I’m getting a kick out of all of the criticism of Kerry for not having a plan for Iraq. It seems to me that, before you can figure out what to do to clean up the mess someone else made, you have to be in a position to get and analyze all of the accurate information about the situation; you have to be in a position to call together the best advisors and sit down with them to get their best thoughts; and then you have to be in a position to have the time to think it through. (Of course, you also have to have the intelligence to think it through.)
Kerry’s got the innate and honed intelligence. He’s not yet in that position, however. But, if he is after elections, lots of us have no doubt that he will find some humane way to clean up the mess left by Bush’s innately unintelligent decisions regarding Iraq that he began making right from the get go.
And speaking of cleaning up messes (not someone else’s — mine), it’s interesting to see what books I’m deciding to give up. With an M.A. in English, I look at books like favorite collectibles. I like to have them around to look, occasionally leaf through them again after I’ve read them — sometimes find things in them to blog about.
But, I’ve decided to give my town library the books that I’ve already read and am sure I won’t re-read, the books that I never read and am pretty sure I won’t, and the books I use as information sources but the information in them is now easily found through a Google search.
In The Aritst’s Way, a book I’m letting go, I found a poem I’d written close to a decade ago, when I was part of the book discussion group:
I yearn to know
the gentleness of solitude,
the ease of watching
dew emerge
on Lady’s Mantle folds.
I want to dream
again of harbingers —
crows, toads, dragonflies,
shadows that dance,
lilies that bleed,
clouds afloat in coffee cups.
Simplicity and solitude still elude me.

I seem incapable of doing only one thing at a time. I usually am reading three or four novels at once. Or rather rather reading some of them and listening to some of them on CD.
And, although I’m trying to clean out my old clothes, I can’t just focus on the clothes. My apartment is now filled not only with piles of clothes ready for Good Will, but also piles of books for the library and yarn and fabric sorted to either save or toss.
It’s not that I can’t focus on one thing at a time; it’s as though I’m compelled to focus on several things at once. Maybe it’s because I have so little outside stimulation in my life that this is the way I keep myself stirred up. Maybe it’s because I just get easily bored. Maybe I’ve discovered another psychological disorder.
Or maybe I just like the unlikely connections that wind up being made — because statistical probability becomes more possible the more factors you have factored in. Or maybe I like to give synchronicities every chance to synchronize.
For example, as I’m dealing with the creepy horn worms that are invading my tomato plants and I’m reading Gaiman and Pratchett’s Good Omens and also reading Inamorata (a book I discovered on an online book club to which I belong), the three activites become connected — not only by a word, but by all of its nuances of meaning. And then, of course, there’s that three again.
creepy crawlies (the yucky horn worms)
Mr. Crawley (a Fallen Angel in Good Omens
Mina Crawley (the strange and beautiful psychic in Inamorata)
Now, do you think that might mean that snake “W” will son be crawling away??

Heh. Someone on CNN let too much audio through at the end of the DNC. “Let the f***ing balloons come down,” we heard someone shout, with great frustration as the balloons and confetti-droppers dropped the ball.
That’s showbiz.

b!X gets some nice coverage for his Portland Commique over on the UK’s dotJournalism. We’ve all got our fingers crossed that he at least gets in the running for the Online Journalism awards. Because of the way the awards are set up, he’s competing against mainstream web sites.
But he’s good. And maybe it’s time for the good guys to win.

From here:
In a speech that roamed from the practicalities of health care to the vision of space exploration at the end of the universe, Mrs Heinz Kerry presented an image of a first lady who will not easily be pigeonholed, either as a liability or an adoring spouse
“My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some have called opinionated,” she told the delegates, “it is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish. And my only hope is that one day soon, women who have all earned their right to their opinions, instead of being called opinionated we will be called smart and well-informed, just like men.”
“”This evening, I want to acknowledge and honour the women of this world whose wise voices for much too long have been excluded and discounted,” she said. “It is time for the world to hear women’s voices in full and at last.”
(The quotes above from the speech by Teresa Heinz Kerry at the Democratic Convention.)
Now there’s a Major American Crone if there ever was one!!!
Vote for Teresa Heinz Kerry’s husband!