On the Way to Somewhere Else

Day after tomorrow I get on a plane and head to Eugene, Oregon to see my granddaughter and her parents. Meanwhile I am fighting off a cold and trying to get some housecleaning done. I am not getting much cooking done either. We went to the Saturn dealer last night and drove their hybrid. It's not much of a hybrid, but it is relatively inexpensive.

Still, I don't see us going in that much more expense at this point. A larger car would be really helpful, but I hate to be stampeded, though I understand that is the nature of the car dealer's game, and indeed the salesman in general. I don't see it as a service, coming, as it does, entirely from the self-interest of the other side.

I realize that much as we depend on business and businessmen in our culture, I don't trust them at all. I don't think they mean well. I think they cut the world into small parts and only look at the parts that make them money. Is this a goodthing to do? Apparently it is the only way to really make a fortune. Too bad for them, of course. The relegating of your world to one aspect of it means you blind yourself to everything else.

Is that what athletes and artists do that focus on their part in the great tapestry? I wonder sometimes. Not that I am anybody to go by.

Well, my daughter in Chicago it pretty much completely taken up by crewing for a production right now. So I haven't heard from her in days. And my wife is trying to get a bunch of stuff done at her office before she takes off the next week, while I am gone to Oregon. And Kimb's folks are coming Sunday night for several days.

In the larger world the political situation for the Republicans is very bad, but the pres and his minion, Karl the turdblossom, are convinced they are going to win. Which tells me there will be serious cheating all along the line. These are unprincipled and essentially evil people. You will know I am right if the dems don't win. There can be no other reason in a climate like this.

And if the dems do win the best thing they could do is be positive about the economy and negative about the war.

In any case I will happy to be in Eugene for the next week. I will try and post while I am there, but I don't know about access as I don't have my own box to haul around, or that I would haul around.

Not a very interesting post, but there you go. Still reading Annie Sexton and thinking about stories. I hope you are all well. And I ask Lady Arianrhod for Her mercy for us all.

Anne Sexton and Her Grimm Stories

It is Saturday night around 10:30. Sometimes I question whether I have anything useful to add to the discourse. I spent much of this evening reading in Anne Sexton's Transformations, her book of poems based on the Grimm Brothers fairy tales. I like these poems most of all because they keep the lurid aspects of the original stories. They are like gossip, like the tabloids, with the stink of motive spread through their lines. And there are bits and pieces of Annie herself, occupying the moments before and sometimes during the plot itself.

Particularly compelling is the version of Rapunzel, with its lesbian theme. Since we know Anne had an incestuous relationship with her own daughter there is a pathos to the lines that wouldn't be there otherwise. "A woman/who loves a woman/is forever young." That strikes that mortal coil a hard knock and makes it sing. And we know that Anne committed suicide. I believe she was in her forties.

She was an episcopalian, and sometimes a true believer. I lived with a hardcore episcopalian for eight years, Pat Smith. She had this trip on Clive Staples Lewis, who I considered an apologist for a religion based on lies. But then I grew up a "roman catholic" as Patty would say. An RC. Ever so less cool then her anglican roots. But frankly I didn't think it made much of a difference that her religion was founded by a guy who couldn't get a divorce from the pope. How many other men have been in that position and would have done the same thing if they could?

But this diverges from Anne Sexton, and the action of writing poems. Most of the poems of my life, those I have read and those I have written, are not intrinsically stories. Mostly contemporary poetry is about capturing momenst that act as lenses, metaphors, for emotional truths. I have nothing at all against that goal. Many specifically useful and beautiful things come from that construction. But in reading these poems, built, as they are, upon the armature of plot, I am struck by the similarity in my recent work to this concept. The 'arc' of the story, the change in the character. The most successful of my pieces in the last two years have certainly been the character studies of Jessica Weber and Ross Hulvey ('who she is,' 'born twice' www.divinebearpoems.blogspot.com). Secretly I have long suspected that what I really like about them is the implied stories that haunt both pieces.

(I just tried to use the search engine in Blogger to find these two pieces and sure enough it worked fine for one and didn't find the other, though the title is correct. "Who She Is" was published April 18, 2005 and "Born Twice" was published January 11, 2005, should anyone care to take a look at them.)

I begin to think that this is where I need to go with my work. Now, no one reads my work, at least not many, so its not a question of huge import, except to me. I know this is going somewhere. I know these poems that I have worried from under the rocks of the subconscious have some intrinsic meaning. Not exactly a solution in the normal, algebraic sense, but a metaphoric way of understanding what it is that happened in these last thirty or forty years. What happened to me.

We shall see.

Meanwhile in this world we spent the last couple of days buying Kimberly a new sewing machine. In actual fact it was Bob and Arlene who did most of the buying. We did put out some serious money buying the protection plan for the machine. She ended up buying a machine at Sears. I think it is very good. Her last machine had chewed up a lot of repair money and seemed to fail every time she got it out. I think it is quite old. In any case this was the Yule present from the Brittons for us. And just in time to finish making Piper's bat costume for Samhain. I myself am thinking of a pirate look for that night. I will be whacked from travel, but I am going to perform "Anabel Lee" at Allerton, while Dan K. does his best Poe imitation.

There is way too much to do around the house. And I am working for another couple of weeks at the University. And I don't seem to be able to find the moments to find the next poem. But I can feel it, there, inside the layers of memory and meaning. Language is a lovely mistress, seductive and always changing the rules. Meaning is a remarkable recognition of a moment in space and time because meaning itself can be many different things depending on how you turn it in the light. Like a faceted diamond.

Meanwhile I did finally get around to networking Paige's old box, the one I am now using, to my other old PC so I can use the printer from here. Also I moved most of the music over to this hard drive. I should make some mix cds. I should make a mix cd for Marion. That would be fun, though it wouldn't be as interesting as the ones she makes. In a way though I can see it would be avoiding the poem. The story. The history. My story.

I hope for the best. I respectfully ask of the Lady Arianrhod that in Her mercy She will let me come to Her, my heart full and open, my sins recognized and admitted, and that Her love will be the true taste of the songs of this fucked up life. Something like that, anyway. Love to all.

Counting the Days

Well, tomorrow I am making calls for MoveOn.org. Kimberly has another Dr.'s appt at noon, but after that, when I put Piper down around two, I am supposed to be making phonecalls to urge the leaning dem citizenry to actually go out and vote. I'll do it because the Lady knows we must do something. I still think the fix is in, but when it comes around I want people to know that the whole thing was fixed and we were ripped off again. I will vote and I will send those useless emails to that bastard Tim Johnson, the rightwing nutjob that represents east central Illinois in the house of representatives. I hope he likes being on the outside if it comes to that. If it doesn't I will still keep sending him emails that point out the moral and constitutional responsibility that he should have shouldered. But he's only really concerned about his NRA voters and their money. That's all he really has. What a pathetic loser. We won't even talk about his weedy combover.

Tonight we went out looking for a new sewing machine. Kimb's old one is just going down again, and it's already had a fortune poured into it. So Kimb's folks have told her to try and find a new one she likes and maybe we'll work out a Yule gift. So we spent some quality time at Sears. I looked at flat screen tvs. Too expensive for me, but some nice pictures. Kimb found an ad in This Old House magazine that we get for a panasonic flat screen that comes in a your choice of wood frames, like a painting. Seriously. The future is here again, but it is, as usual, confused with the past.

I'd really like to make an apple pie one of these days. That is on my list. But I am really kind of bored with everything I make at the moment. No inspiration. However a week from tomorrow I climb on a plane in Springfield and go to Oregon for nearly a week (well six days, two of them travel). I am very psyched to see Morgan. My granddaugther. Wow. I have a granddaughter. That is a fact that I am not sure any of my siblings will ever get to mark on their resumes. If my folks were alive I would now be the favorite. Good thing that is all in the past. That sort of thinking screwed us up so bad that most of us don't talk to most of us. Pretty silly.

Well, just something to post this night. Still waiting for Marion to cd me with some music. Still trying to think of a novel I would like to read. Still holding my breath and thinking about Number One daughter every single day. I hope Paige is doing well on the near north side. She is such a remarkable young woman. I look at my children and I am just in awe.

Thanks to the Lady for all Her many gifts, the land, the trees, these children, music and light, sorrow and joy. Love & mercy to you all tonight.

Searching for Mercy

The train is leaving the station here. Paige called me last night to talk while going to crew on the play she's been assigned to. But she went the wrong way on Belmont and had to turn around and go the other way. She found directions from some guy in an artsy boutique. She thought the kind of people in there might know where an independent theatre in the neighborhood was and she was right. Naturally I worried about her. It is hard to have your child in what you perceive as a possibly dangerous reality.

I know, it's not that dangerous. But thirty years of parenting is mainly about trying to foresee the unforeseeable. So you are constantly covering all the bets. Still, I have confidence in Paige's abilities and in her basic luck. She doesn't think so, but I know she has rather good kharma that way.

In any case the week is well under way. I bought Piper "over the hedge" this a.m. and she has watched it already. I don't know how it is, but it's from the Shrek studio and Piper really obsessed on "Madagascar."

Food
I bought a small standing rib roast for dinner. On sale at Meiers, of course. I sort of wish I had a bottle of good red wine to go with it, but I don't. Last night Kimberly made a wonderful potato soup and we had that with some bread she had baked. Very nice.

Politics
I suppose it's all about waiting to see what venal tricks Karl Rove and that evil man in the white house will pull at the end of the month. Be sure that they have something planned. And be sure that there will be cheating aplenty. It's worked for these clowns for the last several elections. Democrats don't cheat, at least not on the scale these guys do. So it will be intersting to see how much howling there will be post mortem.

Sullivan had a post with a picture of a bumper sticker: Frodo failed, Bush has the Ring

As it is things are truly bad everywhere in the world. The rich and the powerful are all about putting distance between them and the regular and the ordinary. That being anyone who isn't them.

I was supposed to see my doctor today, but when I got there, at 7:40 they informed me the doctor was going to be half an hour to forty five minutes late. And Kimberly had a doctor's appointment at 8:30. So I left. I was definitely pissed off. This was a follow up visit to last spring's physical to check on my blood pressure. I take a pill already, but the fact of the matter is that everytime I go to the doctor's office my lower number is high, in the 90s, but at home it is really as high as the 80s. I am told this is something that happens to people. Subconscious fear of one's own mortality. Well, I suppose I have it.

As always, I ask the Lady for Her mercy.

Looking Forward to Anabel Lee

Post weekend reality. It is cold here in the midwest. We had a great fire last night. I am not sure I could live with out a fireplace, a woodburning fireplace, from now on. I first had one in 1986 on South 4th Street in Springfield. And I went through a couple of loads of wood that winter. Then we bought the house on Bryn Mawr and the fireplace was just for show. Finally, here I am years later, with an amazing stone fireplace, floor to ceiling in a room with a cathedral ceiling, watching the logs burn and crackle. Nice.

The weekend was pretty good, though we did do some work around the homestead here. There's always so much to do. No wonder people wanted to have wives. I try and spend good time with Piper every day also, and the hours pass fleetingly. I am having those thoughts about there being a finite number of hours in one's life. Not much you can do about the body decaying. But there is always so much I would like to do.

We did buy a really nice comforter at Macy's for extremely low dollars. Actually when we got it home it turned out to be a set, pillow shams, bed skirt, and the nice comforter: $32. Honking good. Reduced from two bills. Also I ran the cable through the closet into our bedroom where we have the 20 inch tv/dvd so now we are totally setup to struggle through another winter.

On Sunday we went to Dan and Tandy's for brunch. Tandy made a good frittata and Kimberly brought the bread she had made so we had a jolly time. Dan gave me copies of the cd I typeset for him recently, Rudy and the Roller Skate, and also copies of two other cds he has had reprinted so he has some inventory to sell.

And he reminded me that I have promised to read "Anabel Lee" at Allerton on Halloween. Dan will be doing three Poe stories. Allerton is a beautiful old estate with many gardens that was willed to the University of Illinois some years ago. We go there to walk in the woods. It should be plenty spooky at night. Time to get out my Poe poems.

I've also ageed to make phonecalls for MoveOn.org this week. They told me these will be to progressive voters. We shall see how that goes. I haven't given much money this year. We have less and I was and am still pretty fucking pissed the dems in the senate didn't filibuster Alito. For this alone Lieberman deserves to go down. And I remind people that this is what a McCain presidency will bring us to: a rightwing Supreme Court, anxious to re-criminalize any sexual behaviour that the Catholic church doesn't approve of.

I used to think of myself as a middle of the road kind of guy. But the truth is the road has moved so far to the right that I am barely on shoulder anymore. If something doesn't change this election cycle we are all pretty doomed to a religious war future. And I do believe Rove and Bush know there will be lots of cheating going on, and that is why they are so confident. What they don't seem to realize is that if the Repubs do hold on to both houses that the electorate will start to believe in the fix and that will breed revolution. I remember the sixties. I think that time will come again. This time far more seriously. This time there won't be much of that peace and love shit. There will be serious violence. And you will be able to thank Karl Rove for having created this sad and sorry world. It used to be the United States of America. Now it is the world that power has corrupted entirely.

On that cheery note I must say adieux. I thank the Lady for Her grace and for another day of this existence. I do not take it for granted. Every breath I draw is a gift from Her mercy. Same goes for all of you. Take care.

Intelligent Design, My Way

I made a decent lasagna last night which I just had some of for a quick lunch. Delish. I like to use a sweet italian sausage in my sauce. It's Friday the 13th, a bad day for the Templars as I suppose everyone must know by now. I don't think I am superstitious in that way, but I recognize that there are actions I don't take and words I think signify certain things, that are not rational in nature. Or rational in that way that we think means logical. That's okay. I am not ruled by capricious ideas, I hope.

Or maybe I am and we all are. It is difficult to say for sure that there is certainty in an uncertain universe. Sullivan has been pushing this idea that doubt makes faith workable lately in his blog. I tend to think of people of faith as being utterly closed minded. So perhaps what he means is being open to different thoughts and interpretations of the data that form the castle of your belief system. It makes no difference to me. I already understand that doubting the data is the core of a rational approach to this universe. Everything is subject to change, except your own commitment to finding what is true for you and living in that truth.

Well, no doubt there is some truth in this existence. And it is subject to change and interpretation. That doesn't mean I don't have faith in what I think is so. It just means I understand that every day is a new adventure in being and I struggle not to let myself stand in the way of perceiving the data as fresh and new. But we all play games with ourself. We just need to learn what games we are playing and how to compensate for the places they take us that do not represent a true reality. Someone needs to talk to George W. about this process.

And what did that guy learn in college? Or maybe what does anybody learn in college? It should be how to question yourself and your belief system and rebuild it. Science is right, though it often doesn't follow its own dictates. A truth should be subject to change when the data changes. A theory/belief system is a construction that is susceptible to addition and subtraction. Reality is plastic, in this sense. Just like we change from day to day, so does this world/universe in which we live. But it is like jazz, the changes are rung on the basic structure. When something completely new appears most of the time it cannot even be integrated into the system.

Well, I should shut up about these things. As a poet my truths lurk inside of metaphoric language and are often quite specific. Do they mutate? Certainly. Language is a far from static medium. And a good thing too. If language were as stiff as the baptists would have it this place really would be stuck in the dark ages, with the Inquisition constantly tearing us apart. Not that Rove and the boys wouldn't really prefer that. I don't know if they can impose it on us or not.

I am always ready to join the underground, if that becomes necessary. Freedom is only served by a certain kind of vigilance and most of the right wing and the libertarians have abandoned their duty. Typical.

Just talked to Paige on the phone. She told me that she saw Terry Pratchett, the novelist and humorist, in Naperville last night and he was great. Her mother and her husband drove in from Colorado and met her at the reading. They are in Chi-town for several days, which Paige should quite enjoy. She also told me she got a PO Box, because the university mail system is so slow. Good idea.

I have to work this afternoon. Then it will be weekend, something we all need and enjoy. How did they do it before the invention of the weekend? How did the days of the week end up being called by their norse names? Except Saturday, Sunday and Monday??? And Monday is really Moon's day, folks. And the months are roman, mainly, but numbered wrong since they changed the start of the year. So November is the ninth month, december the tenth. And we are in the 8th month now. Waiting for Samhain, the Celt's year feast. The one I celebrate. The end of the season, the harvest past. Now it's time to hunker down and live through the cold weather.

Hey it snowed in Chicago yesterday. And Buffalo is supposed to get like ten inches today. Early winter here in the plains.

I thank the Lady for bringing the winds, and varying the days. This is what makes life interesting, the melody is beautiful and we can all take off on sudden variations, making up our meaning as we go. Only a beautiful Lady could have thought this up. Now that is intelligent design my friends.

How to Ruin An Art Form

Now that I've found out how to moderate my comments I check for some every day. I'd say I get one about every five days. It reminds me of the seventies when I waited anxiously for the mail every single day, as if something important depended on it. And I suppose there were important things in the mailbox at that time. Mostly missives from my friends. We wrote letters at a far more manic rate than people write emails today. And we wrote long, intricate letters, not just about our lives, but about what we were reading, listening to, movies, ideas, people we knew, people we had heard of, the very concept of being a writer in a writers' world.

Later, in the 1980s, I supported my second wife's writing ambitions as much as I could. I felt that Pat had given me the opportunity to write and that I had blown it and that I owed it to Becky Bradway to give her that opportunity. I couldn't make as much money as Pat (or even Becky, as the case may be), but I did as much as I could to encourage her literary career. And I hoped every single day that I was married to her that there would be an acceptance letter in the mailbox. And there were quite a few along the way. Becky could write well, and she had some good story ideas, and she could schmooze up the literati in a way that I cannot. I just can't tell a really boring and shitty writer how good their stuff is, even though they control vast quantities of public arts money (Michael Anania in the back when) (or Larry Lieberman, even now). That is what happened to american letters. It is inhabited by people that are politically astute but who are crappy writers. Not everybody, but every little magazine is filled with stuff that is being published because somebody owes somebody.

That is how John Knoepfle built what career he had. By bringing in people for readings and expecting the same from them. They all scratched each other's back. If you had to depend on people being good you would never have had anybody because most of the people with the money had that money because they were part of an institution. And nothing kills poetry faster than being a lit professor. Don't believe me? Read Kevin Stein as he gets worse and worse each book. And he was great once.

Probably this explains why I have had such trouble in my life at the academy. Every time I go there and try and get a degree I end up being honest to some fatuous asshole who has tenure. Bob Sipe comes to mind. The communist-in-residence at UIS in Springfield. He was my first ex-wife's "boyfriend" after me and he led her on a merry chase for a couple of years. He always liked to have at least one other woman working and often two. And they all knew each other. I heard some terrible stuff. And he hasn't changed. And his politics are still awful. He's one of the people who produced Ward Churchill that bastion of liberal thought in Colorado. When the wingers howl about Churchill I want to say, "but, but, he's not one of us!!" But that is how the liberal dems are characterized, by losers and weiners like Bob Sipe and Ward Churchill. Save me from the fools in the academy. Save me from the politics of go along and get along. Save me from the bad poets of America.

Food
So last night I wanted to go out, but Kimb didn't feel well, so I made lamb chops, mashed potatoes, baby peas, and I turned some italian bread in a very crackery garlic and butter/olive oil bread. I also had a salad with some blue cheese dressing. Chunky.

It's been two weeks since I have had a mixed drink. I didn't have any bad experiences (like Marion), but I did have that gut pain and am re-considering parts of my lifestyl. I definitely have stopped on the caffeine, which I think was the real trigger. I still have my butter fat addiction. Last night I happened to tell Kimb I had a huge hankering for shortbread and berries and cream and she went right out to the kitchen and made shortbread, with real butter that I had acquired on sale. We had frozen raspberries and non-fat half and half. It was a delightful experience in every way.

Today Piper and I went to Art Mart this a.m. for something to do. Art Mart has a fabulous toy store and they have a wonderful store with household goods, and they have a marvelous little deli with three hundred kinds of cheese, and duck confit and good italian meats. And they also serve coffees and cookies. Piper goes, while we are looking at some soap and shampoos, "I'm a little hungry." By which she means can we get cookies. So I bought her a bunch of tea coookies and I bought Kimberly and myself a selection of croissants. Now these are actual croissants, the way I used to make them, with butter. They fill them with chocolate and raspberries, and various savory combos. We had bacon and cream cheese, roast beef and blue cheese, and a sausage wrapped in a pickled jalapeno and cooked inside the croissant. That was lunch and it rocked pretty good.

I don't have a plan for tonight's dinner. Not even a thought and here it is two in the pm. Just trying to get by.

Politics
There is a book coming out in the next week by the number two guy in the faith-based initiatives office that blows the Rove cover on how the guys in the admin really feel about the evangelicals: "They're nuts." Well, I've known this for awhile. But it's always fun when an insider pulls back the curtain and you can see them as they really are. Sad, evil men, manipulating the american public for their own gain. The sad fact is that most of the evangelical leaders are actually just like the Roves and the Cheney's and the Bush's. So they will tell their flocks that it's all a democratic hoax and the good man who runs this country was ordained by the god they worship. And they won't be lying, because he was ordained by the gread god Money. And that is the heart of things. They have all conspired to wreck this country for all but the very very rich. There unfortunately will be a price to be paid.

Personally, I say bring back the guillontine and Madame LaFarge. Heads should start rolling in DC. Starting with the governing cabal and working through such insincere losers as John McCain and Clarence Thomas. Evil little men with small minds and no actual ideas, and no empathy for anyone else.

So I must go wake my sweet child. That will cheer me up. Hope you are all well. May the Lady Arianrhod, Welsh Goddess of all that is Truly True, bring Her mercy to this world, and, Her love.

Future Discovery

Well my storyteller friend ended up in Chicago last night. She's supposed to train in tonight and Piper and I will stop by Dan's house in the morning and hang with her a bit before she heads back to the UK.

Clearly the Republicans are now constructing a "blame the gay cabal" excuse for the Foley thing. And clearly the evangelicals will choose to believe that to excuse themselves for the damage that their people are doing to this time and this culture. "It's doom alone that counts."

That's too damn bad. I saw today that McCain blames North Korea on Bill Clinton. How easy is that? I suppose that will be the kind of president he will be, facile, and quick to say what needs to be said. He has this reputation for being an honest guy, but it is all facade. He's an evil little creep, suitable to being a conservative republican. If he wins then america truly is over.

But, I dont give a rat's ass today. I am just trying to keep moving. In a couple of weeks I am supposed to go to Eugene and see Morgan, and her parents. After that, in November, we are planning an extensive trip to Mississippi to do thanksgiving with Kimb's folks. And Paige is coming with us, so that will be extra fun.

Meanwhile I have spent too much time of late, reading ancient paper, and trying to make sense of the world, the past, the people I once knew, the people I know now, the body politic, the kharmic burden, all that happy crap. I have stopped drinking, of late. The kidney stone episode promoting the slightly healthier lifestyle. My friend in New Hampshire told me there's been a special on Grey Goose, $20 a bottle. I said to him, if I could get the goose for 20$ I'd be drunk all the damn time.

Not really true, but golly. It's about 30$ here, so I'm safe.

Time to stop on this and get Piper up from her nap.

May the Lady favor us with a world that can overcome CO2 emissions and deforestation. I am confident something will be here. Not sure about my grandkids fate. I hope Morgan discovers a world even better, populated by reasonable and loving people and beautiful animals and plants. I even hope it is earth.

Radical Weather Change

Amy Douglas, my story telling friend and used-to-be-client is supposed to come sup with us this evening. She's been at the National Storytelling Fest in Tennessee, along with Tandy Lacy and Dan Keding. I think she heads back to Shropshire this week. Yes, she's from the same town as Brother Cadfael in the United Kingdom. Amy is a fabulous story teller and a very decent human being and we have always gotten along quite well. I am hoping to feed her Kimb's homemade pesto and a nice salad and a good, italian bread.

I talked with Paige last night. I think she will be coming to visit us again weekend after next. We shall see how it works out. She is going to the dojo on a regular basis now. She's also crewing for a play that goes off in two weeks. I am glad she is busy as busy is a positive thing when you are in a new place, trying to get used to it.

Meanwhile I hear the weather is set to change radically on Thursday. They are talking possible snow for Chicago. It is so beautiful here today. But there you go. It is Autumn and the arctic winds are bound to blow sooner or later. This is, of course, way too soon.

And North Korea tested some sort of nuclear device, but it put out less than a kiloton of force and people on the web are questioning what really happened. The consensus seems to be that it was a device that failed to reach a sustained reaction. Thus fizzling. For Kim Il Jong's purposes, all it had to do was go off at all. He's entirely about blackmail folks. That is what this is all about. Show me the $. Evil little tyke. I saw an austin powers movie yesterday and even Dr. Evil is not as dumb looking as Kim Il Jong.

Well, time is up. Must go. Thanks to the Lady for Her mercy this day.

Saturday in October

Some days it is really just fuck politics. I know it's a struggle for our freedom and for the planet and all that. I do my part. I give money. I have a sign up in my frontyard for Naomi Jakobsson right now. I admit that part of the reason I put the sign up is to remind the republicans across the street that this neighborhood isn't like the neighborhood by the Champaign Country Club, all lily-white republicans. We have lots of black folk and foreigners in this neighborhood. And some are actually democrats, for that matter.

In any case it has been a particularly lovely Saturday. Kimberly doesn't have any work to do this weekend. So we are just doing fairly pleasant things. Had pancakes for breakfast (King Arthur Cookbook; perfect of course). I wanted coffee, but eschewed it for the de-caffeinated ice tea I normally drink. We took the recycle in and went to Home Depot and bought a box of logs for the fireplace. We went to the Mall and bought sweaters at "Macys" which used to be Famous Barr. Two sweaters apiece, nothing too pricey. No cashmere. But good stuff for both of us. Piper had a jolly timie looking at all the xmas stuff they had out. They actually had an xmas tree, one of those white ones, mounted upside down, complete with lights, white and pastel pink and green. It was pretty funny, really.

Later on we worked on the yard. I swept the pods from our honey locust off the roof. Something I have gotten very proficient at doing these five years. We used to have two honey locusts and there were twice as many pods. Now there are still plenty. I chopped back the ivy that is getting out of control. It is far from reasonable, however.

To reward ourselves we went to the custard stand, Jarlings. We had to drive by the stadium, where there were many hundreds of people still tailgating. Game day. I hear the U. of I. got beat by a field goal at the very end. Ah well. Anyway, Jarlings wasn't too crowded. It is only open for about another month and we do love that frozen custard. It is good stuff. I always get a huge chocolate malt.

For dinner I went out and bought a free range chicken and took it home and marinated it in low sodium soy sauce, olive oil, lotsa lemons, and many smashed up cloves of garlic. I grilled it in pieces over some hickory and served it with corn on the cob and a rustic italian bread I got at Schnucks which I put out with olive oil mixed with italian herbs and garlic salt. And I made some fresh lemonade. It was good.

Now I have a fire going in our fireplace, first of the season. Piper is watching "Cinderella", the copy that Paige owned as a little girl. Kimberly is lying on the leather couch watching the flames. A good friday. I don't even know what happened today in the world. I just hope nobody was murdered, or died in an accident, or committed fraud, or sold out the free world. I just hope the constitution was upheld and the powerful got a big piece of humble pie. Hey, it could happen.

Tomorrow will be a normal Sunday in Illinois. Will I ever get out of this state? Sometimes I wonder. I did live in New Hampshire for the greater part of a year, and I loved it. But jobs? Housing? Only the rich out of towners can afford the good places on the lake in the upper valley. Ah well.

At least Illinois is blue, and has Barack Obama. Have you folks seen the bumper sticker "Oprah Obama '08"? Wouldn't that turn some stomachs south of the Mason-Dixon line?

May we all seek the solace of truth in the Lady's long shadow. May we be paying attention when She calls to us.

Music in Ads

Ads on tv. There's a nice ad from Target for Tony Bennett's 80th birthday. Of course they are selling his CD of duets, but the ad is sweet and features numerous major league singers, including Elton and KD Lang. I went to see Tony Bennett in the very early 90s before he got popular with the MTV crowd. He was still singing with George Shearings little group and they were fucking tighter than a drug. He did Ellington stuff, and the backup, three piece, sounded dense in that way that Ellington's orchestrations can make things. Phenomenol. I have to say the Tony Bennett was the nicest performer I ever saw. He loved the audience and the audience loved him. I was among a small handful of people in the crowd under the age of 50-60 at the time. I thought it'd be a little slow, but the show was a powershot of classics and interesting experiments and he was so wonderful. To this day I have huge respect for Mr. B. Good stuff.

The other current ad that comes into my mind is one for Dell computers that I am absolutely certain is using the guitar part from a Thirteenth Floor Elevators song I used to have on an lp, Easter Everywhere. It's a popping along little riff that sounds like someone on speed playing surf music on an overtuned guitar, or oud. I loved that album but eventually sold it for some serious money when I was down financially in the mid 90s. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators were a psychedelic group from Tejas, fronted by a wild man named Roky Erickson, as I understand it. I got the album from my old friend, Russell Mill, who ran the Akashic Recrord in St. Louis in the early 70s. Russell was from McAllen, Texas, actually, but I think he ended up living in Austin. I don't quite know what to make of Dell using the homegrown stuff. I guess I approve. Dell is based in Texas, and Michael Dell is an actual Texan, isn't he? I hope he's paying somebody good money for using their stuff. That would be okay with me.

But the use of "All You Need Is Love" in the Chase commercials is just wrong. It is so sad, and it reveals a complete lack of understanding of what the song is about. Some half clever advertizing ace convinced a bunch of middle aged white men who were scared to death of this music when they were kids that it makes their company look all warm and fuzzy now. Wrong. It just makes them look exploitive and stupid. And of course it is really Michael Jackson's fault. He owns the Beatles catalog. He let this happen. What can you expect from a guy who was flogging Pepsi when he was 18. There are a lot of performers who are whores at heart. MJ is certainly one of them.

But even Dylan has had a song in a commercial. That Vicky Secrets piece from last year with one of the darker cuts from Time Out of Mind. On the other hand, there's the Bobster with some Vicky Secrets chicks, singing about love. Maybe its a fantasy of his. Not like he needs the moolah.

Well this is a politics free zone tonight. I almost completely agree with my friend from the mysterious east, or the less mysterious northeast, that whatever it takes the Republicans will do to keep control in November. There will be cheating. There will be crimes committed. There will not be an investigation next spring. The thugs have taken over and rule, just like the mob. Well, they are the mob, aren't they?

Tonight's dinner was chicken thighs cooked in white wine with mushrooms and sweet onions, served with rice that was started in rendered bacon fat and then had the bacon bits and some sauteed green onion and celery stirred in. Everything turned out well. Good to eat good food again. I didn't have a riesling, like I should have, so I cooked it in a half bottle of gallo vermouth. Plus the end of a bottle of dark run.

Last night was fajitas. They were okay. Tomorrow? Who knows. Maybe the Lady but She don't send the menu in advance too often.

Piper and I walked through the woods again today and it was so very sweet. Fall is a lush time of year. I was happy to be there and to be alive at this time.

I did talk to Paige about the weather in Chicago on Monday. She was at a dojo there where she intends on taking classes in Aido (sp?), japanese sword martial arts. Dan K. is into this bigtime. I think he might have gotten to black belt recently. In any case she was in this dojo and it started raining vast quantities. She ended up getting a ride with a couple of black belts from the school. One of them turned out to be an alumnus of University High and Metcalf in Normal and he was pretty excited about meeting another one. He graduated in 1989, of course, 17 years before my darling. But, pretty neat. She said the rain was phenomenol. I heard on the radio that there was 8 inches of standing water on Highway 57 up north by the city. Glad I wasn't out in it. As it was it stormed here very hard in the middle of the night. Scared the kitty. Me too.

May I walk in Your path Sweet Lady who has given us this world. May I be allowed to be grateful for all that I have. May I not try and strategize my own truthiness (thanks to Colbert there). Just be the Lady's true child.

Foley Adieux

It seems like there is less time every day, and of course that is true. There is less time on the overall clock because one moves steadily closer to the point at which the physical self falls apart and quits working. I seem to be in a spiral where the more I do the less I get accomplished. It's dispiriting, of course. But life is often just one boot in front of the other, isn't it?

This Foley business is being responded to by the right with the usual sort of weird takes: it's really all about homosexuals and they way they want teenage boys. Never mind the heterosexual men who are invading the nation's grade schools and killing the young girls because they themselves can't manage an erection with a real woman. No, it is the homosexual life style that encourages men like poor old Foley to sidle up to the male pages. And never mind what age they are, they were leading him on (yes, that has actually been said at the corner, NRO's disturbing online blog). You know how these kids are, what with the permanent hardons. They need a good strapping, probably from old Denny Hastert.

Of course the religious wing is blaming Satan (Bill Clinton?). And a lot of the rightwingers are pulling their usual juice: the emails were doctored by Dan Rather! Foley was never all that bad! People's sex lives should be private, except of course for Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and Barney Frank and disturbed people like that. Buy not us nice as hell republican shills for that fool in the white house.

Meanwhile the really funny story is how George Tenet read the riot act to Condi Rice in July and she did nothing. Imagine that happening on Bill Clinton's watch. It wouldn't have happened. They would have been prepared. So who was it that passed the amendment that keeps Bill from being president again? Republicans who didn't like FDR and were afraid one party would just monopolize things. I'm still not convinced George will be gone in 2009. But we can hope. And we do hope.

Meanwhile I have watched half of Mary Poppins three times in the last couple of days. Piper gets to a certain point and won't go on. It's the song about the flower lady and the pigeons. It loses her. Of course she's only three. So understandable. It pretty loses me too.

Meanwhile that guy who killed the amish girls turns out to have molested his cousins when he was 12 and was looking to relive the jolly experience. I suppose one of the real questions we have to ask ourselves is why wasn't this guy in therapy? Why didn't anyone know? And how is possible that to fix himself he thinks killing a bunch of innocents is at all okay? How do you stop this sort of violence? It can't really be stopped. This sort of violence is all about how men can't live with their own sexuality and how they are encouraged to suck it up and not talk about it and live with themselves inside their own heads, secretly enjoying all sorts of darkness. I posit that the xtian culture has created a great deal of this with its emphasis on pain and torture. But whatever the reasons the truth is very clear: these men feel powerless in the presence of any female, any age, any type. Just the very femaleness takes them down to the ground inside. And the only way men know how to deal with having their egos reduced to that flat stain on the garage floor is, of course, violence. Yahoo.

I think it would seriously be worse if there wasn't football. I think football siphons off a great deal of the men's self esteem madness that exists into that weird stupid dance they pretend is actually a game. More like an excuse to think of something outside of yourself and celebrate your masculinity as an adjunct to that organization/team. I must admit I watched the last few minutes of the Illini game last week. Of course, I was sick as a dog. And the Illini won in the last seconds. And they are so bad that it's a kind of miracle, so everybody around here has been jolly of late.

Food
For lunch today I put up a plate for Kimberly of country ham bits sliced, with oven baked ricotta, and some chihuahua cheeses. Also featured was a very ripe peach and some black grapes, seedless of course. It is damned hot here. Tonight I will make fajitas out of some beef I picked up at the right price, along with that chihuahua cheese.

It is amazingly hot here today. My storyteller friend, Amy Douglas, is in the states from Shropshire, UK and hanging out with Dan and Tandy and I am hoping to see her maybe today. Tomorrow they all go to the National Storytelling Conference in Tennessee. But I'll have another chance to see Amy next week. If you've never been to her site, it is worth a look (plus I did the original site and kept it up until recently): www.amydouglas.com

Well, may we all walk with the Lady this noble day. Things are bound to get better.

Religion and Republican Pedophiles

I'm better today. Went to my nice Indian-American Doctor and she reassured me, mainly. Probably a kidney stone that passed on its own. In any case the pain eased off yesterday afternoon. Later Kimberly and Piper and Tim went for a walk in the Lady's woods, over by our house. And that was very pleasant indeed. It is supposed to get nearly to ninety degrees this afternoon. So the weather is very mild yet for the beginning of October.

The political news of this strange country is no better today than yesterday. The same sort of falling apart syndrome seems to have gripped us all. I wish the democrats could pull themselves together and begin to stand for fighting back. Fighting back against the mullahs in Iran and the mullahs here in the united states. Religion is clearly the source of all that is weird and scary in the world. Don't tell me that it is the source of what solace there is because most of the religions people practice are based on the tribal notions of a pack of not so interesting nomads who metastasized into the head of the women as chattel brigade. Their notions were not good for most people in 1500 BC and they aren't good for most people now.

And as far as Islam being a little better version of the religion of the book, that is a carnard also. It is simply the codification of people seeking to regulate other people's lives. It was certainly a good thing when it was new, but like all religiously based idea systems, as it ages it creaks.

Of course you can't convince people as easily of your direct line to heaven as you could back when. Or there'd be a new religion (well, Mornmonism??? Or Sun Myung Moon? What kind of God would stick us with Sun Myung Moon? Only a cruel and stupid one. Though I suppose you can't write that out).

I saw a car with the bumper sticker "Guns Save Life" today. There's a guy who puts up roadside signs, ala burma shave, with cute little sayings about the need for guns in our culture. He's the source of that statement: "Guns Save Life." Not lives. NO, life its very own self. I suppose there is no point in noting that life existed millions of years before guns and will exist millions of years after the last gun has deteriorated into base particles. No. This guy's website was probably already taken and in the spirit of american know nothing how he probably thought up this as a decent alternative. Like the sort of stupid things people invent for their license plates. What is unnerving about it is how it completely supports the righteous anti-gun folks in their view of the pro-gun forces as being completely stupid. As someone who loves the language it irritates me every time I see it. And I think of myself as mainly pro-second amendment.

I foresee a time when the common man and woman will need to take up their guns and revolt against the government that is seeking to completely suppress us. Now, I don't think the NRA quite understands that that is the real reason behind the second amendment, but I know that eventually there is going to have to be a second american revolution. Heinlein, the sci fi writer, envisioned this revolution as being against a theocracy that had arisen in the United States. I don't think he would be very surprised at what is going on now, but I think he would be saddened to see that his own libertarians basically put these people in the position to take over and impose their religious will on the rest of us.

The great irony of the Bush years: Wherein is revealed the hollowness of the conservatives' actual soul. You people were, pardon the expression, Bushwhacked. And now what passes for conservatism means ripping off the poor and the middle class and giving that to the rich and the religiously powerful. If I were anywhere close to being a xtian or a jew, I'd be pretty damn ashamed of my religion and the way its followers have allowed it to be used to usurp the Constitution of the United States.

These people are actually soulless unbelievers. You can count on that. They think there won't be a price for what they do. But there will be one. And they will pay it.

And of course the worst pain comes from knowing that you deliberately deceived yourself for entirely petty reasons.

Well, I haven't really thought about food for days now. Hopefully cooking will return this week. I am pretty drained. I went through all the darvocet we had and some tylenol with codeine and now I'm having dizzy spells again.

The most interesting aspect of the current republican sex scandal to me is the way some people are playing games with the numbers. Well the boy was sixteen, so it's not pedophilia. And sixteen is the age of consent in the District of Columbia. So it's not really illegal. But the fact of the matter is that nobody wants their sixteen year olds dating forty year old congressmen. And the fact that this is yet another aspect of the Party of God just says it all: They Are All Hypocrites. Particularly Denny Hastert, a noxious dumpy little man. Third in line for the presidency. What a great country we have. Fat little pigs like Hastert that snort at the trough (3 million dollar land deal earlier this year) covering up the gay romeo on the house committee to protect children.

And speaking of hoist by your own petard it seems that having sex with a sixteen year old is not a crime in DC, but soliciting said sixteen year old over the internet is, and by who's hand did this law come into being? Yes, by the congressman himself. Foley. Pretty damn funny.

Time to go be a good Dad. Thanks to the Lady for my beautiful children.