Campaign has forced Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin into special recall election with one million Wisconsin citizen's signatures.

A campaign to force Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker into a special election has gathered an estimated one million signatures, nearly one quarter of the state's electorate, in 60 days. Of course Mr. Walker was not in town to see the many, many boxes of signed petitions arrive by truckload, 3000 lbs. of signed petitions!  He had fled the state capitol and was in New York City for another fund raiser with his big money Republican donors for his special election. It was just one year and one week ago that  Walker came into office and it was only a few weeks later, in the deepfreeze of Winter, that Wisconsinites started protesting his actions around the capitol building keeping it up by the tens of thousands throughout the Winter and Spring. It was exhilarating, empowering,  and grass-roots.  When we chanted, "This is what democracy looks like!", we knew we were right.  Walker will be only the third State Governor to be recalled in United States history. Along with the Governor, there is also a recall against his Lieutenant Governor and 4 Republican state senators, including the Senate Majority Leader. 
 It has been a long, highly emotional battle and we have a ways to go still. But if Wisconsin is successful in the recalls, the tide will turn building up to the November, 2012 Presidential election. Wisconsin is a leader in this people's revolution, and the birth place of collective bargaining which is a right the Republicans want to take away.  A lot is riding on this. It's about who we want to be. What we want our state and country to be. What we want to leave to our children. There is no turning back. We will not give up. The sleeping giant has been awakened for a while now, there are no plans to hibernate again. Along with Wisconsinites, other impassioned, patriotic citizens in the states of Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Tennessee, Indiana, Nevada, New Jersey, Maine, and others, along with the phenomenal Occupy Movement nationally together make up the front lines - there are many more recruits and volunteers coming along everyday. This has been a heartbreaking, aggravating, painful decade. We may have not even hit bottom yet. In spite of everything, this is still an exciting time to be alive. Change is definitely underway. Just as nothing else has been predictable since 2007- 2008 when the nation was left in ruins by the Bush administration and Wall St. bankers, this country's future is perilously up in the air. The only way forward is for us to take our Democracy back. That has started here in Wisconsin.

An Old Man's Winter Night by Robert Frost

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

It's thus he does it of a winter night.  

Year's End by Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year,   

And night is all a settlement of snow;

From the soft street the rooms of houses show   

A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,   

Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin   

And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake

The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell   

And held in ice as dancers in a spell   

Fluttered all winter long into a lake;   

Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,   

They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns   

Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone   

A million years. Great mammoths overthrown   

Composedly have made their long sojourns,   

Like palaces of patience, in the gray

And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise   

But slept the deeper as the ashes rose

And found the people incomplete, and froze   

The random hands, the loose unready eyes   

Of men expecting yet another sun

To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.   

We fray into the future, rarely wrought

Save in the tapestries of afterthought.

More time, more time. Barrages of applause   

Come muffled from a buried radio.

The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Presenting Digital Whispers at Creative Souls New Calendar!

Some of the artists of Digital Whispers / Creative Souls ( including me) have created an absolutely gorgeous calendar in book form - not a wall type. Each artist had 4 pages to create including the calendar pages, a notes page and an artwork page - all pages are beautifully decorated. This is a real treat to the eyes! Please check out the entire calendar at the URL below, just click on it! Enjoy!

DigitalWhispersCalendar

Occupying History!

We are all seeing history being made before our eyes in the "Occupy Movement". I find the whole thing thrilling to watch the movement grow and change almost organically. This is the moment! There's no going back!

Above is a recent photo of Occupy Washington DC, just one of many cities having been "occupied" this year. The movement is expanding into many different places - from Congressmen's offices to foreclosed homes. It is exciting to see where it goes next. This makes me proud to be an American! It is thrilling to see my fellow citizens stepping up. That's what "we the people" is all about.

But this isn't the first big occupying movement in our history. The nation's Great Depression in the 1930s had it's own mass movement that spread into many large cities. They were called "Hoovervilles" after President Herbert Hoover who was president at the start of the Depression. These shanty and tent communities were made up of many of the country's countless homeless people who had nowhere else to go. The citizens needed to be near the soup kitchens and other charity sites so that is one reason why so many were drawn to the large cities. 

                                 "Hooverville" Washington DC 1930s

                      Other "Hoovervilles" around the United States

As I said in an earlier post, we've been here before. We can do it again. Thanks for stepping up America!

Christmas dinner in midst of the Depression

We have been through bleak times before in our history. We will get through this misery too and take inspiration from those who came before us and weathered the Great Depression.