Crystal Moment

The broohaha over Cheney's "hunting" accident has had me thinking all day about real hunters. About people for whom the success or failure of a hunt could mean the difference between life and death. About the animals who are killed so that we might live. Again, fear is all tangled up with thriving in a very interesting dance. Those thoughts sent me hunting for a poem I'd copied down years and years ago, in fact, on April 30, 1987, according to the journal that I finally dug up this evening. Here's Robert P. Tristram Coffin's poem, Crystal Moment:

Crystal Moment


Once or twice this side of death
Things can make one hold his breath.

From my boyhood I remember
A crystal moment of September.

A wooded island rang with sounds
Of church bells in the throats of hounds.

A buck leaped out and took the tide
With jewels flowing past each side.

With his head high like a tree
He swam within a yard of me.

I saw the golden drop of light
In his eyes turned dark with fright.

I saw the forest's holiness
On him like a fierce caress.

Fear made him lovely past belief,
My heart was trembling like a leaf.

He leans towards the land and life
With need above him like a knife.

In his wake the hot hounds churned
They stretched their muzzles out and yearned.

They bayed no more, but swam and throbbed
Hunger drove them till they sobbed.

Pursued, pursuers reached the shore
And vanished. I saw nothing more.

So they passed, a pageant such
As only gods could witness much,

Life and death upon one tether
And running beautiful together.

Whatever Cheney was doing on that "ranch" in Texas, it didn't have anything to do with this.

A Little Protestant Work Ethic, Please?

You know, I've spent more of my life than I care to admit at work. When a client of mine is in trouble, I figure it's my job to do everything I possibly can to help. I've slept at the office in order to be sure to be there the next day in spite of snow in order to file a pleading. I've worked all the way through the night and into the next day in order to make sure I'd read every case that needed to be read. The joke in my office on Friday is that it's only two more work days until Monday.

So, as res ipsa noted over at Eschaton, I find it incredibly puzzling that Bush and, now, more to the point, Cheney take so much time off to go hunting and fishing and shit. Last week, Heckovajob Brownie told us that he tried to tell Bush that Hurricane Katrina was going to be a nightmare, but Bush was off fishing when Brownie called and never got back to him. Course, the VP was on vacation AT THE SAME TIME. That's weird, because I always coordinate vacations with the people who work for me so that we're not all gone at the same time. And, in case you've forgotten, which, under the circumstances would be pretty understandable, Cheney is in charge of rebuilding New Orleans. Last I heard, New Orleans is still pretty fucked up.

So why did Cheney take this weekend to fly half-way across the country to, no, not New Orleans, but to some rich bitch's "ranch" in Texas to shoot at birds who were raised and uncaged for that specific purpose?

America is in trouble, yo! There are sick troops at Walter Reed who could stand to have the VP's big black SUV pull up and take them out for dinner at the Palm. There are homeless people who won't be able to move back to New Orleans for months. We've got a budget deficit that my great grandchildren will be cursing us for and, in case Cheney hasn't noticed, he and Bush are not real popular at the moment.

Look, clearly Cheney was drunk and his SS protected him from the local law guys -- let's all say Cheneyquiddick and chuckle. And Cheney has a spokesperson who should have talked to the press rather than leaving the rich bitch to do it. And, yeah, apparently Cheney's now officially too old and feeble to be out "hunting" even caged birds.

But I want to know why the hell these guys are always fiddling while Rome burns? You're only the Vice President of the United States of America for, at most, eight years. Maybe you could try working once in a while?

When the Hunter Becomes the Hunted

Bwhahahah

Thank you, Diana.

Fields of Emerald and Steel -- Gee, I Wish I'd Written That

Mystique by Arthur Rimbaud

On the dark side of the slope, angels revolving
Their dresses of wool, in fields of emerald and steel.

Flames shoot out of meadows, to the top of the hill.
To the left, the face of the ascent is pitted,
By all homicides and every battle,
And the sounds of disaster string out on a curve.
Behind the ascent on the right, the orient line of progression.

And while this band in the distance
Is made of the whirling, leaping sounds
Of conch shells and human nights,

The flowery softness of the stars and all the sky
Flows over the side of the slope
Like a basket poured out in our face,
And turns the abyss beneath us a flowering blue.

Journaling

So, do you, too, have authors like this? Authors you like so much that you space out their books, being careful not to read them all at once? For me, Sheri S. Tepper is one of those authors. I've loved her for some time, but I only read a book or two of hers every year. I just finished Six Moon Dance, which I think may be one of her best.

And, do you do this: do you fold over the pages with absolutely amazing passages so that you can copy those passages into your journal? I've kept a journal since I was young enough for that to be presumptuous. And going back once every couple of years and re-reading all my journals, and remembering where I learned a particular concept or turn of phrase is one of my real pleasures. I'm going to turn fifty in a few weeks, and I'll probably go back and start with my first journal and read all the way up through my current one. Interestingly enough, my father was a "journalist" and my grandmother even used the same kind of notebooks that I use to keep her journals. So I at least figure that I come by it honestly.

Here are some of the passages that I'll be copying from Six Moon Dance into my journal. I think you can read them and not find any real spoilers.

* Who could feel claustrophobic in space? One either was well off inside or one was outside and dead.

*Simon leaned forward and laid a rough hand on his shoulder. "Look, Mouche, you've got to understand what Newholme men are about, not from Madame's point of view but from our own. Now most men get taught early on that being dutiful is good, so they think they're being good when they work themselves into exhaustion and meanness. And most men know that pleasure distracts them from duty, so that teaches then pleasure is shameful. But at the same time, we have these restless brains inside that tell us to keep pushing toward the top so we can make a hole, crawl through, and see what's up there. All of us, even Consorts and supernumes, figure we've got a natural right to be there, on top and we use whatever we've got to get there. Humor. Or eloquence. Or skill. Whatever.

Bayne and Dyre, now they've got the idea mutual pleasure is sissy stuff, so the only pleasure they get is sniggering and bullying and destruction. And they don't like duty either, so they avoid it. The only thing that gives them satisfaction is anger, so being angry is how they go looking for themselves, like vandals taking a city: throw, hit break, kill, shatter -- it's all one to them. Destroy enough stuff, suddenly they'll find the hidden door with heaven behind it."

Simon looked at his glass, swirling the liquid in it, watching the patterns it made. "I try to tell you boys, best I can, that there isn't any door. You climb over people, you push and shove and get up there on top, it's empty. I try to tell you pleasure is a good thing, and it's easier with Hunks than most, because you're being trained to give it. And I try to tell you that duty's good, too, but you've got to balance it. And you've got to study yourself to know how much of each you need, for no one man is a measure of all."

* "What does fathers and mothers have to do with who you are? Your planet is your mother; time is your father. Your insides know this! All life outside you is your kin-folk. Even we dosha are your kin, born of another planet but with same father as you. Starflame makes your materials and live-planet assembles them, and time designs what you are, not your fathers and mothers. Pff. You could be genetic assemblage; Bofusdiaga could make you without fathers or mothers; and you would still be persons! But you could not have material without stars, or life without planet, or intelligence without time and be any way at all. It is your stars and your world and long time gives you legs to dance and brains to plan and voices to sing. "

* "We are made of the stuff of stars, given our lives by a living world, given our selves by time. We are brother to the trees and sister to the sun. We are of such glorious stuff we need not carry pain around like a label. Our duty, as living things, is to be sure that pain is not our whole story, for we can choose to be otherwise. As Ellin says, we can choose to dance."

*She complained, "But the Hags didn't have to choose that way of doing things. Surely there's a better solution!"

"If you can suggest one, I know they'd be happy to hear it. They aren't monsters, Questy. They're the descendents of the cultural historians on the second ship, and their ancestresses knew very well that surpluses breed contempt. Too much of anything reduces the honor in which it is held: too many men, too many women, too many children, too many people. "

Six moons. How would our world be different, how would we be different if we had six moons? How would we be different if we weren't afraid of pleasure, if there weren't too many of us?

It Doesn't Get Any Simpler Than This

Once more, slowly, and in short declarative sentences, with pictures for those whose minds have been almost destroyed by listening to Chris Matthews.

The Scariest Words in the English Language

Last night, my lovely friend Angela identified THE five scariest words in the English Language:

1. Michael
2. Moore
3. Ann
4. Coulter
5. Slash

Goddamn, This Pisses Me Off

Bush is selling off our national forests.

Let's be clear. This is nothing but a transfer of wealth. Bush is funding tax cuts for the richest Americans by selling off national treasures, and, given that these are irreplacable assets, no matter what he gets for the forests, he'll be selling them off at bargain basement prices. Those are your forests that are being transferred into new Hummers and plasma screen tvs and Juicy Couture sweat suits for people who are so much wealthier than you are that it's difficult for you to truly imagine how well off they are. But you and your children and your grandchildren and your great grand children are buying them their brand new Hummers.

Small, mean, petty, and viscious

One of the things I like about getting older is that I can do things I was afraid to do when I was younger. Had a late lunch with a friend today at the Old Ebbitt Grill and ate raw oysters and drank white wine and generally gossiped and chatted and had a fine old time.

But the most fun was before we were seated, when John Ashcroft came pushing his sour old face through the crowd at the door and had to walk right past us. I had plenty of time to give him the evil eye, which, I admit, I would have done when I was younger. But when he was directly even with us, I launched into a loud discussion about calico cats, loud, and rude, and mean-spirited. He turned the most satisfying shade of red, from the neck of his long wool coat to the top of his Criscoed-hair, got bug-eyed, and pushed his way out the door. As my friend Katrina likes to say: “I’m only going to get worse.”

I’d have kicked him, but I wanted to get my lunch. Which was very good.

A Nation of Indentured Servants

Yesterday, I was reading T. Thorn Coyle’s Musings concerning the difference between wanting something and needing something, between being hungry and being starved. My first reaction was negative; I adore language and enjoy the colorful use of language. What’s the big deal about saying you’re starving when you’re merely ravenous or that you’re ravenous when you’re merely hungry?

And, yet, Ms. Coyle does have a point, I think. In America today, we’ve more or less lost the distinction between wanting something and needing something. Of course, we have an entire industry -- advertising -- devoted to blurring that distinction and to making us “need” things we’d never even heard of before. Then, today, I began reading about Howard Karger’s new book, Shortchanged.

Mr. Karger looks at the growing “fringe economy” devoted to providing credit -- at usurious rates -- to poor and, increasingly, to middle class Americans. As Karger points out, there have always been pawn shops, rent-to-own furniture stores, and payday loan joints. What struck me is his description of how America’s increasingly cash-strapped, debt-ridden middle class is turning to these operations. Karger says, “Some readers may be put off by the book’s focus on the economic straits of the poor and the middle class, thinking that it minimizes the true impact on the poor. I had originally titled the book Scamming the Poor , but as I dug deeper, I soon realized that the fringe economy is also affecting a growing number of functionally poor households — those with above average incomes but with little or no assets and high debt. Indeed, many financial transactions have become so tricky that the middle class, especially the functionally poor middle class, is also vulnerable to the predations of the fringe economy. As Shortchanged illustrates, the lines between the fringe and mainstream economies are blurred, and the interests of the poor and the functionally poor middle class are growing closer.”

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Americans aren’t special, no matter how much we believe that we are. The world doesn’t owe us anything, including Chinese credit. We can’t, either as individuals, as families, or as a nation keep living beyond our means and using more than our fair share of the world’s resources. Quit living on credit. Get your credit cards paid off. Get at least six month’s net salary in a liquid form of savings. This is all about the two topics I’ve been pondering this year: fear and thriving. Living in debt means living in fear. Thriving is about so much more than acquiring new things. What do you need?

Odds and Ends

Several odds and ends today.

First, my brilliant friend Elizabeth sent me two interesting articles. She works with a group that focuses on the use of technology in education, so the No Child Left Behind program is a special bugaboo of hers. She notes that: "Bush is proposing eliminating Enhancing Education Through Technology funds (for the second year in a row). His idiotic No Child Left Behind legislation
requires "highly qualified" teachers. EETT funds are the ONLY funds in the entire federal budget that are specifically there for professional development for teachers and school administrators.

So no funds for EETT that is a direct support for
NCLB, but sure, you can have federal money to send
your kid to a private (religious) school! ARGH!!!!!"

She also pointed me to Garrison Keillor’s column in Slate in which he points out that: "Republicans believe in smaller government and deregulation, but it takes more and more of their friends and loved ones to not regulate us, and who can blame them? Washington is the perfect place for the slacker child who flubbed his way through college and flopped in business and whom friends and family kept having to prop up -- find him a government job. Government service is a broadening experience. It certainly has been for Mr. Bush. He has traveled to China and Europe and other places that never interested him before." And, interestingly enough, as Atrios reports, Republican spawn can apparently get jobs telling scientists what to say without even bothering to finish college.

Second, a bit of pimping.

(1) The D.C. Radical Faeries are having their Feast of the Red Dragon this Saturday, February 11th from 2pm – 5pm at the Universalist National Memorial Church, 16th ST and S St NW, Washington, D.C. Funds raised at the Feast of the Red Dragon will go to support the work at Grandma’s House. Grandma's House operates five homes in NW D.C. which care for HIV infected infants and children. The children range in age from newborns to 10 years, and require 24-hour attention. This is always a fantastic event, admission and food are only $10 and if you’re in or near D.C. you have GOT to go!

Shit.Fuck.Damn. I Hate This Goddamn Disease.

So, when I had breast cancer, I didn't enjoy the surgery or the chemo or the radiation or the five years of Tamoxifen. I didn't enjoy the fights with the morons who regularly lost my films or losing my hair or learning to live with the idea that, sooner or later, IT is likely coming back to finish me off, for good. But I'll tell you what I really hated. I really hated the way that having breast cancer defined me in a lot of people's minds. i became a "breast cancer survivor" first and Hecate second.

I.Am.Not.Breast.Cancer. I.Am.Hecate.

But, today, an aquaintance called me to tell me that she has to go in tomorrow for some more pictures because something suspicious showed up on her latest mammogram. She called me because, to her, I'm a "breast cancer survivor." We chatted for a while and it was clear that she's really worried, really freaked out. She's a single woman, fifty years old, all her family is in other countries and other states. And, then, offhand, I said, "Would you like me to come with you?" Her relief was palpable, even over the phone.

So send me a bit of light and compassion tomorrow. I'm short on compassion. I'm not good at warm and fuzzy. I'm going to have to beg off a conference call to do this and, well, if the news is bad, I'm going to take her out for martinis at the Palm and tell her, well, what can I tell her? When you're going through Hell, keep going? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Hair and boobs are overrated? You'll either live through this or you'll wish halfway through chemo that you were dead? If you fight really hard with the radiologist you can make them use markers instead of the tatoos they want to use to mark you up for radiation? Good thing you don't have a lover right now because mine left me as soon as he heard the word "cancer"?

I'm really fuckng glad we've spent so much money killing people in some country halfway across the world instead of finding a cure for this mother-fucking obscene dirty obnoxious miserable excuse for a disease.

Postscript: I never cease to be amazed at the support and kindness of this "community." Thanks to everyone for their kind words. And, if you're a woman, please remember to do self exams every month. Put a reminder on your calendar. If you're a man who loves a woman, you could remind her to do self exams. And, women, please insist that your doctor send you for a mammogram any time you feel something. I've heard too many tales of women whose doctors told them not to worry and then, a year later, found out that, if they'd had a mammogram, they could have caught the cancer before it turned into Stage 4. Early detection is still the best way to beat breast cancer.

Post Postscript: Good news. "Normal aging of breast tissue; no follow-up indicated." So we still had martinis mid-afternoon, but they were celebratory, rather than for solace. Here's to normal aging!

Sacred Places in the Modern World -- The First in a Continuing Series

So, celebrating Imbolc this week, and continuing to ponder how we thrive in today's less-than-gentle world, I got to thinking about the sacred wells where the Goddess Brigit, whom we honor on Imbolc, was worshipped. When the xians conquered Ireland and Scotland, many of Brigit's sacred wells became the sites of xian churches, often dedicated to St. Brigid or to the Great Mother Mary. Most peoples have found places in the natural world that seemed to them especially blessed, places where we Wiccans say that the veil between this mundane world and that "other world" that we sense is out there is thinner than it is in other places.

You can find lamenting in the Pagan community, and, Goddess knows, much of it is valid, that our sacred places are disappearing, being paved over, turned into dumps, strip malls, office parks. You can also find mystics who show us that every place is sacred, that a plastic bag blowing through a city street can be a thing of immense beauty, an avatar of East/Wind/Swords. The simple truth is that many, if not most, Pagans today live in apartments in cities, not in small cottages, surronded by herb gardens at the foot of Stonehenge. I'd love to wander the fields like Mary Oliver, but almost 99 days out of 100, I drive to an office building in a big city and then back to a suburb, stopping at a large grocery store, or the dry cleaners, or the taqueria on the way back.

So, how do we thirive? What do we do when we need to be in a sacred space? Where do we go? What places in the modern world help us to remember that Earth is alive, we're part of a larger whole, our entire lives are shot through with connection and glory, and, emobodied consciousness that we are, with sensual delight?

I'm not a New Yorker, but my first Sacred Space in the Modern World is Central Park. Watch the video. Take a deep breath. Sacred Space: wherever you go, there you are.

May the Goddess Guard Her. May She Find Her Way to the Summerlands. May her Friends and Family Know Peace

Thanks, Betty. You saved my life.

From Chapter 2 of the Feminine Mystique:

In the early 1960's McCall'shas been the fastest growing of the women's magazines. Its contents are a fairly accurate representation of the image of the American woman presented, and in part created, by the large-circulation magazines. Here are the complete editorial contents of a typical issue of McCall's(July 1960):

1. A lead article on "increasing baldness in women." caused by too much brushing and dyeing.

2. A long poem in primer-size type about a child, called "A Boy Is A Boy."

3. A short story about how a teenager who doesn't go to college gets a man away from a bright college girl.

4. A short story about the minute sensations of a baby throwing his bottle out of the crib.

5. The first of a two-part intimate "up-to-date" account by the Duke of Windsor on "How the Duchess and I now live and spend our time. The influence of clothes on me and vice versa."

6. A short story about a nineteen-year-old girl sent to a charm school to learn how to bat her eyelashes and lose at tennis. ("You're nineteen, and by normal American standards, I now am entitled to have you taken off my hands, legally and financially, by some beardless youth who will spirit you away to a one-and-a-half-room apartment in the Village while he learns the chicanery of selling bonds. And no beardless youth is going to do that as long as you volley to his backhand.")

7. The story of a honeymoon couple commuting between separate bedrooms after an argument over gambling at Las Vegas.

8. An article on "how to overcome an inferiority complex."

9. A story called "Wedding Day."

10. The story of a teenager's mother who leerns how to dance rock-and-roll.

11. Six pages of glamorous pictures of models in maternity clothes.

12. Four glamorous pages on "reduce the way the models do."

13. An article on airline delays.

14. Patterns for home sewing.

15. Patterns with which to make "Folding Screens--Bewitching Magic."

16. An article called "An Encyclopedic Approach to Finding a Second Husband."

17. A "barbecue bonanza," dedicated "to the Great American Mister who stands, chef's cap on head, fork in hand, on terrace or back porch, in patio or backyard anywhere in the land, watching his roast turning on the spit. And to his wife wit without whom (sometimes) the barbecue could never be the smashing summer success it undoubtedly is . . ."

An All Volunteer Army

Go buy the New Yorker and read the article entitled “Swamp Nurse” by Katherine Boo. It will break your heart.

Boo follows Luwana Marts, a nurse in Louisiana’s Nurse-Family partnership, whose job is visiting poor young mothers in an effort to improve their babies’ lives. The mothers’ lives are chaotic; they move from one ruined trailer to another crowded apartment. They move from one convicted felon to another drug dealer. They don’t bother to have themselves tested for the hepatitis that Marts suspects they have since they can’t afford medical care anyway or they stop taking their hepatitis medicine because it makes them too tired for their cleaning jobs. And, then, they find out that their newborn has hepatitis.

Boo reports: ”Jose, who was with Maggie, [the young mother of the infected infant], then took her hand. Together, they informed Luwana [Marts] that decisions bigger than high school had also been made. Jose was joining the Marines, and he and Maggie had decided to marry. In the telling, their mouths were straight lines. Love and patriotism were not much on their minds.

“I’m less nervous about Iraq than I am about marrying Maggie,” Jose told the nurse as he and Maggie took turns pushing the talkative eighteen-month-old Maia around in an empty diaper box. Since they lived in a community with a particularly high death rate in the war, Maggie saw the Marine Corps and marriage as equally distressing propositions. But the couple had made a hard calculation, and there were two more things they wanted for their daughter that they didn’t know another way to get: good, possibly life-extending medical care and a habitable dwelling in which she might grow up.”

I’ve heard many times that we have a volunteer army. No we don’t. We have a system of enforced poverty and lack of access to basic human necessities that forces young men (including those like Jose who don’t have the sense that the Goddess gave a garbanzo bean) into the service in order to keep their children from dying of hepatitis. And we wonder why the oligarchs are against abortion and contraception and sex education?

Alanis, Where Are You When We Need You?

As Ms. Morissette would say, "Isn't it ironic?

I'm still too angry over Cindy Sheehan's treatment to write sensibly about it. This will have to serve for now.

May the Goddess Guard Her. May She Find Her Way to the Summerlands. May Her Friends and Family Know Peace.

The beautiful ballerina, Moira Shearer has died. She was best known for her role in the film The Red Shoes in which she played a ballerina.

Is Nausea Enough?

It’s not very often that I agree with Jack Danforth. In fact, his name simply conjures up for me bad memories of the way Anita Hill was treated. But my brilliant friend Elizabeth pointed out this article to me in today’s WaPo and I’m glad to see Mr. Danforth saying what he says. I especially agree with him about the meanness that is, for me, at least, the predominant characteristic of today’s Evangelicals.

The article quotes Samuel Lloyd, dean of the National Cathedral, who says, ”My hope and my guess is that there is a fair amount of revulsion and that the moment is right for one or more candidates who want to appeal to a more generous spirit in the American people.” I think that’s what I’m trying to get at with my discussions of Galway Kinnell’s poem about St. Francis and the Sow. When the poet says, “though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing,”
I think of America, which seems rather desperately in need of someone who can reteach it its loveliness, who can retell it in words and in touch that it is lovely, until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.

Danforth says he’s “counting on nausea” to turn politics around. I’m not so sure that’s enough. I’m wondering a lot these days about the role of heroes and heroines. Do we need someone who can articulate for America what is good about it and remind it of its better nature? Or is it something that lots of smaller someones can do? And if so, how? Or is Danforth right and nausea alone will turn the tide?

Find a Sacred Well and Read Some Poetry -- or Write Some!

Happy Imbolc! February 2nd is one of the eight major Pagan holidays. It goes by several names, but in my Circle, we call it Imbolc. It’s been almost six weeks since the Winter Solstice and you really can tell that the days are getting longer. Spring’s not here yet, but we can tell that it’s coming.

We celebrate and honor the Celtic Goddess Brigit (pronounced Breed). Brigit was worshipped at various sacred wells throughout Ireland and Scotland. She was the goddess of, among other things, blacksmiths and poets. I’ve always loved that juxtaposition -- blacksmiths and poets. The connection, for me at least, is that they both work with fire.

I’ve been thinking lately about what poor poetry, what poor art in general, totalitarian regimes tend to produce. And here’s what I believe, although I know of no study that backs this up: I believe that the side with the best poets always wins in the end. In the sixties, the anti-war side had, by far, the better poets, albeit that those poets tended to put their poetry to music.

And, I’m wondering, where are our poets today? Who’s writing good poetry that explains what’s wrong with the theocracy that is being installed in the White House, Capitol, and Court Houses across America? Who’s writing the poetry that will, in the words of the poem by Kinnell, help America to remember how to blossom from within of self-blessing?

The Gift

So today pretty much sucked. In fact, it started sucking last night, when my throat started to feel scratchy and when our new moon ritual was only kinda ok, which happens sometimes, but it's so much nicer when everyone really clicks. And then, the cloture vote. Less said at the moment, the better. I'm still trying to process what to do next. At five o'clock, an absurdly early hour for me, I gave up and drove home, getting more despondent every minute.

When I opened the door, there on my floor was a package that the mailman had brought to me from one of the many dear friends I have that I've never met. For no reason at all, except to wish me a happy holy day on Imbolc, February, 2nd, was this amazingly gorgeous new tarot deck. And it's some kind of serendipity because, last night at the dark moon, we cleansed and consecrated divination tools, which for almost all the women in my group, means tarot cards. And, today, I have a beautiful and meaningful new tarot deck.

It's amazing, isn't it, how a kind act can help us to remember that we live in an enchanted world, in spite of the George Bushes and the Haliburtons, and the cold germs? Once, when I was doing chemotherapy, had just been abandoned by my lover of twenty-some years, and was about as sorry for myself as it was possible to feel, I was sitting in a restaurant trying to make myself eat something. I called for the check and the waitress said, "A man saw you sitting in the window, came in and paid for your meal. He left this." It was a tiny, dirty scrap of paper, torn off of an envelope and it said: "Believe." I still have that scrap of paper and it keeps me going sometimes when I feel like giving up.

So, while I don't have any grand strategy to save the Republic (the song I keep hearing in my head is "I need a hero!"), nor any deep philosophical explanation for what happened today, other than to say that evil, as it sometimes does, temporarily prevailed, I can say that I'm not giving up. I'm bloody, but I am not yet bowed.

And, because I've been reminded today of the power of gifts, I'll gift you with a tarot reading, if you like. Click on Lunaea's link in my Wicca section, ask a question, and pick a card from her oracle. Tell me in comments what you pulled and I'll read for you. As they said in Dr. Zhivago, "Ah, well then, it's a gift."

I Am Begging You

Call today and demand that Senators filibuster Judge Alito. Just go here for all the information on who to call and how to reach them. DON'T limit yourself to only calling your own Senators. Call the ones that blogger Thersites lists and tell them that if they can’t stand up for women, you won’t be donating any more time or money to the DNC or the DLC and that you’ll be telling the DNC and DLC which Senators are to blame.

The Sow

I love this poem very much. And, lately, I've been thinking of it because it seems to me that America is quite a bit like the sow in Kinnell's poem. She needs to be reminded that she can "flower, from within, of self-blessing." She needs a St. Francis,or maybe a whole bunch of St. Francises, to remind her what it is about her that's beautiful. I know America has always been far from perfect. That's true, as far as I can tell, for every society on Earth. But there was much in America's "bud" that was lovely: the idea of the rule of law, the notion of self-governance, the fearlessness of her people as they faced the trip across the oceans, or the trip across the prairie, or the depression, or Hitler, or the need to change ideas about race. America's generosity to the rest of the world has, for a long time, been part of her loveliness. America's willingness to accept all immigrants and to become stronger because of diversity rather than weaker has always been a part of her loveliness.

But the Bush administration has made America forget her "long perfect loveliness." Now, we're given to believe that we're a nation terrified of a few terrorists, although the rest of the world manages to live with the threat of terrorism all the time. In fact, America lived with terrorism for 200 years, from the attacks on Native Americans, to the KKK, to Timothy McVeigh, and no one ever suggested we give up our rights, let Big Brother spy on us, allow the government to seize people and throw them in secret jails without charges or access to lawyers. I don't believe it.

We need a St. Francis, or maybe a St. Frances, to remind America "from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow."

Galway Kinnell - St. Francis And The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

The Mad Ones

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars . . . . "

~Jack Kerouac

Last Best Chance

OK, I’m begging you. We have only today, Friday, January 27th, to convince the Democrats to filibuster Judge Alito. And, if any one ever needed filibustering, it’s this racist, sexist, Tory. He WILL overturn Roe v. Wade.

Luckily, someone else has made it very easy. Blogger Thersites gives you the names, phone numbers, etc. to call. Just go here. Don’t limit yourself to only calling your own Senators. Call the ones Thersites lists and tell them that if they can’t stand up for women, you won’t be donating any more time or money to the DNC or the DLC and that you’ll be telling the DNC and DLC which Senators are to blame.

I honestly believe that today is the very last possible chance we may have to save Roe v. Wade. And I don’t care if a filibuster results in the Republicans using the “nuclear option.” If we can never use the filibuster out of fear of the “nuclear option,” we’ve already lost it anyway. As I said above, if Alito isn’t worth being filibustered, no one is.

If my grandchild has to live in a post-Roe world, I at least want to be able to say that I tried, right up to the last minute, to hold the line. What are you doing during your lunch hour today that’s more important?

The Rude Pundint has a great list of reasons why the Democrats should filibuster Alito, as Prior Aelred reminded me. They include:

Then here's a brief list of reasons to filibuster Alito that have nothing to do with Savage Sammy:
- Because President Bush authorizes spying on Americans without a warrant.
- Because President Bush authorized torture by Americans and through renditioning.
- Because President Bush detains people without charge for an indefinite period.
- Because President Bush ignores whatever laws he wants, even if he signs them.
- Because President Bush lied about Iraq to get us into the war.
- Because the Army is stretched "to the breaking point."
- Because the reconstruction of Iraq is being fucked up, too.
- Because President Bush refuses to acknowledge what it's gonna take to help the people of the Gulf Coast.
- Because Ford is getting rid of 30,000 employees.
- Because Karl Rove still has a job.
- Because President Bush and the Republicans fail to fully fund the bullshit "No Child Left Behind" program.
- Because President Bush denies the existence of global warming.
- Because the Medicare prescription drug program is a clusterfuck that will end up in people dying because of its existence.
- Because President Bush denies any connection to Jack Abramoff.
- Because President Bush refuses to speak before any audience that doesn't adore him.
- Because Dick Cheney exists.
- Because Osama Bin Laden is either living free or died free.
- Because Donald Rumsfeld still has a job.
- Because the White House has stymied every investigation into its fuck-ups.
- Because President Bush calls spying "terrorist surveillance" and pollution "Clean Skies" and money to churches "Faith-Based Initiatives."
- Because Richard Scaife doesn't need another tax cut.
- Because there has to be a line in the sand, somewhere; otherwise, it's just one long desert until who-knows-when.

See, the thing about a filibuster is it says to the White House, the Republicans, the nation, that Democrats have some say left in the processes of government. The nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, and the abandonment of Harriet Miers, were pure manna to the right wing base. At some point, Democrats have to give something to their base, something to keep the faithful from throwing up their hands in disgust, from shaking their heads and mumbling, "What pussies, what godforsaken pussies." And if not this, then what?


Rude Pundit is right. So please call.


Lines will be busy. Keep calling back. Really, I'm begging you.

This Is How It's Done

Barbara Boxer has ovaries.

During the hearings, we all felt great compassion for Mrs. Alito when she became emotional in reaction to the tough questions her husband faced in the Judiciary Committee. Everyone in politics knows how hard it is for families when a loved one is asked tough questions. It is part of a difficult process, and whoever said politics is not for the faint of heart was right.

Emotions have run high during this process. That's understandable. But I wish the press have focused more on the tears of those who will be affected if Judge Alito becomes Justice Alito and his out-of-the mainstream views prevail.

I worry about the tears of a worker who, having failed to get a promotion because of discrimination, is denied the opportunity to pursue her claim in court.

I worry about the tears of a mentally ill woman who is forced by law to tell her husband that she wants to terminate her pregnancy and is afraid that he will leave her or stop supporting her.

I worry about the tears of a young girl who is strip searched in her own home by police who have no valid warrant.

I worry about the tears of a mentally retarded man, who has been brutally assaulted in his workplace, when his claim of workplace harassment is dismissed by the court simply because his lawyer failed to file a well written brief on his behalf.

These are real cases in which Judge Alito has spoken.

I Think Louise Slaughter and Barbara Boxer May Be the Only Ones Who Truly Get It -- Must Have Something to Do with Ovaries

OK, Atrios already linked to this, but I think it's so well-written and spot on that it bears repeating.

It sums up perfectly the frustration that we liberals feel with the Democrats. Why don't they GET it? How can they continue to send Donna Brazile (and if not send, at least not try to replace) out to go up against Ann Coulter? Why won't they call the media on their bullshit? Why didn't Barak Obama say to Russert: "Tim, that's an obnoxiously racist question for you to ask me. I'm not going to dignify it with a response"? Why don't the Democrats have their own version of the weekly Grover Norquist meetings to hand out poll-tested talking points? Didn't they see the John Stewart show where one Republican talking head after another repeated "most liberal Senator" something like a hundred times in one day? Why can't they figure out how to support popular positions such as reproductive choice or national health care? I mean, sure it's difficult to support an unpopular position, but Dems consistently fumble issues where the vast majority of Americans agree with them and have for years!

Daou identifies the problem perfectly, but he doesn't propose much of a solution. I don't know myself what the solution is. (Don't do it. Don't say the solution is for Soros to buy a network. I'll hex you into tomorrow morning. If that were the solution, it would have happened by now.) But as Woody Guthrie's Guitar has commented many times over at Atrios' place, as long as the Dems allow the media to keep these races close, they'll be close enough for Diebold to steal them. And I've about fucking had it with that.

I will say that a good start would be for Boxer, for example, to start holding the weekly meetings. I will say that no Democrat ought to apologize, the way that Durbin and Reid have, for making truthful statements. I will say that Dems need to learn how to interrupt and talk over other panelists. I will say that Dems need to question the premise of the questions and call the media on their bullshit all the damn time. The media will only change incrementally, but we've seen, with the pressure on Debbie Howell, that we can make them change. She'll at least phrase her Republican talking points more carefully next time.

So, I don't know what the solution is, but I'm sure that it's not continuing to do the same thing and hoping for a different result. That's what the Dems have been doing and that, by definition, is insanity.

In Order to Persuade You Would Need What You Lack: Reason and Right

Recently, there’s been a concerted effort by various “conservative” (read: fascist) groups to “go after” college professors who are “too liberal.” A lot of it has been below the surface of the tv news (can’t take valuable time away from talking about the missing white woman de jour), but it has received some blog coverage.

I think it’s terribly dangerous and deserves a lot more attention than it’s gotten. Movements like this are designed not so much to route out the one or two professors that they highlight, but to intimidate all professors, to get them to self-censor out of a desire to avoid trouble. And that’s not a good way to educate America’s young adults.

By the time a young person gets to college, they’re ready to have their cherished notions -- generally the notions they received from their parents -- challenged. And that’s as true of red diaper babies at Brown as it is of blue-blooded Muffy (funny how those colors now mean different things than they once did!) at Princeton or of the child of NASCAR fans who is attending community college. Being exposed to new ideas, new ways of living, and new people is one of the major benefits of college. Examining your unexamined premises, learning how to support your positions, becoming able to understand how and why others have adopted positions with which you don’t agree -- those are as important as any specific course of study that a college student takes. Gotcha goons reporting back to their fascist masters when a professor doesn’t toe their prescribed party line puts an end to this important aspect of education.

Which, even more than imposing their particular party line, is what fascists are really upset about when they begin these attacks on education. An educated populace, well versed in the ability to reason and argue, sophisticated enough to accept a diversity of opinions, and unwilling to simply accept the word of an authority because the authority “says so” is not the sort of populace that a fascist government can easily control.

I once was privileged to write about this at Eschaton, but I think it bears repeating. Fascists have always had to go after professors and educators. Roger Housden has a series of books (Ten Poems to Set You Free, Ten Poems to Open Your Heart, etc. ) that are fantastic, especially for people who never “got” poetry or had it ruined for them by an uninspired high school English teacher. Each book has, not surprisingly, ten very well-chosen poems and then a short discussion of what the poem is about. In Ten Poems to Set You Free, Housden includes an amazing poem: Throw Yourself Like Seed by Miguel de Unamuno:

Throw Yourself Like Seed

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life
is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing
which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your
own field,
don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it
to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead
in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group
of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

Here’s what Housden tells us about de Unamuno:

When the fascist General Milan-Astray stormed into the University of Salamanca to confront the elderly professor and poet-philosopher Miguel de Unamuno over his criticism of Franco and the fascist cause, Unamuno said to him:

At times, to be silent is to lie. You will win because
you have enough brute force. But you will not con-
vince. For to convince, you need to persuade. And
in order to persuade you would need what you lack:
reason and right.

The general shouted, “Death to intelligence! Long live death!” and drove the ailing poet out of the university at gunpoint. The poet suffered a heart attack and died within the week. It was 1936, soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

Mieguel de Unamuno was right. The reason why the fascists must fight college professors with the intimidation that we see today and with the brute force that we’re likely to see before this is all over is that they cannot convince. For, in order to convince, you must persuade, and, in order to persuade, you need what fascists lack: reason and right. If their ideas were truly persuasive, if their ideas were truly better, the free market that this group of fascists fetishizes would surely ensure their gradual adoption by society in general and college professors as well. The blind poet Milton himself remarked that, ”And tho all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” Their ideas -- that we live in a perpetual state of attack by dangerous brown people, that women and gays are inferior, that George Bush was picked by the xian god to lead the world, indeed, that the free market is the solution to all of our country’s problems -- suck. They are not based upon reason and they are not right.

At times, to be silent is to lie.

The Gender Gap

Echidne of the Snakes is consistenly good on feminism. Go read her latest posts and her "ads".

Religious Vigil Against Torture

Don't know this group, but this was forwarded to me on a DC Pagan listserv that I belong to. It sounds like a good idea.


RELIGIOUS VIGIL AGAINST TORTURE

Tuesday, January 31st
(The night of the President's State of the Union Address)

5:00 6:30 P.M.
Massachusetts Avenue and 34th Streets --
across the street from the Vice President's House
(The Naval Observatory)

Sponsored by: River Road Unitarian Church Social Justice Council

This will be our third vigil at the Vice President's house against torture, and we hope we can double the number of people who attend. Please invite members of your religious community as well as friends and family. On December 21 and December 28 we had 50-60 people at the vigil, and the effect was significant. We would like to see 100 people come out for the night of the President's State of the Union Address.

As religious people, we feel it is critical that we speak out against this country's torture policy and practices. We need to let our government, our country, and the world know, that we oppose torture, whoever commits it & that the torture policy of this administration does not reflect the values of the American people. Vice President Cheney is the apparent leading voice with respect to torture in this administration, and we think it is appropriate to hold our vigil outside his home at the Naval Observatory.

We will be demonstrating quietly and peacefully with candles, flashlights, and signs on the sidewalk across from the Vice President's House. If you come by Metro, you will need to exit at Dupont Circle and transfer to an N2, N4 or N6 bus going up Massachusetts Avenue. Plenty of parking is available in the neighborhood, but we will also car pool from RRUC.

As before, when you arrive, please take your place next to the last person in line, on the sidewalk, facing the Vice President's House. We will create a line down Massachusetts Avenue as long as the number of people we have joining us.

This is a vigil, and we ask that there be no shouting or chanting. However, signs are important, and they need to be large in order for the drivers going by to see them.

For further information, please contact Linda Gustitus at 202-363-3928 or linda.gustitus@yahoo.com.

A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings

Thriving. It is, as I’ve noted before, even more important during times such as ours -- difficult times, to say the least -- to feed the soul.

Last night, I saw the National Ballet of Canada do Swan Lake at the Kennedy Center. It was, in a word, unforgettable. Beautifully and richly costumed and gorgeously and creatively set, this Swan Lake emphasized the male dancers as much as the ballerinas. In the fourth and final scene, the flock of swans were all dressed in black, echoing the black always worn by Odile in the third scene. They were gorgeous and made a perfect contrast to the flock of white swans that attends the lovers’ meeting in the second scene.

The dancers were excellent, really as good as I’ve seen in several seasons of ballet.

Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets, wrote about Swans and, I think, about thriving, as well:

The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?



What will you do this weekend to feed your soul? How will you thrive in these difficult times? Have you figured out what beauty is for and, if so, how has it changed your life?

Shit.Fuck.Damn.

James Lovelock certainly wasn’t the first human to figure out that the Earth is alive or to identify her as a Mother -- most pre-xian religions in Europe, parts of Africa, and the Near and Middle East did so long ago -- but his Gaia Theory certainly popularized the notion in the latter half of the Twentieth Century C.E. And he caused many of us to wonder, if the Earth is a living organism, what role do humans play? Are we similar to the brain, the nervous system, the heart, or the eyes, or are we a germ, beneficial in small colonies, but likely to kill the host organism if not reigned in?

In today’s Independent, Lovelock states that “Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. Each nation must find the best use of its resources to sustain civilization for as long as they [sic] can.” He notes that “climate centers around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth’s physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years.” He explains that Earth has suffered from similar conditions before, but that her recovery can only be measured in tens and tens of thousands of years. One function of fevers, I’ve always understood, is to raise the temperature high enough to kill off many of the germs and bring them back to a stable (i.e., tolerable to the organism) population level.

How sick does Lovelock think Earth is? He says that as this century progresses and temperatures rise, “Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve [to help regulate Earth’s temperature]; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth’s surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. He notes that current air pollution in the Northern Hemisphere actually cools the earth by reflecting sunlight back into space but (pace, wingnuts! don’t embarrass yourselves the way Ronnie Raygun did! keep reading!) this “global dimming” could “disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool’s climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."

Well, it’s interesting to think that the Eskimo and Laplanders will be the ones to survive this fever. Ursula LeGuin could write a fascinating novel about what that civilization would look like. But ecological stresses often lead to population movements that displace the original inhabitants. Somehow, I’m afraid that the rich and powerful (at that point, likely the Chinese) will claim those tolerable climates for themselves.

But Lovelock has more to say about what Earth’s fever means for civilization: First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realize how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilization for as long as they can. Civilization is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered decent. I don’t know about you, but I have a grandchild about to be born whose life expectancy covers a large part of this century. The idea that this child will be involved, not in colonizing Mars or conquering cancer or writing transcendent poetry, but in conducting triage in order to “sustain civilization for as long as” possible so as to ensure a softer crash -- well, shit. Shit. Fuck. Damn. Who’s Hummer was worth that?

Lovelock still can’t completely answer the question that his theory originally caused us to ask: What role do humans play in Earth? Or, he answers the question in a way that creates even more questions: Perhaps the saddest thing is that Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but in human civilization the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet. Through us, Gaia has seen herself from space, and begins to know her place in the universe. Then, he concludes with a sentence scarily reminiscent of some of Al Gore’s themes from his speech this week: "So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords."

I fully expect many to ignore Lovelock as an alarmist. I wont. I take what he says very seriously. So along with “fear” and “thriving” -- my understanding of both of which concepts are enriched by Lovelock’s article -- I’m going to spend some time over the next year or so thinking about what this means. What does it mean for me -- as a grandmother, as a witch, as a lawyer -- to do my part to sustain civilization for as long as possible in order to try and win a softer crash? A softer crash for some baby. Some baby who will have straight black hair or Nordic blonde hair, who will grow up to speak Mandarin or Aleutian, who will wear shorts at the North Pole. Some baby who will learn about our time not as the time when people reached for the stars, but as the time when people had their last best chance to save civilization and chose to drive Hummers instead.

I guess I’ll start by reading Lovelock’s new book, The Revenge of Gaia.

How will you start?

PS Thank you to SITTENPRETTY for directing me to this article. I took the liberty of Americanizing a few of Dr. Lovelock's spellings.

Hey! Maybe There Was a Reason They Regulated this Stuff Back in 1935! Ya Think?

Well, the Billings Gazette at least bothered to report what many of us have suspected for some time. Electric utility deregulation, or "restructuring," has not reduced rates for industrial consumers - the group it was most expected to help - and in some cases created costs that raised prices, three experts have concluded.

"There is no evidence that the price or rate of change of the price (for industrial consumers) has been any different whether in restructured states or not," said Jay Apt, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Look, electricity isn't like other commodities.

When the price of hog bellies goes too high, you can quit buying hog bellies. If a drought in South America makes the price of coffee go through the roof, you can drink tea or use up the coffee that you bought on sale last month and put in your freezer. Electricity is an essential service. We have to have it. The price is inelastic, particularly in the short (e.g., several year) time frame. And, it can't be stored (Note to electricity geeks, I know about water behind the dam. It's irrelevant to my point. Bite me.) So it makes ZERO sense to deregulate it. ZERO. None. Nada.

We've know for some time that retail customers, Jane and Jennifer Homeowner, don't benefit from deregulation and, see, e.g., California, are often hurt by it. The big push for electricity deregulation has always come from power marketers such as Enron and from large industrial consumers who imagined they'd be able to get a better deal from the Enrons of the world. (OK, and, in the case of California, from Thatcher devotee William Fessler.) As this study shows, industrial customers hbenefitednefitted from deregulation, either.

That's not very surprising for a number of reasons. First, deregulation itself has had huge costs. Setting up and running ISOs and RTOs that duplicate what the public utilities used to do has been phenomenally expensive. Second, public utilities are the providers of last resort who must have enough generation on hand that they can step in and supply those industrial customers the very morning that Enron or Calpine declares bankruptcy, abrogates its contracts (which is generally the point of a power marketer going bankrupt), and quits supplying power. Someone has to pay for that backup generation. So, no savings. Finally, experts, such as Harvard's Paul Joskow believe that we would have to invest massive amounts of money in new transmission lines, which no one wants in their back yard, and which are hardly profit centers for their owners, in order to "make" deregulation work. That's so because in many cases, public utilities used to substitute generation for transmission when that made economic or ecological sense. The system just wasn't built to work under the deregulated market, as the East Coast blackout from several years ago made all too evident.

But I don't expect Dick Energy Policy Committee Cheney's administration to admit any time soon what even the Billings Gazette now knows.

Commander. Visit Our Displeasure Upon This Town

Monday's a federal holiday, but I suggest we arrange for our displeasure to be visited upon the Honorable Senator from the great State named for the Amazon Califia first thing on Tuesday morningL

Phone or Fax

If you wish to phone or fax the Washington, D.C. office:

Phone: (202) 224-3841
Fax: (202) 228-3954
TTY/TDD: (202) 224-2501

Write a letter

Senator Dianne Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

I've fucking had it with Vichy Dems. I have a daughter in law and maybe a grand daughter on the way and I want them to own their own fucking uteruses, you Feinstein bitch.

I Was Not Angry Since I Came to Bedlam

As always Athenae says it best. Listen to me Dems, and listen to me very closely. You.Either.Support.Women.or.You.Don't. If you want any more of my money, and I think you do, and any more of my volunteer time, and I think you do, do not lay down and enjoy this rape.

For the love of the Goddess, Diane, if you won't fillibuster Alito who WILL you fillibuster?

I am so fucking sick and tired of Dems who "keep their powder dry" for the next battle and then, when the next battle comes along, save it for the NEXT battle. Kali's Dugs! The Republicans will call you obstructionist no matter what you do; does the name Tom Daschle mean anything to you??

The Dems better fillibuster this evil creep and they better do in on a party line and they better make the Republicans go nuclear and they better vote against him on a party line. Persephone in a poppy field!!!


PS And go download NTodd's podcast to your iPod or listen to it on your hard drive. His rant at the end is worth it.

Feast of the Red Dragon

OK, I’m going to pimp this now and then several more times between now and mid-February. If you live in or anywhere near DC you have GOT to experience this!

DC Radical Faeries
Present
The Feast of the Red Dragon

All Hail the Red Dragon!
All Hail the Life Giving Blood!

What: The Feast of the Red Dragon
When: Saturday, February 11th 2pm – 5pm
Where: Universalist National Memorial Church, 16th ST and S St NW, Washington, DC Dress Code: Anything as long as it’s RED
Cost: $10 Suggested donation, but no one turned away for lack of funds; and cash or check for whatever you buy at auction.

The DC Radical Faeries are a fantastic group of Pagans and their Feast of the Red Dragon has become an amazing annual fundraiser.

Proceeds from this year’s event will go to support Grandma’s House. Grandma's House operates five homes in Northwest DC which care for HIV infected infants and children. The children range in age from newborns to 10 years, and require 24-hour attention.

If you’ve never been to a Pagan event, the Feast of the Red Dragon is an excellent place to start. Everyone is very friendly and there are so many different people from so many different Pagan traditions that no one can feel “out of place” or “silly for not knowing what to do.” Here’s the agenda for this year’s Feast:

**What Happens at the Red Dragon Feast?**

Our local practice of the Red Dragon Feast is to…
gather near Valentines Day wearing red outfits
drum and dance with the Red Dragon
feast on red foods
offer raucous toasts of red drink
honor all who have died of blood borne disease
host a raffle and auction to raise funds for charity
call for strength for healers
call for comfort and healing for all who suffer

They usually manage to attract some fantastic priests and priestesses, as well, who are excellent at raising and directing energy in large public groups. In previous years, one of my teachers, Katrina Messenger, has led the ritual and she may be on tap to do so again.

Fun, feasting, and a chance to help out a great charity. As the RadFey say, “Go ahead. Be fabulous!”

Words of One Syllable or Less

Well, the Goddess knows I don't say this very often, but the NYT is spot on.

In an editorial in this morning's paper the NYT explains what any moron ought to be able to see: America cannot win President Bush's much-vaunted war on terrorism as long as it is sending billions of dollars abroad for oil purchases every day. It cannot establish democracy in the Middle East because governments rich in oil revenue do not want democracy. And it will never have the geopolitical leverage it needs as long as it is dependent on unstable foreign sources for fuel.
You'd think that would be obvious, but apparently not to the neo-cons.

Something else obvious that the NYT points out: Iran is the second largest oil producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia. Iran has recently inked energy deals with China and India -- two huge consumer countries that already have nuclear weapons. Someone better pull George Bush's head out of his ass and explain this to him in words of one syllable or less. An attack on Iran -- by the U.S. or Israel, which is widely perceived in the Middle East to act on America's orders -- would be not only an invitation to WWIII, but also would deprive America of the fuel it would need to fight said WWIII. It's just stupid enough for him to do it.

The Times suggests that becoming less dependent on foreign sources should be among the West's - and most especially America's - most urgent priorities. But not in the way that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney seem to prefer, which is to try to drill our way out of dependency - an utterly impossible task for a country that uses one-fourth of the world's oil while possessing only 3 percent of its reserves, and whose once-abundant supplies of natural gas are now severely stressed. A much better answer would be a national commitment to more efficient vehicles and to the rapid deployment of new energy sources like biofuels. Gee. I remember a Democratic President who tried to get us to do that thirty years ago. Ronald Reagan played footsie with the Iranians in order to defeat and humiliate President Carter and then dropped any pretense of caring about energy independence.

Imagine where we'd be if we'd spent the last thirty years really focused on energy independence. Think what it would mean for our foreign policy, our economy, our environment. Goddess, if even the NYT can figure it out, you'd think maybe one or two of the frappin geniuses surrounding the boy king could break this down into sound bites he could comprehend.

We need a Manhattan Project to develop safe, renewable sources of energy. And we need it now. We could easily spend a trillion dollars or so on this if we'd quit flushing money down the Bremmer-hole in Iraq and if we'd raise taxes on (1) the richest two percent of Americans and (2) consumption of all forms of fossil fuel. A Democrat with some passion could make this a winning presidential campaign. Or, we could play Scarlett and think about it another day.

Me, I'm thinking of taking Mandarin lessons.

Love in a Time of Political Cholera

So it’s Restaurant Week in DC, a program that started after 9/11 when the restaurants around here were basically empty for weeks. It’s a great chance to check out places you’ve been thinking of trying without dropping too much cash. The restaurants that participate offer a three-course fixed-price lunch special for, this year, $20.06 (get it?) and three-course fixed-price dinners for $30.06.

Had a nice dinner earlier in the week at i Ricci, where we eat a lot anyway since it’s close to my office. Also had a great dinner last night at a new place called Willow, near where I live in Arlington. Willow is run by a former chef at Kinkead’s and the owner of the Firehook Bakeries, and has a fantastic Jugendstil interior, that any Arts & Crafts devotee would enjoy.

It’s not frivolous to talk about music and food in times like ours. It’s not frivolous to seduce our lovers, as Nikki Giovanni knew:

Seduction

one day
you gonna walk in this house
and i'm gonna have a long African
gown
you'll sit down and say "The Black..."
and i'm gonna take one arm out
then you-not noticing me at all- will say "What about this brother..."
and i'm going to be slipping it over my head
and you'll rap on about "The revolution..."
while i rest your hand against my stomach
you'll go on-as you always do- saying
"I just can't dig..."
while i'm moving your hand up and down
and i'll be taking your dashiki off
then you'll say "What we really need..."
and taking your shorts off
the you'll notice
your state of undress
and knowing you you'll just say
"Nikki/
isn't this counterrevolutionary..."

In fact, music, food, great sex, things that bring us joy are more important than ever in this time of political cholera. This is going to be, as Peter Daou recently noted, a long, difficult slog. And, as Emma Goldman may or may not have remarked, if I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution. I’m still thinking about thriving -- thriving while we overthrow the Bush junta, thriving in a post-Roe world, thriving while the planet all around us continues to sicken, thriving just to spite those who’d love to see us wither. Wallis Simpson was, I believe, onto something when she remarked that living well can be the best revenge.

What will you do this weekend to thrive?

Scorp Faery

My brilliant friend Amy Clarke is performing in NYC on the 17th.

Happy New Year and a Bright Full Moon! Thanks to all who came out to my December gig at PIANOS – I love you all for your support – it rocked.

Next week, I am playing a few songs (including new ones) at the lovely little KAVEHAZ on Tuesday January 17 at 8PM – the live music and jazz club in Chelsea.

Just me and a piano, sharing an hour set with Gary Hill, NO COVER, would love to see you there!

The CD is beginning to shape up – a few tracks are finished recording...will keep you posted as it develops further.

Thanks for listening, and wishing you a prosperous and fulfilling year!


AMY CLARKE – acoustic
KAVEHAZ
37 W. 26th St, NYC
TUESDAY JANUARY 17
8PM, NO COVER
www.kavehaz.com



If you're in town, you MUST go hear her!

I Love Me Some Miss Dorothy

Temps Perdu by Dorothy Parker

I never may turn the loop of a road
Where sudden, ahead, the sea is Iying,
But my heart drags down with an ancient load-
My heart, that a second before was flying.

I never behold the quivering rain-
And sweeter the rain than a lover to me-
But my heart is wild in my breast with pain;
My heart, that was tapping contentedly.

There's never a rose spreads new at my door
Nor a strange bird crosses the moon at night
But I know I have known its beauty before,
And a terrible sorrow along with the sight.

The look of a laurel tree birthed for May
Or a sycamore bared for a new November
Is as old and as sad as my furtherest day-
What is it, what is it, I almost remember?

And Me All Out of Stoli (aka Put on Your Big Girl Panties and Deal with It!)

Someone give this bitch something to cry about. How about a daughter found in a back alley who's bled to death from a botched abortion? No? No tears over that? OK. How about a son with his arms and legs blown off in George's excellent war that he lied America into before he anointed her lord and master to the Supreme Court? No? Not doing it for her? Can't get the waterworks going over that? OK. How about some poor slob thrown into Gitmo, tortured, and kept from consulting a lawyer or even being charged due Bush's "executive powers" which her Sammy wants to expand? NO? Really? Still can't get the tear ducts flowing? Wow.

OK, then let's go with what this really was. Karl Rove told her to just think about a kitty getting killed or a fetus being torn, ripped, grabbed untimely from its mother's womb. And she did it on cue. What a trooper. Hit her mark and exited stage left. Now if Karl would only spring for some decent costumes and some real jewelry.

Fucking skank.

Living in a Post-Roe World

So now that Roe v. Wade is dead -- or at least in Schiavo territory -- what are we women going to do? I'm past being able to be pregnant, but I have friends and loved one's who aren't so lucky.

I've been urging all the women I know who either have all the children they plan to have or who do not want children to get sterilized NOW. Because they're going to make that illegal in a few short years, as well. A vasectomy for your partner is less expensive and less invasive, but doesn't provide the woman with enough control, IMHO. You can still become pregnant due to rape and, Goddess forbid, you may want to change partners some day.

But we know that teenagers and young women will continue to experience unplanned pregnancies. In fact, with the ineffective "abstinence education" that has replaced sex education in much of this country, and with the increasing difficulty that many women experience (which will get worse as the fundies implement Phase II - No More Birth Control) when trying to obtain birth control (fuck you Target!) unplanned pregnancies are likely to increase.

We need to start thinking now about how we'll cope. Charities that fund travel to Canada for indigent women? An underground railroad to get pregnant women to Canada? Offshore hospital boats that anchor just outside of US coastal waters? I don't know. I just know that WE CAN'T GO BACK.

What are you willing to do? What risks would you take for yourself, your sister, a Goth teenager you don't know?

And, along with my meditations this year on the word "thrive" -- what can we do to help women not only survive but thirve in a post-Roe world? What would that look like? What would it mean for you, for your sister, for that Goth teenager?

I Was Afraid of This

I put off starting a blog for a long time because I was worried I wouldn't have time to "do it right." I honestly don't know how the folks who run big blogs do it -- it's a 24/7 occupation. And, for the last four or five days, my job has been keeping me too busy to write what I'd like to write here at Hecate.

To wit: I'd like to research and write a post about buying stock in Diebold and showing up at shareholder meetings arguing that management's practice of cooperating with Republicans and selling unverifiable voting machines is opening the company up to huge suits and legal repercussions.

My friend Elizabeth sent me a fascinating e-mail about Bush's statement that Arab tv misrepresents Americans and I've been meaning to do a post on that as well.

Hopefully, things will slow down later this week. But meanwhile, I'm thinking again about the role of fear in our lives. Fear of not being able to "do it right" often keeps me from starting new things. That can be good, but it has its downside, as well. How afraid of being over-committed are you?

Serene and Bright, and Lovely as a Lapland Night

One of my favorites:

William Wordsworth
Complete Poetical Works

TO A YOUNG LADY

WHO HAD BEEN REPROACHED FOR TAKING LONG WALKS IN THE COUNTRY

Composed at the same time and on the same view as "I met Louisa in the shade": indeed they were designed to make one piece.

DEAR Child of Nature, let them rail!
--There is a nest in a green dale,
A harbour and a hold;
Where thou, a Wife and Friend, shalt see
Thy own heart-stirring days, and be
A light to young and old.

There, healthy as a shepherd boy,
And treading among flowers of joy
Which at no season fade,
Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,
Shalt show us how divine a thing
A Woman may be made.

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,
Nor leave thee, when grey hairs are nigh,
A melancholy slave;
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.

Other writers,

When you're writing something, do you live it? I'm working on a brief and, for the first time in my career, I had an associate who works for me do the first draft. But, even so, I'm living it. I think about it, dream about it, pray about it, walk to work to its cadence.

What is it about writing something that makes it so magical? Why is writing such a powerful act?

It consumes me. I give myself all the way over to the writing in a way that's beyond the way I've ever given myself, witch that I am, over to a human lover. I just live for the sound of the words, for the selection of one set of words over another. I wake up thinking of the best way to say what I want to say and go to sleep dreaming of the way my words might affect three judges and their clerks. I know I'm driving this associate nuts explaining to her why one set of changes works but another won't.

I have some dear friends who are studying Air this year. The direction of East, thought, communication, ideas, new beginnings. Their watchword for this year is "Damn Birds." Birds keep showing up in their lives as they focus on East. I live in the East, make my living by my ability to write. And, there are times, like now, when I can't imagine a different spiritual practice.

is it like this for you, too?

This is the place/ I meet the evening face to face

OK, thanks to the kindness of strangers, I think I've got this blogroll thing figured out and will be trying, over the next few days, to add a blogroll.

Here's a weekend poem for you while I'm at work.

This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun.

This is my rock
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky.

This is my rock
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face.

-David McCord


Where is your rock? Have you been there lately?

Bangs Head on Watertiger's Desk; Petitions Jeffers for Keys to Bedlam

Yesterday’s WaPo Food Section contained the obligatory “food forecast” for 2006, supplemented by the obligatory opinions of Faith Popcorn, trend recognizer extraordinaire. Along with interesting information such as the fact that the use of trans fats is decreasing, while the popularity of “small plates” continues to grow in area restaurants, the article contained this disturbing nugget:

Trend expert Faith Popcorn, keynote speaker at the Future of Food conference last month in Washington, and the person who predicted the “cocooning” craze of the 1990s, sees faith-friendly food showing up in the marketplace, an outgrowth of what her company calls “clanning,” or the desire to belong to groups with common ideas.

Tyson Foods, which makes chicken, beef and pork products, already has begun offering free downloadable prayer booklets on its Web site. The booklets provide mealtime prayers in a variety of faiths. The article notes that “food forecasters are predicting some provocative trends, including such possibilities as Christian-raised chicken . . . .”

Now, I’m a person of faith and one of the things I try to do every time I eat is to offer some gratitude for my meal. I do it quietly; no one eating with me even knows I’m doing it. But I can tell you that I sure as heck don’t download my prayers from the Tyson Food website, nor can I imagine anyone doing so. But, I checked and, sure enough, Tyson’s is now apparently selling prayers along with processed chicken parts. Most of the prayers are xian or at least Abrahamic, although a few appear to be Native American and a few appear to be based on some kind of generalized religious sentiment. Strangely, given the role women play in purchasing and preparing food, none of them speak of divinity as feminine, although a number refer to a masculine god. I’m sure Tyson Foods thinks they’ve been very “inclusive,” but they’ve failed. But that’s not the real problem.

The real problem is that it’s creepy. WTF is “faith-friendly” food, Ms. Popcorn? It’s apparently not kosher food, which, based upon my very limited understanding, at least requires humane methods of slaughter. It’s apparently not organic food, which, again based upon my very limited understanding, at least evidences some respect for the Earth. No, what it apparently is, is food produced by big corporations who try to dress up their processed food and agribusinesses with advertising that appeals to wack-job fundies. Forget it. I’ll take the small plates, the dark chocolate, and the larger print on the nutrition labels. But I’m not downloading my prayers from the Tyson Food webpage and I’m not buying any xian-raised chicken, either.

Blog Roll

I'd dearly love to add a blog roll to the side of my blog. I changed the "template" to one that allows links, even though I'm not crazy about the way it looks, but it won't seem to let me add any links.

Any one who'd like to advise the newbie, please do so in comments here.

Thanks in advance!

I'm Rooting for the Cedars

I used to work for a narcissist. She was a monster. Everyone who worked for her, and I mean everyone, hated her and hated working for her. I don’t call her a narcissist lightly; she’d been diagnosed as a narcissist by one of the best Jungian analysts I know. Everything, and I mean everything, was all about her. You’d go in to talk to her about an issue in your department and spend an hour listening to stories about her ski trip; then she’d be late for her next appointment and you’d never get to discuss the issue you came in to discuss. Since working for her (I left that job and, a year or so later, she was fired, thank the Goddess), I think I can recognize a narcissist when I see one. (Insert obligatory skyatrist/tv joke.) George Bush strikes me as a world-class narcissist.

He gave us another example just this weekend:
After meeting with wounded personnel at Brooke Army Medical Center, Bush joked about what he termed his own injury in combat — from an encounter with a tree on his Crawford ranch.
"As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won," he said. "The cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, [a] colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, colonel."

When you think about it, this is quite an amazing statement. Bush, who never served, goes to visit seriously wounded soldiers and comes out to make a joke about his own “injury.” Of course, many of us have noted Bush’s propensity to get injured in weird ways when he’s out of the public eye for several days, but whether he was drunk or sober when he went out to clear brush, he’s got a freaking scratch, for Goddess sakes. He’s apparently incapable of giving a statement that does not focus on him.

Narcissism is defined as: An exaggerated sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements). Only a narcissist would start a war because Saddam threatened his daddy and he wanted to get Saddam’s gun to wave around. Only a narcissist would insist that anyone who criticizes him must favor the terrorists who attacked America on September 11th. Only a narcissist, with a exaggerated sense of his own achievements and talents, would dress up in a flight suit and strut his codpiece across the deck of a carrier decked out with “Mission Accomplished” banners.

And only an asshole would stand in a hospital full of wounded soldiers and talk about his own stupid scratch. I'm just sorry the cedar didn't give him the cockpunch he so desperately needs.

The Battle of Manassas

They’re the “family values” crowd. But if your sister has breast cancer and needs chemo, don’t think that you can take in your niece and nephew and have them live with you while she recovers. Better to send them off to an orphanage, I guess. They’re the “family values” crowd, but don’t think that when your favorite Great Aunt gets too old to live alone, you can bring her into your home and let her impart her wisdom and values to your children. There are nursing homes out there and someone makes a profit running them. They’re the “family values” crowd, but don’t think that you and your two favorite cousins can pool your resources and buy a house together. Better if you each rent a one-bedroom apartment, live alone and isolated, and don’t invest in the American dream of owning a home.

At least in Manassas, Virginia.

As the Washington Post explained earlier this week, it’s apparently more important for Manassas, Virginia to hate on illegal immigrants than it is to promote the “family values” that the conservatives are always shoving down our throats. Actually, since the law they’ve passed in Manassas does nothing to target illegal immigrants but is clearly aimed at immigrants, maybe we could just drop the pretense and admit that, in Manassas, Virginia, it’s more important to hate on anybody who isn’t a white suburbanite than it is to promote the “family values” that apparently are only “valuable” when being used by the MSM and the Republican Party to dupe the rubes at election time.

Manassas, as the WaPo explains, adopted an ordinance on Dec. 5th that ”changed a definition of ‘family’ in the zoning code so that, essentially, households are restricted to immediate relatives, even when the total is below the occupancy limit. With a few exceptions, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and other extended relatives do not count as family in Manassas anymore. For instance, six cousins living in a six-bedroom house would be illegal, even though the number does not exceed the occupancy limit.” Although, like the school board in Dover, city officials are now denying that the ordinance was passed for the obvious reason, last month the Vice Mayor admitted that it was aimed at what he was pleased to term “the larger problem in Manassas of illegal immigration,” which he blamed for problems such as “parking and strained school budgets.”

Dear Mr. Vice Mayor: Bite me. An illegal immigrant doesn’t take up any more parking spaces than a legal immigrant. (And likely less space than the fucking Escalades that the white suburbanites in Manassas appear to favor.) Children of illegal immigrants don’t take up two desks due to the fact that their parents are illegal immigrants; Manassas’ schools are strained because overpopulation, execrable public transportation, and the housing situation around Washington, D.C. have sent people way the hell out to bumfuck Manassas. Which used to be almost completely lily white, but now finds itself with a population that is -- horrors -- 15 % Latino and 13% black! You know that blue that’s been creeping south and west from Arlington over the last few elections? Hmmmm.

Anyway, the citizens of Manassas ought to be outraged over this waste of taxpayer money. Manassas will waste money defending this racist, anti-family ordinance, money that could have gone to build schools, provide public transportation (voila! less need for parking!), or build affordable housing. And then, they will lose anyway. No matter what they say, they’ve clearly violated the very line that the Supreme Court laid down almost thirty years ago in Moore v. City of East Cleveland, Ohio, 431 U.S. 494 (1977).

Morons.