Sarah "spite fence" Palin - not a good neighbor

There is a local urban legend in Philly about the wall surrounding the infamous Girard College founded 1833. The boarding school, grades 1-12, originally for white male orphans has a twenty foot wall around it. The Civil Rights laws over time opened the school to all races and sexes.

If one looks at the wall and somebody says that the wall is twenty  feet high, it is one of those barroom bet things like a phrase in the bible and “Did Delilah cut Samson’s hair”? (She did not by the way. She had someone cut it for her.)

It’s a sucker bet if you take it. While only 10 feet of wall is visible above ground, another 10 feet is built underground. Why? The last will and testament of Stephen Girard, a rich French Pirate, stated that the wall around his orphan asylum was to be 20 feet high.

Architecture and good taste and a little bit of slack from the estate lawyers came up with the final 10 feet above and 10 feet below aesthetic solution.

So Sarah and Todd went mooseshit on Facebook about Joe McGinniss, their new next door neighbor, a famous and successful writer who goes to the heart of political matters as in The Selling of the President 1968, a best seller and now standard political science tome in most college courses to this day.

Apeshit happens. But before good taste or a level sober (do the Palins drink?-a lot?) attitude could set in about a new Neighbor, the Palins go gorrillashit over the situation. The Palins have extended their wooden fence facing the rental property up to 14 feet high.

Not that Joe is the real problem, the Palins were, are bad neighbors with the present owner of the rented house.

Palin's neighbor rented to author for revenge

(Newser) – As the Wasilla world turns: It seems Sarah Palin's next-door neighbor purposely rented her home to author Joe McGinniss because she wanted to exact some revenge. She "was renting her house and sought out the author because the Palins had crossed her (owed her money for renovations she had done at their request and never paid her for)," the author's son explains in an email, which Ben Smith shares on his Politico blog.

The American Poet Laureate Robert Frost said that “good fences make good neighbors”.

Jesus said “love thy neighbor”. Speaking of which Sarah religious affiliation on Wikipedia keeps changing. In 2006 she was Protestant, last year she was Pentecostal, now she is “non-denominational Christian”. Jeez, she is all over the board. In all deference to her, her Wikipedia site seems to be changed every fifteen minutes by herself or her tea bagger friends.

I have to wonder what metaphoric 14 feet of fence lie below ground for America’s favorite dysfunctional family, the Palins of Wasilla, Alaska and possibly representing anger, hate, fascist xenophobia, and dirty family Peyton Place secrets.

I know Joe McGinniss doesn’t need the bread and I doubt, as rumors have it, he went through their garbage looking for a used pamper as a piece of useful DNA evidence.

When the numbers $$$ start coming out about McGinniss’ book, I think the local truth of Trig will finally surface and in traditional hillbilly fashion we will all finally know if his brother is his father and we can finally identify the real birth mom.

In the meanwhile Joe, if anybody from the Palin compound bunker shows up with cookies and lemonade as a peace offering – RUN!

Charter for Compassion - an Interfaith Road?

This past week we observed the fiftieth anniversary of the flight of the Dalai Lama, the head on a Buddhist sect, and his followers out of their native Tibet and into the neighboring country of northern India.

Tibet of course got annexed by China. I will pass on the judgment of the godless giant and talk about interfaith beliefs.

I put a Tibetan chant on above in honor of a faith in exile. I hope that China one day opens its hearts and minds to the Compassion preached by this man.

I believe that there are interfaith approaches which in some ways talk about talking over the back fence like neighbors. I am also reminded of the line from the poetry of Robert Frost, the American poet, about how “good fences make good neighbors”.

In an increasingly religion-less secular world I am listening to this chant, listening to words I do not understand, in Sanskrit, and hoping to gain a little calm in my life to seek the enlightenment spoken so often about in Buddhism. I am not worshipping the Buddha. Few in Buddhism consider their prophet, their main saint, to be a god.

Surfing the tube last night I landed on the PBS show “Bill Moyers Journal” and happened to hear Dr. Karen Armstrong talking about her attempts to form a global “Charter for Compassion” with others who would forge this document that recognizes the “Golden Rule” as the basis of all world religions and put it back into daily use and cognizance globally both in a religious and secular sense.

Armstrong, who taught for a time at London's Leo Baeck rabbinic college, says she has been particularly inspired by the Jewish tradition's emphasis in matters of faith versus practice: "I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It's about what you do. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.” She points out that religious fundamentalism is not just a response to but, paradoxically, a product of contemporary culture. "We need to create a new narrative, get out of the rat-run of hatred, chauvinism and defensiveness; and make the authentic voice of religion a power in the world that is conducive to peace." (Wikipedia)

Perhaps the road to interfaith cooperation and beliefs lay in recognition of common grounds.

Instead of talking over the back fence so to speak, perhaps we should be going into each other’s gardens and seeing and feeling and talking about what the next guy with the other religion or beliefs sees and feels as they share in the same visit.

Her use of the word “Compassion” is what triggered my combining these not so differing points of view (?) of the Dalai Lama and Dr. Armstrong.