Quench!

Thirst is Mary Oliver's book of poems written after the death of her beloved partner, Molly Malone Cook (there's a name for a poet's lover if ever there was one!). It also chronicles Oliver's flirtation with xianity. I'm biased, but I find a number of the explicitly xian poems below Oliver's usual standards; that said, you've got to love an established poet who takes the kind of risks that Oliver keeps on taking. She opens with one of my favorite quotes from early xianity:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame." You know that Rumi would have said the same thing.

Oliver's first poem, Messenger, works:

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird --
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium,
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

So does her paen to Cook, Those Days:

When I think of her I think of the long summer days
she lay in the sun, how she loved the sun, how we
spread our blankets, and friends came, and

the dogs played, and then I would get restless and
get up and go off to the woods
and the fields, and the afternoon would

soften gradually and finally I would come
home, through the long shadows, and into the house
where she would be

my glorious welcoming, tan and hungry and ready to tell
the hurtless gossips of the day and how I
listened leisurely while I put

around the room flowers in jars of water --
daisies, butter-and-eggs, and everlasting --
unlike our lives they trembled and shimmered
everywhere.

Isn't that how you'd describe every real lover you've ever had: my glorious welcoming, tan and hungry and ready?

She's less successful, IMHO, when she becomes explicitly xian:

The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist

Something has happened
to the bread
and the wine.

They have been blessed.
What now?
The body leans forward

to receive the gift
from the priest's hand,
then the chalice.

They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.

I want
to see Jesus,
maybe in the clouds

or on the shore,
just walking,
beautiful man

and clearly
someone else
besides.

On the hard days
I ask myself
if I ever will.

Also there are times
my body whispers to me
that I have.

It's not a bad poem, it's just not up to Oliver's typical standards. You never get that ice-pick-in-the-guts moment of: "Oh, my, YES!" that she so regularly delivers when writing about Nature. And, of course, Oliver's had so many real encounters with the God:

The Place I Want to Get Back To
is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground, like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but anyway, harmless;

and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

Going every day for twenty years to the same woods, not waiting, exactly, just lingering. That will suddenly set you alight, all flame. Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. But the wood and the water are something else now from what they were before this began.

Derrick Jensen On Demands Of The Land

Rhododendron In Bloom In The Woodland Garden

(I promise to quit playing with the new toy soon!)


Music: The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, Adrian Boult conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra on: Vaughan Williams, Suites, Seranades, Fantasias

Ruh Roh

A co-founder of the investment company proposing a biblical theme park in Rutherford County was a prolific photographer for Penthouse magazine in the 1970s.

Amnon Bar-Tur shot cover and centerfold photos of nude models for the soft-porn publication, according to Web sites that sell back issues of the magazine.

. . .

U.S. Bankruptcy Court documents show that C2 Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Oct. 10, 2001. The company was in debt for about $71 million ? equal to its assets at the time. Amnon Bar-Tur served as the "executive chairman" of C2's board since May 1999, and prior to that had been the chief executive officer for about five months in the company's infancy, according to the court records.

According to the bankruptcy affidavit filed by co-founder David J. Manning, C2 Media executives attributed the company's downfall to a softened economy and "by a dramatic fall-off in business following the World Trade Center disaster."

The company's inability to pay off the debt also stemmed from the collapse in 2000 of the initial public offering market, which allows a private companies to sell its stock to the public. Without the IPO, the documents said, C2 could not pay back what it owed.

What a great use of Rutherford tax dollars! No, it's not. And it will cost even more to defend this stupidity against the inevitable First Amendment challenge. Is Tennessee really that stupid? You do know that the rest of America is laughing at you, right? Mayor Burgess, I'm looking (and laughing) at you

More here.

Look What I Did! Look What I Did!

Music: Crowning of the King by Blackmore's Night from the album Fires at Midnight

Our So-Called Liberal Media

From Media Matters:

Summary: In 2004, the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal called on Teresa Heinz Kerry to release her tax returns. But both have yet to call on Sen. John McCain's campaign to release Cindy McCain's tax returns or even note that the campaign has refused to do so.

Cindy McCain's wealth is reported to be about one hundred million dollars. IOKIYAR.

Good News!

Desiree Fairooz was initially charged with two counts of assaulting a police officer and one count of disorderly conduct for telling Condoleezza Rice,"The blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands!"

Judge Ringell honored her actions by referring to Thoreau, Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, all models of resistance, and explained how they understood they would eventually spend time in jail for their acts. He told Desiree," Some day you'll have to accept the consequences of your acts, but not in this forum [his court]."

He found her guilty of "disorderly conduct" and could have given her 90 days in jail, but instead he sentenced her to 5 days suspended sentence, 3 months of unsupervised probation, and $50 for a mandatory victim's fund. Thank you Desiree ... and thank you Judge Ringell!

Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Roses

A Pict Song - My Pipple!

Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass by and that's all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.

Chorus:
We are the Little Folk--we!
Too little to love or to hate.
But leave us alone and you'll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak--
Rats gnawing cables in two--
Moths eating holes in a cloak--
How they must love what they do!
Yes--and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they--
Working our works out of view--
Watch, and you'll see it some day!

Chorus
Although maybe we are not strong,
But we know Peoples that are.
Yes, and we'll guide them along
To smash and destroy you in War!
We shall be slaves just the same?
Yes, we have always been slaves,
But you--you will die of the shame,
And then we willl dance on your graves!

Chorus

~Original poem by Rudyard Kiplling

Sexiest Line I've Heard In A Long Time

"My love rode by with sun-stained feet"

~from the song, The World's Wedding, sung by Emerald Rose

Bad Idea

The Queen Of All Argyle

Lines On The Land

We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening –
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.

They’ve taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.

~Seamus Heaney

Save Tara!

Beltane Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Catching breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. (Mattsmom, email me! I owe you a reading!)

Merci!

And,



here's a video demonstration of a BSE.

May The Goddess Guard Her. May She Find Her Way To The Summerlands. May Her Friends And Family Know Peace.

Cora Anderson, elder of the Feri Tradition of witchcraft passed over to the Summerlands early this Beltane morning. What a perfect time to slip between the whisper-thin veils. More here.

Blessed Beltane

That's What I'm Taking About

In addition to Beltane, or, actually, because of it, but that's a long bit of history for another day, May 1st is also known as a day for the world's workers to protest working conditions. You could spare a moment of Beltane magic tomorrow in support of America's longshoremen.

An arbitrator has ordered the union that represents dockworkers at West Coast ports to tell members they must report to work on Thursday and not take the day off to protest U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A wide enough walkout could cause a slowdown at the West Coast ports — the nation's major gateway for cargo from the Far East.

. . .

Despite that decision, word continued to spread on the Internet of a May 1 walkout by longshore workers and details of protests, including a march in San Francisco. Thursday is May Day, when workers traditionally celebrate the labor movement.

Thank the Goddess someone is willing to protest these illegal, immoral wars.

/hat tip to ErinPDX at Atrios

Blessed Beltane

Remember to wash your face in the dew tomorrow morning. It's an old Beltane charm for staying beautiful.

Sick, Disgusting, Old, Unfit For Office

Just Stop It!

OK, I will say this in little words and short sentences. The Democrats need to quit pandering to the religious right -- which will (are you listening?) NEVER VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT EVEN IF THAT MISGUIDED RABBI, JEBUZ OF NAZARETH, GETS DOWN OFF OF HIS CROSS AND HOLDS UP A SIGN SAYING "VOTE DEMOCRATIC IN THIS ELECTION IF YOU LOVE ME I DIED ON THE CROSS FOR YOUR SINS YOU WILL BE WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB BLESS MY SOUL IN THE BOSOM OF ABRAHAM!"

I understand. Many of you, are, in fact, devout xians. You see nutjobs like Tom DeLay and Larry Craig and David Vitter and, the xian god forgive us, George W. Bush, getting elected because they appeal to xian whackjob fundies and you say to yourselves, "Self," you say, "why don't I get some of that action?"

The next time that you say that to yourself, go smack yourself in the face with a wet washcloth and get the fuck over it. Stop picking Harry Reid for Senate majority leader because you think that because he's against abortion (and, it turns out, ever doing anything even mildly effectual), he'll appeal to "value voters." He won't. Stop running devout catholics like John Kerry because you think that will inoculate the party against attacks from the little-boy-molesters in the catholic church. It won't; Razi will arrange for Bush to visit Rome and give the sitting pope a medal while releasing rumors that Kerry should be denied communion. Stop running bullshit ads, like Obama's been doing, about how you're a committed xian and are "called to serve." Just stop it.

We're seeing this week how much good it's done Obama (and, yeah, they're all guilty of it, but he's gone way out of his way to assert that he should get elected because he's such a devoted xian and he's getting pounded the hardest for it this week, so I am using him as an example) to play the xian card. He's getting hammered over the head with his xianity and this is WEEKS and WEEKS after he, supposedly, put this entire issue to bed with his "masterful" speech on race in America, which we were all told was such brilliant political ju jitsu. Not.

Religion will NEVER be anything except a hammer to use against Democrats. Democrats need to accept that fact. I am more religious, I am willing to wager, than 95% of Americans. My religion would only be a detriment to me if I decided to run for office. The best thing for Democrats to do -- and, wow, here's a benni, it's also the right thing to do -- is to insist that religion has no role to play in American politics. Refuse to answer questions about your religion because, in America, we have a separation of religion and the State. Change the topic. Assert the principle. Quote John Adams. Move on.

Look, my number one issue is the environment. I'm NEVER going to vote for a Republican, even if s/he talks about "Blue Skies" and "stewardship" and "Clean Forests," etc., etc., etc. First, I don't believe her/him, and, second, even if I did believe her/him, I don't think that she's/he's AS COMMITTED to those notions as is the Democrat. I'm not really any smarter than someone who's number one issue is the rather obscene notion that "America is a xian nation." They don't care how much a Democrat talks about "Called to Serve," etc., etc., etc. First, they don't believe the Democrat and, second, even if they do believe the Democrat, they don't think that the Democrat is AS COMMITTED to those notions as is the Republican.

So Democrats have two choices. They can concede that being a good xian is important in politics, in which case, they can keep losing. Or, they can challenge the basic premise and begin to move the debate off of their opponents' favored ground. It's unclear to me why this is such a difficult choice for them.

Imagine

What If?

Query

In her newsletter, Janet Kane notes that, "Simone Weil wrote, 'The beauty of the world is the mouth of the labyrinth.'" I wonder what Weil meant.

Listen

Poetry For Beltane

As I've said before, I think this is a perfect Beltane poem:

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?



- Mary Oliver

Please?

Angela Eloise! Everytime that I try to comment at your blog, I get a message saying that I've tried to post too many posts in too short a time. Can you fix this?

Beltane

My brilliant friend E reminded me this week of something I wrote a while back about Beltane:

My idea of the perfect ritual involves women showing up to a calm, clean, well-ordered space, where wine is poured, tensions are dropped, flowers release their scent into the ritual air, muscles relax, women remember who they are and from whence they came. I want intent clearly specified, ritual supplies laid out, incense alight, and grounding done right.

Like Anne, I prepare like hell for the strike, and then I let that sword just fall as it will. My Younger Self responds better that way.

But, that's not THE only way to do ritual. I've been reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing In The Streets every day at lunch, four or five pages a day. She talks about how women left their spinning to run into the streets to follow Dionyisis, how ecstacy can overtake even the most repressed, at times. Beltane is all about living in the moment, all about feeling, after a long winter of parsing out the left-over seeds and saving enough back for planting, that it's ok to let go, ok to burn fires on the high hills, ok to have sex in the fields, ok to act without thinking it all through. About finding what Anne calls the "middle ground between worrying and controlling something on the one hand, and ignoring it on the other."

Blessed Beltane.

As you prepare this week for Beltane, for the fire festival on the high hills, for our religion's most important celebration of acts of love and pleasure, I hope that you feel free to let go. Goddess knows, I mean to.

Blessed, blessed Beltane.


Art found here.

Good Thinking

[Nature on Earth continually cycles itself through the use of energy, which comes] from outside the system in the form of perpetual solar income. Not only does nature operate on "current income," it does not mine or extract energy from the past, it does not use its capital resrves, and it does not borrow from the future. [Designers must begin to use these same principles.]

. . .

[Discussing a day care center built for the City of Frankfurt:] Because of the solar hot-water collectors, we asked that a public laundry be added to the program so that parents could wash clothes while awaiting their children in school. Because of advances in glazing, we are able to create a day-care center that requires no fossil fuels for operating the heating or cooling. Fifty years from now, when fossil fuels will be scarce, there will be hot water for the community, a social center, and the building will have paid back the energy "borrowed" for its construction.

~William McDonough, Centennial Sermon: Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Feb. 7, 1993~

Life, Life, Life, Life, Life

I left work early yesterday to go to one of my favorite sit-and-watch places alongside the Potomac. This was obviously the day that the caterpillars burst forth from their nests. They were ALL OVER the place and they crawled all over me while I was taking pictures. Ducks on the river swam over to see if I'd brought them anything to eat.

Cradle To Cradle

[I]f what we make with our hands is to be sacred and honor the earth that gives us life, then the things we make must not only rise from the ground but return to it, soil to soil, water to water, so that everything that is received from the earth can be freely given back without causing harm to any living system.

~William McDonough, Centennial Sermon: Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Feb. 7, 1993~

The witches say: We all come from the Goddess./And to her we shall return,/Like a drop of rain, flowing to the ocean./Corn and grain, corn and grain,/All that falls shall rise again./Hoof and horn, hoof and horn,/All that dies shall be reborn. McDonough's trying to ensure that what we create -- buildings, shoes, carpet, textiles, toys -- follows the same principle. His ideas remind me, in a way, of what the Arts & Crafts movement was trying to be about, although they didn't have the ecological awareness that exists today.

My New Name For A Blog

What Jane Said About What Digby Said.

Maybe it's nothing more than the fact that it's been sunny and warm, with the daylight extending almost to 8:00 pm. Maybe it's the lilacs and woad in full bloom in my back yard (For the last few days, I swear that I've literally been able to hear the Earth thrumming: Beltane, Beltane, Beltane!) Maybe it's the win Hillary pulled off in Pennsylvania due, in large part, to those old women in boxy blazers. Or maybe there's more, but, in any case, I'm lately feeling quite hopeful about almost everything.

As Jane notes that Digby said:

To me, this primary is actually a good thing for the fall. All this hand wringing strikes me as typical Democratic nervous nellie-ism. A huge increase in Democratic voter registration, building of strong ground operations in most states, new technologies being beta tested, lots of media coverage and battle testing for the nominee are of benefit to the nominee in the fall. Meanwhile, the Democrats stay at center stage while McCain wanders around in obscurity, failing to raise money and leaving a trail of gaffes in his wake. As long as they don't know at whom to aim their fire the Republicans can't cement their narrative. In the end, I remain convinced that we are going into an election that is so fundamentally seismic that either of them can win it, even if more closely than we might want, due to the breakthrough nature of their campaigns. The primary continuing on is not going to change that.

I don't think people realize that the democratization the internet has brought to the system is also one of the main reasons why the campaign goes on. If you think superdelegates are undemocratic, back in the bad old days (of a couple of cycles ago) big party donors pulled the strings by pulling the money when they decided that someone had no chance to win. Today, both candidacies are where they are on the basis of avid small donor supporters contributing online and that's prolonged things past the point where it would have in the past. Thousands of Clinton supporters keep sending her money-- ten million since last night, apparently. So, if you don't like the fact that the campaign continues, blame the internet. It wouldn't have happened under the old paradigm.

Obama supporters could do themselves and the party a big favor if they'd quit crying about how that eeeeevvvvvvvvvviiiiiiillllllll woman needs to shut up "so we can speak with one (man's) voice!" and step down before she "destroys" the guy who is supposedly going to be able to stand up to the Republican slime machine. I didn't like it when Sandra Day and her Gang of Four shut down democracy in Florida and I don't like it when Obama's supporters try to do it in the Democratic primary. I am just saying. Have a little faith -- in your candidate and in the process.

As Digby explains:

the fact that Clinton is still winning big primaries and getting campaign contributions makes it ridiculous to expect her --- or any politician --- to quit (no matter what the NY Times editorial board says.) She has a legitimate constituency (nearly half the voters) in the party that wants her to see this through. As Somerby says in response to Maureen Dowd's typically daft (and equal opportunity insulting) column this morning:


This year’s campaign has shown what can happen when a party has two closely-matched candidates. There are potential downsides for the party, as anyone can see. But journos like Dowd think it’s their role to demand that the person they hate should just quit. Those million-plus Democrats [who voted for her yesterday] don’t exist in Dowd’s world. In Dowd’s world, Dowd wants Clinton to quit. And so, by the laws of childish dreams, “the Democrats” must want that too.


Since I don't think the Democratic Party will crumble from the stress of finishing up the primaries (or even a brokered convention for that matter) until Obama officially wraps up the number of delegates and superdelegates to go over the magic number, I think she has a right to continue.

Wouldn't It Be Nice To Have A President Who Believed In Science?

From today's EEI newsletter:

Scientists Report Instances of Political Interference

More than half of the 1,586 EPA scientists who responded to a questionnaire from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported witnessing political interference in scientific decisions over the past five years, the Washington Post reported today. Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' scientific integrity program, said: "Things are not as they should be at the EPA. Scientific findings are being suppressed and distorted; 889 scientists personally experienced at least one type of political interference. ... Scientists are being pressured by outside interests."

More than 100 respondents said the Office of Management and Budget was the source of the interference, with hundreds of others blaming industry groups and other agencies, the Post reported. Wrote the Los Angeles Times: "Such allegations are not new: During much of the Bush administration, there have been reports of the White House watering down documents on climate change, industry language inserted into EPA power-plant regulations and scientific advisory panels' conclusions about toxic chemicals going unheeded."

J. William Hirzy, an EPA senior scientist and union official, said scientists also saw political interference during the Clinton administration but "what we're seeing now is ... the favoring of energy interests, coal-fired power plants. That's something different in this administration." Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has sent a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson advising him to prepare to face questioning about the survey findings at a hearing next month. Waxman wrote: "These survey results suggest a pattern of ignoring and manipulating science in EPA's decision making."

As far as I can tell, the survey only includes scientists now at work at EPA, and not the many who have left, disgusted, over the past seven years. If there were a way to include those scientists, the results may have been even more alarming.

A Building Lovely As A Tree?

From this month's VF article on Cradle to Cradle design:

Jefferson . . .wrote to James Madison in 1789. “They were deciding the term of the federal bond,” says McDonough, “and Jefferson’s conclusion was that a federal bond should have a term of only one generation. And his logic was this: The earth belongs to the living. No man may, by natural right, oblige the lands he owns or occupies to debts greater than those that may be paid during his own lifetime. Because, if he could, then the world would belong to the dead, and not to the living.”

McDonough discusses the Industrial Revolution and notes that:

Consider looking at the industrial revolution of the 19th century and its aftermath as a kind of retroactive design assignment, focusing on some of its unintended, questionable effects. The assignment might sound like this: Design a system of production that

• Puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year
• Produces some materials so dangerous they will require constant vigilance by future generations
• Results in gigantic amounts of waste
• Puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved
• Requires thousands of complex regulations to keep people and natural systems from being poisoned too quickly
• Measures productivity by how few people are working?
• Creates prosperity by digging up or cutting down natural resources and then burying or burning them
• Erodes the diversity of species and cultural practices

Does this seem like a good design assignment?

Even though none of these things happened intentionally, we find this "design assignment" to be a limited and depressing one for industries to perpetuate — and it is obviously resulting in a much less enjoyable world.



And, of course, McDonough's discussion of building buildings as lovely and safe as cherry trees in bloom reminded me of a poem:

Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918

119. Trees

I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

The One They Pick. The One You'll Know By.

You know, people who think that:

It's time that we declared a ceasefire on the caricatures and explored the shadows -- not just the silhouettes -- of our differences,

yet who go around saying things such as:

At another university, a woman in a black, boxy blazer took the microphone as she stood up, clearly preparing for a full-on lecture. After talking about the books she'd donated to the women's center, the feminists she'd known in the late 1960s, and the virtues of knowing your feminist history, she said: "I don't want to hear about justice and blogs and food politics; I want to hear about feminism. Is there some common ground that we can all stand on?"

might spend a few minutes being self-reflective. I am just saying. Boxy blazers cut an interesting silhouette.

Atrios, who is as good a feminist as a man can be, directed me to the above post, noting:

I've been reading with some fascination the various intergenerational feminist back and forth going on. I'm not sure how valid that description is for the country generally (aside from the general trend of older voters siding more with Clinton), but it has played out in the media to some extent that way.

I found this bit to be telling:

At a recent pre-panel reception, I immediately connected with a philosophy professor about the difficulties and joys of teaching feminist theorist Judith Butler. But the professor's mood took a 180-degree turn when the issue of eating disorders came up. "I'm so sick of hearing young feminists talk about fashion and body image and work/family balance," she said, rolling her eyes like an adolescent, though she looked to be about 50. "What about the women in Afghanistan!?"

She even approached one of the other panelists, 42-year-old journalist Kristal Brent Zook, with a plea to shut down any conversation about these "frivolous" issues if they should come up during the panel (i.e., shut down me, the silly author of a book on body image). Zook had my back, of course. She responded to the professor, "Actually the entire goal of this panel is to create intergenerational dialogue where all voices are heard. It's not my job to decide what's important to Courtney or any other feminist. It's my job to express my own issues and listen openly to others."


One of the more frustrating, futile, and self-aggrandizing rhetorical games is to tell people what their priorities should be. Nick Kristof has played this game in the past, chastising womens' rights groups for not focusing their limited resources on whatever his pet cause of the week happens to be. It's also global warming concern troll Bjorn Lomborg's trick, saying that instead of focusing resources on combating global warming we should use them for a bunch of other things that aren't going to happen. There's always a more important cause, a more deserving subject, a more downtrodden person. It's essentially a way of undermining all good works while building up the critic as More Serious And Enlightened Than Thou.

But people have different priorities. And to the extent people become involved in issues or causes, they have different skill sets, different abilities, different sets of knowledge. They have different things they can bring to the table. Telling people they should be fretting about the women of Afghanistan instead of focusing on eating disorders is, to put it bluntly, just stupid. More than that, it achieves absolutely nothing.


I have to say that my first reaction was: "Gee, thanks, Atrios, for telling us silly women how to have our debates. What we've really been needing is a guy to come along and straighten us out, tell us that some of us are stupid." But Atrios' post, which, in all fairness is trying to make a larger point about discourse in general and not just feminist discourse, reminded me of Anne Hill's recent heartfelt post about attempts to control acceptable topics of discussion within Reclaiming. Anne recently explained:

One thing I noticed in the course of the afternoon is that the things which drove me away from Reclaiming continue to rub me the wrong way. A case in point is what happened over lunch. I was at a table with some people I have known for a long time, and a few that I had just met. I was enjoying catching up with an old friend, when our lunch was interrupted with a lengthy announcement explaining that every table was now going to have a discussion about the same subject. Each table would take notes, and the results would be somehow digested at the BIRCH meeting the following day. (Don’t ask me what BIRCH is—I may say something cynical.)

The topic we were to discuss was diversity. To wit: why isn’t Reclaiming more diverse, and what can be done about it? I was already banging my forehead against the table in pain, but the intro continued, first singling out my friend Evelie, who got to stand up and wave because she is diverse, I mean Filipina. Then a woman named Rosa got to stand and say her 2¢, to the effect that people like her could be helped by people like us if we only knew how to meet more people like her.

I kid you not. I am dead serious, and by this time it was through sheer force of will that I was not 1) bolting for the door, or 2) standing up and saying something confrontational in the middle of the dining hall. The only thing that kept me from shouting out was the knowledge that if I did so, I would be in the middle of an even worse discussion than the one I was apparently now going to have.


. . .

[T]his is where I can get a good rant going, I have had it with red herring questions like this pre-empting conversations about the real issues that Reclaiming has avoided for years. I am speaking here mostly of Bay Area Reclaiming, but frankly the patterns that have been set here get exported regularly to other areas, and I have seen more than one community plagued with the same issues that we have been mired in here for a decade or more.

The final straw for me on this was when I was still in the Bay Area teacher’s cell—I believe it was in the late nineties—and the group was essentially split in two, with neither side trusting or speaking to the other. It had been months, the group was moribund, and though we had plenty to discuss we were not even able to come up with a date for a meeting, let alone assure that some representatives from either side would attend.

It was a horrible dynamic and finally Thorn and I, who had some credibility on both sides, were able after several weeks of intensive lobbying to set a date and get people to agree to come. With assurances that there would be neutral facilitation, we were going to actually talk about the issues that mattered, and hopefully come to some resolution or at least respectfully agree to disagree.

Then literally the night before the meeting, Starhawk, who had been out of town, emailed saying that we should really discuss fundraising for scholarships so that young Pagan activists could attend witchcamp. Another person on the cell quickly wrote back and said that’s what she wanted to talk about too, and I watched in dismay as months of preparation were tossed out the window.

Disheartened, I could not even bring myself to attend the meeting. That was the turning point for me, the moment where I gave up my years of struggle to change the course on which our local community was set. Now there are virtually parallel Reclaiming communities in the Bay Area, and no encouraging signs that the two will ever be reconciled save briefly, when old friends are able to catch up over lunch or lounging on a sunny deck.

The fragile alliance which had led to that meeting was hijacked by the very mentality that hijacked my lunch table discussion at Dandelion: the insistence that Reclaiming is best served by bringing in new recruits rather than cleaning its own house. Blessedly, I found myself not a lone voice of discontent at the table, and we ended up with some meaningful feedback to offer the next day’s meeting. Then I got the hell out of there before a second discussion topic could be suggested.

In both cases, the attempt to exercise power-over, to control the very questions that may even be discussed, becomes the topic of discussion. Feminism, as a movement based upon the notion that the personal is the political, can't be about shutting down discussion. But, that goes both ways and sometimes, sadly, young women like Martin are as willing to shut down those women in boxy blazers (we all know that's code for "up-hip middle-aged woman") as the women in the boxy blazers are to tell young women to shut up about issues that weren't as important to us when we were blazing new feminist trails back in the sixties and seventies. That woman in the boxy blazer is as entitled to talk about her feminist credentials and hope for feminism's future as Ms. Martin is to talk about eating disorders. That Clinton's candidacy has gotten us -- boxy-blazered old women and young women -- talking about generational issues seems to me like one of the benefits of her campaign. I'd like to think the talks will continue, regardless of who wins the nomination.

The situation in Wicca's a bit different; one can hive off when one gets fed up with attempts to control the discussion, although I certainly understand why those who've invested so much in Reclaiming wouldn't want to do that and I admire them for hanging in there and attempting, as Anne has clearly done, to address the problems rather than just walk away. It's also less clear to me -- out here on the East Coast and living in my own closed, eclectic circle -- that Reclaiming's issues are generational, although I may be mistaken about that. Regardless, it's interesting to compare the two attempts to control conversations. In the case of Reclaiming, Anne and her table did take on the "suggested" topic and used it as a way to address the larger issues that concern them.

Query

Did you do anything vital today?

My New Name For A Blog

What echidne said.

Jane Sixpack, the ignored voter.

Resign Condi

My New Name For A Blog

What Ruth Said

Not all countries on our earth, though, have been held captive by a ruling cabal that eschews good relationships based on diplomacy. Some are advancing their interests.

China has been moving into good relationships that include material advancement. It has trade agreements with Sudan, that it has not used to advance human rights there. It has also a few alliances our media does not usually talk about. I thought it might be a good idea to see what some of them are.

Liar Or Completely Out Of Touch With Reality? You Decide.

When your wife's unrevealed assets top $100 million, it's difficult to understand the problems faced by most Americans.

Light

Ah, there it is.

Sitting out on my steep backyard slope, with the sun coming in from the West, I see a blade of grass incandescent, ablaze, alive, alight with sunshine. There it is. That is my spiritual practice. That is all of it that there is, to sit on that hill and to see that blade of grass making food out of nothing but that sunlight and the water that has rained down on the Earth. Not elaborate, not sophisticated, not disciplined, not, well, not anything except what I am.

All winter I sit inside at my altar, light candles, burn incense, call the quarters meditate upon tarot cards, breathe the Ha Prayer, go on vision quests. But then, on an afternoon in April, I return to who I am. I observe a blade of grass alive in the late afternoon sunshine.

May it be so for you. May we all burn with that light and to such good effect.

S'Official. I've Moved Out Onto The Porch And The Western Lilacs Are In Bloom

We Shall Dance

G/Son's New Favorite DVD

She Dared To Run For President While Being Female

Go read the whole thing.

Question: Is Chris Matthews the Michael Scott of political talk show hosts? And if so, does that make MSNBC the Dunder Mifflin of cable news?

Matthews has harvested a bumper crop of outrageous remarks during this extended primary season. Specifically, fueled by his obsession with the Clintons (he can't recall attending a single Beltway party where the couple has not been discussed), Matthews has unleashed a flood of sexist commentary.

On that front, of course, the Hardball host has not been alone. This election season, we've seen a cavalcade of white, middle-age men express their deep, personal contempt for the first serious female contender for the White House. Contempt, of course, that has nothing to do with Sen. Hillary Clinton's policies or her beliefs. Instead, it's been an oddly personal disdain dressed up as political analysis.

The way Mike Barnicle on MSNBC said Clinton "look[ed] like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court." The way Bill Kristol on Fox News said that among the only people supporting Hillary Clinton were white women, and "[w]hite women are a problem, that's, you know -- we all live with that." The way CNN's Jack Cafferty likened Clinton to "a scolding mother, talking down to a child." The way Fox News' Neil Cavuto suggested Clinton was "trying to run away from this tough, kind of bitchy image." The way MSNBC's Tucker Carlson announced that "when [Clinton] comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs." The way Christopher Hitchens on CNBC described Clinton as being "sort of alternately soppy and bitchy.'"

Because

Support The Troops. Send Them To College!

Like my good friend watertiger, I, too, had a dad who served in World War II (he joined up right out of high school and spent the war in the Pacific) and then came back to take advantage of the original GI Bill. He was the first in his family of English/Welsh immigrants to go to college and, even with the GI Bill, he worked his way through college, cooking breakfast, as his store of hysterical stories assured that I'd remember, for a women's dorm. My dad was a journalism major, back in the days before spellcheck, and I still remember him telling me how the dean called him in and told him that he was going to have to learn to spell if he wanted a journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He must have learned, somehow, because he fed a family of five kids on nothing but his writing, sent all of us to college, left money for my mom to live on after he died, and left me enough inheritance for a lovely diamond dragonfly brooch.

My Democratic Senator, Jim Webb, has proposed that America, again, begin awarding our soldiers a full GI Bill. After dad's first-ever-in-his-family college degree, I stumbled my way into a masters degree and a juris doctor degree, largely still running on the strength of the impetus from Dad's GI Bill's push forward. Son, whose granddad helped move him into Princeton, earned degrees from that school and a law degree. We've paid commensurate taxes ever since. Goddess knows what G/Son will do. It was a good investment that America made in the late 1940s. It would be a good investment here at the end of aughts. Course, as watertiger notes, Republicans like Five-Deferments-Dick and John Sideny McCain are opposed to that expense. Fuckers. Why do Republicans hate the troops.

Go!

I am very proud of my friend Sinfonian, who is smart, funny, brave, and an American patriot. Dude, I will even buy you a blueberry vodka (yuck!) shot!

Tell me what a patriot looks like? This is what a patriot looks like:

understand that this is an illegal act under current federal law, but based on my own values and morals, I believe that the war and occupation themselves are illegal and that my decision to conscientiously object to funding these military actions is a necessary act of civil disobedience in order to express my outrage at the federal government’s continued adherence to a dangerous and destructive military strategy. There was, as we now know with certainty, absolutely no defensible reason to invade and occupy Iraq, and while the military operation in Afghanistan arguably was justified by the search for Osama bin Laden, the apparent abandonment of that mission has made our efforts there futile and has created an increasingly unstable environment for their citizens and our soldiers alike.

And, for his work on this issue, I'm also proud of my friend NTodd.

Take This Bible Park And Shove It

Turns out, the early news reports were wrong. The Rutherford County, Tennessee Planning Commission voted 8-7 to deny a rezoning request to allow the development of Bible Park USA. They were likely responding to local pressure from residents concerned about traffic, light, and noise. For example:

County Commissioner Steve Sandlin moved to deny the park.

Sandlin based his motion on lack of TDOT approval of the access road, bridge and tunnel; a belief that the park does not conform with the Blackman Land Use Plan; and most importantly, because the park would affect the character of the neighborhood in a negative way.

His last point was the park is at odds with the regulations for a Conditional Use Permit, which requires developments to not have a substantial effect on the value of the neighboring buildings or have a negative effect on the basic character of the neighborhood.

Fine by me. They might want to consider, as well, though, the legal costs that they're going to face, without a doubt, if they go ahead with this obvious violation of the First Amendment. Is that a good use of tax dollars?

The next step: The zoning plan will go before the Rutherford County Commission, which has final say in the zoning, on May 15.

The real First Amendment problems arise from the tax dollars that will be used to build this humiliating abomination.

In a separate process, the park's developers are seeking $27.9 million in property tax revenues in tax-increment financing (TIF) from an area around the park.

Under the TIF, the local government would authorize the sale of bonds to help pay for the park. The increased property tax revenues generated because of the value of the land of the Bible Park USA and inside an impact zone around the park would go toward the park's debt.

That financing plan is set to go before the Rutherford County Budget Committee on May 8, and will likely be considered by the Rutherford County Commission on May 15.

The developers are also likely to seek a second TIF, which would capture some sales tax from the area as well as a luxury tax on sales in the park to help pay for the development. No proposal on that TIF has been submitted to the county yet.

And, of course, in 2006, the county was successfully sued by the ACLU for posting the Ten Commandments in the Rutherford County Courthouse as part of a historical display, and made to pay legal fees of $50,000.

Contact decision-makers here. No Pagans at all in Tennessee to stand up against this nonsense?

A Bit Of Earth, Please

I planted some containers this weekend, even though it's a bit early for Zone 7. I was explaining to my wonderful landscape designer last week that, for me, it all starts and goes back to A Secret Garden. My first exposure to the root word "Wick." Did you ever read that book?

Things That Make Me Smile

Some days, I really need to smile. When that happens, I remind myself: it was a lovely Spring day today and Jeff Skilling spent it in jail.

My New Name For A Blog

What Four Legs Good said.

Razi, don't let me see you in my town.

Dumb Fucks

Going to make some lawyers rich.

Bible Park Meeting Draws a Crowd--Erika Kurre

NEARLY TWO HUNDRED MIDDLE TENNESSEANS GET THEIR CHANCE TONIGHT TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT A PROPOSED BIBLE THEME PARK.

THE RUTHERFORD COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION RECOMMENDED TONIGHT THAT THE PROPERTY IT'S PLANNED FOR BE RE-ZONED.

DEVELOPERS WANT TO BUILD "BIBLE PARK U-S-A" IN BLACKMAN, A RURAL PART OF RUTHERFORD COUNTY BETWEEN SMYRNA AND MURFREESBORO.

BUT MANY IN THE AREA SAY NOT IN MY BACK YARD.
FOX 17's ERIKA KURRE HAS MORE IN A STORY YOU ARE SEEING ONLY ON FOX.

ONE BY ONE... RUTHERFORD COUNTY RESIDENTS FILED INTO THE COUNTY COURTHOUSE-- MOST WITH RED SHIRTS ON, SHOWING THEIR OPPOSITION FOR "BIBLE PARK U-S-A."
Rutherford County Resident Tony Pegel says, "I see this taking lots of tax dollars and infrastructure building for a theme park I don't see any reason for a way it can succeed."

DEVELOPERS WANT TO BUILD THE BIBLICAL THEME PARK ON 282 ACRES OF LAND-- JUST NORTHWEST OF MURFREESBORO.

TO SOME LIVING IN BLACKMAN , THE PARK IS SEEN AS DISRESPECTFUL TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH AND ISN'T WANTED IN THE COMMUNITY.
NOT TO MENTION CLAIMS SOME SAY ARE UNREALISTIC.
/Rutherford County Resident Rafe Hyatt says, "Theme parks that do 1.5 million visitors a year have water slides, they have roller coasters, they have ferris wheels, thrill rides-- none of these things the Bible park currently brings to the table."

/Erika says, "While the majority of people at this meeting are opposed to the Bible park, there are a few who want to see it happen."
RICHARD MEADOW HAS BEEN LIVING IN RUTHERFORD COUNTY FOR 46 YEARS.

HE CAN'T SEE A REASON WHY "BIBLE PARK U-S-A" SHOULDN'T BE BUILT HERE.

Richard says, "I'm just very much interested in seeing something that can and will-- in my opinion-- bring revenue into this county."

HIS ONLY CONCERN IS TRAFFIC CONGESTION ONCE THE PARK IS BUILT.

THOSE WHO OPPOSE THE PLANS-- BELIEVE MAKING UP FOR THE INCREASE IN TRAFFIC COULD FALL BACK ON TAXPAYERS.

THEY BELIEVE WHETHER THE PARK IS BUILT SHOULD BE UP TO THEM... NOT TO THE COUNTY.

/Rafe says, "If we the people, the residents of Rutherford County are given the chance to vote this up or down, #1: I"m confident it will go down in flames. #2: I'll live with that."
IN MURFREESBORO, ERIKA KURRE, FOX 17 NEWS.


THE COUNTY COMMISSION WILL HEAR THE PARK'S PLANS MAY 15th.

IF APPROVED, DEVELOPERS SAY IT WOULD BE FINISHED IN 20-10 AND COULD PROVIDE MORE THAN A THOUSAND NEW JOBS OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS.

Freeway Blogger Rocks II

Let's Hope That The Planning Commission Does The Right Thing

From Michelle Willard:

The contentious debate surrounding the proposed Bible Park continues at 5 Monday evening, when Rutherford County Planning Commission hears public comments and casts its vote.

The planning commission is the second step in the zoning process and is only a recommending body to Rutherford County’s Board of Commissioners. The county commission has final say in the process and is expected to hold a vote on the project on May 15.

The Future Development Committee, a recommending body to the Planning Commission, met Thursday, April 3 to review the land-use plan and Conditional Use Permit request of SafeHarbor, LLC, to develop a non-denominational, Biblically based theme park in the Blackman Community, northwest of Murfreesboro.

The FDC debate ended in a 3-3 tie, meaning the plans go to the Planning Commission with no recommendation.

The committee based its vote on public concerns about the park’s impact on the surrounding community and its seeming conflict with the county’s Blackman Community Land-Use Plan.

SafeHarbor’s plans for the park and its economic impact study were approved by the Industrial Development Board, a quasi-governmental body, April 2.

Wearing Spiders

I got to babysit my much, much loved G/Son last night. His 'rents dropped him off about dinner time, he spent the night, and his dad came around 11:00 this morning to take us out for breakfast. We did everything from blowing bubbles, to picking bluebells, to watching Elmo DVDs, to baking cookies (with blue sprinkles!), to dancing to music, to picking up rocks and putting them in our pockets, to coloring with blue crayons, to watering Nonna's gardenias, to petting the cat (GENTLY!), to reading stories and poems. He walked me through the book about Thomas the Tank Engine, explaining the difference between tenders and helicopters and tank engines. He sang Little Rabbit Foo Foo to me and I sang a family variation of The Muffin Man to him. Plus, just hanging out. I just adore this kid.

This morning, I was getting him out of his pajamas and into his clothes and he told me that he didn't want to take off his Spiderman pajama shirt to put on the lovely blue-striped Hanna Andersen shirt that his mom had packed. We'd talked the night before about how spiders make their webs out of their own bodies, spinning their own homes, and he'd been so impressed by that discussion that he repeated it, this time as the imparter of information, verbatim, to Miss Thing. When I tried to jolly him out of the spider shirt: "Look, this one has BLUE stripes!" he cried, and he cried the way that two-year-olds cry: completely, abjectly, thoroughly. And I stopped and thought, "I'd cry too if I couldn't even be in control of what I wore on a Sunday morning in my own Nonna's house. I'd cry, too, and every bit as abjectly." So when Son came, we went to brunch in the Spidey pajama top. And, Sweet Goddess, what did I think? Of course, no one even noticed. G/Son scarfed strawberry crepes and gulped orange juice (he'll never be president, this kid, plus, he's way too interested in mass transit) and no one batted an eye.

I think that I didn't do such a good job of allowing Son to make his own choices. I was a poverty-stricken, single, teen-age mom and always terrified that people would judge me a poor mother and, as a consequence, judge him as a badly-brought-up child. (When he was born, the first thing that I said to him, talking more to myself, was, "It's OK.") No such fears with this wonderful young man and I pray that I'll do a better job of always being the place where it's safe for him to be all of himself. When he was born, the first thing that I said to him was, "Namaste." That which is divine within me honors that which is divine within you. I mean to honor that. I wish that I'd been a braver mother. Sorry, Son. Sorry. I mean that.

Next Time, Don't Try To Play So Cute And Swipe At Hillary, M'Kay?

So, probably more has been made of this than it deserves, but here's my problem with Barack Obama's recent remarks concerning people in small towns.

The controversy stemmed from remarks Obama made at a private fundraiser in San Francisco on April 6 when he explained his struggles appealing to working-class voters by saying they were frustrated with the loss of jobs under both Republican and Democratic administrations over the last decade, adding: "It's not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment."

Obama wasn't asked why Democrats have trouble appealing to working-class voters. He was asked to explain his trouble appealing to working-class voters who, rather emphatically, when they vote Democratic, choose Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama, whose support comes, to a large extent, from African Americans (from all economic classes) and better-off white Americans with college degrees. (The question commits the usual fallacy of using a term such as "working class" when what is actually meant is "white working class.") Obama's answer may or may not explain why working-class voters sometimes vote, in a "What's the Matter with Kansas" way against their own economic interests when they vote Republican, rather than Democratic. But his answer is in no way responsive to the question of why working-class voters who do vote Democratic choose Hillary Clinton over him. To the extent that voters are voting on abortion or gays or guns or immigration, they're not voting for Clinton, either.

Maybe he was too eager to get in a swipe at the Clinton administration, in a Ralph-Nader-kind-of-way: there's no difference between the Democratic and Republican administrations. That's how his answer sounded to my ears and, if that's what tripped him up, shame on him.

Maybe he was reluctant to say that working-class Americans can sometimes be racist (although then he'd have to explain why he thinks that they're more racist than sexist and I'm not sure he'd get me to agree with him on that). Fair enough, if he'd said that, even though it has an element of truth, he'd be in hotter water than he is right now. And the explanation that they're sometimes racist because they're sold hating on brown people by corporatists who want them to have an enemy other than the corporatists would have gotten lost in the sound-bites on Hardball. Running as the first genuinely competitive African-American presidential candidate is a marathon race through a field of landmines and acknowledging racism is, in the minds of Fox News anchors and squawking heads, being racist.

But perhaps he could have used the question to explain what he does intend to do for working class Americans, why he thinks that he can be more successful than his Democratic predecessors, and to begin reaching out to a branch of the Democratic party that, so far, hasn't been overwhelmed by his promises of "change" and praise for Ronald Reagan and Joe Lieberman to the same degree as college students and well-to-do Democrats. Perhaps he could have used the question to show his support among working-class African Americans and explain how he intends to build upon that to begin attracting white working class voters. There were ways to answer that question that didn't involve insulting people.

Hey, remember when we had to select Obama because otherwise the media was going to pick Clinton to death? Remember how Obama was supposed to have this amazing ju jitsu? Yeah. I do.

Susie's blog does a good job of rejecting the premise of the question, but also leaves unanswered why Clinton does so much better with working class voters than does Obama.