Legacies and Legends
My mother spends a great deal of time watching Channel 61 on our cable system, the Catholic Global Television Network . She also spends a great deal of time trying to get me to watch it, and I spend a great deal of time making excuses about all the other things I have to do.
The other day, however, while I was over in her apartment, I caught an old segment of Mother Angelica facilitating a discussion of stem cell research. Now, my opinions these days are decidedly catholic and not at all Catholic. And so I have to admit that I didn't agree with most of what was said. However, I did get a kick out of Mother Angelica's quippy sense of humor. She reminded me of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who used to be on our old black and white tv in the early fifties. Like Mother Angelica, he knew how to play to an audience. They both used humor to make religious doctrine sound human and humane. It occurred to me, watching Mother Angelica perform, how much that approach appeals to the "childlike" in all of us. People of such uncritical faith seem to have remained innocent and childlike in ways that people like me turned way from for all kinds of personal and realistic reasons.
People like me look at Mother Angelica and see Granny Weatherwax. They are both the stuff of Croney female legacies and legends. And childlike fantasies. Their quirkinesses are appealing and disarming. Personally, I prefer Granny in terms of what lessons there are to learn about life. But if one is compelled to wear a black habit instead of a black pointy hat, she should take lessons from Mother Angelica.
Legacies and legends. I guess that's why I also like novelist Alice Hoffman, whose novel The Probable Future I just finished. It is a novel teeming with legacies and legends, and, like all of Hoffman's works, it opens up places in my poetic spirit that strict and traditional religion was never able to touch. Legacies and legends are powerful in their metaphor -- more powerful, for people like me, than any literal interpretations of life as we are supposed to know it.
And that's why I'm interested in seeing Mel Gibson's controversial movie, The Passion of the Christ.
I hadn't been paying much attention to the publicity about the movie, but when my phone rang at 11 p.m. Monday night and it was my mother excitedly telling me to put on Channel 61 (aarrggh), since I was up, I did. It was Mel Gibson being interviewed about the movie. What he said in that interview is pretty much what he's been saying in all interviews:
"Obviously, nobody wants to touch something filmed in two dead languages," Mel Gibson explained at a news conference …. . "They think I'm crazy, and maybe I am. But maybe I'm a genius.
"I want to show the film without subtitles," he added. "Hopefully, I'll be able to transcend language barriers with visual storytelling. If I fail, I'll put subtitles on it, though I don't want to."
"The idea came to me 10 years ago and has been rambling around in my empty head, very slowly taking shape ever since," Gibson said. "I think this is a pretty timeless and timely story to tell, involving an area where there's turbulence now just as there was turbulence then because history repeats itself."
"I want to show the humanity of Christ as well as the divine aspect," he continued. "It's a rendering that for me is very realistic and as close as possible to what I perceive the truth to be."
Gibson's last seven words, above, (hmm. Think of those Seven Last Words of Christ) are the point for me. "what I perceive the truth to be."
From where I sit, it's all headology -- our own or some sect's -- that propels us to what we choose to commend our spirit.
According to conservative columnist Brent Brizell*:
Gibson believes something different. For him, the time is right to reawaken a spiritually deadened culture to the inspiring story of Jesus as Lord -- not as some doubt-riddled horny carpenter, or some oh-so-hip gay swinger -- and to remind us all of the unbelievable suffering He endured to give an everlasting gift to the world.
Now, that's the legacy and legend to which Gibson chooses to commend his spirit. To him, it's literal. And, so it is to my mother, who wants to go to see the movie when it comes out. (I told her it's pretty graphic, but the fact is that her eyesight isn't very good these days anyway. And Gibson's flick has no understandable diaglog and that's OK since she doesn't hear that well either. Heh.)
And I want to see it for the metaphor. For the movie-making and risk-taking. For the legacies and the legends that have carried me from the days of the brilliantly amusing but stoically traditional Archbishop to my day today filled with the amusingly perceptive and outrageously ornery Granny Weatherwax. (I'm currently reading Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad.) It is my spirit, now, who commends them.
*I lost the link to this and now I can't find it again.
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Well, I fell for that one (see post below this one)
Damn. I almost always remember to check out www.snopes.com when I get emails that sound too good to be true. I dropped the ball on the Social Security Urban Legend that, as one of my weblog readers informed me via email, has been around since 2002. And I fell for it. Too eager to think the worst of our leaders. So much for Crone wisdom. Heh.
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Wishful thinking about Social Security.
Got this as an email. It's worth sharing, I think, even though there's not a chance in hell of anything ever being done to achieve equity.
SOCIAL SECURITY:
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years!
Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it.
You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan.
In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan.
For all practical purposes their plan works like this:
When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die! Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments.
For example, former Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives.
This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries.
Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives.
Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA....ZILCH....
This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds;
"OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK"!
From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, -every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer)- we can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement.
Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal SenatorBill Bradley's benefits!
Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.
That change would be to jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us ... then sit back and watch how fast they would fix it.
Heh. And just how likely is that to happen??
ADDENDUM: Please see comment below indicating that the above is not really true. The commentor points to links that can be used to verify the validity of such emailed information.
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We Got Gort
This today from non-blogger Mars-watcher myrln:
I think I know what's going on. The Martians have WMD (Weapons of Mission Destruction). I think we should immediately send troops (preferably Dumbya, Dickie, Rummy, and Asholecroft) w/o UN agreement along with Halliburton experts to find and destroy the weapons and capture Saddamars Holstein. Tom Ridge we have to keep here to protect the homeland from interplanetary terrorists such as Gort who was left behind by Klaatu when he left earth and is living in a undetermined secret location. (No, I'm not suggesting Dick Cheney is really Gort...altho'...?). Why do you think Dumbya was in Roswell yesterday. He knows cuz God told him (not meaning the god Mars who of course is not on our side in this interplanetary conflict). Barado nicto! Barada nicto!
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The Reel Deal; the Real Dean.
Someone finally did the smart thing -- they uploaded the video they took as one of the crowd during Howard Dean's speech. See what it was like for the people who were there, from their POV, and see how it's not what the media turned it into.
I got this from Werther Kems, who reports that Idiom Studio has posted the speech
as seen by a personal video camera out in the audience. It's available in three different formats, and two different sizes in each format.
It's an entirely different effect and experience. And it shows up the media for the unprofessional swamp it really is -- not that we needed yet another reminder, but they themselves certainly do. Let's see if any of them bother to play this personal in-the-crowd POV, this version which better serves the media's role to properly and accurately report the news.
Don't hold your breath. You don't look good bloated and blue.
Also, in an "Open Memo to Congressional Democrats," Kems spells out a five-part assignment that begins:
Since, as previously stated, politics is not merely some intellectual exercise, and since the stakes this time are so enormously high, and since no one is bothering to adequately provide the full context of the onslaught, and since your party is in dire need of appearing to actually comprehend the enormity of the situation, here's your assignment.
Read the audacious five-part assignment here.
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Dreaming Weird
Lindsay, over at Frog Star, is one of my every-day reads. She's young enough (under the right circumstances) to be my grandaugther, but I keep learning from what she writes. I'm going to follow up on this post of hers soon.
But meanwhile, she has a newer post about this unbelievably detailed dream that she had that reads like a sci-fi novel. I used to have dreams like that. Now, most of them, while rich with sound, color, and sensory details -- as well as convoluted plots -- all seem to be trying to say the same thing.
Last night, for example, I dreamed I was going back for a college reunion, only I lived near the campus, so I didn't have to stay overnight in the dorm. I did, however, bring a change of clothes. The only place I could change, however, was a coat room, and I started to try and do that. Only people get walking in as I had my shirt almost off. So I grabbed the clothes I wanted to change into against my chest (I was bare from the waist up) and went looking for a ladies room to change in. After walking around these wide public hallways for a while, I finally found one -- but the stalls were too small to change in, they were filthy, and all kinds of people kept walking in and out. At that point, I realized that I had to pee, but there was no way I would sit on any of the seats. (Actually, I really did have to pee in real life, but I remember thinking that I wanted to stay asleep so that I could resolve my dreaming dilemma.) So, I somehow found an empty dorm room and went in to change. But then I realized that I didn't have any underwear to change into, and the clothes I was carrying didn't fit me.
I went over to a telephone by the bed and tried to dial out for help. But I couldn't punch in all the numbers because most of them had been broken off and didn't work. And I really had to pee.
Suddenly, there was this cow (now, where the hell did she come from) in the room and she was was peeing all over the floor.
At that point, I made myself wake up and go to the bathroom. I never did get out of that room.
What's interesting is that I often dream of a college campus that's also like a big resort hotel and grounds. I always get lost -- can't get from where I am to where I want to go. Stairs that should get me from one floor to another end up in another building entirely. Same thing with elevators.
I have to stop having those late night snacks!
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Real People, Warts and All
Judith Steinberg Dean and her husband, Howard -- real people, warts and all. They care. They have passion for what they believe in. A Jewish wife and a Christian husband and somehow they work it out so everyone wins. Two demanding careers, and somehow they work it out so everyone wins. Two very different personalities, and somehow they work it out so everyone wins. Isn't it time that we had a president who's passionate to work things out?
I can't say it any better than Werther Kems, who has come to my attention through one of my West Coast contacts.
Here's a snippet from yesterday's post-Sawyer interview post:
Politicians, pundits, and press are scared out of their minds of an authentic populace roused to fight the good fight when none of them will. It's why barely a moment passed after the Iowa speech before it was seized upon as evidence of some sort of defect.
Authenticity is not a defect. Voice is not a defect. Passion is not a defect. Neither is a deep and abiding respect for one's supporters.
Co-opt the screech. Supporters need to make it mandatory at all campaign events. Admist the bellowing cheers and chants, masses of Dean supporters should swing their arms through the air and respond to their candidate's Monday yawp with one of their own, day after day, week after week, campaign stop after campaign stop.
Go and read the whole meme. And spread the word.
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Taking Back Our Democracy
In case you haven't read -- or don't plan to read -- Howard Dean's paper on reviving democracy and ending the role of big money in American Politics, at least take a look at these specific proposals of his:
1. Fix the Presidential Public Finance System. The current presidential campaign financing system is on the brink of failure because the incentives for candidates to participate are shrinking and their chances of election if they do may be hurt. Governor Dean will propose legislation to:
• Increase the public match. Match the first $100 of every donation on a five-to-one basis.
• Improve incentives for candidates to accept public funding. If one candidate opts out of public financing and exceeds the spending limits, his opponents should receive additional public funds to level the playing field.
• Raise the primary spending limits. Double the primary limit, placing it at the same level as limits for the general election. Candidates must opt in/out for both primary and general.
• Fix the funding mechanism. Too many people fail to check the box on their income tax forms because they incorrectly believe it will cost them more money. The amount should be raised from $3 to $5, and a program of public education should be started to explain what this program is all about: limiting the influence of big donors and special interests.
2. Public Financing Option for All Federal Elections. The same principles that govern public financing of presidential campaigns – spending limits and public funding, including the new multiple match rate – should apply to U.S. Senate and House elections too.
3. Offer a “Take Back Our Democracy” Tax Credit. Establish a dollar-for-dollar matching tax credit on the first $100 of every individual contribution made to a presidential candidate. This incentive would apply only to individuals making under $50,000 a year, or $100,000 in the case of joint filers.
4. Take Back the Public Airwaves. Reclaim the public airwaves by requiring that TV and radio broadcasters offer a few hours of civic broadcasting every week around election time. Low dollar contributions will be matched with advertising vouchers. This will be funded entirely by a small spectrum use fee – an entirely fair reclamation of the public airwaves.
5. Abolish the FEC and Start Over. All the reforms in the world will fail unless there is meaningful enforcement. With three commissioners from each party on a six-member panel, the commission repeatedly deadlocks on party lines, and fails to punish even egregious violations of the law. Governor Dean supports bipartisan legislation now before Congress to create a new, independent three-member Federal Election Agency, with administrative law judges to enforce the law objectively. In the meantime, he will appoint independent, tough-minded commissioners who will enforce the law in the public interest.
6. No More Hanging Chads. Reliability of voting systems is vital. Electronic voting may be the wave of the future, but these voting systems are susceptible to software glitches. Governor Dean supports pending legislation to require that all voting machines produce a paper record that voters can view to check the accuracy of their votes, and allow election officials to verify votes in the event of irregularities.
7. Embrace Non-Partisan Redistricting. In almost every state, politicians control the redistricting process. Only Iowa, Arizona and a handful of other states have chosen a different path: non-partisan redistricting. An expert body draws legislative maps that disregard partisanship and incumbency, creating compact and contiguous districts. Governor Dean will work to move every state toward non-partisan redistricting for congressional districts and to limit redistricting to once every ten years to prevent repetition of the debacles in Texas and Colorado. Citizens should choose their representatives instead of politicians choosing their voters.
8. Protect the Voting Rights Act. Protect the Voting Rights Act when it comes up for reauthorization in 2007. The Act contains key provisions protecting minority rights, and the Governor wants to retain what is best about the Act, and fight attempts to use the Act for partisan advantage.
9. A National Commission to Strengthen American Democracy. Governor Dean would establish a commission of ordinary Americans – not politicians – to consider such cutting edge ideas as instant runoff voting, internet voting and abolition of the Electoral College.
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A range of loyalties.
What does it mean to be loyal to an ideal? How about to the ideals of America? For Robert O'Neill, it meant whistle-blowing on the President and his Cabinet.
From Robert Reich's piece in Newsday:
The central question his book raises isn't really the loyalty a cabinet officer owes a president. It's the loyalty a president and his inner circle owe to the country and to its democracy. If O'Neill is telling the truth - and we have no reason to doubt his veracity - there's serious doubt about the loyalty of this administration to America.
Serious doubt? To me, there's no doubt.
In Britain, a woman loyal to the ideals of peace leaked documents to the U.N. that indicated the U.S. was getting ready to wage war.
From Bob Herbert's column in the NY Times today.
The plans, which included e-mail surveillance and taps on home and office telephones, was outlined in a highly classified National Security Agency memo. The agency, which was seeking British assistance in the project, was interested in "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals."
Countries specifically targeted were Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan. The primary goal was a Security Council resolution that would give the U.S. and Britain the go-ahead for the war.
Daniel Ellsberg, who got in trouble for leaking classified documents about the the Viet Nam War, is lending his support to Katherine Gun's case. Also from the Herbert's piece in the Times:
What I've been saying since a year ago last October," said Mr. Ellsberg, "was that I hoped that people who knew that we were being lied into a wrongful war would do what I wish I had done in 1964 or 1965. And that was to go to Congress and the press with documents. Current documents. Don't do what I did. Don't wait years until the bombs are falling and then put out history."
As far as I'm concerned, both Ellsberg and Gun, unlike our current American adminstration, are people of conscience, loyal to the principles of a peaceful humanity.
There is a dark side to loyalty, however, and Frank Paynter shines the spotlight on it here.
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Inspiration
Inspired by what I wrote here, this:
Texturized
My friend Joan
is quilting a portrait of me--
not a literal portrait,
but rather her impression
of who I am,
based on fifteen years
of knowing me.
I hope it's a little glittery,
with some snakeskin
nestled among
healing blues and greens,
certainly, a few ragged edges,
bits of leather and lace, and
one or two homely bows,
appropriate in their contradiction.
I will hang in on the wall
above my couch,
a mirror
and a wish.
copyright Elaine Frankonis 04
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Sitting in fields of gray.
"Swimming to Cambodia’s" Spaulding Gray is missing. He has a history of depression.
According to a piece at Salon.com,
"When I'm doing my monologue, I'm in my element" he said in a 1997 Associated Press interview. "I am most me when I'm on stage. I'm getting closer to enjoying life. I tell my edited life story with ... more energy than the way I live my life."
"I tell my edited life story with...more energy than the way I live my life." That’s pretty much how I feel about blogging. He would make a great blogger, doncha think?
One of my favorite TV characters is Maxine Gray of "Judging Amy." As that character, Tyne Daly jokes about not being ready to wear purple; as herself, "At 50, she shaved her head to signify rebirth for the second half of her life."
And in an interview, about her character’s sex life: "Oh, yes. Sex after 60 seems to be quite interesting to people. It's certainly interesting to me," Daly said. "So that's kind of cute. Although I also am interested in a woman at any stage of the game being a whole unto herself and not having to rely on a man . . . to validate her."
A definitively deliberate Crone.
It’s a gray day outside. I wish my kitchen had a window.
A Need to See
Kitchens should have windows,
double wide and Windexed clear,
if not into sunny vistas,
then at least into patches of sky
edging shadowy trees,
clumps of day lililies,
maybe a lilac bush
or two,
certainly a full bird feeder --
so that there is always
lilting movement in sight --
and an indoor sill
where seeds germinate
all year long
above the dregs
in the tea-stained sink.
copyright Elaine Frankonis 04
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Creating new lives.
My friend, Joan (who bought that funky fantasy painting) is also a fabric artist (quilting with applique and various embellishments). Her quilts are nothing like the traditional notion, and she has exhibited locally. She is a lawyer and is going to be retiring soon so will have lots of time on her hands. And her hands make magic out of fabric.
I have a Renoir print hanging over my couch that I've grown tired of. I bought it during my last relationship and it reminds me of a darker time; the mat is a dark green, so even the colors are too dark for where I hope I'm heading.
So I asked Joan, who's known me for almost 15 years, to make me a wall hanging. A portrait of me. Not a literal portrait, but her impression/expression of who I am based on all that she knows about me. I'd like it a little glittery. Maybe some snakeskin fabric nestled in among the blues and greens. A few buttons and bows thrown in, in appropriate contradiction.
Meanwhile, on February 1, we're going to do an official ritual unveiling of the fantasy painting. A little magical brunch. I, of course, will officiate. I think we should wear our Ya-Ya hats, we six who meet often for movies and mayhem.
Also meanwhile, I've been in contact with a woman who teaches "free-form knitting," which is something I want to learn, since I like to knit but want to do it with more creativity. I like clothes with varying textures. I am thinking that Joan and I should sell our unusual designs on the net. I already have a domain name. I just need a web site. I need someone to set up a simple web site with a template that I can just pop into and update, like I do my weblog. I've been trying to get b!X to set it up for me, but the truth is, while he's a definite Geek, he's not really a techie. And he's been really busy with his own projects. He would probably let me host it on his server.
Oh well, since I don't have any money to pay anyone to set up such a site for me, I guess that part will have to wait. Unless there's someone reading this who might like to help. For all I know, I could set up another MT blog and do it that way. Only I never set up this one, so I don't know how to do that either.
I love what this technology can do. I just don't have what it takes to learn how to make it do it. I looked at the MT manual, and it's all Geek to me. Hmmpff. I'm a writer, for goodness sake. I can interpret writing, but I can't interpret codes and the related acronyms.
Maybe in my next life. (Heh. I don't have that many left.)
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Moving Bush ON and OUT
Blog Sister and writer for the Portland Journal, Sheila Lennon, posts an excellent piece about the controversy over CBS not allowing MoveOn.org to air its anti-Bush advertisement just before the Super Bowl. Apparently, moving on, MoveOn has purchased ad time on CNN.
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No Flash in the Pan.
I sat down this afternoon and finished "The Adventures of Flash Jackson." (See previous post.) I couldn't put it down.
As the story pointed toward its closing, an older woman/mentor (Miz Powell) gives spunky, sassy, wild girl/woman Haley (AKA Flash Jackson) some advice that I just can't help sharing here:
"Don't be afraid to be all the things that a woman can be.... [snip]
"You can be a mother and still be Haley," she said. "You can cook dinner for your family and still be free. I'm not saying your life is going to be independent of the people involved in it. You have to make the right decision. But you can have a baby and still be yourself. You can fulfill traditional roles if you want to, without letting them define you. Who you are will change when you have childen, of course, but you could let it be an improvement, not a detraction."
"I don't mean to be rude, but how do you know all this? I [Haley] said. "You never did any of those things."
"No," she said. "What I have done is be a woman, with all my feminine qualities intact, in a world that was run completely by men. And you know something? They appreciated it. They didn't exactly move over and make room for me --I had to carve out my own space among them, but that was nothing different than any of them had had to do. That's something some women don't seem to understand. Nobody is accepted right away. Everyone has to prove themselves. The world will never make room for you-- you have to make it yourself. You have to make your own place, and stick to it. And there's nothing weak whatever about those same feminine qualities, Haley. That's what I want you to recognize. They are not a liability. They are a strength."
One would think that this novel was written by a woman, given the right-on Croney point of view, but it wasn't. And adding to my delight in the book, the author, William Kowalski, brings my favorite myth, Lilith, into Haley's final learning curve as the girl confronts her fear of snakes.
"The snake, she'd [Miz Powell] explained, is the oldest symbol of feminine power in the world. It's not a FEMALE power -- it's a FEMININE power. Miz Powell was very clear on this point, because men and women alike have feminine energies within them -- as well as masculine ones. People were too obsessed with gender these days, she said. Really, there weren't nearly as many differences between us as we like to pretend."
Who was this Lilith anyway? Miz Powell, ever the walking mythological dictionary, was only too happy to explain.....
[snip]
"Lilith has been many things, my dear," said Miz Powell. "There are goddesses similar to her in Hindu culture. The Israelites knew about her even when they were nothing more than a bunch of simple nomads, thousands of years ago. She is everywhere. She has a JOB."
"Which is?"
"She is that which does not surrender," said Miz Powell. "She is indomitable."
"In other words," I thought, "she is Flash Jackson."
Lilith and Kali. Miz Powell and Haley. And aspiring Crones. In Haley's own terminology: LEGITHATA (ladies extremely gifted in the healing and telepathic arts).
Why not?
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Winning one for the gaffer.
"You know what a gaffe is? A gaffe is when you tell the truth when the people in Washington don't think you should have."
I was told that Howard Dean said that. And also
"The President wants to go to Mars. I think Mars is a great idea... I think he should be the first to go."
I actually contributed to moveon.org's campaign to get the winner of its "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest on as the first ad on before the Super Bowl.
It's well worth watching all 26 of the finalists in this ad contest. If you can't get to all of them, be sure to see the winner.
My personal fave is the "Hood Robbin'" entry.
Let's hope it all works to win one for the truth-telling gaffer.
Go Dean!
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The Adventures of Flash Jackson
"Flash Jackson doesn't give a flying fart what's ladylike and what isn't" states the main character of this novel by William Kowalski that I'm recommending even though I'm only half way through.
First of all, the main character is a spunky, sassy, horse-riding 17-year-old 0ld-Soul girl who lives in rural upstate New York and whose grandmother, a Mennonite, lives in a shack in the woods where she brews up herbs and other witchy things.
Secondly, this girl's best friend is a 28-year old diagnosed (perhaps not totally accurately) schizophrenic who can't dream and who has the mind of a young boy. During one of his "episodes," as he stands with the girl before an open field, he says that he wants to build a theater there. He says:
"This will be a place where people can come and tell their stories. They've been silenced, Haley. It's not right . Someone has to help them get their voice back, and I'm going to do it. [snip]
"Someone has to give them their voice back, or I don't know what will happen. But it'll be bad. It's already bad. And it's going to get worse.......The state of communication in the world today," he said, "is very very bad......I'll build the theater and they can come from all over. People from the whole world can come right here, and they can get onstage and tell everyone their story, and then things will be okay again. People will understand each other."
That resonated for me with what Ken Camp has posted about today and also what Jeneane once envisioned (a kind of bloggers encampment). This is it, the stage from which people tell their stories. Blogs. The understanding is happening. Slowly, maybe, but it's happening.
Take heart, Shelley, wherever you are.
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ditto
This is a Reader's Comment on BuzzFlash (I don't have the link because it was emailed to me without one.)
The Hypocrisy of Bush Investigations
A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
It amazes me the difference in how the administration requests investigations and tries to file criminal charges to anyone that is not agreeing with their views, but how much they drag their feet to the investigations that are important to the American people, like the 9/11 case or the CIA's agent name leak....I pray that before November many more Americans follow their conscience and bring to light all the irregularities of the current administration.
Another thing that really amazes me is the fact that the Republicans have been saying for the last years that Clinton was not impeached because of the affair but the fact that Clinton LIED about it.....are our troops being killed and maimed because of the TRUTH relevant to the WMD? ...Just asking.
Helloooooo......does impeachment apply in this case?
ditto...ditto...ditto...ditto...ditto...ditto...ditto...ditto
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Deaf, blind and mute.
From the end of Paul Krugman's piece in the NY Times today about the awful truths coming out in Ron Suskind's new book "The Price of Loyalty:"
The question is whether this book will open the eyes of those who think that anyone who criticizes the tax cuts is a wild-eyed leftist, and that anyone who says the administration hyped the threat from Iraq is a conspiracy theorist.
The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting better. How can Howard Dean's assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn't made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a "detour" that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O'Neill's revelations?
So far administration officials have attacked Mr. O'Neill's character but haven't refuted any of his facts. They have, however, already opened an investigation into how a picture of a possibly classified document appeared during Mr. O'Neill's TV interview. This alacrity stands in sharp contrast with their evident lack of concern when a senior administration official, still unknown, blew the cover of a C.I.A. operative because her husband had revealed some politically inconvenient facts.
Some will say that none of this matters because Saddam is in custody, and the economy is growing. Even in the short run, however, these successes may not be all they're cracked up to be. More Americans were killed and wounded in the four weeks after Saddam's capture than in the four weeks before. The drop in the unemployment rate since its peak last summer doesn't reflect a greater availability of jobs, but rather a decline in the share of the population that is even looking for work.
More important, having a few months of good news doesn't excuse a consistent pattern of dishonest, irresponsible leadership. And that pattern keeps getting harder to deny.
As Paul O'Neill described, Bush and his Cabinet are deaf and blind. And, it seems, too many Americans stand mute. Feh.
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Word Bowl Poem
One of the other exercises we did in the writing session Sunday at the Glass Lake Studio (see post below) involved picking a handful of words out of a bowl full of all kinds of words that were cut out of various publications and/or printed out on small strips of paper. The idea is to use whatever words you have in your handful and turn them into a poem. Here's what I wound up with, which came out amazingly coherent. (The words that chose me from the word bowl are bolded.)
Why waltz, I asked,
when you can whirl like a dervish,
so alive in group travels
into a common center of gravity.
This is not an orderly universe,
after all,
no easy sojourn.
So much happens behind our backs,
after all.
Why waltz,
husbanding that obscenity of repetition,
that age-old rustle
of corrupt fascism?
Instead,
germinate, condense, enthuse,
embrace like a shark,
like loping sailbirds,
foretelling the integrity
of feeling lost in the stacks.
Isn't that cool??!!
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Mything pieces
I remember a little boy
with a heavy brow
that framed a steady gaze.
I don’t remember where I lost him.
Maybe
it was at that fuel pump,
where I absentmindedly drove off,
only to see him, in hindsight,
running down the road after me,
crying. Both of us
crying.
Maybe
it was during that black and white
winter night, when
the only light was the moon on snow,
and I left him, alone
not knowing that the dark house
would overtake him.
Maybe
I didn’t really lose him.
Maybe
it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that
I still dream about
a little boy with a radiant brow
and a deep gaze,
who reaches and needs
and fades away.
Sometimes stories tell better when you start at the end. The poem above is at the end of a story with a series of intersecting and synchronistic threads. I wrote it yesterday at an afternoon of exercises in poetry writing at the Glass Lake Studio. I went to try to prime the pump. The assignment was to write a poem that began with "I remember..."
During the several days before that writing session, I had been researching the myth of Kerridwen (or Cerridwen), mother to Taliesin, legendary poet of ancient Wales, whose name means "radiant brow."
I found the image on one of the greeting cards in a package that my friend Joan gave me to thank me for clearning up the mystery about her newly acquired fantasy painting.
Here's the image from the card as well as a photo of a scultpure, both depicting Kerridwen and her cauldron.
The image of the scultpure is from here.
from here
Ceridwen
aka 'Cerridwen', 'Keridwen', 'Kerridwen', the 'Goddess of the Cauldron', the 'Goddess of Inspiration'.... reputed to be associated with Welsh sixth-century bard 'Taliesin' when she is described as guarding the magical cauldron, ...... giving birth to Taliesin (See Taliesin). She is associated with magic and the power of transformation. Described as a Welsh crone.......
A myth that speaks to me, certainly.
According to the web site that features the sculpture,
Cerridwen's cauldron is an ancient feminine symbol of renewal, rebirth, transformation and inexhaustible plenty . It is the primary female symbol of the pre-Christian world, and represents the womb of the Great Goddess from which all things are born and reborn again . Like the Greek Goddess, Demeter, and the Egyptian Goddess, Isis, Cerridwen was the great Celtic Goddess of inspiration, intelligence and knowledge, and was invoked as a law-giver and sage dispenser of righteous wisdom, counsel and justice. .......
The ancient cauldron of the Goddess was reinvented, by patriarchy, as the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend , and was transformed into a solar symbol, the Chalice used by Yeshua, or Jesus Christ, at the Last Supper . Very little of its mystical meaning was changed, however, and it is still, today, a symbol of enlightenment and spiritual transformation.
OK. So it's obvious why I feel an affinity for Kerridwen -- all that crone and cauldron stuff, you know.
But that's not the half of it. The other half is the story of her and her son, Taliesin. While Kerridwen did not go about the process of mothering in the most nurturing ways, in the end, Taliesin turns out even better than fine.
.....Some legends indicate that Taliesin was indeed the same character as Gwion. The transformations experienced to escape Ceridwen indicate a similar process to the believed transformation events that happened to ancient poets. Due to the effect of the Cauldron of inspiration, Gwion's ability to change form, led to him changing completely, giving him considerable knowledge about the past, present and future, and therefore able to return with the birth of a new child Taliesin.......
It has always fascinated me that, at various ponderous points in my life, I stumble upon some old myth that helps me to magically transform the ponder into wonder.
In the seventies and eighties, it was Lilith. Today, it's Kerridwen.
As I go along, I try to gather up what info I can about pre-Christian Poland, just to see if I can find myths that are based in my own heritage. What good stuff I've found has been at Okana's, somwhere in which there's mention of a strong Celtic influence on the ancient Slavs. So maybe Kerridwen is closer to my own racial memory than I thought.
Kerridwen -- crone, cauldron stirrer, dispenser of righteous wisdom; an intense mother who loves her children beyond measure but made mistakes doing what she felt she had to do; a mother whose radiantly browed son became legendary as a writer of wisdom.
No wonder I dream Kerridwen's dreams.
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Why Not Make It Sew?
Did you ever notice that kids' clothes are imprinted with all of these cute images -- Elmo, trucks, cats.... But when the kid wearing the clothes looks at the images, they're upside down. So, I decided to put some upside down trucks on some shirts that I bought for my grandson, since he likes trucks. Now he can enjoy looking at the trucks on his shirt, and everyone else can just enjoy looking at him.
Here's one of the shirts with a truck that's upside down to us but right side up to him.
So, when you see stuff like that coming out in stores, you now know where they stole the idea. You saw it here first.
Addendum/correction: [see comments below] -- The idea for a Baby's Eye View design of children's clothes was, indeed, my daughter's. I just had the time, materials, and machinery to make it sew. I forgot to remember to include that very important fact. ;-(
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Another Example of Why I Love the Net.
A few days ago, a friend of mine (who doesn't use the Net) called and asked me to do her a favor. She had bought a fantasy painting at an antique store and wanted to find out if it's an original. She asked me to track down the artist's web site and send her an email and ask if the signed painting is, indeed, hers.
As a result, I had fun email conversation with Marianne Plumridge, the fantasy artist, who was almost positive that she never sold that painting and it was stored somewhere in her house. Finally, her husband (an award-winning fantasy illustrator, himself) remembered that she did sell the painting a while ago (when they were at a fantasy convention in Albany) when "a little old man of slightly timid aspect turned up at the last moment and bought it." Which fit in with what the antique dealer told Joan about getting the painting as part of the estate sale of a man who collected fantasy paintings.
Here's an image of "Kitnapped."
Now, you have to understand that my friend Joan loves cats and has taken in several strays. She's also a vocal feminist and has fun with the rituals that I do. Luckily, her live-in boyfriend is easy-going about Joan's obsessions, although he's not sure that Kitnapped is what he wants to look at all the time hanging over the mantle in the living room. Heh.
So, now I'm working on an unveiling ritual for the painting, which certainly will have to involve swords and fur. :-)
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The One True b!X is going to Mars.
Well, his name is anyway.
When my son b!X was about four years old, he decided that he was going to grow up to be a space moving van driver, and his interest in space exploration has not waned. Check out his new weblog, The One True b!X's Mars or Bust, Wherein the one-time wannabe outer space moving van driver (helping to move families into orbit) engages in part-time obsessing over exploration of the Red Planet.
Man, I love my kids!! They're just about the most interesting people I know.
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Searchin' Safari
It often starts with a email. Some reference to an idea or a happening or piece of writing I didn’t know about. And then I'm off and virtually running as it progresses into a major searchin' safari – sometimes out of vague curiosity, sometimes out of a gut feeling that there's something I'm supposed to find out about and I need to make an effort and climb out whatever window someone else opened for me.
This time is was an email about a workshop that my therapist friend is leading out at the Rowe Conference Center in MA next month. I've been to Rowe before when he did a session several years ago. So I got on the Rowe website to figure out if I might want to go to this one. Nope. While I appreciate and often refer to Greek myth and such, that approach doesn’t speak to me as clearly as other, earlier, more earthy, versions. But while I was there in spirit, I figured I’d see what else Rowe was offering.
Aha. This "Mysticism: Birthright of the Heart" sounds kind of interesting. I am, after all, a professed "spiritual seeker" (see above, way above).
Hmm. Who's this Will Keepin who's running the workshop. Over to Google (don't forget to put the quotations marks are "Will Keepin" or you get way off the track).
Well, look at this, if that ain't right up and down my alley!
Will Keepin, Ph.D.,President and Executive Director. Will co-founded the Satyana Institute in 1996, and has been developing its Gender Reconciliation work since 1982, and its Leading with Spirit work since 1996. Originally trained in mathematical physics, and later in transperonal psychology, Will’s professional background began in environmental science. He was research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) near Vienna, Austria where he led an exposé of a major scientific research program that was biased to favor nuclear power. The inside story behind this work is featured in the recent book The Cultural Creatives, by Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson (Harmony Books, 2000). Will became research scholar at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and was later Hewlett Fellow at Princeton University. He joined the Rocky Mountain Institute, and subsequently became consulting physcist to the Energy Foundation, whose founding documents he co-authored. His work on global warming and renewable energy has influenced energy policy debates in several countries. He has published over 30 articles and was a consulting editor for ReVision...... [snip]
Will is co-author of the forthcoming book, Gender Reconciliation: The Spiritual Alchemy of Collective Healing between Women and Men.
He's into Physics and Gender Reconciliation -- the same kind of mix of things that I like to get mixed up in.
Oh, look at this about the co-author.
Molly Dwyer, MA, Ph.D (Cand), Vice President and Associate Director. As co-director of Satyana’s Gender Reconciliation Project, Molly has been involved in developing and facilitating gender reconciliation work since 1998. With an interdisciplinary MA in Creative Writing, Psychology and English, Molly’s background is as an educator, journalist and creative artist. She taught composition and creative writing at the college level for ten years, and then studied for three years with cosmologist Brian Swimme at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she is completing her Ph.D. in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness. Molly’s cosmological inquiry into the role of the feminine in the evolution of the universe The Emergent Feminine won the 1999 Vickers Award from the International Society for the Systems Sciences. During the 1980’s Molly worked as a journalist for the San Francisco Bay Guardian,and as promotional director for the Academy Award winning, anti-nuclear film, Women for America, For the World. Molly was a delegate at the 1987 International Women’s Conference on Peace and Justicein Moscow...... [snip]
Molly is co-author of the forthcoming book Gender Reconciliation: The Spiritual Alchemy of Collective Healing between Women and Men.
I sure am interested in her paper "The Emergent Feminine" that the web site says I can't quote or cite. I think I'll contact her and see if I she'll let me. Meanwhile, I'm going to go back and read what's there.
And Keepin's workshop on Mysticism at Rowe? Well, it depends on the weather, my finances, the cost, my mother, my energy level, and other options for that last weekend in January. The odds are, no. The evens are that I'm going to check out more on this gender reconciliation business. Well, not the "business" of it, 'cause like most therapeutic "movements" someone is trying to make money on it. I want to check out the theory and practice. And the relationship to alchemical processes. Heh. Heh. Headology!
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ARE YOU DEAF????
In November, don't forget: he knew. The following from near the end of a piece by William Pitt in Truthout.
George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn't have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.
Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew.
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Spirit and Opportunity
Spirit and Opportunity. I think that’s what we all need to take up as our rallying cry for this new year – big picture and little picture.
Spirit and Opportunity. These are the names of the two space rovers that will reveal to us the secrets of our mysterious neighboring planet, Mars. Spirit is there already, readying to begin its exploration of the alien terrain. Later this month, Opportunity will land on the other side of the planet to see what’s brewing – or more accurately what once might have been brewing so far from our oversight. Together they are the symbols of our best hopes for this new year. As non-blogger myrln emailed: Yup...we sent a golf cart to Mars, dropped it from a couple thou miles and nothing broke! And how we managed to do that is the topic of what I have on my tv right now.
Spirit and Opportunity. Howard Dean offers us both. As I listened to the Democratic hopefuls debate the issues today in Iowa, while I heard Edwards say things I liked, it’s still Howard Dean who embodies the spirit of what I think my country should exhibit and who believes in the same opportunities for equality and freedom and prosperity and security as I. I applaud the efforts of my fellow bloggers who are taking opportunities to literally spread the Dean spirit.
Opportunity and Spirit. That’s what I’m looking toward to help me keep doing what I’ve made a commitment to do – be my mother’s caregiver. Tonight, I watched a program on public television about caregivers who are responsible for older people with dementia. My mother is in the very early stages of that but, of course, she won’t admit it. What I’m committed to doing for myself this new year is taking opportunities to keep my spirit up, to keep my own aging brain stimulated. Beginning this Tuesday, I’m joining a group of poets who meet twice a month to share, suggest, stimulate, and inspire. (I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about writing a series of “Old Lady Rap” poems but I can’t seem to get myself rolling on it; maybe a poets’ group will help the spirit move me.) On Saturday, I’m going to take a “Contemplative Movement” workshop (meditation through movement), which I figure is good for both my body and psyche. And, on Sunday I’m going over to an expressive arts therapy center to so something artsy and creative and expressive and totally useless except as a therapeutic outlet for my spirit.
Spirit and Opportunity. I’ve enjoyed both over at Wealth Bondage as I added my croney comments to the spirited words of Jon of wiredarchy and the venerable Happy Tutor. I had an opportunity to speak my piece about issues that I care about but only understand from the context of my limited experience. More importantly, I had an opportunity to interact with minds and ideas whose paths I don’t have a chance to cross in the Real World. To try to get more voices over there (to add to my opportunities for learning), I post here my last two comments:
..."the need for basic education, training, and self-management within a system offering opporutunity for advancement and incentives for productive work."
Sure, and we also have to figure out how to convince the currently young, poor, angry, have-nots, lacking in nurturing and/or productive role models to believe it's worth following the dream that begins with basic education and sprouts both its roots and wings in meaningful and productive work.
AND, (and as someone whose career was in the field of education, from classroom teaching, to teacher training, to statewide policy development [the last uniquely unsuccessful]) the really big "AND" for me has to do with how we define and provide "basic" education. Before kids will do well at learning the basic 3Rs, they first need to have some help developing the even more basic 4 Cs: curiosity, cooperativeness, confidence, and compassion. People who have those basic human skills can't be stopped from learning and producing. They will seek out the training they need; they learn from experience; and they develop an understanding of themselves in relation to the rest of the world.
I think of my two offspring, both of whom hated school, dropped out of college, and continue to live their lives following their blisses, which always have much to do with ongoing learning and productivity and with "paying forward" into society from the heart of their 4C "education."
(BTW, the Holy Grail of my professional life was the integration of the arts and hands-on learning into all aspects of classroom and other learning -- the idea being that each person has his/her own way of opening up to the pleasures of learning, and the arts provide another window into learning everything from math and science to history and language skills. And there is a growing role for technology in taking the arts into a whole new universe for creative self-expression.)
And Jon, I have found that what a system needs to be productive is strong, visible leaders/role models who are skilled in the 4Cs (see above), implementers who share the values of the leaders, and fair basic guidelines/rules with a way to enforce consequences for those who flagrantly disregard those rules. Now, I admit that works well with small systems, and the Net is anything but small.
Many super large public schools, who previously used consolidation to achieve what they hoped would be cost-effectiveness, have found that, in terms of effective teaching and learning, it all works better with small "schools within schools," "houses," that share the costs of some basic operational necessities but where students can learn in a more manageable (for them) environment where they feel more secure, protected, and have a chance to feel part of a productive and interactive community.
It seems to me that bloggers, in a sense, have done that with the Net -- carved out a piece of it for themselves that is manageable and where they have a chance to feel part of productive community. But they share the fundamental services and operational necessities that power the net as a whole.
Maybe that's what has to happen to the Net -- some sort of re-construction into smaller loosely joined "houses." Not that I have any idea how that might be done! It's f**ing anarchy out here!!
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Stop here and then go there.
There's a discussion ongoing at The Happy Tutor's here that's worth checking out. I just posted the 26th comment (which I'm repeating here -- with added links and other info). Go on over and add your 2 cents. You don't have to be a blogger to participate. Just click on Comments and go from there.
I'm not going to able to catch up with all of the great points of this discussion, but at least I want to say that my Dad sounds like he was very much like Debbie's. My life would be very different today if my Mom had passed away first.
And Robert Bly has tried to give men a sense of how they might create an archetype that works for them like the "crone" works for older women -- some model that incorporates the male version of the most inspiring and humane human traits. [Robert Moore did some interesting work on that too.]
Some of us older women latched onto the crone vision because it concisely captured the fact that we don't have to be disempowered and disenfranchised as we get older. As men get older, there's lots of support to continue reinforcing their Alpha Male daydreams (viagra et al). Unless they suffer some great catastrophe, those kinds of men continue to feel a certain level of empowerment. So there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for those men to think that they would be better off somehow if they let go of that vision of empowerment and tried the other version, the one that many (some?) women have discovered works for them.
I was thinking last night about what kind of world this might have been if men (in general) had not had the advantage of size and strength and the added alpha male fuel of testosterone. Suppose those male-associated qualities never existed. Suppose the world had remained deferential to the life-giving, nurturing [and cthonic] capacities of the female.
Camille Paglia speculates about this in her books, and I don't totally disagree with her. We might not have built skyscrapers, but we probably would have fewer wars. (She uses the way men and women pee as a great metaphor for pretty much all gender differences. Think about it.)
If "women's ways" dominated the development of human culture, we might not have gone to the moon or out into space, but we probably would have fewer homeless, starving people. Or maybe not. Maybe we would have had it all. Maybe we still can.
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Speaking of Crones
(photo by Shelley Powers) Burningbird: Borders, Boundaries, and Birds
I love this photo and what Shelley wrote about taking it.
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Y'all Come.
Over on Wealth Bondage, The Happy Tutor picks up on some things I said in my previous post and starts what I would love to see become a lively discussion over there. So, go on over and stick it to someone. Or at least stick in some good sense with your two cents.
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Full Face into the New Year
Like just about everyone else, at the end of each old year I make resolutions that, of course, I don't keep. This year I ended the old year a step ahead of the game and began keeping my most important resolution: to go out and get a life. (Note, for those who don't know: being responsible for the health and well-being of my 87-year old mother and living across the hall from her has been more of a drain on my energies than I expected.)
So, on the afternoon of the last day of the old year I accepted an invitation from the publisher to gather with his staff of the NY Dance Scene magazine, for which I was the editor and primary feature writer when I was still ballroom dancing. The magazine is almost finished moving from print to web format, and I think it looks great online. My name is still listed in the "About Us" section (although misspelled; I've got to remind them to correct that) because I condense and provide the condensed chapters of a mystery novel set at a ballroom dance weekend in the Catskills that a former SO of mine wrote (and I edited -- and inspired, btw!) It's a good story, I think, and the magazine intends to eventually get the entire (condensed version) novel online.
The point is that I got my sorry self dressed and coiffed and out of the house and thoroughly enjoyed the company of these interesting people. (I even got to explain to them about weblogging, since, although net-literate, most are not blog-literate.) I might even join some of them in a Quick Step dance class that recently started. I'm not bad at basic Quick Step, and maybe I'll give it a shot and see how my herniated disc problem (much relieved because of Core Physical Therapy) stands up to the challenge.
After that, I made dinner for my mom and two long-time (also divorced) women friends and the three of us set out to see a movie. I should have remembered how packed the movie theaters are on New Year's Eve. The only movie we wanted to see that wasn't sold out was Cold Mountain, and I'm glad we were forced into that option. While I wanted to see a comedy so that I could laugh through the end of the old, battered year, instead I found myself wrapped in a stunning reminder that human life, indeed, is often more tragedy than comedy BUT -- and that's a very big BUT -- it's also what we make of it despite the pain and longing and frequent unfairness of it all. A reminder that families are both blood and brotherhood (and sisterhood, of course, but that didn't alliterate or assonate).
Nicole Kidman's character makes a statement that I wished I had thought to write down (one of my friends has the book and is going to try to find it for me). It has something to do with weather and rain and men making it and then complaining about it.
When I got back from the movies, I got online and discovered that The Happy Tutor had gone and really ended my year on the best note I could have hoped for. Please do go read the really neat stuff he said about me. When the great glittering Times Square ball slid down into a new year, I felt on top of the world.
Feeling a little bad about the trouncing I gave Rage Boy, I emailed him a carefully composed collage/image wishing him a Happy New Year to "the revered resident dickhead of Blogdom."
Despite the fact that much of what Chris Locke posts leaves me completely disinterested, the fact also is that usually, somewhere in all the crap, are ideas that get me thinking. As he continues to weave himself (and his readers) into the Gordian knot of psychobabble R&D, he currently is attaching himself to some theories of "Attachment" -- something I'm interested in because my daughter has read all the stuff on Attachment Parenting and is following that child-rearing approach. I wish I could make some sense of Locke's post on the Attachment theory because I'm not sure I understand if the research shows that it's good or bad in the long run. I suppose I could track down and read a copy of the book he recommends, The Handbook of Attachment, but I'm really not in the mood to wade through that kind of academic tome. I wish that Chris' efforts to make sense of it all were written in a way that makes sense to less brilliant (but equally eager) minds like mine.
It's the first day of the New Year, and I'm following through on my second resolution: to write. (Remember, the first was to go out and get a life; I suppose they're related.) My third is not to spend any money on new clothes but to re-make the ones I have to better suit my mood and lifestyle. (I LOVE clothes -- colors, textures, lines; to me they're wearable art.)
That's what I'm off to start doing now, after I remove all the odds and ends of clothes that are piled on top of my dusty sewing machine.
Happy New Year, everyone of my blood and brotherhood (and sisterhood, but that doesn't alliterate or assonate. Heh.)
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