Let me school you a little about friendship

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by Stan Faryna

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My dear friend walked home along the river’s edge.
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Charly walked among saw-toothed crocodiles
(their father is the king of pride and perdition;
they go to, fro, up and down until judgment day)
because the road took her six more miles to get home.

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We buried my friend today – what was left of her
because I wouldn’t, couldn’t wait fifteen minutes
and take her home by my car, every Friday night.

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Had places to go and things to do, Friday night!

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I wept bitter tears for my friend, Sunday morning.

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Charly knew better than to walk the river’s edge
irregardless of her young-un’s want for dinner
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I told her, what they need’s a little respect

because their mother is working a twelve hour shift
and me, I made my own food since I’s twelve years old.

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And I’s none the worse after all was done and told.

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My dear friend used to make the most wonderful pie.

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Charly walked among saw-toothed crocodiles

(out of their nostrils and mouth – smoke and sparks of fire;

their hearts, stone and eyes like the eyelids of morning)

to bring me a heavenly pie on my birthdays.
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None made a better rhubarb pie than Charly made.

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That’s what I’s thinking, driving by Charly’s place;
social service was herding up her kids with a hurry.

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Couldn’t stop. Fifteen minutes late for church dinner.

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Weren’t no better friend and a mother than Charly.

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Stan Faryna
20 February 2015
Fairfax, Virginia

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Mountain Tops and the Fall of Empires

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by Stan Faryna

 

I have been to the mountaintop speech
by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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On this day, we Americans have decided as a nation to remember the life, thought and works of Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. The scoffers, the hard-hearted, the ignorant and the ungrateful will ignore the will of the people in this regard as they ignore all other things. “King who?” and “King, whatever,” they will say quietly to themselves lest someone recognize them for the racist, misanthropist or fool that they are.

King may be remembered most for his “I have a Dream Speech” on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. Or, perhaps, the Civil Rights March that he led in Alabama – a march which called out and revealed the evil spirit working through the rule of law, leaders and law enforcement officers. There’s also his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail in which he explains that non-violent, civil disobedience is just, holy and necessary under certain circumstances of oppression and injustice.

King reminds me that the Christian faith continues to have an urgent and powerful role in the American public square. It cast out the demons in the machinery of democracy and from the hearts of once prejudiced Americans. It brought healing to long sufferings. Of course, it did not cast out all demons nor heal every heart – for where there is stubbornness, pride and rebellion, God allows the person (or people) to pursue their self-determined course to hell.

As I contemplate the present Protestant hope for Revival, I wonder if the hour is too late, if our hearts are too cold, if our minds too cynical and if our evil ways too entrenched – wrong has become right and, likewise, right has become wrong. Unlike the past, our greatest challenge is not our ignorance. As a nation, we have chosen fear, curses and death – not love, blessings and life. These are interesting times. And dangerous.

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Stan Faryna
15 January 2015
Fairfax, Virginia

Sleeping Through A Culture War #TamirRice #DCprotest #Ferguson #TortureReport

Sleeping Through A Culture War

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by Stan Faryna

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Tamir Rice

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It’s heroic humanism, stupid

The heroic humanism that gave unofficial permission to exercise the inhumanity described by ‪#‎TortureReport‬ gives the same unspoken permission to murder 12 year old ‪Tamir Rice‬, ‪‎New Yorker Eric Garner‬, et al.

Consider how such diabolical humanism informs law, the so called rule of law, government mission and the culture of death.

Let us repent, together.

 

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U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s Report on CIA practices for Detention and Interrogation

The official title of the unclassified #TortureReport is a long one:  Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program. It is the 528 page executive summary that has been released for public review. The full Study exceeds 6,700 pages and it documents the countless, inhumane, and diabolical abuses and mistakes made between 2001 and 2009. Those abuses and mistakes represent a grotesque monument of horror, immorality and human rights violations.

Here’s a few links for you to begin a journey into an Inferno which makes Dante’s hell seem polite and tolerable:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/world/cia-torture-report-key-points.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/09/worst-horrors-cia-torture-report/20146081

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-cia-torture-report-global-reaction-20141209-story.html

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/226564-us-embassies-issue-warnings-after-cia-report-release

http://www.odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/198-press-releases-2014/1149-dni-message-to-the-intelligence-community-workforce-on-the-release-of-the-ssci-report

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/10/cia-torture-report-global-reaction-roundup

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/09/the-most-gruesome-moments-in-the-cia-torture-report.html

Culture War

It is no coincidence that we have been woken from our sleep at this time. We cannot ignore the overwhelming and horrific evidence that our society and culture has been compromised, corrupted, and turned over to an enemy – unprosecuted police abuses, the murder of 12 year old Tamir Rice, and, now, the #TortureReport.

Any attempt to defend, ignore and obscure these horrors is reducible to deception, false accusations and diabolical suspicion regarding the dignity of the human person, human purpose and the destiny of the human species.

The Culture War is not an academic debate. It is not a moveable feast for the parlor of intellectuals. It is not a clever forum to debate the diversity and consequence of opinions, values and ambitions. It is about casualties. It is painful, horrible and juggernaut. And wars, they are fought in the streets.

Snooze Button

Who can you trust? Neither Republicans nor Democrats to be sure. Nor libertarians, I regret. For they all serve the same masters – pride, greed, gluttony, lust, etc. Parties are called parties for good reason. No? But if you can’t trust anyone, why not hit the snooze and wake up when the dust has settled? Some suggest that this is what a democracy looks like.

What should a great democracy look like? Where is the dream, the vision, and the want for a promised land?

Where is the hunger and the thirst for good things? Where is the want for greatness, goodness and prosperity?

 

Where is the love!

Love, it is said, comes like a river when we have repented of our evil and forgiven others for the evil they have done to us.

 

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Stan Faryna
09 December 2014
Fairfax, Virginia

Broken hearts and getting away with murder #TamirRice #DCprotest #pray

Broken hearts and getting away with murder

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by Stan Faryna

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Tamir Rice

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It has been said that when evil, immorality and self-serving license prevails in the world, the human heart will grow cold. That our compassion, empathy and desire to be a comfort and help to others shall be greatly diminished. I wonder if these are those times.

I wonder now if my own heart has grown cold.

Because I watched surveillance video footage that provided a view of the murder of a 12 year old child and I did not weep.

I understood it was a true horror that I was watching. I felt deep sympathy for Tamir Rice’s parents, but what I felt did not go deep enough. An awkward sound escaped my mouth but I should have sobbed. And I knew the fault must be mine. That my heart was growing cold.

Has my heart been so broken that it is beyond repair. Yes and no. Comfort and convenience will not heal this heart. Technology cannot fix it. Nor chemical prescription – legal or illegal. Nor government.

The hows and whys of the murder of Tamir Rice will be argued with heartless contention, legalistic pageantry and much anger. But I will not put the murder of a child behind me. I will not move forward in my thoughts. There is enough evil in the murder of a child to claim my hearts’ complete attention. Racism and prejudice is also evil and, yet, I cannot move past the greater evil to feast and rail upon the lesser evil. There is time to account for all of our evil.

There is enough evidence in the paltry, unadorned facts that a child was murdered for you and I to understand that the world is broken and that we, collectively as the human family, are exceedingly worthy of a curse upon our heads- a curse that follows each one of us wherever we go and whatever we do, and confounds us with unrelenting hardships, misery and unbearable misfortune.

Some say that this is what is happening now. Others even suggest that those who do murder or other evil, they share their curse with us all. And those who get away with murder, they break the human heart (all hearts) in ways that shall never be healed – even until the last star blinks out. Yet we also know, deep down, that the answer is not to tear them to little pieces.

I feel the curses piling up upon me, my body, mind and soul. Upon my family, friends and neighbor. Upon my nation and all of the human family. I feel the poverty of my spirit growing wide and deep as oceans. For what should I be proud?

If only I could have wept, I could almost imagine that I could step out from underneath this particular curse – one among the millions. And so I put my face on the ground and I repent for us all.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar, and [God’s] word is not in us.

1 John 1:10

And I beg God to have for mercy on us and on the whole world.

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Stan Faryna
06 December 2014
Fairfax, Virginia

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Where is the light? #EricGarner #ICantBreathe #Nowisthetime

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by Stan Faryna

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Eric Garner died as a result of a choke hold used by a NYPD officer attempting to subdue him. The first video shows it here. Mr. Garner pleads for his life. “I can’t breathe,” he cries out (weakly) to the police officers. The second video (here) shows police officers and EMT handling an apparently unconscious Mr. Garner like an animal. Or a slab of meat.

How did the Grand Jury not indict the police officer?

We should and must mourn the loss of Eric Garner lest we accept that our hearts have grown cold. We should and must grieve over the injustice served by the non-indictment of Daniel Pantaleo.

In the midst of an overwhelming number of police officers, Daniel Pantaleo’s actions in subduing Mr. Garner (in the manner in which he did) were arrogant, contemptuous and, yes, evil – beyond even the possibility of a racially motivated crime. If you watch the second video where Mr. Garner appears unconscious, hand-cuffed and mishandled, Pantaleo appears in the background – proud, puffed up and “manly” in how he holds himself.

Pantaleo did not act as a man on that day. He acted as a coward. He did as a bully does. And we can all see this with our own eyes. Any other conclusion is in itself, cowardice, false consciousness, or, yes, evil. Regardless of prejudice.

Daniel Pantaleo, however, is not beyond redemption or our compassion. He can confess his sin and repent, publicly. And, in return, we can forgive and love the man.

Cases of police brutality, state oppression, terrorism, and all kinds of violence may be worse and more frequent elsewhere in the world. That does not make the wrongful death of Eric Garner, acceptable. Lukewarm reaction is absolutely reprehensible and disgusting. It is written that God vomits the lukewarm.

In the face of overwhelming lack of compassion and concern for the dignity of the human person, outrage and anger will burn in the hearts of those who still have hearts to mourn what has happened. Evil shall also grow in burning hearts. There will grow a want of revenge, a spirit of fear and contempt for others. This too is human – fallen humanity.

Now is the time for justice. For leadership. For love.

Ye are the light of the world.
Matthew 5:14

Where is the Christian voice in the midst of the darkness? Where is the light of Christian love in dark nights as these?

Light does not shine in the streets. Now is the time for Christians to go forth, cast out demons, heal the broken-hearted, and demonstrate the power of Jesus. In prayer. In compassion and with love. In sharing Christian wisdom and truth. In solidarity with the human family. With a crying out to God!

I am reminded of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, Now is the time.

Or is my opinion in error?

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Stan Faryna
04 December 2014
Fairfax, Virginia

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Facebook
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#BlogSoup 09.10.14 @Faryna feat. @Nisha360 @craignewmark @MSAdvertising @pmarca @mkonnikova @bhorowitz

#BlogSoup 09.10.14 @Faryna feat. @Nisha360 @craignewmark @MSAdvertising @pmarca @mkonnikova @bhorowitz

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by Stan Faryna

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Blog Soup

If you don’t know about the epics of blog soup, a deliciously OP (Over Powered) explanation follows.
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The comments below represent comments that I posted and those that failed to post to the websites, blogs, videos and streams that I visited. On occasion, they may represent Tweets, Replies, or Comments made on Facebook and other Social Media networks. Not everyone will appreciate the comments made to their post (I rarely suck up, brown nose or gush), but hopefully they’ll forgive me any offense (real or imagined) and, yes, they should absolutely love the rank-link juice to blog and Twitter. This is not a noob’s blog and some have even said that my seo game is fierce as it is sweet.
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More about blog soup at the end of this post.

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#BlogSoup 01.10.14 @Faryna feat. @Jerusalem_Post @slr436 @oiwan @peHUB @r_alhames @isocialfanz @geekyantics

#BlogSoup 01.10.14 @Faryna feat. @Jerusalem_Post @slr436 @oiwan @peHUB @r_alhames @isocialfanz @geekyantics

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by Stan Faryna

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Blog Soup

If you don’t know about the epics of blog soup, a deliciously OP (Over Powered) explanation follows.
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The comments below represent comments that I posted and those that failed to post to the websites, blogs, videos and streams that I visited. On occasion, they may represent Tweets, Replies, or Comments made on Facebook and other Social Media networks. Not everyone will appreciate the comments made to their post (I rarely suck up, brown nose or gush), but hopefully they’ll forgive me any offense (real or imagined) and, yes, they should absolutely love the rank-link juice to blog and Twitter. This is not a noob’s blog and some have even said that my seo game is fierce as it is sweet.
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More about blog soup at the end of this post.

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#BlogSoup 17.09.14 @Faryna feat. @eugenefarber @MattoMcFly @harleenas @BlogtorWho @Indiegogo

#BlogSoup 17.09.14 @Faryna feat. @eugenefarber @MattoMcFly @harleenas @BlogtorWho @Indiegogo 

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by Stan Faryna

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Blog Soup

If you don’t know about the epics of blog soup, a deliciously OP (Over Powered) explanation follows.
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The comments below represent comments that I posted and those that failed to post to the websites, blogs, videos and streams that I visited. On occasion, they may represent Tweets, Replies, or Comments made on Facebook and other Social Media networks. Not everyone will appreciate the comments made to their post (I rarely suck up, brown nose or gush), but hopefully they’ll forgive me any offense (real or imagined) and, yes, they should absolutely love the rank-link juice to blog and Twitter. This is not a noob’s blog and some have even said that my seo game is fierce as it is sweet.
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More about blog soup at the end of this post.

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#BlogSoup 09.09.14 @wonderoftech @Nisha360 @MattoMcFly @startyournovel @emmasuzieq @geekyantics

#BlogSoup 09.09.14 @wonderoftech @Nisha360 @MattoMcFly @startyournovel @emmasuzieq @geekyantics

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by Stan Faryna

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Blog Soup

If you don’t know about the epics of blog soup, a deliciously OP (Over Powered) explanation follows.
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The comments below represent comments that I posted and those that failed to post to the websites, blogs, videos and streams that I visited. On occasion, they may represent Tweets, Replies, or Comments made on Facebook and other Social Media networks. Not everyone will appreciate the comments made to their post (I rarely suck up, brown nose or gush), but hopefully they’ll forgive me any offense (real or imagined) and, yes, they should absolutely love the rank-link juice to blog and Twitter. This is not a noob’s blog and some have even said that my seo game is fierce as it is sweet.
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More about blog soup at the end of this post.

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#BlogSoup 29.08.14 @adamcroft83 @BetsyKCross @dancristo @RankMagic @KDillabough @TheRealS0s @RealCapaldi

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by Stan Faryna

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Blog Soup

If you don’t know about the epics of blog soup, a deliciously OP (Over Powered) explanation follows.
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The comments below represent comments that I posted and those that failed to post to the websites, blogs, videos and streams that I visited. On occasion, they may represent Tweets, Replies, or Comments made on Facebook and other Social Media networks. Not everyone will appreciate the comments made to their post (I rarely suck up, brown nose or gush), but hopefully they’ll forgive me any offense (real or imagined) and they should love the rank-link juice to blog and Twitter. This is not a noob’s blog and some have even said that my seo game is fierce as it is sweet.

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For better or worse, curation, conversation, intelligence, humanity, curiosity, intense value and cunning are at the heart of social. If you can’t bring three out of seven, social is going to be a casual experience for you. Blog Soup is a exercise in both social savvy and social media DOH. You can learn from it. You are free to imitate the format and steal the title for your own purposes and ambitions. Hat tips to me would be appreciated but they are not necessary. The words in my blog soup are copyright by me. Just email me if you want to use my blog soup on your own blog.
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Feel free to recommend a post or other kind of share to me. For inclusion in my blog soup. Do not recommend your own stuff unless you are doing awesome, epic or legendary things that will amaze me. Or if no one knows who you are AND you have important things to share with the world. Because I do have a heart. My email is stan.faryna@gmail.com.

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Stan Faryna

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Got Arts?

A blog post about how to get art for your book.

http://amcroft.weebly.com/blog/working-with-an-illustrator-for-your-novel
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Author Adam Croft writes about Authors’ need for artwork. Self-publishing authors – even more so. Beyond cover art, there is need for art work to illustrate your social media messages and online marketing campaigns for Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and beyond.
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My comment

The game has certainly changed and there is need for good artwork. Not just for covers, but also for social media and online marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, good artwork is rarely cheap or easy to get.As some of you know, I’ve been working on the cover art for my WIP and future marketing campaigns.Below is the 10th revision of one of four design theme drafts. And there is many more drafts ahead.

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The work goes beyond the capacity of a young design professional.

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Below is a sketch of George, one of the characters from the story that would be used in my online campaigns. It remains to be colorized.
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George

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The young design professional is not likely to be of much help for you. Sure, they can come up with a little something something. Likewise, the affordable foreign designer with some experience is going to have problems if they can’t read, feel and understand your book.Will the artwork sell the book?You can pay five to twenty bucks on fiverr for a book cover design. And you can try out 20 gigs on fiverr ( that can be a horribly expensive lost cause), but are you prepared to provide the commercial marketing and design direction to that so-called  “design professional”?You need someone with experience and someone whose designs have been successful. That’s going to cost $1,000 just for a cover – if you are lucky. A successful publisher will pay several thousand for a decent cover and not just because they like spending money. And, yeah, the professional book designer still has to read the book. [grin]The artwork is not necessarily about what makes you happy. The artwork is about what sells.This is not impossible. Chin up.…