Irises

        BINARY STAR
No, I'll never forget
your perfect mouth, your quick glance,
bold as love- I think of you,
dream, and speak your name - a prayer,
a rhythm like my heart beat.

I experience whole universes
soaring as Venus tacks,
and the Milky Way spins,
burning like a firework, just as always,
just as for us it always will.

Together, we are one-
    a binary star-
your sweet, radiant smile, goodness itself,
makes me dance across the stars
and kiss the moon on its voluptuous lips.
 

        AUTUMN'S FIRST FIRE
Autumn is here in earnest now,
and the night's are cold and the sky
is wrapped in a warm cloud cloak.
It's time to celebrate
Fall's first evening fire.
I sit before it reading and dreaming.
Isn't it wonderful,
how we are like the fire-
everything that we read and experience
is consumed like fuel for its flames.
 

        CRYSTAL CLEAR
During the Autumn season
and the coming New Year,
when the days grow shorter
and night's colder, too, I have been
pensively spending time
reflecting on the nature of things
and my modest roll in it.

What kind of creature
do I wish to be - a man or a beast?
And, if a man, what kind?
A person who uses reason,
as a beacon to guide their life;
or, a lost soul who abuses their,
and sneaks around in the dark.

What makes things terribly ironic
is that all people are born with reason;
whether we use it to become pious and just,
two terms which are unfortunately
out of style today, or, abuse it,
to become deceitful and hurt each other
that is the great question.

And, as a seemingly endless grey
stretches from the horizons across the sky,
the answer for me is crystal clear.
 

THE RAINS ARE HERE!
The rains are here!
Leaves that yesterday
merrily scudded down the street
now lay congealed in soggy mounds
scattered across the suburban landscape.

The rains are here!
It sings to us,
with a thousand little voices
that form into little laughing rivulets
which disappear into dark drains.

The rains are here!
The air smells vaguely of decay;
and, like a palpable presence,
a host of memories
loiters on street corners.

The rains are here!
Parents run from their cars indoors,
while their children,
wearing bright colorful coats,
play in puddles and forget to go straight home.

The rains are here!
 

        IMPATIENT
Impatiently I wait for you,
who are dearer to me than a thousand others,
Margy, we will hurry home,
to where our children wait.

You are here!  All is well!
You'll tell me how work went,
and I'll drve you safely home.
We will discuss the events in the news,
and I'll explain what the stories mean.
And, placing my hand on your knee
I will lean my face near yours
and plant a burning kiss
on your smiling lips.
Our happy hearts will soar
above the still slumbering city.
Has God blessed anyone
as much as me.
 

        FEEL THE AIR
Feel the air, this morning
its chill and damp after last night's rain;
ermine clouds skim across the deep blue sky,
which reflect back from the river's smooth face
along with the autumn foliage of the inquisitive trees
that lean over and peer downward into its depths;

unlike the inattentive people I encounter,
while shopping at the Mall,
from the circumference of disrespect
demonstrated for themselves
and curve of contempt displayed for others
that lies beneath the frost of transparent conventions;

who are inattentive and incurious,
in their observations, which are like teardrops,
either, reflecting back their prejudices,
or, warping the World to look like their beliefs:
doomed to superficial perceptions
never delving into the depths of things.

The morning hesitates, and I decide to depart
from the environ where everything grows less real;
leaving the stridency of their contemptuous speech,
and the aggressive looks that are not very friendly.
Outside, I chart my course over vast seas of asphalt
past the chuckling sewers to my patiently waiting car.
 

                                RUMOR MILL

                                      VOTE

        Rumor Mill can not remember an election as important as this one is.  It hopes
that the following considerations of the issues will help you on election day,
when it comes time for you to fulfill your responsibility to your community and
you vote.
 

RALPH BUSH\NADOR:
        RALPH - Stated that "Gore is suffering from election-year delusions if he thinks
his record on the environment is anything to be proud of."  RUMOR MILL wonders if Ralph is aware
of the role that the Republicans have played in opposing the Democrats environmental measures in Washington D.C. this year.
Or, is Ralph Bush aware of the following accomplishments realized by Vice President Gore in the last legislative session.
    1)Passed legislation that protects the off shore environment, which in turn protects 1 in every 6 jobs in America.
    2)Passed legislation that protects environmentaly sensitive lands
    3)Succesfully expanded the E.P.A. budget.
    4)Dramatically increased National Monuments and National Parks.
    5)Substantially increased the roadless wilderness areas.
    6)Increased by 100% the amount of money available to purchase more National Monuments and National Parks
in the next year's budget.
    7)In Oregon established the following new National Parks Soda Mt, Steens Mountains National Park, and The Hanford Reach.
    Rumor Mill is sad at how Ralph has turned his back on everything he has championed in the past.
All so he can temporarily regain the spot light.  A vote for Ralph Nador = a vote for George Bush!
And that will undermine all that Ralph has fought for in the past.
 

SOCIAL SECURITY:
        BUSH Jr. - Promises to give you choices, and to maintain a lock box on Social
Security.  But, how he can take one Trillion Dollars from Social Security and
give it to the Radical Right's mutual funds, in the form of young individuals
taking part of their Social Security and investing it in the stock market, and
make that claim is beyond me!  Obviously, he can not keep the money and give it
away, too.  The least that can happen is that the primary source of income for
75% of Senior Citizens (our grandparents) will be dramatically reduced.  The
worst is that Bush Jr. will bankrupt Social Security.  Those of you who invest
in Wall Street should hate to see that happen, because that will destroy the
primary ballast to the United States' financial markets.  The subsequent
downturns in the economy will become much more severe.  The recessions and
depressions will be wider and deeper.  The last time we had a major depression
without Social Security it took a major event of the magnitude of WWII before
the economy recovered.  And if you think those kind of things don't happen
anymore then look at Japan over the last 10 yrs.
        Vice President Gore - Promises to fully fund Social Security.  Plus he has a
plan that will promote savings, too.  The savings will be generated by middle
class Americans.  The net effect will be to encourage savings, promote
sustainable economic growth and maintain stability of the American financial
markets.  He will do this by helping to develop a healthy prosperous middle
class.  This in turn will benefit American business by guaranteeing that
consumer demand, the main driving force behind America's market, will continue
strong in the foreseeable future.

TAX CUTS:
        Bush Jr. - Promises a tax cut of $1,600,000,000,000.  The primary beneficiary
of this tax cut will be the top ten percent of Americans.  This tax cut will
have some other effects he hasn't bothered to tell you about. First, it will
impair our ability to buy down the National Debt.  Second, it will mean higher
interest rates.  Third, it will mean we will have to continue to pay interest
(hundreds of billions of dollars) on the national debt, which is currently the
third largest item on the National Budget, an item we currently get nothing in
return for.  Fourth, it will drive construction workers out of work, because
higher interest rates mean higher house payments which in turn means people can
not afford to buy homes, and this in turn will have a serious multiplier effect
on the over all economy.  Fifth, it will create stagflationary pressure.  This
only mentions a few of the more obvious negative examples produced by Bush Jr.'s
unfair, inflationary generating tax cuts.
        Vice President Gore - Offers an affordable tax cut now.  And, after we have
made Social Security sound, and Medicare and Medicaid solvent, and bought down
the National Debt; then, we will enjoy another fair and affordable tax cut
later.  He offers tax cuts and tax incentives, as non inflationary seed programs
to promote prosperity for all Americans not primarily a wealthy few.  He offers
tax cuts and tax incentives to revitalize urban poor areas and to develop rural
poor areas.  He offers tax cuts and incentive programs to promote energy
efficient technologies, which will create more jobs for Americans; and,
encourages energy conservation measures that will make America more energy
independent.  This is only a partial list of an impressive comprehensive tax
cutting plan that is integrally interrelated with his overall economic strategy.
It is easy to see why under the Democratic Administration we have experienced
the longest uninterrupted period of economic expansion in this country's
history.

MEDICARE:
        Bush Jr. - Promises to give us more choices.  His proposal is to give us what
has been determined as the WORST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD.  It
is a health care system that has locally increased by 64% in the last two years.
It is a health care system that doesn't cover over 40 million Americans and
promises to cover even less in the future.  It is a health care system that
promises to reduce services and charge more for premiums.  He will cut  Medicare
by $100,000,000 to help pay for his $1.6 trillion tax cut for the rich.   Yet he
promises to increase Medicare and provide prescription relief, too.  It is no
wonder Texas UNDER BUSH JR. IS RATED DEAD LAST IN THE U.S. IN FAMILY HEALTH
CARE!  It is no wonder Texas under BUSH JR. HAS BEEN TAKEN TO COURT AND IS BEING
FORCED TO PROVIDE HEALTH CARE TO POOR CHILDREN!!!  Texas has squandered away
$4.7 Billion in health care to accomplish this.  Such incompetence staggers the
imagination.  Bush Jr. promises to provide a BILL OF RIGHTS for Health Care:
but, it only covers 15% of Americans.  What a deal.
        Vice President Gore - Proposes to fully fund Medicare and Medicaid.  He will
provide affordable prescription relief for all Senior Citizens.  He will provide
an honest Bill Of Rights rather than a Bill Of Wrongs, which is nothing more
than a disguised attempt to rob you of the right of legal redress by a jury of
your peers.  He will expand Medicare to cover those of us who are between 55yrs.
and 65 yrs. at an affordable price.  He will provide Medicare coverage for those
who help with research and development programs for new medicines.

EDUCATION:
        Bush Jr. - Promises vouchers to charter schools.  He will underfund schools
that do poorly and send a sum of money to the parents instead.  He doesn't
mention that states will have to match the amount there bye underfunding state
schools.  The effect will be to increase taxes, while promoting poorer education
for the majority of our children - up to 80%.  He does not bother to inform the
public that the money parents will receive will not be enough to cover their
costs, and so the vast majority of children will be worse off than ever before;
because, they will have to go the bad schools that will, under Bush Jr.'s plan,
be seriously underfunded.  Texas, cheated on testing its children, not counting
the kids who dropped out, and even so it rated in the bottom third of the
nation: it did not even attain the lofty pinnacle of mediocrity under Bush Jr.'s
command.  The only way Texas schools obtained the results they did was by
targeting additional funds and giving them to the schools that were having
trouble.  These measures were accomplished by Democrats and were just the
opposite of Bush Jr.'s educational proposals.  If Texas would have followed his
advice then they would have done far worse.  He says he is for testing and local
control.  Local control is already the norm in public education, which is
another Democratic proposal by Sen. Wyden; and, what will happen when the
children go to these private (yet publicly funded) charter schools in terms of
testing is never mentioned and so presumably is not an important feature - if a
feature at all!
        Vice President Gore - Proposes to increase money to education.  He will fully
fund Head Start Programs.  He will hire 100,000 more teachers to reduce class
sizes for all of America's children.  He will provide better teacher training.
He will provide more instructional materials.  He will provide money to make
capital improvements on our aging school buildings and where appropriate buy new ones.
He will provide programs to make our schools safe.
He will provide College tuition tax credits.  He will provide
vocational training that will be available throughout the course of an adults
life; thus promoting a better trained, more productive work force for business,
while creating better paying jobs for American workers.  The effect will be to
expand America's middle class and strengthen the American market.

ENVIRONMENT:
        Bush Jr. - Promises to give back our Natl. Parks and Natl. Monuments and to
establish something he calls local control.  First, how can you give back
something that is already owned by "we the people"?  What is probably meant is
that he will give the Natl. Monuments and the Natl. Parks to the special
interests for exploitation.  The Republican Party, last year after Kosovo, used
the resupplying of the U.S. military as an excuse to pass a spending measure to
mine in the North Cascades Park, using acid to leach the mineral out of the
ground.  The acid entered the ground water and eventually made its way into our
water ways.  This is only one representative example of the Republican's
position on the environment.  Second, the local control is supposed to sound
fair; but, consider the following, the political party that controls rural
America will control the fate of public lands; and, that party happens to be the
Republican Party.  Talk about deliberately trying to deceive the American
public!  Third, Bush Jr. promised to review the decisions to make new National
Monuments and National Parks.  Why review if you do not intend to reverse those decisions.
UNDER Bush Jr. TEXAS IS IN LAST PLACE IN MONEY FOR CONSERVATION,
Rhode Isl. the smallest state in the nation provides more money.  Under Bush Jr.
UNDER Bush Jr. HOUSTON TEXAS HAS THE WORST AIR POLLUTION OF ANY CITY
IN AMERICA for the last two years!  And last though certainly not least,
UNDER Bush Jr. TEXAS IS THE MOST POLLUTED STATE IN AMERICA FOR INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION.
        Vice President Gore - has an excellent record on the environment.  He has
championed expanding roadless wilderness areas.  He has championed protecting
environmentally sensitive land.  He has helped double the money that will be
spent next year on expanding our National Parks.  He has successfully protected
the off shore environment knowing that 1 in every 6 jobs in America today is
dependent on maintaining a healthy environment off America's coasts.  He has
been a leader in solving the problem of Global warming in a timely fashion with
minimal international economic dislocation; which, is in direct contrast to Bush
Jr. who is not sure it exists and wants to study it AGAIN, before we even start
to do anything;  a policy course that will be more costly in the long run and
could be devastating both environmentally and economically in its impact;
because, it will mean that the problem will grow in the interim making
correcting the situation more difficult, extensive and expensive.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS:
        Bush Jr. -   He is against becoming over extended abroad.  Who isn't?
He is opposed to a thing called nation building.  He also said that Russia's leader Putin should be
called in to lead negotiations with Mislosovic.  If we would have had Bush Jr.
we would still be confronting Milosovic today.  Consider, Putin had provided aid
to Yugoslavia during our war with them, while receiving foreign aid from the
U.S..  Further, Putin called for disregarding the free election in Yugoslavia,
which witnessed Milosovic's defeat and called for another election.  Finally, to not
utilize our allies in NATO in negotiations with Yugoslavia tends to concentrate
all efforts hence expenses on the U.S.; besides, further enhancing our relations
with Western Europe and improving our image internationally.  Bush Jr. showed
the astonishing incompetence that resulted in the Republican created mess in the
Balkans in the first place, when under the Republican's Reagon and Bush
administrations the CIA admitted that"We blew it.".

How can one oppose nation building?  Bush Jr. must not understand that we are
experiencing a trade deficit and any money spent building nations abroad will
mean the development of market for our goods and services and will improve our
trade deficit.  Besides minimizing the amount of money necessary for military spending.

The REPUBLICAN PARTY, with Bush Jr.'s blessing, has consistently underfunded the
U.N. and foreign affairs for the last 8 years.  This has accomplished the
following unfortunate things;
        1)supported illiteracy abroad by not helping to fund education systems in the
third world - this means labor becomes less efficient and so economic
development is retarded; it results in hampering our endeavors to create
stability abroad, impairs our ability to promote our trade programs with Africa, the Caribbean and
China to name only three Democratic accomplishments, which in turn promotes
prosperity for everyone;
        2)supported Aides (a body fluid born virus) and T.B. (an air born virus)
epidemics by not helping to fund health care systems in the third world - this
will result in tremendous cost pressures on America's health sys. when the
epidemics, viruses are no respecters of national boundaries, reach America, as
they most assuredly will; this has the potential to dwarf costs to the health
care industry generated by smoking and will cause tremendous increases in health
care premiums to the public - if it does not bankrupt private health care
systems as we know them today;
        3)abandons ten million African children who have been orphaned by Aides and T.B.
        4)impairs the ability to study phenomenon like global warming, equality for
women, and health care concerns, while defraying the costs of these necessary
and expensive studies;
        5)hampers the U.N. as an invaluable adjunct to U.S. foreign policy, which once
again could be accomplished while sharing the expense among all the countries
that receive benefits form them;

MILITARY
        Bush Jr. - Claims that we are weak militarily, but he wants to give 1.6
trillion in tax cuts.  He neglects to tell U.S. citizens that the United States
spends more money on the military than the next 10 countries combined.  And,
almost all of those countries are our allies.  He doesn't point out that we have
just fought and won a war in the Balkans without experiencing one fatality.
Remember, the Republicans wanted to commit ground forces to that conflict, which
undoubtedly would have resulted in more casualties and many fatalities, too.  If
Bush Jr. is right then, with his excessive tax cut, he couldn't do anything
about it ,unless it were to incur huge amounts of debt like the last time
Cheney, his running mate, was in Washington in an official capacity.  The
Republican Party has also called for a land war in East Asia with North Korea.
A position Bush Jr. never criticized.
        Vice President Gore - Promises to adequately fund the military.  He will
continue to develop new weapons systems, which Bush has stated he will not do.
If we are supposedly militarily weak like Bush Jr. claims wont that put America
at risk?  He will provide a wage increase to make the military competitive with
the private sector and help solve the retention of our soldiers, something Bush
Jr. does nothing about except claim that there is a problem.

ABORTION
        Bush Jr. - He opposes abortion.  He is running on a platform which promises to
make a constitutional amendment to prevent anyone from disagreeing with them on
this issue in the future.
        Vice President Gore - Promises to protect a woman's right to a safe abortion.
NARL where are you?

ENERGY:
        Bush JR. - Promises to copy Democratic programs already in place with some
important exceptions.  He also will drill in the Alaska wilderness for a couple
of months worth of oil utilizing existing technologies.  Bush Jr. neglects to
point out that there have been 3 major ruptures in oil pipe lines this year.
The last one resulted in over 200 dead in Africa.  He has stated his support for
the unprecedented 300% increase in the price of oil.  He has stated his
opposition to using the U.S. oil reserve to try to place pressure on OPEC to
increase production.  The program worked and saw a 15% decrease in the price in
oil and OPEC and non-OPEC producing countries have increased production which is
expected to cause future price decreases.  Bush Jr.'s position has the following
negative effects:
        1)It increases the trade deficit.
        2)It increases inflationary pressure.
        3)It increases interest rates.
        4)It results in poor Senior Citizens not being able to heat their homes this
Winter.  Or, they could choose to heat their homes and not eat.  Or, they could
afford their medicine and not afford to heat their homes (Bush Jr. proposes a
health care program that provides prescriptions at a price 100% more than either
Canada or Mexico).
        5)It creates an economic environment that makes stagflation much more probable.

        Vice President Gore - provides a comprehensive plan that provides immediate
relief in the form of tapping the U.S. oil reserve for home heating oil.  He
also has future benefits like tax incentives and tax credits to encourage
conservation and new technologies.  He plans to develop domestic oil sources.
This is only a partial listing of a comprehensive plan that is available to the
public.

There is so much more that needs to be said; however, I am out of time in order
to get it my issue out today.  So the above is  what the RUMOR MILL contends.
It is hoped that it will help make you an informed voter so you can vote in the
interests of your family, community and country.  No matter what your decision
might be please meet your public responsibility and VOTE. >
 

volume 37