She said: "I just don't get it! I mean, I don't understand it at all. These are the boys who cheated on their school tests who became the men who cheated on their wives, the spoiled stuck up kids who stole pennies from their Grand Mom's kitchen. These are the liars and the stealers and the dope users who think it's OK because they are Office Suite muckitee mucks; who have staff at their beck and call; who get what they want just because they want it. These guys, and I tend to think that they are all "guys", used to get billion dollar tips from their places of employement. They used to think, and still think, that they deserve it because of who they are. Who they are, in fact, are the same guys who brought the entire U.S. economy down into the dirt. And, yet, they think that they have done a good job and deserve a whole lot of money for what they have done. They can't understand why someone like me would find this offensive and that they should be taken out around the barn and thrashed to within an inch of their sorry ass lives! This is Financial Porn! And I don't like it one little bit. You'd think that grown up men would do better. But you would be wrong. And what does AIG stand for anyway?"

Stumble It!

He said: "Well, I've been sick for as long as I can remember. If it wasn't one thing, then it was something else. The cancer is the latest one. I kind of always felt like that was gonna sneak up on me and bite me in the butt, and it sure enough did just that. The doctors got me all medicated out so that I don't feel no pain and that's fine, but it does kinda make me dopey and all and sometimes I can't even remember who came to see me. To tell the truth, I just want to live long enough to get some access to that medical marijuana. Then I'll be all right."

Stumble It!

He said: "You know? It's work. That's what it is: it's work. No matter how much satisfaction there is in it or how much new you learn from it, or any of that stuff, its still work. It's all work. There ain't no Fairy Angel gonna land on your head and say: 'There! How's That?' Uh uh. It don't go like that, because its work, y'all".

Stumble It!

He said: "I guess you would have called her radical, but I didn't think of her that way. I met her because of a note tacked on a campus billboard about tutoring kids in "the projects". I volunteered. It didn't last long because the program was being run by the Panthers and word came back from Oakland that the movement didn't need no white people. So, that was that. She left eventually and moved to San Francisco and I, after a time, moved there myself and wanted to see her, so she gave me directions where to meet up with her. The place turned out to be a church in the Haight and when I got there the place was packed with people. There was a band playing and there was "testifying" and eventually she came on stage to tell how the 'spirit' had helped her kick drugs and how the 'Reverend' was helping the poor people in the city get and keep their health and all. We met up and I was introduced to the Reverend Jones and we talked and then she was gone and I later found out that she and the whole church had moved to South America. I didn't see her again until after the inquiry about the murders in the jungle. Several hundreds of people, young, old, as well as babes in arms, died. She was in the house in town when it all happened and she survived the killings. I often think about her, but I don't think we'll see each other again. Sometimes, things just end permanently."

Stumble It!

She said: "The first thing you'd notice about him is his hands. These would be hands that have lasted a lifetime making object of beauty. When I first saw him and he took my hand in his in greeting, I almost lost it. At close to 90 he still looks strong. His hands are still strong hands and he is still working every day. His studio was amazing. There were art works everywhere I looked. Every corner, every inch of floor, every table and chair has work "in progress" on it. The only space that was free, and it was a very small space, was where he set down his coffee cup. We talked a lot about what he was currently doing. He didn't want to talk about the past. He said that it didn't mean anything to him; he was happy everyday, so the past and the present were all one for him. It was just such an honor to meet him for the article. He has lived such a large life in his art. We got some good footage and some good video and the film will be good, I'm sure, but the thing that I took away with me was the image of his hands."

Stumble It!

He said: "I met her at a show. I was with someone and so was she. We went out a few times and then became friends. As it turns out, a close friend of her's works in my building, so I see more of her friend than of her. Her friend, Jessi, is a bubbly, chatty woman. She's always talking about "the world". She peppers her conversations with chat about "this part" or "that part" of the world as if the world was divided up into uniquely interesting states that you could pop in to and out of on the way to somewhere else. At first I thought is was kind of cute, the way she talked about the world. Then I started to think about why I though is was strange first and then irritating more recently. There isn't really any "this part" or "that part of the world. There never was. The world is a whole thing and we all live on it. There isn't any "part" of the world. The world is the world and it is heating up. All of it is world and it is heating up."

Stumble It!

He said: "Here's how I do it. This is what works for me: I dream my life forward, just a little, every day. What I mean to say is that I dream the life I am living before it actually happens. Or, maybe a better way of saying it is that what I dream becomes the life I have. It all happens really fast and the pieces that get dreamed that eventually become my experiences are experienced first as tiny bits of a dreamed story. Isn't that weird? It works for me though. It might be considered as a way to control my life, but that's not correct at all. It think of it as a technique where I dream forward and don't look back. Somehow everything always falls into place and the life I have makes sense somehow. As I said: it works for me. I appreciate the coming attractions very much. They allow me to relax for the rest of the show, even though I might not always know how the story ends. It's sometimes enough just to know how the story starts."

Stumble It!

She said: "I don't know why this is happening. I can't for the life of me imagine what goes through the heads of these children. Does it say something about their parents? Yes it does. Does it say something about our country? Yes it does. Does it say something about our culture, the culture of violence and our culture of war and our culture of 'If I Can't Get What I Want, Then I'll Just Have To Take It At Any Cost'? My goodness, it certainly does. But all of that does not excuse what is going on here. It's shocking. I'm shocked to my very core. How can this continue to happen? What is causing it? How can we stop this? We simply have to find a way to stop these students from shooting their teachers! This can't continue this way!"

Stumble It!

He said: "I'm going to make sure that I can swim. That's going to become an important part of our lifestyle in the next decade or so. The scientists say that the water is going to come up and drown the people who can't or won't swim. I have to believe that the scientists know something about this, otherwise they wouldn't be saying stuff like that and getting folks all agitated and stuff. I never needed to swim here in Iowa. There's not much water around; just enough to water the crops and the cattle and all. But now they're saying that the oceans are going to spill over into the land because big pieces of ice, like the ones that used to sink boats, are going to melt and and water will come up on the land and if you can't swim, well, you're going to be in bunch of trouble. So I'm going to learn to swim. I just hope I don't drown."

Stumble It!

She said: "There are only two kinds of people in American. In other countries there may be more, but in the U.S. there are only two and everybody knows this fact. There are Cat People and there are Dog People. That's it. Dog People are the ones who don't mind scooping poop. They are active people who like to get out a lot, in any weather. They love their dogs because they believe that their dogs love them. They don't mind their dogs lifting a let and peeing on almost anything available. Cat people are different from Dog people as night is from day. Cat people like having mostly silent and unknowable creature living with them. They like cats because cat catch and kill things like mice and such using their own ideas and making their own plan. They like animals that sleep most of the day and them explode into activity around meal time. They like order in their life and are happy with a quiet and unknowable companion. I have learned all this by being both a Cat and a Dog person in my life."

Stumble It!

He said: "The shaman was called to perform his duty on this sacred ground. He came a long distance with his bottles and his powder and his power to clean this place of what had happened here before. It was not long before a crowd gathered to watch. Then the police came to move the growing crowd back to allow the shaman to do his work. Soon there were the sounds of keening and the wails of the women. The men stood and stared with intent into the distance, not say a word. The children who came with their parents or who appeared out of nowhere, were silent, taking in what was happening before them. He had been a great man, a great leader. Now, he was gone."

Stumble It!