What are 3,000 Americans Worth to George W. Bush?

Today they posted the 3000th American soldier who has died in Iraq, Dustin Donneca. Twenty-two years old. His life is gone now, with so many others, ours and theirs. And for what purpose? What have we gained? Tell me again, what those 50,000 american lives spent in Vietnam got us? Tell me again what the money thrown down that rathole purchased? Tell me where the billions spent in the desert are reallay going? Who's buying good vodka and high-end hookers with our tax dollars? Who's hiding securities in offshore accounts and in swiss banks? Who's living in luxury in London, while their country burns and our boys sneak through the streets, trying to avoid the snipers and the IEDs.

All those people who purport to give a damn about our soldiers, when are you gonna require some accountability from George W. Bush??? When are you gonna ask, just what the hell are we getting from all this? Iraq's oil production has never been as high as it was under Saddamn Hussein. And it probably won't be for many years. We've pumped lots of our money, your money and my money, into this country and it's ended up in the pockets of american contractors and iraqi politicians. Dirty. It's all dirty now.

Filthy, greedy sonsofbitches using our boys and girls in uniform to make their fortunes and support theories and ideas that are just plain wrong, and then blaming somebody else when it all turns out to be a house of cards. Isn't this pretty much what the soviets were like? Yes it is. Conservatives? My ass. They have nothing to do with conservatism. It's all about power and money and George W. Bush's inability to deal with the fact that he will never be the man his father was. And I don't even like the elder Bush; he's a conniving little sneak too, but at least he was smart enough to pay attention to the facts, something George has no concept of whatsoever.

Perhaps 2007 will be the year we get smart and get out. Then Baghdad will fall into whatever form it will take next. Maybe Osama will show up and then there really will be a civil war on a regional scale. It could happen. Be prepared to do a lot of walking in the future.

I will say, this isn't the new year for me, though the number rolls over. I celebrate the old new year, not the roman one in March, but the Celtic one in October. So I wish you all peace and prosperity and open minds.

500th Post in This Series

It's Friday here and I've had my right foot evaluated today by the therapist. He built some things to put in my shoes to force me to walk in a better manner. It's a good thing we have excellent insurance; I suspect this whole thing isn't cheap.

In any case, it is Friday and Kimb is still of of work. We spent yesterday driving to Bloomington/Normal and going to first the flower shop we love so much, and later we went to the Children's Museum there. That was a great experience and Piper had so much fun. We enjoyed it also. Good stuff. Then we steak and shaked before driving home. We did drive past Paige's old home on William. Nostalgia, you know.

Meanwhile my eldest daughter, Paige, is in Denver where it is snowing again. I hope she can get back to Chicago okay next week. I wonder what Becky is thinking about living in Denver about now.

My brother, David, who is recovering from his appendectomy from before t'giving, sent us a package of books for xmas. We had just been out to Barnes and Noble to buy Piper some new books ("Sheep on Ship", "Sheep at Play", and a book about "My Room is a Pigsty"), so getting another book was very welcome. This last, the one from bro David, was a Jan Brett title. We like her work pretty well, having received a wonderful book about a Hedgehog ("Hedgie") summer before last from Kimb's cousin in Louisville when we were there for her daughter's amazing wedding.

Politics
We all agree, Gerry Ford was a better president than George W. Bush. And there are a lot of people who don't like the surge idea at all. Meanwhile the fundamentalists still want to outlaw all forms of sexual pleasure. But the Lady will never let that happen.

Food
Last night I made a potpie out of leftover turkey. It turned out very well. I had forgotten how good I am at pie crust. I used to pie quite a bit, but it has been years. Tonight I think will be vodka sauce and meatballs on linguine. We shall see.

Well, not a sterling post for number 500, but what's important is to stay alive consciously and not just let the stream carry you into the river without watching the scenery. Hey I did read some of that new biography of Allen Ginsburg today at B&N and it looks great. I miss Allen, to tellyou the truth. I loved some of his poetry and all of his greatness. Appropriately enough the book is called "I Celebrate Myself". And truly Ginsberg was the child of Whitman, as indeed Whitman came from Blake.

Be well. And thanks to the Lady for these days, numbered as they inevitably are. The story is intricate and powerful. May we live in Her mercy.

1965

Still getting past James Brown being gone. We spent this evening watching two Barbra Streisand tv specials from the 1960s: My Name Is Barbra, and Color Me Barbra. I remember watching both of these shows on television in the mid 1960s. Yes, I am an old fart. I had quite a Streisand trip in those days. Her voice was just fantastic. Seeing these old shows really puts people like Mariah Carey in their place. Divas, ha. Streisand was on the level of Judy Garland. She just came out and used that instrument of her's and it was magical. I was a weird teenage boy, I liked broadway shows and I was very taken with Streisand for her humor and for the way she seemed to be utterly honest in her presentation of her material. Remember, she was really just past being a teenager when these shows were done.

It was also fun, remembering/re-living, being in the sixties. It was a decade where there was the aspect of magical thinking in pretty much everything that happened. Remember, while Streisand had these specials on tv, James Brown had "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" on the radio and Dylan was writing the songs that became "Blonde on Blonde." "Cabaret" opned on broadway that year, with Bob Fosse's new style of dancing that we all recognize today. Edie Sedgewick was still friends and partners with Andy Warhol. LBJ was sending an additional 300,000 troops to Vietnam, to try and "win" the war. Because there was a draft he could get the troops to escalate things dramatically. But even then the anti-war movement was already in full gear. I found J.R.R. Tolkien's Ring Cycle at the grocery store as a series of ACE paperbacks. I had only heard of them before that. I bought all three of them, with those garish Jack Vaughn covers (he did a lot of work for Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, which I subscribed to in tose days). Later Ballantine brought out the "authorized" versions, which Tolkien got money for, and I bought those too. I was pretty much the first person I knew who read the Rings.

What else? Batman was on tv. I remember seeing "What's New Pussycat?" at the movies with my friends and being impressed with its outright focus on sex. It was the first woody allen movie I ever saw.

The sixties really were a different time. If you weren't there you don't really understand just how much everything changed. Hopefully it's not all changing back, again. But you can't put some things back in the closet. Stonewall happened in the later 1960s and I don't believe gay people are ever going to accept being second class again. Unless of course we turn into a theocracy and they start hanging them, like in Iran.

And what greater argument could you have against any country using Sharia law then that it condemns people to death for "sex" crimes. As if that is ever anybody else's business. But there are many people in today's rightwing who make the case that the state has every right to outlaw gay sex because it doesn't create children. What a load of horseshit that is.

Yule for us was entirely presents for Miss Piper. We had fun and I took about a half hour of video tape to send to the grandparents. Probably the most successful single item was the doctor's accoutrements: the stethoscope in particular. She also got a play saxophone, several videos, some Playmobil stuff (a flower store! and an astronaut). Much fun. I did get Kimb that King Arthur Whole Wheat Cookbook. And she was actually a bit surprised. Good one for me.

Food
Speaking of food: I made my brined turkey on Sunday. Monday we reprised it and the dressing and the mashed potatoes and gravy. Tuesday I made baby back ribs and fresh snapped green beans. Tonight, wednesday, I did the Ina Garten version on roast duck, this time on a fresh Maple Farms duck. And it was even better than the one last week.

Kimberly made pretzels yesterday and we ate them all, every one. And today she made the best chocolate chip cookies I have had in years. Holy mackarel.

Politics
Gerry Ford died. I am of two minds about him. I hated Nixon for so many different reasons (though Nixon would be a complete liberal in today's climate; utterly unlike these guys who say they are republicans now). So I was bitter that Ford "pardoned" him. And I think it certainly lost the next election for Ford. And I liked Jimmy Carter though I think his presidency was done in by the wastrel democrats in congress who, frankly, were entirely too much like the republican congress we have had for the last ten years.

Yet Gerry Ford was a pretty decent guy and did his best in a tough job that he really didn't want. Also he resisted the kind of rightwing strangeness that came to characterize Reagan's administration. Except for the nuclear bomb treaties Reagan's foreign policy was weird and flawed and based on all the wrong concepts. And all of his (Reagan's) advisors hated the bomb treaties. Perhaps only a perceived warmonger could have gotten away with them. In any case, Gerald Ford was one of the first americans to try and resist the israeli lobby. He set the stage for the Camp David agreemenets that Jimmy Carter pulled off. And he did it by remind the israelis that they get a shitpot of money from us and that that could actually stop if they didn't find a way to peace with the palestinians and the other semitic cultures in the levant. That is now past, of course. There is no american politician that would withold funds from the israelis to get them to negotiate. After Arafat made the big mistake of not going along with the Clinton deal (and it was a mistake, though the deal was not that great for the palestinians--check the land boundaries out and be amused), the Bushies came along and simply ignored the situation, hoping for the battles of the end times no doubt, as described in the one book of the new testament that was almost certainly written a century after the rabbi yeshua's death, the revelation of John.

Well, we aren't in anybody's end times, except perhaps several thousand animal species that we have succeeeded in killing off. Even if there are cataclysmic events, the human species will be around in one form or another for seveal huundred thousand more years. George W. Bush and company have no sense of what the facts are, and even if you told them they would just blow it off as not fitting into what they need to believe. Power corrupts, but fundamentalist faith turns normal people crazy. Look at the fundies in any religious/philosophical system and you will see people with mental disorders.

Tomorrow we are going to drive over to Bloomington to go to our favorite flower store/nursery. Today we went to the Krannert Art Museum. The Spurlock was closed; they probably don't have the funds to pay anybody to be there. But the Krannert was great and we all three had a wonderful time. Later we went to a bookstore, Pages for All Ages, and hung out for awhile. I am too broke to buy any books. I think I am going to need to find a job pretty quick here. Wish me luck and ask the Lady for Her help and mercy for me. I am going to need it.

And I found out yesterday on the news that a recent study says that people who take the medicine I take for persistent heartburn (GERD) for more than a year substantially increase their chances of injuring/breaking their hip bones if they are over fifty. Well, I'll be 57 in June. Welcome to another aspect of aging. I guess I have to figure out how to quit taking these pills and keep on eating.

I truly hope we all have a better year in 2007. Perhaps Obama's hope will become a talisman we can all cling to. Perhaps rational thought will become respected again in these united states. I wonder.

Thanks again to the Great Lady, Arianrhod, for this mosaic reality that transfigures us all in data and design. We are all going somewhere this time. Call that a prophecy.

James Brown

Truly the Godfather of Soul, Disco, Rap and really all modern black music in the USA. James Brown was a true American, someone who embodied what is supposedly meant by the opportunities of this system. I remember my second wife's mother didn't like James Brown because he sweated so much. Yet that sweat, the hardest working man in showbusiness riff, is and always will be an important part of the great art produced by this man.

I saw James Brown in New York City in 1985. He was more than 50 years old at the time and I expected a more sedate show than he was famous for, but about two minutes into the first number the band hit one of those staccato horn riffs and he split to the floor and right back up, no hesitation. I was blown away. And he moved (HE MOVED) for the next hour and a half, doing all his famous hits and even doing "Living in America" the disco song he put out in the beginning of the 1980s. It was great. Right up there with seeing Bruce Springsteen the month that Born to Run was released and seeing Dylan in Chicago in 1974, when he finally started touring again for the first time since the english tour of Spring 1966.

He was the man. He cared about people. He cared about his duty to "his people". But he was a deeply flawed man who could not control his ego and his inability to deal with his wife. So he ended up in prison. I think it is worthy of noting that a white star at his level would never have been sent to prison. But he lived in the american south where racism is alive and well and everywhere, no matter what they may claim. Racism is what gives the Republicans power. That's why they never talk about it.

But James died a legend. His music will always be with us. I myself have a good fifteen James Brown albums, mainly french reissues, of course. I have the one with the cover where all the letters are spelled out by illustrations of naked women. I have the lp with James singing "By the Time I get to Phoenix" which Gary Davidson gave me in the early 1980s. It also has one of the premier versions of "Sex Machine". I have the album "Hell" (alternatively "James Brown goes to Hell") and it is among the worst albums I have ever heard. Clearly a monstrous error by the sound people trying to do a live album and missing it. Still, it had James singing "When the Saints Go Marching In", worth a listen all by itself.

I have most of the early stuff, and the indispensable "Live at the Apollo" from 1963. If you can't have it all you need to have that one. And "JB the CD", for a greatest hits collection. I remember weeding Mrs. Fish's garden in 1965, with a radio on the bricks, playing "It's a Man's World" and thinking "this guy is too much." And who can forget "Papa's God A Brand New Bag," and "Hot Pants" ("What I like about hotpants is that/what you see is what you get...Ow!!"). And everybody but everybody knows "I Feel Good/Like I know that I should now/so good/so good...it comes back to me..." And those horns man. The rhythm of the notes, the melody used as percussion. This guy did it all folks. He invented most modern music in one way or another.

It's good to see the MSM give him his due. Now I want to see the shows on the networks, remembering the Godfather of Soul. I hope they do it. I point out that you never saw James Brown at the Kennedy Center with the president. Can you even imagine George Bush in the same room with someone as powerful and true as James Brown? He would've just exploded in shame and guilt. I think they must know stuff like that; they keep George away from anybody that is actually true.

Well, I will miss you James. You gave my life so much hope and some really amazing dancing. That is where it's at. I bet you are grooving for the Lady right now. That is how it should be. Peace be with you my old friend.

Sesame Street Redux

Sesame Street today was one of those great episodes that remind you of how good tv can really be. Two items stand out: Harvey Fierstein singing "Everything's Coming Up Noses" as he takes noses and puts them on various monster puppets. Full out production number, with Harvey ending up wearing those glasses and noses Groucho Marx thing. Big grin. I have to say, I love Harvey. I discovered Torch Song Trilogy in the back when. I knew it had won the tony the year it came out, but I had no idea of how intelligent and sweet it was. For those that may not know, Torch Song Trilogy is a trio of short plays presenting the life of a gay man/female impersonator clearly inspired by Harvey Fierstein, written by Harvey Fierstein and starring, yes, Harvey. He of the froggy voice.

You may remember Harvey from Mrs. Doubtfire, where he played Robin Williams brother who turned him into a woman. Harvey's greatest recent triumph is the role of Edna Turnblatt in the broadway hit show Hairspray, a role originated by the remarkable female impersonator/actor Divine in the John Water's movie of the same name. But Harvey's been with us in all sorts of roles along the way. We are totally blessed, having Harvey in the room. And I'm sure Stephen Sondheim forgave Harvey and the Children's Television Workshop people for taking his song and turning it into the sweet number that it is, "everything's coming up noses/for me and for you..."

I always thought Harvey could do the mom in Gypsy, no problem.

The other great thing on Sesame Street this a.m. was the reggae version of "Rubber Duckie" that Ernie sings in the bathtub. He is ultimately joined by nearly every character puppet in the stable, including the Cowntess, the Count, and even the inimitable (it ain't easy being green) Kermit the Frog. What a raucous joyful time in the tub!

I've probably blogged about this episode before, as it seems familiar, but I'm not surprised at any repitition. This is my 497th episode in the continuing saga. I did go out and try and buy things for Piper's xmas today, but the stores looked like a hurricane had hit them. I managed only to find Ariel's wedding dress at Toys R Us. And two Kipper videos. Luckily we already have a number of other items. What we didn't get though, was the Ariel Kitchen Piper has been asking for. It was gone baby. All the kitchens were gone, except the really expensive one from Step Two. Good stuff, but I am not in aposition to lay out 150 bucks on a pretend kitchen.

Meanwhile I am thinking about going to Schnucks and buying steak. Maybe wine too. I am in that kind of a mood. It's still pretty darn nice here, but I don't know how it is going to ride into the weekend. We got a package of pictures from Joel today. And I have to say I do have the most beautiful baby granddaughter that was every born. Clearly a remarkable child. Kimb said that Morgan is beautiful in just the same way that Piper was beautiful when she was a little baby. Maybe it is int he genes, eh?

Well time to get back on the horse and ride off into the sunset. Which is a little later today than yesterday. Yay the Solstice Yay moving on towards Spring, once again. I hope to survive another winter, with Her mercy. Thanks Lady.

Apprehension

Yesterday evening was this year's winter Solstice. Now the amount of daylight lengthens each day until June 21st. The extremely ancient knowledge of this fact is the true foundation of all religion. That the world can be understood; that is the important realization. You could also say that it is the true beginning of science. Observation creates the information that is subject to analysis and interpretation. Yup, the days pass, different but similar. The complexity begins to sort itself out.

All knowledge is power, of course. So initially the information about the cycle of the year applied to how we moved from place to place. When agriculture was formalized, 8-10,000 years BP, the cycle information became even more important. It is in the understanding of the movement of the planet through space that the metaphor that is godhead can be truly understood.

Is it random? How do we understand something called "random"? The universe is in itself a poem. Consciousness is merely an aspect of being, so whether there is a director, poet, creator, or some sort of conscious organism merely "being", it really doesn't matter. The symphony is played, the chant is sung. We become figures in the great tapestry that Ariadne creates with lives, thoughts, creatures, plants, stars, melodies. The great task is to apprehend it all.

Here's to apprehending, gang.

Well, I just stopped to put Piper's Ladybug raincoat on her. We aren't going out. She just wants to wear it. We got it last March, after special ordering it at Art Mart. She obsessed on it even before we bought it. It is rainy out here. And it will be in the low 50s here. Speaking of the weather, I talked to my remarkable daughter, Paige, who is in Denver, yesterday. They are snowed in pretty severely. I understand that Denver proper got two to three feet of snow and some outlying areas received up to four feet. Four feet! So Paige and her mom and stepdad are fairly snowed in. But they have a comfortable home and, as I pointed out to Paige, they have power. Thus the internet and assorted goodies that electricity provides.

We are still working our way to the traditional Monday Yule celebration. Tree, presents, food. All the finer things. We didn't really get each other anything this year (though I have a present for Kimberly; I don't think she'll check this before Monday). But we have a bunch of stuff for Piper. And I have a stack of things for Paige here that I will give her in January.

I received a really sweet email from Myra Epping yesterday. Myra was a longtime member of my last writing group. I think she started coming in 1986 and she was there at the end, in November of 1999. An excellent writer and a compassionate person, Myra was the one person in the group who was my age. She and her husband, Jim Redlich, live in Springfield. Their two daughters, Margaret and Amanda (both of whom I have many pictures of as children) are gone to college; Margaret is finishing at Circle Campus in Chicago, and Amanda, a University of Chicago graduate, is doing her masters work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After a certain point in their childhoods, tired of dealing with the local public school system, Myra ended up homeschooling these girls. As you can tell, this worked for them quite well.

No surprise. Myra is a smart person, talented and open and very insightful. A good liberal dem too. She also lived across the street from my great friend Ted Samsel, when Ted and his family lived in Springfield at the end of the 1980s. Hard to believe it was so long ago now. Ted lives in Virginia with his wife Brenda. I don't see Ted often, but our friendship has endured for a decade and a half due to email, and phonecalls. Ted called night before last and we talked about cumin in guacamole and cookbook authors we both approve of (Anthony Bourdain and James Peterson). Ted married a woman in Virginia who is a better than decent poet.

Back in the day Ted and his family lived across the street from Myra and Jim, and next door to Claire Martin and her husband Terry. Claire also was a longtime member of that last writing group, Sangamon Writers, and a fine writer. I knew Claire through the museum. She is a trained historian and I first met her when she was doing some work on a museum project called Harvesting the River. Her husband, Terry, is an anthropologist with the museum, one of the archeologists. A good guy who I have done some work for over the years.

Well, time passes and we know each other in so many different ways and in vastly different spaces. I am one of those people with a good memory of the different scenes I have occupied along the way. I am not so good at quoting dialogue from memory though. So I have always kept copious notes. A vast quantity of words, recording the ephemeral moments from this round on the wheel.

Updating will be spotty through the next week. Kimberly is off from work and we shall have a pretty good time hanging out with ourselves and our darling daughter. I hope we are all good this holy day season. The roots of this time are so deep within us. They probably go back at least 35,000 years. I thank the Lady for the remarkable and beautiful reality She has given us. Thanks be to An(na) [the oldest name for the Great Goddess] for all that we see, all that we hear, all that we smell, all that we taste, and everything that we feel. In all the ways we Apprehend we Apprehend Thee, my Darling Lady!

Oh, Eight, Gee Whiz

I bought another load of wood today. We are almost through the first one I bought at the end of October. But we have had a bunch of fires in the fireplace. It makes our living room so beautiful and Kimberly likes to stand by the fire and get really warm.

There's a number of different articles and polls out on the 08 elections. I guess the big question for the Repugnants is whether John McCain can really get elected after having sold his soul to the religios on the right. It's an interesting dilemma for them. And there's also Guiliani, who lots of folks love, but who is in favor of abortion rights, gay rights, and immigrant rights. All things that the right don't like a-tall. I am not a fan of either of these gentlemen, but probably they would be a better pres than Newt Gingrich or Sam Brownback. I don't know that much about the guy from Massachusetts, but he has set himself back by running away from his gay rights statements of ten years ago. Who knows where he will be in ten years? Plus he's a mormon, and they are insane.

On the dem side there's Hillary who we fear would lose bad in a general election. There's Barack Obama who is great but has no real experience. It is pointed out though that he has the experience Lincoln had when he was elected pres. There's John Edwards, a nice guy, but god he looks like one of the Brady bunch. He's just too damn boyish for me. And finally there's good old Al Gore, who brings in the "I lost" vibe when he shows up. Mind you he does have the vibe "I know what's actually going on" down. But can he win?

And what happens now? Politically there are clearly two different countries in this geographic location. And they pretty much despise each other. One side, the red guys, simply cannot abide by the facts about how some people are born with a different sexuality than they are. The other side has no problems with gay people, but business scares them with its greed and self centredness and they are not inclined to cut it any slack. So business, the boys with the bucks, inevitably support the crazy bastards from the deep south. And that is how we got to this point.

I read one of the left blogs complaining that Obama really isn't with "us". It truly remined me of the snotty attitudes of people like Bob Sipe and those guys in the 70s. When I hear the rightwingers complain about the leftwingers, I think, I am not one of those guys, but those guys are the only ones the rightwingers want to talk about because they think it makes them look good. When the reality is these people are entirely too much alike. And they are all out to destroy the rest of us.

The good thing about this goverment used to be that nobody could control it all the time. I don't know that those days haven't passed now. We will see what happens. There isn't really much time left to save things from sliding into the abyss. General sunni/shia war in the middle east will fuck up the oil supply and that will generally reek havoc on our economy. We may all be hunkering down in a few years, complaining abou the food supply and what happened to the really good balsamic vinegar I used to get?

Oh well. Piss and moan, to quote my friend Marion. I hope you are all well. Four more posts and I will have done 500. I have no idea if anybody ever reads this, except for my pacific rim friend, but there you go. I keep putting it out. It would be nice to get a comment now and then.

May we all learn how to ask the right questions. May we celebrate the Lady's mercy as the days begin to lengthen again. Solstice is on Thursday. To quote George Harrison: "Here comes the sun/little darling/here comes the sun/and it's all right..."

Mostly Food, Actually

It's the last monday before Yule here in the american mid-west. The news from on high (that is the aristocracy) is bad: they are going to send a bunch more american troops into the quagmire, but not enough to actually make a difference. I would be truly pissed off if it were my son/daughter that was being tossed in like a wad of paper towels into a flooded room.

Speaking of flooded rooms, our basement seems to be dry. Another household tragedy lived through. We had a jolly weekend, besides. Kimb even got the lights up on the bushes outside. One week before the day, so we are at least in season here.

We bought some lovely cheese on Saturday at the sixth street market and we acquired a nice bottle of red wine. I cooked a duck Saturday night. I did it the Ina Garten method. This primarily consists of simmering the duck in a pot of chicken stock for about 45 minutes to an hour and then taking it and roasting it at 500 degrees for about a half an hour. It was quite good and I will certainly do that again. I also roasted some baby potatoes and some cippolina onions with it. They caramelized nicely and, with the red wine, it was a jolly and comforting winter dinner. Oh, and the duck was on sale at Meiers for only $9, and a decent brand too.

Sunday night I made lasagna and it too turned out quite well. Very yummy. Killed the red wine with it. Kimberly made shortbread with a chocolate icing top. There is still a piece left. I can hear it, calling to me, "eat me, eat me". In that soft tone chocolate uses to appear sweet and without any downside. Actually chocolate is good fro you in some ways. Of course there is the matter of the shortbread it is resting on.

This is Piper's nap time and pretty much my only time to do things like this. I truly do need to figure out more time to work. I typed one page of an old novel the other day and never got back to it. Argh. There is always something happening. I did talk to both my other children over the weekend. And I had a nice talk with my sister Diane. Paige and her mom should be on the train to Denver about now. They trained around the state over the weekend. I know Paige spent time in Normal with at least Kiri. It's good she still has good contacts there. It is a lot harder than you think to maintain high school friends as college separates us all. But it can be done. Kimb has a great friend from grade school and one from high school that we just mailed xmas cards to and Kimb is in her thirties.

Me, on the other hand, have no friends left from high school and really only a couple from college. My best friend in high school, the novelist Tom Bezzi (Hubble Time), died of complications of AIDs in 1995. My friend Giff Booth I emailed in 2004 but haven't really heard from him again. He lives in NYC these days. Is it interesting that most of the people I have kept in touch with in my life are gay? Hmmm.

I did swap letters and phonecalls with Barry Paris a couple of years ago. He lives in Pittsburgh where he's a well known local film critic. He's also the author of numerous bios of film stars. Particularly well known and important is his book about Louise Brooks. But he also wrote about Audrey Hepburn and Greta Garbo. And he ghostwrote Tony Curtis fun "autobiography." Barry and I shared the romantic interest of Marcia Jean Froelke, now Coburn, who used to write for Chicago magazine, but who now runs a no-kill animal shelter in Chicago. I think I last talked to Marcia in 1988.

Time runs its funny, fluid little river. Hopefully we will all survive as best we can. I haven't much hope for those with strong religious convictions. I think they are pretty determined to be sweptaway in some sort of self-annhilation. The good news of the day is that the elections in Iran aren't going the way Ahmedinjad (however you spell the guy's name) would like them. There is a real undercurrent in that culture. You just can't really run repressive religious regimes without violence in a time that has the communication and internet resources that we have.

Well, excuse me now. I need to go brine the small turkey I bought so I can have it Sunday. It's a never been frozen butterball that I paid sixteen bucks for, not quite nine pounds. I will also make some serious dressing to go with it, and the cranberry confit that I love. What else? I dunno. Days to plan here. Kimb is off all next week, so we will work on the house and play with our daughter, Piper Gwynne. I read in my family book today that my great-grandfather, Henry Columbus Osburn married a woman named Rosanne Guinn in the 1870s. They were married 69 years before they both died around 90. I did know that Guinn was a family name and now I know why. Interesting.

May the Lady Arianrhod, also known as Isis, smile upon us all in this weird time.

Drying Out

Not me, the basement. The sump pump failed thursday afternoon (or some time, but I discovered it around 4:30). So we ran out and bought a new pump and pipe for it and came back and Kimberly got it attached and working. Meanwhile the basement took about three inches of water. So we borrowed a shop vac and ran it, but it needs a great deal more work. And the last resident installed carpeting, so it is truly a bad scene. Lots of stuff to throw away. Fear of mold. All the finer things.

The glories of home ownership. I guess if you are well off you hire it all done and taken care of. When we first moved in the sump pump failed and, not knowing any better, we called a plumber, who installed a new one and billed us $300. This one was almost half of that, but we did all the work and running around and it wasn't any fun.

That same day, as I was picking Kimb up from work, she found the way blocked by a young man who had obviously slipped and fallen on the stones steps. We saw the ambulance pull up as we drove away. Somebody else had already 911'd it. And that day I talked with an old friend who himself had walked close to someone dying that day.

Some days just seem ready for the dark. But the dark doesn't need to be a negative thing, though I am in no hurry to transcend the fleshly cave (very kerouac, don't you think?). I am interested in all that there is to this reality and this organism.

Listening to Leonard Cohen. One of the later albums, Recent Songs.

Reading a potboiler paperback Kimb got as a white elephant present. It's about a guy in the white house, young lawyer, who's sort of seeing the president's hot daugbhter. And then they see something they shouldn't. Tension ensues. The story is apparently well researched and full of assholes who the narrator seems to be saying he respects. What's wrong with america today? The lawyers are indeed the problem. Not all of them, just the ones attracted to power. You know, the ones in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile the sun sets and it gets close to the time I need to pickup Kimb. Campustown today is madness. It's the day everyone is taking off for break, so the streets are crazy. I can't wait. But it is took expensive to park in campustown. And I hear they are actually raising the rate. If you park at a meter on the street it is 75 cents an hour, or six dollars a day.

Lennie is talking about being "humbled in love..." I think we all have heard that song. May the Lady smile on us this day. May you all be well.

Cafferty Scores: The F-word Network

I just saw a clip of Jack Cafferty from CNN last night, castigating Bush for putting off doing anything about the tactics in Iraq until next year ("the decider has decided not to decide"). But the best thing about the piece was that he called Fox News "the F-word Network." This needs to become common usage people. The F-word Network. We all know what that means. The people who want to fuck us all over for the sake of the super rich and republican powerful (Rupert Murdoch and his carrion vultures).

So let's try and use this phrase every day people: the F-word network. Oh yeah.

Tuesday with Leonard Cohen

I talked to Paige this afternoon and she pointed out to me that she had been correct on every point in her evaulation of Pirates of the Caribbean, last summer. I hereby give her due credit; she was right, indeed. She's still in Chicago, through this Saturday. Her mom, Becky Bradway, is driving into town about now and will be there with her. They hope to spend a couple of days in Bloomington-Normal on their way to Denver this next weekend.

Meanwhile I received in the mail today my ebay buy for Ms. Paige, six Leonard Cohen cds. As she already knows they are coming this does not spoil any surprises. I am notoriously poor at surprising anyone and actually am uncomfortable with it. So I mostly don't try. In my family gift-giving/getting was wrought with guilt and ill-feeling. My mother's roots in a dire poverty in the 1920s often came out at this time of year. We got good stuff, but we were generally made to feel really bad about it. And the gifts I gave as a child were often stupid and poorly received. So, am a little tender on the subject.

As to the Cohen cds, they are: the 1st, Songs of Love and Hate, New Skin for the Old Ceremony, Recent Songs, Various Positions, and Cohen Live (1978). There are two live Cohen releases, and maybe three now that I think about it. Anyone know for sure? I have another one, Field Commander Cohen which I believe dates from fairly recently (90s?) but I think there is yet another one that I vaguely recall listening to with Jessica Weber in her apartment on Spring and Canedy in the early 1980s.

For those of you who don't know, Cohen has long been a primary source for me. I read Beautiful Losers, his second "novel", when I was 18 and that was all she wrote. It had a profound and lasting impact on me, and I still think of the various divergent prayers that appear in the book, long chants every word capitalized that take off on modern culture and history and theology. The end of the book has been rented to the Jesuits. The Jesuits demand the beatification of Katerina Tekakwitha, the Iroquois virgin martyr.

I heard from my little brother today. I get emails so rarely that it is always an event. You would think I would have a correspondence, as I am the sort of person who always answers their emails. But fewer and fewer people talk to me. I suppose this says something, but I don't know what it may be. Modern life no doubt. In any case my brother, David, a psych prof at a small college in Arkansas, tells me that he came down with appendicitis a couple of days before tgiving and was hospitalized for ten days. Also his gout condition flared up and was very bad and he couldn't get around much, so he missed a lot of his classes. I note that when I was 51-52 I had the problems with my gall bladder. Perhaps there is a genetic timing thing there. In any case he seems to be better now. I ask the Lady for Her mercy for my brother.

Tonight will be takehome pizza. We have a free one coming from Papa Murphys. They make it you take it home and cook it. Decent enough, and free in this last week before payday. Last night Kimb went out to dinner with work friends and Tim made himself a jolly hamburger with cream cheese and fried onions.

Politics
From the scuttlebutt I do not believe George W. will change much about his war policy. Well, except the language he couches it in. I understand from the blogosphere that the National Review boys all actually loved General Pinochet, despite his torture and dictatorial rule. He was, it appears, for free trade. Read he helped americans get rich off of his people. That's really what it's all about for Buckley's children, isn't it? Just as long as we get ours (and yours for that matter). Sully says something to the effect that these people would've loved Saddam Hussein if only he'd been a free trader, and not a socialist. And boy is that a pungent suggestion.

I have to say Christopher Hitchens, most of the time a bizarre rightwinger from England, wrote a nasty sendoff to the General that takes his regime apart. What is it with the right? Do they just hate human rights and democracy so much? Is it really all about money for them? Apparently.

Thanks to the Lady for another day. I take nothing in this reality for granted. I am grateful to be with Kimberly and to have the remarkable children I have, Paige, Joel, and Piper. And I am grateful to Tricia Berg for being with my son and for bringing to the family that most wonderful little girl, Morgan Jane. To the Goddess, my friends!

Dead Man's Chest of Drawers

We watched the dvd of Pirates of the Caribbean last night, Dead Man's Chest. I was surprised at how slow the movie was, despite the many fun little things they threw in. Also Johnny Depp's character, Jack Sparrow, was much slighter in this than the last. He's sleazier and the sleazy is less redeemed than it was in the first one. We Americans like the hero to be somewhat disreputable, but turn out to be a man of honor after all. Captain Sparrow can't quite decide, in this story, if he has anything beyond personal self-interest in any part of the world.

There is, late in the flick, a mild love story between him and the girl (Keira Knightley?). This raises the temperature, but only briefly. Of course she can't possibly betray the Orlando Bloom character who is the one honest man in it all. Considering Jack Sparrow's remarkable sex appeal to the female of the race, you would think they would have some sort of exceedingly hot love story cooked up for him in the second one. Frankly the girl is sheer waste in this one. She doesn't really even get to be the strong feminine figure she was in the first one.

Most of the appeal, according to the filmmakers, must revolve around the Kraken, a giant octopus with a lot more than 8 tentacles. This is the groovy special effects part of the movie, but it was not that interesting and frankly unbelievable when they fight it off with gunpowder and rum kegs. Yawn. Yawn again.

I liked the voodoo chick, but the scene dragged on. There's an entire opening sequence among the cannibals that is utterly superflous to the socalled plot. Just a chance to get some black folk in the story, I guess. The only good part of that whole sequence (and it must last ten or fifteen minutes), is when Johnny has gotten away and there's only the poor dog standing on the beach and the group of cannibals, at least a hundred strong, all turn toward it and it suddenly realizes it's what's for dinner and it takes off down the beach. Cute. But that is the level of humor. As good as it gets.

Still the Davy Jones/Flying Dutchman stuff, dominated by extreme makeup and appliances on the actors, is actually pretty good. And the guy who plays Orlando Bloom's doomed father was pretty darn good. That stuff held my interest the best of anything in the movie.

Gotta love Johnny though. It's a good look for him. Two and a half stars. I'll probably never see it again. And I have seen the first one four or five times.

Food
Kimberly made a wonderful soup for dinner. But, more importantly, she made rice chrispy treats with callebaut white chocolate. And they are way too good. Other than that we are essentially broke, so we are just going to try and get by this week. Anyway we both could eat less, that's for sure.

Saturday I bought a ribeye, and I made mashed potatoes with butter and gorgonzola cheese stirred in at the end. We also had baby spinach that I boiled up, drained and stirred some cream cheese and butter into. That meal rocked pretty hard. I used the leftover steak on Sunday for steak sandwiches on crescent rolls with gorgonzola and vidalia onion slices.

We also put up our Yule tree and decorated it, and we shopped for faraway relatives so we could put that stuff in the mail. Mostly accomplished this morning.

Politics
Well Bush is between a rock and a hard place, but I don't think he'll budge anyway. Anything that looks to him like failure is just not gonna play. I think he honestly expects his xtian god to show up and make everything right for him. Honestly, the guy is weird, stupid and incompetent. Nobody really likes him, except people who imagine they are just like him. Interestingly enough this group seems to be shrinking every day. His approval numbers are down to 30% and there is absolutely no doubt these numbers are going to sink into the twenties as time passes and nothing changess. And even if he did change something, I don't think there is any way it can help him now. Too little, too late.

And Pinochet died in Chile. Too bad he never had to pay for the torture and murder he did. I'll bet money that some day indictments are issued for George W. and Cheney in Europe and they'll quit traveling. Not that it matters, you can't escape justice as Augusto is finding out right now in the afterlife. He faces all the lies he told to himself and others and he must apprehend, live, all the suffering and pain he caused. And he must die, over and over again, as many times as there are victims. Glad it is not me. I think it's amazing that people honestly think they can do these things with no ultimate responsibility. Well, they don't know what I know. But too bad for them.

Finally, I must go and be a good dad here. I hope you are well, whoever may read these words, at whatever time. May we all revel in the Lady's world, as the days shorten and the nights lengthen and the sense of renewal builds in us all. To the Goddess.

New Poems

Some new material on Homage & Apology. One new poem, in transit, and two older ones. I am toying with the idea of publishing some explicitly personal pieces, so don't be surprised if I name names (not you, Young Guy).

Frederik Pohl's Gateway

Recently my friend, Dan Keding, the storyteller/musician/author, did a book fair somewhere in these United States (I don't try and keep up with Dan's amazing schedule; he spends great hunks of his year on the road). At this book fair he shared a table with Frederik Pohl, the classic science fiction writer, who's work goes back to the 1950s. I can remember reading Pohl stories in the sci fi magazines I subscribed to as a young guy, IF, Amazing Stories, Astounding, Analog, Fantasy and Science Fiction. All good stuff. Frederik Pohl is pushing 90 these days and Dan had a nice time hanging out with him. He also acquired some Pohl books for himself and for me and my daughter, Paige.

We both received a copy of Pohl's famous novel from the mid-1970s, Gateway, which he believes is his best work. I had never read it before. By the mimd 1970s I was more devoted to mainstream fiction and I distrusted sci fi as being where a lot of rightwingers lived, particularly folks like Robert Heinlein, who had been such a huge influence in my youth. I know now that there is that split on the right, between the libertarians, with whom I have something in common, and the moralists (read "religious", read "evangelicals", read "social conersvatives"; the people who don't want any of us having joyful sex).

In any case, Pohl is neither of those kinds of people. Reading him is like reading Phil Dick, someone who is a realist about human beings. I just finished Gateway last night. And it is a remarkable book, particularly for its time. It has the great elements of sci fi, the unknown alien culture, but it also has the dickian human story: the guy's incredible guilt and his complex sexual nature. It was a jolly fun read and I highly recommend it. There's a lot of talk about homosexuality in the book, and in the future society it is absolutely accepted as a normal version of the human experience. And this was in 1976. Only really Sam Delaney, the black gay sci fi writer, was going to that place in those days. Even Phil Dick never really talked about gays, though he mentioned them in passing.

But the book is even better than that aspect because it remembers that there is a spectrum of human sexuality. The hero, though he has gay experiences that he enjoys, is primarily heterosexual and has psycho-sexual problems created by his relationship with his mother, now dead, and the woman he truly loved who he may or may not have actually sent to her death (well, not exactly death; you gotta love sci fi). So the book is actually about these man's psyche, yet it is placed in an absolutely fascinating world where the human race is exploiting the artifacts of an intelligent culture that hasn't even been around for at least a half a billion years.

Gateway is the name of an asteriod that was apparently a docking station for hundreds of interstellar ships this previous culture built. Humans don't know how they operate, only that they do. So "prospectors" take them out into the galaxies, looking for exploitable resources and often failing to return and dying because of exposure to various bad things. If you can get to Gateway you can sign up to be a prospector and try for the very big bucks that come to those who discover useful things. Yet, so much of the universe is absolutely a mystery to us, even with all this knowledge. And humans have no good way to investigate the technology they are using without destroying it.

I liked that aspect of it. Like the iraq war it takes for granted our immense ignorance and the way we do things anyway. Doesn't matter.

We watched the night launch of the shuttle yesterday, around 7:30 our time. We had it on for a couple of hours because Piper saw the shuttle rocket on tv and asked to see it. Of course she didnt' stay with it, but we kept it on and when it finally launched we all watched it. And Piper was very excited, as we both were. It is still a glorious, amazing site, that candle burning up to the heavens. I hear we are going to built a base on the moon. That is what Nixon should have done in the face of Watergate. Then people would remember him for something entirely different.

It's too late for George W. to get that credit. But the next president can really push this dream. Let's hope they do. After they quite squandering the treasure in the failed war in the middle east. Time to make America great again, folks. Wonder if they understand that?

We bought a small fir Yule tree yesterday and put it up and decorated it. It's lovely and Piper is thoroughly charmed by it. It was expensive by my standards, but cheap by the standards of this time. That's okay. It is pretty and it is about right. We also had a fire in the fireplace, so last night the house looked like a classic holiday card. Part of what we did yesterday was try and get gifts together for out of town family. We are so bad at this. We rarely get it together to send cards. This yeare we are trying, but it is already so late. Wish us luck.

I know that the Lady smiles on me today. I thank Her for another day of this existence. Paige called me yesterday and we had a great talk. It is a wonderful thing to have some understanding in your family. I hope you all can find that for yourselves. To the Goddess.

Be Glad

Thursday and it's like fifteen degrees here in CU. Yech. I don't mind winter, but the bitter cold can slow you down. But we have a nice new car with a heater that works, so it could be a lot worse. Plus it is a great excuse to burn some wood in the fireplace.

Kimb is in a good mood, having gotten one of her work projects (a major one that has been in play for many months) off of her plate. She was a project manager for this one, but now that it's up and running, the software is stable, she gets to become a business analyst, and get out of the project manager game. She is greatly relieved by this.

She was a great web architect, but those jobs are few and far between and the poor woman who took over her old job at the U. is working for people that are not so good at judgement in general. So Kimb is glad to have stayed with her bosses.

Politics
Well, sort of politics: Mary Cheney's pregnant and that is making the rightwing xtians go "fucking nuts" to coin a phrase. Ah those lesbians who insist on living with partners and reproducing, despite gawd's will. Well, they live in Virginia, one of the worst state's as far as gay people's rights go. The Virginians just passed a referendum denying gay people any kind of protectin at all.

So the Vice President's grandchild is basically anathema to his xtian supporters. Don't you love how the republicans and the evangelicals mix so well. In a hundred years this will be looked at with utter distaste. And that's the really funny part. The evangelicals lose, unless the culture is utterly disrupted by nuclear war, or the rapture. Of course there will be no rapture, but there could be nukes in our future. The leaders of this world seem to be stupider and more bush-like every day. That guy in Iran comes to mind.

And of course there is the Baker groups' report on Iraq: We can't win, we better get out. Covered over in nice language. You screwed up Georgie. You're just not as good as Neil, or your father. We all know this. You've made it abundantly clear, while kiling thousands of americans and hundreds of thousands of iraqis. What a loser. And anybody who denies this is not living in the real world. We are all clear on that now.

Food
This week featured a fabulous bacon and potato soup with the most recent batch of stock. It rocked and it rocked hard. The money is getting light and Yule is upon us so I am trying to do relatively inexpensive meals. It's hard and I don't even spend that much on groceries any more. Oh well. Last night was country style pork ribs and stuffed mushroom caps and rice. Nothing turned out superior. It was all rather average. But Kimb made sugar cookies from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Cookbook, and they were jolly fun.

Meanwhile I seem to be having problems in my right leg. But I have a drs' appt next week, so will get it looked at. The other interesting aspect of being today is that this morning I read some of my old prose, from the 1970s. In the 70s I wrote a bunch of novels, none well, and none what I would call finished. But I have boxes of old mansucripts, mine and many other peoples'.

This morning while looking over poems, I discovered I had out the file folder of one of the versions of Strange Sins, my reincarnation horror novel. In the front of that ms. were fifteen pages from Stories of the War, the last book I really worked on. Sort of a large weird book set in an apartment building from the 1920s, but in the 1980s at the beginning of the AIDS story. It had all these elements in it: vampire on the third floor, ghost across the hall, witch on the second floor, twin blondes living with a washed-up C&W singer on the first floor. The narrator character discovers he has AIDs and this is before the cocktails that keep folks going, so he knows he is going to die. Also he has the hots for the vampire, setting up an interesting challenge for both of them. The twins are into voodoo. The kid who lives in the basement makes stop action porno movies with barbie and ken dolls.

So I read that opening and thought to myself, this is actually pretty good. Maybe I should try and write a novel. Though I don't know where I will get the time. Just updating the blog is pretty sporadic. But I am thinking of starting a blog for the novels and putting pieces of them out there. Would anybody read them? That is always the question. I tell the young artist, the hardest thing is getting anybody's attention for more than fifteen minutes. Well, I think I may do it next week.

Meanwhile I am putting some more poems out on Homage & Apology. I did get one comment, from my daughter Paige, which I truly appreciated. I don't think anybody else is reading them, but that is really the story of my life.

I thank the Lady for Her generosity this day and every day. We take way too much for granted in this reality. True respect involves gratefulness and grace. Be Glad. It is appropriate at least a significant majority of the time. Yes it is.

Dining on High

Wednesday in another winter week. It's supposed to dip down in the single digits again tonight. My right leg, knee actually, has started to have some serious pain. Luckily I am already going in to my doctor next week, so perhaps I can get started on what is going on there. There's aging for you. You start to worry about the parts as they start to disrupt your ability to ignore them and continue on, using up that shell in which we live. Luckily there is medication.

Last night Kimberly and I went to a dinner at the Champaign Country Club, the good one in this burg. It was hosted by the guy who is running the online university foray here at the U. of I. Kimb did a lot of the work in getting this project running, and thus was invited to go. We bought a new outfit for her for the occasion. I discovered I do not have a good jacket anymore that matches the best dress pants I have. Aunt Tandy came and took care of Piper for us.

The meal itself was filet mignon, drastically overcooked. Along with potato fingerlings that were alright and some sad normal broccoli spears. We had a nice salad with a good vinaigrette. And afterward we had some pretty good peppermint flavored ice cream. The one saving grace was that the wines were very good indeed. And I had two glasses of a red, a shiraz, and a fine pinot noir.

Kimb was uptight about going and mingling with the groovy people at the top layer, but it turned out it wasn't too bad. I lucked out at dinner and sat next to a marketing consultant who had flown in from Boston and she seemed rather glad to find someone to talk cultural references with. I ended up telling her she needed to read Wicked, the novel, to distinguish it from the show, which she of course had seen. At one point the most important guy at our table was complaining about the resistance to the project (and it's a university, of course there is resistance) and he started to talk about the faculty, then he looked at me and said, "You're not faculty, are you?" And I realized, as I shook my head no, that I'm not faculty, but it is what I would've been if I had stayed in school and done the right things. At least I'd be making a living today.

But look at all the idiotic phds I know. And the ones that are on faculty is often as dumb as a neo-con. As a matter of fact they are often very similar. I will say, also, that I have known a lot of faculty that were just fine and who I enjoyed and learned from, so don't let it appear that I am tarring everyone with that brush. The fact of the matte is though that in any faculty you are going to have obstructionists, no matter what the course of things is. Rightwing, leftwing, pro-business, pro-labor. These things mean nothing when it comes to the individual kingdoms that are the hallmark of academia. Mos the these problems come about because when these guys are threatened, they haul out the big words and sound very tough, knowing that at heart they aren't really considered that important by the culture.

But I'm not faculty now, nor will I ever be faculty. I will, however, be Grandpa. And that's a role I can live with. Piper and I went shopping for Yule presents for our sweet Morgan Jane yesterday at ArtMart and we had a jolly time of it. Though now Piper wants said presents to be her's. But that is predictable.

Tonight I hope to make some country style ribs with sauce and some pork/breadcrumbs stuffed mushrooms. I hope it all comes about. We shall see what happens next.

I hope you all are well.

Thanks to the Lady for another fine day.

Poetry Posts

Old words. I've posted a number of poems from the 70s and 80s on my poetry blog, Homage & Apology. Some interesting things, plus some clear nostalgia. A poem for my girlfriend from early on, Kitty Broderick. The odd numbers, plus references to the hostage crisis in Iran. There is a sense of history, both internal and external, in this material. I would appreciate comments.

I Always Thought That I Would See You Again

Purely by chance last night we turned on one of those great performance pieces that PBS stations throw at you when they are trying to raise money. This one was a concert to fete James Taylor. Some award or the other. JT has always been someone Kimberly likes to listen to and early in our relationship I gave her a copy of Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon. I caught this show just at the time the Dixie Chicks were on and they did a most killer version of a JT song that I don't remember the title of now, but that Natalie Maines can sing brother. Later in the show Alison Krauss, our hometown girl here in CU, came out and sang "Going to Carolina" and was exquisite. Sting however botched "Close Your Eyes" or whatever it's called (from Mud Slide Slim). He threw in all these little vocal ticky things and made out like he's a diva, but of course it is a song that is blessed by its simplicity . . . "I don't know no love songs/and I can't sing the blues/anymore/but I can sing this song/and you can sing this song/when I'm gone..." So Sting was a twink once again.

Dr. John was also on, but rather pedestrian. Springsteen showed up and kicked some solo ass. Finally Carole King came out and sang "You've Got a Friend," accompanying herself on the piano. I remember getting Tapestry, the album with that song on it, on Easter day in 1971. Russell Mill opened up Akashic records because he said I needed to have that album. It sold six million copies that year, the first mega platinum lp, I believe. I had Carole's previous solo effort, Writer, and knew her as the co-author os songs like "The Locomotion" with Gerry Goffin. I knew she was friends with JT at the time, so her covering "You've Got A Friend" was not nunexpected. It's popularity, though, was huge.

While Carole was singing the song, suddenly JT comes out and starts dueting with her. She seemed genuinely surprised. It was a sweet moment because it pointed up the lyrics, over these many years. 35 now. The last thing in the show, after a rave-up number, James came out and sang "Fire and Rain." "Just yesterday morning/they let me know you were gone/Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you."

But I always thought that I'd see you again.

Isn't that really a true thought? Here, at the end of another year among 56 years, I think about those I have known and those gone on before me. And I think I always thought I'd see you again. GD and myself were talking about Karen Cooper the other day; Kareco in the old days. He hasn't seen her in 9 years and I haven't seen her in twenty some. But if she were to walk in here tomorrow I would be glad.

What does this say, if anything? That to be touched by another human being is always a sacred act, even as time's river carries us all away to the great sea. I don't know. There's sure lots of people I miss. And quite a few people who there are, as Dick Farina put it, "one or two hard feelings" about. Would I welcome them again? Probably, though I'd undoubtedly want to talk about things that would make them feel uncomfortable.

Always looking for the resolution of the story. For the meaning behind people's words and actions. What is true is that few of us are ever willing to admit it when we have done somebody wrong. How sad this is. In the struggle to live truthfully soothing the ego should be a distant second in terms of what we desire. But I have done plenty of smoothing over myself. It is always going to be this way. Call it emotional etiquette.

I do remember this girl at St. Louis U. who tried to commit suicide that first year. I remember going to see her at the hospital and having the Doctor give us a hard time for not being there for her. He was your typical catholic dickhead, using guilt to try and control people. I don't know what happened to her. She probably went home. That first year away from the safety of the nest is hard. In JT's song, though, that girl is in an institution, and in the 70s we all knew somebody that had been in the psycho ward and had had those medieval treatments. No wonder she offed herself. Suicide is a form of shock, I am convinced. The body/mind knows that it cannot survive a certain level of pain, so it turns off the pain sensors, and in the case of suicide it turns off the whole organism. I am not in favor of suicide, but I think it is far more understandable than people paint it. It's just another tactic in the biology. I myself have tried to commit suicide a couple of times fairly seriously. Now, of course, I am hanging on to every shred of every hour I have left. Pretty funny. It is true, though, now that I think about it, that I have never had a really good friend commit suicide. For that I am grateful to the Lady.

The major effect of suicide is to destroy those you are related to and who love you. And even for people who think they are alone and unloved the truth is always that there will be terrible suffering afterward. I lived with Pat Smith for 8 years and she was a case study in someone who's mother had killed herself when Pat was 13. Her younger brother was crazy, a schizophrenic, and her poor father always seemed a little lost. And Pat was a determined to last it out no matter how bad it was person. She's still with us, too. And I certainly hope she is doing well, though she is married to a seriously fucked up dickhead, John Knoll. But, maybe he is just fine now. It's been 30 years since he was a power tripping girl fucking crazy man who taped conversations and said he related to Nixon. Crazy world.

It's monday again. We had a pretty solid weekend. Kimb got the curtains for Piper's room half done, so one side is up. And they are great. She's pretty darn good at this home beautiful stuff. Piper's room is really nice, and very comfortable.

We watched the lastd Xmen movie. I don't recall the title. It was lots of CGI fun, but fairly predictable. Still, gotta love that Wolverine. And Hailey Berry is great as Storm. I liked the Jean Grey stuff in it, though she is sort of portrayed as Shiva the Destroyer. It was jolly fun.

Politics
Let me say right now that I do hope Barack Hussein Obama runs for President in 2008. I don't know if he can win, but I think it is extraordinarily important for us all to talk about what he has to say. And if he is on the ticket we will have shown the world that despite the dickheads that vote for George W. Bush, we are still a place where a guy with a father from Africa can be the voice of serious emotional change for an entire bloated culture. It could happen. It should happen.

I'd like to see Obama versus Romney. That would be a truly interesting election and might be a great deal less dirty than the last two. Still the swift boaters are out there. And the great fox propaganda machine is out there. But the Iraq war has shown a significant part of the public that Fox and the rightwing blogs and press are actually propagandists, after all. And now we can all laugh at that fact, thanks to the Daily Show and Colbert.

Maybe things will get better in '07. Let's hope so. Thanks to the Lady for another day.

Gladiator Donnie At Play in the White House

Saturday in the midwest here, though it is really east of the Mississippi. Somewhat centrally located. I grew up in Wichita, Kansas and was always told that that is the midwest. It's all how you look at it.

Now, the rumors behind the news. Rumsfield's last major memo has been leaked to the hoi polloi (that is, us) and it is full of those weird assertions he always makes, plus casting blame for how bad things are everywhere but at his own feet. The rumor that makes this most interesting is that it is Rummie himself who is leaking stuff like this and Hadley's memo from last week which oinked all over Maliki right before Georgie boy was to meet with him. A master of bureacratic payback. The only thing Donnie has ever really been good at. What a fucked up administration if this is true. These people are a bunch of despicable twits. Neither too smart, nor too lucky. Just a bunch of weiners put in charge by the denizens of industry. How many of those CEOs are kicking themselves these days and wondering which of the bunch out there is the most likely to bring a return to a normalcy they can work with. Let's face it, they liked Clinton and the Repub congress and that's what they'd like to get back.

But will it happen? I think we are gonna see Obama get punched around in such a manner that we will lose even more international crediblity. Not that the repubs give a crap about the world and our place in it. They just want their money and their ability to fuck whoever they want in private while saying in public that they are just the jolliest most moral jokers on the block. Piss on them.

In the local news, we went out and bought Piper a pair of two toned pink cowgirl boots at a place called Pards. I should admit that actually Grandma Britton, the inimiatable Arlene, financed the venture. Piper was mighty pleased with them, of course. Also today I talked with Daughter Number One, Paige, and she was in a jolly mood, on her way to Normal with Doug who was in Chi-town for a conference and wanted to drive down to BN for the night. They'll return to the city manana. I think Paige thought she would be meeting up with Marion. Hey Marion, hope you had a good time.

Kimberly is in the kitchen, hard at work on some serious big league curtains for Piper's room. The ones in there were put up in the summe and are akin to sheers. The weather has changed on us, with a vengeance as they say, and we are interested in getting the windows better covered. And Kimberly has the new sewing machine that is our xmas pres from her folks. So we picked out some really nice, and heavy, materials and she is putting together curtains from them. Hopefully she'll get them done next weekend.

For dinner I fell off the wagon and made fried pork chops and hash browns with some shoepeg white corn. It was good, but we have been eating less fat of late. Still and all it was fun for the tastebuds. Tomorrow though I have new stock for a good soup. We will see what the Queen of Soups comes up with.

Thanks to the Lady for another day. In the history of the species most of us didn't live as many as fifty years, though it is common nowadays. I am appreciative of this fact. Hope you are all living in Her love and in Her mercy.

Snow? Not So Much

Well it snowed here today, but not like they predicted. We got less than an inch, though the drive to campustown this a.m. was quite blowy and snowy. But it tailed off and now it is just cold outside. Piper is napping and I am trying to figure out what of the many things I should do I should do next.

I talked to my daughter in Chicago yesterday. She is really on her own there. Her roommates are both gone on break and Paige is just there for two weeks to work crew on a production in the evenings. This means she can sleep in and hang out every day. I envy her the lack of responsibility, but I know this is her first test of real loneliness. It's weird to be somewhere by yourself, no real friends, no family. On your own. But there is a freedom in that also.

I made stock yesterday and today and perhaps it will become soup this evening. Tomorrow is Saturday and, as always, there is plenty for us to do. I cannot quite decide to think about food yet. Yesterday I made turkey thighs and dressing and a little brown gravy. Oh, yes, and cranberry confit. I do like dark meat with confit. Very european peasant of me. We had a nice fire in the fireplace, and sort of watched tv. There's not that much on regular tv anymore, and we don't have cable. So we ambled through the evening.

Politics
The word is that Bush is planning to putoff doing anything real about Iraq to the bitter end. Then, when the next president takes over a complete failure he can blame them for it. That does sound like his psychology. I don't know why any of us are surprised. The man failed at everything he ever did. The real story is that American business interests and the Republican hierarchy decided to make him president, despite his obvious mediocrity. It shows that their view of politics is entirely about self interest. That they would foist such a loser on this once great land tells us everything we need to know about business.

And the meme on the right about the war is now that the real problem is and has always been the inherent weakness of the american people. Yes, it's our fault that we have lost the war in Iraq. There were plenty of us who said it was a stupid idea, that it was ill-planned and done on the cheap, and that we should have some idea of what we wanted to happen when it was over. But, hey, it's our fault anyway, for not being there for "the boys" and "the president" every single stupid step of the way. Have they no fucking shame?

Krauthammer (columnist for the wapo from the right side), a cheerleader from day one, is now writing in the WaPo that Bush should give the current iraqi admin two months to control the Sadrists and if they can't we should install a better government. Funny. Democracy. Aren't you supposed to get to vote for who you want? It of course turns out that in the Islamist middle east they tend to want Islamist parties. And there were always more Shi'ites than S'unnis in Iraq, so once you made it a one man one vote (which I note was pushed over the Bushies real plans by the Ayatollah Sistani) you were gonna get a religiious state, leaning towards the Iranians. And that's what we've got. And the S'unnis don't like it a bit. They know they will get screwed on the oil revenues. And they will. For having such a dickhead leader as Saddam Hussein.

And speaking of Hussein, the rightwing have discovered that that is Barack Obama's middlen name: Hussein. And they are trotting it out at every possible moment. I don't know why they are scared of him. He's a black man. No black man, not even the noble Colin Powell before his disgrace, could win an election in America. And if he did seem to be getting close some well financed cracker from the American South would put him down. You can bet on that. America, for all its pretences, is a racist country. The white guys do not like black guys, and they do not like chicanos either. That's why they need to build a big fence.

And all that racism is really truly rooted in sexual insecurities. Most white guys are like George Constanza on Seinfeld: Scared that they don't measure up. I've known a ton, and the more macho they are the more likely they are afraid that they are just too damn short in the dick department. So they spend their lives proving what "men" they are. You gotta feel sorry for their women, if they get any. Hey guys, it's all about shrinkage! That's what happens when you look closely at yourself. You shrink.

I, of course, have other problems. I grew up Roman Catholic so my life has been spent rebelling against the stupidity of the Church's rules on sexuality. You know masturbation is still a sin for an RC. Unbelievable. They don't want us touching ourselves and each other. Just stick it in occasionally to make a baby, but for Jesus sake, don't enjoy yourself. That is just wrong! Well, I have railed about Jesus's cock before, so I guess I'll let it pass today.

The year winds down to the winter solstice. I truly hope things get better for the good old us of a, and for the whole world. I appreciate the life the Lady has given me, and I appreciate that it is my life. I haven't done anything truly of note, but I also haven't spent my life as a zombie consumer in the system. I struggle for honesty. And it is a struggle. And I fail at it. But at least I struggle. At least I don't accept my worldview as necessarily the final word. I know I have been wrong, and I just hope I keep on discovering where I am wrong and changing myself to live as close to honestly as I can. Sort of the scientific method for an ethical life.

Hey, hope you are all doing well. Nobody has commented in awhile. Are you out there?