dear_jane Doar I received your beautiful hand made card yesterday. Thank you. . 080131 ... Doar oh...and you freakin owe me. Pay up. :) 080131 ... gja (and dear you too Birdmad - because I reckon I might like you to join in – although the effort may be a deterrent – but you, Jane, you always seem expansive – if not ) - A query for you both, just because you were next on the “list”. Please, riddle me this, please? Don’t let the two pleases fool you two, or, even lull you into a sense of false ease. I am demanding and I am panting. The two pleases belie the imperative. Beginning: - The generation that precedes, what I would guess, is ours, are lucky enough to enjoy good health – I think, in the main, that is the case – and this belief is borne out by the ever upwardly creeping life expectancy figure. They, that (our) parental generation, have, I believe, sipped, tasted, considered and then skolled the precious juice, the nectar, the milk, the drug of wealth and prosperity. But (and this is really the clue buried early in the story (as all good clues are)) they did not "waste". They indulged, revelled and kept. In their eyes (and perhaps theirs alone?) they do not waste. When actually all it is – is waste – we know don’t we. Nudge, nudge wink, wink. Their chalice, the container of their cumulative lard and inertia, was that, what is, what we know as - their parents fortitude. Pre and post war they were, that striving and shackled band. Exposed to death, on mass, but denied the face of pleasure. Willing, rallying slaves to big ideas. Toughened. And importantly FAIR – myth I ask or true. I will follow their lovely example – I will be fair and say – TRUE. For a cause. Everything, all action, thought and presence for a Reason. They knew that simple things could be hard to come by. The crate, the packing for that strong chalice, was industrialisation – more generations back now we go. That improvement, that concept, that definition, we know, had problems, has left us with the realised legacy of surplus. But that crate, that wide eyed bunch, realised, and allowed it to bring humans had ever known before – access to abundance had arrived. Is it letting them off lightly to suggest that anyone, the average man (that strange concept – invented by French architects and imported into British Law – and from there to most of the Zoroastrian world) would have embraced this opportunity? Or should they have known – been guided by their generational elders - to realise that this crate they were assembling – contained mischievous spells – that unleashed on a seeded world, aready planet - would push us into our current whir-pool? (And some did know – I might add – I suggest you search for “nuts and berries” responses to the concept of industrialisation. A friend and unwilling mentor of mine once suggested that they were “ahead of their time” these early hippy drop outs. I thought, when my head hit the pillow at the end of that educational day – that they were just a bit, but tragically a bit too much – late. And again as an aside (aside to aside) – that’s when I knew that my mentors guidance had been better than they had realised – I now knew (and know) more than them – perhaps they knew this would happen – a reason for the reluctance to take up my invitation to mould me to their image perhaps?– and now that I think about it maybe that makes them more knowing than me – they wanted to withhold the knowledge and maintain their place at the top of the local tree – hmm, those Machiavellian mentors – they’ll pay – when you anser this riddle I will be again once ahead – note to self – don’t tell them of blather – at least not when they are in a state to remember – perhaps just before the break of a wave – a big one I will yell – I know a place where words rule – but I digress). We can decry it as horrible this industrial beast. But it is the reason we can now do what we can do. Read on screens, be cooled by electric fans, as a starter I suggest these – but the list we know is – endless. Before that, the raw material of that crate, the timber, the nails, the ore from which it came, the sap, the fire, the ignition key, the spark plug – the light bulb floating above their cartooned head was, I am sure, was the printing press. That wonderful machine - That destroyer of stories and / but bringer of knowledge. I am not capable of adding more on these pioneers – these printing press journey men – Victor Hugo does it nicely and concisely – ironically. Middle: - And so, we know, these focused, these inspirational components (and the many more, long suffering ancestors, that I overlook for brevity) gave rise, via material assembled into cradles of varying description, to our direct forbears (I know, I know, and what more I await correction from some jumped up techno embracing divorce baby boomer, I am making assumptions about the age of skites - but the truth would bear me out, I am sure). And these recent spawn, these urbanites, these 2.1 children families, consume and consume and ....go on and on. Problematically – they just keep going on. We shove the older ones in “homes” – they get a wide screen TV and just keep watching and drinking and wetting their pants. And they hoard. And deny us our position. Deny us our chance. We want to seize – but there are always excuses – they say its bad mannered to snatch. They say its for our own good – that waiting builds character. And so we develop alternatives. We strive to be good. We talk about ethics. False modesty abounds. The long suffering artisan / craftsman / musician is held up as a fine example. We should, if we had access, shower the crème of our generation with riches and encase them in opulence. But instead – we say – us X and Yrs that real talent needs to be fostered, and respond only, to hardship. - What are we? Us. What is, tell me without error, our zeitgeist? I thought, for a while, that we were just that nectar, digested and pissed into a well plumbed drain. But we are more aren’t we? (Rhetorical that question is not.) What, and, when will we know it? Hints on achieving full marks: Don’t give me none of that crap about not knowing the answer until we, or others to come, have some perspective. I think we, you and me, Jane and Bird, know now. We, us need to know now – so that we can change it – if indeed it needs change (Formulate reasons for change or stasis to get a bonus) Presentation criteria - Free form and logic will be scaled up. Speed is essence – response not with standing, the response itself must embody speed and lightness and quickness, and all of Calvino’s other Memos (7 in total if I recall correctly) Respond now even, the deadline is now. 080201 ... Doar Jane? . 080202 ... Doar I should start at the beginning, I hatched a scheme to take us right to the top, The solution was your hat. Behold the insturment of fedoramatic, a vapour water park. ... um.. okay...really I'm just bumping this blathe to the today column. . 080209 what's it to you? who go blather from