March 31, 2005

Woke up this morning with Perry Como singing this in my head:

Oh it's a good day, for singing this song
and it's a good day, for moving along
Yes it's a good day, how could anything go wrong?
It's a good day from morning till night

Cause it's a good day, for paying your bills
And it's a good day, for curing your ills
So take a deep breath (ahhh) throw away all your pills
Cause it's a good day from morning till night
say that again
yes it's a good day from morning till night
that's what he said
cause it's a good day from morning till niiiiight!

Of course, the sun is shining and it feels like Spring, so my subconscious must have harkened back to those early 1950s days when life was just a bowl of cherries.

I know the feeling will last only as long as it takes for me to go over and wake up my mother. But it feels good while it lasts.

March 30, 2005

Non-blogger/friend myrln sent me the above cartoon a while ago. I wrote to the cartoonist to try to get permission to blog it, but I never got a response. Heh.

According to an op ed piece in today's Times, A Pastime of Grandma and the 'Golden Girls' Evolves Into a Hip Hobby

Carol E. Lee, who chronicles the place of knitting in American culture, has discovered:

These days, young women knit during their lunch breaks, on the subway and in cafes. Trendy coffee shops offer knitting classes and sell yarn. Across the country, young women get together to "stitch 'n' bitch," as a best-selling book is aptly titled. Amtrak is offering "Stitch 'n Ride" cars out of Oakland for people who prefer the click of needles to the buzz of cellphones.

I knitted through my college days, my mothering days, and continue to do it through my aging days. The cartoon pretty much sums it up for me.

Today I went with my friend Joan -- an amazing quilter -- to a fabric art exhibit. She didn't submit her work for the exhibit, but she certainly should have.

I spent most of my time looking at the yarn creations. It annoyed me somewhat that there were so many ponchos on display and for sale. I was making and selling them three years ago; unfortunately, my ideas were so ahead of the trend, that I gave up before the big wave hit. Figures.

I don't participate in any of the knitting blogs. Practically, and spiritually, I don't subscribe to patterns. I make it all up as I go along.

March 28, 2005

Over on Metafilter, there's a flaky conversation about Dyngus Day, which they keep misspelling.

Smigus Dyngus (shming-oos-ding-oos) is an unusual tradition of Easter Monday. This day (Monday after Easter Sunday) is called also in Polish "Wet Monday", in Polish: "Mokry Poniedzialek" or "Lany Poniedzialek". Easter Monday is also a holiday in Poland. It was traditionally the day when boys tried to drench girls with squirt guns or buckets of water. "Smigus" comes from the word smigac meaning swish with a cane since men tap the ankles and legs of the girls. "Dyngus" comes probably from German word dingen which means to come to an agreement since the girls needed to give men money to stop being swish and splash. The more a girl is sprayed with water, the higher are her chances to get married. Usually groups of young boys are waiting for accidental passerby near the farmer markets or in the corners of the streets. Older men behave like gentlemen spraying their wives with cologne water rather than with the regular one. The girls got their chances for revenge the following day. They can spray boys with water as much as they wanted on Tuesday.

Dousing may have pagan roots, or it may reflect Christian rebirth and baptism. It may hark back to the baptism of Poland's Mieszko I and his court on Easter Monday in 966. Whether the tradition is historic or religious in origin, Smigus-Dyngus remains a significant, well-loved Polish tradition.

My childhood Polish community in downstate New York didn't celebrate Dyngus Day, and my mother says she never heard of it, even though she lived in Poland for eight years during her childhood.

Nevertheless, that it should show up on Metafilter is a hoot.

The following from Yahoo News via Toolz of the New School:

It's not that Sam Kimery objects to the views expressed on Fox News. The creator of the "Fox Blocker" contends the channel is not news at all. Kimery figures he's sold about 100 of the little silver bits of metal that screw into the back of most televisions, allowing people to filter Fox News from their sets, since its August debut.

"Apparently the making of terroristic threats against those who don't share your views is a high art form among a certain core audience," said Kimery, 45.

As John Ennis of Toolz, concludes:

Now if we could just screw that into the back of Bush's head...

March 26, 2005

As I was posting the reference below to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, unbeknown to me, my mother was unearthing photographs of my daughter who, as a junior in high school, choreographed, costumed, and danced her own original interpretation of that piece. Her costume was flesh-colored and glittery. Her makeup dramatic. Her movements fierce. This in a school district community that, at the time, was quite unsophisticated. (Actually, given the large number of current unsophisticated national constituencies, it was apparently ahead of its time.)

Anway, I just love this photo, which, according to writing on the back, was taken and given to her by one of my daughter's teachers.

I must not have taken any photos of her that evening since no others are turning up. I do remember sitting in the middle of the audience listening to the murmurs during her performance that probably had more to do with the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra under her leotard than with the choice of performance piece. I wish I could have taped the comments afterward from other parents as they tried to come up with something that would not give away their real opinions.

to stroke the skin of ripening
birches fringed like armies
of buckskinned arms, their fine-boned
fingers splattering buds like spots
of blood in the sky

The above is from one of my poems that was published back in the mid-eighties. The birches in the park haven't yet begun to sprout, but there are these bushes doing something similar:

My favorite spring poem is this one by ee cummings (sorry, but the spacing doesn't seem to come out the way it's supposed to, even though it looks fine in the "entry" box).

in just-

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

balloonman whistles
far
and
wee

Around here it is certainly JUST spring. The ice is just thinning. The mud is just emerging into something puddleluscious. The sky today is an Easter Bunny blue, but just how long it will last is anybody's guess.

I have always done whatever spring cleaning I get around to doing with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring blaring in the background.

It's time for revving up. C'mon Oestre. You go, girl.

A little early for April Fool's Day, but this -- from Scientific American via Too Much and Too Little -- is too good to make wait.

from the Scientific American editorial
Okay, We Give Up

MATT COLLINS
THE EDITORS editors@sciam.com
COPYRIGHT 2005 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

March 25, 2005

After my daughter and her husband bought their little ranch on a dead-end street in a little town in western Massachusetts, they began to realize all of the things that are wrong with it. Mold behind the walls in the basement. Bathroom too small. Not enough closets after all. Windows need replacing.

But last week they watched out their kitchen window as eight deer cavorted around just behind the bush that separates their back yard (which badly needs re-grading) and the nature preserve that abuts their property.

And each day the same family of cardinals gathers at the bird feeder that graces the corner of their yard.

There's very little traffic on their road, and the neighbor (who is my daughter's age) two houses down runs a small day-care center where my grandson loves to hang out with the other kids while my daughter and her neighbor hang out in the background.

My son-in-law works at a new job that he likes that is less than a ten-minute drive from the house. Sometimes he even comes home for lunch.

The house can be fixed enough to be comfortable and safe, but a friendly neighborhood where deer meander past your back yard is, as they say, priceless -- and, in the grand scheme of things, enough to balance out the bad.

I try to remind myself of that as I find myself back in my little apartment, across the hall from my mom. I think of the victims of the tsunami who are struggling to rebuild some kind -- any kind -- of roofs over their heads, and I think that what I have is enough. For now, anyway.

The Little Picture is what we make of it. We have no control over the Big One.

My three days of belly-laughing with my grandson is enough to balance out the stuff that sometimes doesn't seem enough.

March 21, 2005

A basket lined with purple feathers and strings the colors of spring. Eggs within eggs within eggs within rest fossils from other places, other times. Moons and hares and runes (znaki) that my Polish pagan ancestors might or might not have used to help make sense of a unpredictable world.

Yesterday, on the Spring Equinox, we five women gathered for a pot-luck brunch and some sympathetic magic. Or maybe it was just our ritualistic way to manifest our yearnings for warm weather and green shoots and, in general, a world more to our liking.

Tomorrow I head out to see my grandson. Rain, snow, or any weather, he makes me feel as though it's Spring. There is nothing I like more then spending some time in his joy-filled toddler world.

And I desperately need that feeling. My next door 77 year old neighbor, who was taken to the hospital in an ambulance three weeks ago, apparently has blood leaking into her brain. Another neighbor, who walks with a walker, fell down yesterday and broke her arm.

Today, I took my mother to my brother's, where low clouds hovered over the Catskill Mountains, and, even though Spring showed no signs of even considering to make its approach, I was still soothed by the serenity of the monotoned wooded landscape.

I'm sure that there were creatures dying somewhere in those acres of trees and stones. But that's not the same....not the same as when it happens within this concerete and steel warehouse (upscale though it is).

My mother is doing surprisingly well on new medication. She is much less anxious and unhappy. We play cards, laugh, wait together for Spring.

On the white doors along the long hallways in our building hang the various shapes and colors of Spring. There are silk calla lilies on mine. But there is no magic here. Lots of sympathy, but no magic.

Magic is an exhuberant two-and-a-half year old running out to greet his Grammy, who, of course, has brought him a surprise.

Spring will come. Like magic.

March 19, 2005

I can't remember the last time I was out on a Saturday night. I can't remember the last time I had a glass of wine out on a Saturday night.

So, this was a special occasion for me on several levels.

I started reading Dave Rogers' original weblog, Time's Shadow, when I began blogging, when we were all a part of AKMA's fantasy University of Blogaria. (The Happy Tutor reminisces here about those good ol' days, back in 2001-02))

Then Dave went dark for a while, and I lost track of him. He's back in the blogosphere with Groundhog Day, and he was back in the Albany NY area this weekend to visit his sisters on the way to Syracuse to visit his folks.

So we made a date to meet. (I told my mother I was going to meet one of my girlfriends, since she panics every time she thinks that I might abandon her in favor of some guy. Dave brought his lovely teenage daughter along to protect him, just in case I proved to be an axe murderer.}

There's something special about meeting, in person, someone whom you've gotten to know through his writing. We only had an hour to chat, though, since Dave had to leave early Sunday morning for his drive, with his offspring, to visit his parents.

But it was a wonderful hour of gossiping about other bloggers; sharing, in person, more details of what we share on our blogs; laughing and imbibing (him beer, me wine). We also shared in some of his daughter's calorie-filled dessert. It really was like hanging out with a long-time and dear friend.

Dave lives in Florida, so who knows if we'll ever have a chance for a meet-up again. But, you never know, since I have cousins in Florida, and I plan to visit them often when I'm free of caregiving responsibilities. Dave says he's going to take ballroom dance lessons. Maybe he'll give me a spin around the dance floor.

In the meanwhile, thanks for the memory, Dave.

March 17, 2005

I bought a set of beepers and put one on her keys and the other in her purse. I keep the third. That way I can always track down her keys and purse when she can't find them. Which is just about every day. Sometimes twice. Tonight it was as I was falling asleep and she called me because someone has stolen her purse. Beep Beep. It was right where she hung it in the closet -- not that she remembers doing that.

Her brain scan shows moderate to severe atrophy.

She hugs me a lot. Tells me that I'm her beautiful daughter. Thanks me often for what I do for her. Begs me not to leave her.

She doesn't realize how fast I have to run just to keep up. Beep. Beep.

March 16, 2005

We're being duped at every turn. No wonder we don't know where to turn.

Half of the time that we think we're watching news reports, we're really watching video news releases prepared by public relations firms for organizations promoting their own agendas, and that includes the Bush administration. What we are led to believe are news reports are really propaganda.

There is, at least one voice in the PR industry who is calling attention to this unethical practice. Richard Edelman, president and CEO of the world's largest independent public relations firm, blogs the following, as he refers to an article published in the NY Times:

"Under the Bush Administration, the federal government has used a well-established TOOL of public relations; the pre-packaged, READY-TO-SERVE news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations..." It is a world where all participants benefit...Public relations firms secure government contracts worth MILLIONS of dollars..."In three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office has held that government-made news segments may even constitute improper covert PROPAGANDA..." An FCC decision in year 2000 states that "Listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom they are being PERSUADED..." (Note that the capital letters are my own so that you get the full effect of the words being used).

Edelman goes on to say:

What can be done? Let's start by revealing the size of our US government contracts. We have heard in the media that PR agencies are receiving $250 million from the US Government each year to promote its programs. I'm skeptical of this number. At that level, Government contracts would constitute 10% of the fees of the top ten agencies in the world. At Edelman, our fees from the US Government (we have one account, from the US Department of Commerce to promote travel to the US from the UK) are $400,000, out of our global total of $240 million in fees. I understand from another top-ten firm that they only have 3% of its fees from Government contracts. So a useful first step toward transparency is to end the mystery of size of fees by having each firm reveal total spending by US Government-related accounts.

From www.prwatch.com/spin:

VNRs are produced for the government by private contractors and the State Department's Office of Broadcasting Services, the Agriculture Department's Broadcast Media and Technology Center, and the Defense Department's Pentagon Channel, among others. We've been criticizing VNRs used as propaganda for more than a decade. For example, our 1995 book Toxic Sludge Is Good For You described how VNRs were used to sell the first Bush administration's Persian Gulf war.

The New York Times editorial (repeated in Truthout.org) lays it all out:

As documented this week in an article in The Times by David Barstow and Robin Stein, more than 20 federal agencies, including the State Department and the Defense Department, now create fake news clips. The Bush administration spent $254 million in its first four years on contracts with public relations firms, more than double the amount spent by the Clinton administration.

Most of these tapes are very skillfully done, including "interviews" that seem genuine and "reporters" who look much like the real thing. Only sophisticated viewers would easily recognize that these videos are actually unpaid commercial announcements for the White House or some other part of the government. Some of the videos clearly cross the line into the proscribed territory of propaganda, and the Government Accountability Office says at least two were illegally distributed.

I wonder how much Hitler spent on his propaganda machine?

And then there's the propaganda aimed at keeping the white boys off the front lines:

"The U.S. Army is adjusting its marketing pitch to minorities as the war in Iraq hurts recruiting efforts among Hispanics and, especially, African-Americans," reports Advertising Age. Leo Burnett is the Army's lead marketing agency, with Cartel Creativo doing Hispanic, and Muse Cordero Chen & Partners and Vital Marketing Group doing African-American, outreach. The Army will "maintain a minority presence in general-market advertising, craft minority-specific messages," and "focus Spanish-language messages at parents and 'influencers.'" Political science professor Peter Feaver expressed skepticism, saying, "If the problem is Iraq, there's not much in the short run that the Army recruiters can do."

"Outreach" in this case is just another word for propaganda.

Wal-Mart's television commercials are propagandizing really hard to off-set what everyone knows is really going on -- that women employees are concentrated in lower-paying jobs, are paid less than men on the same job, and are less likely than men to advance to management positions? These gender patterns persist even though overall women have more seniority, lower turn over rates, and higher performance ratings in most Wal-Mart positions than their male counterparts.

And that's just Wal-Mart's Little Picture. In the Big Picture:

The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?

Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

"You won't hear anything negative from most people," says Paul Kelly, founder of Silvermine Consulting Group, a company that helps businesses work more effectively with retailers. "It would be committing suicide. If Wal-Mart takes something the wrong way, it's like Saddam Hussein. You just don't want to piss them off."

It's a killer American capitalist success story. Read it and weep.

And then start paying a lot closer attention to how we're all being hoodwinked every time we turn around.

Especially watch how Dumbya tries to hoodwink us into believing that he's not making every effort to undermine Constitutional checks and balances. Watch as Senator Harry Reid fights the good fight, pointing out the fallacies and dangers of the Republican effort ...to use extraordinary parliamentary tactics allowing the Republican majority to rubberstamp the handful of nominees already rejected and all future Bush nominees.

Keep an eye on that effort of Bush to do still another endrun around the law of this land.

And as Factcheck.org so clearly reminds us, Bush's propaganda machine is still churning out lies about Social Security:

In a new TV ad, Progress for America exaggerates the true state of Social Security's finances by comparing it to the Titanic. The ad claims the system will go "bankrupt" if nothing is done and that we must rescue the program "before it hits the iceberg." Actually, neutral experts predict the system can pay between 70 and 80 percent of currently scheduled benefits even if the Trust Fund is exhausted, which isn't predicted to happen for another 37 years, at least.

The ad also touts Bush's plan for "voluntary personal retirement accounts" as though that would improve the system's finances. But even the White House now acknowledges that individual accounts alone do nothing to fix the system's long-term financial shortfall.

I'm not sure how we Americans can keep ourselves from being hoodwinked over and over again by all of those working so hard to turn this country into something it was never meant to be so that they can reap one kind of out-of-whack profit or another.

Checking these non-partisan sites can help us to keep our eyes open:

www.factcheck.org
www.prwatch.org/spin

and also www.truthout.org

It's that price of freedom, right?

March 11, 2005

Today I mailed out some poems to a university poetry contest for poets over 50. I've been procrastinating for a month, trying to decide if I should do it or not. The deadline is March 15, so if I was going to do it, they had to go in the mail today. Maybe mailing them on my birthday will bring me luck.

Then there's the other side of the coin.

I haven't been lucky with some of my weblogger friends who have tried to leave comments on my weblog but are blocked. b!X says that I seem to have blacklisted anything that comes from blogspot.com. I probably wreaked a lot more havoc with my blacklisting than that; he's trying to figure it out. Bleh.

And I left my mom home to made a quick run over the the little post office in the mall so that I could mail in the poetry by Priority Mail. Mall customers are not supposed to use the post office parking spaces, but it was snowing, so of course people did (the post office was almost empty but the parking spaces were full up) so I kind of created an extra space next to the last car and was in and out in just about five minutes. Of course, the security patrol left a warning sticker on my car. That pissed me off, so I just mailed the Security Office a pissed off letter, the warning sticker, and my receipt from the post office. It probably won't do any good, but it made me feel better.

What really made me feel better was a message on my phone left by my 2.5 years old granson while I was out. "Happy Birthday, Grammy," squealed his little-boy voice. "I love you."

And then I got a call from a friend whom I've known for 40 years. Our paths cross periodically. She didn't know it was my birthday and called just to check in. We're going to see "Aviator" tomorrow and catch some dinner. She reminded me of how, twenty years ago, it was I who called around and rounded people up to go out and party. So much of who I am has faded into the past. At least for now. And at least for now I have friends who continue to return my past favors.

And I made myself a chocolate cream pie with Oreo cookie crust.

The good always seems to more than balance the bad.

65.

I've got my Medicare card, but it still doesn't seem possible. How could I be that old? I watch some middle-aged couple demonstrating basic ballroom steps on my public TV station and think how much I loved dancing and how much I'd like to get back into that someday.

Someday? How many days for ballroom dancing do I think I have left? And first, I'd have to drop the 20 pounds I put on over the past three years of taking care of my mother and turning to tasty food as my one consistent sensual comfort.

I went out yesterday and had lunch with a couple whom I've known snce college, but, as my mom continues to slip away, I'll have even fewer opportunities than I have now to indulge is freedom and comfort. I have to believe, however, that I will have another life to create for myself when she's no longer around. She's already 89. Chances are that I'll live to at least that age. Hell, Chita Rivera is in her seventies and still going strong on the dance floor. Well, I'd still have to lose at least those 20 extra pounds.

On every birthday since I started blogging in 2002,I've posted a photo of myself. I started blogging about the same time my mother began to become more dependent on me. She changed. I changed.

So, I was born on March 11, 1940 at 3:42 a.m. My early birthdays were big parties with lots of friends and relatives. We were a part of a large extended family. Yesterday, my mother unearthed this photo from my seventh birthday:

There will be no party for me today. I'll take my 92 year old neighbor on our usual Friday grocery run. Maybe I'll rent a video. Pick up some kind of special dessert.

March 10, 2005

The comment left on the previous post deserves being here up front:

One thing I've noticed even about generally positive TV reports on blogging is that they end right when the subject gets juicy and interesting.

To me, that's precisely the point at which the meaty discussion happens, and we need to get into the whole issue of blogs "outing" the editorial discussion that normally happens prior to a story's publication in traditional media, and conducting that discussion out in the open as the story evolves.

When I worked as an "Editorial Associate" at the New York State Legislature (I'm talking 30 years ago), legislative staff made a point of befriending reporters who covered that beat. On the positive side, we wanted the reporters to make sure that they had the facts, had right information when they wrote about proposed legislation. We wanted to make sure that they understood the intent and the planned outcome. On the dark side, of course, hopes were that the reporters would not print something that the legislators did not want printed.

The legislator who appeared on Nightline seemed pretty put-out by the fact that, while reporters always run their stories by him before submitting them for publication, the blogger who stirred up opposition to his one piece of legislation didn't do that. Well, yeaahhh!

Power players usually understand that one hand washes the other. "You keep this information off your newspaper's pages, and I'll give you other inside information that you can use."

Independent bloggers don't need to accept those kinds of understandings. Independent bloggers can have the freedom to do what other news media should also do, but all too often don't -- dig out and stir up the actual truth. In complex issues, it's often a matter of "truths" -- examining them, analyzing them, comparing them. And then bloggers have the freedom to add their own conclusions, their own opinions.

Nightline only began to approach that difference between mainstream media journalists and blogger journalists. And it's an issue that makes all the difference in the world of reporting.

March 09, 2005

It was great to see some of the people that I met at the first BloggerCon (Jim Moore -- for whom my daughter worked when he still had his GeoPartners company --, David Weinberger -- who, I notice, has kept me on his blogroll) still there in the middle of things at the Berkman. I think that last night's Nightline program demonstrated just how difficult it is to capture -- in such a short time -- the vast potential of blogging for the individual and for the culture. The one point that did get through, however, is what a potent force it is to help an individual make a difference, especially when it comes to government, where individuals seem to have so little power.

I can't seem to find, online, information about the former teacher/current blogger who was profiled on Nightline regarding her succesful effort to keep a bill from going forward in her state's legislature. She and b!X are good examples of how one person can affect the workings of government.

Bloggers like those two have done a good job of proving their credibility as reporters/journalists as well as activists by doing the research, making sure both their reporting and linking are accurate.

While there's still a lot of discussion going on about ethics and blogging, it seems pretty obvious to me that the cream rises to the top. Those blogger/journalists who infuse their personal ethics into their reporting will gain respect and readership. The others will fall by the wayside.

Bloggers as journalists are in the media spotlight these days because their writing can have broad and deep public influence. Bloggers as diarists, like me, are a mixed bag and we don't have much influence. But we do have fun being on the fringes of this cultural and technological phenomenon.

If I lived closer, still had my young-years' energy, I would be right there on Thursdays at the Berkman Center. Meanwhile, I watch from a distance and keep blogging.

March 08, 2005

There are two wonderful and different conversations happening on two woman-authored weblogs. They're both about male tendencies.

One is at Burningbird's, where Shelley posts a delightful bit of creative writing to examine why male bloggers do so much linking to each other. You've just got to read her take on it. As a consummate techie, Shelley ties it all into Autolink (I have no idea what that is) and other blogging peripherals, so I kind of get lost at that point. But her post is priceless, and she's got 17 comments rolling out at this point.

I remember early in the weblogging game when we were all linking to each other like crazy in order to develop a readership base/community. These days, I link to provide more details about whatever I'm writing about.

And then there's the other conversation at Time Goes By, where Ronni takes me to task for male bashing. Keep scrolling down on her post and check out the thoughtful comments.

There's no doubt that women can exhibit the same violent tendencies as men do, but I suspect that, when they do, it's because they're following the male model. (Again, I repeat that while most men are not violent, most of the violence perpetrated in the world is done by men. They provide the model.)

Most women who attain any kind of political power tend to do so by following the male model of power attainment and maintenance. I have worked for a woman who did just that and another woman who led and managed a large organization using a totally different power model -- one based in a more humanly networked style, a "female" model of egalitarian and familial relationships. I stayed on her immediate staff for almost 20 years because she was such a delight to work with (not "work for" but rather "work with").

Some women in some cultures, taught not to question the attitudes of authority, allow themselves to be kept pregnant and dependent, to be physically mutilated (for all kinds of reasons), to bow to the abusive will of their male masters. The habits of generations of women following the rules set down by traditional male power structures seem almost impossible to change in some cultures.

We do things the way we do them because our parents did and their parents did.

This story is probably apocryphal, but it makes the point.

A child was watching her mother prepare a rolled rump roast before putting it in the oven. When the mother cut off both edges of the roast and threw them away, the child asked why she was throwing away good meat. The mother replied: "My mother taught me how to cook, and that's the way she always did it. I'm sure thata there's a good reason for doing it. I'll go and ask grandma."

So the woman went and asked her mother what the reason was for cutting off the ends of a rump roast before roasting it. The mother replied: "My mother taught me how to cook, and that's the way she always did it. I'm sure that there's a good reason for doing it that way. Let's go and ask grandma."

So the women went to ask their 80-year old progenitor why she cut off the edges of the roast before cooking it. And the old woman replied:

"Oh my! You remember that I used to do that? Well, we were very poor and only had one small square roasting pan and the roasts I would buy somehow would never fit into the pan, so I had to cut the ends off to make them fit into the pan."

Point made.

Finally, in one of the comments to Ronni's post on Becoming Older and Wiser, Jean points to this weblog by a young father weblogging about his new son and his "developing relationships to self, place, and family." It's a wonder to behold!

It reminds me of when b!X worked as a kind of nanny to young son of one of his single-mother friends. He would send us photos of the two of them together. It was a wonder to behold.

There are some guys who are changing what is considered a "guy thing." You go, guys!!

March 06, 2005

One Democratic image maker admiringly predicts that our two most relentless blondes will outlast everyone: "When the world ends, there will be left only a few cockroaches, Cher, Hillary and Martha."

So ends Maureen Dowd's column "Alpha Gals Can Prosper as Victims" in my local newspaper today, a column that begins with:

Every culture has its own way of tamping down female power, be it sexual, political or financial. Americans like to see women who wear the pants be beaten up and humiliated. Afterward, in a gratifying redemption ritual, people like to see the battered women rewarded.

Unless, of course, you're a version of Condi Rice, who, Dowd suggests

does not need to play the victim to make people feel better about her power because she was never seen as a termagant, pushing people around and bending them to her will. She always seemed subservient to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, a willing handmaiden and spokesman for their bellicose bidding.

When men fall from grace, it's almost impossible for them to regain any kind of stature (except if you're someone like Rush Limbaugh with a neo-conservative base that's expert in denial, or if you're one of the good 'ol boys and your buddies keep you afloat in the background). When women fall from grace, it's a different story -- as Dowd goes on to explain:

Obviously, many men are uncomfortable with successful women, so when these women are brushed back, alpha men can take comfort in knowing alphettes are not threateningly all-powerful and they had better soften those sharp edges.

The double standard is alive and unwell.

March 05, 2005

Sitting Saturday with an 18 pound cat holding onto my lap for dear life while I watch "Sylvia" on my computer screen because the DVD player that's part of my TV doesn't work.

"Poets are Shamans," he says to woo her. "What are rituals and incantations but poetry." How could she resist?

Without the seratonin uptake inhibitors, would I have been another Sylvia? With them, would she have been another me?

I remember the darkness and lying, exhausted, across my unmade bed while my daughter and son worried and did what they had to.

There is a power in that darkness. Words crawl around like snakes slowly curving themselves into dark meanings. The trick is not to fall into the pit.

I am no Lady Lazarus. I am no Sylvia.

I am, however, fond of snakes.

A Kentucky high school student who wrote a story about Zombies invading a high school has been arrested and jailed.

Winchester police say William Poole, 18, was taken into custody Tuesday morning. Investigators say they discovered materials at Poole's home that outline possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police.

"My story is based on fiction," said Poole, who faces a second-degree felony terrorist threatening charge. "It's a fake story. I made it up. I've been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies."

Some reports say that he didn't mention "zombies" in the story that his grandparents unearthed from his journal.

Thanks to the tenor of the times established by the Bushites (who perpetrated the WMD PR fiasco)and the pressures of their fear-inspiring Patriot Act, some Americans no longer can distinguish between fact and fiction, between creative writing and terrorism.

Grandparents turning in grandchildren! Don't they talk to each other??!! Oh wait, it's Kentucky -- a really RED state, where they blindly follow the country's blind leader and don't hesitate to Rush to judgment

I guess none of the adults in Kentucky have every watched Buffy.

Here's a little brain teaser for all you smart and literate people out there. (I know the answer because I cheated.)

Last year, a man went on vacation to Key West. He spent most of his time either sport fishing on the high seas or carousing on Duval Street. A friend of his prefered a very different kind of vacation. He liked hiking and camping and using stone-age toilet facilities. So he spent most of his vacation in the woods in California and the Pacific Northwest.

When both men returned from their trips, they compared notes. The first man explained that on his vacation he saw something that, when written down, has all five vowels, and the vowels make up five of the seven letters in the word. ( A-E-I-O-and-U were all in the same word) In fact, he saw not just one, but a few of these things.

His friend replied: "When I got to Key West, I also saw something that when written down has all five vowels in its seven letters. In fact, I saw quite a few of these as well."

Each man wrote down his seven-letter word, and then they exchanged papers. Both men had written down the same word. But what they saw were very different things.

What did each man see?

March 02, 2005

I hadn't thought about Annie Dillard in ages, but she popped into my head as I was writing my previous post last night.

And then, this morning I open my email and see this horoscope from Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology:

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In her book, *For the Time Being,* Annie Dillard says that throughout history many people have thought civilization was on the verge of collapse. Around 300 B.C., Hindus believed they were living in a "degenerate and unfortunate time" known as the Kali Yuga--the lowest point in the great cosmic cycle. In 426 A.D., the Christian writer Augustine mourned that the world was in its last days. In the 1800s, renowned Hasidic Rabbi Nachman grieved for the world's "widespread atheism and immorality." Dillard offers more examples, concluding, "There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less . . . There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree." Go sit under that tree, Pisces. The time for your awakening is now at hand.

So I'll take that as a hint to go and read more Dillard.

I am SO ready for an awakening. I just hope it's not a rude one.

March 01, 2005

Part 1.
Today, March 1, Senator Robert Byrd delivered the following remarks at the end of his speech warning the Senate and the American people about a procedural effort being considered by some Senators to shut off debate and shut down minority voices and opinions. It's worth a read to hear him roar.

Yes, we believe in Majority rule, but we thrive because the minority can challenge, agitate, and question. We must never become a nation cowed by fear, sheeplike in our submission to the power of any majority demanding absolute control.

In the eloquent, homespun words of that illustrious, obstructionist, Senator Smith, "Liberty is too precious to get buried in books. Men ought to hold it up in front of them every day of their lives, and say, 'I am free – – to think – – to speak. My ancestors couldn't. I can. My children will.'"

Part 2.
And as we begin this month of celebrating the history of women on this planet, let us also roar loudly and angrily over the fact that it is still males of our human species that continue to abuse their power against us.

From an Awakened Woman e-newsletter:

Are they not all men, raping murdering and torturing? It is men who are killing the planet, until we get that, hear that, except that, it will continue. It is white American men who pimp 11 and 12 year old girls. It is the Southern British men who are the number one recipients of the world wide sex slave trades. It is the African men who rape in Africa. And the list of the races of men who rape are endless!

Here's just one horrifying example.

Part 3.
At some point in my daughter's early high school years, she and a friend performed in a school Variety Show by miming Helen Reddy's I Am Woman Hear Me Roar. I remember helping them with their costumes, which began as suffragette long skirts, long sleeved blouses, and hats that velcroed-off half-way through to reveal jeans and sneakers and t-shirts.

I’ve been roaring since the 60s, but we really haven't come a long way baby (remember that Virginia Slim cigarette slogan of decades ago?), at all.

And while it's not rape, murder, or abduction for sex-slavery, this little essay captures the long road we still have ahead on a very basic level.

Part 4.
So, while some of us keep trying, in our own personal way, to find sources from which to draw psychological sustenance while we gear up for more roaring, my nemesis, Chris Locke continues to try to put some of us into boxes that he can stack up and stand on. I know that he's using his blog to work out his book-in-progress while he's earning his keep promoting and demonstrating the value of buying into the services of High Beam Research. I have no problem with that.

What I have a problem with is his obsession with forcing relationships between women who create their own spiritual destinies and either New Age airheads or Nazi narcissists or some other combination thereof.

Part 5.
The theme for the 2005 Women's History Month is "Women Change America," and there's a growing list of such women that I think should include contemporary leaders like Senator Barbara Boxer.

These women put themselves out into the Big Picture and try to change the world they live in.

But there also are women who struggle each day to save their pieces of the Little Picture -- artists who bring women together to explore who they really are aside from the expectations of men; writers who try to move and motivate women who have lost touch with their own energies, their own ambitions, their own souls' hungers. These women also change worlds.

Many of us women like the feeling of having our feet on the ground and our heads in the clouds. Back in the 70s, after reading one of Annie Dillard's essays about a tree alive with light, I wrote this (not very good) poem:

I choose the cosmic and the common,
refusing to sever half my soul.

I eschew the single minded vision.
I am all I.

Now, I suppose, some people would call that narcissism.

Part 6.
Here in the Northeast, March has roared in like a lion.

March is a month for roaring. I am woman. Hear me roar.