Went to the opera tonight. The marriage of Figaro by Mozart.  This was one of the best operas I have ever seen. It helped understanding of why Mozart is such a longstanding beloved composer. It was magnificent. 

Although everything seems so tainted right now by the bombardment of Iraq, and the media’s insistence on turning it into the action/adventure movie of the week.  

Thank God for people like Michael Moore or bill Maher. Tim Robbins appeared on bill Maher tonight and courageously spoke up against many aspects of this slaughter and got several thunderous applauses from the studio audience. bill made a funny but potent comment he heard in a bar the other day. “No matter what the outcome whether we win or lose, it can still be summed up with four words: ‘he didn't do it.’ meaning Sadaam. He may be thinking of doing it. He may want to do it. He may one day be capable of doing something. But he didn't do it.” So that's what bothers the rest of the world so much.

We’re all of a sudden back to the ‘well I'm scared you might hurt me so I'm going to hurt you first’ mentality of the middle ages. A dark time indeed for mankind if you know your history. And I have to say, it isn't that easy to know how you're supposed to feel about all of this, I think for any of us. We are experiencing one of the worst economic times in recent memory. People being laid off by the hundreds of thousands. The whole world seems to be mad at us all of a sudden. Even our own neighbors Canada and Mexico are against in this. We have a president in office who we aren't even sure if we really voted him in or not, who’s trying to burn down our forests and drill for oil in our national wildlife preserves. He comes off on TV like he is just about as dumb as dumb can be. it was just released this week that our social security and our Medicare will be bankrupt and out of funds by 2043, which is when a lot of us my age will retire. And worse than any of that, we’re back in a music meltdown like we haven't seen since the late eighties where alternative music which is so worn out and entirely nauseating is now the mainstream and anything even remotely actually alternative or cool or artistic is completely ignored by our radio and TV. Where is God when you need her?   

Started the message to the world site to voice our simple views about this attack to the rest of the world, the gen x view. Should be up in a day or two.

On the back porch writing. About 1:03am. A whole family of raccoons just walked by me. Slowly turned to face me and we all just kind of froze staring at each other. Like ‘who will move first.’ So I moved a little and they all ran up different trees and stared down at me for a while. Cool. I told them, “o.k. look, I'm just as freaked out as you guys are. So I'm not going to hurt you or anything but just don't think you're going to jump down on me or anything o.k.? I'm just going to turn around now and keep writing now.” crazy.