Did you friend Jerry come through his surgery ok? I sent him a card today and hope he is recovering well. Tell him to drink his tea.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,

as if it is the axis

on which the world earth revolves

- slowly, evenly, without

rushing toward the future;

Live the actual moment.

Only this moment is life.

--Thich Nhat Hanh

When the prisoners in the cave Plato speaks of were initially set free and helped to turn around from the shadows and see the fire and the puppets and the puppet masters, the light would hurt their eyes and they would blink and turn away; but then helping hands would spin them around again to face the light until their eyes become adjusted to it. Reading your column is like being forced to turn around again and face the situation: to see the puppets and the puppet masters that cast the shadows. But it hurts! Education into reality is such a painful business-- but you have to thank those that help you see the painful realities more clearly. Thanks, Glenn.

Thanks for the Rick Steves link on his visit to Iran. It was fascinating.

that Glenn in that interview had on his fuscus-kicking boots.

Thanks for the itunes link. I signed up for Glenn's stuff--wasn't aware of that function on itunes.

Glenn, you are helping to bear witness to the truth: helping us to speak out and avoid indifference to these things. It is essential to our humanity that we stand up to these things and speak out. Elie Wiesel once said:

Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction . . .

Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

Reading your columns helps me to avoid indifference. It reminds me to speak out. Thank you.

to your post was a surreal experience. The most frightening thought I had was that some of them might really believe what they were saying, and were not just some sort of agent provocateurs. You run into them again and again, the ones who do not know what the words they are saying mean; and though you have encountered them a thousand times it is still a shock. Every semester when I begin a logic class I ask the students to consider that they might not know what they are saying when they toss all the words around so casually, all those words they are so sure of when they answer my questions--that the words they use might just be using them.

I invite you to read through all the responses to Glenn's post from yesterday on kicking out the Bluedogs, then to read my comments again. That is the context of my statements. In those comments many people used words like "stalinist" "purge" "undemocratic" and so forth in ways that showed they had no real idea what those words meant. I was responding to that. Thank you for your reminder to always be more explicit and to avoid the enthymemic.

for your work on this. When I think of good journalism and reporting now, I think of you.

about five minutes for each act blue page to load at each stage of the donation process. Next time I will mail it! But I waited it out and the donation is made.

Thanks again Glenn.

for your report on Palden-la, as we learned to call him when he stayed with us to give a talk at the local college about his experiences. He was one of the most profound human beings I have ever met. His pity for the Chinese and how they had harmed themselves in harming him still stands as an example of true wisdom. I recommend his autobiography to anyone interested in these things.

Well said. Is that not Costas in a nutshell? If all those commentators would just shut up and let us watch and listen to the athletes and the crowds we would all be happier.

I wondered why Griff seemed so familiar. He is Moranis in Ghostbusters to a T. Hahahaha. Thank you for a good laugh.