in California.

The Chumash have always maintained they came to the area 40,000 years ago in large boats, directly across the sea. The discovery of San Miguel Woman, a burial dated 14,000 years ago, on San Miguel Island just off the coast.

Until after WWII Isla Vista remained undeveloped and quiet except for becoming a target for a Japanese torpedo, aimed at the Marine base which occupied what is now the University of California at Santa Barbara. No damage was done. In 1953 a growing student population caused a housing boom as rentals sprang up.

With the highest concentration of population in Santa Barbara County, most of these students, there is a tradition of activism. In the aftermath of the Isla Vista Shooting many students are talking about violence. A good beginning would include understanding the Chumash and see the world through their eyes.

No. 98 – May 22, 2014 – Little House on the Prairie vs. Greed

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

The quote in the New York Times appeared last Sunday in an article by Nicholas Confessore titled, “Quixotic ’80 Campaign Gave Birth to Kochs’ Powerful Network.” I received several congratulatory calls and emails.

The quote was, In September 1980, at a rally in Los Angeles, Mr. Crane and Charles Koch shared an elevator with Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, a libertarian activist, who overheard Charles Koch grumbling that his brother was dipping into his investments to pay for the effort.

“Charles was horrified that David had actually had to spend capital instead of just some of the interest on some of his money,” said Ms. Pillsbury-Foster, who became a critic of the brothers’ involvement in the libertarian movement.”

The last sentence was likely why no Libertarian called me with cheery best wishes. People who point out inconvenient truths are not popular. But there is more to be told.

The Libertarian Party had real potential as a political movement when it was founded. This ended with the nomination of David Koch as the Vice Presidential candidate at the Bonaventure Hotel in 1979.

Nixon's announcement of Wage and Price Controls, came on August 15^th. David Nolan, the LP founder, had started Young Republicans for Goldwater at MIT. Conservatism was dead when the Goldwater Campaign ended.

Libertarianism could fill the niche. But what the Kochs wanted was not freedom, but to become a new generation of unregulated Robber Barons.

Then, and today, for the Kochs, it was all about profits, which they conceal behind the rhetoric of free enterprise. To accomplish this they wanted to own and control the Libertarian Party and, through the manipulations of Ed Crane, believed the sale was final.

But Roger MacBride, adopted great-grandson of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who produced Little House on the Prairie, did not agree. As the guardian and keeper of the Little House books, he understood why power must be local. Individual enterprise, accountability, and doing right to others were his values. Roger knew the Koch strategy lead not to freedom, but servitude.

Honorable people, Americans, once made choices facing the elements, turning their values into action with hard work, innovation, and courage.

When Roger campaigned as the LP candidate for president in 1976 he flew his own plane to events and spent his own money. He did so in support of the many Little House people, Americans, who then, and now, are hungry for freedom.

No. 97 – May 15, 2014 – Do You Remember Monica Lewinsky?

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Vanity Fair will publish an article by Monica Lewinsky in it's June issue. Ripples of commentary have already begun on the now 40 year old woman who earned a Master of Science degree in December of 2006.

For the last eight years Monica has tried to keep her name out of the news. Today, she is again useful to the Clintons and their corporate sponsors.

While the source of her notoriety titillated, consider why her emergence matters one way or another. It doesn't, you know. This is hype, orchestrated to impact the 2016 election.

Lewinsky was persuaded to write the essay for Vanity Fair because her life has been on hold. Every job she has gotten pivoted on the events from July, 1995, when she was turning 22, to the failure to impeach Bill Clinton by Congress on February 12, 1999.

The Washington Post touts her return as a positive for Hillary Clinton's run for the White House. This surge of media attention focuses on Hillary as a secondary victim. It distracts us from what should, finally, be asked about the Clintons. They did well for themselves. Today Monica is still defined by the words, “cigar,” and “blue dress.”

Some of these questions are:

Why was Hillary ever positioned as a victim? We learned early on she had assisted in cover-ups of Bill's womanizing from the time he entered politics. Hillary showed no concern for the damage done to the women involved. Political advantage trumped telling the truth, the impact on victims, and accountability, for Hillary.

When the trial ended in Congress the Clintons were drained of money. Yet by 2004 they were doing well, entering the embrace of the 1%. The Clintons had become intimates of Bush Co., and were not speaking out against a war which had originated in another set of carefully orchestrated lies by Bush and his NeoCon cadre. What else was happening while these relationships were forming?

What might we have learned if we had demanded accountability when Bush jovially looked under his desk for WMD? What if Saddam had not been hurried into the silence of death?

Following the money and connections always answers questions far more revealing of secrets than are sexual dalliances.

The answers are there. Don't let Monica be used as a tool of distraction. Forget those nine incidents of sexual dalliance and demand answers to real questions.