I’m really displeased that I can’t send an email to earthlink.net complaining that someone/s using their email service is purposely sending me infected emails. You can’t email earthlink unless you have an account with them. If anyone reading this has an earthlink account, could you please tell them that I’m getting viruses that originate from these ID addresses, and I sure hope that there is something that they can do to stop it:
E191Zwz-0007BO-00@swan.mail.pas.earthlink.net
E191Zta-0007bh-00@hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net
And I was really amused to see blogging featured on the last episode of “Judging Amy,” as one of Judge Amy’s staff people gathers info for her new weblog and Amy’s pre-teen daughter, Loren, explains to her mother what a weblog is. Cool.

President Dumbya, again, makes another really bad decision. He plans to refuse help from the U.N. in any post-war effort to rebuild Iraq. This from truemajority.com, where you can go to send a free fax opposing Bush’s plan:
Even if the war in Iraq ends today, we would need to address the depth of grief and misery that the people of Iraq confront – and will face indefinitely.
The supplemental budget bill delivered to Congress last week falls far short in resolving the likely humanitarian crisis caused by the war.
It’s essential that our nation stand behind its commitment to heal Iraq, to make certain that the Iraqi people receive the food, medicine, and support that they need. It’s time for us to begin inspiring the world community with our hearts, instead of alienating it with our guns.
That’s why America’s humanitarian and reconstruction work in Iraq must be conducted with the full cooperation of the international community. We should reaffirm our commitment to the United Nations by joining with it in the healing process in Iraq.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration is poised to conduct its humanitarian efforts in Iraq with the same disastrous “go-it-alone” approach that it used in the war. Tell Congress to 1) ensure that our nation partners fully with the United Nations for all humanitarian work in Iraq, and 2) provide the humanitarian resources needed to inspire awe even among our enemies.
And, yes, I know that will mean my tax dollars going toward that effort. I don’t mind as long as Bush’s additional plan to give rich people a tax break is defeated. Fair is fair.

Years ago, I applied to a week-long poetry workshop that Marge Piercy was giving at the Omega Institute. I like to think that I applied too late, but the truth is that I wasn’t accepted. But I still am a big Piercy fan. Here’s an example of why:
Flying over the Nebraska of my life
Marge Piercy, Colors Passing Through Us, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
So much of our lives dissolves.
What did I do the day before
I met you? You remember
what I was wearing that holiday.
What did I wear the next morning?
What did I write the day my mother died?
I fly at night over the plains.
There is a cluster of lights,
a starfish shape glittering. Then
darkness and darkness.
Then another clump bearing
long daisy petals of roadway.
Then nothing again. How much
of my living has fled like water
into sand. The sand is not
even damp to the hand.
Tears and wine and sparkling
water all vanish the same.
I know looking out the plane’s
dirty window that there are houses,
barns, roads, trees, stores
distinct in that darkness I once
drove through. I knew them and will
never know them again.
The plane is flying from lighted
place to lighted place, but
our arc is from the dark into
brightness then back into darkness.
I want to possess my own life like a
necklace, pearl by pearl of light.
And I also really liked her future-world novel He, She, It, even though I’m in the vast minority on that.

I love it when my theater-trained daughter does her imitation of Kathryn Hepburn. Hepburn had such an individual style and such a remarkable acting talent.
As writer who

I don

This is a letter to the Editor published in my local paper. The secretary in my former office pointed me to it because she said that when she started reading it, she thought I wrote it. I don