Peter

Truly an excellent show. Overall I'd say your style and content are excellent and progressive. In fact, I think my two favorite episodes of the Thom Hartmann Show this years may be the two you guest hosted.

On the other hand, I'm not as impressed with folks like David Ray Griffin as you are. Anyone who devoted his professional years in a making excuses for an imaginary god isn't someone I'm going to unravel the questions about what happend leading up to and on 9/11. Still, the arguments have to be evaluated on their own.

Thanks for another great show.

the problems of the world are all related to the greed anger and folly of corporations

DDay

I'm no copyright attorney, but I think your contribution falls under the concept of "fair use", and both your account of your experiences with Martine and Lucien and your excerpt from "The Little Prince" were more than worth the read.

I've had little contact with French people, but I did rent a guest house from a French family here in the USA. One thing that struck me was that they were at least 125% French. While they spoke their beautifully accented English, their expressions were pure French. At times it was like Marcel Marceau had taken over their faces.

By the way, are you the DDay that spoke with Brad Friedman on the Mike Malloy show a few weeks ago?

When I was 17 years old and very full of myself and rebellious, I went off to live with a French family with whom I had been matched. I had studied two years of German, put in to go to Japan, and had been offered a home in Lyon, France. My family consisted of a 29 year old professor of nuclear medicine at the University of Claude Bernard. Lucien was very quiet and stern at first. My French mother, Martine, was slender, athletic, and full of joie de vivre. She was a kinetitherapist, (a physical therapist), at a large heart hospital. There were three little children, Jean Pascal, the boy, was 5, Catherine and Christine were 3 and 2 respectively. They spent most of their time with the Grandparents in the country home about 45 minutes away. We spent most weekends with them in the country. During the week I had Lucien & Martine to myself. They were more like a big brother and sister than parents. I alternated going to work with them as I was very interested in medicine. It was the best time in my life. Being a foreign exchange student those 5 months changed my life more profoundly than any other event in my life. Being thrown into a new world without being able to speak the language taught me new ways to listen and communicate. Slowly I picked up some French too.

Martine, being a supremely confident, politically left-wing, extrovert was in my face all the time. Lucien was always sitting nearby with piles of medical texts and a smoldering pipe. He said very little, at first. Over time with many shared experiences on weekend adventures, we grew closer. I began to understand his dry sense of humor. One day not long before I was to return back to the states, Lucien gave me a children's book. He told me that it meant a lot to him. He explained that he and Martine had wanted an exchange student in order to brush up on their English because they would be moving to Berkley, Ca. in a few months. He said they hadn't planned on getting too close to me. He then handed me Antoine de Saint Exupery's "The Little Prince". He told me that his favorite part dealt with the fox and being tamed.

"My life is very monotonous," he said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am bored. but if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. the wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
"Please tame me!" he said.
"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."
"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends anymore. If you want a friend, tame me..."
"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.
"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that--in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me every day..."
The next day the little prince came back.
"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you...One must observe the proper rites..."

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near-
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields."
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

And he went back to meet the fox. "Goodbye," he said. "Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."

Thirty seven years have passed since then. Lucien and Martine retired a few years back. Lucien opened up one of the first private medical clinics ever allowed in France. Martine ran it. It was so fabulously successful that they were able to buy a small vineyard with a large Chateau in the middle of their beloved Beaujolais region. Lucien bought an entire medieval village some years back. He paid to have it restored completely and then turned it over to the State so it could become a national park. If you saw the most recent movie about Joan of Arc, the village was the backdrop. The children who live near Lucien all call him PaPa LuLu. I visit him as often as I can. After all, I am responsible, forever.

Dear Thom - It is hard when a mentor goes, even when they have had very long lives'

I cared for both my Voice teachers of 30 years throughout their old age. I was the only one there and had to terminate life support for Mrs. Dane who died last.

She said one day, "You're going to miss me when I'm gone."

They were the most wonderful couple in the world and taught and helped thousands of singers in their careers spanning 1905-2002, some quite famous.

I did not sing for 7 years after.

It's easy to call for more surges when her fanny is not on the line of fire. Two Nazis make a formidable team.

http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2009/09/28/two-faces-of-kimberly-kagan/

Ok, so I suggested on yesterday's blog that we make some uplifting posts in honor of Thom and his friend and mentor Gottfried Mueller. The response was... well there was no response. But putting my links where my mouth is, I'm posting the URL to a songs by an organization called Playing for Change.

I heard about these people through GRIT TV. My limited understanding is that they select songs and then record artists from around the world performing them. Then they edit the various versions together, creating a unique blend of voices and instrumentation. Let music bring us together.

I think this is in harmony with the goals of Gottfried Mueller. I hope you all take the time to listen and I dare u to sit still.

This is the first song I ever heard from Playing for Change. They have other excellent songs as well.

Chanda Mama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I23Bkk92124

In the 70s, there was some talk of cooling, and one of the sources was a paper by Stephen Schneider of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. His premise was that pollutants in the atmosphere would block more solar energy with a greater cooling effect than the warming effect of CO2 leading to an ice age if aerosol pollution quadrupled.

But then he realized that he overestimated the cooling effect of the aerosol pollutants and underestimated the warming effects of CO2.

DDay,

Yes, that was a great line...I always think of the scene in "The Princess Bride" with Billy Crystal as Miracle Max and Carole Kane as Valerie. That was such a great bit, talking about "true love."

http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Miracle-Max-and-His-Wife-t...

Actually, I really enjoy hearing Thom do "modelling" talking to right-wingers who call in. He usually refutes them in a cheerful way. I really admire that.

cx: Willhelm Von Kristol .....Ja

Re: "B Roll,

BTW, I wouldn’t mind a general consulting “with Bill Crystal.” At least it would show he had a sense of humor! LOL"

Please forgive me. I read too quickly. This comment should have been directed to DDay. Please forgive me.