Saved by Mary Oliver
I've been imprisoned in my mother's apartment all day, while she vomits, sleeps, gives orders in inaudible mumbles, and clangs my lovely Tibetan bell (which is the only one we have) for my attention -- and I start making phone calls to locate home health care aides and talk to her doctor. Actually, it's the stupid Darvocet that's upsetting her stomach and making her feel woozy. No more of that stuff for her!
In between, I read Mary Oliver.
From the end of "In Blackwater Woods":
[snip]
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
From the middle of "Entering the Kingdom":
[snip]
The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees --
To learn something by seeing nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention.
[snip]
One of my close woman friends is coming over to stay with my mom on Thursday evening so that I can go to the first session of the Advanced Poetry Workshop into which I was accepted. Whether I will be able to continue after that remains to be seen.
Mary Oliver writes of wild geese and peonies and moonlight and snakes and stones and egrets and more moons. Despite what Rage Boy might believe or not believe, moons are not just for witches.
From the end of "Strawberry Moon":
[snip]
Now the women are gathering
in smoke-filled rooms,
rough as politicians,
scrappy as club fighters.
And should anyone be surprised
if sometimes, when the white moon rises,
women want to lash out
with a cutting edge?
And now, back to life as I live it, hoping my words will come with time.
Categories:
wheelchairs and woe is me
What I want to do is sit here and escape into the blog. But my mom has a severely pinched nerve and is on major pain killers and pretty much wheelchair bound for the duration.
Gotta eat. Clean up my messes. Make sure she eats, takes her meds, doesn't cry too much.
Gotta hang up my clothes. Do my dishes. Eat. Try not to cry too much.
No escaping now.
Categories:
How do you become...
How do you become......
best blog in the state
something Great
a valuable public service
must-read source
in other words,
How do you become theonetruebix?
I ponder this question as I study his photo, which appeared on the front page of The Oregonian kitty-corner from Condoleeza Rice's.
According to my personal and precise recollections, among other imaginative things, you have to
-- come into this world vocalizing before you're even all the way out of your mother
-- get accepted into a Montessori pre-school when you're 2.5 years old because you're already reading
-- become addicted to comic books and sci fi before you even start Kindergarten
-- want to be a space moving van driver when you grow up
-- from age 6 on, never be without a book of some sort in your back pocket
-- dislike school but love to investigate and create
-- grow up in a room that a set designer painted to look like the Star Trek bridge
-- manage to get an excuse from gym class
-- use one of the first Macs to write, publish, and distribute an underground newspaper while in high school
-- never get a driver's license or learn to drive
-- get arrested on high school graduation night for shooting off firecrackers
-- apply to only one college and get accepted based on your application essay
-- get written up in the NY Times while in college for helping to stage a kind of "art is for the people" protest on campus
-- churn out an underground newspaper in college
-- quit college and spend some time in Texas, Minnesota, New York City, and San Francisco and do all the traveling by bus
-- get written up by Rolling Stone as one of the dozen twenty-somethings trying to change the world
-- wear black and shave your head
-- convince a couple of girls you meet over the Internet to rent a truck and move you from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon
-- use money that your grandfather left when he passed away to buy an internet cafe in Portland and then realize that you're not cut out for the business world
-- try many times and without success to get a job at Powell's books
-- keep shaving your head and wear hats
-- spend a couple of years earning some money being a "nanny" and father-figure to a little boy/child of a working single-mom friend
-- discover the joys of weblogging early in the game and convert your mother to the cause
-- find your bliss -- although not your fortune -- as a citizen journalist and get profiled by The Oregonian.
Oh. And also
-- give your mother heartburn, gray hairs, bad dreams, and lots of reasons to be plenty proud, amazed, and teary-eyed.
Check out
The One True b!X's PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE: Open Thread For 'Oregonian' Story
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"Portland e-citizen doggedly chronicles local government"
Citizen e-journalist b!X is profiled today in a lengthy piece in The Oregonian.
[snip]His real name is Christopher Frankonis, but everyone who's anyone in Portland political circles knows him simply as b!X. And during the past year and a half, this college dropout with no journalism experience has become the must-read source for those who follow city government.[snip]
But unlike most bloggers, who typically link to previously reported material and then offer their own analysis, b!X is unusual because he's going out and doing his own legwork. Armed with a black spiral notebook, a laptop and a homemade press pass, the admittedly shy and soft-spoken Frankonis has become a familiar face at City Council hearings, county task force meetings and news conference crushes, quietly forging something that is one step beyond the Fourth Estate. [snip]
In fact, what some fans love about b!X (who, when he could afford cable, watched C-Span and the NASA channel incessantly) is his painstakingly thorough coverage of meetings and hearings that would hardly warrant two paragraphs in most newspapers -- what City Commissioner Erik Sten, a faithful "Portland Communique" reader ("Everybody at City Hall reads b!X"), calls the "tidbits of news you don't get other places." [snip]
By the time the debate finished at 8:40 p.m., he had logged an 11-hour day. He had ridden six buses, downed five cups of coffee, smoked about 71/2 cigarettes and written one story. He had made no money. [snip]
Ya' gotta love him!
Now help us find someone who loves what he does enough to pay him to do it!!
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Some things are worth causing a stir about.
My local paper has the story on the hard copy front page, but I can't find any link to it on their online version.
So, here's congratulations to my friends Elissa Kane and Lynne Lekakis who were married by a Unitarian minister in a controversial same-sex marriage ceremony here in Albany yesterday. There's a great photo of Elissa (with Lynne and their 9 year old daughter) holding up her arm in the power salute. I worked alongside Elissa for more than a decade and remember when her daughter was born. We got along well and got a lot accomplished because we both liked to stir things up, but we knew how to do it with political and personal style and tact. And Lynne is one of the best West Coast Swing leaders I've ever danced with. You go, girls!!
The online newspaper does link to Ellen Goodman's column today, which is about all the fuss that Michael Newdow is stirring up in the Supreme Court about separating out that "under God" inserted for "Cold War" propaganda purposes and mucking up our American commitment to the separation of church and state. She ends with:
What a pain this Michael Newdow is. Who needs this in the middle of an election? Why stir up the culture wars? Why make such a big deal of two little words? Aren't there bigger fish to fry?
Here's the problem. God save this honorable court (oops), Newdow is right.
Hee hee. Cackle cackle. Double double, toil and trouble..... Some pots you just gotta keep stirring.
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Too soon old, too late smart.
I say that a lot these days.
I wish I had been smart enough at a much earlier point in my life to develop some sense of self-discipline. Then I would be able to restrain myself from stirring sticks in ant hills (metaphorically, that is).
I wish I were smart enough to recognize that if angels are not treading, then I sure should keep away. That statement's in reference to responding to group emails I should ignore and then linking to the sender, who, I should know by now, will only respond on his blog the way he always does. (No link here; no foolrushing this time. While there are times that a good verbal battle gets my juices going, this is not one of those times.)
Blogging, for many of us, is such a self-serving egocentric pastime. (I'm including myself that that reflection.)
For me, I think I blog because it's about the only place in my life where I can be self-serving and egocentric. I sit here struggling to decide whether to take my mom to the emergency room (where she insists, in tears, that she doesn't want to go) or call her primary doctor tomorrow and see if I can get her an appointment. She likes her doctor, who's female and my daughter's age, and shares with other elderly patients my (literally) sage -- and successful -- formula for getting my mother's hair to stop falling out. She hugs my mom after every office visit and gives her a kiss on the cheek. Ah yes, flies with honey. Much better than ants with sticks.
I have three days of dishes in the sink and my fabric boxes are in upheaval all over my bedroom because my mom asked me to tinker with her lumbar support belt and add a piece because it was too tight. Heh. Of course, I did, and it works. These days, I am the mother of invention.
I think that some bone in my mom's lumbar spine must have been injured somehow. With the kind of severe osteoporosis she has, all she has to do is twist and a bone could break. I borrowed a wheel chair from a friend whose mother passed away a couple of years ago, and at least my mom feels less in pain when she's sitting it in.
What to do? What to do? No linking to other bloggers, that's for sure.
Do the dishes while my mother sleeps. Clean up my mess. Don't make any more. Breathe.
Categories:
On being a tinkerer.
Maybe it has something to do with control issues. Maybe it’s a matter of always trying to achieve a personal vision. Maybe it just means that I like to play. Whatever it means, it means that I waste of lot of time on projects that don’t work.
I buy unusual clothes on sale and not my size because I figure I’ll re-make them into something that suits me. It only works half the time. I find interesting recipes and then add, subtract, and substitute until I have something either exquisite or inedible. I find patterns for knitted and crochet items that I like and then change the yarn and needle size so that I have to figure out a revised gauge and then do a lot of ripping out and re-doing.
I write a poem and then fiddle with, remove, replace, insert and otherwise tinker with words until, like all my other projects, I either embrace what it has become or else throw it away.
I tinker with everything in my life unless it/they is/are close to my heart. Those things and people I take as they are. Or at least I try.
Sort of related to this whole idea of tinkering is Rage Boy. I haven’t picked on him in a while, and I probably wouldn’t except that I’m on an email list of his, and I can’t resist reading what he sends.
Chris likes to tinker with the ideas of others. No, wait a minute. He doesn’t really tinker, does he? He blasts with his creative bombast. That’s OK. He’s got a right.
But it all makes me wonder if he ever reads any poetry. I mean, early on in our lives, we marvel at the moon winking at us from above the rooftops outside our parent’s bedroom window. And then, one day we look around and find ourselves mired in markets and melancholy and missing the pure poetry that can be tinkered from our private pain. We project instead of protect.
It seems to me that tinkering taken to extremes is attacking. I suppose there’s a time and place for each, and, of course, we are each free to choose how we find satisfaction in life somewhere along the continuum.
I’m happy tinkering. Except, of course, when it comes to current national politics. I’m all for cutting off those little PPs.
Categories:
Let's cut off those little PPs
Love this, from an interview with Kurt Vonnegut in Truthout.com.
I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!
And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.
What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
Categories:
Living Life Spherically
Second draft:
still life with lunch
I indulge my tongue with baguette and brie
and contemplate a miniature collection
of my life's best metaphors,
captured in small wooden squares
framed, off-center, in an expanse of
off-white kitchen wall--
spiny shells and chunks of stone
bought or stolen from gritty beaches
and hallowed hillsides;
two miniature totem poles,
stacks of toothy masks eternally
divining and defying;
a ceramic face of serene Kwan Yin,
open hands inserted
in stiff maternal blessing;
a pious, pewter St. Anthony,
haloed, holding the sad Child, and
on the lookout for misplaced keys;
a feather, probably a duck?s
because the wild turkey's didn't fit,
and every altar needs a feather;
a brass double dorje, the mate
to the Tibetan bell I ring
in moments of turning
toward thoughts of a box-less future;
and, finally, a crumbling wine bottle cork
on which someone I can?t
remember had printed
in balky blue ballpoint:
Conundrum.
Elaine Frankonis 3/04
My life and my poetry -- striving for art, settling for whatever it is.
"Live life spherically" is a line from Mona Lisa Smile -- a movie a rather liked because it harkened back to my life as it was in the 50s (although I was a couple of years younger than those characters) and I felt good about not having made the assumptions that those girls made about being a successful female. And I really like that one line: Live Life Spherically.
Back in the 50s, being a helper, taking care of others, was not part of my life's plan. Now it's one of my primary functions.
But that doesn't stop me from writing. At the moment, I'm wrestling with the first exercise for the NY State Writers Institute Advanced Poetry Workshop led by poet Eamon Grennon -- to write three different 11-line (9 to 13 syllables per line) stanzas based on a assigned Vermeer painting.
A Google search located poems about paintings written by a variety of well-known poets. I find that I like this exercise.
I particularly like this poem by Wislawa Szymborska, "Two Monkeys by Brueghel":
I keep dreaming of my graduation exam:
in a window sit two chained monkeys,
beyond the window floats the sky,
and the sea splashes.
I am taking an exam on the history of mankind:
I stammer and flounder.
One monkey, eyes fixed upon me, listens ironically,
the other seems to be dozing--
and when silence follows a question,
he prompts me
with a soft jingling of the chain.
Actually, years ago, I wrote a short poem about Renoir's Peonies.
There are no blossoms real as Renoir's Peonies.
No rose as red. No red as real.
I would have them for my lover's table,
to bloom red
and real
as a heart
open
to the palette knife.
In the meanwhile, I'm also helping to make arrangements for a reunion of a dozen or so of my old Beta Zeta sorority sisters. Most of us haven't seen each other in more than forty years. I know for a fact that one of them will be participating in the Republican Convention in NYC this summer. We shared an apartment with four other BZers the summer of 1958. That was after my freshman year in college and I didn't want to go home so I took some courses over the summer. I was 18 and we were all politically liberal. I guess I'd better not talk politics at the reunion. Man, that's going to be hard!!!
And also, meanwhile, I watch my mother grasp for words, sleep away afternoons, and fret over losing control of everything she fought so hard to hold onto.
Live life spherically. But don't hold on too tight.
Categories:
Entertaining the Muse
I should be vacuuming, doing the dishes, changing the sheets, folding the laundry. Instead, this:
still life with lunch
I eat my baguette and brie
contemplating a miniature collection
of my life’s best metaphors,
nested now into a frame of small squares
set off-center in an expanse
of off-white wall--
spiny shells and chunks of stones
bought and stolen from gritty beaches
and hallowed grounds;
two miniature totem poles,
stacks of toothy masks eternally
divining and defying;
the ceramic face of a serene Kwan Yin,
open hands inserted
in stiff maternal blessing;
a pious, pewtered St. Anthony,
haloed, holding the lost Child,
on the lookout for lost keys;
a feather, probably a duck’s
because a turkey’s was too big to fit,
and every altar needs a feather;
a brass double dorje, the mate
of the Tibetan bell I ring
in moments of turning
toward thoughts of a box-less future;
and, finally, a crumbling wine bottle cork
on which someone I can't
remember had printed
in balky blue ballpoint:
“Conundrum.”
© Elaine Frankonis 3/23/04
first draft
Categories:
Acknowledging the Equinox
Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox, but my women friends and I celebrated it today, with our usual pot-luck gathering. where we sit around and complain about the aches and pains that plague our bodies and the aches and pains of the plague that is our country's leadership. And then we share in some sort of creative ritual or ceremony. Today, it was a variation on this.
Of course, I can't pass up the opportunity to pass along some Equinox lore, which just shows how contemporary religious Spring rituals and stories harken back to other, much, much older ones.
In ancient Rome, the 10-day rite in honor of Attis, son of the great goddess Cybele, began on March 15th. A pine tree, which represented Attis, was chopped down, wrapped in a linen shroud, decorated with violets and placed in a sepulchre in the temple. On the Day of Blood or Black Friday, the priests of the cult gashed themselves with knives as they danced ecstatically, sympathizing with Cybele in her grief and helping to restore Attis to life. Two days later, a priest opened the sepulchre at dawn, revealing that it was empty and announcing that the god was saved. This day was known as Hilaria or the Day of Joy, a time of feasting and merriment.
Sound familiar? Easter is the Christian version of the same myth. Even the name Easter is stolen. It comes from the Saxon dawn-goddess Eostre, whose festival was celebrated on spring equinox. The date of Easter is still determined by the old moon cycle. It is always the first Sunday on or after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
One can only hope that there will be some kind of rebirth for this country after its looming demise at the hands of the Almighty Burning Bush (see previous post), who needs some major help finding his way out of his own Fog of War. He would do well to internalize the "Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara."
Like that's ever going to happen. Unless course, god tells him to. Oh Yeah!
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237 and counting
A report released on March 16 by the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Special Investigations Unit is described as
...a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five [Bush] Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq.... It finds that the five officals made misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 125 public appearances. The report and an accompanying database identify 237 specific misleading statements by the five officials.
Complete with charts, graphs, timelines, quotes, and categories of disinformation, the report, Iraq on the Record offers substantial proof of either the incompetence or the deviousness of our leadership. Or maybe both.
Meanwhile, In Cincinnati, Claire Mugavin wore a biohazard suit to a protest that drew several hundred people. She pretended to look for weapons of mass destruction beneath benches and garbage cans. "We figure they're not in Iraq," said the 24-year-old Cincinnati resident. "So we figured we'd come look for them in Fountain Square."
I like nonblogger myrln's response to that:
You gotta love it. What we need is a National Mockery Movement that daily mocks Dumbya and his gang...a relentless, ruthless campaign for the next 8 months. Make them into a national joke, and we'd get rid of them. Laughter may indeed be not only the best medicine but maybe the best weapon, too.
The Ben of Ben and Jerry's is already full speed on that one. To keep up with the lies being shoveled at us about even more than Iraq, keep checking here.
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At the Heart of It All.
At the heart of it all is the heart. Literally. If it's not keeping up, we can't. That's what's happening to my mom. Her heart is beating only about half as fast as it should. Well, what do you want; it's 88 years old. It's dealt with the tribulations of two odd-ball offspring, another two odd-ball grand-offspring, and now a great grand-offspring who keeps getting really bad ear infections. Between the two great World Wars, it found itself in Poland living a "dust-bowl of the 30s" kind of life. It outbeat its spouse's heart and the hearts of all four of its siblings and most of its friends. This is a tired heart. A pacemaker would help it to keep up. But that's not what she wants, and I understand that. She wants to rest, wants her heart to rest with all of those other hearts that have left her behind. And so, at the heart of the matter for those she'll leave behind is to be OK with what she wants -- to let her heart do what it will naturally do. Beat..beat..beat.......beat........beat........
beat..............beat...................beat...................beat...
.........................................beat................................
..........................................
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And then there's the boob on the tube.
Hee hee.
My daughter emailed me that my 19 month old grandson just looked at Bush on TV and said "boob." Another dissident is born!!!
Meanwhile, the boob "celebrates" the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. Congratulations, Dumbya, on getting 571 Americans (and countless others) killed in pursuit of your Amerikan nightmare.
And then there's all these other monumental things you're doing for our country, as Molly Ivins so clearly explains at the beginning of her piece of "Red Alert at the White House.":
How much fun can one administration have? More dead GIs. New record trade deficit. Stock market plunge. Defeated ally in Spain. New Spanish prime minister says the occupation in Iraq is a "continuing disaster" and he's pulling his troops out. Still no jobs. And then they guy who was supposed to be the new jobs czar turns out to have laid off 75 of his own workers while building a $3 million factory in China to employ 165 Chinese people.........
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It's a guy thing.
The "every other Tuesday night" poet's group I'm in is usually mostly made up of of guys -- which actually works for me because, in my confined life these days, I don't get to interact much with guys. Granted, as fine poets, these are not your stereotypical guys; they are used to digging below the surface of things and they are unusually perceptive. They're also funny.
But that's not what this post is about. This is about one of them sending an email around listing "37 cool things about being a man." (This might have been one of those viral emails that somehow missed me.) And then another of the guys created "37 not so cool things about being a man," which makes me enjoy having been born a girl (but not for these reasons.)
For all my beleaguered male friends everywhere, I share:
37 not so cool things about being a man.
1. I never get a job interview anymore.
2. MY orgasms don't matter.
3. My last name appears on too many checks I didn't write.
4. The garage is where I sleep after I've shared my feelings.
5. I wind up paying for the wedding the rest of my life.
6. I never stop feeling compelled to get laid.
7. Car mechanics are always engaging me in conversations.
8. I look really dumb when I shave my pubic hair.
9. I can get 30 years for helping a child who has fallen off a bike.
10. All work...more gray.
11. Wrinkles mean I'm old and dirty.
12. Nobody ever tells me about my zipper.
13. Pregnancy 9 months; deadbeat dad forever.
14. Somebody's always pissing in my canteen.
15. No one ever stuffs dollar bills into my underwear.
16. I haven't been able to afford shoes since the wedding day.
17. I have a tumor the size of all the emotions I've never expressed.
18. Phone conversations are the only sex I ever have.
19. I consider 5 days under the rubble of a collapsed building a vacation.
20. I am often praised for my ability to open a jar.
21. All my thoughtful acts have to be connected to credit card usage.
22. My underwear has stains old enough to vote.
23. & Now that I'm 54 and married, nobody notices.
24. I drive a truck and expect to be able to pick up something with it.
25. "Shoos" are what are hurled at me in the kitchen.
26. I have to watch football every Sunday instead of jerking off.
27. I have my memories - at least until I turn 50.
28. I can't act worth a damn - it takes years of imagining the death of Ron Jeremy for me to cry a single tear.
29. There is more variety in the colors of my bowel movements than in the colors of my wardrobe.
30. I can't bolt from a nut without being called a coward.
31. I am perfectly capable of tinkling on my pants.
32. The same hairstyle is persisting for decades, even as the follicles disappear.
33. My belly hides my erection.
34. One empty wallet, and one pair of ratty shoes.
35. I have to claw my way to the top without any fingernails.
36. I even have to be sloppy about my suicide.
37. The world is a stopped-up toilet.
Categories:
I believe in misbehaving.
Shelley Powers (aka Burningbird) took and posted this photo.
If you read this weblog, you know why I'm posting the photo. If you read Shelley's weblog, you know that this is not representative of her exquisite talent for capturing remarkable images.
And we all know, in this age of Bushite media manipulation, image is everything.
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Speaking of Religious Symbols
From todays New York Post: Go and read the whole article, which begins:
A delusional man who apparently believed he was Jesus Christ built a wooden cross and tried to nail his hands to it in a horrific bid to re-create the crucifixion, police say.
But after hammering a spike through one palm, the man realized there was no way to hammer his other hand to the cross - so he dragged himself to the phone to dial 911 with his free hand.
Asked if he'd recently seen "The Passion of the Christ," the 23-year-old man, from Hartland, Maine, answered no, but said he had been "seeing pictures of God on the computer."
What a world! What a world!
Categories:
Celebrating Bring Back the Snakes Day
While others are celebrating St. Patrick's Day, I'm celebrating Bring Back the Snakes Day (preferably, green ones).
It's not easy being green.
Or a snake.
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Rumsfeld deceit captured on video.
Some disempowering of an American Bushite missionary at MoveOn.org:
A year ago today, the Bush Administration was making its final push toward war in Iraq. We know now that much of what we were told about the threat that Iraq posed was untrue. And rather than own up to their distortion of the facts, Bush administration officials are denying they ever said such things.
But this Sunday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld got caught blatantly contradicting his past statements, and we have the video clip. You can check it out at:
http://www.moveon.org/censure/caughtonvideo/
I'm repeating here my suggestion to give the Bush boys a SimAmerika game to play, plug 'em in, and let 'em go at it and let the rest of us get on with saving what's left of this country.
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It's the Missionary Position that's Screwing Things Up.
Hah! I'll bet you think that this post is about sex. Sorry about that.
Since times of olde [sic], Christian missionaries have purposely invaded other cultures and manipulated their religious symbols and rituals in a brainwashing attempt to "convert" the people to Christianity. So, back in those really olden days, the archetypal gods and goddesses were transformed into saints, the Great Mother into the Virgin Mary, the Female Trinity of Virgin-Mother-Crone into the patriarchal Holy Trinity.
And now, (well, not only now because it's been going on for a while in various forms), there's the Jews for Jesus movement.
My aged mom, who watches a lot of the Catholic television channel, keeps telling me about the Jewish man they feature who has turned into a Catholic.
If she were astute enough, if she had eyes that could deal with reading for any length of time, I would print out the information on this site and hope that she might come to see that it's the missionary position of Christians that has kept the fires of bigotry and intolerance blazing destructively throughout the world.
If she were so inclined, she would read that:
In the year 325 CE, Constantine (a non-baptized Pagan) convened the Council of Nicea to settle disputes in the Church. The council changed Jesus from man to God in the flesh, they changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, and the Passover was changed to Easter. Among the nearly 200 Gospels circulating in the first three hundred years of this era, the Catholic Church canonized only four. Origen, the great Catholic father, confirms this fact: "And not four Gospels, but very many, out of which these we have chosen
[snip]
Christian apologist Richard Sisson states:
"In fact, after the death of Jesus a whole flood of books that claimed to be inspired appeared.... Disputes over which ones were true were so intense that the debate continued for centuries. Finally in the fourth century a group of church leaders called a council and took a vote. The 66 books that comprised our cherished Bible were declared to be Scripture by a vote of 568 to 563.
I am always amazed at how little Christians in general, and Catholics in particular, really know about the history of their religions as institutions that are as political as any major govenment. (Another, more scholarly perspective is here.)
(Of course, now that Bush equates "American" with "Christian", the whole invasive missionary thing has really escalated.)
Now, understand that I'm not anti-Christian, I'm not anti-any religion. What I am is anti the missionary position (in addition, of course, to being irreligious and irreverent).
The Missionary Position is the antithesis of freedom in any context.
And my mother, who has no idea what that means, keeps lighting candles and praying that I will return to the faith of my fathers. And I help her light the candles, and I smile through her lectures, and I then blog my own version of prayer, of hope for a world free of missionaries..
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presidentialprayerteam.org
presidentialprayerteam.org
They claim to have no political affiliation.
They have a sub-team for kids.
Welcome to neo-puritan Amerika.
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Bottom-up Citizen Journalism
The One True Bix, whose experiment in citizen weblog journalism, Portland Communique, continues to garner regional accolades and support, has crossed the divide into the mainstream print media. His commentary -- on the way that resolution of the same-sex marriage issue in Multnomah County is being derailed by both supporters and opponents getting mired in arguments over process -- appeared today in the Portland Tribune.
With 1031 entries and 1420 reader comments since December 21, 2002. Portland Communique has succeeded in engaging both local politicians and ordinary citizens in weblogged discussions of important community concerns.
B!X also makes his Portland chronicling available in print form, enhanced by photos related to events that his reporting has covered.
While some look at citizen journalism in the context of established mainstream reporters using weblogging to bring their more personal perspectives to the news, b!X has proven the power of the voice of the ordinary citizen when exercised with craft, fairness, passion, and an abiding belief that, as his blog quotes from C.E.S. Wood: Good citizens are the riches of a city.
(And I'm not saying that just because he's my son!)
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The Imperial Presidency
My visual rendition of the above irreverent statement was triggered by an email I received of text puportedly written by Rev. Rich Lang of the Trinity United Methodist Church of Seattle Washington. (I believe that any kind of deity who might exist and in whom I might be convinced to believe would support this kind of irreverence on my part.)
[Update: I emailed the Reverend himself, and he verified his authorship of the text quoted beow.]
I thought it was fundamentally disturbing enough to post some of it here. (I personally confirmed that the quotes ascribed to the 2002 Texas Republican Platform are, indeed, accurate.) If you're not scared yet, this should help:
----------------------------
Ominous signs are all around us concerning the accrual of power into the hands of the Presidency. If Mr. Bush stays in office I think our future will continue to witness shrinking political rights, financial collapse and endless war. Part of the power and seduction of this administration emerges from its diabolical manipulation of Christian rhetoric. I want to flesh out the ideology of the Christian Fascism that Mr. Bush articulates. It is a form of Christianity that is the mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied. It is, indeed, the materialization of the spirit of antichrist: a perversion of Christian faith and practice
Christian Fascism
This country, like it or not, is overwhelmingly dominated by the ideology of the Christian story. It is not so much that our founders were all Christians. Rather, they lived in an atmosphere which was visioned through the lens of Christian thought and rhetoric. What they saw was that America had become the New Israel (the new Promised Land) of God. America was a benevolent nation seeking only the good of all. Our wealth is a blessing given to us as a sign that we are a "chosen, special people" whose larger meaning is to help the world into an era of peace, prosperity and justice. Every politician draws on this "civil religion story" of benevolence which gives authority to the politicians ambition and agenda. Another way of saying this is: every nation needs sacred legitimation. It needs the authority of transcendence: of a story larger than itself ... a story that connects past with present and future. An Empire needs an even broader story: one that connects with cosmic and/or historical redemption and new creation.
Martin Luther King understood this sacred American civil religion and was able to wed it brilliantly with the prophetic religious teachings of the Bible. He drew upon Biblical narratives which limited the power and authority of the elite while calling for economic redistribution of wealth. He drew upon teachings rooted in the personal morality of nonviolence and compassion. George Bush, on the other hand, also understands this sacred American 'civic gospel' and has brilliantly merged it with Biblical Holiness and Holy War traditions. These traditions call for the emergence of the Righteous Warrior who will cleanse the land of its impurity. These traditions are rooted in the personal morality of righteous zeal and obedience.
[snip]
Renana Brooks writes (The Nation June 24, 2003: Bush Dominates A Nation of Victims):
"Bush is a master at inducing learned helplessness in the electorate. He uses pessimistic language that creates fear and disables people from feeling they can solve their problems. In his September 20, 2001 speech to Congress on the 9/11 attacks, he chose to increase people's sense of vulnerability:
'Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. ... Iask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight ... Be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat.' (Subsequent terror alerts .. have maintained and expanded this fear of unknown, sinister enemies.)"
[snip]
Mr. Bush certainly sees himself as a Messiah figure. Listen to his language after 9-11: " I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people." Or, in his 2003 State of the Union speech: "I will defend the freedom and security of the American people". He has become the nation. He is its embodiment. According to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, - Bush told him: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." This is Biblical language ... it isn't political script. This is Bush's soul language. He understands himself as a man with a Divine mission. It also means that for him leadership is not "representing the people" rather leadership means transcending the will of the people. George Bush already knows the truth before the evidence is presented. He is guided by God and must blaze the trial even if the people are reluctant.
Iraq, for example, was a necessary war whether or not Saddam had nukes. Saddam, for Bush, was a bad guy who tried to kill "my dad". The war, for Bush, was holy and justified and necessary. Purging evil is necessary in the Holiness/Holy War tradition of the Bible. The righteous will purge evil but the unrighteous will be consumed by it.
[snip]
Jesus drew on the prophetic traditions that called upon the people to change their way of life even as it critiqued and called upon the elites to decentralize their power. Jesus role modeled a lifestyle of redemptive suffering on behalf of others. Mr. Bush, however, draws on traditions that call for purity and cleansing. It is a language of hostility towards enemies and a strident call for obedience. It calls forth a lifestyle of the RIGHTEOUS ONE who will purge evil from the world through sacred violence. This religious rhetoric, which merges Holiness Christianity with Imperial Americanism, is "in sync" with a growing new movement in theology called Christian Reconstructionism (or Dominion Theology).
Reconstructed Fascism
First and most basic is that Dominion Theology wants to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern according to a very literal and peculiar interpretation of Biblical law. The disciples of Jesus are to have "dominion" over all of creation. It is the role of the Church to rule over the wicked and bring them into the obedience of faith.
In a "reconstructed society" democracy would be heresy. The division between sacred and secular would be abolished. A new insistence on conformity to moral rules would replace the pluralism we now know. The purpose of the Federal government would be to enforce morality through military and police functions. Society would be regulated by a theocratic elite: in the words of Pat Robertson: "just as the Supreme Court justices place a hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, so they should also put a hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."
We see this at play in the leanings of Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Thomas. Against the common assumption that we are a secular state Mr. Scalia has said (in a FIRST THINGS: May 2002 ) "government ...derives its moral authority from God. Government is the minister of God with powers to revenge, to execute wrath, including wrath by the sword."
Scalia is drawing from Romans 13. If taken literally the implication of those verses would prohibit any resistance against the policies of a government. No more peaceful demonstrations (the government would be justified to do what it did to those recently in Miami and earlier here in Seattle). Even writings of dissent and opposition could be labeled treasonous (this is part of Ashcroft's passion for Patriot Acts and other warnings not to say too much).
Scalia (and many of the conservative judges placed in Federal Courts since Reagan) believe in interpreting the Constitution in its original intent. As Scalia has said (same article as above) "the constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead. It means today not what current society ..thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted." So, as Katherine Yurica points out in her article THE DESPOILING OF AMERICA:
.. since the death penalty was clearly permitted when the 8th Amendment (which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments) was adopted and at that time the death penalty was applied for all felonies --- including, for example, the felony of horse-thieving, "so it is clearly permitted today".
[snip]
The good society according to Dominion Theology has men on top. Society would be reconstructed into a strong patriarchy that would provide the social pressure ensuring conformity. Women would find their true function as supportive wives, mothers and homemakers. Those outside this "patriarchal modality" would be exterminated. (Today the Gay marriage movement is a true threat to establishing a patriarchal society. This administration has no choice but to make this a MAJOR issue in the coming election.).
Purity becomes very important. There is only one right way to see the world. It is therefore of fundamental importance to control education in all spheres of culture. We see this in the Bush administration's approach to testing in schools; in his massive discounting of Global warming and in his repeated refusals to engage in open, diversified conversation about matters of importance: whether it be Cheney's Energy Task Force, the investigation of 9/11; or the creation of an "in house" intelligence team which created evidence for the Iraqi war after the other governmental agencies couldn't provide it. The Bush team KNEW the answers before the evidence was even accumulated.
Dominion Theology denies history and spurns the modern. It is not a conservative conserving) movement. Although it might appeal to a nostalgic and mythical past it is primarily focused on a radically, revolutionized future of utopia. It assumes that the end will justify the means and it is moral to work as "stealth agents" fooling the pagans. It sees the world as engaged in spiritual warfare pitting "good Christians" against everybody else. This HOLY WAR and HOLINESS rhetoric is foundational in Mr. Bush's worldview.
Now if you think that this talk is bit "hyper" on my part ... that I'm Chicken Little squawking in the wind ... what then do you make of these Texas Republican platform positions of 2002 ???
"The Republican Party of Texas reaffirms the United States of America is a Christian nation.
Government: We reclaim freedom of religious __expression in public on government property, and freedom from government interference. Support government display of Ten Commandments.
... Dispel the "myth" of separation of church and state.
ECONOMY: Abolish the dollar in favor of the gold standard. Abolish the IRS. Eliminate income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains, corporate income tax, payroll tax and property tax. Repeal minimum wage law ...Gradually phase out Social security tax for a system of private pensions.
UNITED NATIONS: We immediately rescind our membership in, as well as financial and military contributions to the United Nations ... we should evict the United Nations...
FAMILY: We believe that traditional marriage is a legal and moral commitment between a man and a woman. We recognize that the family is the foundational unit of a healthy society and consists of those related by blood, marriage or adoption. The family is responsible for its own welfare, education, moral training, conduct and property.
EDUCATION: Since Secular Humanism is recognized by the United States Supreme Court as a religion ... Secular Humanism should be subjected to the same state and federal laws as any other recognized religion.
ENVIRONMENT: Oppose the myth of global warming. Reaffirm the belief in the fundamental right of an individual to use property without governmental interference.
This coming election will not be decided because of political policy. It will not be decided in a debate over free markets versus fair markets; tax cuts or no tax cuts, Patriot Act or no Patriot Act; military draft or no draft. None of these issues will determine the election because the candidates are all for free markets, tax cuts, domestic security and a strong global military presence. The election will be determined by the candidate who can embody the deeply felt, often unarticulated religious yearnings of the populace. Yearnings such as "who will save us, secure us, lead us??? who will connect us with a power greater than the terrors of the night?" Bush speaks this language. Democrats are stuck in political nuance. Or, in other words, Democrats cannot speak the language of Martin Luther King who understood that social transformation requires a transcendent authority. And it is a vision of transformation, not nuance, that gives people courage to risk alternative paths to violence.
The problem comes down to this: Democrats, liberals, and social progressives have simply not grasped how afraid, insecure and how deeply in despair the populace is. They keep speaking as if tinkering with the system is a vision that can win the day. What Bush and Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Pearls, Abrams and Bolton, DeLay and Rice etc, have clearly understood is that truth is perception. Image is EVERYTHING! Unfortunately, the inner person of America today is a hollowed out consumer who lacks the will power, stamina and imagination to do anything more than be overwhelmed by appearances. Therefore, a politics of crisis, a politics of fear will keep us locked into a state of conformity.
[snip]
Apocalyptic theology believes that Jesus dying for my sins is far more important than the teachings of Jesus. We see this in the recent movie PASSION OF THE CHRIST. What this creates is a spirituality that can overlook the teachings of Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount is re-framed as an impossible this-worldly ethic. Teachings about nonviolence, economic redistribution, compassion toward those who are thought of as sinners and resistance to injustice are all discounted. Recently, the Governor of Alabama in a fit of religious zeal wanted to take the economic teachings of Jesus seriously: he tried to reform his state to benefit the poor. The Christian Coalition led the charge against such thinking and foiled his efforts.
A leader who loves Jesus is to be followed as God's man for the hour. The Christian leader is God's shepherd over the American flock. When Bush, who sees himself as a messianic figure anointed by God, decided on running for the Presidency he called a group of evangelical Pastors together announcing to them "I have heard the call" and then received from them the "laying on of hands" which corresponds to divine ordination for the task ahead. On September 14, 2001 he stated: "our responsibility before history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil". He then launched the crusade Operation Infinite Freedom against Afghanistan.
[snip]
CONCLUSION:
The point I'm trying to make is that we are not dealing simply with politics when it comes to the Bush administration. The progressive left, which often pays little attention to Christianity, and the moderate middle, which thinks "these things will balance out"; will be making a huge mistake if they overlook the religious ideology at the core of Mr. Bush personally and the movement he represents. And we are talking about a "movement" (a movement of 'the people' not just the elites). We are seeing today the emergence of a "fascist movement". It is bankrolled and organized by Corporations, and articulated through the ideology of neo-conservatism. But the troops come out of the right wing church. And that church, drawing upon the Holiness/Holy War Biblical narratives of Apocalyptic-Dominionism theology, is growing in this country. This is not a battle between intellectual and institutional elites. It is far more intimate than that. It's a battle in our homes, our families, friendships, neighborhoods and within our faith communities. Let me make a rather audacious prophecy: WHOEVER CONTROLS THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE WILL CONTROL THE FUTURE OF THIS NATION. In other words it's the vision of Pat Robertson or Martin Luther King.
When Dave Korten (author of When Corporations Rule the World) says that we need a "new story"; he is talking about needing a transcendent authority in which we root our political culture. Human beings cannot live in societal form without a sacred narrative. Neither anarchy nor atheism can construct a house that will hold our future. The Republicans know this well. But the Democrats seem clueless.
What we need is a movement of spiritual justice. We need the language of those who can wed America's civil religion with Biblical prophetic narrative. We need to expand that language so that it can include the language and stories that are emerging from the antiwar, fair trade and human rights movements.
Together this language can form a unique new narrative that has the power to inspire imagination and courage. A language that can call forth a new coalition powerful enough to envision a new and better world. It will be a language that articulates "we are the ones we are looking for". A language that proclaims "God with us in our diversity" not God above us threatening wrath and ruin.
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As I used to tell my (deceased) Republican Dad, when the revolution comes, you know what side I'm going to be on.
And, if my mother (88 years old and fully Catholic) knew I was posting this, she'd be very, very upset. What's interesting is that yesterday I came home from having dinner with some friends and found her watching a PTV re-run of Bill Moyer and Joseph Campbell (1988) talking about "The Power of Myth." It was all new to her and she couldn't make much sense of it. How ironic that Joseph Campbell's writings were seminal in informing my own mythic journeys. The power of myth. Yes. I don't know if Dumbya ever heard of Joseph Campbell, but he certainly seems to understand how to create his own self-serving myths.
While I don't share Rev. Lang's faith, I do share his vision of the role that people of faith should be playing in supporting the fundamental intentions of American democracy. I hope that the Reverend Lang's piece reaches viral proportions on Net email and spirals out into the minds and hearts of religous Americans everywhere.
You can read the Reverend's entire piece here at the Smirking Chimp.
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Why the World Hates Us
Dumbya marked International Women's Week by praising Libyan reformer, Fathi Jahmi, saying, "She's a local government official who was imprisoned in 2002 for advocating free speech and democracy." Only problem is Jahmi is a man.
Man oh man, get that man out of the White House!! How many times and how often does he have to embarrass us Americans with his stupidity??
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The Power of Attitude.
Today's local newspaper has a fine article by Harvey Mackay. It's about power -- the power of little people. No, it's not a St. Patrick's Day piece about leprechauns.
Mackay tells two beautifully illustrative stories.
#1. U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley used to tell a story about an experience he had while ordering dinner at a Philadelphia restaurant.
The busboy came up to him and put a dinner roll and a pat of butter down before him. The New Jersey Democrat looked at the busboy and asked for another pat of butter.
"One pat of butter to a customer, sir," replied the busboy.
Bradley looked at him. "Don't you know who I am?" he said, to which the busboy replied, "No, who?"
Bradley proceeded to rattle off his credentials: "My name is Bill Bradley. I graduated at the top of my class from Princeton University ... Rhodes scholar ... an All-American in basketball ... drafted by the New York Knicks ... elected U.S. senator."
The busboy replied, "Those are very impressive credentials, Mr. Bradley, but don't you know who I am?"
"No, who?"
"I'm the man in charge of the butter."
#2. Terry Paulson, a professional speaker and author, witnessed an angry executive tear into a baggage handler who was working as fast as he could. After the executive left, Paulson sympathized with the poor fellow, who replied, "Don't worry, I've already gotten even."
"What do you mean?" Paulson asked.
With a sly smile, the baggage handler explained, "He's going to Chicago, but his bags are going to Japan."
One of the criteria I always had for continuing to date or not date a guy was how he treated waitresses, bus boys, cashiers, sales persons -- all those "little" people" who, in the Big Picture, feel powerless and who, in the Little Picture, have the capacity to frustrate, delay, and pretty much turn what should be an efficient and pleasant experience into a nightmare.
Having had, as part of various jobs, the task of solving problems for disgruntled consitutents, I learned early that just about everyone will respond positively when treated with respect and courtesy. Of course, it helps that I truly believe in the old "doing unto others..." Golden Rule and that that I'm a helper at heart. And, the tales told by my daughter, who waitressed her way through her NYC acting days, certainly reinforced my perspective on the matter.
It's interesting that Mackay's is a column about how to succeed in the business world.
He ends this one with:
When you are good to others, you are best to yourself. I make it my business to get to know the managers and servers of the top restaurants in town, just as I do the bell captains, and so on. Similarly, I let them get to know me. It doesn't take a $100 tip for someone to remember you. But I will guarantee you, the minute you are rude, demanding, arrogant or otherwise dismissive, they will remember you -- for all the wrong reasons. Don't even think about asking for a second pat of butter then. From my perspective, there are way too many people who are so arrogant, they have chapped lips from repeatedly kissing the mirror.
So much depends upon ATTITUDE.
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I always loved the image in that William Carlos Williams poem.
The beginning of that poem came to me today as I thought about an email from my daughter that said:
so Massachussetts is poised to pass an amendment that bans gay marriage, but allows for civil unions -- get this -- *with all the same rights and priviliges of marriage*. In other words, they can get married, they just can't call it "marriage". So it's not REALLY the institution of the marriange union that they hold sacred, it's the WORD marriage they hold sacred. It's so ludicrous
It seems to me that so much of what America is about depends upon the separation of church and state. Right now, the issue of gay marriages is being complicated by the unAmerican blending of the two.
Each religion has the right to sanctify -- or not -- gay marriages. That is totally separate from having government, the law of the land, legalize them. The fight on the religious front is a whole other fight, but everyone keeps lumping it all together. Legal marriage provides certain rights to the legally married partners.
Religious marriages need to be looked at as the religious sanctification of the legal bond. Religions don't have to do that if they don't want to, but that shouldn't affect the legal rights of the married pair.
Thanks to the neocons, who are insistently imposing religious doctrine on legal issues, the American public is losing perspective. It should be a simple matter of rendering unto Ceasar.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with
rainwater
beside the white
chickens
It's really a red and white issue.
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64: It just might be a really good year.
Back on 2/19/04, when I was posting from my bloghome away from bloghome because the server I'm on was down, I stuck in a mention of applying to an advanced poetry workshop at the New York State Writers Institute, founded by local and Pulitzer Prize winning author William Kennedy (whose path I used to cross on occasion back in another life [when I had a life] where we had mutual friends).
Well, Happy Birthday to me! I just got a call that I've been accepted in the workshop.
OK. Yes, I'm kind of nervous. It's been a while since I've done anything like this. It's going to mean I'm going to have to focus on writing poetry for a while, shift gears from mindlessness to mindfulness. My oh my! Now, where did I put that Mind. I know it has to be around here somewhere -- maybe with that set of keys I misplaced last year. Or maybe stuffed between the cushions of the couch where, mindlessly, I sit and watch mindless TV each night.
I hope that I can remember how to skin the surface rather than just skimming it. Blogging (at least for me) lends itself so well to skimming -- a few quick posts, some skimmy comments here and there, then back to crocheting and "Judging Amy."
But that's not how poetry happens for me. It has to brew under a silent and open night sky. It has to boil and roil, ferment a little, the silt sifted out, the skin slipped off, the bottom revealed by the stirring. Time. It takes time. And it takes mind. If I can find it.
I sure hope to Eammon Grennan that I find it before I have to walk into that room full of "advanced poets" on April 1. If I can't, I'm going to really be an April Fool's joke.
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My Beatles Birthday
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.
Which is what I'll be in three more days. But who's counting.
Actually, I'm counting on a lot of things, including Bush not being re-elected and Medicare not disappearing after I turn 65. I'm counting on my grandson and I seeing a lot more of each other:
I'm counting on keeping whatever teeth, hair, muscles, vertebra, and brains that I have left for a long time to come. I'm counting on being able to create yet another life for myself when my mom is no longer my responsibility.
Most of all, I'm counting on 64 being a good year. After all, my favorite number is 8. And 8 squared is even better, right?
Today is International Women's Day. I remember well when, in the mid 70s, during the first International Women's Year, so many of us young American women counted on the energy of our IWD efforts to truly change our worlds.
In her speech at the First International Women's Year Conference, Betty Ford reminded us that "The long road to equality rests on achievements of women and men in altering how women are treated in every area of everyday life." From where I sit and read and watch, we haven't moved very far down that long road in those 30 years since.
Instead, each week there's some additional TV program touting the miracles that plastic surgery works on the lives of poor, plain, unloved females. Instead, more and more women strive to unleash the power of Victoria's Secret, buying into yet another misleading fantasy about what it is to be truly female and powerful, attractive and persuasive.
Today, while other places in other parts of the world at least acknowledged the importance of what this day symbolizes, American voices were mostly silent and unaware.
I guess that's part of why I post here -- to try to remind my blog sisters that you won't always be 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 60; that, if you're young and cute and smart today, and those qualities are getting you what you want, remember that you won't always be young and cute. And it's going to be the "smart" -- combined with honesty, compassion, humor, acceptance, patience, and courage -- that will sustain and support you long after Victoria's Secret can no longer hide -- or flaunt -- what you've been programmed to believe are your best assets. We are still allowing our culture to manipulate what men expect us to be as the women in their lives -- both personal and business. We are allowing it by buying into it ourselves.
I've come a long way in 64 years. But what was once the women's movement for equality seems not to have come very far at all.
That's why I have to publicly celebrate being 64 -- because I've been there, done that, and I'm not done yet. And that's why I acknowledge International Women's Day -- because we've been there, tried to do that, and we're far from done yet.
It's my birthday, and I'll crow if I want to.
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I think we're falling, like Rome.
Rome fell. Hard. It's a fact.
Can you feel our Land of the Free sliding down that same slippery slope?
Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
• Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
• Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
• Threat to the world is greater than terrorism
----------------------------
From Buzzflash:
In "The Sorrows of Empire," Chalmers Johnson, acclaimed author of "Blowback," details why a Neo-Con vision of empire, if not halted, will undo civil democracy as we know it.
As Johnson concludes, "Militarism and imperialism threaten democratic government at home just as they menace the independence and sovereignty of other countries. Whether George Bush and his zealots can bring about 'regime change' in a whole range of other countries may be an open question, but they certainly seem in the process of doing so in the United States."
-------------------------
From Paul Krugman, here:
Last week Mr. Greenspan warned of the dangers posed by budget deficits. But even though the main cause of deficits is plunging revenue — the federal government's tax take is now at its lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950 — he opposes any effort to restore recent revenue losses. Instead, he supports the Bush administration's plan to make its tax cuts permanent, and calls for cuts in Social Security benefits. [snip] But wait — it gets worse.
---------------------
From Sorry, Right Number by Maureen Dowd:
The catchphrase du jour is Donald Trump's snappy, "You're fired." But no one has lost a job over the intelligence failures that led to 9/11 or the war that was trumped up and velcroed to 9/11. In fact, the only people the president and vice president are trying to put out of business are the members of the commission charged with figuring out how 9/11 happened and how to prevent another one.
The White House seems more worried about the public's finding out how much it knew and how little it did before 9/11 than it does about identifying and fixing security weaknesses.
-------------------------
From a recent speech by Senator Byrd:
The IMF, an international organization normally concerned with the debt problems of third-world nations, has issued an alarming critique of the United States, pleading with the Bush Administration to rein in its massive budget and trade deficits. Similar warnings have emanated from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, from former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and from the U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. Even the Administration's own political allies, ranging from the conservative Heritage Foundation to private-sector economists who endorsed the President's tax cuts, have pleaded with this Administration to get its fiscal act together.
[snip]
Yet these warnings fall on deaf ears in this Administration. After spending $1.7 trillion to finance three enormous tax cuts in the last three years, the President's budget proposes an additional $1.24 trillion for more tax cuts.
When this Administration leaves office, its legacy will be an enormous debt burden that will weigh heavily on the middle-class. In the process, it will have severely weakened their safety net, and have left little means for fixing it.
But it won't matter to this president at that point. He'll move back to Texas knowing that his pension and health care benefits are secure, and that corporate CEOs and Texas oil men are wealthier and more comfortable than ever before. He'll never have to rely on the safety net that his Administration has worked so hard to dismantle.
------------------------
Well, while I'm waiting, powerlessly, for the American Armaggedon, I think I'll hie over to BloggerCon II on April 17 because
• it's free and only one day
• lots of non-A-list bloggers are going, and that's good
• I can stay with my daughter and son-in-law and get to see my grandson
• thanks to Lisa Williams, it's supposed to include a session of women and blogging. From Lisa's weblog:
Women & Blogs: A Roundtable Session
This session will include a lively and welcoming exchange on the best of blogs by women. Participants are encouraged to prepare to share what motivated them to start their blog, and what motivates them to keep blogging. While this session will focus on blogs written by women, guys and their perspectives on the topic will also be enthusiastically welcomed.
And just in case Armaggedon comes before BloggerCon, I'm heading out on Thursday to visit my grandson for a couple of days.
Meanwhile, I had a good laugh tonight with Judging Amy's Tyne Daly's Maxine Gray as she giggles: "I'm sixty-five years old and my boyfriend's mother hates me."
And this election campaign video did NOT make me laugh because it's so damned true. Warning: Adult language and adult content.
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