Micheal Moore on Capitalism: A Love Story

On Fora TV Micheal Moore talks about his newest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. You can watch the interview here.

Of his movie, Moore writes on his website,

"...I'm gonna show you the stuff the nightly news will rarely show you. Ever meet a pilot for American Airlines on food stamps because his pay's been cut so low? Ever meet a judge who gets kickbacks for sending innocent kids to a private prison? Ever meet someone from the Wall Street Journal who bluntly states on camera that he doesn't much care for democracy and that capitalism should be our only ruling concern?

You'll meet all these guys in "Capitalism." You'll also meet a whistleblower who, with documents in hand, tells us about the million-dollar-plus sweetheart loans he approved for the head of Senate Banking Committee -- the very committee that was supposed to be regulating his lending institution! You'll hear from a bank regulator why Timothy Geithner has no business being our Treasury Secretary. And you'll learn, from the woman who heads up the congressional commission charged with keeping an eye on the bailout money, how Alan Greenspan & Co. schemed and connived the public into putting up their inflated valued homes as collateral -- thus causing the biggest foreclosure epidemic in our history.

There is now a foreclosure filed in the U.S. once every seven-and-half SECONDS.

None of this is an accident, and I name the names others seem to be afraid to name, the men who have ransacked the pensions of working people and plundered the future of our kids and grandkids. Somehow they thought they were going to get away with this, that we'd believe their Big Lie that this crash was caused by a bunch of low-income people who took out loans they couldn't afford. Much of the mainstream media bought this storyline. No wonder Wall Street thought they could pull this off..." Read the rest here

A Wonderful New Online Tool for Job Seekers in Lewiston/Auburn

The Lewiston and Auburn Public libraries have joined together to offer their patrons a wonderful new tool. Career Transitions, a "clear, easy-to-use, self-paced online resource that walks job-seekers through the entire process: from assessing strengths and interests, to exploring new opportunities, to improving their chances of getting a job, to finding and applying for jobs. With Career Transitions LPL and APL cardholders can:

Prepare - build, save, retrieve and update personal career information with a career toolkit

Assess - explore current skills, occupational knowledge and interests and match them with fulfilling career paths

Explore - investigate thousands of career paths, industries, locations and companies

Improve - find educational opportunities and take classes to increase hiring chances

Apply - search job listings from around the country that meet user criteria"

   The following is a poem by artist and social activist, Rashani
that I find to be both beautiful and powerful entitled, There is a Brokenness.

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.

-Rashani,1991
You can visit her website at http://rashani.com/

Life as Art

We're born to create, each and every one of us. I’m not necessarily talking about painting, or poems or novels, although I am talking about works of art. Each of us makes the painful and profound journey down our mother’s dark birth canal and onto a waiting canvas. That canvas is our lives.

We’re not presented at birth with our fair share of resources, nurturing, or opportunities upon our arrival, but we do each receive all that we require in the way of teachers. These teachers school our souls even while at the same time they may break our hearts.

Frederick Buechner in, Our Fiction or our Faith wrote, “There is something deep within us, in everybody, that gets buried and distorted and confused and corrupted by what happens to us. But it is there as a source of insight and healing and strength. I think that is where art comes from.”

Our once empty canvas doesn’t promise beauty or wisdom or meaning. An empty canvas doesn’t promise much. But the world that holds it is overflowing with possibility, more than enough for us to create meaning, and beauty, and wisdom.

It’s entirely up to us.

New Online Support Group for PTSD

There is a new online support group for those who suffer from PTSD. You can find it here. You do need to register in order to participate however registration is free.