Inspired by what I wrote here, this:
Texturized
My friend Joan
is quilting a portrait of me–
not a literal portrait,
but rather her impression
of who I am,
based on fifteen years
of knowing me.
I hope it’s a little glittery,
with some snakeskin
nestled among
healing blues and greens,
certainly, a few ragged edges,
bits of leather and lace, and
one or two homely bows,
appropriate in their contradiction.
I will hang in on the wall
above my couch,
a mirror
and a wish.
copyright Elaine Frankonis 04

“Swimming to Cambodia

My friend, Joan (who bought that funky fantasy painting) is also a fabric artist (quilting with applique and various embellishments). Her quilts are nothing like the traditional notion, and she has exhibited locally. She is a lawyer and is going to be retiring soon so will have lots of time on her hands. And her hands make magic out of fabric.
I have a Renoir print hanging over my couch that I’ve grown tired of. I bought it during my last relationship and it reminds me of a darker time; the mat is a dark green, so even the colors are too dark for where I hope I’m heading.
So I asked Joan, who’s known me for almost 15 years, to make me a wall hanging. A portrait of me. Not a literal portrait, but her impression/expression of who I am based on all that she knows about me. I’d like it a little glittery. Maybe some snakeskin fabric nestled in among the blues and greens. A few buttons and bows thrown in, in appropriate contradiction.
Meanwhile, on February 1, we’re going to do an official ritual unveiling of the fantasy painting. A little magical brunch. I, of course, will officiate. I think we should wear our Ya-Ya hats, we six who meet often for movies and mayhem.
Also meanwhile, I’ve been in contact with a woman who teaches “free-form knitting,” which is something I want to learn, since I like to knit but want to do it with more creativity. I like clothes with varying textures. I am thinking that Joan and I should sell our unusual designs on the net. I already have a domain name. I just need a web site. I need someone to set up a simple web site with a template that I can just pop into and update, like I do my weblog. I’ve been trying to get b!X to set it up for me, but the truth is, while he’s a definite Geek, he’s not really a techie. And he’s been really busy with his own projects. He would probably let me host it on his server.
Oh well, since I don’t have any money to pay anyone to set up such a site for me, I guess that part will have to wait. Unless there’s someone reading this who might like to help. For all I know, I could set up another MT blog and do it that way. Only I never set up this one, so I don’t know how to do that either.
I love what this technology can do. I just don’t have what it takes to learn how to make it do it. I looked at the MT manual, and it’s all Geek to me. Hmmpff. I’m a writer, for goodness sake. I can interpret writing, but I can’t interpret codes and the related acronyms.
Maybe in my next life. (Heh. I don’t have that many left.)

Blog Sister and writer for the Portland Journal, Sheila Lennon, posts an excellent piece about the controversy over CBS not allowing MoveOn.org to air its anti-Bush advertisement just before the Super Bowl. Apparently, moving on, MoveOn has purchased ad time on CNN.

“You know what a gaffe is? A gaffe is when you tell the truth when the people in Washington don’t think you should have.”
I was told that Howard Dean said that. And also
“The President wants to go to Mars. I think Mars is a great idea… I think he should be the first to go.”
I actually contributed to moveon.org’s campaign to get the winner of its “Bush in 30 Seconds” contest on as the first ad on before the Super Bowl.
It’s well worth watching all 26 of the finalists in this ad contest. If you can’t get to all of them, be sure to see the winner.
My personal fave is the “Hood Robbin'” entry.
Let’s hope it all works to win one for the truth-telling gaffer.
Go Dean!

“Flash Jackson doesn’t give a flying fart what’s ladylike and what isn’t” states the main character of this novel by William Kowalski that I’m recommending even though I’m only half way through.

First of all, the main character is a spunky, sassy, horse-riding 17-year-old 0ld-Soul girl who lives in rural upstate New York and whose grandmother, a Mennonite, lives in a shack in the woods where she brews up herbs and other witchy things.

Secondly, this girl’s best friend is a 28-year old diagnosed (perhaps not totally accurately) schizophrenic who can’t dream and who has the mind of a young boy. During one of his “episodes,” as he stands with the girl before an open field, he says that he wants to build a theater there. He says:

“This will be a place where people can come and tell their stories. They’ve been silenced, Haley. It’s not right . Someone has to help them get their voice back, and I’m going to do it. [snip]

“Someone has to give them their voice back, or I don’t know what will happen. But it’ll be bad. It’s already bad. And it’s going to get worse…….The state of communication in the world today,” he said, “is very very bad……I’ll build the theater and they can come from all over. People from the whole world can come right here, and they can get onstage and tell everyone their story, and then things will be okay again. People will understand each other.”

That resonated for me with what Ken Camp has posted about today and also what Jeneane once envisioned (a kind of bloggers encampment). This is it, the stage from which people tell their stories. Blogs. The understanding is happening. Slowly, maybe, but it’s happening.

Take heart, Shelley, wherever you are.

This is a Reader’s Comment on BuzzFlash (I don’t have the link because it was emailed to me without one.)
The Hypocrisy of Bush Investigations
A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
It amazes me the difference in how the administration requests investigations and tries to file criminal charges to anyone that is not agreeing with their views, but how much they drag their feet to the investigations that are important to the American people, like the 9/11 case or the CIA’s agent name leak….I pray that before November many more Americans follow their conscience and bring to light all the irregularities of the current administration.
Another thing that really amazes me is the fact that the Republicans have been saying for the last years that Clinton was not impeached because of the affair but the fact that Clinton LIED about it…..are our troops being killed and maimed because of the TRUTH relevant to the WMD? …Just asking.
Helloooooo……does impeachment apply in this case?
ditto…ditto…ditto…ditto…ditto…ditto…ditto…ditto

From the end of Paul Krugman’s piece in the NY Times today about the awful truths coming out in Ron Suskind’s new book “The Price of Loyalty:”
The question is whether this book will open the eyes of those who think that anyone who criticizes the tax cuts is a wild-eyed leftist, and that anyone who says the administration hyped the threat from Iraq is a conspiracy theorist.
The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting better. How can Howard Dean’s assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn’t made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a “detour” that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O’Neill’s revelations?
So far administration officials have attacked Mr. O’Neill’s character but haven’t refuted any of his facts. They have, however, already opened an investigation into how a picture of a possibly classified document appeared during Mr. O’Neill’s TV interview. This alacrity stands in sharp contrast with their evident lack of concern when a senior administration official, still unknown, blew the cover of a C.I.A. operative because her husband had revealed some politically inconvenient facts.
Some will say that none of this matters because Saddam is in custody, and the economy is growing. Even in the short run, however, these successes may not be all they’re cracked up to be. More Americans were killed and wounded in the four weeks after Saddam’s capture than in the four weeks before. The drop in the unemployment rate since its peak last summer doesn’t reflect a greater availability of jobs, but rather a decline in the share of the population that is even looking for work.
More important, having a few months of good news doesn’t excuse a consistent pattern of dishonest, irresponsible leadership. And that pattern keeps getting harder to deny.
As Paul O’Neill described, Bush and his Cabinet are deaf and blind. And, it seems, too many Americans stand mute. Feh.

One of the other exercises we did in the writing session Sunday at the Glass Lake Studio (see post below) involved picking a handful of words out of a bowl full of all kinds of words that were cut out of various publications and/or printed out on small strips of paper. The idea is to use whatever words you have in your handful and turn them into a poem. Here’s what I wound up with, which came out amazingly coherent. (The words that chose me from the word bowl are bolded.)
Why waltz, I asked,
when you can whirl like a dervish,
so alive in group travels
into a common center of gravity.
This is not an orderly universe,
after all,
no easy sojourn.
So much happens behind our backs,
after all.
Why waltz,
husbanding that obscenity of repetition,
that age-old rustle
of corrupt fascism?
Instead,
germinate, condense, enthuse,
embrace like a shark,
like loping sailbirds,
foretelling the integrity
of feeling lost in the stacks.
Isn’t that cool??!!

I remember a little boy
with a heavy brow
that framed a steady gaze.
I don