tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41205272012-01-28T15:39:26.516-05:00The Thinking Dog's JournalChasing the scent of Love, Truth, Beauty, and Mirth, wherever it may lead.Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.comBlogger361100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-52717351577016887632012-01-28T15:36:00.003-05:002012-01-28T15:39:26.529-05:00Harmonic Convergence, Anyone?Thoughts for a New Paradigm
I’ve taken several on-line political surveys in the past six or eight months which include a question like this: “What do you think is the most important issue we face today?” The issues, of course, are provided by the survey and typically include such topics as the economy, the environment, energy, entitlements, Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-91503298717419651052012-01-20T01:13:00.000-05:002012-01-20T01:13:16.510-05:00The Thinking Dog Has Questions
Speaking from the heart, I am quite concerned about the future of our country being offered by Republicans. It looks to me like a great Repression is in the offing. And if the people are scared enough, they’ll buy it. It’s happened before. Then should I vote for Obama, on the theory that at least he’s a Democrat? But Obama’s record is Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-50007689555837205882011-08-31T23:51:00.001-04:002011-09-01T17:55:34.392-04:00A Special Thinking Dog Perspective
My Struggle To Escape the Bondage of Health Care
1. Health Care Corners Me
Those who know me well, or who have read my essay, “Always Safe, Always at Home,” are aware of my shameless boast that, sick or well, I never employed a medical doctor between 1974 and 2008.
But, as I describe in that essay (published as a pamphlet in 2009), one afternoon in early MayDelaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-82381869435088079082011-05-21T10:42:00.000-04:002011-05-21T10:42:09.185-04:00The Economics of Happiness(Is There Such a Thing?)
What kind of economic system will create the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people and species?
That question was posed in Norfolk at the Naro Cinema’s Wednesday documentary series on May 18, where the film “The Economics of Happiness” was seen by an audience of perhaps a hundred.
The film, produced by the International Society Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-16980885199745337142011-05-05T21:01:00.000-04:002011-05-05T21:01:26.475-04:00May Day, 2011
This poem expresses my reaction to the assassination of Osama bin Laden by American military forces on May 1, 2011. I thank my friend Tom Ellis for poking me to post it after I read his blog on the subject at http://dharmagaia.blogspot.com/.
It was like a block-buster action thriller!
Does life imitate art or what?
The superbly trained Navy Seals,
faceless warrior-assassins
Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-53808566513160053172011-03-27T16:39:00.008-04:002011-03-27T22:49:59.429-04:00From the Heart of the WorldA Must-See Film for the Restless
What would happen to you if all our technological support systems failed and you had to make a quick transition to an indigenous lifestyle?
I’ve often pondered this probability, though I’ve done little to prepare for it. For one thing, what would an indigenous lifestyle really be like?
An answer to that question appears in a propheticDelaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-85733406453722201202011-02-12T11:36:00.001-05:002011-02-12T11:37:21.298-05:00This Week in BriefA Reflection
The big news in the world this week is the revolution in Egypt. That has to be noted, it strikes me as a huge deal. Mubarak held out for almost three weeks, until finally the military told him it was over, and he resigned. Now the army is in charge of the country, but it’s not billed as a military takeover but an interim care-taker sort of arrangement until the Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-20803327127357214212010-06-27T16:49:00.001-04:002010-06-27T16:50:10.998-04:00In Ocean View...
Hands Across the SandA Thinking Dog’s Journal Report
An impressive line of 125 people joined hands across Norfolk’s Community Beach on the Chesapeake Bay in Ocean View on Saturday, June 26, to demonstrate to politicians and corporate “persons” their opposition to drilling for oil and gas in the waters off Virginia’s coasts.
Similar demonstrations were held throughout Hampton Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-15386103631344892982010-06-25T11:29:00.001-04:002010-06-25T15:11:50.439-04:00Return to Mother EarthA Midsummer’s Day Dream
On this Midsummer’s Day (June 24, 2010), one of the great celebratory holidays in Earth’s cyclical, life-sustaining relationship with the Sun, I feel the absolute need to set priorities in my own mind, leaving behind all lesser attachment to my opinions in favor of one overriding conviction of necessity.
Somehow, some way, I’ve come to Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-51294344793164758952010-06-16T12:35:00.000-04:002010-06-16T12:35:17.843-04:00Obama from the Oval OfficeNo Direction Home
Obama came on TV last night—his first speech to the American people from the Oval Office, we were told, as if that made it special—to talk to us about the Gulf oil catastrophe. It was almost total bullshit.
First, he tried to convince us he’d jumped right on the crisis, not delayed the federal response as so many say. Excuses, excuses! Nothing but PR.Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-39293258471509475592010-06-10T00:06:00.006-04:002010-06-10T14:38:45.877-04:00From an Actor’s Notebook....
Possessed!Being Morrie Schwartz
In my thirty-one years in theater, much of it as an actor in many diverse roles, I’ve only been “possessed” by a character twice.
The first possession was by a character who deserves a full essay of his own—Strider the Horse, central figure in a musical play adapted from a Tolstoy tale. It was a unique experience. On the first day of Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-14298447740957706272010-05-10T12:05:00.000-04:002010-05-10T12:05:59.449-04:00Journal Entry
May 10, 2010
We had a pleasant Mothers’ Day, without duty or guilt, since both our mothers are no longer physical. The weather, brilliantly sunny, was also cool and windy—definitely not inviting me to the beach—so I stayed out front of the house to go over my lines thoroughly, then around 2:30 we went to the spa where I finally got back to a mile-long swim. I hadn’t done one of Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-73003735319367853292010-05-05T11:56:00.000-04:002010-05-05T11:56:08.281-04:00Journal Entry
May 5, 2010
Two things dominate my thoughts these days: Tuesdays with Morrie and Ammon Hennacy’s Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.
The first is seeming more and more to me like channeling. When we start rehearsing I find myself stumbling all over the place with lines until I get oriented in Morrie’s character. Then it all goes pretty well, yet at the same time I find myself Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-75596434257045188072010-03-18T14:19:00.004-04:002010-03-18T14:48:45.979-04:00Why the CIA Killed JFKA Book Report
“I shouted out, ‘Who killed the Kennedys?’when after all it was you and me.” —The Rolling Stones
I’ve occasionally reflected on what it means that I was born in 1940—the cusp of the great darkness of World War II—to a mother of heretical views in an Anabaptist agricultural community just above the Mason-Dixon line in the Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-34786657360925465752009-12-15T23:26:00.006-05:002009-12-15T23:42:45.987-05:00On Blog Talk Radio:
"The Concise Dickens Christmas Carol"
Tonight I tried something new for me. My sister, Kate Loving Shenk, and her friend, Joan Adams, host a weekly internet radio show, Moo, Moon & You: The Collective Wisdom, on blogtalkradio. Last month I proposed to Kate that I come on the show sometime during the Christmas season and perform my one-man, one-hour "Concise Dickens' ChristmasDelaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-48440646812605912592009-11-17T23:20:00.004-05:002009-11-18T21:06:06.831-05:00“The Concise Dickens’ Christmas Carol”—Season Four
(This is the press release I prepared for my upcoming Christmas show.)
“The Concise Dickens’ Christmas Carol,” a one-act, one-person dramatization of the Charles Dickens’ seasonal classic, has been cut loose from its natal home.
After three years of holiday residence at Norfolk’s 40th Street Stage, where it was first performed in 2006, theDelaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-60403248994241133412009-10-10T02:38:00.006-04:002009-10-12T15:32:15.573-04:00The Struggle for Health Care
Revolution in the Streets?
Or Revolution in the Mind?
Unless ordinary American working people—blue-collar, white, or green—demand adequate, accessible, and affordable health care—shouting out much more vigorously than they have so far—their views will have no impact on Congress.
That was the most distinct message delivered at the public Health Care Reform Forum atDelaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-79658732917361421782009-10-07T00:07:00.002-04:002009-10-07T00:12:59.266-04:00Not All Martyrs Are Human
Reflections on Nature’s Saints
Is the martyr’s sacrifice an instinct of Nature? Is an individual’s choice to risk and often meet death in order to benefit the larger social group not only allowed for but, at certain points in the flux of time and circumstance, required behavior for the survival of a species?
On Sunday, Oct. 4, something I saw in a segment of 60 Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-59584962753228014262009-09-03T10:21:00.019-04:002009-09-03T13:12:35.511-04:00Is Health Care a Civil Right?A Community ConversationPart 1Just the FactsA series of town-hall meetings on health care reform convened in Hampton Roads, VA, this week, with 600 constituents estimated to have attended U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman’s Congressional District-1 event in Newport News on Aug. 31 and another 350 reported at Rep. Bobby Scott’s District-3 town hall, also in Newport News, on Sept. Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-14702649615360250142009-07-18T12:43:00.006-04:002009-07-18T18:17:05.285-04:00From Here to China and BackConnecting a Few Dots“Hey, you White House—ha-ha! Charade you are!”(Pink Floyd)Cindy Sheehan was in Norfolk July 14 and 15 as part of her Myth America Tour promoting her new e-book, Ten Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution.Her message, in a sentence, is that America is not and never was the exceptional City on the Hill, with all the grand Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-45078728279195678402009-07-02T16:13:00.011-04:002009-07-02T17:18:32.957-04:00 On the Walk To No WarA Thinking Dog’s Ramble1. A Personal DilemmaIt was the week of the high summer solstice, and, facing the enormity of war in this world, a small group of my friends marched to call for an end to it. They marched the whole work week, Monday through Friday, June 22-26, from one military installation to another here in Hampton Roads, VA, stopping at thirteen of them in all, to Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-86515979345187960132009-06-18T00:46:00.001-04:002009-06-18T00:50:44.429-04:00Health Care: The Tipping PointUntil I was old enough to qualify for Medicare, I couldn’t afford to get sick. And I was lucky. I stayed well enough to avoid doctors and hospitals for nearly 35 years.But in early May, 2008, my luck ran out. I began to experience chest pains that didn’t ease up or go away.I reported to the nearest hospital emergency room with my Medicare card in hand, and, after Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-36362844981913738002009-06-13T12:50:00.003-04:002009-06-13T13:04:19.257-04:00SystemsThere’s a lot of talk these days about reforming our systems. It seems there’s hardly a system we have that doesn’t need major repair—our financial system, our health care system, our educational system, our prison system, our energy system, our very free-market capitalist system itself. Not to mention our eco-system!All have suffered blowback from various forms of gross dishonesty and Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-17714925882000320342009-06-02T22:32:00.005-04:002009-06-03T00:26:01.517-04:00In the Shadow of Military Might,A 50-Mile Walk for PeaceA core group of local peace activists is planning a likely Hampton Roads “first” at this year’s Summer Solstice.The Norfolk Catholic Worker, in collaboration with the Off-Base Coffee House, is organizing a 50-mile “On the Road to No War” walk for disarmament June 22-26, with plans to stop for demonstrations and vigils at each of thirteen of Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-8401157986890633472009-03-13T23:32:00.001-04:002009-03-13T23:40:46.136-04:00Economics 101When I was a first-semester junior in college, way back in 1960, I enrolled in a course in basic economics.A couple of weeks into the semester my professor made what was to me at the time an astonishing statement.“Economics,” he said, “is not about right or wrong. Economics is about how to make a country rich.”I’ve forgotten what prompted him to make this statement. But it made a Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-51182743530039930252009-01-30T01:06:00.002-05:002009-01-30T01:10:47.519-05:00Buy No MoreReports keep surfacing about the increasing numbers of military personnel who commit suicide.Just last evening there was a segment on Jim Lehrer’s PBS NewsHour focused on the single case of a U.S. Army Reservist who, after a year in Iraq followed by orders that his unit would be called up again, shot himself dead in his home, where he lived with his wife and two small daughters.You donDelaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-84613940413153256612009-01-29T11:08:00.001-05:002009-01-29T11:13:18.573-05:00What’s the Damn Hurry?As I listen to the brisk, sometimes heated economic discussions underway in our national forums these days, I wonder if there are any right—by which I mean “correct”—answers.One thing seems plain—if it’s coming from self-described conservatives it’s probably discredited by its own history. Clearly it doesn’t work to put unfettered business in charge of the common good. We Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-74313651581476325582008-08-28T16:19:00.003-04:002008-09-01T16:00:07.104-04:00It's been awhile since my last post. In the interim, on May 4, I developed heart problems which, after several readmissions to the hospital, culminated in surgery on July 23 to replace a damanged mitral valve. After a week of feeling fairly miserable and a couple more of moving mighty slow around my house and neighborhood here in Norfolk, VA, I've begun to feel more and more like a real human Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-58746642515685777902008-02-29T15:32:00.008-05:002008-03-04T16:49:24.877-05:00Two New PoemsHere are a couple of my recent poems I've been practicing for my "poetry act."Cotton CandyI was just a little boyof three or four years oldthat summer at the circus groundswhen I saw people walking roundwith stems of pink, voluptuous foodlike giant, puffy lollipopsthey bit into and chewed.My relatives had brought me there,my mother, aunt, and cousins,and based on my persistent Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-40621074918077825542007-11-10T12:19:00.000-05:002007-11-10T12:29:05.429-05:00A Talk by Kevin Ryerson—First ImpressionsQuite a heady evening yesterday at the Association for Research and Enlightenment, the Edgar Cayce center in Virginia Beach, where we went to hear, with the purpose of covering (for Port Folio Weekly), a talk by Kevin Ryerson, celebrated psychic channel. I was welcomed quite enthusiastically with press passes for Jala (photographer) and myself and took Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-10201454666302785892007-10-21T23:33:00.000-04:002007-10-22T00:25:09.318-04:00The Final Taxi(Around 2:10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 20, my wife Jala and I experienced a death in our family. This is an account of that experience from my personal journal in an entry written Sunday morning, Oct. 21, 2007. Except for some editing for clarity, the entry is reproduced here verbatim.)Myrrha in her chair, Christmas, 2006One day after, the grief is subsiding, even if the hole left in Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-70597161394952295462007-10-14T13:35:00.000-04:002007-10-14T13:52:52.035-04:00Claim Your Consciousness--Clear Your Karmaby D.D. Delaney(The following article was scheduled to appear in the Oct. 2, 2007, issue of Port Folio Weekly, the Hampton Roads, VA, newspaper of culture and opinion. But because of communication glitches beyond anyone's control it was never published. For this and other reasons, Mark Krueger, subject of the article, cancelled his Oct. 6 workshop at the Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-91276102183485172362007-03-10T13:28:00.000-05:002007-03-10T13:33:06.034-05:00Wartime Reflections—and a PoemFrom the very beginning, in the latter days of 2002, there were influential voices warning that a war in Iraq was neither justified nor smart. There were doubts about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and repudiations of the Saddam-al Qaeda connection. Progressives and some Democrats consistently said it was the wrong war at the wrong time. A majority who spoke outDelaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-78648660942684647602007-03-01T22:25:00.000-05:002007-03-01T22:34:15.119-05:001968I had a meeting recently with the editor-in-chief at Port Folio Weekly, the Norfolk newspaper where I’ve free-lanced over the past eight years. He called me in to brain storm on stories for me to work on in the weeks ahead, but as things turned out we didn’t talk so much about that but instead rambled along in a wide-ranging two-hour rap about politics, culture, religion, art, and the Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-20815027116881560222007-02-11T13:05:00.000-05:002007-02-11T13:59:50.986-05:00Balancing Act in the Global BazaarJala, my partner of 43 years, was speechless when I rolled up to our Chesapeake Bay beach cottage in Norfolk, VA, in a Home Depot rental truck with a six-foot-tall cardboard carton strapped in the bed behind the cab.It was Oct. 9, the eve of her 66th birthday, and I’d brought home the first refrigerator I’d ever bought—a ten-cubic-foot, frost-free Magic Chef.It Delaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4120527.post-69913208344420491582007-02-10T01:05:00.000-05:002007-02-10T14:23:56.058-05:00 Here I am, playing my harp at a Spoken Word performance at the 40th Street Stage, Norfolk, VA, on Aug. 6, 2006. It was my first appearance with the City Arts Poets. The first poem I performed that night, as a way of introducing myself to the world of performance poetry, appears below, serving as well to introduce myself to you, the readers of my blog. TodayTodayI will startto unpackmy sackof allDelaneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02538442464106472741noreply@blogger.com2