This post is from the JMBzine Blog Vault, which means it is a very old blog post that I wrote at a very different time of my life. My views on religion (I’m now a Humanistic Jew), politics (today I’m a democratic socialist), and many other subjects (LGBTQ+ inclusion, abortion rights, etc.) have drastically changed over the years, so please bear this in mind when reading this post.
Tuesday, August 14, 2001
11:52 pm
Susanna Thomas, Quaker Activist – Good news!!! She is now free from imprisonment in Genoa and will be returning home soon.
11:36 pm
AP story that tells of the global effects of light pollution
This story seems incredibly sad to me. So often, I’ve experienced the purest of epiphanies when staring at a star-scattered sky. Right now, my mind goes back to a late night of driving west on I-40 in New Mexico. I was between the Texas State line and Tucumcari and really needed to take a leak.
Finally I gave up in looking for a convenience store on the lonely highway and pulled off the side of the road. After taking care of business, I looked up at the sky and I was blown away. In this most mundane and even human of moments, God met me. The sky was so beautiful and it seemed as the stars were beyond numbering.
I ended up sitting on the hood of my old car quite awhile, staring into the cosmos. As I was mesmorized by the sky, my eyes woke up and I began to see even more and more stars. It was as if there layers and layers of stars that were coming out of hiding.
Never in my life have I experienced anything like that night.
10:52 pm
Scheduled to be killed by the racist Texas criminal justice tomorrow. It looks like a state-sanctioned lynching to me.
Editorial note (2022): Napolean Beazley would end up being killed by the state of Texas on May 28, 2002 as one of the last people to be executed in the USA for a crime committed while under age 18 (a practice that would be barred by SCOTUS in 2005).
10:42 pm
Here’s another action alert from the ACLU on the death penalty
10:27 pm
AJY.net Blog – Here’s a blog made by an old friend. He just started it back up, but I have high hopes for it as he is always sending me lots of interesting political and news links via ICQ.
He is probably a good bit more conservative than me in politics but his views are normally very well thought out. (I would probably classify him as a Centrist.)
6:19 pm
Here’s the lastest on the Beazley execution from the NY Times It looks like the Supreme Court is going to allow another racist execution of juvenile. May God have mercy on us as a society as we continue to all be accomplices to state-sponsored killing.
12:02 pm
I’ll write more about the SOA 26 later, but I wanted to go ahead and post this link that has info on how you can write these brave prisoners of conscience while they are in Federal prison.
Also, here are two more critical links:
ACLU action bulletin on Beazley execution – Urgent! Execution will take place tomorrow!!! Email Texas Governor Rick Perry before it’s too late!!!