Dear Secretary-General Moon,

Please do not treat this as politics as usual, and may you and your assembly move beyond the said responsibility to protect into a new era of a practice to protect. However, while you work within the system, and wait for deliberations and reports, we the people will try our hardest to do what we can to pursue our collective liberty.

In an article that came out today, Secretary-General Moon urged the international community to move beyond its responsibility to protect, as outlined in 2005, to a practice of protecting. Read the article here.

“Never forget, too, the complacency and cynicism that often prevented this Organization from acting as early or as effectively as it should have,” he added. “Our publics judged us then, and found us wanting. They will be watching again this week, and they will – rightfully – judge us harshly if we treat these deliberations as politics as usual.”

-Ban Ki-Moon

30 October 2008
Sewanee, TN
Green's View

"as we fall asleep
the woods will cover us
lull us with the sounds
of blowing leaves
in the wind.

and this peace will guide us home
to the stillness and the quiet."

The grind has gotten to me. Motivation is sometimes hard to come by, and due to my youth, it's hard to remember the larger picture, knowing that the small reports I write daily are a part of something much larger than myself. And sometimes, you come across something that just puts chills down your spine. Oh the beauty of this language and this vision.

Let us not, I beseech you sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.

If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!

-Patrick Henry, 1775

the spotless mind.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

-Alexander Pope "Heloise to Abelard"

i really don't care...

you know, sometimes i really don't care if you don't care to hear my stories... do they make you uncomfortable? well damn, they should, you know that. and i got to tell them, because they've started scratching again, because i'm reading about more of them every day and they're clawing to come out... you know? you know what that feels like, because sometimes it hurts and sometimes you just ignore it and let them scratch and cover it all up 'cuz it's easier that way, until in the stillness of the night, you remember and they rip ya one more time.

sorry if you don't want to hear it, i gots to tell it now. you, whoever you are, stifled them and told me you don't want to hear, and you told me there won't be no change... you won't change anything and you can't change it and it's not even that way, young man, so you just take your ideas and your ideals and your dreams and put them away 'cuz we don't got no room for those 'round here.

but see good sir, i believe in a revolution that's been happenin' since the beginning of time and it's still happenin' in all these small revolutions that happen every time someone loves somebody else and every time somebody somewhere says, "no. i'm mad as hell, and i'm not going to take it anymore." and they stand up and they scream and yell and say somebody listen to me because this is wrong and i want it to stop and i ain't never gonna be free until it stops.

until it stops.

so... it's gonna make you uncomfortable, and i'm already uncomfortable with this. but i'm real sorry because these stories, it's time to tell them. mebbe you need to hear them, but i think i need to tell them. and since they are demanding to be told, i ain't gonna be free until that women who told me her story is free. because somewhere in the space between, our freedom will come together.

i will tell your story. along with everyone else who's saying, "i'm mad as hell, and i'm not gonna take it anymore."

we believe in revolution. but it's nothing new. it's just a love and a search and a hope in all the things that we feel there must be to life and we are going to find them.

and someday, we're gonna be free.