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Make it a great day

10/24/2013

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You will never understand
how it feels to live your life
with no meaning or control,
and with no place left to go...
"Common Peolple," by Pulp
...and if you do, you're one of us.

The thing about control is, you take it.

The thing about meaning is, you make it.

One Toronto punk band of the early 1980's sang,
live your life or have it lived for you;
live your life or have nothing to look forward to
Wish I could remember whether this was Youth, Youth, Youth, or Zeroption,
or Chronic Submission, or Young Lions.... nope, can't recall
Strummerfest believes in the empowerment of every individual to make his or her life meaningful.  We believe that everyone should be encouraged to cast aside controls that harden them into fixed limitations on their creativity and personal control. 

Of course, that doesn't mean, "no rules".  The slogan, "no rules," is, as a friend of ours would say, "for the weak."  Or, as John Wayne once said,
a man's got to have a code, a creed to live by...
Having a code, a creed, rules -- a set of standard things you know (or believe, or hope) to be right and true, and then live by -- that is one of the keys to controlling your life and living it meaningfully.  If we are ever to contribute to life, we have to draw lines, we have to dismiss what's harmful, unwholesome, unethical, and embrace what we know or believe to be good, stand by it like the most loyal of friends, speak it in public, and live it at all times.

Another friend of ours, now long passed on, used to always say, "Make it a great day."  That -- what we've just said -- is a significant part of how that is done.  We can't make anything great -- not even a single day -- till we make decisions that are fundamental. about who we're going to be in the world.

So Strummerfest invites everyone to take that bull by the horns, to embrace your life's meaning by making it, to experience your control by taking it, and to contribute every bit of good you can to the world that surrounds you.  We like to think that's sort of what Strummer meant (in part, at least) when he defined punk this way:
I go straight in, see what's wrong and I fix it.  ...That is a punk attitude

...My motto is  'never take your eye off the ball,' ...I like to be completely aware of what's going on at all times...  There's no long wait 'cause  I've already clocked it while everyone's going (jabbering) meh-meh-meh.  I'm going meh-meh-meh too but I know what's going on around me.  This is punk rock.

In fact, punk rock means EXEMPLARY MANNERS TO YOUR FELLOW HUMAN BEING... [not what people] thought it was twenty years ago.  
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The Bullying Connection

10/16/2013

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Today deserves one additional post.  This one was first posted in Strummerfest Philosophy.


Here's an example of how complex the issue of suicide is. Sometimes the objective of giving hope to the victims is not enough. They need protection as well from those who callously steal their hope. There is no time or place when bullying is acceptable. There is no circumstance in which parents, teachers and other caring adults should not intervene..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2460996/Rebecca-Ann-Sedwick-suicide-2-girls-aged-12-14-arrested-stalking.html#ixzz2hwHtoUxB

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Today is "Blog Action Day"

10/16/2013

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Courtesy of: http://www.blogactionday.org
Today is Blgg Action Day.  Considering this blog only started up yesterday, this was news hereabouts, but here we are.  Today's topic?  Human Rights.  In particular, the Blog Action website points us toward the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Read it here.  So, Strummerfest fans, what would you say is the state of human rights today?  

For our part, let's keep it simple.  Strummer summed up the situation pretty well in this famous statement:
  
I'd like to say people can change anything they want to; and that means  everything in the world. People are running about following their little tracks.  I am one of them. But we've all gotta stop... just stop following our own little  mouse trail. People can do anything; this is something that I'm beginning to learn. People are out there doing bad things to each other; it's because they've been dehumanized. It's time to take that humanity back into the centre of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed... it ain't going anywhere! They should have that on a big billboard across Times Square. Think on that. Without people you're nothing.
There are several things to say about that, but let's just point out two:  (1) It's pretty simple, isn't it?  Stop being greedy; stop being selfish; and things will get better.  In this blogger's other life, he teaches a fair bit about law to community associations.  Inevitably every lecture comes down to this:  if you treat other people the way you'd like to be treated, and if you don't allow yourself to lose sight of their humanity, it is almost impossible to break the law, and your community will, on the whole, be a happier, healthier, better place to live.  There's really not much more to it than that.  And then there's point (2):  it starts with you.  Strummer admits, "I am one of them."  That's the first step to making change -- recognizing where it really begins.  It's no good preaching about human rights in the world at large if you don't treat your own neighbours, and, indeed, your own family, well.  All moral accomplishment begins and ends in the moments that individuals make choices within the context of their private lives.  Be good, folks, and the humanity will follow.

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    Strummerfest is brought to you by a diverse crew of volunteers. Entrepreneurs, lawyers, artists, musicians, technicians... and that's just a description of a couple of us. What do we have in common? Love of the indie music ethic; appreciation for Joe Strummer; support of charitable work in our community; particular concern for suicide-prevention.

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