She said: "I used to think what is the one thing that defines us as Americans? I mean, we are such a diverse bunch of 'melting pot' people who came here, and are still coming here, from all over the place. So, since we are so different in so many ways, it's hard to think of a common bond that holds us together as 'Americans'. But recently I think I got it, the thing that we have in common. I think the glue for Americans is money. Don't you agree? It's what we all want or have or are trying to get or have had but then lost. I think the American Dream is simply that we will at some moment wake up and discover that a relative we didn't even know we had either is about to die or has just passed and that the lawyers for this new family member are writing or are calling to tell us that "Uncle Bob", or whoever, left all of his money/property to us and as a result we are now rich, rich, rich and won't need that televised "Make Over" as it turns out. That's the American Dream: that a substantial pot of money is going to fall out of the sky and land right at our feet. That's America for ya."

Stumble It!

He said: "I just noticed one day. One day while I was walking to the subway, I noticed that all of the young men had very short hair like what my father had when he was in the Army. Some of the young men had a little bit of facial hair, a "soul patch" here, some quiet "side burns" and such. But, basically, all of the young men looked like Republicans. Now, my knowledge of what young Republicans look like relates from what I experienced in the '60s so it probably doesn't mean anything at all to the anyone who is not "old school". I use to have long hair and it's still pretty long sometimes. I would like to grow it real long, but I think I'd look to much like a hobo or something. But, it's funny though. After all of these years and all of these living generations, hair is still sends a message and hair length still has power. Hair is STILL an issue."

Stumble It!

He said: "Sometimes a message will come to me from someplace far away and I only get about half of it. Sometimes the line goes down because of wind or snow or some other problem and the message doesn't make sense. Then I just sit at my desk looking at the paper that holds the message and I try to guess what the rest of the message that didn't get to me might be about. Of course, I really can't act on a confused message or an incomplete message, or a message that doesn't make any sense anymore than I can take action from a crazy person who is talking to him self on the street. I have to be careful about what is transmitted to me. I have to be responsible and not jump to conclusions without having all of the facts. I have to make sure that all the channels are open. But, I sometimes wonder what happens the messages that don't get to me. Do they become a part of somebody else's dreams?. And, if so, is everybody just as careful as I am about garbled messages from afar? I sure hope so."

Stumble It!

She said: "At the end of the day, we find stillness and quiet. At the end of the day as the sun is setting behind the wispy clouds, we find long shadows that covers the land. We find quiet then. Even the animals on the land stop to attend the fading light. At the end of the day we reflect on where we are and where we have been and what we have accomplished and what is still left undone and we accept these things as a part of ourselves, because we are just shadows now. We are just shadows in the fading light at the end of the day."

Stumble It!

She said: "We didn't notice for a long time. We just didn't know. We could feel and see that things were changing, but we didn't know how close we came to loosing it all. You know how one day just follows another and in the blink of an eye you find yourself at the end of a lifetime like the end of a book. Well, we were loosing our stories; all of the stories about who we are, where we came from, who our people were, and where they had gone. I guess, really, that we just became lazy. There were so many things to distract us from what was important until one day we woke up and found the things most sacred to us were gone. They had just blown away be a wind in the night. I shutter to think how close we came. It is a frightening thought: We almost lost our stories."

Stumble It!

He said: "You won't find the way out from somebody else. You will only find it within yourself. There is a part of you that has always known, but, perhaps, you were not ready then. When you need to know, that knowledge will find you. That is the first rule. The second rule is that if you act as if you already know what to do, people will leave you alone. These two rules will put you on the road that you need to follow. By following this road you will find the rest of what you need to know or to have or to reach for. You will not need anything beyond this."

Stumble It!

She said: "This is something special about living in a very cold place. The cold eventually becomes you, or rather, you become a part of the cold because it is all around you and it works it's way into you and then, one day, you realize that you don't feel the cold anymore because the cold is, in fact, you. You are a part of where you are. You stop shivering long after you stopped talking about or thinking about the cold. Your breath is the cold and your feelings are the cold and your body is the cold and it feels normal. It feels normal because, at last, for you, it is."

Stumble It!

She said: "Billions for war, but no money for health care for everyone; Billions for death, but nothing to keep the homeless in their homes; Billions for Road Side Bombs, Billions for Drone Attacks, Billions for War, but not even one dime for Peace or for Hunger or for Justice for us all; Billions to give away as tips for the Bankers so that they can continue to dream of more ways to keep us poor, to keep us hungry, to keep us homeless, where they can keep an eye on us as they pretend that we are not there, looking at them directly and asking for something to eat. How can we win against the Billions? They can out spend us and then hide us away so that they can continue to believe that they are the best of the best, living it large in the greatest land on Earth, and Never Mind the ones that you choose not to see; in the blink of an eye they are gone and in another blink the money just rolls on in, as if it knew where home was."

Stumble It!

He said: "In my dream it's very real. I am in a building somewhere. I am on the bottom floor just inside the entrance and I start climbing up the stairs. There doesn't seem to be anyone else in the place, just me. It must be night, but I don't know why I know that because the dream starts with me already in the building and each floor is lit up with light coming from somewhere above me. Anyway, I'm climbing and the more floors I go up the more nervous I get. It's like I know and I don't know what I'll find at the same time. The only sounds are of my shoes on the steps and the sound of my breath. As I climb each floor is colored with a brighter color of red and near the top it almost burns my eyes. I can't look at the light anymore; it's just too intense. That's the word I use: intense! Finally, I can't stand it anymore and I turn and run down the stairs that I just climbed up and I'm breathing fast because I'm afraid. I'm very afraid of that red light and that empty building and the sound of the shoes running down the stairs, and right before I get to the bottom, I wake up, breathing fast, and sweating, and I'm so aftraid. If I even find that building here, I will buy it, I don't care at what cost, and I will tear that building down and dump the remains into the bottom of the ocean where it will never be seen again!"

Stumble It!

She said: "Let me tell you, they didn't let too many women come on up to that place. It was sure enough a man's world up there. They let me come up because I could sing and I could scat and I could play piano. Mostly, though, they let me up because I could put up with them and I could drink any of them under the table, and I didn't mind the mice and the bugs and the drugs. It was considered to be bad form to show up before 1AM, and often we didn't leave until the sun came up, whenever that was. The music changed every night, depending on who came to play. Man, we had us some WILD times. I remember Monk the best, but there was a whole bunch of players that you would probably never have heard about. The walls rocked! There wasn't any complaints from neighbors because in that part of the city there wasn't much in the way of anything, especially neighbors. We didn't have heat. We didn't have a toilet. We sure enough didn't have no refrigerator, and you really couldn't even see out the windows. That's how dirty they were. But we sure enough had ourselves a good time and we sure did learn a whole bunch from the people there who played that sweet sweet way on into the night!"

Stumble It!

He said: "I don't know, I just think that it's a little strange that someone with the name 'Beyounce' should be more famous and better know that the President. It just don't make much sense to me at all. I think that she is famous because she is a singer and because her hip-hop boyfriend beat the poo out of her, or maybe I'm mixing her up with some other entertainer person. But, whatever, she is real, real famous and everybody, even me, has heard of her even though I don't really know anything about her. But, I'm sure that there are lots and lots of folks who think that the President is the person that Right Wing Radio nuts say he is, which is just wrong. Just because they have some staff writers who are paid to come up with these lies, don't make it the truth. But a lot of people think that it is and I think that they must be the people who know who Beyounce is, too.

Stumble It!