How George Screwed New Orleans in Advance

Just in case we aren't clear on what this government (the bush team) stands for, here's a couple of grafs from the Washington Post:

" 'The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. . . . In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need.'

"Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, 'the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be.' "

And welcome to the shortsighted approach to the future. The other great note in today's news are the predictions of $4/gallon gasoline all across the most populated parts of the country, and lasting for several months. This means, in short, the end of growth for 2005. This means terrific hardship for millions. This means heating oil costs will be skyhigh this winter. This means the sound of revolution is in the air.

In other notes, this culture of public opinion polls finds that 48% of americans believe in the fundamentalist version of the earth's history. That is, everything has been here since day one and that was about five thousand years ago. That's when their god did his tiny little thing. My Lady has been here since time immemorial. These measurements only cause Her laughter. Believe what you might foolish xtians. The facts are these: science will only heal us if we can accept what it finds to be true. All those on the creationist side should be simply denied all medical benefits that issue from modern biology. Let them live their beliefs.

And I also hear on the web that the fundies are saying gawd sent the storm to New Orleans because there was gonna be a big gay event there and he was so offended he had to kill a few thousand poor bastards because he is such a selfish twit of a deity. Just look at the people who believe in him, if you have any questions. Like Jo Rawlings said about Harry Potter, "I know who the enemy is. Just read my books." And she does. And so do I.

Brisket for dinner. It's been awhile since we had some beef. I suppose those days are going to disappear soon. Ah, the noble cow. Hera, our Mother, I thank you for the many meals you have given me, and I hope to overcome the damage to my cardio system left in their wake.

Wearing a Different Hat

Piper is in a period of costuming and hat-wearing. Currently she has three hats that are worn as costumes, each with their own role to play. She has a hat that resembles a baker's hat (a gift from Aunt Wendy). When wearing this hat she tends to refer to herself as "Chicken Soup" which comes from the Maurice Sendak story. Lately that has morphed into "Mickey" from Sendak's In the Night Kitchen--a book that if you don't know it you should hunt it up at the local bookstore and take a quick turn through it. It recounts a dream of a young boy who falls out of bed, out of his clothes and into a place called the Night Kitchen, peopled with several bakers who look exactly like Oliver Hardy (Laurel and Hardy). Things happen. He flies around in a plane made of bread dough. He dives to the very bottom of a very large quart bottle of milk (approximately four stories tall). He ends up back in bottom, dry and warm. Mickey's great statement is: "I'm in the milk and the milks in me!" Piper loves this book. We also have a video that was produced in europe and has Peter Schickele as the narrator. She loves the video. And she loves the hat.

Hat number two is a red plastic fire fighter's hat. Piper has had an attraction to fire fighting paraphenalia from very early on. I give a Sharon, Lois and Bram episode early credit for this. "There's an Elephant in the Tree" posits Elephant, having climbed up a tree, now stuck and eventually rescued by the Toronto Fire Department. Piper loves her fire fighter's hat and she loves firetrucks of all sorts. We recently acquired a bunch of matchbox firetrucks and she likes having them with her in the car. The drawback to this hat is that with that great bill in the rear it is difficult to sit in the car seat. We have overcome this by turning the hat sideways or back to front, so that it sticks out in the front. Very humorous. She often likes to have this hat on while wearing her pink, fluffy tutu. An interesting amalgam of cultural referents.

The third hat is new from this last weekend. It also fits a reality that comes from a television experience. The australian group, the Wiggles, have a sidekick character named Captain Feathersword, the friendly pirate. No you know and I know that real pirates were not that friendly, but these guys are pitching at five year olds, so this character is a sweet and charming fellow with a huge feather for a sword. We found Piper a tri-cornered pirates hat for a girl at one of the used/weird clothing stores in downtown Champaign last Saturday while taking Paige and Lauren around. Piper loves this hat, which she calls "Pirate Ship" not understanding the exact noun here. That's just fine. She doesn't need to know about real pirates for a few years yet. And, meanwhile, she can share her mother's pirate interest in a safe way. (Kimberly's pirate interest of course stems from Johnny Depp's great portrayal of Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Carribbean; we all look forward to the sequel.)

When Paige was young(er), we had a trunk full of cloth and costume and hats that she and her friends had great fun with over the years. I have quite a bit of videotape from Paige's forays into fantasy play. That trunk actually belonged to my old friend, the poet Steven Dolgin, who left it at Scarritt in the early 70s, after having talked of moving in. He ended up in Chicago, instead, but I had that trunk for decades. I hauled it to Los Angeles, and to New York City, not to mention Wichita. And Paige had it in her room on the house on Bryn Mawr for most of her childhood.

In the 70s many of the parties at Scarritt involved the wearing of hats. There was a box of many hats, mostly pretty strange ones, pith helmets, mouseketeer ears, berets. The object was to become a character who would wear that hat. Funny voices, accents, strange diction, all were allowed to become one with the "hat" you were wearing. And, obviously, hats would be exchanged. Now, admittedly there was a lot of marijuana use at these events. But the exchange of identities is an important part of the learning process. These people were mostly writers, and mostly novel writers at that point in time. Clearly, they were people who were interested in exploring the versions of reality that different people inhabit. This is related to the empathy business.

This is why it is most important to read fiction in your life. It is a very good way of coming to understand different points of view. But reading only fiction from your own experience, while that can be good, it is just not enough. We have to become bigger than our own flesh. We have to become larger than our physical self. The greatest asset of our species is in its social necessity.

Because we cannot live alone and separate (and anyone who has ever had a baby knows this) we have to live together. Yet because we are conscious, we have a profound sense of our self. We are the dichotomy, alone and together. Both states are necessary. It is when this balance goes one way or the other that mental illness and power-seeking come to take over. It is only in balance, and understanding, and tolerance, that humans can be okay. That is the true way.

And for the many roles I have played, and the many costumes I have worn, I thank the Lady Arianrhod for the joy that comes in this ride on Her silver wheel.

Weekend Notes

We had Paige and her friend Lauren this weekend. Lauren is going to Emerson, in Boston, next weekend. So they are at the end of their time together. Lauren is the artist on Paige's manga that is supposed to be on the web this week. I'll post an address when I get one.

Mostly we shopped. We took the ladies to downtown Champaign for lunch on Saturday, and then we hit the antique and used clothing stores. Piper acquired a jaunty pirate girl hat. Paige came into some large, golden clipon earrings. Lauren managed not to spend money. Smart, considering she is going to be in Boston next week.

I made Paige salmon with bearnaise sauce for dinner on Saturday. We had it with salad and corn on the cob. Lauren and Paige drank sparkling white grape juice and Kimberly and I had Ravenswood's Zinfandel. Sunday morning Kimb and I recycled the leftover salmon and bearnaise into eggs benedict. Very nice.

We went to that's Rentertainment before taking the girls back to Normal. That's Rentertainment is selling all their vhs tapes, having moved completely to DVDs. This place has the largest selection of titles I have ever seen anywhere. We bought a bunch of kidvids at 3for$6: Blues Clues, Teletubbies, and Babs and Buster Bunny material. I think we bought two adult vids: The Man with the Golden Arm, with Sinatra and Kim Novak (based on a wonderful Nelson Algren novel), and Sinbad, with Douglas Fairbanks and Maureen O'Hara.

Unfortunately, I failed to pickup my prescription for prilosec before the time when the pharmacy closed. Thus last night turned into one of those long weird nights where you can't sleep because of the acid in your throat. Kimberly also had a terrible time, so this Monday we are both running at something of a loss.

I did do a lot of online reading about the situation in New Orleans. Hopefully Katrina is doing much less damage then was speculated in the nighthours. I have heard the Superdome roof has been damaged. I do know that the price of gasoline will rise another $.25/gallon because of this storm. And just when it had almost gone to $2.50/gallon here in central Illinois. I read that Chicago has the worst prices in the country.

Politics
Some thoughts on the breakdown of discourse in this culture. The problem is that for there to be some kind of broad consensus, people have to be willing to give up some of what they think is the correct way of being. So, in the argument about abortion, if you stick to the notion that it is murder, there can never be a consensus with the broader population, who while they don't like abortion, believe it is acceptable in certain situations. That right there removes it from the murder category. If it is ever acceptable, than it cannot be called murder. Not unless you are willing to say that twenty million of your citizens are murderers. And if they are murderers and you don't punish them once again you have negated your argument.

But they aren't really murderers. That is just the overstatement of people for whom sexuality is about sin. The pro-life group has really always been "Pro-punishment for girls who have sex" and no matter what they tell you, that is what is really going on inside of them. But, they have successfully lied to themselves about what is important. The fact of the matter is that even if Roe v. Wade were overturned tomorrow, there will be places in this world where abortion is safe and legal and there will be places where it is hard for anyone not middle-class or richer to have control of themselves.

And the one great truth behind these movements is embodied in the roman church's consideration that all contraceptives are sins. All forms of birth control make you a mortal sinner, doomed to the pit. Why is that, you say? The pope says it is not our's to stand in the way of what god designed sex for. But I tell you clearly that it is about controlling people through guilt. The drive to have sex is about so many more things than just having children, but reducing it to that means the church can always call up the child and exploit that child for the political purposes of the church.

So, child-abuse has always been the norm for the Roman church. They give not a crap about children, except that they be indoctrinated to become slaves to that man in Rome, pretending he has something to do with Yeshua. The fear of the freeing of the woman runs through all this stuff. We are approaching a truly crucial moment in the development of human culture. If the religionists win and force women back to the position of slave/chattel/baby oven, then the enlightenment will be truly over and the return of slavery and domestic violation will be upon us, in spades.

Dobson's "Family" sites all basically call for the recriminalization of everything to do with sexuality: gay sex, sodomy, abortion, birth control. They want, and have stated this, people not to have good sex anymore. What this tells us about them is they must be truly screwed up. Can you imagine hating sex so much? And being so afraid of those of us who can have decent sexuality and not live in fear? We are not too far from an honor culture, ourselves. Where the men blame the women for the male sex drive and punish them for any sign of a female sex drive.

In good news I have been re-reading Martha Miller's stories in the first of her books, Skin to Skin, and they are so warm and generous, it makes you wonder what kind of person fears this sexuality so much? Martha writes about real people, not people pretending to be something that no one is or should be.

Well, I know poor old man Dobson will be mortified when he crosses over and his insistence on these lies is shown to him by the Lady. In Her beauty his sadness will become unbearable and he will suffer the worst tragedy there is, the loss of communion with the truth. I know he already has lost it, but he will know it beyond all doubt when he crosses over.

Let the great Silver Wheel careen through the many universes, slow and fast, the threads turned and pulled through the loom of being.

Lesley Gore, part ii

A second note on the Lesley Gore cd, Ever Since. The more I listen to it, the more I recognize the themes of my own life. The version of "You Don't Own Me" which I first characterized as dark, is in actuality a statement of self-worth where she states that she also doesn't "own you". I have listened to this piece about six or eight times and I like both the music and the songs. I upgrade my rating on this from really good to a great, honest, statement of self that is as good as anybody's in the last thirty years.

A couple of years ago my pacific rim friend told me that Gay people have the best music (an overstatement, of course), but here is an example of that very concept.

Watching the Child

I'm at one of those junctures where it sort of feels like threads unraveling. The truth, of course, is that things actually plod on pretty much the same, one day to the next. So I recognize that that feeling is one from inside. That sense of losing control of the concrete posts of average existence. Mostly that would mean the house is a mess and I didn't get to do the cleaning this week that I had hoped. Particularly difficult is getting to the floors. With a two year old there are infinite numbers of small objects on the floors. And many of them are organic in nature and need to be found and tossed. Still, it's really not as bad as it might sound.

It's that damn lack of time. Admittedly I did finish the new Harry Potter this week, but no one can accuse me of spending all my spare time reading. I get little reading done, compared to most of my existence. I used to read an average of three or four books a week. These days I am lucky to read two or three books a month.

However I wouldn't trade the intellectual pursuits for the time I spend with Piper. She is forever fascinating and leads me down all sorts of corridors that she has herself never been down. So that language is like a great smorgasbord and she is invited to take whatever words appeal to her (by sound, or by meaning) and to use them miscellaneously, as emotional communicants, rather than as mere intellectual props.

We have been trying to institute a better bed time ritual, but it is slow going. I rocked the recalcitrant young princess last night for almost an hour, then Kimb took over and put in another full half hour. This on top of reading several books and singing several songs. Even Leonard Cohen's sepulchral verses would not take her down last night. Well, this too shall pass. And I shall think wistfully of these days soon enough.

That is the funny, surprising thing about parenthood. You quite miss the hard parts too. After they move along to another place of childhood, you know you will never be there again, listing the colors, or rocking the young child, or picking the cheerios up off of the floor.

Soon enough they become your seventeen year old, with friends and strong opinions about segments of literature you barely acknowledge. Or your 35 year old who is a fine person and very polite when you call him, but who never actually calls you. Life goes right along, and things change relentlessly. That is what makes time so grand a concept. Don't get me wrong, I am not unhappy that this happens. It just happens and it is perfect that it does. I am just reminding myself these days with Piper are jewels that need to be contemplated in the light of this long weird life.

Tonight there will be leek and potato soup at my house. I am quite looking forward to it. There's a bit of wine left, and some of yesterday's baguette. The meal last evening was a very nice rendition of Ossobucco with veal and lots of carrots. I used some of my last batch of double strength chicken stock. We both enjoyed it. Later Kimberly made some very chocolatey brownies. Wow.

The wheel turns and the days flow by. I try and remember these hours will never be with me again. Keep your eyes open and feel the Lady's presence in the natural world.

Harry Potter, Really Rosie & Other Items

I took my car in this morning and it cost me the better part of $500 American. I don't know how you are supposed to save money when a 2 1/2 year old car with 30,000 miles on it needs that much service as mere maintenance. It's not even a great car; just a Saturn SL2. But, there you go. So I'm swimming deeper into the debt pool here. Combine the truly exorbitant cost of such things as car maintenance ($40 to change an air filter?) with the coming $3 a gallon gasoline and you will start to see the divide between rich and poor people in this country start to become antagonistic. The Repugs are intent on reviving the class warfare that existed before Franklin Roosevelt.

Personally I like to stay in the center, politically. The problem is, my center was the center about twenty years ago. Now the center is John McCain coming out against Darwin. If he gets nominated, a chancy proposition in the increasingly and stupidly right-wing Repugnant Party, I will enjoy going door to door in the fall election and telling people that being against Darwin is essentially being against all forms of biological research. The most significant effect of teaching this creationist bullshit in the schools will be that this country and this culture will eventually lose whatever minor advantage we used to have in the sciences. And China and the pacific rim countries will bring it all home, without any help from us. And then they will charge us for everything they find out. Talk about creationism.

Piper is watching Carole King's "Really Rosie" in the other room. Carole is currently singing about "Chicken Soup with Rice." The fun part is that Chicken Soup is a little boy who likes to cook. Piper has a psuedo-baker's hat she wears and calls herself Chicken Soup. I wonder how much impact these things from childhood have on us all.

My favorite childhood literary memory is that of Elizabeth Enright's novels. There were two series, one about the Melendy Family, mainly told in The Four Story Mistake. The other series was about a place called Gone-Away-Lake, about a resort lake from last century that had turned into a swamp. Her characters were interesting and decent and I hoped to be like them. I found out about Tolkien from the Melendy's who sang the dishwashing song from the Hobbit in The Saturdays. I must've been around 12 or 13. I remember finding Tolkien on the shelf in the library in downtown Wichita. This would've been 1963. I didn't really read the trilogy until some years later. I do remember that I loved that library. It was old and victorian with many dark halls and corridors. Rather like Hogwarts, now that I think about it. Of course they tore it down and built a new modren library sometime in the 80s.

Speaking of Hogwarts. I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday. I was very gratified to find this book much better than the Order of the Phoenix. It pulled me right along and had many wonderful scenes and miscellaneous information. The Quidditch match stuff worked well for her. And the complications of adolescent love were carefully used to advance everybody's characters. I wasn't too surprised by what happened, but it was still extremely tragic. And I have to say that it will be a long two years before the final volume comes out and I get to find out how it all works. Darn that Tommy Riddle!

Oh, and all the reviews that talk about the humor in the book are dead on. A very funny, wonderful book. Highly recommended for wizard and muggle alike.

Lesley Paige Osburn, 8/24/1988

My daughter, Lesley Paige, is seventeen years old today. I wish her well and hope she has a good time tonight. She's a smart, passionate woman. She's beautiful and strong-willed. She's a better stylist than I am, and she's better at storytelling than her mother ever was. Now if she can just survive being a teenager and living in a dark, pro-republican time she should have a good and useful life.

As for me, her birthday once again reminds me of what a strange, episodic life I have managed for myself. I have had something to do with bringing into the world three extraordinary human beings. And I like to think I have had some effect on them as they have grown into the people they choose to be. But, truth to be told, looking back at my life I can see how much I was buffeted by chance and the winds of change. I have never been very good at controlling how the external world acts upon my life.

But, my life has always been a life of ideas. I have always known that being here, in this little pie-piece of reality, has to do with discovery. We apprehend the world. We remember that data. We seek coherency in our thinking, in our worldview, in our sense of ourselves. Life as a machine is wrong: eating, sleeping, shitting, rutting, television television television. What Gurdjieff called the robot. If you let it the robot runs things. You should always struggle to break routines.

Go a different way to work. Get your coffee later in the morning. Sleep on the other side of the bed. Work in the garden. Turn the tv off and get your news online. The good thing about the information age is that it urges us to examine language. Look at these words. What do they mean?

And blogging is a good way of forcing yourself to see you from outside at least a little. I like to read my blog and try and figure out how other's are reading it. I believe that language is a bridge, though I can clearly see it as a wall (just go to freerepublic sometime; all they have there is walls). Paige has a blog too. She tells me that all of her friends have blogs and read each other's blogs. I find this fascinating. Now it must be admitted that Paige's friends are probably more literate on average than most American teenagers. But, still. In this age of aural soundbites and flashing images on a television screen, these people are describing their lives in words, and communicating this way.

As Monty Burns would say, "excellent!" Paige's manga (graphic story) is supposed to go up on the web today. When I get an address from her I will post it here and we can all go marvel at today's youth and their methodology for storytelling. I am sure it will be startling, as I have been hearing about it and seeing bits of it for many months now. Paige does the writing and her friend Lauren does the art. Good to see a creative partnership.

I ask the Lady Arianrhod to walk with my daughter Paige this day, so she may be clad in the gold and white robes of truth and vision. I thank the Lady for Her mercy and Her love.

Lesley Gore, "Ever Since"

Into the depths here. Just finished my first run through of the Lesley Gore CD I purchased online last week. It's called "Ever Since." The songs are by a variety of different people, several by Lesley G. For those who do not know, she has written songs in the past, including songs for the movie Fame. Her brother, however, wrote the Fame song, itself.

It's a pretty relaxed piece in the way that it sounds. Lots of piano and deliberative guitar. She sounds great, I have to say. Her voice is a lot closer to later Carole King now. I suppose that is the New York part. They are both denizens of the City. You can hear that. I have lived in the City and found it difficult, at best. But I love a lot of things about New York. Watching Sex and the City last night (and what a great, well-written show that was) and remembering what it is like to live in the cities, I am glad they exist. I think we need the cities, but I think they are difficult to face, truly. But, I like that sound that Lesley gets. I suppose it is sort of an accent. Somebody better equipped than I will know what it is coming from. But Lesley always had it, that little almost lisp she does. Something mildly Elvis-like about it.

The songs all have that theme of trying to figure out what the heck is going on in her life. I was touched many times, feeling she was speaking directly to me. I have many of these same concerns. She sounds hopeful, but calm about it all. She's been burned a lot and she knows better than to rush to any judgements. Yet she remains truthful and hopeful and ready to go where she needs to go and do what she needs to do. A fascinating record for somebody of my generation.

Lesley Gore was always about deeper things than parties, jealousy, and teenage angst. If you listened to her albums you could hear many true concerns taken on. "I'm going out the same way I came in/with my head held high . . ." "Happy Day/You've come back . . ." There's an updating of "You Don't Own Me" on this CD that is pretty darn chilling. I love Rasputina's version of this song, but Lesley's new version tells us a great deal of what she has been through along the way.

"There's a hot bed of anger just ahead/We are fighting to be led from the fire...to the clouds where the cool cool silence winds ...baby you should have told me/that you were awake." I also recently read a good interview with her that spoke about her being an out lesbian. I always sort of knew that about her. Still, I find her a very sensual, attractive woman. Which I suppose says that sexuality/sensuality is not about the flesh. She sounds hot to me. I know that she has a partner whom she has been with for eighteen years now. And I am glad for her, that longevity in love. I think I've at last found it. But it was a hard journey.

Anyway, I am recommending this album for her voice, and for the songwriting. It's pretty much in the Carole King/Joni Mitchell mode. I have always loved Lesley Gore's music, so I am pleased to hear her lo these many years later (and this is the first project in 25 years for her). So many things seem to be coming full circle for me.

And I bought one of the autographed 1,000 special editions. Thanks Ms. Gore. I really appreciate your putting these songs to tape. Hope you are well.

The Lady is always with me, now. Perhaps it is just that I recognize my place in this universe a little better. In any case, I can hear Her love in these songs.

There Is A War

There's a new book out called The End of Faith by Sam Harris. Among the things the book talks about is the true gap between the culture of "faith" and the culture of what he would call rationality. As someone who has lived in the shadow of mystical spirituality my whole life you might think I was a member of the culture of faith. But I was a science boy first. I learned the scientific method. And I noticed this about the religion I was raised in: All the socalled magical parts, the "supernatural" as the priests liked to pronounce them, were just so much bullshit. Explainable in ordinary terms. Yes there are miracles referred to in the new testament, but without corroborating evidence they are just stories, and not very good ones at that. The raising from the dead stuff could easily be coming back to consciusness from coma. The loaves and fishes could merely be supplies brought by members of the audience. The changing of the water into wine simply stinks of psychological manipulation. The more interesting aspect of the wedding feast at Cana is the idea, lately current, that it is actually Jesus' wedding he was attending there.

In any case, the one truly profound thing this guy says in his new book is this: xtian, jewish, and moslem fundamentalists are not mis-reading their holy books. Those texts say all the things they say they say. Those texts are the enemy of civilization. He says this truth and you can hear nobody standing up for what it means. It means there is indeed a war going on. The fundies know it and they are out there, plotting the end of this civilization. And they are serious, and they believe things that can't possibly be true, but that matters not to them because they have "god"; and that god lets them believe what they desire to believe. They believe sex is bad, and humans are bad, and that the devil is the source of evil and everything that doesn't agree with them issues from that devil.

So, what can we do about this? We can raise our voices up and question those texts. Anyone who says that "god" wrote the bible or the q'uran or the book of mormon is wrong. You need to tell the young, in particular, that there are huge holes in the bible, that there are untruths there, that the bible contradicts itself constantly. You need to say these things about the q'uran, too. These books are based on tribal, patriarchal belief systems that were wrong two thousand years ago and are still wrong.

You say I am an exremist? I say the only hope for this time is to overcome the people of the book. And that is not unlikely to happen, with the rise of the chinese as the next great superpower. Unfortunately, the chinese are,in their own way, just as much an enemy of truth as the fundies.

If you still believe in one of the religions of the book, I urge you to find some way to moderate your co-religionists in the face of the true constitution of the greatest country on earth. I don't want you god in my life and I have a right to that life. Get him out of my government, get him out of our schools, get him back into that screwed up text where he belongs. And don't tell me to read the bible; I have. More than once for much of it. There is beauty in there, and wisdom, but there is also falseness and ego and the desire to rule. And there can be no truth in the face of those things.

May the Lady smile upon me this afternoon in August. May you all know Her love and mercy.

Let's Hear It For the Farmer's Market!

The weather here is almost mild for August. There has been a fair amount of rain in the last two weeks, so the greenery is quite green. We bought Piper an electronic piano over the weekend, as it is something she can play with using two hands. We are trying to promote her using her left hand, as she doesn't use it enough. We have been taking her for therapy for the hand to Carle clinic for the last couple of months. Sometimes I think she is doing much better, then there are days where it is difficult to get her to open her hand (she clenches it).

Food
Friday night we had a delightful carrot soup, based on a very nice chicken stock. On Saturday I went to the import store that has the best wine prices and bought several bags of dried herbs: bay leaves, italian seasonings, and others. I use them so much now in bouquet garni in my stocks.

Saturday we had lunch at Panera's: sandwiches and french onion soup. But for dinner I broiled a chicken I bought from the Amish farmer at the Urbana open air market. I got quite a lot of nice produce there Saturday morning. The chicken was wonderful and not as expensive as I thought it might be ($9/4lbs). I made a nice avocado salad, with vidalia onion and radish sliced thin, barely dressed. I did a new kind of rice I got at the international market on sixth street: japanese jasmine (a brand I haven't tried). I put in a chicken bouillion cube in the water and chopped cilantro into the cooked rice. This turned out very tasty indeed.

Sunday morning I made breakfast with more supplies from the Amish farmer: eggs and homemade pork sausage. We didn't have too much of the pork sausage, trying to control the level of fat entering the diet. It was a sage-flavored sausage. The eggs were very good; you have to pay to get fresh, good-tasting eggs these days. We don't eat them much, so when we do we like to have something of quality. So breakfast was old -fashioned and quite tasty.

Later in the day I made red beans and rice for dinner, from an online recipe for a "new orleans style" version. Whatever that means. Not overly complicated but needed to be cooked for several hours. Later put in some more of the farmer's sausage. Should have used a smoked sausage, but once again I don't buy sausage, so it was a rare treat. I also made a peach pie with peaches acquired at the farmer's market. The peaches were great and the pie-crust, made with real butter, was pretty great. I used to be wonderful at pies/piecrust, but I don't believe I have made one in about ten years or more. It was good to find that I haven't lost my touch, though I think it unlikely we will be having too many pies in the future. Just too much fat to make a decent crust. Any suggestions?

Tonight I think we are having a squash soup. We are trying to control our costs, as expenses are up and likely to rise. I have to get the car serviced on Thursday and they are telling me it is in the neighborhood of three bills (and I don't mean clinton). I gotta cut out drinking the vino, for the sake of the pocketbook. I can always put away a half a bottle of wine with dinner.

I see that they blasted Hunter Thompson's remains off yesterday in Colorado. Well, that is appropriate, especially since Johnny Depp put up the scratch. A good use of his ill-gotten gains (well, not that ill-gotten; just that anybody who makes that much money should be doing creative stuff with it and I think this qualifies). I remember when Jerzy Kosinski killed himself; he pulled a plastic bag over his head and went to sleep. At that time I tried to figure out whether it was okay or not to do that. It turned out that Kosinski was afraid of his body failing him and becoming a sick old man. So I guess I could see that as a reason. Hunter I know was actually in bad shape, couldn't walk and likely to get much worse. Still, I don't know that I would do such a thing.

But, becoming a burden to people you love. That's harsh.

Politics is just too depressing anymore. It is clear that things in Iraq are headed down the truly doomed path. Iran gets a major ally. Women in Iraq get turned back into chattel. Oil will get demonstrably more expensive every month from here on. This is what you voted for, Republican America. Thanks for nothing.

Meanwhile the Medieaval Baebes have released a new CD, Mirabilis, which I haven't acquired yet but did check out on Amazon. They do a truly haunted house version of Tam Lin, one of my all time favorite old songs. They also do Scarborough Faire. Nice stuff, multi-choral work, lots of different instruments. If you've never heard them before the CD to get is Unrentide, produced by John Cale (of Velvets fame). I'll get this one and do a good review down the way here.

I looked at my beautiful wife and child this morning, before they had awakened, and thought again, how much the Lady must love me to have guided me into this remarkable life with these truly valuable people. Kimberly is the anti-thesis of most of my relationships with women. She is not only so beautiful, but she is smarter than any of my previous relationships, and she is also a truly good person, giving and caring at every turn. How I came to be with her is a direct testament to the Lady. I believe this, though I know that most of you think it is just coincidence and luck. I believe the Lady brought Kimb to Springfield, and I believe that my part in this has always been to bring Piper into the world.

And speaking of bringing people into the world, my beautiful, remarkable daughter Paige will be seventeen on Wednesday. And I will never forget the long, grueling day it was for her mother when she was born. Paige was a breech birth and we had an obstetrician (Dr. Victoria Nichols, who was in high school with Rosie Richmond, and who I knew when I worked for SIU at the clinics in the early 1980s) who encouraged us to go for a vaginal birth. By the time Paige came out it had been around seventeen hours and Becky Bradway was pretty much all done in. Paige was a beautiful girl right from the start and I still remember singing "I'm an Old Cowhand," the Dan Hicks version, to her there in the birthing room at Memorial Medical Center in Springfield.

Paige starts her senior year at University High in Normal this year. It will be an exciting year for her, with many changes and much to look forward to. I can't wait to get her senior picture (which has been ordered). I will post it to the blog and everyone can see what a remarkable woman this girl has grown into.

May Arianrhod show us Her grace this end of summer, 2005. May we learn to ride the Wheel with good humor and charity to all living things.

The Great Song

An old friend sent me an email about a stillborn baby girl in his family today. Last night I asked my next door neighbor if he knew why there were so many cars at the neighbor on the other sides house yesterday. He checked the paper for the obituaries and, yes, the wife next door had died at home on Wednesday. I always hear John Donne's lines when I experience mortality a couple of steps away. "Each man's death diminishes me." And it truly does have an ability to cause the world to contract in the face of those passing. You who read me know that I do believe there are various different states of being. I do not think death is the final statement of a biologically driven system.

Yet, death is a final statement in the sense that we do not easily communicate/know what being may exist beyond where we are now. George Carlin used to do a death routine, in which he said that dying was the exciting part. When you died you got to find out what happened! And I have often thought there will be some good aspect to passing from this material shell.

I said this morning to my friend who's niece had birthed the little girl that grief is the price we pay for consciousness. But really it is the price we pay for memory. It is in our memory that so much of existence actually lives. All of us can remember people that haven't been alive for years. We can also remember dogs, cats, events, the passing of the great story of the world. And so nostalgia is a form of grief. We miss that which has past. Including, and especially, each other.

To tell you the truth, I never met my neighbor's wife, though I knew she was sick (ovarian cancer). But I can tell that she is gone. I talked to my neighbor many times, recently discovering we both graduated from high school in 1968. His wife was 59 years old. I have known so many people to leave this world in their forties, fifties, and sixties.

And who are the people who are dying today in Iraq? What are the children's names? What games did they play? What stories did they tell? Why is life so cheap this late in the day? The chickenhawks (which is coming to be the preferred term for the Donald Rumsfelds-Dick Cheneys of this time) argue about the socalled big issues, and there is no doubt that the BTK killer lurks among us. But wouldn't you think a sophisticated western world would have figured out a much less destructive method of carrying on the politics of this human world? Power and greed corrupt rational thought in all our basic social systems. What really happened to communism wasn't Reagan and his arms race. It was the psychological needs of the people who lived and ran the system. I always liked what Bertrand Russell, the great mathematician and British troublemaker, said about communism: "It's probably great, but like christianity no one has ever actually tried it."

"Power and greed and corruptible seed/seem to be all that there is . . ." Dylan

Great Lady Arianrhod, today your wheel turns, silver in the light of sun and moon, carrying us all, the living, the past, the future of ourselves, making the great dance through the fabric of your being. Thank you for all of this, the creatures, the forests, the weather, the waters. Thank you for every individual that lives and dies, whether human or not. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this song.

Encore: You Don't Own Me

Today Cindy Sheehan is still outside of George Bush's place. Today more people died violently in Iraq. Today those in power had their cocktails and checked their portfolios. Today I am sitting here, looking at my emotions and finding various different geographies being traversed.

Ted Samsel commented on my post yesterday that Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction, spoke to the same general material that the DaVinci Code does, and that it is funnier. But that is exactly why it has never bothered the Church. It's a small hip book that could be ignored. I have complained in this space previously about the DaVinci Code, so you already know that I find Dan Brown an irritating prevaricator, who can use this information/disinformation to write a fast-moving piece of schtick, but when push comes to shove it always turns out to be the lone gunman of the piece: someone who is slightly nuts. The Church isn't worried about the outcome of the book. They are worried the DaVinci Codeis reminding people all over the place that there are plenty of lies in the bedrock of the xtian religion.

Ted also notes that the DVC, as he calls it, has been debunked by this person and that. No doubt true. What it made me think about, though, is how the New Testament could never really stand up to the same sort of debunking ritual, but that you will never see that program on the Discovery Channel. The xtians would shut the place down. As a matter of fact, you will also never see a discussion of why certain aspects of the Q'uran reflect the Prophet's rather prodigious sexual appetite. You will never see the debunking of those lies that underpin this culture and most of the middle east and the west. Only the oriental culture could accept a real discussion of facts about these issues. That's why Sun Myung Moon moved here from Korea, where he would never have remained so untouched, allowed to go on in his madness, raking in the chips from the cows of unquestioning xtians.

I was never a big Tom Robbins fan, myself. Though I like the one, Jitterbug Perfume, and I accept that he is a great writer. You can't get everything. I don't care for Led Zeppelin, either, but they must be doing great art, so many people I respect say so.

So, in the interest of telling the absolute truth about myself, and in describing where I am today of all days, I must bring up Lesley Gore. Today, half an hour ago, I bought (online) Lesley Gore's new CD. Her first in 25 years. You may ask why I would do such a thing, and I have to admit it stumps me too. Is this an act of nostalgia? Is it an act of petty fandom? Do I wish to return to my sixties roots?

Let me say this: I am a big Lesley Gore fan. I have most of her vinyl lps. I know people primarily remember her for "It's My Party." Not my favorite cut by any means, but a decent pop song of its era. I point out that her second highest rated single was the first true feminist song of the modern era: "You Don't Own Me." A rather daring statement for its time. In some ways, along with the folk music movement, and the british invasion, it certainly ushered in the time of great change that was the sixties.

These sides were mainly produced by Quincy Jones. They were smart, well crafted pop songs. Listening to them is a sociological exploration of dating mores of the time. And there is a lot of heart in those songs. She was seventeen when Party hit the airwaves and she spent the rest of her childhood riding that wave. Good stuff. I particularly like the albums, My Town, My Guy and Me, and California Nights.

I have to give credit to my younger brother Greg for turning me on to Lesley Gore in the first place. I remember going over to his room, across the stairway from mine, to listen to "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows," a real piece of fluff if there ever was one. But we bought lps, not singles, so I heard a bunch of her stuff and I thought, man this girl can really make these songs work. This was about the time we were waiting patiently for Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to hit town. We were calling the record stores every day for weeks before the big event.

When we were small I thought my brother Greg and myself were pretty close. But it turned out I didn't know what I was talking about. Greg essentially quit talking to me about 1973. I saw him at my folks' funerals in 1994 and 1995 and he was weirder than ever. But there you are. There are just some folks you really don't know what is going on inside of them. He was a bitter kid, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out he is a pretty bitter man.

But I'll always think about him when I put on Lesley. I owe him for that. And for a lot of other things. I have no idea how to talk to him, communicate with him, or whether it would make any difference if I did. I have such a cruel, weird family. I know a great deal of that comes from the way my mother made us all compete. She was completely about triumphalism. Either you made her triumphant in the market place of old ladies and their families, or you got pushed to the side while she worked up some new plans for how to save you and her face.

Greg ended up a lawyer in Los Angeles. I hope he's doing okay. He had one daughter in his one marriage (that lasted seventeen years), and she, Molly, has graduated from college and is interning in a medical research program. So, at least one thing has gone well for him.

I've had Wichita on the mind lately. The BTK killer's hearing reminds me of those days. That guy got started right about the time Greg and I left town. But I can't help but think about all the torture stories I heard in grade school from the nuns. Not all the nuns, just certain ones. They were obsessed by the martyrs, and by the use/acceptance of pain in the pursuit of grace. Now I recognize, from the lofty heights of adulthood, that there was some serious S&M'ers among these folks. I had this one nun, Henrietta, in the sixth grade, who specialised in stories about torture and rape and keeping yourself pure. Whoof. What effect did that sort of thing have on this BTK guy? Oh, I know he didn't hear it, wasn't catholic, had his own demons. Still, all xtianity is infected with that pain is part of sex, pain is good, pain makes you a stronger person. Creepy shit, we know it is. I don't hear Pope Benny saying anything different, either. He's obviously a guy deep into pain. Like Mel Gibson.

I personally don't think you can learn that much from suffering. You can help yourself to a greater personal understanding by examining your pain. But, that business about pain tempering the steel is just a load of bullshit from people who are actually getting off on it (giving and getting). I know, lately I keep saying that all of our problems are essentially coming from sexual dysfunction. I don't hear any real argument out there.

And one more note about Dan Brown. I read his novel, Digital Fortress in New Hampshire. It was on my father-in-law's shelf and I jumped through it, riding around the country, in a couple of days. It's about the NSA and encryption software. As usual the so-called hero ends up sort of the bad guy. I found myself politically on the side of the terrorists in this book. It was an all or nothing sort of deal. Either the NSA should have carte blanche (and no one has the right to any real privacy), or the bad guys will rule the world. It's amazing that this guy is considered in any way liberal or radical. He's a major league hack. Yes, he's good at what he does. But is there anything he believes in anywhere at all in history or the world? I don't think so.

I started Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince when we got back to town and was immediately struck by how far from Dan Brown Jo Rawlings really is. I can tell what she believes on nearly every page. And as a stylist she blows him completely out of the water.

Once again, I thank the Lady for Her grace and Her mercy. The days flow around the wheel. Autumn approaches. I hear Jane Morrel's voice in my head: "Here it is Autumn/the Color disks are whirling . . ."

Keep Your God Out of My America

I think people should have a spiritual life, I just don't think they should foist it off on anyone else. Of course this makes a lot of people mad because they are so intrinsically insecure in their belief system that the sight of a lot of other people essentially ignoring it causes them enormous fear.

Like, how homosexual couples being married somehow makes their marriages not-so-good anymore. Is that because gay people really know how to do the marriage thing? Or is it just because these people, at heart, are pretty much totally worried about whether their penises work right?

Yes, that's truly it: all this fuss about religion and sex is entirely from people who are at heart completely worried that they are just not doing it right and can't ever do it right. Mostly men, but quite a few women in there too. Afraid of their peepees. Don't want to look at it, don't want to touch it. It might go off, you know? Like that song about how "I didn't know the gun was loaded/and I'll never ever do it again!"

Family
We are back from doing the New Hampshire Britton family scene. I think we all had a fine time. I was a little worried about Paige, at first, but I think she had a pretty decent time of it. She seemed to really like hanging out with my friend, Gary, on the beach in the Portsmouth end of the state. And she seemed like she had a great time with the Brittons, particularly after Wendy got back from her gig in Utah.

Wendy, Kimb's older sister, is pretty much a force of nature. She's a human of great energy, and boundless optimism. She has been through some dark times, being married for fourteen years to a man with some serious psychological difficulties, and she has had her share of failures along the way. But like Molly Brown she always has a new idea and a great attitude. She has absorbed the most important rule in this current existence: You can always change things and do something else.

And she is funny, as are the Brittons as a family. Wendy drives a Mini-Cooper, with license plate: supacupa, as in Super Cooper said in a new england accent. Currently her house in Sunapee is torn up big time, as she is having the back end lengthened out and her kitchen and bath made much larger. She has also acquired a yorky terrier who she takes everywhere. A cute dog who adores her. No surprise. Most people have a positive opinion of Wendy, and of her siblings. Somewhere along the way the Brittons all learned to be nice to their fellow humans. What a concept!

We had a number of family events, and we also did some of our own running around. When we are in New Hampshire we almost alaways work in a daytrip to Woodstock, Vermont, where we go to a restaurant named Bentley's for a bloody mary. We also go to an antique clothing store there to marvel at the smallness of people in the past. Much of the clothing is from the first part of the last century, but she also has things from as long ago as the late 1700s. We did buy Piper a large sombrero that fit her well. Piper is deeply into hats these days, thanks to Maurice Sendak's character, Chicken Soup, from Really Rosie.

Ted Samsel sent me a link recently to Kinky Friedman's website for his gubanotorial campaign. I think we should take a leaf from the rightwing and run more entertainment figures for public office. Kinky Friedman, the Texas Jewboy, has been around making music and writing mytery novels for quite some time. I think he has a decent shot at taking over Texas. He could do no worse a job than George W., and then maybe he could get in the whitehouse and snatch some sort of happy ending out of the pitiful Iraq mess.

Somebody on Andrew Sullivan's blog mentioned the Q word recently ("quagmire"; you remember Vietnam, don't you?). Sullivan, the rightwing gay iconoclast who thinks he's as all that as willie buckley was in the backwhen, has been on vacagtion and has been letting friends write on his blog. Including that source of sources, Dan Savage. Savage writes the column Savage Love for the Village Voice. It is an advice column for the sexually adventurous and confused. He is a gay man and is very funny, with a good sense of balance. He also coined the term "santorum" for the effluvia of anal intercourse, to honor the junior senator from Pennsylvania, who's feelings about homosexual love must be even more confused now that one of his longterm senior staffers has been outed. Santorum has compared gay love to bestiality and pedophilia.

And in more ridiculous stories from the external world there is a nun leading a protest at the cathedral where Tom Hanks is filming The Da Vinci Code. The church is determined to make them change this story. I predict that if the church succeeds this movie will utterly flop, but that if it stays true to the book it'll do three/four hundred million.

New Hampshire Catch-up Post

It is Monday in New Hampshire, our last day here in the northeast. Yesterday was a family dinner at the mexican restaurant, and before that, a walk in a state forest just off route 4A. It was a buggy experience, but that dissipated the further into the woods we went. It was well worth the experience. There is a sound in the woods you cannot hear anywhere else. I know it is probably a racial memory for me, but there is an ordinary comfort I find in the woods that does not exist anywhere else for me.

Today we are scheduled to take brother Randy's boat (motor boat) out on the Lake Sunapee with brother Jim. Saturday was a big family party at Jim and Jane's house outside of Croydon Flats. They have an aboveground pool and Alison and Wendy's beau Jeff's two daughters, Katy and Carolyn, played hard in the pool with my teenager, Paige. We took Piper in and she had a great time. She is quite the water baby.

Last week we took Piper out to see Kimb's gradeschool friend Heidi and her husband John's family outside of Springfield. They have a great house, looking out on Mount Kearsarge. Lots of woods and trees. Beautiful structure. Great landscaping. Best of all they have three wonderful kids, Michael, Patrick and Kennedy, who is just a bit younger than Piper. For Piper it was like finding the motherlode of all toys. We had a good time. They are progressives and catholics and it is always good to find that that combination can exist.

We have eaten out more than our fill here, though I did cook several meals here that Wendy and Alison came over to share. Wendy's house has no kitchen currently, due to extensive re-construction. When it is done she will have a wonderful kitchen, with huge windows looking out on her rugged backyard. New Hampshire truly is the granite state. There are big, gigantic rocks everywhere. Of course for construction purposes you have to deal with them.

And food here is a good bit more expensive. Still, the choice and quality seems to be all that I remember from living here in 1999-2000.

Tomorrow is get up early day. We drive down to Manchester starting at 7:15, then we fly out at 10:00. When we get back to Illinois it should be before noon. We have to drive from Chicago to Urbana, and then I have to get Paige home to Normal. By then it should be around 5:00. So I won't post again until Wednesday.

May we all walk with the Lady this beautiful day. I hope you are all well.

Driving A Standard Transmission

It's a hot wednesday in New Hampshire. Kimb and her dad are planting shrubs and flowers at the condo over in Granliden. Piper and Dad and Paige are hanging out. Later we hope to drive to a state forest over near Hanover and go for a walk. And tonight we are going out on the dinner boat on Lake Sunapee. Kimb's brother Randy is captain tonight. Randy, husband of Melissa and father of Olivia, is a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy Reserve and gets sent to Qatar every so often. He can run the big boats.

Yesterday we drove to Portsmouth and met Gary Davidson and went to the beach. Pictures of Piper in the Atlantic are forthcoming. We had lobster and coffee smoothies, two different stops, and eventually made our way home.

Politics
The political news is rather odd. There are several rightwing groups deserting the Roberts nomination because it turns out he did pro bono work to defeat a Colorado amendment that would have banned gay rights laws in Colorado. The Supremes voted 6-3 against it and Roberts helped the pro-gay rights people to frame their argument. And I hear he was eager to do it. It is worthy of noting that he didn't mention this piece of pro bono in his resume and the White House has played it down big time. But it is certainly something of a puzzle: where does this guy stand? It he, as Ann Coulter has argued, another David Souter? We don't know and I don't know how we can know. If he is part of overturning Roe v. Wade, then there will be hell to pay, and no democratic senator wants to be on record for having voted for the guy who did that. So, I don't think he will ever get many Dem votes. Meanwhile, the bigots in the republican right are starting to shift against him. He could be in actual trouble, as far as getting into history goes.

Meanwhile the stench of corruption lays heavy on the Republican version of Washington, D.C. This will eventually destroy them, as some of them are beginning to notice. It was that stench of corruption that lost congress for the Democrats. who will the lumpenproletariat turn to now, understanding that all those guys are essentially whores, in the pay of the rich?

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to food shopping some more here. The selection is better, the quality is great. But the prices for some things are outrageously high and for others amazingly low. Same as it always is. Gas here is pushing 2.50 a gallon. That day is close.

This morning Kimb's dad, Bob, took Paige out and tried to teach her how to drive his standard transmission Fiero. He also took her for breakfast and then to play tennis. I was writing an email to another friend this a.m. and I was talking about this and I realized that no one, no one, in my family would ever go that far out of their way to be nice to one of my children. My siblings would and have treated my children as essentially garbage in their way, particularly my sister Kathy. But the Brittons are like the antidote to my siblings. They are all just normal, nice people, trying to be okay and get along in this world. By the way, they have no organized religion, legislating their behaviour. For them it is strictly a free choice. Doing what they consider the right thing, and not judging anyone else. I have learned to be a better person from these people. And in a low key manner, with no ego aggrandizing going on. Just struggling in the world to see its beauty and keep everyone on the bus.

Great Arianrhod of the Silver Wheel, each day brings its words, puzzles, and memories. Each evening brings the thought of the future. I am grateful for this course on the wheel of life and I offer you my poems and my struggle to be a better person.

Portsmouth & Geographic Desire

we went to Portsmouth today, and to the atlantic shore with my old friend, Gary Davidson. After having lobster for lunch, we headed out to the beach. We took the Piper for a walk in the atlantic and everyone got all sandy. Later we went into town and had the strongest coffee smoothie I think I've ever had. It was great and I still have a slight buzz, here at seven in the p.m.

Although the drive was somewhat long (2.5 hours because of conditions), the day was very enjoyable. And most of the driving here takes you by lakes, mountains and thousands of trees. So beautiful. Gary of course longs for Thailand. We do not look forward to returning to the plains. Everything is relative. Are we ever exactly where we long to be? Occasionally.

Paige hopes to be home with her friends, yet she wants to get out of Normal, desperately. These things act upon us all. We want to be where we are appreciated, but we always know we really aren't appreciated the way we'd like to be in our home base. I am a big believer in everybody moving after growing up. I think you should go out in the world and find a place to be and make it your own. There are, after all, good people everywhere.

Of course Gary would point out that there are no republicans in Thailand, and few xtians, obsessed with people's sex lives. And I have to admit it would be great to be away from these fools. New Hampshire has its fair share, though it voted blue last year. Live free or die is the state motto and there are plenty of people who think living free means not being taxed at all. Of course, they aren't interested in who actually pays for things, long as it isn't them. And the libertarians among them play that old Ayn Rand game, you can do whatever you want, if you are strong enough. Those people have obviously never raised children, or never raised them in a social environment where they had to be taught to cooperate and share. Sharing is not big among republicans in New Hampshire.

In any case we are having a good time. Tomorrow we are scheduled to have dinner aboard the Mt. Kearsarge, and take that dinner tour of Lake Sunapee. Kimb's bro, Randy, is captaining the dinner boat and that should be fun. He'll do a little running commentary, tour-talk, for the folks on board. I do hope the food is better than last time I did this. For my 50th birthday in 2000 the Britton sibs took Kimb and me on the boat. It was fun, but the food was weak. However Bro Jim brought a bottle of irish whiskey and we did our best.

More tomorrow perhaps. May we walk with the Lady this evening and every moment of our lives. May She bring us love and Mercy.

New Hampshire, part ii; and Mario Cuomo on Religion and Politics

Sunday morning and it is beautiful here. We spent yesterday going to our favorite restaurant in Lebanon, NH, Lui Lui's. A good italian place with a woodfired oven pizzas. Kimb and I split a white pizza with caramelized onions. It was delish. The thing about Lui Lui's is that they bring you good bread and an olive oil dipping sauce before the food and it is so good it is difficult to have any appetite left when what you ordered comes. Darn good.

Later we went to Kimb's brother Randy, and his wife Melissa's new house in the country outside of Grantham. It is a beautiful place. You can't see the neighbor's house for the trees. They have a great room with a twenty foot ceiling, and huge windows looking out on the woods. Very nice. And the kitchen is very awesome too. Randy has worked hard for a long time, and Melissa too, so they totally deserve the place.

But the most important part of the day was meeting their brandnew little girl, Olivia. Olivia is six weeks old and is very alert and involved for those few days on this earth. Surely she is special to the Lady. She gave us a big smile and pretty nearly gurgled. Amazing for one so young. She has beautiful dark hair and piercing dark eyes that seem to see everything. It would be wonderful to know how the brain handles the data at that early age. The question is always how much pre-programming is there really? And is that an intelligent design, eh?

Piper had a great time at Randy & Melissa's, running around like a banshee. They seemed a little, uh, "will this be our child in a couple of years?" And the anser is, of course, "D'uh!" We all had a nice time and I had a good talk with Paige out on the deck, overlooking the woods. Paige is getting ready for senior year of high school and we talked about that feeling of waiting for it to be done so you can get on with the rest of your life. It's an artificial reality, senior year, yet it is ritural now in our culture. Glad to be far past it now.

Politics
I saw Mario Cuomo on tv this a.m. with some catholic prof from Notre Dame, talking about Roberts and religious beliefs. Cuomo was very good, blew the other guy out of the water, but of course the religionists don't give a damn about reasonable. Their way is the only way. The question is, does Roberts bring his religion to the bench? Cuomo said the only reasonable way for the republic to stand is to leave your religion out of your public duty, when you serve. The religionists will never stand for that excuse. They continually say there is a higher law: God's law, and I know what it is. That is why they are just like Osama bin Laden, and the mullahs of radical islam. My way is the right way and your way should get you killed.

It's in the Q'uran: you kill the homosexual. And the bible says similar things. The bible advocates stoning for adultery. These are things they really want to do. That's the bottom line. And people are, for the most part, at heart, scared of people who aren't like them. So this war, culture war, is serious and for real.

And Roberts had better turn out to be David Souter, or we are all in real trouble.

I thank the Lady for this glorious day in New England. I glory in this land of tree and leaf, mountain and lake.

New Hampshire

Hello out there in television-land. We are in New Hampshire and I am sitting at Bob's round apple IMAC in the upstairs apartment at the building in Guild. This is very nice indeed. The flight was bearable, but when we got off the plane, alarms started going off and they cleared the terminal. They let us all back in in about fifteen minutes and I never did find out what the matter was, but hearts were pumping there for a few minutes because they hussled us out big time. Then we found Arlene and she drove us home in her mother's 1979 cadillac. Very pleasant indeed. It's about an hour fifteen from the airport in Manchester to Guild/Sunapee.

It is beautiful here. Unspeakable, the green-ness of this place. Piper is playing in the living room and Kimb and Paige are half-watching "all my children" on the tube. they neither slept very well last night, but I got about six or seven hours in.

All I can really say, at the moment, is this sure isn't Illinois. Hope we all walk with the Lady for another day.

Preparing to Travel

Today is nice and rainy, perfect to drive to Chicago. We will be leaving in a couple of hours and I don't know when I will get to post again. My teenager is still in bed, my two year old is eating a chocolate chip cookie. We went to her therapy this morning after dropping Kimb off at the job. She is working until noon, then we come home, eat a lunch of gyros from Zorbas (best gyros in this part of the country), and hit the road for Chicago.

Today I hope to ride with the Lady to the next set of hours in this exquisite world. The great silver wheel of being is turning with me inside for the journey. You see this wheel in the Shiva story too, and there is the wheel in the wheel in the old testament. I believe the wheel is the most accurate symbol when it comes to metaphorizing (is there a word?) existence itself.

In some ways it is always true that we ask the wrong questions. What we should be asking, is what have I forgotten?

Temporal Insanity

Fourteen marines dead this morning in Iraq. Only Republicans would be dumb enough to elect a guy who would start a war, but then refuse to do what is necessary to win it. Do they hate the people in the service? Do they hate our soldiers? Apparently. George Bush bears the responsibility for this failure. We are on track to lose in Iraq. It is gonna happen. And it is going to be the fault of this administration and the republican party that kissed the president's ass because they perceived him as a big money winner. How sad for us all, and certainly for the poor bastards they have sent to the middle east, underequippped and in small numbers, to fight a cheap Donnie Rumsfield war.

But, be of good cheer people. I ran into this post about a supposed time traveler named John Titor. He claims to be from the year 2036, come back in time to get an IBM 5100 to solve a Unix glitch, on the order of the millenium bug, that is coming in 2038. There are large holes in his story, but it is fun to read this guy's "history". Where he begins to fail in his predictions (and how can they be predictions if where he is from they are 'history'?) is that he says that a civil war starts in the united states around 2004-05, and that it destabilizes everything to such an extent that the russians nuke us in 2015, just to take advantage of the situation.

The guy is a big gun nut (and I'm not against the second amendment myself, so saying that means he is on the extreme side of things), and he mentions Waco over and over again in his ramblings. That pretty much destroys what little credibility he has. If you mention Waco, and Waco-like incidents, why don't you mention Oklahoma City? But, this is another loony on the loose story.

In his america it's the cities versus the country. And the country wins because all the cities are destroyed. What's humorous here is that he thinks being in the country means you can more easily avoid the security apparatus of the government. He also characterizes George Bush as "lincoln-like".

I still say, Titor-aside, that secession is the correct move. The people who vote republican are just too dumb to vote us out of the present mess. The special election in Ohio where the democrat was an Iraqi war vet, even those people still voted for the republican. Though it was close, for that district. It just goes to show, people are going to go to their parents' church and vote for their parents' party, and eventually they are going to be buried in the same cemetery as their parents. Or one just like it.

Today I am driving to Normal, Illinois to pick up my daughter, Paige. Tomorrow we will drive to Chicago, to fly out Friday morning, early. May we walk with the Lady to the lakes and mountains of New England.

Grade School, part 2

Some more notes on growing up Catholic and science-minded in Wichita, Kansas in the 1950s/60s.

Pat Hotze was my best friend in 7th and 8th grades. This was mainly because I completely bested him in a science argument. We both designed rockets and I pointed out to him that just having gyroscopes wouldn’t correct course. They had to be linked to rockets or jets that would fire briefly to put the missile back on track. This was not a huge thing, but it was accurate and he took that to be a sign that I wouldn’t speak out of turn, or beyond the data. This, of course, was not true, and I bullshitted more often than not, even at that early age. I don’t even remember when I didn’t bullshit. I can remember bullshitting in the second grade. Usually for reasons of ego.

My mother stressed knowledge and education. She also stressed a sort of ubermensch approach to being. She was very interested in her children excelling. And clearly she saw it as a reflection on herself. One good thing about this: we could usually get any books we wanted. And I spent almost all my spare money at the end of grade school on books. I also read all the books (well, let’s say 75-80%) in the school library, many of them multiple times. So I had a large and ready supply of data when I was 11 years old. I could really sling it around. I remember telling another kid (David Green? I think) on the playground at recess, that I knew how to carbon date things and had actually done it. Talk about your b.s.

But, let me run the rest of the Hotze story passed myself. He was a tall young man, blonde buzzcut, birth control glasses. He had a remarkably strong chin. I had a great time with him because we always talked concepts. We walked all over that part of Wichita, often late at night, and talked about time travel, weird politics, religious ideas. The freedom of those discussions stays with me to this day. He was the first person who didn’t simply characterize me as a nut. He was interested in my pretty outré ideas. I was in the grip of my first bout of atheism at that point.

My feelings about religion are pretty classic for someone growing up in the roman faith. At first, as a little kid, you take for granted it is all true. I went to church, mass, every single day of most of my childhood. Our parish, however, had a vernacular mass before it was the thing in the sixties. So the readings for us and much of the ceremony was conducted in English. I got to where I could tell what part of the year, what month, what day, we were at by what the readings were. They repeated, year to year, in a great cycle. I was so bored with them by the time I was in the sixth grade. That was about the point in which I started to realize that these stories were not about my people. That they issued from another source. They didn’t feel particularly familiar to me, though I had heard them over and over again. If anything they tended to feel alien.

It wasn’t until reading Tolkien that I started to find religious history which I could recognize. And it isn’t exactly in Tolkien, just the beginnings of it. Later on I came to recognize that the religious tradition that I ‘recognise’ is that of the northern European tree religions. Of course, if you posit racial memory this would make sense. Gene encoded memories of who we prayed to, and why. These days I often sign forms in the religious affiliations box: Druid. Nobody really knows what the druids believed, except from what the romans wrote down, and you can’t really trust much of that. Like reading about the American communist party as described by a longtime Rush Limbaugh fan.

The upshot on Pat was that in 8th grade we both took the entrance exam to the catholic boys high school taught by the Jesuits, Chaplain Kapaun High School (named for a priest who was murdered by the red Chinese during the Korean war). We got exactly the same score on five of seven tests and split the other two. So they ended up giving us both the scholarship. We entered Kapaun tied at number one in our class. Four years later we graduated, Pat was valedictorian. I was 42 out of 84.

Pat went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a full ride scholarship. I went to St. Louis University, at my mother’s prompting. I did have a national merit scholarship. Pat too was a national merit scholar. These were the sixties, 1968-69. Pat’s dorm at MIT took part in hiding a draft evader and helping him get to Canada. His letters to me were pretty much movement letters. Resistance and revolution. I lost track of him that next year.

I heard later that he joined the air force. He had always talked of joining the military, so I wasn’t too surprised. I also heard that he was learning Chinese and Vietnamese. Then there was no word for many years. Eventually he turned up in Wichita and people told me he wouldn’t talk about his service career. I figure he worked for military intelligence. He couldn’t go undercover though, tall and blonde as he was. But he was damn smart, so I know he did the best job he could.

Years pass and then last xmas-time I got an email from my little brother David, the psych professor. He wrote, “Didn’t you used to know a guy named Pat Hotze? Well, I was walking through Calvary Cemetery (ED: where our folks are buried), and I came across a grave for a Pat Hotze, born in 1949.” And of course, that must be him.

He was my best friend in grade school days, a smart and decent guy who had an open-mind and an interesting vision. My best friend in high school was a blonde fellow named Tom Bezzi. He didn’t admit he was gay, but I knew he was. Soemthing that pretty much never bothered me in any way. I always knew there were gay people and that they were a normal variation in human. Later, after high school, Tom went to Notre Dame and fell in love with his roommate. The experience and the place very nearly killed him and he tried suicide very seriously. They ended up institutionalizing him around the time I was getting married. I saw Tom one more time, in 1988 in the summer, right before Paige was born. He came to Springfield, after looking me up. He was working as a journalist in LA. And he had published a novel, Hubble Time, which he brought me a copy of and which I insisted on paying him for.

Later I heard that Tom had died from complications of AIDS. That was in 1995.

May He live on in the Lady's mercy, and Pat, too. Good friends, smart and open minded and creative. I've known the best in my life.

The Pope Takes Over America: Thank You George Bush for Ending 200 Years of Freedom From Religion

Here's an interesting political thought for you: In a private meeting with Senator Durbin (my man Dick), would-be Justice Roberts was asked by the Senator what he would do if a case came before him where the law contradicted his religious beliefs. He said, Durbin says, that he would "recuse" himself from any such case.

This is interesting because Pope Ratzinger, Papa Bennie (get it, pop a bennie?), has publicly stated that any politician who supports abortion should be denied the sacrements and ultimately excommunicated. With Roberts there will be four justices on the supreme court that are catholics: rehnquist, scalia, thomas and roberts. That effectively gives Pope Bennie control of our whole society.

So all those rightwing crackers who worried about John Kennedy being under the Pope's thumb and who deserted the democrats and ran to the Republicans have now created the very situation they were horrified by only forty-five years ago.

And, finally, the founders of the republic, those patriots who created the greatest democratic republic in the history of the world, have been defeated. The greatest danger to democracy is the establishment of a theocracy. These guys whole reasoning goes: everything comes from God (my god) and therefore that is a higher moral imperative than the law. So the day will come when the courts and the legislature will decide people who are baptized and practice xtianity should be worth more, politically, than those of us who know the truth and who pray to the Lady, or those who read the words of the Buddha. The day will come when the Ayatollahs of the Religious Right will take away our suffrage.

The only thing that made progress possible was to separate law from religion. They are now determined to destroy that. Particularly culpable here is Antonin Scalia, an evil, twisted little toad if there ever was one. And Clarence Thomas, a sickening dick-rubbing oreo, interested only in his personal power and status.

Leave it to the rightwing to destroy everything that was good about this country.

Preparing to Hit the Road

This week is on the way to vacation. We cleaned house over the weekend (though there is always much to be done). On Sunday Martha Miller and her partner Ann came by the house so I could show her how to update her website herself. She also brought me copies of her books for my three children. She had signed them all to each of my children, and personalized them to some degree. I was touched by that, but not surprised. Martha is a very good person, not just a great writer.

Food
Food has been very catch-as-can because I am trying to unload the refrigerator and clean stuff out. I did do that brined young turkey last week. I used a recipe from the Zuni Cookbook, Judy Roberts (?). Anyway it called for a brine complicated with juniper berries, hot peppers and bay leafs which I did. Then it wanted it to be in the refrig for five days. I settled for three. I rinsed it out, and let it sit for another day and rinsed it again. Then I roasted it in a 375 degree oven for a couple of hours. It was great. Unbelievably moist and tasty.

We used the leftover from that to make turkey tetrazinni, one of the few casserole type dishes I prepare. Of course I mostly just make noodles and a cream sauce and chop the turkey up along with a couple of vidalia onions and then pop them in the oven for forty minutes. A good noodle dish, but even better with that brined turkey.

Tonight it is cold boiled shrimp I think. I also have some veal shanks for tomorrow. I haven't any wine and have foresworn buying any booze until I get to New Hampshire, where the booze is sold by the state and is consequently quite a bit cheaper than it is here. I am thinking of buying a bottle of grey goose vodka while I am there. We shall see. Since we have an apartment to stay in, it simplifies whether one will get through a bottle or not in the time you have. I can always cook with any extra, vodka, or wine. Thinking ahead.

Politics
Well Bush appointed Bolton today. Of course he will do things at the UN that will piss people off and we won't get our way nearly as much as we would've if we had an actual diplomat in the job. And will he make the UN a better organization? Or will he and the Bushies try and control it and bend it to their purposes? Probably number two. As for corruption in the UN, why don't they take a look at Iraq and American contractors there? Billions of dollars are missing and you can bet they are in the pockets of friends of George and Donnie and Dickie and all the boys. It's all a sick game to these people.

And George will have to answer to himself for these words and actions. Man, I am glad I am not him! When he crosses over the emotional pain will be exquisite and will last millenia. But I have no sympathy for him, for he has designed this outcome himself with his own lies. Be careful of believing things that you want to believe. Especially when they support your vanity and when they support your fortune. Darkness, darkness for all the Bushes.

But I am going to New Hampshire on holiday, so piss on those pathetic a-holes. Postings will be sporadic at best for the next two weeks. I promise to check in, but I don't know how much opportunity I will have to get to a computer.

The Lady knows us all and Her love is there if we take the time to perceive it. But like the man said, sometimes that love can be very painful, so it is no wonder that Republicans are xtians, hiding themselves from the truth of Her love.

For me truth is the light of the Lady and whatever it shows is a demonstration of Her beauty. Even my darkest flaws and most pretentious moments. To the Lady, then. Salud!