At 88 years of age, Betty White still rocks and rules, and she demonstrated on Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show the other night. I hope I can be a sharp as she is in another 18 years.
At exactly my age, Dixie Carter succumbed to cancer earlier this week. I never missed a performance of her Julia Sugarbaker on Designing Women.
Dixie Carter and Julia Sugarbaker. Gone but not forgotten.
TGB led me to the Cheerful Monk, where I also found these statements and the inspiration to try to finish the beautiful Spring sweater I’m working on.
The people of the tribe believed that when they died they would be called before their god Isis and be asked two questions: “Have you found joy in life? Have you brought joy to others?” If they could answer yes to both questions, they would be rewarded with eternal bliss. If they had to answer no to either question, they would be eaten by a crocodile.
and
Stay curious and open to life. No matter what happens keep learning and growing. Find what you love to do and find a way to share it with others.
So, today, a nice early Spring day, I will take a walk in the sunshine, play with my grandson, and finish my sweater. All with joy. After all, I don’t want to be eaten by a crocodile.
“The Words of Christians in the Mouth of Christ.”
There are lots more. Go here to see images that link back to the persons who really said the words.
It’s reasonable to assume that education in a democracy is distinct from education under a dictatorship or a monarchy; surely school leaders in fascist Germany or Albania or Saudi Arabia or apartheid South Africa all agreed, for example, that students should behave well, stay away from drugs and crime, do their homework, study hard, and master the subject matters; they also graduated fine scientists and musicians and athletes, so none of those things differentiate a democratic education from any other.
What makes education in a democracy, at least theoretically, distinct is a commitment to a particularly precious and fragile ideal: every human being is of infinite and incalculable value, each a unique intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, and creative force. Every human being is born free and equal in dignity and rights; each is endowed with reason and conscience, and deserves, then, a sense of solidarity, brotherhood and sisterhood, recognition and respect. Democracy is geared toward participation and engagement, and that points to an educational system in which the fullest development of all is seen as the necessary condition for the full development of each, and conversely, that the fullest development of each is necessary for the full development of all.
The above is an excerpt from Bill Ayres’ piece in yesterday’s Huffington Post
Ayres, now Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was the founder of the militant Weather Underground in the turbulent 1960s.
Many of my beliefs about government, politics, education, and learning were formed during those years of widespread controversy, disillusionment, and rebellion.
Ayres piece, written when two talks that he was scheduled to give at the University of Wyoming were canceled because of “security threats” and “controversy,” reinforces those beliefs I still hold today and is worth reading in full.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, at my age.
I lost my big bunch of keys somewhere in the past few days, and the ring has my car key w/chip on it. Today, as I was out running errands, twice I left my extra car key on a store counter. Sometimes, when I’m driving, I forget where I’m going and wind up blocks out of the way before I come back to the moment.
Granted, I’ve been pretty distracted, worrying about my son’s “dental carnage,” as he calls it. With no health insurance (and living across the country from me), he was given little good advice from the doctors he saw regarding his swollen (although pain-free) jaw. After a CAT scan and a week and a half on antibiotics that didn’t help, he finally was sent to an oral surgeon for the extraction of several infected teeth.
Which brings me to appreciating friends that I HAVEN’T lost, including a former SO who now lives in Portland and wound up bringing my son to stay with him after the surgery and transporting him home and to and from the follow-up appointment.
I guess it’s a matter of losing some and winning some.
I can always get another set of keys made.
He goes off to the dentist today to have a baby tooth pulled, armed with his light saber, one back leather-gloved hand, and his face marked with a “scar” like Star Wars Anakin in Clone Wars.
“May the Force be with you,” I call to him as he marches out the door with his mother. We give each other a “thumbs-up.”
It’s interesting that of all the Star Wars characters, he identifies with this permutation of Jedi Knight Anakin, who is caught up in the fight between good and evil within himself.
My grandson, Lex, is an unusual seven-year old, with an understanding of human and historical complexities and an adult sense of humor. Cliche though it is, he lights up my life.
For example, as my daughter reports on Facebook:
Quick science review — Me: “Lex, what do mammals have that no other animals have?” Lex: “Um…a good sense of dancing?”
(As a homeschooler, Lex knows the right answer to that question; he has explained it to me many times, pedantically showing me pictures of whales giving birth.)
Before he left for the dentist, I gave him a Lego minifig of Luke Skywalker. When he comes back, he will find Lego minifigs of young Anakin and Obi Wan Kenobi added to his collection. (The minifig of Clone Wars Anakin in is the mail.)
The challenge for us all, and Lex already recognizes this, is to not let the dark side in each of us win.
May the Force be with you.
ADDENDUM: Lex is back from the dentist, where he wound up losing two baby teeth. But the Force was with him, and he’s dealing with it all like the hero he wants to be.
The book, which contains free verse and reprints of prayers and bits of prose, features lots of Corita’s collage art, which contains lots of cut-up words from ads and headlines, sometimes reconfigured, sometimes not.
The description above is from a post on the site from which I won the book — Killing the Buddha. It’s a site that I find always stimulating.
I never win anything. I mean it. I think that this is the first thing I every won. Well, I came in second in a Swing Dance contest once. Even got a trophy. Usually I don’t even make an effort to enter any kind of contest. Never play the lottery. Because I never win anything.
But this time I did. And I did because I remember the 60s. I didn’t remember Sister Corita, who created the book, published in 1967. But I did remember the Berrigan Brothers, and I remembered that Daniel Berrigan was a Jesuit.
I recently read online somewhere (can’t find it again) that the story was that Daniel Berrigan kept a photo of Sister Corita in his shower with a note that said “no one should shower alone.”
Thinking of Berrigan, I am remembering another activist ex-priest who was a good friend at one point in my life. He has grown immensely as an artist in those past 25 years, although he was good even back then. His paintings, as he is, are larger than life. I just love his new stuff.
I have been fortunate in my life to have had some closeness with some truly unique men, who have inspired me and moved on and left me with the kinds of memories that will keep me smiling someday as I retire to a rocking chair in the sun.
(And I’ve been just as fortunate to continue to have a group of close women friends whose constancy and candor, humor and heart, help to keep me smiling — well, most of the time.)
So, now I wait for my prize, a book by a creative woman, to arrive.
It’s a good day.
Even in dark corners, good things grow.
I read this article in the NY Times by Bob Herbert and am almost overwhelmed by the clouds of darkness with which the GOP has shrouded the minds of so many of my countrymen and countrywomen.
Herbert writes:
The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.
The toxic clouds that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country. If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.
If you’re all fired up about Republican-inspired tales of Democrats planning to send grandma to some death chamber, you’ll never get to the G.O.P.’s war against the right of ordinary workers to organize and negotiate in their own best interests — a war that has diminished living standards for working people for decades.
The are dark times. Depressed and depressing times.
But then I read this article, also in the Times, and see a brighter side — small, still. But we are due for a new season of enlightenment in our nation’s political world.
David Leonhardt reminds us that
The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.
[snip]
The bill is the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. It aims to smooth out one of the roughest edges in American society — the inability of many people to afford medical care after they lose a job or get sick. And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich.
[snip]
Above all, the central question that both the Reagan and Obama administrations have tried to answer — what is the proper balance between the market and the government? — remains unresolved. But the bill signed on Tuesday certainly shifts our place on that spectrum.
While I am not a Christian, I can’t help but wonder how a U.S. Senator Jesus Christ would have voted on the issue of universal health care.
I gave up raging over the mess that the GOP so-called “leaders” have been making of my country. It seems like too many of the people on this planet are hell-bent on helping with the demise of sense and sanity.
All of the following are excerpts from this week’s Harper’s Weekly Review, where you can find documentation and a citation for each of these discomfitting reports.
A Walmart in New Jersey asked all black people to leave.
An Ohio man told police that since January he’s been sucker-punching little children at his local Walmart for thrills.
A Kentucky man was charged with wanton endangerment after he got drunk and put his five-week-old son to bed in an oven.
Wachovia Bank was fined $50 million, and required to remit a further $110 million, for laundering funds for Mexican cocaine cartels.
A Swedish report found that the United Arab Emirates is now the fourth-largest importer of weapons in the world.
Dutch officials repudiated a claim by U.S. general and former NATO commander John Sheehan that the gayness of the Dutch army had rendered it unable to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs.
Pope Benedict XVI wrote a letter to Ireland to apologize for the sexual abuse of children by Church leaders.
A lawyer in Oregon was planning to release the Boy Scouts’ “perversion files,” a secret archive of 1,000 documents identifying Scout molesters.
A cable network in North Carolina played two hours of porn on the Kids On Demand channel.
Then there’s the “a little nuts but not immoral” category:
Members of the Winnemem Wintu Indian tribe traveled from California to New Zealand to beg forgiveness of the salmon.
Mexican police were praying to spirits and sacrificing chickens to protect themselves from drug lords.
The Vatican was investigating the daily appearances in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, of the Virgin Mary, who is crowned with stars and floats upon a cloud.
Indian politicians wanted to ban both black magic and Lindsay Lohan.
Finally, neither nuts nor immoral, and maybe a good idea — especially since I haven’t been able to wear my removable bridge because my gums are swollen:
A Bavarian baby-food company said it was planning to market its product to adults who dislike chewing.
Makes you just want to break out in song, doesn’t it?
Stop the World I Want to Get Off
and
Stop the World I Want to Get Off
and
My grandson is wearing a “Haley’s Comet” t-shirt that was my son’s back in 1985.
There was a time when I intended to make my son a quilt out of the images from his old t-shirts, and I saved a bunch of them in a box that has accompanied me on moves since the late 70s. These days, my grandson also wears a 30-years old t-shirt from the original Star Trek movie.
Sometimes intentions have their own intentions.
