meta me

Apparently, because I have many other things I should be doing, it was time to change the template header to one that I made.

I liked the general design of the header that came with this template, but none of the individual elements applied to me. So I basically copied the header they supplied but substituted elements that are more meaningful to me. Because this is a political blog, and it's my political blog, and I'm all about the symbolism and shit so that's why. And here's where I get all meta, so if you're all, "whatever, I have a life, buh-bye"...yeah, the regularly-scheduled political blogging will commence shortly sometime so skip this if it's not your bag.

Okay, and so. Here's the old header, for reference:

(you can see the big picture (ha!) here )

So the #17 didn't mean anything to me, and the text that you can't read probably didn't mean anything to me, either. The landscape is pretty but I don't know where it was taken and the image of the road says a lot of things that I don't agree with so that had to go, also.

I kept the map portion because I'm a HUGE map junkie and it's close enough to a MAX route map that I'm okay with it. I changed the number to 12, which is my personal number. Everyone has a personal number, right? Of course you do, we all do. Yes we do. You' don't? Okay, you're weird, I can't help that.

The little symbol thingie to the left of the number didn't mean anything, either, so I changed it to one of my own. The wheel and arrow symbolize wheels turning, and of course the arrow is pointed left because hello, liberal over here. I like the idea of wheels turning, of directions changing or reversing, of progress in a progressive direction. It seemed to fit.

I changed the unreadable text to the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence for pretty obvious reasons. As I said, this is a political blog, with the unwritten philosophy of Edwin Rolfe, who said, "Write as if you lived in an occupied country." I believe very much that we do live in a country occupied by traitors and bigots and evildoers, and none of those people are the people who regularly get accused of it by the President and his cronies and the rightwing nutjobs and the media. I started this blog to add my voice to the wind, hoping that someday that wind would be a hurricane to obliterate the encroachment of the dark-hearted machinations that currently grind and twist across our political and social and economic landscape.

The Declaration was written by men who lived in a similar time, who lived under the rule of another spoiled and childish and craven King named George, and they committed to paper the most revolutionary idea, I believe, in the history of humanity: that we, we all, are created equal, that we have rights, inherent in our being, and that no government, no king, no laws can abridge them. I memorized the Preamble as part of a U.S. History assignment when I was in junior high and I can recite still them; I carry a pocket-sized copy of this extraordinary document with me everywhere I go, along with the equally-important document it gave birth to, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We would do well to remember these rights and the words that first spelled them out:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

These words are a call to action, a manifesto, a defiant and determined cry out against tyranny and oppression. These men didn't shrug their shoulders and resign themselves to the inevitability of darkness. It boggles me that a country founded on such a radical, revolutionary platform now finds itself sliding down the disastrous slope of Fascism. We were a great and proud country once, and I believe that we can be again if we return to the founding principles that birthed our nation, if we remind ourselves of where our country began and how much it's worth fighting for.

So the flag imagery, then, is also obvious, knowing that I believe so strongly in the foundation of this country. I've shown it here as flying upside down, a signal of distress. During the sixties, my parents' generation were vilified for flying the flag in this manner, and it angered those who didn't understand, who claimed it was a sign of disrespect. On the contrary, it's a sign of an utmost love and respect, to signal that our country is in distress and call out for aid to all that would save it. When my country puts an end to the disastrous reign of the Republicans and more specifically, to this monumentally evil Administration, replaced by a Democrat, then I will right the flag proudly. Until then, we are a country in distress and the call must go out to all who would hear it to stand and fight.

And finally, the imagery of Mt. Hood. This is a picture I took a year or so ago, on a glorious July afternoon when the sky burned such a bright blue that it almost hurt to look at it, the kind of day when you know, on a primal, fundamental level, that there is something larger at work in this universe, perhaps a god or simply something much more elemental, but that there is something much bigger than each of us, and with that understanding, there is peace and there is serenity.

All the places of the earth hold this beauty, this innate connection with the infinite, each in their own way, and we have all felt it and known it. For some of us, it's the rugged and brutal beauty of the Wyoming mountains and prairie, for others, the sun-baked deserts and glorious saturated colors of Morocco. In this miraculous tapestry of our beautiful planet, there are rain forests teeming with noise and light and life, vast and tumultuous oceans that lap so quixotically at our fragile shores, austere and majestic mountains thrust like the thrones of giants into the thin air, fiery rivers of molten rock that roil with the catastrophic power of destruction and creation, great rolling sheets of ice and snow under a sun that doesn't set for half of a year. All of this, all of it, calls and speaks to us and if we but listen, can spark in us a deep and abiding yearning to save it, to preserve it, to be one with it. This Earth, this shining blue jewel on a velvet blackness of space quilted by stars like diamonds, is as much the heart of me and my fight as my fervent and fevered passion for this country I call home.