Harry Taylor was the first American citizen to challenge Bush directly.
On this April 6th, remember the courage of Harry Taylor, and carpe diem...
Harry is running for congress here in North Carolina, and your support and words of encouragement would surely be most appreciated.
Harry is now listed in Wikipedia, wherein it says, among other things:
"Harry Taylor is an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, noted for his unusually controversial question posed to President Bush in a North Carolina town hall meeting at Central Piedmont Community College on April 6, 2006. Taylor criticized Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and treatment of enemy combatants, among other actions, and asked that the president express some manner of shame for his actions. President Bush refused to do so.
Taylor's confrontation has since been praised in independent liberal publications, and noted for its surprising rarity given the prevalence of such opinions among Americans."
I don't go to very many places in Charlotte, but one place I do pop into upon occasion is the Thomas Street Tavern, here in avuncular Charlotte, North Dakota...I mean Carolina. Not sure why, perhaps I knew the President would, one day, go there. Maybe I was thirsty. The tavern used to be my post office. Perhaps I am a creature of habit. No doubt I am a creature. I do have a mirror.
But this is not really important, as is, say, flag-burning or the sad disappearance of the front porch swing. What IS important is that a geomantic concurrence involved our dear former leader, whom I have long advised, on a purely disinterested, volunteer basis, and one of whom might best understand the protean visions of an anonymous Moses. Everyone should have one.
So sorry to have repeated our peculiar left-hankshake, but I would still hope that, by some miracle involving the Information Superhighway, my dear old acquaintance will accept my good wishes that my fair city treated him well. And that, one day, he, Jimmy Carter, John Edwards, Billy Graham, Joel Osteen, Paul Newman, Peter Gomes, Skip Gates and I can share pithy apopthegms whilst pondering the pleroma of archons in our midst.
Short of that, a tip of the hat would do.
Oh, and Bill. Y'all need to anchor yourself near the North Carolina/New York border...as Jude and I are apt to say. We are the Andy Griffith State. We serve to heal and humor all who enter herein, that they may go forth a fine steward and exemplar, widening the circles of peace, mowing the lawns of satisfaction.
"The disdain and uncooperative nature that this administration has shown toward Congress, including Republican Members, is so egregious that I can no longer assume that it is simply bureaucratic incompetence or isolated mistakes. Rather, I have come to the sad conclusion that this administration has intentionally obstructed Congress' rightful and constitutional duties."
"Tonight, I will provide examples of how this administration for the past 7 years has undercut congressional investigators, has lied to Members of Congress, and has forged ahead with secret deals in spite of efforts and pleas by Congress to be informed, if not involved."
"This administration ends up lying in a briefing to Congress and shrugs it off. To this day, absolutely nothing has been done about this crime. And yes, lying to Congress, especially about an issue of this magnitude, is a crime."
Then there is more, including how the bombers of the Murrow Bldg. were in contact with the bombers of the WTC.
The week of 9/11/01, for me, began on 9/05. That was the day I was to fly to Manhattan, attend a party for my friend Rob, and hang out a few days, then return on the 10th. Well, there was a huge storm on the 10th, and I couldn't fly out. I was stuck in Manhattan. I would simply fly out the next day, which, as is now legend, was a beautiful blue September day...until around 8:45 am...when the skies got dirtied up with smoke, asbestos and cremated human beings. America was under attack. Just as I had predicted.
I don't know how I knew something bad was going to happen, and probably in New York, but I did. Right before I fly up on the 5th, I had written, on a message board, a post called: "The week the world ended". I swear I had nothing to do with it. I do have a fairly keen intuition though, and it just seemed too weird to me that, for one, the Media was overly obsessed with two stupid things: Gary Condit and sharks. They still waste our time with shark stuff, and I still wonder if it isn't if not a cover-up, at least a sin of omission and a sign laziness.
There were other things that augered ill, like the moribund economy, Bush's pathetic ratings (although not quite as bad as today), sabre-rattling with the Taliban, and so on. In retrospect, I think it may have been something that Robert Fritz used to talk about, but sadly I forgot the term. But it was basically this: As your patient, client, friend, whatever, is describing things, events and whatnot, you, as the healer, etc., try to visualize in your mind the action...and when it becomes difficult to visualize, therein lies the problem...which is oftentimes a lie, or some other construct that has no coordinates in reality.
Maybe what made me so suspicious was that things didn't add up. Fact is though, things hadn't added up since the election, a few months earlier.
A couple of nights before 9/11, while walking to Radio City Music Hall to see what turned out to be a remarkable Yes concert (the review of which alludes to my fears), I said to my bud, who was working in the Media, "What is the deal with all this "sharks and Condit?), to which he replied: "It is a slow news time", to which I replied from the midst of my overall suspicion, "Not for long." Less than a hundred hours later...
GATES OF DELIRIUM, ON SACRED GROUND
Re-reading my review of the concert (the original site is closed but probably in the Wayback Machine), I am taken by what I had neglected to focus upon prior to just now...and that is that heretofore, I had thought that "Gates of Delirium" was the defining song of the night...which, after the fact of 9/11, was made all the more the obvious choice, as it was about the war between good and evil, armageddon, and so on. I had all but forgotten that I wrote about a song called "Sacred Ground" [correction - it is actually called "In the Presence of".] which must have impressed me at the time, and I recall being a beautiful and meaningful song. I HAD thought about the fact that this concert was to their last and crowning event of the tour, but I had not, fully connected NYC with Sacred Ground, and that might be because, at the time, I was disturbed by the decadent, wanton seeming lack of sacredness. From the skyscraper with a big red 666 neon sign, to megamammoniacal hindbrains, to the endless honk honk honk of angry cars...Manhattan was in decay.
In this final segment, Jon warns us of war, and says the light can win out...
from "In The Presence Of":
In your arms I can see it all I can see it all If we were flowers We would worship the sun So why not now? This light is burning brightly This light is burning brightly Brighter than before Brighter than before Brighter than before Brighter than before Turn around and remember that When it gets so low As you finally hit the ground Turn around and remember that Now I’m standing tall Standing on my sacred ground Turn around and remember that When it gets so low As you finally hit the ground Turn around and remember that Now you’re standing tall Standing on sacred ground Standing on sacred ground Standing on sacred ground
Little did I know at the time how sacred the ground on which we stood, would soon become.
After the initial shock of 9/11, there was a change in the air. Literally. Some of it was actually good, in that people became more pensive, conversational, communitarian...and I, for the first time in my life, felt like a New Yorker...even though genealogically, I am an Old Yorker...which is suppose is better than being an old porker. We shall see.
