abandon
Summer has abandoned the mountain, and the colors of autumn are fast spreading from valley to valley.
Just before the bright orange full moon, my mother seemed to have lost another bit of her brainpower. Several times a day, now, she says that she doesn't know where she is and she wants to go home. She is terrified of being abandoned, left alone to fend for herself, despite the fact that we never leave her alone, not even at night, now that I'm sleeping on a bed in the next room. Any kind of altercation -- even on the television -- sends her mind imploding. She cries. She cries a lot, but not from pain anymore. We took her to an orthopedist, who looked at her recent x-ray and gave her a cortisone shot in the shoulder that has been so excruciatingly painful. She has not been complaining about pain in that shoulder.
Her pain is her awareness that she is being abandoned by her "self." When she asks "where am I?" it's not the confusion over "where" that terrifies her; it is the loss of the "I."
"Am I going crazy?' she asks in lucid moments.
We can't bear to tell her that, yes, she is.
91 years and counting.
Categories:
bankrupt
The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily's guest writer every Monday.
BANKRUPT
The number keeps growing. It's already in the hundreds of thousands, and it keeps growing. What number? Iraqis killed since the U.S. invaded. Hundreds of thousands, most of them innocent people trying live in a virtually impossible situation. Hundreds of thousands killed by U.S. military or in sectarian violence or by perhaps-foreign insurgents or by private U.S. contract mercenaries. All since the U.S. turned Iraq upside-down with an unwarranted invasion.
Nobody here seems much to care. Media occasionally footnotes a news report with passing mention. Military shrugs with a fatalistic, "War, people die," or an incredibly callous "collateral damage." Administration, with its led-by-god's-hand president, insists that we fight them there so we don't have to fight them here.
That last is particularly galling. "Them" -- who exactly does that refer to? After all, Iraqis were not responsible for 9/11, but when that point is made, the god-chosen president says nothing or simply repeats his "them" non-sequitur which actually means: "them," you know, the ragheads, them "less-human-than us creatures over there in the Middle East." Oh yeah...them. There better than here. In other words, let innocent Iraqis die so Americans don't. (Sounds similar to the prez's serving -- or not -- during 'Nam.)
Okay, then here's a question: if fighting there means no fighting here, then we must all be secure (here in sieg-heil "homeland"), right? Then why all the intrusive, scare-tactic "security" measures here in America? Why the stripping of Constitutional rights? After all, if we're safe cuz innocent Iraqis are dying in our place, then we don't need all those intimidating measures here, do we? (By the way, what color is the security alert level lately?)
It may all seem like a real puzzle, but actually it's no puzzle at all. Behind every point and question raised above, there is a single, basic explanation for why hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have died because of our presence in their land. And here's the reason: we don't care. Why not? Because America, in virtually its entirety, is morally bankrupt. We have tossed our moral compass in the trash cuz it was convenient to do so cuz it was getting in the way of our being pissed over 9/11, and keeping us from smashing anyone and anyplace we wanted. So our alleged "leaders" -- all of them we elected, and their buddies -- led us down the rose garden path with lies and scares and twisted logic.
But it's not their fault. Nope. The fault lies with the rest of us. We let them have our moral compass. We readily made ourselves morally bankrupt so we could kick some butt. Anybody's. Guilty or not.
Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis dead.
Shame on us.
Categories:
still above ground
The title of this post became the mantra at my high school reunion last night. Despite multiple by-pass surgeries for themselves or their spouses, despite various joint replacements, complex medication menus, and debilitating illnesses of all kinds, despite the tragic loss of children and spouses, we were there and we all were STILL ABOVE GROUND.
We were as varied in terms of personality as we were in high school, but this time we all felt a general comradeship that wasn't always there more than 50 years ago. The indefatigable classmate who organized the whole shindig vowed to organize another one in five years, if not sooner. After all, next time there might well be "a lot more roses." (That was an event in-joke that I will footnote.)
Meanwhile, I made the mistake of dancing the Lindy with strappy shoes that had non-skid soles. Landed on my butt once, tried to get up, landed again, and then finally managed to hold onto my partner's hand tight enough to right myself. Since there were only two other couples on the dance floor, of course everyone was watching. But we finished the dance (trooper that I am who isn't easily embarrassed); the distressing part was how totally out of breath I was at the end of the song. Out of shape! Definitely out of shape! The only other dance I did was part of the Electric Slide, which I managed, with flair, despite the sticky-soled shoes, and which I ended with a "high-five" from a attractive woman who pretty much ignored me in high school.
As it turned out, I was not the only one who had been divorced. I was not the only one who was a heretic, although I was probably the most heretical of the bunch. I chatted and hugged and kissed on the cheek both men and women I didn't even know that well back then. It was as though our five decades of life's experiences had given us a lot more in common. And, heh, we were all still above ground.
As I checked my email when I got home today, I found that one of my classmates had already emailed us photos that he had taken with a camera a lot better than mine. I realized that, without name tags, I couldn't readily remember the names of most of the faces because they had changed so much over all those years. There were a few I recognized right away last night, however, because, underneath the wear of years, their teenage faces, their eyes and their smiles, were still there.
Some were more successful and/or wealthy than others. Many have had to survive any number of personal tragedies for which money couldn't compensate,. several having lost children to illness or accident. I can't even imagine the horror of losing a child. I learned that the friend I thought had died in a tragic house fire died by much more tragic circumstances.
I discovered that I was not the only one caring for a parent, and not the only one living with a care-needing parent. I seem to be, however, the only one who doesn't have outside help.
When I walked into the house today, my mother was sitting in her chair crying. My brother was ensconced in a side chair, immersed in some ebay transaction. She hadn't eaten lunch yet, and before I unpacked my car, I made her something to eat, which she hungrily devoured. Later, we watched a travel video of Poland, and before she went to sleep, we danced to her muddled rendition of the Polish National Anthem.
While there were some divorced and some heretics among my former classmates, there were no bloggers. This URL is now listed in the bio information about each graduate that was circulated. It will be interesting to see if any of them will visit and comment.
I drove home from the reunion grateful for my reasonably healthy body, for my two children and one grandchild, for the past 50 years of being able to live much of it "my way."
Footnote: During the Mass, which I didn't attend, the priest noted those classmates who had passed away since we graduated and placed a rose for each in a vase. And so, all evening long, there were poignant comments about the number of roses there might be the next time we get together.
Categories:
reuniting
I don't know how many of my old close friends will be there -- tonight, as my graduating class from Sacred Heart High School celebrates it 50th. But I will be.
A half-century ago I graduated from high school, escaped the confines of a parochial education and launched myself into a much more reasonable world. At least it was a co-ed school.
There were two separate groups of kids who went to Sacred Heart: the Irish kids who came from the parish's grade school, and the rest of us (mainly Poles and Italians) who came from the other Catholic ethnic parish grade schools. It's not that there was discrimination, but it was the Irish kids who were the most popular. After all, it was their inherited territory.
While I achieved no academic honors in high school (my biggest claim to academic fame were my high nineties' Regents Exam grades in English and French), I had an energetic social life that had no ethnic boundaries. Apparently, according to a few comments in my yearbook, I also drank a lot - probably because I liked feeling uninhibited, although not enough to loosen the high moral sexual standards ingrained in me since birth.
But I did have fun, my circle of girlfriends sharing my party-going personality. One of them, I remember, had a little Nash Rambler that six of was would squeeze into. We practiced dancing with each other, and that's when I taught myself how to lead the Lindy.
Here are four of us, overshadowing our dates, gathered at my house to leave together for our Senior Prom. I am on the left, and I remember that my date's name was Bobby Kennedy and he had graduated the year before. Of us four, one died in a tragic house fire. One owned the Nash Rambler and ultimately married my cousin. I haven't seen the fourth since graduation. I hope that she will be there tonight.
I don't actually remember this high school date at Rye Beach/Playland, so I am glad I saved this photo. I do, however, remember the guys. I'm the "pistol packin' mama;" I don't remember who the other girl was. I think that my selective memories are telling.
I'm going alone, and I'm a little nervous about tonight, although I am looking forward to it all. I do know that my old friend who married my cousin will be there with her husband. I know that one woman (widowed) with whom I went through grade school and high school will be there. I think that at least one guy I dated will be there. I wonder if I will be the only heretic. The only divorcee. The only blogger. I'm not going to the mass that's being held before the cocktail hour (odd joining of events, doncha' think?)
Fifty years. How different was the world in 1957, both Big Picture and little picture.
I'm going to take pictures. It's how I remember.
I'm staying overnight at the hotel where the reunion is being held. It's only about 45 minutes from here, but I don't like driving in the dark. These old eyes, you know.
As I throw stuff in an overnight bag, I realize just how impossible it is these days to travel light. In addition to the usual makeup, deoderant, and toothbrush etc., I have to take my meds, stuff to make sure my hair looks good, allergy nose spray, the stuff to soak my partial denture in at night, reading glasses (in addition to my regular seeing/driving glasses), saline nasal spray (because the air in hotel rooms always dries out my sinuses), my mp3 player so that I can listen to the audio book to help me fall asleep......
And, of course, my digital camera. It's how I remember.
Categories:
no lions and tigers, yet
A reddish fox trotted across our forest-lined driveway as I walked down to get the mail today. The same color as the shadows in this autumn-leafed woodland, he seemed to magically appear in my peripheral vision. I managed to focus on him quickly enough to catch his disinterested lope across my path into the dappled tangled of trees and weeds on the other side. I wished he had found a reason to loiter a while, as did the bear we had in our back yard recently.
No lions and tigers around here. Just bear and fox and raccoons and groundhog (which has managed to eat up whatever remaining vegetation there was on the potted plants I had so cleverly arranged on an old wooden pallet at the edge of the woods).
Categories:
too many chilling facts
I've been doing light writing lately. All too aware of the many disasters overwhelming the Big Picture, I write of deer and dear.
But this current article in an Albany publication deserves careful notice:
The Chill Factor
Slave labor, a mercenary army, vulture funds, and the ongoing onslaught against the Constitution—here is Project Censored’s list of the biggest stories the media missed last year
[snip]
This year’s Project Censored presents a chilling portrait of a newly empowered executive branch signing away civil liberties for the sake of an endless and amorphous war on terror. And for the most part, the major news media weren’t paying attention.
[snip]
As the stories cited in this year’s Project Censored selections point out, the federal government continues to provide major news networks with stock footage, which is dutifully broadcast as news. The George W. Bush administration has spent more federal money than any other presidency on public relations. Without a doubt, Parenti says, the government invests in shaping our beliefs. “Every day they’re checking out what we think,” he says. “The erosion of civil liberties is not happening in one fell swoop but in increments. Very consciously, this administration has been heading toward a general autocracy.”
Carl Jensen, who founded Project Censored in 1976 after witnessing the landslide reelection of Richard Nixon in 1972 in spite of mounting evidence of the Watergate scandal, agreed that this year’s censored stories amount to an accumulated threat to democracy. “I’m waiting for one of our great liberal writers to put together the big picture of what’s going on here,” he says.
And as I sit here blogging I am also watching a news program reporting on Rudy Guilliani's trip to England to raise money for his presidential campaign. While I recognize that we are all part of a global community, it just doesn't seem right to let other countries help to elect the person who will be in charge of our country.
And so I create my own realities.
Categories:
Oh! Deer!
We saw it through the screened window and didn't want to scare it away by moving.
It seemed young enough to be traveling with its mother, but she was nowhere around. We had seen a doe and a fawn come through the property several times before. This time, the little one was obviously on its own.
We've had raccoons (which I was never able to catch with a camera) and a bear (which I did). This young deer -- long skinny legs, ears it hasn't yet grown into, gentle brown eyes -- reminded me of the movie The Yearling. We stood and watched it for almost twenty minutes as it grazed on the grasses that never get mowed, always alert and responsive to any odd sound or movement. Sometimes it seemed to look straight at us through the window.
Soon, the hunters will be out. I wonder if we will see it again.
Categories:
a deadly numbers game
The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily's guest writer every Monday.
NUMBERS GAME
This will be fairly short and not at all sweet. Why short? Because at its heart is an unsubstantiated assertion. If the assertion's true, that's one thing, but if not, it would best just disappear since there's enough b.s. in the political air already.
Okay, Saturday in a local paper was a letter from a woman who for several years has been using the stockade fence of her property along a busy side street to "lament the U.S. military dead." At first, she simply used a plastic grocery bag to represent each death, but now she puts up antiwar posters and tiny photos of the dead, all thus far up to some 3750. She also has the number itself posted on the fence.
Recently, she related, a young man in a truck stopped to examine the photos, noting he was veteran of the Iraq war. He studied the pix and found several he knew, the deaths of some of them news to him. Then he pointed at the number and told her it was wrong. And here's where we meet the unsubstantiated assertion.
The number displayed, he told her, was only the total of those who died in Iraq. If others were wounded there but flown to Germany or the U.S. and THEN died, why they're not counted in the official number. Even though they're dead from the war. If they were, he asserted, the count would be closer to 10,000.
10,000. True number or not? True policy or not? Where do we turn for substantiation or repudiation? Media's too busy covering O.J. Simpson and predators and party girls. Our government wouldn't tell us the truth if the young man is right and its word couldn't be trusted if it purported to do so anyway. So where do we turn?
We rightly lament the deaths of over 3700, but what if we're not remembering another 6300 or so? Does it matter? Of course.
But where do we turn for the hard truth?
Categories:
playtime
I never get enough of stacking them up so that he can knock them down.
Categories:
Polka Saturday Night
I remember when I used to go out ballroom dancing every Saturday night. I had a regular dance partner, then, and he was as eager to dance every dance as I was.
I have a regular Saturday night dance partner now, too: my mother (91 years old and demented). I've blogged before about how amazing it is that she remembers how to dance the Polka, the Oberek, and the Waltz, and she can even take the lead. She can follow me if I lead her in the Box Step and the Night Club Two Step.
A friend of mine emailed this poem:
"Meadowbrook Nursing Home" by Alice N. Persons, from Don't Be A Stranger. © Sheltering Pines Press, 2007.
Meadowbrook Nursing Home
On our last visit, when Lucy was fifteen
And getting creaky herself,
One of the nurses said to me,
"Why don't you take the cat to Mrs. Harris' room
— poor thing lost her leg to diabetes last fall —
she's ninety, and blind, and no one comes to see her."
The door was open. I asked the tiny woman in the bed
if she would like me to bring Lucy in, and she turned her head
toward us. "Oh, yes, I want to touch her."
"I had a cat called Lily — she was so pretty, all white.
She was with me for twenty years, after my husband died too.
She slept with me every night — I loved her very much.
It's hard, in here, since I can't get around."
Lucy was settling in on the bed.
"You won't believe it, but I used to love to dance.
I was a fool for it! I even won contests.
I wish I had danced more.
It's funny, what you miss when everything.....is gone."
This last was a murmur. She'd fallen asleep.
I lifted the cat
from the bed, tiptoed out, and drove home.
I tried to do some desk work
but couldn't focus.
I went downstairs, pulled the shades,
put on Tina Turner
and cranked it up loud
and I danced.
I danced.
Categories:
multi-media or magic?
While in Albany, I stayed with a friend who recently bought her first house. And so I gave her a gift for her new home -- a mandala/talisman for peace and prosperity as she embarks on the next stage of her life. The center is crocheted all in one piece, the circle is make of willow and vines layered and twisted together.
I like combining natural materials and fibers. I have everything I need now to start the piece I want to make with the yarn that Andrea spun, dyed, and sent to me from Australia.
But it's going to take some powerful magic to give me the time I need to work on something that creative.
It's raining today. She's sleeping. I still haven't unpacked from my glorious four nights away from here.
Time. Time. Time. Time alone. To create.
Categories:
911
The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily's guest writer every Monday.
911
Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It's a time to remember again/still those who died and to recognize again those first responders who tried to make rescues at the cost of their own lives. They are deserving of our attention and honor.
But it's also a time to remember and condemn those who since 9/11 have used that day for political advantage and dragged this country down into a morass of a war having nothing to do with 9/11, and while doing so have also launched major assaults on the freedoms our democracy guarantees us. While purporting to be fighting to protect them.
Who are these scoundrels? Not bin Laden. Not muslim terrorists. No...our own Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rove: the Fatal Five. We didn't know that the date, 9/11, would take on the additional significance of another emergency in our land -- that 9/11 would also become the symbol of a 911 call to all of us. The call telling us that we were under attack by the Fatal Five: our Constitutional rights, our reputation in the world community -- all being dragged down the tubes because of the incredibly ignorant audacity of the Fatal Five.
Terrorism is not defeated by war as we have known it (as we should have learned in Vietnam) because there's no visible enemy as in a war as we've known it. Terrorism arises out of uniform and apart from armies from people feeling and being done grievous wrong (like the Jewish underground in WWII Poland and later against the British in the yet-to-be Israel). Or out of pure hatred, which is harder yet to combat or change. Terrorists will always achieve their vengeful or murderous or righteous goals -- if not today, then tomorrow. They will wait, they will choose numerous targets, and successful completion of ANY of them is satisfactory. They have no intention of rolling over their enemy in some kind of blitzkrieg. Only dumbheads like the Fatal Five think the latter is what they're fighting. Terrorism is reduced only by changing conditions that foster it, and through diplomacy (a foreign word to the Fatal Five).
At this time, the Fatal Five has shrunk. The others having bailed out, we're now left with the DD, i.e. the Dreadful Duo (or Dumbya and Darth), namely Bush and Cheney. The latter, as in most of his time in office, is hiding in his unknown location. While the former, having made the world an incredibly more dangerous place, is reduced (if reduction were possible) to sneaking out of America and into Iraq or Afghanistan. He calls them surprise visits, but in truth, he's sneaking out and in and out. Not risking his cowardly butt with open visits. Risk is for those he sends to war in his chicken place. Imagine: an American president having to sneak around the world.
So on tomorrow's 6th anniversary, honor those we've lost: take time to write or email the Dreadful Duo, those 2 sniveling cowards who evaded military and combat service themselves but send others' loved ones, and who keep using 9/11 for their own advantage (like timing the upcoming so-called Petraeus report release for the week of the anniversary), and who continue only to lie and equivocate and make a further mess of what already seems as bad as it can get. Tell them what you think of their stupidity. Tell them they are far and away the most shameful administration in our country's history. Tell them that in some very real respects, they have been treasonous to our nation. Tell them how, most of all, they have dishonored those who lost their lives on 9/11 and since. Tell them they should recognize their shame and remember and live with and be haunted by it all the rest of their miserable, cowardly, dishonorable lives.
That may be the best we can do with them. Unfortunately.
If by chance, you'd worry that writing such things to them might somehow rebound badlly on you, then understand that such a feeling means they have achieved their goals: they've squeezed your Constitutional rights out of you. C'mon, suck it up, call your personal, internal 911. Take those rights back -- if only out respect for those who lost everything on 9/11 and since.
Categories:
days like this
Even as so many pieces of the Big Picture seem to be on the road to the big garbage dump, it's hard not to appreciate days like this here in the mountains, with the sky a perfect summer blue over miles of sunflowers lining the road to and from where I travel.
I am eating tomatoes from my garden. The daily flocks of birds are back at the feeders in hopes that the bear will not return. And, on Monday, I will set out for five whole days away from caregiving. I have not had that stretch of time away from my mother in six or more years.
It's supposed to rain most of those five days, but I will take the sense of this sunflower day with me as I visit my grandson (who just started kindergarten) and his parents, and then go on to spend a few days with my women friends in Albany.
I don't know how my brother is going to manage our mother by himself while I'm gone. He has agreed to have a friend who is a home health aide come in on one day to give him a break. I don't think that's going to be enough, and I am willing to pay to bring someone in every day. He makes his choices and he takes his chances.
Meanwhile, the open road less traveled is waiting for me. It will all be here when I get back. Although the sunflowers might be getting droopy headed. Summer is, after all, over.
Categories:
leaving Baghdad Burnning
The girl from Iraq who has written so movingly of life in the city of death leaves for refuge in Syria. Read her whole post about the escape, which includes the following.
As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. The car was silent except for the prattling of the driver who was telling us stories of escapades he had while crossing the border. I sneaked a look at my mother sitting beside me and her tears were flowing as well. There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq. I wanted to sob, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I didn’t want the driver to think I was ungrateful for the chance to leave what had become a hellish place over the last four and a half years.
The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.
We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.
The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?
Categories:
so many reasons to rail and rant
via emailer myrln:
Of course: 4 days before the 9/11 anniversary and who knows how many days before the great Petraeus report (written by the White House), a bin Laden video "surfaces" and is being "studied" by u.s. intelligence (oxymoron) agencies for validity. Tape obtained from "jihadist" website, BUT it is now no longer available at that site. How convenient. When are folks gonna catch on that this kinda shit goes on every time there's an important decision to be made and they want to insure there'll be no opposition to their direction? Not in Congress, certainly.
In South Korea, the Chairman of Hyundai was convicted of embezzling over 100 million from the company and sentenced to 3 years in jail. An appeals court, however, suspended the sentence because he "is too important to South Korea's economy to go to jail..." Teach your children well, as the old song goes, only today means they need to learn to make millions so they never have to worry about jail.
via the one true b!X:
Down in Australia, the GOPresident manages to mistake the APEC summit for an OPEC summit, refer to "Austrian" troops instead of Australian ones, and (deja vu!) try to leave through the wrong door.
You can't help wondering if something really IS wrong with Bush's brain. We know something is very wrong with his capacity for critical thinking, but I'm referring to his physical brain. Lapses like those he displayed in Australia are very similar to those my mother had early on in her dementia. These days, of course, her misnomers are really off the wall and are not consistent, either. I often have to rely on her pantomiming to give me an idea of what she actually wants. Yesterday, she wanted her toothbrush, but she kept saying "place." There's no way I would have made the connection to her toothbrush if she hadn't mimed how it's used.
I don't know why I watch the local (NYC/NJ) news. Yes I do know why. I can't stand not knowing what's going on. Today's broadcast featured a couple of individuals who operate (make that past tense because they've been arrested) a couple of hair braiding salons in New Jersey. They were going back and forth from their home village in Africa and kidnapping pre-teen girls to work in their salons. The girls were forced to put in 14 hour days, seven days a week, and never saw a penny for their efforts. They were kept as slaves and forced to live in squalor.
It seems to me that most crimes are about money. Money for drugs. Money for cars. Accumulating more money. I like money as much as the next guy, but I always figure that I have to work to earn it. And I never seem to be able to accumulate very much. It's a good thing I'm not high maintenance, since I'm the only one available to do the maintaining.
The above cartoon is for those of you who know the relationship I have with my brother. Heh.
Categories:
bear eating birdseed
We were eating lunch at the table near the window when my brother pointed to the bear cub, just outside, raiding our bird feeders.
We went over to the breezeway to get a better look, and I also got some video.
Unlike the raccoons, who totally demolished the feeders, dragging them away and leaving them, useless, on the hillside, the bear, having knocked the feeders to the ground, gently pawed and licked them, getting as much of the food as it could but not mangling the feeders in the process.
Even my mother was fascinated by the cub, who was about the same size as the giant white Malamute my brother had years ago. She kept thinking it was a dog; I'm not sure she remembered what a bear is.
"She's so pretty," she kept saying.
And, indeed, it was a beautiful bear cub, hungry and preparing for winter. I wondered where its mother was, where it was going to find food here on the mountain, which is getting more and more populated.
We knocked on the window to scare it away after it had eaten all the bird food that was out there. It was still hungry, nosing up at a hanging flower basket, hoping for something more before it sauntered down toward the lake, toward our neighbor's house, where, I assume it hoped to find a garbage can or two.
Categories:
it doesn't necessarily take magic
Shift Happens.
Categories:
is the Pacific Northwest shifting yet?
No, I'm not referring to earthquakes.
The talisman that I made for r@d@r was delivered to him today. I hung it askew for this photo; r@d@r needs to decide how he wants it hung.
And I put b!X's in the mail this morning. He really does need to find another job.
And now I need to find more willow branches. I think I saw a willow tree near the side of the road toward Poughkeepsie. I wonder if I'll get in trouble if I just pull over and cut off some branches.
And if someone sees me and asks why I'm cutting off willow branches, I wonder what they'll think when I tell them it's to make magic that shifts the universe.
Categories:
body counts
In case you haven't noticed, i have a new box in my sidebar that shows the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of the U.S.'s invasion. I got it from www.justforeignpolicy.org, a site I got to last last night after one of those marathon linkfests. So, I don't remember how I got there, but I'm glad I did.
Categories:
Wanderlost in Languageland
The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily's guest writer every Monday.
Wanderlost in Languageland
Language is our major means of communication. But sometimes it doesn't cleanly live up to that function. That's not language's fault, though. The fault lies with those who use it...or misuse it. Meaning us. In the hands (and minds and mouths) of its users, language often goes down strange roads -- sometimes by accident, sometimes deliberately, and sometimes through carelessness. Accident leads to some funny or incomprehensible or just plain dumb results. More sinister is the deliberate manipulation of language for what are ultimately dubious or selfish or manipulative ends. Carelessness often creates undesirable or questionable outcomes.
For example, the overuse of the word "hero" falls into the careless basket. Nowadays, many legal acts only slightly outside the ordinary activity of daily living are labeled "heroic." A dog barks to scare an intruder, a child calls 911 to save a parent, a person joins the military. All "heroes." No harm, you say? Well, what about when someone acts in a truly selfless, important way that has deeply meaningful results? Like the first-responders on 9/11, or the G.I. who dies throwing himself on a grenade to save his buddies. They're heroes, for sure, but overuse of the word has diminished its meaning. The barking dog and the G.I.: both "heroes?" Both acts of equal status? Unh-uh. By labeling both with the same word, we've robbed the term of its real heart. And thus the G.I.'s unselfish act of its important meaning.
Language's accidental basket is much more fun, 'though sometimes annoying -- as when a t.v. talking head after a commercial break says "Welcome back" to us. Huh? We've not been anywhere, just sitting in front of the t.v. all along. "Welcome BACK?" Then there's the truck driving the main road in front of your car. On its tailgate is a sign: "Construction Vehicle. Do Not Follow." What do you do? Pull off the road 'til it's gone? Turn and go the other way? And product instructions/descriptions, too, can be baffling. The shampoo bottle says, "Lather, Rinse, Repeat." Something that open-ended has you washing your hair every second of the rest of your life. Or the juice bottle: "Shake well before using." Like you're a dog ridding its coat of water? Or the small/tall kitchen trashbags. What makes for a "tall" kitchen or defines a "small" one? Oh, and there's the Department of Motor Vehicles conundrum: at a 4-way STOP sign intersection, four cars arrive simultaneously, one
at each sign. Which car proceeds first? The one on your right, says DMV. Okay, great, but...uh...each of the four cars has a car to its right. Now what? Uh-oh...language making for an hilariously incomprehensible situation. Permanent gridlock.
Of real concern, however, is the manipulation of language for questionable or sinister ends...especially by government. "Weapons of mass destruction," for example, used to evoke fear and/or anger to get a particular action started. "Detainees" -- guilty of anything or not. "No terrorist attacks since 9/11 proves administration policy is succeeding." (Yeah, and spitting once daily in each direction is also responsible.) "Mission accomplished." Richard Powers, in his 1991 book, THE GOLD BUG VARIATIONS, wrote, "Wars come down to the control of information," (suggesting the "encoding" of language, using it in deceptive ways). That's a truth we've learned the hard way in this Iraq conflict. The current administration has, at every turn, withheld, distorted, and contradicted information by deliberately misusing language. Powers' point was about keeping an enemy from knowing what you're really doing. Our problem is a government doing the same to its own people. Assisted, perhaps, by the fact that, as a recent study discovered, only 1 in 4 adults read a book in a year.
Maybe what we need is to deal with language the way a 5-year old child does: by continuously asking, "WHAT?" until clarity is achieved. Maybe then language will be returned to its major function: communication.
Categories:
she's refeathering her empty nest
Well, it's not REALLY an empty nest because my grandson has just begun his half-day Kindergarten class, but my daughter has already launched her next career.
She has just set up her online store to sell the products of her very artful eye. My sidebar has had her general website up for a while: 1505 Photovisions, which also links to her store.
Over the past several years, she has developed a talent for capturing moments in nature that most of us usually miss as we hurry along to get done what has to be done. Taking the time to show her young son the marvels of nature gave her a chance to rediscover them herself -- and to wait for that perfect moment to capture them digitally.
This happens to be one of my favorites.
So, if you're in the market for any note cards or gifts with original nature photographs, check out my daughter's online store.
Meanwhile, I'm ordering this mousepad:
Categories:
I know I didn't dream this
For years, I've been trying to track down a novel that I used when I taught 8th grade back in the 70s. I remember the kids really liking it, and I remember the name of the book being "The Child Kings." I swear that the author was Rebecca West, but that can't be right.
I'm thinking that maybe it was a short story -- but, at any rate, the tale tells of a day when everyone in the world wakes up to discover that the children are the physical size of adults and the adults are as small as children. Their minds remain what they were, but the difference in physical size changes everything.
I'd love to know if anyone else ever heard of this book.
I have this novel on my mind right now because I just answered a question on Facebook posed by one of my blogger friends about what book/s I read more than 10 years ago that I would recommend. As I thought about my answer, I realized that my taste in reading matter is not very sophisticated.
The two books I listed in my answer were The City Not Long After, which is really a young adult novel, but I thoroughly enjoyed "watching" the surreal machinations of young artists as they use their magic to save the city of San Francisco. I still own my 1990 paperback copy of that book.
The other book is If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him. That book was given to me at a very low point in my life and it helped me turn my life around. Maybe it spoke to me because Sheldon Kopp, the author, was a psychotherapist who understood the power of story to stir insight and understanding.
The part of the book I remember most was his comparing people on this planet to those in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Like them, we are all pilgrims, and we survive emotionally by telling our stories to each other.
I guess that's why a lot of us blog.
P.S. Sheldon Kopp was the one who originated the eschatological laundry list that still surfaces in emails. These are the first few:
1. This is it!
2. There are no hidden meanings.
3. You can't get there from here, and besides, there's no place else to go.
4. We are all already dying and we'll be dead for a long time.
5. Nothing lasts!
6. There is no way of getting all you want.
7. You can't have anything unless you let go of it.
8. You only get to keep what you give away.
9. There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.
10. The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no compensation for misfortune.
11. You have the responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
12. It is a random universe to which we bring meaning.
13. You don't really control anything.
14. You can't make someone love you.
Categories:
