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Been to an Emergency Room lately?

Perhaps, like me, you live in a town, rather than a city or poor rural area, and assume that things are like they used to be at your local emergency hospital. That's what I assumed, if I thought about it at all. Five hours in the emergency room with a friend (she's fine now) has cleared up that misconception.

I shot that sign, above, during our wait. The sign says -- for those who can't see the image --

Thank you for your patience. The Emergency Department is experiencing unusually high patient volumes. This is causing delays.

It certainly is. 

For the entire time, I kept hoping, not only that my friend would be seen soon, but that the man across from us, his hand held up and wrapped in ice, had at least been given something for pain. Something more than ice.

I asked: Why? Why are you seeing so many more patients?

Because, I was told, so many more people are without insurance, and have nowhere else to go.

Do you think health care reform is irrelevant to your life?

If so, you are mistaken.

[By the way, the 911 folks were wonderful. What a great job!

And what do you do? 

Oh, I save lives.]

Inaugural Poem * by Elizabeth Alexander

UPDATE: Here, courtesy of RCH, is the poet's version of the poem, with line breaks: Praise Song for the Day. This version, though, is copywrighted, so I don't feel comfortable posting it here -- even though it seems to me that this poem, of any, should belong to any of us.

So below is the transcript from the New York Times:

* ~ *

Praise Song for the Day

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

* ~ *

This is from the NYT transcript; I don't know whether the poet's own version has more line breaks. It may.

Already I've seen that some find it too prosaic; they wanted something with more grandeur. I quite like it.

What do you think?

Martin Luther King Day

I have always felt ambivalent about this day. I feel the call, of course, to celebrate Dr. King's life; but each year instead, I remember how he died, and grieve.

But not this year. Today I feel celebratory. I feel hopeful. I feel, at last, filled with joy.

Today, I look forward to tomorrow.

Veterans Day

Why do we keep making war veterans?

Is it written in a rule book somewhere?

Is it written in our genes?

Dear President-Elect Obama:

Re: Fireside Chats

Let's have these again. Minus the fireplace. (Maybe a solar-powered atrium. Maybe the Oval Office.)

Forget the weekly radio broadcasts; or, don't forget them, but make them weekly television programs and video podcasts. [I will confess right here that I have never, not once, listened to the President's weekly radio broadcast.] These should be long enough to contain substance; perhaps one half-hour each.

You will be too busy to do one every week -- at least, one worth doing -- but you could do one each month, and have surrogates do the others. They might speak to whatever is timely, in the economy, or foreign policy, or new programs for health care and education.

The point would be to educate and update the citizens on what the government is doing; what the reasoning is for such action; and the anticipated obstacles and goals. The presentations must not be partisan. They must be from the position of governance and information, not persuasion.

Yes, tricky, I know.

But these surrogates should not be experts in talking points; they must be willing and able to present content, context, and transparency. Perhaps they might even answer questions submitted by viewers; if not immediately, then within a few days in writing. Pick, say, the five major 'themes' of the questions, and respond to those, and perhaps the occasional amusing outlier. I'm guessing that both Colin Powell and Michelle Obama would be good at this, but I'm sure you have access to many talented people who could pull this off, as a service to the nation.

But you, as President, should speak to the larger and more fundamental, issues. It has become painfully -- dangerously -- apparent that much of our population is almost completely unfamiliar with our founding documents: The Declaration of Independence; The Constitution; The Bill of Rights. And these, luckily, are your particular area of expertise, as well as where we most, I think, need leadership and clarification.

What binds us together as a people (or should) is not shared religion, or shared ethnicity, or even a shared language. What binds us together is the ideas and ideals expressed in these documents. These great achievements in idealism and pragmatism; structure and flexibility. But when many of us do not know these documents, the binding becomes frayed. We do not stand together; we fall apart; we are easily divided.

What I imagine is a real-time lesson on history, current affairs, and our Constitution. There are no links to our original documents on the CHANGE.GOV site; there should be. Maybe one of the first requests you make of us should be to read them, even before asking us to change our light bulbs or volunteer for service.

I am not suggesting a dry course on early documents. I am suggesting that you present whatever issue is most current, most insistent -- and help us understand how we, as Americans, might go about addressing them -- with reference to what makes us Americans. A sort of sneaky course on what America means, has been, might become.

These presentations should be so good -- like the Edge presentations -- that no school feels compelled to require their use in classrooms. Students and teachers will want to use them. Citizens will want to know what's in them. Young people will send them back and forth on YouTube and Facebook.

The government, and the governors, have drifted far from the people. I believe this can change. I believe that you can be a part of our lives, and we can be a part of yours in more than a philosophical way. You have led me to believe this.

I think that this regular contact might be one way to accomplish it.

In admiration and respect,

Sharon Brogan
Citizen of the United States of America

  

Send your own letter:

My brain needs longer arms ...

... as I try to wrap my mind around this, in some concrete way I can understand.

  

Confetti
Originally uploaded by ADoseofShipBoy

We have a House (a real house), and a House Owner, and a House Buyer. The House Owner and the House Buyer work to find a Real Estate Agent to make a match. The House Buyers think they can afford a little house, but the Realtor finds them a big one s/he says they can afford, and matches them up with a Mortgage Broker. The Broker works up some numbers, and the House Buyers are concerned; the payment promises to increase over the next few years.

Not to worry, says the Broker, says the Realtor -- the value of your house will just go up and up and you can refinance later at a lower rate.

Elsewhere

I actually blogged today, but it's about politics, so I put it on Open Salon: Unpopular Opinions.

If you like to think of me as a mellow, spiritual poet, don't go there.

July 4th

[This poem's lines are too long for the column, so I've posted it as an image. You will find the text, with broken lines, below the cut.]

Bobby Kennedy

Forty years ago I was a student at a business school in Billings, Montana. I wanted to go to college, and my father said he'd help pay the way, but only if I went to business (secretarial) school first: something to fall back on. We had a dress code, I remember; jackets and ties for the men, and skirts, of course, for the women.

June 5, 1968, was an ordinary day. I have no recollection of it at all, until my brother called me late in the evening. My brother, who at seventeen had lied about his age, was with the McCarthy campaign in Los Angeles, and called to tell me to turn on the television. I spent most of the night watching the black-and-white t.v., and talking with my brother on the phone. Because he was there, I knew before it was reported that Bobby Kennedy had died.

It had been just five years since President Kennedy was killed, and only two months since the Martin Luther King assassination. Too many times in my young life I had sat in front of a television grieving the loss of hope. What did my generation learn from these losses?

The next morning I called to see if school would be in session, and it was, so I went. I went partly, I think, to be with other people, other Americans; others who had the same experience I did.

But they didn't have the same experience.

I was three classes into the day before the events of the night before were mentioned, and I'm the one who brought it up. I had always felt that this was another world, a world where I did not belong, but I hadn't realized just how drastically different it was. Here, at a conservative business school in 1968, the assassination of a Kennedy did not even merit mention. It was irrelevant.

I remember that day now as a blur of pain and confusion. The surreal quality had less to do with this -- to me, significant -- death, than the disinterest of the world around me. This was my first hard lesson in the different Americas. This was when I learned that we can live in one country, but different worlds. This is when I understood, in my gut, how it was that people could pretend there was no poverty, no discrimination, no undeserved suffering in our United States.

We still pretend. We still buy the pretense.

And some of us still experience anxiety in our gut when a new charismatic leader emerges, who reminds us that there is poverty, there is discrimination, there is undeserved suffering, and there is hope.

MLK Day

I wanted to write, yesterday, about Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a day to celebrate his birthday, his life, and his dream -- but what took over my memory was the day in April that he was killed. That day, forty years ago, came back to me, with all its rage and despair. I was nineteen. I remember wanting to destroy ... something. I wanted to throw the television at the wall, but I wanted to know what was happening.

At that age -- so young -- I really understood only the surface (or perhaps the root?) of King's vision. For me, then, it was so simple. I was still child enough to want -- to expect -- the world to be fair. Just that, only that. Fairness. Justice.

It would be many years later that I began to understand the subtleties of racism, including my own; that assumption that white (and male, and heterosexual) is normal, and all else is subordinate. I did have a breakthrough of sorts in my mid-twenties, when I realized that being black is no guarantee against narrow-mindedness, sexism, and general idiocy. Oh, yeah, that's right -- we're all human.

Yes, things have changed. I see my young friends grow into different assumptions, different expectations. I remember the first time I saw a black and a white singer performing, together, a love duet. Though I was quite young, and no longer remember who the performers were (was the man black, and the woman white, or vice versa?) I do remember that almost physical shock, that knowing this was something important; something bigger than a love song. 

My young friends don't look twice at interracial couples. They don't have to stop and realize, when asked out by someone unlike them, that the only reason they would have to say no is exactly that difference. They seem to feel nothing in particular about voting in a presidential election with a black or a woman candidate -- I mean, nothing in particular beyond a certain academic interest in the possibility of making history.

It's not that, for me. For me, it's some combination of victory and despair. Look how far we've come!

And -- look how far we have to go. The crevasse between rich and poor grows wider and wider. We live in a country wandering -- being led -- away from our values, the values Martin Luther King represented and fought for. We live in a country that leaves its poor black citizens on rooftops for days, and then forgets.

It was so much simpler when I was nineteen. Things were right, or wrong, and that was all there was to it. I didn't realize that right, and wrong, are all mixed up in me. And in others. I didn't know that forty years later I still would not know whether to celebrate, or despair.

       

I Have This to Say About That

Don't those pollsters know
that married women
lie in the presence
of their husbands?

They lie mostly about
money and politics.
And sex. That, too.
They sneak shopping bags
in the back door.

If their husbands notice
something new,
they say, "What?
This ole thing?"
And when they pull

that poll booth curtain
closed, who's to know?
And white women, well,
they'll vote for a woman
or a black man

without flinching. And smile
while they do it. Just like   
they smile when asked
"Was it good for you, too,
honey?" "Why, yes,"

they say. "Yes."

 

[This poem has been published at New Verse News.]

UPDATED 15 JAN: I've posted a response to comments on this poem here:  Politics & Poetics

Janus

From Wikipedia:

In Roman mythology, Janus (or Ianus) was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings. His most apparent remnants in modern culture are his namesakes, the month of January and the caretaker of doors and halls: Janitor.

...Janus was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, the growing up of young people, and of one universe to another. He was also known as the figure representing time because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other.

This is the time we look ahead, and back. A time for reflection, as light slowly grows again here in the north. So here's a question: a year from now, what do you want to see, when you look back?

World AIDS Day

  Sunset on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
  for Judd Polivka 1940-1992

In afternoon, sun
becomes more precious, spare
near evening, as it falls
toward that spot, there

on the mountain. That far
spot, where trees thin
and shale shows through. 

You can see the shape
of the world there
at the curving edge
of sky. 

In the last moment
sagebrush burns
red. Then

stars. Pale
and countless
as dust

       as ashes.

 

World AIDS Campaign

Remembrance Day

 

MP3 File

When they brought my father out
of Germany, he weighed ninety-two
pounds. He had no tolerance
for picky eaters.
                         Was he still
a boy then? Was he kind?
    They could leave the camp
but had nowhere to go.
    A brass key to a church, where
sometimes there was food. Then
    back through the foreign woods.
                         Who might he have been?
If not for this? Did he dream, ever,
of people burning beneath his plane?
                         Does it matter?
    What counts against him?
    What weighs in his favor?
                         Who has the right
to measure?

 

Stephen Colbert for President!

Finally, a right-thinking emoting pseudo-candidate whose fake political positions I can artificially support!

AMBER ALERT

Amber Alert Cancelled, Person has been located and is ok

nevermind... 

Nice? Kind? PINK?

It seems everywhere I look these days, I see pink.

I came across this somewhere (I thought it was Liz Elayne's blog, but when I went back, I couldn't find it; a Google search unearthed it.)

By posting this badge, I'm declaring that in addition to humour, intelligence, wit, sadness, snarkiness, passion, exuberance, peace, stillness, excitability, anger or any other emotion you may witness on my site:

1) I will never intentionally hurt other people, whether I know them or not, whether they blog or not, whether they're celebrities or not, either through my words or my images. It's just not my style; and

2)  I hope that by the time you've clicked away from my site, I've helped in some way to make your day just a little bit better.

Signed,

Me

A lovely idea, and a lovely image. And I thought:

• I'm trying to cut back on sidebar stuff; and
• I'm not qualified for this, anyway.

Then I thought some more, and I decided -- I am kind. I may be sometimes oblivious, and sometimes clumsy, but I am rarely (deliberately) unkind.

Very rarely.

But I'm not nice.

DoppelMe via Google Blogoscoped

I looked them up, to be sure:

nice  (ns)
adj. nic·er, nic·est
1. Pleasing and agreeable in nature: had a nice time.
2. Having a pleasant or attractive appearance: a nice dress; a nice face.
3. Exhibiting courtesy and politeness: a nice gesture.
4. Of good character and reputation; respectable.
5. Overdelicate or fastidious; fussy.
6. Showing or requiring great precision or sensitive discernment; subtle: a nice distinction; a nice sense of style.
7. Done with delicacy and skill: a nice bit of craft.

Well, OK, I hope for #6 and #7, but the others -- ummm -- maybe not.

Then we have:

kind 1  (knd)
adj. kind·er, kind·est
1. Of a friendly, generous, or warm-hearted nature.
2. Showing sympathy or understanding; charitable: a kind word.
3. Humane; considerate: kind to animals.
4. Forbearing; tolerant: Our neighbor was very kind about the window we broke.
5. Generous; liberal: kind words of praise.

This is more descriptive of me, I think. I'm told.

My FairyGoddessDaughter, Abigail, tells me that I am "relentlessly perceptive, and relentlessly honest." Honesty is sometimes not nice -- but is it really kind to be dishonest? Is it a kindness to pretend?

I think I'm more like Shelley in this (though not as clever.)

One of the things that bewilders me about niceness advocates is the theory that one should pretend to accept thin excuses and lies. Would you rather be liked (even loved) for what you pretend to be, or for your wholeness, including even those bits that you think you've hidden from the world? Do you angrily reject those who really know you?

Foolish you.

Foolish me, at times.

More pink:

9/11

Women's Equality Day

Today is Women's Equality Day.

I discovered the women's movement sometime in the late 1960's, when I was about 21 years old. Gloria Steinem came to speak at our campus. I went to hear her, because I recognized her name from articles in one of the magazines I was fond of; Glamour, I think.

Irony is my watchword.

When Steinem began to speak, she warned her audience that if we were happy with our lives as they were, we should leave. Some did.

I stayed, because I wanted to hear what Steinem had to say. And she was quite right to warn us; it changed my life. I sat there, and almost physically experienced my world shift -- that famous click. The veil lifted. It was a conversion experience.

War | this is not a poem

To be 17, or 18, 19 or 20;
filled with certainties,
as we all are at that age.

To be given a rifle ("This is my weapon;
this is my gun!" the soldiers sang as they marched.
"This is for killing; this is for fun!")

What do they sing now, with women in their ranks?

Most of us here, in The West, grow up with only a slight idea
of what humans are capable of doing to one another.
We are innocents.

They are innocents, though they believe themselves to be
tough, trained, invincible. They are children.

Then they are thrown into the slaughterhouse,
and thrown back again.
And now, again.

Where the only protection, the only ground to stand on
is fierce loyalty to a chosen few,
and fierce rage at an amorphous many:
sometimes the enemy; sometimes the officers;
sometimes anyone near.

Sometimes themselves.

This fierceness may deepen to understanding, to compassion;
but more easily hardens into a coldness
cloaked with a kind of sentimentality,
a false nostalgia. They become vulnerable
to propaganda. To patriotism.

They are "broken".
This brokenness is intended;
it is planned, and mercilessly imposed upon them.
It makes them marines, soldiers, sailors.
It makes them men.

(What does it make the women?)

Some were broken to begin with.

Many come home in physical and metaphorical pieces.
Some will not come home.

Those of my generation remember, and that is what we fear
and fight and flail against as this war goes on and on.

How many -- any? -- of us were not directly affected
by the Vietnam war? Did not have husbands, cousins,
classmates, brothers, lovers,
go off to that changing and hardening place?

I had a lover, a Green Beret. Once, in the night,
I startled him awake. I no longer remember --
was this inadvertent? Was I teasing?

There was no time for fear, he had me down  so fast
with his arm across my throat.

It was as he paced off the adrenaline and regret
that my fear and shock took hold,  and I sat on the bed,
shaking in the sheets, as he told me:
"Never, never do that again. Never surprise a soldier
in the dark. I might have killed you. I nearly killed you."

This man never showed me any threat or violence
on any other occasion. One of the few regrets of my life
was to be so young, so foolish, so naive,
as to allow myself to be seduced away from this man.

He never spoke of the war.
Did I ask?
I don't remember.

And there are others -- men drunk in the park;
men closed like vaults in the therapy room;
the man who pulled his pistol from the glove compartment
on our first (drive-in movie) date --

Men who came home to spend their lives making amends,
without ever disclosing their self-named crimes.
Men with great authority, who organized marches,
and wore their medals on the line.

Men who swallowed their guns.

Now, today, it is possible to know no one in this fight.
To read the names, to see the faces in the paper,
and recognize none of them.

There have been losses in my town,
but I did not know them.

Am I to grieve these near strangers more than I grieve
those other, far strangers shredded by bombs;
displaced by fear; kidnapped, bound, tortured, and shot;
the women and their children in poverty,
selling themselves to survive; the men,
once proud, now merely -- angry?

Are they not also my neighbors?
My spouses, my children, my cousins, my lovers?

How does one take a stand in this --
conflict, engagement, fight, war?

Tell me, which side is which?

When I was 17, 18, 19 -- I knew. I was full of certainty.

Does it worry you, now, that our leaders --
leaders of my generation --
are so filled with certainty today? That they speak --

and send others to act --

with the arrogance of adolescence?

It is 1:33 in the morning here.
The air is full of smoke.
We are at war
and I don't know what to do.

[for fp]

NEW POST!

Cathy wants a NEW POST!, and she's not alone.

So I sit here, looking at the blank New Post screen, wondering why it's been blank for so long. At the same time, I'm watching the news, and it occurs to me that the difficulty is that reality has become too amorphous for me to write about. The world has become, if not unreal, surreal.

How does a poet tell the truth, when truth becomes so elusive; so apparently insignificant?

I know this is not new. I've seen a lot of politics in my life. I remember watching, with my Grandad, the McCarthy hearings, and the Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy.  A tiny television; a technological marvel bringing us the (North American) world in black & white.

My Grandma, near the end of her life, told me that one of her greatest regrets in life was the vote she cast for Richard Nixon. A life-long Democrat, she was frightened; she was afraid; she believed the lies.

So it's not that the obfuscation of politics is new to me. I've even noted the current version here, and here.

Perhaps my tolerance has diminished.

But this era of sanctimonious prevarication seems so much worse. Our tolerance of it, as citizens, seems so much higher. Our Fourth Estate, now seemingly recovered from its post-Katrina outrage, has once again retreated into referee mode.

Well, not entirely.  But I still see "reporters" "interviewing"  this side, then that side, as if totally conflicting -- and clearly verifiable, or not -- facts have equal weight.  Fact-checking, alas, continues to be rare.

This is the scary part. The unnamed White House aide (could it have been Scooter Libby?) told  Ron Suskind of The New York Times:

"...when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

And he (I'm assuming a he) was right. They have created their own reality. They can do what they like, and they do.

I can study what they do. I can try to discern the actual reality beneath the created one.

But I cannot write.

Fibromyalgia Awareness Day

Non-blogging friends Joe & Charlene sent a note reminding me that today is the day to help remind others -- who are not otherwise daily reminded -- of what Fibromyalgia is.

If only we knew.

But we do know how it effects the lives of some who have it.

A few years ago this was known as International ME/CFS/Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, but an internet search today doesn't find that. Many of us have been diagnosed with both (and several other) conditions; my reading hasn't clarified for me what the difference is, except that folks with M.E./CFIDS are really tired, and folks with Fibromyalgia really hurt -- but most with either suffer both.

 

I look at that butterfly on the logo up there, and I know that we (patients) are expected to be hopeful and cheerful and spiritual and all that, but I gotta tell ya -- this illness does not feel like emerging, bright and beginning, from some cocooned metamorphosis.

Nope.

Just doesn't.

[Oh -- and I have a bunch of resources listed on the sidebar of Abide, if you'd like to have actual information about these conditions...]

 

Valentines

That's Cloud and Blue up there, cooing at each other. I chose them to tell you how much I appreciate you. All of you, who keep coming to visit, and add your thoughts to the Introduction Post, even though I've been mostly absent for a month now.

I'm almost back, though. The drawing class ended last Friday, and my energy will soon turn back to this.

Thank you so much for your patience!

Richard and Judd

Today, at the market, a middle-aged couple, squeezing
tomatoes. They remind me of you, one gaunt, grey,
with sharp cheekbones; the other large and reddish.

I remember you exiting the plane at the Missoula airport,
both in huge fur coats, New York queers and proud
of it. Christmas, and you two glittered and grinned

brighter than the trees. I wish I could tell you, again,
how you filled up my house with your games and quarrels,
and how I miss you now, all the empty corners. Every day

there is something I wish I could tell you. A woman
at my office has a Mariachi band made of stuffed frogs
and tin guitars. I am making a garden, dreaming

into spring, pale daffodils, crocus, orange columbine. 
The sunroom will have a heated floor of satillo tile.
I gave your buffalo robe to a Chickasaw poet, who one day

will give it to her daughter, and she to hers. I have tried
to put your things where they belong. The Hudson Bay painting
to a man who never loved a picture before. Your gold

LaBaron convertible to the artist who painted the woods
you went into, finally. Sometimes I look for you there. 
Are you where you belong?

   

Veteran's Day

Thank you, neighbors, for the subject of today's photo.

But most importantly, for your service.

Watching. Waiting.

So here I am, glued -- at the same time -- to cable news and the internet. Thinking.

So this will be a thinking post, possibly updated as the evening progresses. You know this isn't a news site -- go elsewhere to keep up.

The pundits are all listing the following four issues: Iraq. Terrorism. The Economy. Corruption.

There seems to be some surprise that corruption is such an issue for voters; everyone (those who are supposed to know) expected it to be Iraq Iraq Iraq . . .

But why are these seen as separate issues? Doesn't corruption run through all the others?

Surely voters have noticed that the administration has been dishonest (corrupt) about the war; that huge military contracts have been granted with questionable (corrupt) oversight; that the poor -- who are getting poorer -- were left on rooftops at least partly due to nepotism (corruption) and incompetence; and that a number of very public people have turned out to not embody the values they espouse. That they are, in other words, corrupt:

1. guilty of dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked...
2. debased in character; depraved; perverted; wicked; evil...

Are you surprised?

Oh, yes -- then there's torture -- speaking of corrupt. Do Americans really feel comfortable about endorsing torture? Do Americans really believe that their president ought to be able to 'interpret' the Geneva Convention? Is our loyalty to party and president, or to country and consitution?

I guess we'll find out.

From The Huffington Post:

The Associated Press has just posted a piece on its exit polls, and just like CNN's exit polls found, AP is finding that corruption is a key issue driving voters today. AP's exit numbers are also finding a surprisingly high number of evangelicals going Dem, a trend that many political analysts noted early in the cycle.

One-third -- that's 33% -- of the evangelical vote is said to have gone Democratic. If this is true, it really is a sea change. Perhaps it indicates hope for a return to values we really do share: fairness, equality,  justice, democracy -- our Constitution; our Bill of Rights. Our shared freedom of religion. 

Thoughtfulness. 

As I go, exhausted, to my bed, it seems we are about to have the first woman Speaker in history. How could I not be pleased with that? And it seems Tester will take the race here in Montana, though that has not been called.

I go to bed hoping that our new Congress, whatever its makeup, will realize that this wave was not pro-Democrat; nor, do I think, it was anti-war -- Lieberman, after all, survived handily.

I think it was pro-governing. I think we want those who represent us to actually govern: competently, ethically, thoughtfully. Cooperatively.

To govern in this, real, world -- not in some idealogical, science-denying, made-up reality. Not for self-interest, but in service.

Good night. And may the next few years be better.

Election Day

You Are 40% Democrat

You're a bit Democrat, and probably more liberal than you realize. If you're still voting Republican, maybe it's time that you stop.

How Democrat Are You?

   

You Are 12% Republican

If you have anything in common with the Republican party, it's by sheer chance. You're a staunch liberal, and nothing is going to change that!

How Republican Are You?
   

This must mean I'm 48% something else.

No surprise there.

The Same Rant, Again

I just feel compelled to repost this:

. . . The very individuals who speak with disdain of the private, adult sexual lives of others, suddenly become coy about the exploitation of teenagers in their care. Those who condemn others for -- sadly -- ordinary sexual indiscretions, are publicly and undeniably revealed to have committed the same (or worse, more destructive) sins, but are somehow exempt.

Because they are sorry. Because they are religious. Because God forgives them and so should you. Because they are Republican. Because such behavior should now be considered private and irrelevant, where it was previously considered 'fair game'. . .

. . . Just as most rape and child molestation is not about sex, the core of these scandals is not about sex, either. It's about hypocrisy, greed, abuse of power (which is, after all, what many who have too much do with it), selfishness, narcissism, and the arrogance of the untouchable. But criminality -- the abuse and deception and exploitation of the weak and uninformed and easily led -- uses the same techniques, in both the commission of the crime and the denial of responsibility . . .

Another Confession from my Dark Side

On my way to the grocery store today, I saw this bumpersticker:

Mr. Cheney, would you please take Conrad hunting?

I laughed for two blocks.

But I did feel guilty.

Politics & Criminals | A Rant

Watching the national news has taken me back to my working days -- days spent in rooms with criminals, wife-batterers, rapists, child molesters, murderers -- few of whom accepted responsibility for their own behavior. And living in this country is feeling a bit like dealing with the offenders' families and communities -- firmly in denial.

Denial. Blame. Minimization. Distraction. All classic maneuvers.

While the offense may come from the perpetrator himself, the crimes could often not occur -- at least not repeatedly -- without the silence and/or active collusion of family, employers, friends, churches -- all the organizations and individuals that move to protect and 'forgive' the offender; and often to blame the victim. In the refusal to accept the evidence. In the protection of one's own position, income, influence, at the cost of honesty, recompense, accountability.

The very individuals who speak with disdain of the private, adult sexual lives of others, suddenly become coy about the exploitation of teenagers in their care. Those who condemn others for -- sadly -- ordinary sexual indiscretions, are publicly and undeniably revealed to have committed the same (or worse, more destructive) sins, but are somehow exempt.

Because they are sorry. Because they are religious. Because God forgives them and so should you. Because they are Republican. Because such behavior should now be considered private and irrelevant, where it was previously considered 'fair game'.

The very individuals who lecture about family values and the degeneration of American Culture, apparently consider financial and ethical shenanigans involving the public trust -- and the public purse -- perfectly legitimate. Misdirection, double-speak, and outright lies are just part of the game. What's a few hundred thousand in cash or golf abroad from lobbyists? It's a coincidence that subsequent votes were to the benefit of said lobbyists' clients. Just a perk of the job. Everybody does it.

He's one of ours, after all. As long as he's one of ours, he didn't do it. Or, if he did it, it's not his fault. He was seduced, entrapped, confused. Victimized. He promised not to do it again.

Or, if he did it, and we can't slip him past it, then it's all his fault. No one else was involved. We didn't know. Or, if we knew, we thought he had quit doing it. Or we didn't understand how bad it was. Or -- no -- actually, we didn't know. He lied to us.

The victim(s) lied to us. OK, they told us, but how were we to believe such outrageous accusations against such a fine upstanding person / corporation? There was no evidence. The evidence was unconvincing. The evidence didn't fit our ideology. There was no room in our world view for this evidence.

Well, so there was evidence, and we did know, and we knew it was bad -- but the real crime is how the system (the child protection workers; the cops; the media; the prosecutor; the judge; the opposition party) handled/ leaked/ took advantage of this relatively minor problem. It's been escalated beyond all proportion.

We will deal with it ourselves. He's in treatment; we've instituted new policies; we fined the corporation. No further attention -- no further investigation -- is required. We all need to move on.

I once sat in a room with a man who had molested his three daughters, his two granddaughters, for decades. He assaulted another man in the group for 'taking the name of the Lord in vain'. He was a Christian, you see; and therefore superior to the other man -- who was not, in fact, an offender, but a therapist.

A devout Catholic therapist, as it happens.

Just as most rape and child molestation is not about sex, the core of these scandals is not about sex, either. It's about hypocrisy, greed, abuse of power (which is, after all, what many who have too much do with it), selfishness, narcissism, and the arrogance of the untouchable. But criminality -- the abuse and deception and exploitation of the weak and uninformed and easily led -- uses the same techniques, in both the commission of the crime and the denial of responsibility.

We have seen all of this in the past few weeks. In the past months; in the past years -- as military contracts are let without bids to companies with connections, which are then not held to the terms of the contracts. In the public flaying of those who question the war and so 'don't support the troops' by the very people who refuse to provide our soldiers with sufficient equipment and armor. In the pretense that we don't torture. In the lies about who knew what, and when.

It's about votes. It's about money.

But really, right down to it, it's about power.

Yes, I know this post should be dense with links, but it's the middle of the night, and you know what I'm talking about. If you have links you think I should add, send them on.

I do want to thank Ryan, though, for his series of posts that helped clarify for me these connections, the cause of my recent agitation.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Constitution Day

A timely reminder of what we hope to be.

GENERAL COLIN POWELL WILL LEAD THE NATIONWIDE ANNUAL TRADITIONAL RECITATION OF THE PREAMBLE TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2006 (11AM PST/ 2PM EST).

 

The Constitution of the United States

Article I • Article II • Article III • Article IV • Article V • Article VI • Article VII

The signing of the Constitution took place on September 17, 1787, at the Pennsylvania State House (now called Independence Hall) in Philadelphia.

  PREAMBLE

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

9/11

Meet the Montana Political Bloggers

  Montana’s online activists are changing the balance of power in Democratic politics. Would you let these men drive your campaign?

Thus asks the Missoula Independent, in an article by John S. Adams, available online. The article is based on a birthday party for Jon Tester, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, so most of the bloggers present were from that side of the political spectrum -- but the article is broader than that:

Democrats across the country are taking notice of the new power-shifting movement within their party. The netroots are doing a better job of organizing grassroots support and framing issues than many highly paid political consultants, and they’re doing it for almost nothing. In a Montana U.S. Senate campaign that could see spending top $10 million (most of that coming from Burns’ war chest) Tester has embraced that movement and is relying heavily on the netroots to help him defeat the incumbent come November.

There are photos and profiles of several folks with whom we are familiar, if not personally, then blogally: Wulfgar!, Shane Mason, Pogie, Eric Coobs, Matt Singer, and Touchstone.

Hmm, no women. Interesting.

[Crossposted from The Big Sky Blog]

Anniversary

Last year, about this time, I was in a funk before Katrina struck, and then -- in my deep nest in front of the television -- sunk further down.

I watched Americans pleading for help that did not come, and did not come -- knowing with a dark certainty at my center that if these Americans had been white and shiny, waving from Connecticut roofs, help would have come much sooner. And yes, I do, still, believe this.

I thought I would never forget; I thought I would remember every day.

But I do forget. Days have passed without thought of this; a thoughtlessness that I, white and northern and safe (as safe as any of us) in my little house, can afford.

I checked the Thesaurus; nearly all synonyms for anniversary are celebratory: ceremony, festival, holiday... 

Last year, I was wordless for some time. Today, I repost the first poem I wrote after Katrina-- a commemoration:

Snapshot 21 September 02005

bird cries lift me
from the shallow
surface of sleep

while i slept
flood walls broke
southern cities drowned

these northern hills
bleached tan
the maples turn

birches rustle
storms swirl
lifting the sea

south and north
autumn comes
north and south

the darkening

 

 

Equality Day

At the behest of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), in 1971 the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.”

The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.  This was the culmination of a massive, peaceful civil rights movement by women that had its formal beginnings in 1848 at the world’s first women’s rights convention, in Seneca Falls, New York.

We take this for granted, but my grandmother didn't. Montana gave women the right to vote in 1914, and then elected the first female member of Congress. From Wikipedia:

Jeannette Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the first female member of Congress. A Republican and a lifelong pacifist, she was the only member of Congress to vote against United States entry into both World War I and World War II. Additionally, she led resistance to the Vietnam War.           

Jeannette Rankin was born not far from where I'm sitting right now, and her work continues at the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center here in Missoula.

Take the NWHP Women's Equality Day Quiz!, then update your herstory.

small poem

father's day
    how he bent
    over his cane

    

Squirrel Blossom

These may be rat-faced, sneaky, Machiavellian, greedy, manipulative, tricky little rodents, but they are actually innocent.

666

There are many cheerful things I could blog about -- I have a list, including that today is GoddessDaughter's birthday -- but for some time now I've been distracted by a confluence in the news: many stories about this being 25 years since AIDS began to devastate our communities; and our Christian President's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I lost my brother, Richard Julian Brogan, to AIDS in October of 1986, and his partner, Judd Polivka -- my best friend -- in 1992. Richard was one of the earliest diagnosed, in 1982; and one of the longest-lived at the time of his death.

I was with him in the New Jersey hospital, where staff who objected were permitted to not treat, nurse, or touch him; were allowed to refuse to clean his room; could decline to provide respiratory or other therapy to ease him.

I was with him in Minnesota when a fall down the stairs left him unconscious, then aphasic and confused -- and the 911 medics put on their gloves and masks, set him on a hard backed chair, and left him there with me.

I was with him in New York, where taxis would slow, then speed away at the sight of this frail, sick man; where pharmacies had lines of gaunt dying men stretching past their doors.

It was a time when science was ignored in favor of fear and hate -- like today.

To those who seek evil in this coincidence of numbers, let me tell you -- I have seen it. It is here, right here, in our own hearts. It is the willingness to follow our fear instead of our love, instead of our god-given intelligence.

It is ordinary, everyday selfishness; the willingness to put one's own brief pleasure -- that rush of sexuality, or superiority, or smugness -- above the safety and security of our neighbor, our child, this stranger.

It is in the casual cynicism of politicians who will manipulate our ignorance and fear to their advantage.

I have sat in barred rooms with men who had committed terrible acts against others, and felt less contaminated, less evil, than I have felt in public rooms where bigots, wrapped in the jewelry of religion, declaimed their hate.

How willing we were to blame the victims of this plague, to call it homosexual -- still. Even with a full third of the young and heterosexual populations of some countries infected. And now, in this civilized, western, christianist country, some are actually willing to defend institutionalizing bigotry; the amendment of our brilliant constitution to exclude a portion of our population from its rights and responsibilities. These, our own brothers and sisters; our own children.

My heart hurts.

Memorial Day

When they brought my father out
of Germany, he weighed ninety-two
pounds.
            Was he still
a boy then? Was he kind?

    They could leave the camp
but had nowhere to go.
    A brass key to a church, where
sometimes there was food. Then
    back through the foreign woods.

                         Who might he have been?
If not for this? Did he dream, ever,
of people burning beneath his plane?
                         Does it matter?
    For years his medals rested

in a velvet box, passed from wife to wife.
   What counts against him?
    What weighs in his favor?
                         Who has the right
to measure?

I struggled for some time about what to post today, and finally decided on this somewhat revised version of a NaPoWriMo piece.

Will we ever have no need for this day?

Snapshot 08 March 02006

Today is International Women's Day. Below are the results of searches (today) for woman women on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, and BBC News:

[I decided to put this below the cut, since it's both boring and distressing.]

ADDENDUM:

I just discovered, from vegankid, via Bad Feminist via Fetch me my axe, that today is also Blog Against Sexism Day. Which I just did. Which I try to do, always -- even when you don't notice.

Howard Fineman on Countdown

Fineman, to Olberman, re: UAE port purchase:

The President has a lot of credibility when he claims ignorance.

I swear. I heard it.

Another Glimpse of My Dark Side

When the news popped up on my television, the text below one of the classic Cheney sneer photos:  Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter --

I laughed. Out loud. Before even knowing the condition of the victim.

It just seemed so . . . emblematic:

• All available intelligence indicated that there were quail there.
  
• No one anticipated that there might be a person there.
  
• Collateral damage is regrettable, but sometimes unavoidable.
  
• The person did not comply with the terms of the hunting treaty.
  
• He looked like quail to me.
  
• Direct threats require decisive action.

I know it's not really funny. This aspect of my character is why I decided against pursuing a law degree; I knew I would be a good (as in: competent) lawyer, but what part of me might have bloomed, one shudders to think.

Year of the Dog

So, we all know it's the Year of the Dog, right?

Are we treating our best friends with the deference they feel they deserve? I certainly hope not.

Who, me? I'm a Rat.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

From The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research & Education Institute

I think that Patia chose the perfect thing to point to today:

Martin Luther King Jr.'s
Six Principles of Nonviolence

1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
2. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.
4. Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform.
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
6. Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

I wish it were easier to believe that last one.

A New Year

I've let my pens dry out again. It's been so long since I just wrote; oddly, the keyboard suits me better now. Another change.

Everywhere, people are making resolutions, and at How to Save the World, Dave is doing the imagination exercise. This exercise -- imagine yourself in the future, one year, or five years -- has been useful for me in the past; but now I resist. It's disappointment that I resist, I think -- even though I've not been disappointed when I've done this in years (many years) past.

Still, I managed a list that can be imagined without reference to fatigue, or illness -- which does not matter, really; which need not intrude on small pleasures. All that matters is that I value my own creativity enough -- for it to be -- enough.

I recently joined Brainstorms, an online community, which did a New Year exercise called Daypix, in which we recorded our days photographically from Saturday through Monday. People from all around the world participated; folks in Australia complaining of heat, and those in California dealing with floods.

It was good and timely exercise for me, as I've been lax with the camera lately. I enjoyed it very much. Several folks commented on how nice it is to get to know someone this way; I'm thinking of putting together an album from those days to post here.

And, speaking of resolutions, I realize that all of my sites need attention.

It's on my list.

May we all do well with our lists this year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

From all of us to all of you

The card, a gift to me from friends, says:

Given human beings' love of truth, justice, peace, and freedom, creating a better, more compassionate world is a genuine possibility.

His Holiness The XIV Dalai Lama

Winter Solstice

It was dark and cold and Grandmother said let's make a picnic, we'll hang the beaded sun on the ceiling, have lunch from a willow basket. She laid out great-grandmother's quilt, orange and yellow and blue, a homespun lawn on the carpet, and I in my nightgown and she in her lavender dress, ate tuna and crackers and chocolate off delicate china plates.

Winter Solstice

two long nights
one short day

the buddha smiles

[This charming buddha, sitting in the light, was made by Bill Walker. If you are interested in his work, he can be reached at flutio21 AT yahoo DOT com]

Santa Lucia Day

I meet this winter without celebration,
as the man who was dying, but now lives,
greets the ants that pass through his kitchen
in narrow, undisturbed rows.

When the child with her crown of candles
comes to my door in her white dress, singing,
I watch the delicate notes disperse in pale
cold light, like snow.