Pneuma — in classical antiquity the Greek word for “breath.” It is the spirit of vitality, your soul, your rhythm of life on this magnificent planet and your part of creative force on it and in it.
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Some of you may or may not know that I was a very serious percussionist/drummer growing up. During high school marching band and concert band I had one particular drummer that was my all-time idol: Neil Peart of Rush. In the late 1970’s and into the 1990’s he was considered by many “The Lord of the Skins.” Being a slight band-nerd I was always obsessed by his phenomenal syncopation, time signatures, and super clean precision. Neil never failed to astonish me.
When the American HS football season was over our band director let me take home all the percussion instruments that I wanted. Naturally, I tried to setup my drum kit just like Neil Peart’s setup—some 15 different pieces, four-six cymbals, double-bass drums, high-hat, and I mean the entire setup! Down stairs in my house’s playroom, my band members would leave their 5-ft Peavey amps and I’d take my Pioneer stereo turntable, cassette-player, and amp-mixer, and plug my stereo into their big-ass speakers. Let me tell you, the entire neighborhood some 2-3 blocks in radius KNEW I was cranking it up and jamming HARD for a few hours! I’d perspire so much trying to mimic Neil Peart’s drumming that I’d eventually lose my drumsticks; they’d go flying across the room because of my sweaty hands. I had to setup a little electrical fan on top of my bass drum blowing on me JUST to decrease all my perspiration with towels nearby! I freakin’ LOVED IT!!! I’d reach such natural highs of drumming euphoria that it became a drug for me for two years until I graduated my senior year.
Danny Carey of Tool plays “Pneuma”
A bit later another unbelievable drummer came along named Danny Carey, of the band Tool. I’d always known about Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, another fantastically talented drummer, but for me Neil Peart and Danny Carey were the ultimate two drummers with many more after them. With these two genius percussionists, I always had a serious, utterly exhausting drum workout of 2-4 hours, non-stop. I couldn’t get enough. Why? My brain, my DNA of circadian rhythms, syncopation, sophisticated time-signatures just craved and fed my nervous system, my beating soul, and my insatiable desire to reach the realm of the Drumming Gods!
Here’s what I mean. I can so relate to Mike Portnoy’s grief and fear that he could not nail precisely Danny Carey’s extraordinary drumming set to Tool’s song, Pneuma. It is an incredibly sophisticated, mathematical equation that requires unprecedented hand-feet coordination to all the changing time-signatures! Watch as one of rock music’s Hall of Fame drummers (Portnoy) TRIES to figure out Danny Carey’s genius on the skins.
I’ve really missed these sort of workouts on my big drum kit. It meant a ton to me and reenergized, reinvigorated me every single time I do a Neil Peart or Danny Carey drum-jam. GOD what a rush, what a high!
I wonder if I will ever get a chance to do it again? I really hope so. Geezz, this bangs hard and sweet I can’t even talk coherently right now! I am such a drumming nerd. 🤦♂️
Now, here’s Danny Carey playing the same set to Tool’s “Pneuma.” Enjoy it to the drummer’s max! 😁
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always – Jam!
I get regular emails from a handful of political outlets that are aligned with my own viewpoints which is left of center for sure. This I don’t mind one bit for many reasons.
I received this email newsletter today:
Dear Member,
It’s barely been a week since the election, but Donald Trump has already made more than a dozen appointments—and they’re exactly the staff envisioned by Project 2025.1 Some of the appointees even wrote Project 2025.
A white nationalist in charge of immigration policy. An insurrectionist and misogynist as Defense Secretary. A conspiracy theorist and homophobe helming the Department of Health and Human Services. An evangelical Christian and staunch opponent to Palestine as ambassador to Israel. A climate change denier as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.2
And Trump named Elon Musk as the co-head of the effort to “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy” and hand our country’s future over to corporations and billionaires.3
This wave of extremist appointees—who are rife with extraordinary conflicts of interest—is antithetical to American values. It’s overwhelming. It’s depressing. That’s exactly MAGA’s point.
Trump is dumping this deluge of awful appointees and plans for his administration on us in hopes that we will be so exhausted that we won’t fight back. He couldn’t be more wrong. We are already fighting back—in fact, we just had an amazing victory we’ll tell you about in a minute—and we are preparing for four years of nonstop campaigning to stop Trump’s anti-democratic, anti-civil-rights agenda.
Trump’s appointees are a veritable Who’s Who of right-wing extremism, racism, and hate.
To no one’s surprise, white nationalist and architect of Trump’s “kids in cages” plan Stephen Miller is now deputy chief of staff for policy—ready to implement Trump’s mass deportation plan.4
Trump appointed “Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth, famous for cheering on the January 6 insurrection and saying that women don’t belong in combat, as secretary of defense. Trump also announced plans for appointing a board to weed out any military generals who are not sufficiently loyal to him.5
Other appointees include Mike Huckabee, who believes that Gaza should be eradicated, as ambassador to Israel.6 Climate change denier Lee Zeldin as Environmental Protection Agency administrator.7 John Ratcliffe, who weaponized secure data against Trump’s opposition during his first term, as CIA director.8
And just minutes ago, Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, to lead the nation’s public health department.9
His MAGA House of Representatives tried to fast-track a bill through Congress—H.R.9495—that would have granted Trump unilateral power to strip organizations of their nonprofit status if they were accused of “supporting terrorism.” His administration would have no burden of proof or standard to meet—just a stroke of the pen would take down any organization (such as MoveOn!) that he perceived as an enemy.10
The bill had bipartisan support and was assumed to be a done deal, but our members fought back. Thousands of our members called their representatives, and our voice was heard in the halls of Congress as well. Because of the work of you and others in our coalition, H.R.9495 failed.
The American government is one of checks and balances, and we can rein in Trump’s assault on us if we are willing to hold our leaders accountable to those checks. As an organization of millions of voices, we are strong. We are powerful. And as long as we keep speaking out together, we can stop Trump’s attack on our civil rights, on our economy, and on our democracy.
But we must be prepared to campaign around the clock and use every tool at our disposal, which takes vast resources—resources that are depleted in the wake of the most expensive election in history.
Left to right — National Security Adviser – Mike Waltz, Chief of Staff – Susie Wiles, and Department of Government Efficiency – Elon Musk
What are your thoughts? Share them. Did you vote this past election year?
If you did not vote, like far too many Americans did not—approximately 7-8 million registered voters did not turnout at the polls—then your silence was beyond horrendously appalling for such a historically unprecedented election year given what was at stake for our country! That is the sole reason tRump and Republicans won so many positions of government! Sad, very very sad America.
It is November 5th, 2024 and American voters are out in droves to vote for the future survival of true democracy. About half of American voters, approximately 167.5-million, are voting for the two Republican candidates. The other half are voting for the other two Democratic candidates. Who are the Republican candidates? Here are their portrait-photos:
Presidential candidate Bernie Madoff and Vice-Presidential running mate, Ted Bundy
What are Bernie Madoff’s qualities? First and foremost is Madoff’s financial genius and empire he created through his Fonzi-Ponzi Fund. He promises Americans millions in economic returns. Second, he is an expert in wall constructions. In fact, he will soon be on the cutting edge of small cell-like confinements for any criminals that try and cross his Madoff Wall system! And third, Bernie Madoff promises his mega-wealthy investors Carte Blanche in environmental change opportunities on unprecedented scales, done in less than 20-years that Earth won’t be recognizable to even the most astute observers. I mean, who can’t vote for this fine gentleman and future leader of the world?
Bernie Madoff’s Vice-Presidential running mate is the one and only Ted Bundy of Burlington, Vermont. Bundy is best known for his diplomatic prowess and quirky charm so much so that his foreign and domestic guests would die for more time with him! Another top quality Bundy possesses for role of Vice-President is his family values, especially women’s rights, or rather no rights. Finally, VP candidate Bundy has vast experience in presidential campaigns; he worked for Nelson Rockefeller’s unsuccessful presidential run as well as Arthur Fletcher’s state and federal career and campaigns for, yes, you guessed it, Affirmative Action as the Revised Philadelphia Plan for more equality across genders and social equity, primarily for women since Bundy’s natural gift was diplomacy with women.
These Republican candidates are a very strong ticket for the Party which is exactly why about half of American voters are casting their precious voice with these two fine, upstanding men. If the Madoff-Bundy Republican ticket wins this presidential race, our country will be in very good hands with a fabulous future in store that the rest of the world will envy! No doubt about it.
Vote Right – Vote Party – Vote Progress – Vote Red
Feeling nostalgic today. Feeling somewhere else, and not here, wishing for another time, a more euphoric place where I felt… at home—understood in all possible ways by those who had come into my life… and are now gone from my life. So I post this, I play this special song. It was shared with me by two past Soul Mates/Twin Flames.
This song is also on my page The Bohemian, under my About page. I am a kindred spirit of Bohemia, the French tenets of which I descend from my mother’s side are Creativity, Love, Merriment, Experimentation, Art, and the arousal of all the human Senses. My Bohemian side says:
If I had to give a quick summary of myself, it would be “Bohemian Drummer Living and Musing A Different Beat.”
[…]
This belief in integrity and the intense desire for creative freedom often leads to a threadbare existence. Perhaps this material poverty (or ‘simplicity’ as Thoreau would say) leads to the archetypal Bohemian, wild at heart and empty of pocket.
The two Soul Mates/Twin Flames who shared this song with me and meant for me?
There was a boy A very strange enchanted boy They say he wandered very far Very far Over land and sea
A little shy And sad of eye But very wise was he
And then one day One magic day he passed my way And while we spoke of many things Fools and kings This he said to me
The greatest thing You’ll ever learn Is just to love And be loved in return
And then one day One magic day he passed my way And while we spoke of many things Fools and kings This he said to me
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn Is just to love And be loved In return
Is it coincidence, random one-in-billion serendipity when we encounter a soul mate/twin flame? Or… is it something more?
When I was 12 or 13-years old I learned a very painful lesson, literally! Who or what taught me this hard painful lesson? The who was my father. The what was a gas-powered mechanical lawn edger.
After edging my neighbor’s front and back lawns with their mechanical edger with the blade spinning on the side, I did not know how to turn it off. I walked to our house, explained to Dad I didn’t have a clue how to turn the motor off so he and I returned to the still running edger. Here’s the complete story in my December 2014 blog-post, To Operate A Mechanical Edger.
The short version of what happened that Saturday afternoon in 1975 was that Dad explained to me verbally, and by pointing at the external spark-plug with its attached metal short-out bar, that all I needed to do was to push that little metal L-clip onto the tip of the spark-plug and the motor and blade would stop. Easy.
WHAAM! 💥😵🥴 I was almost knocked to my ass. Unmoved by what he saw happen to me, Dad repeated again what to do so the motor would shut off. WHAAM! Same painful result. Was I not holding it to the spark-plug long enough? Dad pointed at me to turn it off. WHAAM! This third time hurt even more. I was tearing up and shaking like a leaf in the wind. I looked up to Dad in complete shock and baffled. “Turn it off” he said again with a straight face, unmoved. I tried to hold the clip down even longer this attempt. WHAAAAAM!!! Now I am convulsing trying to shut the edger motor off and crying now.
Finally, Dad had mercy on me, pointed at my other hand holding tight the metal handle-bars, and calmly explained to me “Dwain, your are directing the electrical current from the clip and spark-plug, through both your hands and arms, into your upper body, and back to the edger’s metal handle bars. Move your left-hand off the metal and onto the rubber handles.”
To this day that incident has never left my traumatized memory. It never will leave me, ever. It hurt so much and burned into my fingers, muscles and memory that today anytime I deal with electricity and electrical currents and/or equipment, that painful lesson always rushes back to me.
Why would I want to repeat that horrible, excruciating lesson? Why would anyone want to repeat or keep repeating over and over hard, painful lessons of the past? Why? Isn’t that sheer stupidity?
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In Heather Cox Richardson’s latest Letters from an American dated October 27, 2024, Heather writes “I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way.” But once again she and the rest of normal, sane, democracy-loving Americans have been again taken to all-time lows after Trump’s Nazi-esque rally at Madison Square Garden yesterday. Apparently, his MAGA rally deliberately recalled its February 20, 1939 predecessor, a pro-Hitler rally of some 18,000 “true Americanism” featuring George Washington in his Continental Army uniform front and center stage bookended by swastikas. Yes, I shit you not people!
Heather continues in her letter:
Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024.
Nazi fascist rally in the old Madison Square Garden, New York, USA, Feb. 20, 1939
Her letter is a very good, well-sourced on the verifiable, historical facts and I highly recommend reading it despite how deeply disturbing the rally events panned out. As I read Heather’s letter, skimmed over some other non-profit news coverage of the fascist, Nazi-esque Republican rally yesterday, I kept asking myself this question, Why can’t half of Americans today remember or learn from national and world history, modern history at that!? Seriously, what is that half of the U.S. population’s malfunction? Do they have no clue what the 1930’s–1945 Axis powers did to the entire world, in particular Adolf Hitler, his SS and high-ranking Reich Ministers and Generals, then the Holocaust? WTF!!!?
Written c. 38–41 BCE
Indeed an ignorant child bereft of earnest wisdom and learning.
Will Americans not learn from our grave, indecent, atrocities of the past? Will we never learn from those who we just fought a long, four year war (WW2) to rid Europe and Asia from the worst men in history and the deaths of 75-80 million people worldwide? What does it take to not repeat history in November 2024? How is this even a question right now? I sure as hell don’t want to re-experience my electrical shock memory and trauma as a boy with that damn edger! Isn’t that just common sense?
Addendum 10-30-2024 — Heather Cox Richardson’s follow-up Letter dated Oct. 29, 2024 is another disturbing, poignant letter of former President Trump’s follow-up press conference regarding the Nazi-esque rally Sunday night:
On Monday, Trump felt obliged to tell an audience in Georgia, “I’m not a Nazi.” The Trump campaign has made it a point never to apologize and never to explain, but on Monday it broke that rule, trying to distance itself from performer Tony Hinchcliffe’s comments about Puerto Rico.
This morning, Trump announced he would hold a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. He showed up more than an hour late for the assembled press, then began the event by undermining faith in the election, claiming the campaign is going “very well; there are some bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught or are in the process of being caught,” although it was unclear what he meant.
He went on to deliver such a litany of lies that CNN cited them as a reason to cut away from the speech. Trump chose not to acknowledge the offensiveness of the Madison Square Garden event, saying ““The love in that room, it was breathtaking—and you could have filled it many many times with the people that were unable to get in.”
American voters; sane, reasonable, Moderate American voters, if you cannot just read on a literal basis beyond what this narcissistic, megalomaniac, fascist, Orange Orangutan Baby and his extreme MAGA Republican supporters and sycophants are saying BETWEEN the lines, implicitly as well as explicitly, then please do so with vigilance, honorable conscience, with your COUNTRY first, not your Party. You are an American first who loves this country even with all of its flaws and imperfections, as well as its celebrated glories, equality, liberties, and freedoms. Do the right thing by Nov. 5th!
I have zero expectation that anything I ever say will end someone’s belief in their God. Not my goal or purpose. That alone belongs to the individual. ~ Zoe
'Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it' - Terry Pratchett
The Professor's Convatorium 