June 29, 2003

....I just have to point to this one:

U.S. military commanders have ordered a halt to local elections and self-rule in provincial cities and towns across Iraq, choosing instead to install their own handpicked mayors and administrators, many of whom are former Iraqi military leaders.

Read the Washington Post story here.

Get that idiot out of the White House and his cronies out of their posh posts in Washington!!

My mother's mobile enough. My brother says that he's coming up for a couple of days. (That always remains to be seen.) The food is ready. Her refrigerator is packed and my friends are on alert. I'm packed. I leave for Boston tomorrow morning. Gonna hug the little guy and his cool mom. Gonna sit on their deck and drink tea and take deep breaths while the work gets done on their kitchen and they head for the park. Be back Thursday. :-)

June 28, 2003

Not that long ago, I blogged about being good at beginnings and good at endings, but not being so good at middles. So I have to try a little harder to hang in there through the ordinary times, including ordinary blogging times – that in-between middle of nowhere feeling.

Of course, these days I find myself these days smack in the middle of the tough stuff of a generational sandwich -- kids and grandkid on the top, aging parent on the bottom, and me in between, trying to keep the sandwich together.

It’s a good thing that I’m also good in crises.

Like when, coming home from vacation in Maine, my friend P announces -- when we are about a half-hour south of the state line -- that she left her pack with her meds and makeup lying on the couch in the cottage. We left early to avoid the major lines of going-home-from-the-beach Sunday traffic. So much for leaving early. And it was starting to rain.

Ten minutes later we get to an exit and turn round to go back and get her stuff. Ten minutes after that, the traffic going in our original southerly direction is crawling bumper to bumper. And did I already say it’s starting to rain.?

But that’s the kind of the thing I can take in stride. A friend of mine needs my help. No problem.

As it turns out, after we go back and get her stuff, we stop for lunch (lobster quesadilla) and sit and chat long enough so that by the time we get back on the road, the traffic has lightened considerably. All’s well …..and all that – at least for that part.

When I get home, my mom informs me that she’s been having severe leg cramps, so I took her to the doctor yesterday. Diagnosis? Leg muscles knotted from recent lack of use and from all those early years of wearing high heels. The doctor prescribes Quinine capsules and shows her how to do stretching expercises for her calves.

So, of course, last night she overdoes the stretches and this morning she can’t move out of bed because now her badly deteriorated lower spine is also irritated. On Monday, I’m scheduled to drive out to my daughter’s in Boston to help her out while she’s having some repairs done in her kitchen; she’ll take care the baby and I’ll oversee the work. I can’t wait to see my grandson, who’s on the verge of taking his first solo step.

Ah. There’s my mother flat on her back; there’s my daughter who arranged for the work to be done when I said I could be there. Crisis!

I massage my mother with that great Blue Stuff and put her on a heating pad; email a directive to my brother that I’m expecting he’ll drop what he’s doing and get up here to stay with her while I’m away (that’s not saying he’ll do it, but I was awfully adamant); go out and buy a massage mat for my mom and foods to make cold salad meals for both her and to take with me to Boston. I go to the library and get two mystery books on CD to listen to in the car and stop at the drug store for up Arthritis Strength Tylenol for both me and my mother.

I’m taking lots of deep breaths while I’m marinating batches of chicken, which I’ll cook tomorrow, when I make the potato salad, broccoli and carrot (with craisins and walnuts) salad, pesto chicken and pasta salad, and shrimp and toasted almond pilaf salad.

When it’s a crisis, I cook. The results of which, in this case, will go pretty well with the sandwich I’m caught in.

June 26, 2003

The email from some guy at the London Sunday Times says that they’re doing a piece about blogging and want to include photos of Blog Sisters and can I send them one of me.

So, I get out my digital camera and set and re-set the timer until I get a few passable shots. (All of that lobster and all of those desserts over vacation have not helped my profile!) I email him some thumbnails. Send the third one from the left, he emails back. It’s the one of my face (pretty good hair day) next to my computer screen with the Blog Sisters home page. I can live with it.

Then I email him again. I hope that you also contacted Jeneane Sessum, I say. She’s the leader of the Blog Sister pack. I tried emailing her but I haven’t heard back, he replies. Can you send me her phone number.

I do. I also email Jeneane and tell her to check her mail for a message from the Times. She does. They connect.

And now it’s Jeneane’s photo they’re using and not mine. No sweat, I tell her. I don’t need the world-wide exposure. I need to low-key my life more. (I liked being on vacation, even with no blogging, which, I find takes up more time than I really have to give. I like having hours to sit and read, be with real life friends.) I’ve been thinking of joining George Partington among the many blogging drop-outs. Maybe this is all a sign

June 25, 2003

Vacation Story 3
Anyone who’s read my blog over the past couple of years knows my affinity for creating magic. At least my vision of what’s magical. In case you’re wondering, I talked about it a little in my old interview with Frank Paynter. This is what I said:

… all art began as rituals to appease or connect with the unknown, with whatever the people defined as their deity or deities. So, theatre, music, dance, poetry all began as sacred ritual. Poets are magicians. I just take it back to its origins and turn the performance back into ritual.

Now, does magic work? Sure – the way that psychotherapy works. It’s all in our perception. One of my favorite writers is Alice Hoffman. Her novels reflect the magic all around us in ordinary time if we choose to perceive it all through that lens. Thus, my ritual this weekend on behalf of RageBoy. Will it work? If he believes it will work, it will work. And, am I really going to go out under the full moon with my ritual objects that I am in the process of creating and his ritual EGR words from the Ghost Dance post? Oh yes, indeed. And I will draw a circle and light candles and maybe even do a little ghost dance of my own. Because you never know.

Last week in Maine, on the evening of the Solstice, we stirred up some magic for ourselves.

The thing we drew in the sand is simply a spiral (powerful ancient symbol) with stuff in it. Before we left for the beach, we each chose a Rune stone and meditated on what it meant to us. On the beach, we placed our Rune symbols in the North, South, East,or West on the spiral, depending on what we were hoping for in our lives (each direction has a symbolic meaning). Also in the spiral are a Tibetan bell, which we rang while there, and the stick used to extend the bell sound as long as possible. Those are in the spiral too, as well as the beach stick (in the center) that we used to make the spiral (great phallic symbol, no?). Then we washed our favorite tumbled stones in the ocean -- good vibes, you know.

A while ago, I bought a Tibetan pendant with the Double Dorje symbol on it. Inside was a seed supposedly blessed by a Tibetan priest. It never felt right to me when I wore it, so I didn’t wear it. At the shore, I tossed the seed into the waves and washed out the pendant with sea water. In it now is a tiny feather that P found on the beach, a tiny intact pearlized shell that M contributed, and a tiny stone that I found. Now when I wear it, it feels right.

When we got back to the cottage, we smudged the whole place both with a smudge stick and the sound of the Tibetan bell (the vibration of which you can feel in your very bones, just like those of the Singing Bowls). Then we went out to the deck, lit candles and used a little cauldron I have to first burn pieces of paper on which we had written the things (and things about people) in our lives that we needed to get rid of (NO, I didn't write my mom's name on one of them!) and then burn pieces of paper on which we wrote those things we want to bring into our lives and the lives of those we love.

Then we went inside, had some decaf coffee and Kalua, and played Boggle until we laughed so hard we almost peed in our pants.

Now, that’s the kind of magic that works.

One of the things we three did a lot on our vacation was read. After I finished The Lovely Bones , I passed it along to P, who is found it more disturbing than I did. For a story that begins and is based in a terribly violent act, I think it really is a very sweet and life-affirming tale.

The big hit of the week, however, was Jane Juska’s A Round-Heeled Woman – My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance. P brought it and finished it in record time and passed it along to me, since it’s a library book and we both use the same library, so I can return it for her. I finished it last night.

I tend to read fiction rather than non-fiction, but I loved this book – the style of both the writing and the woman. Juska was 67 when she had her adventures, and there’s obviously still a dance in the ol’ dame yet. I think her story was a real inspiration to my two vacationing friends, who surely do hope to have a few more exploits of their own before they’re done – and maybe even finally find their life partners.

As for me, I made the choice to have my adventures – and some of them very memorable ones – earlier in life than Juska. While, of course, I’m always open to a final foray into romance, I also can live with the fact that I might not. I am pretty satisfied with the memories that I’ve stored up for future meditations as I rock in the old rocking chair – which, I hope, is still a couple of decades away.

In the meanwhile, Juska's story sure encourages me to keep my options open, although I wouldn't have the energy to exercise them until my mom is out of the picture. Yup. Trade-offs.

June 24, 2003

I interrupt the song of my vacationing self to confront the ongoing and frustratingly tough stuff. From a piece in the Oakland Tribune:

BALAD, Iraq -- On a scorching afternoon, while on duty at an Army airfield, Sgt. David Borell was approached by an Iraqi who pleaded for help for his three children, burned when they set fire to a bag containing explosive powder left over from the war in Iraq.

Borell immediately called for assistance. But the two Army doctors who arrived about an hour later refused to help the children because their injuries were not life-threatening and had not been inflicted by U.S. troops.

"I have never seen in almost 14 years of Army experience anything that callous," said Borell, who recounted the June 13 incident to The Associated Press.

[snip]

…Iraqis maintain the Americans have not lived up to their promises to improve security and living conditions, and incidents like the turning away of the children only reinforce the belief that Americans are in Iraq only for their own interests.

[snip]

For Borell, who has been in Iraq since April 17, what happened with the injured children has made him question what it means to be a U.S. soldier.

"What would it have cost us to treat these children? A few dollars perhaps. Some investment of time and resources," said Borell, 30, of Toledo, Ohio.

Not only are too many Americans with power developing incredibly hard heads; it’s now gone to their hearts, too. We need a lot more military -- and other -- warriors like Borell to knock those small hard heads and small hard hearts onto their big soft fat butts.

Vacation Story 2.

Good friends are the ones who help you survive your other relationships.

I have gone on some vacations with male Significant Others and have had some great times. I've also gone on such a vacation and have had not such a great time. I once went on a vacation with a former male Significant Other with whom I had remained "just friends." We had a non-sexual blast and traveled together more comfortably than we did when we were more intimately involved. We even stayed in the same hotel room, used the same bathroom etc. (He's coming into town in a few weeks, and he's going to stop by with a bottle of wine and stories to tell me about his new life in Portland, OR.)

Good friends are the ones who help you survive your other relationships.

I always have almost perfect vacations with my women friends. We don?t actually divide up the chores of sharing space in a rented cottage, but it all always flows with ease and good humor. It's not that we are all similar in temperament and talents; rather we are all adamant about being respected for who and how we are. And, of course, we actually like each other, and we like to both nurture and be nurtured.

The three of us in Maine this time have all been divorced (one of us three times); two of us have kids; one of us was raped in her teens; we all like men and are all tired of the struggle it always seems to be to keep our integrity, identity, and voice in a relationship with a man. We are tired of their not taking responsibility for everything from household chores to extended family dynamics. We are tired of accommodating. For the other two, it's probably a temporary thing; one is five years younger than I and the other 9 years younger. For me it's probably a permanent fatigue.

So, it?s not surprising that we spent several Maine evenings last week sitting around doing a "group therapy" thing. We?ve all been through it; we know how to listen and how to respond with compassion and encouragement; we all know how to constructively construct any criticism we might have, how to wrap our suggestions in heartstrings. We don't always agree, but we give each other lots to think about, and we accept our disagreements as part of who we are.

And, when we play Boggle, we get very competitive, shrieking and whooping, bitching, and guffawing. We forgot a dictionary this time, so we had a few arguments about the validity of a few word spellings. Heh. They tend to defer to me because I taught English. I frequently bluff when I'm not sure; I'm also frequently right!

I?m sure that we gave the quiet people in the neighboring cottages something to wonder about -- what with all the Boggling noise, the frequent group hugs, the strange sage/cedar smudging smells, the echoing tones of my Tibetan bell, and the fire burning in my mini-cauldron on the deck on our last night there, where we symbolically exorcised the bad stuff we?d been carrying around. (More on that later.)

Good friends are the ones who help you survive your other relationships.

Vacation Story 1.
One night during vacation, I woke out of a sound sleep to see the world outside my high windows suffused with an eerie intense green light. I blink and the light slowly fades. My friend P also says that she remembers seeing some kind of green light through her closed eyelids. But she assumed that she was dreaming and just went back to sleep.

All week long we discuss what it could have been. We speculate (laughing nervously): Aliens? Some meteorological phenomenon? Swamp gas? A sign that our healing rituals are working? (Green is the color of healing.) Wouldn’t it be great if magic works?

We are spooked. And we are intrigued.

Then, several nights later, coming back from the bathroom (I do a lot of that these days) in the middle of the night, I see the green light again. It fills the air outside the cottage. I stop in my tracks and, through the windows that line the wall across the front of the cottage, I watch it slowly and silently drift by.

Suddenly, two oddly shaped heads appear moving along the bottom of a window. I move closer. Two oddly shaped heads, bulging eyes, green light.

Heh. Two guys wearing helmets and goggles, dressed in wet suits and riding bikes with gigantic green headlights, quietly pedaling down the dirt road outside our cottage, toward the ocean, probably to get in some private surfing.

While it was fun to think it might actually be something magical, it was even more fun to get a good, silly laugh over the surprises and absurdities of reality.

June 23, 2003

Still waiting to hear from my mom's doctor. Meanwhile, I'm taking her over to P's house (she's the blonde in the photos below) to extend the vacation one more day and let her feed us a light supper. M, the other vacation friend, will come over too, so I'm bringing them both printouts of the collage -- which is numbered by the days. Still no time to tell the vacation story. Of course, you know what they say about pictures....

When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun.

I'm back from Maine. That's me on the right, looking relaxed and rather pudgey. And that's our Solstice sand ritual image above.

I'm doing laundry, waiting to hear from my mom's doctor 'cause I have to get her in to find out why she's gettng such severe leg cramps -- so I'll post more about our great vacation later.

Suffice it for now to know that we spent the week beaching, eating, reading, walking, and Boggling. And laughing. A lot.

June 16, 2003

You can't find my Dad on Google, even though, in his time, he was active and well-known behind the scenes in my hometown politics -- especially among the Polish population.

Today, I think of how proud my Dad would be and how much he would love his grandson, b!X, to whom I managed to give birth on my father's birthday. (That's them, together, celebrating one of them.) And his great-grandson? (His amazing granddaughter's offspring -- that's him in the bottom corner.) Well, my Dad would be beside himself with delight.

Today, Dad, I'm remembering the standards for integrity, compassion, and generosity that your example set for the whole family. I wish that my grandson would have had a chance to know you.

June 15, 2003

I've finally caught up with all of the comments that Klondike Kate left me. I sure hope that Frank Paynter gets around to interviewing her. She's another gem. One of the older/wiser ones.

My mother is prepared with six days of food and a goodly list of emergency phone numbers.

My car is packed with all the essentials: hair gel; prescription meds; shorts, t-shirts, and jeans; digital camera; Newman’s double chocolate mint cookies; sun block and a rain umbrella; Scrabble; I Ching reference book; 3 fiction books: a seamy steamy high tech mystery, a space opera with a strong female protagonist, and a touching first novel that Publisher’s Weekly describes as a reminder that life is sweet and funny and surprising – and, of course all kinds of theatrical paraphernalia necessary for creating a memorable Solstice celebration. Wind, sun, water, and stone – all heed the words of a kindly Crone.

No computer, no blog. Just sun, sand, surf, and sleep. And some reading and lots of laughing in between.

There are three of us going out to Maine in two cars filled with food- and fun- stuffs. I’ll be back after the Solstice, much re-created, I hope. This might well be the last time -- as long as my mother is with me -- that I'll be able to get away for more than a day or two.

June 14, 2003

There’s stuff going on at a variety of other blogs that I’d just love to get into with more adamancy, but I’m leaving on Monday for a week’s vacation, and I’ve got lots to do before then.

Because I think it’s such interesting stuff, however, I’m going to point to them here and hope that some discussions take off while I’m away.

First, there’s this Dutch guy, Niek Hockx, whose link seems to be showing up on all kinds of blogs. I wish I had found this quote from him when I was being interviewed by the Chicago Tribune, because it’s pretty much what I was trying to say.

Let's face it: most blogging is just Cyberbabble. Yes, also much of my own. Just a bunch of Netizens thinking out loud and talking to themselves most of the time. And that in itself ain't a bad thing, but why do these selfproclaimed weblog gods have to make such a big deal out of it? Thinking out loud is not THAT new and revolutionary!

Niek shows up over at Jeneane’s, where, on another issue, I found this quote from her.

Against my better judgment, I go back to this, and point you to this new article, which declares Ethiopians are our shared ancestors. The writing is all over the place, and evolutionary scientists can't even agree on what it means, but I liked two quotes.

And this one: "The team concluded, 'In this sense, we are all African.'".

I wonder what she’s going to think of the Discovery Channel program, Walking with Cavemen that premieres on Sunday, June 15, at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The Discovery Channel website has this to say about the program:

Much of what scientists know about human evolution has come from only a literal handful of major fossil finds. Meet the pre-parents.

Enter a Neanderthal Cave. Some human relatives really did live in caves. Take an interactive step back 50,000 years into the lair of a Neanderthal.

Personally, I believe in evolution, and I believe that the cradle of humanity evolved somewhere along the African banks of the Red Sea. I don’t know why those two beliefs have to be mutually exclusive.

Finally, on Blog Sisters, my apprentice Crone Andrea James points to a book that I’ve just got to read: Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World.
It was interesting to see Andrea’s post followed by one that wonders where are all the women in Boston’s world of talk radio and another about a court case where the judge had an obvious bias against the value of “women’s work.”

For me, all of these blog bits are related to the fact that the world-at-large, which is largely dominated by traditional males and the values that they impose on the rest of us, does not really value the kinds of women’s voices, women’s work, and women’s perspectives that are different from (and are – or certainly should be -- equal to) theirs.

[Addendum: for a less brutal and more female perspective on evolution, check out Elaine Morgan's The Descent of Woman and The Scars of Evolution.]

June 13, 2003

Frank Paynter's interview with Betsy Devine has landed. Now you know why I think she's such a marvel.

Got this in an email from the Howard Dean listserv that I'm on:

National Debt and Bush: the numbers

Those numbers are only going to get worse. CBO just said the debt for Fiscal Year 2003 is going to be over $400 billion, a record in nominal terms.

What is wrong with my fellow Americans who still think that this guy is doing us any good at all???

June 12, 2003

All around me, the greats of the blogging world are discoursing about how and why people use their blogs. I know these are the “greats” because they are the ones invited (and paid) to present papers at world-wide conferences; they are the ones who make their living in close association with the World Wide Web; they are the ones lots of us read even though they don’t read us.

(As an aside, Betsy Devine took the time to take an honest look at the sources of the hits she gets. I know what she means. Ever since, ages ago, I posted a definitely untitillating piece about the death of porn star Linda Lovelace, I continue to come up on searches for information about her.)

So, who has the time and interest to read weblogs that are not among the greats? A June 11 post by one of the greats, Rebecca Blood, got me thinking. In her much longer piece, she writes:

The important point for bloggers is, if you don't link to it, it is invisible from your corner of the Web. A group of bloggers that uniformly dismisses or ignores certain points of view, effectively removes them from the discourse. More importantly, the sense of pervasive shared opinion created by that clustering creates a false sense of majority. If you are interested in uncovering the truth, you won't find it this way. If you are interested in affecting public discourse, watch out--you may gain ascendency in certain circles, but you're just as likely to marginalize yourself instead….

So, is it important for the knitting weblogs to link to the crochet weblogs? Probably not. For now, the test I've devised is this: is what you're talking about important? The more important you think it is, the more important it probably is to consider the opinions of those who have thought about the same subject and drawn a different conclusion.

And so, does it follow from that, that if I’m not one of the greats and I don’t want to be marginalized among a small circle of echo-bloggers, I not only need to search out other webloggers who have posted about Elmo or eerie graveyard photos, but also to leave comments on their posts so that they can then discover and read me?

See, that’s the dilemma for dilettante bloggers like me, who write our personal views on war, peace, family, friends, frustrations, and frivolities: we don’t offer a focus, a perspective that’s deep enough on any one topic to earn us any notability or even notoriety. As a result, it’s very easy to slip onto the rim, out there in the margin.

I guess how disturbing that is depends on why we blog in the first place and how much thought, time, and tenacity we have available to invest in the process. Everything in life is a trade-off. (I’m saying that a lot these days, aren’t I?)

Meanwhile, I just interrupted writing this post because a photographer came over to take my photo for the Chicago Tribune article on women and weblogging. Boy, I wish I could drop those 15 pounds I’ve put on in the past year! I look at what he has on the digital screen of the camera and cringe. Oh well, maybe it’s time to let go of Vanity, since it's obvious I've traded it off for chocolate and cheesecake anyway.

And I was wrong about the publication date of the Trib article. It won't be out until the middle of July. Just ignore the photos!

June 11, 2003

One of my long-time heroes, Bill Moyers, again tells it with eloquent honesty in the text of his speech to the 'Take Back America' Conference held June 4, 2003 in Washington, DC.

In it, he says:

In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether "we, the people" is a spiritual idea embedded in a political reality – one nation, indivisible – or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.

But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That difference can be the difference between democracy and oligarchy.

Read his entire speech here at Common Dreams.

June 10, 2003

Just as I’m scrambling around getting myself ready to go away on vacation with some friends next week (and at the same time frantically trying to make some headway on a free-lance writing job of which I am in the middle), Frank Paynter tells me that he’s about to come out with an interview with one of my favorite bloggers. Betsy Devine. I have a feeling he will birth it on his site when I’m away next week and I’ll be left out of all the ensuing conversation, since I won’t have access to a computer. I guess I’ll just have to catch up later.

Meanwhile, right now on Frank’s site is a link-rich piece about cyberfeminist hacker Cornelia Sollfrank. I should have been doing a dozen other things, but I’m glad I took the time to read and link around for a while. Just a few quotes to pique your interest:

This from an interview with Sollrank (by Florian Cramer) that Paynter repeats on his site:

FC: We're here at the annual convention of the Chaos Computer Club. Is hacking for you art and does hacking have something to do with art?

CS: Both. I've come increasingly to the conclusion over the last four, five years in which I have been involved in hacking, that hacking culture always has something bordering on a national...(laughter) flavor. That's why it is interesting for me to visit other countries and especially Italy, where it appears as if there does not exist the slightest fear of contact between artists, activists, philosophers etc. They coexist there naturally, dialogue with each other and create a common language in which they can communicate (laughter), which is something I haven't experienced in Germany. As a female artist in the Chaos Computer Club, I have come face to face with some of the worse preconceptions, accusations and verbal abuse of my life (unfortunately).

Now, you might think that I’m up on all this cyberfeminist stuff, but I’m not. So thanks, Frank, for pointing me toward some worthwhile info, including this from here:

A cyberfeminist's relationship to technology exists in this negotiated space between theory and practice. Cyberfeminism is aware of the gendered socialization that works against women wanting technology, and calls for a resistance to this manufactured identity. Simultaneously, cyberfeminism accepts the engendered reality of new information technologies at the end of the millenium, and works at an active level towards changing these tired old stereotypes. As a theory of resistance, pleasure, empowerment and practice, cyberfeminism offers society a radical new approach and shift in our ways of understanding the complex intersection of gender, technology and culture.

On the other hand, here’s what Sollrank says on her web site:
The First Cyberfeminist International agreed on not to define the term. The strategy of keeping the term as open as possible was consensual. As a substitute for a definition The First Cyberfeminist International formulated the "100 Anti-Theses"...

All of this is a little too complex for me to do too much more thinking about now, as I get my “life with mom” in order so that I can take a week off and re-create myself.

Meanwhile, I'll probably also miss the article on women and blogging by Gail Philbin that includes an interview with me and that's scheduled to come out in the Women's News section of the Chicago Tribune on June 18. On June 18, I'll be on the beach at York, Maine, where last year Halley Suitt and I sat our butts down on the wet sand and shared thoughts about men, boys, and rage.

Boy, how times change.

This is the last paragraph of a great piece in the NY Times today by Adam Cohen.

As the Bush administration and the religious right fight to put theology more squarely into public policy discussions, they are going to have to be ready for arguments like the ones coming out of Alabama. Many theologians argue that it is far easier to find support in the Bible for policies that help the poor than for, say, a cut in the dividend tax. If Governor Riley's crusade succeeds this summer, Alabama may offer the nation a model for a new kind of tax system: one where the Devil is not in the details.

Being irreverently non-religious, I’ve wondered, as does Adam Cohen, what answer would politicians who also are fundamentalists give if they honestly asked themselves: “What Would Jesus Do?”

Cohen’s article highlights the actions of Alabama Governor Bob Riley, who, he explains,

… is pushing a tax reform plan through the Alabama Legislature that shifts a significant amount of the state's tax burden from the poor to wealthy individuals and corporations. And he has framed the issue in starkly moral terms, arguing that the current Alabama tax system violates biblical teachings because Christians are prohibited from oppressing the poor.

…Susan Pace Hamill, a University of Alabama tax professor with a theological degree from an evangelical divinity school, caused a stir with a law review article called "An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics," which makes an evangelical case for making the tax system fairer. She plans to train speakers this summer to take the theological argument to the grass roots. Kimble Forrister, the state coordinator of Alabama Arise, a coalition that advocates for poor people, expects the 100 church groups that are part of his organization to hold church-basement workshops this summer to get the word out to their congregations.

I think that I’d be much less critical of what I see as the hyprocrisy of the modern version of Christianity if Christians would put their money where their mouths are, which is what Jesus Christ actually did. And that's exactly what he'd DO now. Just like Governor Riley.

On the first anniversary of my father's death (back in the mid-80s), my mom and I visited his grave and I took the photo below. It took the photo with a simple 35mm camera, and I've never tinkered with it digitally. What's here is exactly what Kodak produced -- a magical moment that my mom had enlarged and hung on her wall. I couldn't have made it come out that way if I had tried. The really weird thing is that, as we were standing by his grave that day, she wondered, aloud, what he "looks like now." See why I like to pretend that it's possible to make magic??

June 07, 2003

From the NY Times via www.talkleft.com, which everyone should read daily.

For decades, illegal immigrants have often flourished because officials lacked the staff, resources and political will to deport them. But since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the government has been detaining and deporting illegal immigrants from countries considered breeding grounds for terrorists.

"There's been a major shift in our priorities," said Jim Chaparro, acting director for interior enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security, which has subsumed the old immigration service.

[snip]
Some of those facing deportation have waited months or years for officials to process applications to legalize their status. Immigration lawyers say they believe that a substantial number of these men avoid deportation. Their clients are only illegal, the lawyers say, because of the government's inefficiency.

[snip]
Officials acknowledged that most Arab and Muslim immigrants swept up in counterterrorism sweeps have no ties to terrorist groups. Of the 82,000 men who showed up at immigration offices, and tens of thousands more screened at airports and border crossings in the past six months, 11 have had links to terrorism.

Just imagine how future history will tell the tale of America’s downfall at the hands of the diseased Mad Cowboy.

June 06, 2003

Big picture and little picture, I’m surrounded by fat cats in denial.

Where’s the Outrage? asks David Corn in his piece in The Nation on "Capital Games," as he remembers how outraged the American populace was after learning of President Clinton’s personal games with Monica.

It is hard to resist reprising the GOP call of yesteryear, Corn asserts. Where is the outrage? Just imagine how much shock and complaining there would be if we learned that American Idol had been rigged. But Bush and his comrades can use deceptive means to launch a war and to pass trillion-dollar tax cuts that bust the bank--and then skate away. The ice they are on is a little less smooth and thick than it was a week ago. But much of the public, it seems, is still rooting for Bush. My hunch is that after September 11, many Americans want to see their president--who is now truly their protector--succeed. To conclude that the guy at the helm in these insecure times is not to be trusted can be frightening. Bush is proving--so far--that it is even easier for a president to escape popular outrage when he lies about war and taxes than when he lies about sex.

Yes, Americans are afraid to face the truth, and so they hide in "denial," a psychological disorder defined here as an unconscious attempt to reject unacceptable feelings, needs, thoughts, wishes, or external reality factors.

There are a few other fat cats in denial as well. Here’s one,

who is usually perched anywhere there is food for the grabbing and running. She’s now 16 pounds; she should be around 11 pounds – even though I feed her diet cat food in the recommended amount.

I began thinking about all of the kinds of fat cats there are after bloglinking to someone’s post about her 18 pound, vet-diagnosed-obese cat, who is the same color as my tortoise-shell Calico. Unfortunately, even though I left a comment on her blog, I can’t seem to find it again. So no link here. (I should have bookmarked it, but at the time I wasn’t planning to post about fat cats.)

My cat has no right to feel betrayed when she’s not fed every time she meows. But, as Paul Krugman explains in his NY Times piece, we Americans have every right to feel betrayed by Bush’s tax evasion plan:

The original Bush plan ensured that dividends from such companies would not get a tax break. But those safeguards vanished from the final bill: dividends will get special treatment regardless of how much tax is paid by the company that issues them.

Look at it this way: as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, this latest tax cut reduces federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. to its lowest level since 1959. That is, federal taxes are now back to what they were in an era when Medicare and Medicaid didn't exist, and Social Security was still a minor expense. How can we maintain these programs, which have become essential to scores of millions of Americans, at today's tax rates? We can't.

And the fat cats get fatter.

Except for mine, damn it. She’s staying on her diet no matter how loud she meows and how hard she throws herself at my bedroom door every early morning!

I have a feeling that Bush feels the same way about us.

June 05, 2003

The Bushites have set the standards: outright lies, political and economic cronyism, conflicts of interest, disregard for the will of the American public.

And the F.C.C. is patriotically adhering to those standards.

From Bob Herbert’s NY Times article, "Cozy With the F.C.C."

Not so widely covered was an interesting and enlightening study by the Center for Public Integrity on the "cozy" relationship between F.C.C. officials and the telecommunications and broadcasting industries they are supposed to be regulating.

"This shows us just how close, how incestuous, the industry and its regulating agency are," said Charles Lewis, the center's executive director.

It's sure not surprising that, as Maureen Dowd reports:

A new Pew survey of 21 nations shows a deepening skepticism toward the U.S. "The war had widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim world, softened support for the war on terrorism, and significantly weakened global public support for the pillars of the post-World War II era — the U.N. and the North Atlantic alliance," said Pew's director, Andrew Kohut.

So, are we all going to make sure that Dumbya and his corrupt cronies get booted out of their plush tax-supported offices come election time? Can you say Absolutely Yes?

Regime change begins at home. Take America back from the evil-doers.

June 03, 2003

When I’m visiting my daughter and son-in-law, I sleep on their couch, and then when everyone gets up at 6:30 a.m., I take my pillow and blanket into their bedroom and snooze for another couple of hours. By the time I get up, my son-in-law has gone to work and I have another hour or so to play with my grandson and chat with my daughter before they go in for their morning naps.

And then I take advantage of what I don’t have otherwise – not just the solitude, but also the calming space that surrounds that solitude. This was my view early this morning from the hammock/chair on the deck at my daughter’s – on the second floor, nestled among old leafy tree limbs, drifting in an out of the dappled light as I drank my tea and rocked, rocked, and daydreamed about what it would be like to have this kind of place, this kind of time in this kind of place, every day.



Today, after lunch, the three of us went out and ran errands, taking a bus out to the animal hospital to buy the special cat food for their aging feline. As we walk into the building, we see an old, shaggy dog with bandages around a terribly swollen front leg being lifted onto a gurney. A woman is crying. I look at my daughter and see her empathetic eyes filling with tears.

I marvel at how my daughter manages getting on the bus with the folding stroller, and the diaper bag, and the baby. She’s used to public transportation, since she doesn’t drive; they have always lived near the “T” and near bus lines. Otherwise they walk. Today I leave my car parked and travel with her. I carry the cat food as we make the half-hour walk back.

I like having a town center close by where you can stroll from hardware store to drug store to grocer’s, picking up the things you need, stopping to chat with people you see often on the street running the same kinds of errands. I like walking up and down winding tree-lined streets looking at the old restored Victorian homes that I’ll never be able to afford. My daughter and I walk and talk and take turns pushing the stroller.

When they go in for their afternoon nap, I pack up my car and leave. And so now I’m back where I live – which I can’t really call “home.” Someday I will again have a space that will feel like home. But not yet.

June 01, 2003

Today a post by Bob Harris in thismodernworld.com links to a story in the Independent by Glen Rangwala (lecturer in politics at Newnham College, Cambridge ), in which he shows how the UK and the US manipulated UN reports - and conjured an anthrax dump from thin air.

Well, we aren’t surprised are we?

And not at all a surprise is Harris' own reflection about why most people would be very surprised if they heard the truth. He says:

The folks in the suburb where I grew up -- good, honest people I truly care about -- read their paper every single day, and are almost assuredly under the illusion that they're informing themselves about the world. Quite plainly the opposite. I'll say it again: What they're consuming is actually negative information, worse than illiterate blankness in that it provides both a false worldview and confidence in it. Sheer ignorance and an open mind would seem preferable.

In other words, when it comes to national news, I'm almost convinced my hometown would be better off reading blank sheets of paper. That way, when truth eventually surfaces, it wouldn't have to fight six months of falsehoods to be understood.

Even though bits of the truth are slowly surfacing in the mainstream media, I don’t see the kinds of folks like the ones in Harris' home town (and there are millions of 'em, including my mom) paying much attention. The Bushite propapanda has taken root in their malleable minds, and it doesn't seem as though there's any room left for the truth.