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

My sense of humor, that is. Or have I ever really had one to begin with?
I

I posted about it here on Blog Sisters and I don’t feel like double posting.

Thanks to my healer-friend Ed Tick for his link to a site that is chronicling the true stories of veterans (and others caught up in the ravages of war) and their experiences with warring and its aftermath.
The site, “Eleventh-hour Stories” explains:
When we sent the first two letters out to the global community asking for these stories of the last 100 years, we were primarily concerned with stopping the war planned against Iraq and also possibly against North Korea. Now we are concerned with the ongoing activity of peacemaking. We have found that time does not heal the kind of traumas that people have been suffering but consciousness can heal. So we will gather and tell theses stories so that we develop a culture of awareness that has the capacity to ethically modify our behavior in the directions of compassion and empathy.
It is our hope to bring some healing to the unprecedented traumatic experience of the last decades and to insure that such torture not be inflicted further. When such wars and violence repeat themselves they inevitably create new armies of torturers and countries of the tormented. The telling and the receiving of these stories are activities that say: This must stop here and now.
These stories contain the essential information and understanding needed by everyone in the world in order to know how to move forward at this time. These stories when we listen to them will provide the wisdom of healing and will inform us to take proper action.
We are asking you to tell the stories, to gather the stories, to bear witness to the stories, to send them here and to send them out yourselves widely. We are asking that these stories be gathered and told at public gatherings and peace actions, be read from podiums as well as shared in small groups and councils. Through these activities the truth of this century can become the compassionate ground from which wisdom emerges and an informed global society begins to act on behalf of life, peace and heart.
Read the stories here. And share them.
If you have a story to share, send it in.

I’m annoying some of my dearest Blog Sisters by asserting that men are more violent than women and it’s the leadership of males that almost always is behind our marches into war and the destruction of cultures.
I really do believe that, until we confront the power that our hormonal chemistries have over our natures, we’re not going to be able to evolve much futher as human beings. That doesn’t mean we should be using other chemistries to neutralize that power; but it does mean that we have to become aware of our behavior patterns and work on some “personality” changes to diminish the insidious way that those chemistries effect our behaviors.
I posted the something close to the following in a comment in response to a comment, but I’m repeating it here for broader consumption:
Been there, done that. The “change” has taken all my hormones away, so I can’t fault them for my point of view.
Of course human beings are complex. But look at history as it documents the actions of males and the actions of females as they reflect manifestations of physical violence against others, aggression, extreme competitiveness. I think the males win in that category.
History, literature, mythology etc. also document problem tendencies in females (need to please others, emotional outbursts, over-protectedness, vanity, self-mutilation etc. etc.), but these are not actions that tend to initiate wars and mass murder. Extreme manifestations of our biological natures pose problems for all humans, but the male version is a killer.
Fifty years from now, look back and see if things are any better — if men are still in charge and charging at others aggressively, if women are still defering to what men seem to want them to be or emulating men’s aggression because they’ve allowed themselves to be convinced that that’s the way to succeed. (Notice: I didn’t say ALL men and ALL women.)
How much better the world — how much better relationships — would be if each gender worked at eliminating those extreme tendencies that we’ve carried along in our genes and hormones from our more primitive ancestors?
But, like the process of any evolutionary-therapeutic journey, first one must admit that there’s a problem. That’s the hardest part, and it’s even harder if what is our “problem” is also our source of power.