A turn in the Republican tide.
Conservative columnist Charley Reese posts a piece on how important it is to support John Kerry and unseat George Bush. Vote for a Man, Not a Puppet, he says:
Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush's re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war – Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative ideologues and their corporate backers.
I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a frontman, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory.
It's no wonder the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English than our own president at their joint press conference recently.
John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to think and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than Bush's comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's unfortunate that in our poorly educated country, Kerry's very intelligence and refusal to adopt simplistic slogans might doom his presidential election efforts.
[snip]
People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush. Bush is as far from being a conservative as you can get. Well, he fooled me once, but he won't fool me twice.
[snip]
I will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man in the White House with brains enough not to blow up the world and us with it. Go to Kerry's Web site and read some of the magazine profiles on him. You'll find that there is a great deal more to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe.
Besides, it would be fun to have a president who plays hockey, windsurfs, ride motorcycles, plays the guitar, writes poetry and speaks French. It would be good to have a man in the White House who has killed people face to face. Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and dispels all illusions about war.
Any more intelligent and discerning Republicans out there?
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Brain Break
I'm taking a break from literally trying to make order out of chaos and checking out a web site recommended by the friend with whom I went on vacation. She's interested in how psychic stuff works and so also follows brain research.
The Dana Foundation's web site on brain, immunology, and arts education (interesting combination, no?) could keep me linking around it for days on end, since it covers three of the subjects in which I'm most intersted.
It's not bad enough that our personal and private space contnues to be invaded and assaulted by everyone from our government to spammers. The site's "Brain in the News" section includes this (year-old-but-still-disturbing) piece.
Some Fear Loss of Privacy as Science Pries into Brain. By Carey Goldberg, Boston Globe, May 1, 2003, p. A1
Brain imaging techniques, now able to observe which brain areas may be active when lying, experiencing unconscious racism, or reacting to a consumer product, are raising new concerns about "brain privacy," part of the rapidly expanding field of neuroethics Ethicists are concerned that current privacy laws may not prevent this kind of information from being requested - or even misused - by courts, government, the military, employers, or insurers - who may draw conclusions, about potential violence or mental illness. Some scientists say that brain-based lie detector tests may also not be far off. While imaging equipment is currently too expensive to be used by nonscientists, and existing human experiementation rules protect subjects from coercion, many scientists hope that new consumer laws, or ethical guidelines for doctors, can be enacted.
Neuroethics. Part of Bioethics. So, there's a President's Council on Bioethics. Heh. How about a President's Advisory Council on Presidential Ethics. Period.
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How do they do it?
The antibiotic I'm taking makes me nauseous and screws up my stomach. All I want to do is avoid taking care of any kind of business.
How do they do it, those on chemo, those dealing with knowing that they're going to be feeling a lot worse than I do for the unforeseeable future?
b!X reports on Portland's Mayor Katz, who is continuing to do her job even while battling some rare form of cancer.
I'm not sure I could do it. I can't even get up the energy to put my laundry away.
One more day of the antibiotic. In the meanwhile, it's lots of acidophilus and Tusin cough medicine. Will this coughing never end???
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Battling a bitch of a bronchitis bout
I'm sitting on a bench in the shade with my mother. I can't sit in the sun because I'm taking Levaquin. This is the first time I've been outside since I got back, sick, from vacation. Hell, it's the first time I've taken a shower and changed my clothes since I got back. Bronchitis is exhausting. All that yucky yellow stuff exploding out of your bronchi. Cough. Gag. Spit. Cough. Gag.
I sit far across the bench from my mother and don't touch anything she's going to touch. The last thing I need is for her to catch it. I'm crocheting as I'm sitting -- a brightly striped afghan for my grandson, at his mother's request. It should have holes, she says, because he likes to wind his fingers through the holes. I'm making it soft and snuggly --Alexander's Grammy's Magic Gypsy Blanket -- good to sooth whatever might ail a typically testy toddler. The name was my brainstorm as I lay in bed most of the last week. Coughing. I started writing a story to go along with the afghan. A story about Alexander and his Grammy and a magic gypsy blanket.
My mother's jabbering away about stuff from the 30s and 40s I've heard before. Many times before. I smile, nod, keep crocheting. I can't even really hear what she's saying. My ears are stopped up, her voice is weak, and I'm not even sitting that close to her. I make myself listen. Pick up a word or two so that I can respond as though I'm really listening. I think she eventually figures it out.
A friend of mine has tickets to Moore's F9-11 for tomorrow night and asked if I wanted to go along. Cough. Cough. Guess not.
During our York Beach Solstice gathering, I drew the blank Rune (which didn't exist in the original system but has been added by modern players), the symbol for "The Unknowable." I sure didn't know I was going to get this sick, including raging sore throat and swollen shut sinuses (somewhat better now -- which is why I'm sitting outside and trying to breathe in some fresh air).
So, my future is a blank stone, for me to carve, hurl, or bury.
We shall see.
Cough.
And, finally, this Nid's for you and your crew, my hopefully soon-to-be departing president.
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Fighting for Our Lives
You just can't make this stuff up. You have to hear it to believe it. This may be the first class war in history where the victims will die laughing.
From a speech by Bill Moyers to the "Inequality Matters Forum" at NYU. Read it and weep.
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time, tide, and sigh
As the moment of the Solstice approached the beach at York, Maine, the sea turned an irridescent aqua and the sky poured up from it into a haze of that "sky-blue-pink" that no one believes is a real color -- but it is. Real. And then the sun slipped behind the houses of the beach town, the sea vista slid into silver and then cerulean, and the stretch of sky above the dimly lit shoreline hung out a perfect slice of moon.
I had forgotton to bring my camera, what with having to remember all that paraphernalia. You know, Tibetan bell, rune stones, words -- all that stuff of art and poetry and human hope. But more on that later.
For now, suffice it to say that I'm back from my five days at Long Sands, York Beach, with bronchitis and a low-grade strep infection that's raging high-grade in my throat. Ya' can't win 'em all.
Aside from a one-day trip north to Freeport to the L.L. Bean and The Children's Place outlets, we spent most of the week reading and walking on the beach. This was usually my view when I was ensconced at the cottage (that's my bare toe-polished foot sticking out in the middle of the picture):
As usual, I didn't bring enough books to read, so I picked up a spur-of-the-moment paperback when we stopped at Hannaford. I Love You Like a Tomato -- in the voice of a young female Italian immigrant, who keeps trying to make her grandmother's Old World magic work in her troublesome new world. You don't have to be Italian to love Chi Chi Maggiordino who, tries, as she says to "put to GOOD use the power of the Evil Eye."
When I wasn't reading, I was walking on the beach -- usually without my camera. Except for the one really rainy day, when we went poking around the snail-covered rocks at low tide.
As it turned out, we spent the nicest day shopping. And eating lobster. Twice. And looking for toy rockets for my grandson.
There were supposed to be three of us, but it wound up there there were only two. When it came to our plans for the Solstice, however, we included the third in absentia. Three. You have to have three.
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Gone Fishing
Well, I haven't gone yet, but I will be in another day. And I'm not going fishing, but I am going to hang out on a beach where others do. It's time for my annual Summer Solstice trip. I'll be back in a week. I'm not looking forward to all of the email that will be accumulating. But I am looking forward to Boggling instead of blogging and just being somewhere else, somewhere where there's sea and sand and no one to look after and time to just lie around and read. This time it's one by Louise Erdrich and a sassy sci-fi saga.
Ah. Looking forward to Maine lobster, Merlot, and magic. Packing up my bell, book, and candle. It is the Solstice on Sunday, after all. And there will be three of us to make it happen.
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slip-slidin' away
I guess on one level we can say we've come a long way since 1960 when John F. Kennedy had to foreswear that he'd follow the instructions of the Pope in his decisions of governance. Today we have a Protestant born-again who tries to enlist the Pope to intervene in an American election.
The above is from today's Talking Points Memo that highlights the dark and dirty efforts of our president -- not only to further erode our rights as American citizens, but, even more nefarious -- to enlist the aid of the Catholic Church to coerce (some) citizen support for that effort.
Well, there's always Michael Moore, still fighting the good fight. Believing Michael Moore doesn't require a leap of faith; facts are facts. Unfortunately, I would imagine that many of the people of faith -- especially those who have taken the leap onto Bush's rights-eroding bandwagon -- won't go to see the movie and don't read Talking Points Memo.
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Kali Breathing
Taking my mother down to my brother's today for a mini-family reunion with some of the few who are left living south of him.
Meanwhile, here's something fun to do: the Kali Breath.
1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Inhale, and as you exhale in a loud “haaaaaah,” squat down as low as you can while raising both hands, fists as tightly clenched as you can make them.
2. Make a Kali-face while you exhale, brows scowling, tongue protruding as far toward your chin as you can get it. Part of the joy of this exercise is allowing ourselves to be hideous.
3. Stand straight again as your inhale, then repeat the scowling, tongue-out squat-and-exhale at least twice. You will be amazed at how much more alive you will feel after this.
Finally, from the same people who brought you the Kali Breath:
As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.
--Gary Snyder
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in the negative: for Rage Boy*
black is white is black
we all want our babies back
what's a little scat
instead of rat
poison
just watch chicken
little as the sky
fades to black
bones and skulls,
bloody tongue
Bronx Cheering
more as more or less
negative capability
*link
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Nah! Right?
From Conjure Wife:
Tansy Saylor:
"There are two sides to every woman... One is rational, like a man. the other knows. Men are artificially isolated creatures like islands in a sea of magic, protected by their rationality and by the devices of their women. Their isolation gives them greater forcefulness in thought and action, but the women know. Women might be able to rule the world openly, but they do not want the work or the responsibility. And men might learn to excell them in the Art. Even now, there may still be male sorcerers, but very few."
Norman Saylor:
"The distinction between physics and magic is only an accident of history. Physics started out as a kind of magic, too -- witness alchemy and the mystical mathematics of Pythagoras. And modern physics is ultimately as practical as magic, but it posesses a superstructure of theory that magic lacks. Magic could be given such a superstructure by research into pure magic and by the investigation and correlation of the forumlas of different peoples and times, with a view o deriving basic formulas which could be expressed in mathematical symbols and which would have a wide application. Most persons practicing magic have been too interested in immediate results to bother about theory. But just as research in pure science has ultimately led, seemingly by accident, to results of vast practical importance, so research in pure magic might be expercted to yield simlar results."
"The work of Rhine at Duke, indeed, has been very close to pure magic, with its piling up of evidence for clairvoyance, prophecy, and telepathy; its investigation of the direct linkage between all minds, their ability to affect each other instantaneously, even when theyare on opposite sides of the earth."
Tansy Saylor:
"I believe it is more akin to psychology..... Because it concerns the control of other beings, the summoning of them, and the constraining of them to perform certain actions."
HEADOLOGY, I say. And a few strands, scribbles and scrapes just to make sure.
Here a cackle, there a cackle.
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back with black eye and bloody knee
I don't think I ever had a black eye before. It's kinda cool, really. Of course, it would be a lot cooler if I didn't get it tripping myself while stepping up on a high curb -- if I didn't get it because I was talking to my grandson in my daughter's arms and didn't watch where I was going. It was almost worth it, though, to hear my grandson walk around all evening saying "boo-boo. Fall down. Grammy."
I went out to Boston again, unexpectedly and last minute to take them too look at a house that sounded affordable. (The "gnome home" didn't work out; concern about insulation......) Another marathon trip with no tangible results -- until they asked me stay another day......and I did.....and they found and put and offer on (which was accepted) a really nice little ranch house right next to a nature conservancy in a little western Massachusetts town with a great school system.
Before that successful house acquisition, I was looking for something to read while others were napping, and so I scoured my son-in-law's sci fi collection and came up with Fritz Leiber's "Conjure Wife" . And then, in a fit of witchy inspiration, I took some hair from their hair brushes, and when we were looking around the house that they wanted so badly to buy, I dropped the hair on the property and casually stroked a few auspicious rune symbols into the nearby dirt.
Now, combine that with my son-in-law's in-jest comment after my tumble that, now that we've made our blood sacrifice, the fates would find them a house, I might figure that our little magics worked. But we all know that those things are not the case, right?
While driving back and forth across the state of Massachusetts,I did listen to a wonderful novel on audio CD -- The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg. I've read some of her other stuff, but this is her best so far. I've also begun listening to a collection of Elmore Leonard's short stories When the Women Came out to Dance. I couldn't resist the title, and they're also quite good.
Of course, what I really should be doing is working on the grant proposals that I'm getting paid to write. I got off to a great start and then got interrupted by the unexpected Boston trip. But now that's all over and I can get back to work. Black eye, bloody knee, and all.
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