This is the time of the August full moon

You hate what you fear, they say. What has that got to do “tasting the acquired?” Something.

from Salvaged Poems of Theodore Roethke as cited at woods lot.
And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.
And then there was Elvis Presley. How do I get from Roethke to Presley? Ah, such is the magic of the blog linking, which takes me from Tom Shugart to woods lot.
What came before Presley? Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, I guess.
For me, nothing comes before Roethke.
Shugart’s older piece on tying in the rock and rollin’ explosion of 1955 with the four Kent State shots heard round the world fifteen years later is worth re-reading.
I was there too (at the movies), 15 and frustrated with my family’s small life and ready to Rock around the Clock. At the moment of Kent State, I was hanging around the edges of a conference in the Rockies on changing the face of higher education. Yes, both happenings were life-changing for me too, Tom.
And we dance on.
Or at least we try, despite what Betsy Devine reports: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 486,000 jobs have disappeared since January, 44,000 of those disappeared during July.
We’ve just got to give Dumbya that real and final “pink slip.” (image from Code Pink)
Burningbird thinks we need to get angry:
If you’ve read Burningbird for any length of time, you’ll remember that I’ve talked about learned helplessness before, but it wasn’t until I read this at Maria’s that I indentified what I’ve been seeing among the people of this country. With learned helplessness, even if truth marches up and spits in your face, you’ve lost the ability to ‘see’ it.
How do you fight learned helplessness? I’ve talked about this here also; you fight learned helplessness with anger. Not everyone will agree with me, but if you can anger the American voters enough, I have a feeling they’ll start seeing the reality, the truth behind today’s patriotism. I hope. I wish.
I agree. Anger is what has danced me out of every bad situation in which I ever found myself. You take the energy of anger and, instead of turning it in on yourself and feeling helpless and depressed, you propel it outward into constructive action. We need to get mad at the diseased MadCowboy.
Let’s do the democracy dance.
Dance on.

Got the following in an email from a woman friend. I don’t know if Andy Rooney really said it, since I couldn’t find the citation thru a search, and it seems as though Andy Rooney is being miscredited with saying a lot of other stuff lately. But if he didn’t say it, he should have:
Andy Rooney says…. “As I grow in age, I value women who are over 40 most of all. Here are just a few reasons why:
An over 40 woman will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?” She doesn’t care what you think.
If an over 40 woman doesn’t want to watch the game, she doesn’t sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do. And it’s usually something more interesting.
An over 40 woman knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants, and from whom. Few women past the age of 40 give a darn what you might think about her or what she’s doing.
An over 40 woman usually has had her fill of “meaningful relationships” and commitment.” The last thing she wants in her life is another dopey, clingy, whiny, dependent lover.
Over 40 women are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it.
Over 40 women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it’s like to be unappreciated.
An over 40 woman has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn’t trust the guy with other women. A woman over
40 woman couldn’t care less if you’re attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won’t betray her.
Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to an over 40 woman. They always know.
An over 40 woman looks good wearing bright red lipstick. This is not true of younger women.
Over 40 women are forthright and honest. They’ll tell you right off you are a jerk if you are acting like one. You don’t ever have to wonder where you stand with her.
Yes, we praise over 40 women for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it’s not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of 40+, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year-old waitress.
Ladies, I apologize. Andy Rooney
And when we get to be over 60, we’re even smarter and sassier. Oh Yeah!

myrln’s not a blogger. he emails, like this:
Given the Pope’s stand re same sex unions, I have a few thoughts for pondering:
1. The Pope lives in the Vatican with a bunch of guys.
2. In monasteries, a bunch of guys live together.
3. In seminaries, a bunch of guys live together.
4. In nunneries, a bunch of women live together.
5. Since nuns are married to Christ, the junior godhead has about a zillion wives, which I guess makes polygamy okay. The Mormons will be glad to hear that.
6. Priests, we have learned, are often fond of children, which the Church (and Pope?) knew about but did nothing about.
7. Will Dumbya try to codify those “one way or the other?”
Heh.

According to CNN:
“I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and I think we ought to codify that one way or another,” Bush told reporters at a White House news conference. “And we’ve got lawyers looking at the best way to do that.”
The president has taken a courageous stand in favor of traditional marriage at a moment in American history when the courts are conspiring with anti-family extremists to undermine our nation’s most vital institution,” said the Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition.
I’m just about ready for another Civil War. And you know what side I’ll be on.
Bush’s cronies (in contrast to Crones, to whom he REALLY should listen), are heading us straight toward another Dark Age. Their agenda is clear: limit the rights and privileges of gays, minorities, the poor, the uneducated; the disabled; use words like “conspiring” and “undermine” (which are exactly the opposite of what we who believe in the spirit of the Constitution are doing); set up anyone with views that differ from the neocons as the devils: gays, liberals, non-Christians (except maybe Jews, since they believe in at least half of the Bible)…..
Why hasn’t anyone more erudite and articulate than I am begun to define Bush as the supposedly prophesied “anti-Christ” who distorts and manipulates true Christian teachings in order to woo susceptible believers into laying the foundation of their own destruction. It’s so obvious to me who the Devil Incarnate is these days. But then, again, what do I know. I do rituals at the ocean’s edge and make online amulets.
I guess next, they burn people like me at the stake. Heh.

See, for me, an important part of blogging is the conversation that posts prompt. (The rest is, as Frank Paynter’s site so succinctly explains, that it works as a “public place for self-expression.”)
Recently, I commented on a post of Frank’s (entitled “When Does a Blogger Find Time to Write”) about what constitutes success for a blogger. He cites several, for example, who have parlayed their blogging expertise into dollars. To that I commented:
Maybe it’s because my primary medium is poetry (and we all know that very, very few people make any money writing poetry) that I’m comfortable with the notion of blogging not being a commercial venture. For me, blogging is like giving a poetry reading at Borders: I don’t get paid, and the audience is small. But it’s what I do, and there are always a few people out there who appreciate it, a few people whom my words touch in some meaningful way. Bloggers and poets — each in good company, I think.
While blogging and writing poetry differ in style, often the intent is the same — to share with the world a personal interpretation of a larger reality.
And then Tom Shugart posted a funny piece on an episode of the HBO series Real Sex (which he swears he doesn’t really watch. Right.)
Given my ongoing disagreements with the expressed gender attitudes of both RageBoy and Halley, I wound up leaving a very serious comment. Some things I have a hard time not taking seriously.
I’ll bet that the Boy Toy was invented (and marketed via HBO) by a male. If you read erotic fantasies written by women (ahem, yes, I’ve been through more than a few of those books), it becomes pretty clear that many, many, many of us prefer a slow hand, an easy touch, warm skin on skin. Erotic movies written and directed by women (ahem, yes, I’ve seen a few of those, too) are also very different from the slambamthankyouman scripts devised by men. So, if men seem to be becoming irrlevant to many women (we don’t need them for financial support and all we need is their sperm for impregnation)perhaps it’s because what we look to men for is really something very different from what many men think we look to them for. And so if men seem to be becoming irrelevant, perhaps it’s because they’re making themselves irrelevant.
Anyway, Tom, from what I’ve learned about you here over all of this time, I don’t think you have to worry. Big, heavy-handed anatomically correct Boy Toys are about as satisfying as Halley’s “Girlies.”
Q: What’s the difference between a cucumber and a man? A: A cucumber doesn’t leave a wet spot. (Sorry about that.)

As I emailed to my friends and relatives:
I guess this is one instance where age has its advantage. To be included in an article with Rebecca Blood and Meg Hourihan, the crown princesses of blogging, is an honor that resulted pretty much solely from the fact that I’m one of the oldest women on the blogblock. But that’s OK. These days I’ll take whatever I can get.

Tribiune staff writer Gail Philbin captures a good (if necessarily limited) cross-section of women bloggers who reveal why they bother to blog. I thought I mentioned Blog Sisters in my interview with her last month, but if I did, the mention got lost in the editing. Too bad. I like to plug that bunch whenever I can.
I guess I’ve used up my alloted minutes of fame. Or maybe not.
P.S. Since my interview with Philbin I asked the Linda Lovelace site to remove the link to my blog; I get enough porn spam without that kind of help, and I’m sure that anyone actually finding my post about Lovelace was terribly disappointed anyway.