My mother spends a great deal of time watching Channel 61 on our cable system, the Catholic Global Television Network . She also spends a great deal of time trying to get me to watch it, and I spend a great deal of time making excuses about all the other things I have to do.
The other day, however, while I was over in her apartment, I caught an old segment of Mother Angelica facilitating a discussion of stem cell research. Now, my opinions these days are decidedly catholic and not at all Catholic. And so I have to admit that I didn’t agree with most of what was said. However, I did get a kick out of Mother Angelica’s quippy sense of humor. She reminded me of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who used to be on our old black and white tv in the early fifties. Like Mother Angelica, he knew how to play to an audience. They both used humor to make religious doctrine sound human and humane. It occurred to me, watching Mother Angelica perform, how much that approach appeals to the “childlike” in all of us. People of such uncritical faith seem to have remained innocent and childlike in ways that people like me turned way from for all kinds of personal and realistic reasons.
People like me look at Mother Angelica and see Granny Weatherwax. They are both the stuff of Croney female legacies and legends. And childlike fantasies. Their quirkinesses are appealing and disarming. Personally, I prefer Granny in terms of what lessons there are to learn about life. But if one is compelled to wear a black habit instead of a black pointy hat, she should take lessons from Mother Angelica.
Legacies and legends. I guess that’s why I also like novelist Alice Hoffman, whose novel The Probable Future I just finished. It is a novel teeming with legacies and legends, and, like all of Hoffman’s works, it opens up places in my poetic spirit that strict and traditional religion was never able to touch. Legacies and legends are powerful in their metaphor — more powerful, for people like me, than any literal interpretations of life as we are supposed to know it.
And that’s why I’m interested in seeing Mel Gibson’s controversial movie, The Passion of the Christ.
I hadn’t been paying much attention to the publicity about the movie, but when my phone rang at 11 p.m. Monday night and it was my mother excitedly telling me to put on Channel 61 (aarrggh), since I was up, I did. It was Mel Gibson being interviewed about the movie. What he said in that interview is pretty much what he’s been saying in all interviews:
“Obviously, nobody wants to touch something filmed in two dead languages,” Mel Gibson explained at a news conference

Damn. I almost always remember to check out www.snopes.com when I get emails that sound too good to be true. I dropped the ball on the Social Security Urban Legend that, as one of my weblog readers informed me via email, has been around since 2002. And I fell for it. Too eager to think the worst of our leaders. So much for Crone wisdom. Heh.

Got this as an email. It’s worth sharing, I think, even though there’s not a chance in hell of anything ever being done to achieve equity.
SOCIAL SECURITY:
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years!
Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it.
You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan.
In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan.
For all practical purposes their plan works like this:
When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die! Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments.
For example, former Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that’s Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives.
This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries.
Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives.
Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA….ZILCH….
This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds;
“OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK”!
From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, -every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer)- we can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement.
Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal SenatorBill Bradley’s benefits!
Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.
That change would be to jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us … then sit back and watch how fast they would fix it.
Heh. And just how likely is that to happen??
ADDENDUM: Please see comment below indicating that the above is not really true. The commentor points to links that can be used to verify the validity of such emailed information.

This today from non-blogger Mars-watcher myrln:
I think I know what’s going on. The Martians have WMD (Weapons of Mission Destruction). I think we should immediately send troops (preferably Dumbya, Dickie, Rummy, and Asholecroft) w/o UN agreement along with Halliburton experts to find and destroy the weapons and capture Saddamars Holstein. Tom Ridge we have to keep here to protect the homeland from interplanetary terrorists such as Gort who was left behind by Klaatu when he left earth and is living in a undetermined secret location. (No, I’m not suggesting Dick Cheney is really Gort…altho’…?). Why do you think Dumbya was in Roswell yesterday. He knows cuz God told him (not meaning the god Mars who of course is not on our side in this interplanetary conflict). Barado nicto! Barada nicto!

Someone finally did the smart thing — they uploaded the video they took as one of the crowd during Howard Dean’s speech. See what it was like for the people who were there, from their POV, and see how it’s not what the media turned it into.
I got this from Werther Kems, who reports that Idiom Studio has posted the speech
as seen by a personal video camera out in the audience. It’s available in three different formats, and two different sizes in each format.
It’s an entirely different effect and experience. And it shows up the media for the unprofessional swamp it really is — not that we needed yet another reminder, but they themselves certainly do. Let’s see if any of them bother to play this personal in-the-crowd POV, this version which better serves the media’s role to properly and accurately report the news.
Don’t hold your breath. You don’t look good bloated and blue.
Also, in an “Open Memo to Congressional Democrats,” Kems spells out a five-part assignment that begins:
Since, as previously stated, politics is not merely some intellectual exercise, and since the stakes this time are so enormously high, and since no one is bothering to adequately provide the full context of the onslaught, and since your party is in dire need of appearing to actually comprehend the enormity of the situation, here’s your assignment.
Read the audacious five-part assignment here.

Lindsay, over at Frog Star, is one of my every-day reads. She’s young enough (under the right circumstances) to be my grandaugther, but I keep learning from what she writes. I’m going to follow up on this post of hers soon.
But meanwhile, she has a newer post about this unbelievably detailed dream that she had that reads like a sci-fi novel. I used to have dreams like that. Now, most of them, while rich with sound, color, and sensory details — as well as convoluted plots — all seem to be trying to say the same thing.
Last night, for example, I dreamed I was going back for a college reunion, only I lived near the campus, so I didn’t have to stay overnight in the dorm. I did, however, bring a change of clothes. The only place I could change, however, was a coat room, and I started to try and do that. Only people get walking in as I had my shirt almost off. So I grabbed the clothes I wanted to change into against my chest (I was bare from the waist up) and went looking for a ladies room to change in. After walking around these wide public hallways for a while, I finally found one — but the stalls were too small to change in, they were filthy, and all kinds of people kept walking in and out. At that point, I realized that I had to pee, but there was no way I would sit on any of the seats. (Actually, I really did have to pee in real life, but I remember thinking that I wanted to stay asleep so that I could resolve my dreaming dilemma.) So, I somehow found an empty dorm room and went in to change. But then I realized that I didn’t have any underwear to change into, and the clothes I was carrying didn’t fit me.
I went over to a telephone by the bed and tried to dial out for help. But I couldn’t punch in all the numbers because most of them had been broken off and didn’t work. And I really had to pee.
Suddenly, there was this cow (now, where the hell did she come from) in the room and she was was peeing all over the floor.
At that point, I made myself wake up and go to the bathroom. I never did get out of that room.
What’s interesting is that I often dream of a college campus that’s also like a big resort hotel and grounds. I always get lost — can’t get from where I am to where I want to go. Stairs that should get me from one floor to another end up in another building entirely. Same thing with elevators.
I have to stop having those late night snacks!

Judith Steinberg Dean and her husband, Howard — real people, warts and all. They care. They have passion for what they believe in. A Jewish wife and a Christian husband and somehow they work it out so everyone wins. Two demanding careers, and somehow they work it out so everyone wins. Two very different personalities, and somehow they work it out so everyone wins. Isn’t it time that we had a president who’s passionate to work things out?
I can’t say it any better than Werther Kems, who has come to my attention through one of my West Coast contacts.
Here’s a snippet from yesterday’s post-Sawyer interview post:
Politicians, pundits, and press are scared out of their minds of an authentic populace roused to fight the good fight when none of them will. It’s why barely a moment passed after the Iowa speech before it was seized upon as evidence of some sort of defect.
Authenticity is not a defect. Voice is not a defect. Passion is not a defect. Neither is a deep and abiding respect for one’s supporters.
Co-opt the screech. Supporters need to make it mandatory at all campaign events. Admist the bellowing cheers and chants, masses of Dean supporters should swing their arms through the air and respond to their candidate’s Monday yawp with one of their own, day after day, week after week, campaign stop after campaign stop.
Go and read the whole meme. And spread the word.

In case you haven’t read — or don’t plan to read — Howard Dean’s paper on reviving democracy and ending the role of big money in American Politics, at least take a look at these specific proposals of his:
1. Fix the Presidential Public Finance System. The current presidential campaign financing system is on the brink of failure because the incentives for candidates to participate are shrinking and their chances of election if they do may be hurt. Governor Dean will propose legislation to: