Watermark

Snapshot 16 March 02005

A slow, slow waking into

a foggy morning. In the night

I woke to the soft ticking of rain

 

on the windows. I am looking,

carefully, for a poem, in all the bare

branches of trees; under the stones

 

on the path; in the cold, low

river; in the colorless sky. In the

evening a huge crescent moon floats

 

above downtown, as if it had risen

from the spike on the tallest building.

Green is pushing up, from the hard

 

ground, through soft, composted flower

beds, through the tough skin of tree

limbs. Sunlight creeps earlier and

 

farther into this garden each longer day,

and as the season widens and opens,

my life narrows and thins down,

 

falling, to this one bud, this tiny press of

clematis, this small space, in this small

town, on this small, blue world.

This Morning's Light

for Erin, who is caught in Canada's winter

More Good Writing

From A View From A Broad:

You know, I think being a feminist is exactly like being gay. It's something you can hide as long as you're willing to swallow all sorts of insults all day long till finally you have enough. So much of the stuff women face is just invisible---the way women's bodies get used to sell everything under the sun, the way women are required to starve themselves because we're not allowed to occupy too much space; the ways we get called bitchy when men are just assertive---all that stuff---that when you finally react to it there's a bunch of words that get tossed at you, too. We accept all that stuff and keep ourselves from noticing it, but boy, we sure notice when someone points it out.
 
People like Rick Santorum compare homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality, and others compare feminists to Nazis or else they call us man haters. It has the same purpose; it keeps us off balance, eternally trying to find our land legs in a world that just doesn't like us much. It's like we crawled onto land from the sea and we have to explain why our eyes see things differently, why we feel the sun strangely . . . 

From Beauty Dish, written by our own Patia:

I was 17 years old and two weeks into a therapeutic, wilderness survival course when I said something - I don't remember what - that angered a popular, arrogant boy. He looked at me dismissively and said, "Skank."

I have struggled with beauty for what feels like my whole life. My mother often told the story of how she had to tape bows to my bald baby head, and people still thought I was a boy . . .

I have a tendency to forget compliments, so I've started keeping a written list. Because for every compliment, there is at least one criticism , and those are seared into my memory. Criticism is the wrong word, actually. What I mean to say is more like mean, hateful, ugly, trashing remark. These remarks are nearly always from men, although teenage girls can also be cruel.

I was walking through a mall, wearing a sleeveless sundress, when a trio of teenagers strolled toward me. One girl scanned my bare arms, then looked fearlessly into my eyes and said, "Ewww!" as they passed.

Beauty and weight are all mixed up for me; I've often suspected that even if I lost weight, I'd still be ugly . . .

From Shelley:

I am reminded of frogs.

Frogs are very cool creatures. They eat bugs and make the most amazing sounds that always remind me of warm summer nights, down by the lake. However, frogs are not particularly intelligent, and their behavior is almost completely governed by outside stimuli . . .

While in Florida, though, surrounded by people with shielded minds, hidden thoughts, and past experiences and future hopes totally hidden from view, I was able to experience events at face value and just let them happen. I did not have to pay attention to the happiness or not of those around me; did not have dig deep to find the hidden meaning of every overheard word; did not have to react except at the most primitive, and immediately rewarding level . . .

I was surrounded by hundreds of people, thousands, and their voices became a soothing babble, and their faces, bright bits of animated confetti that swirled about me in a peaceful, colorful flow; slices of which I captured, from time to time, with my camera. In the nomenclature of frogs, it was all flies, all the time . . .

From Echidne:

This is not a political post, not at least in an obvious manner. It is a post about words and what they do. What some words do, or perhaps all words when dressed in their secret fancy clothes or when they are moonlighting. The thing that words do which words cannot do, the reaching to something in us which is not intelligence or logic, which is not even emotions, and when the contact is made there is this enormous thunder and an opening and a realization of something instantaneously. And then a flow of understanding and the feelings that this particular understanding carries in its arms.

Poetry does this covert work often . . .

And finally, from Tild ~, via Pen-Elayne:

This is all for Trish, on her birthday.

Note to 'Serious' Journalists

The rule is so simple it should not have to be stated: if you wouldn't say male, don't say female; if you wouldn't say white, don't say black; if you wouldn't describe his clothes- shoes- hairdo, don't describe hers.

What century is this, again??

Oh, and an amazing study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

In covering the Iraq war last year, 73 percent of the stories on Fox News included the opinions of the anchors and journalists reporting them, a new study says. By contrast, 29 percent of the war reports on MSNBC and 2 percent of those on CNN included the journalists' own views. These findings -- the figures were similar for coverage of other stories -- 'seem to challenge' Fox's slogan of 'we report, you decide' . . .

Well, I'm stunned.

my basket

my basket
Originally uploaded by sbpoet.

flickr has a group called what's in your bag? with lots of interesting voyeuristic photos. This is my contribution; since I am mostly house-bound, I don't really have a bag -- I have a basket.

Oh, this photo has lots of notes; apparently they don't translate when you blog from flickr. Too bad. Click the image to go to flickr and see the photo description and notes.

Whiskey River

        Congratulations, Whiskey!

crow

CatLinks

A slice of a very cool cat photo from elvis1967 on flickr.

.m notices that there are several similar black jungle cat photos on flickr [Black Cat 1; 2; 3 ]

There are cats, and then there are Cheetahs. [via Life In The Present]

There are even cheetahs on flickr.

Apparently nobody ever warned this guy that cats and guns are a volatile mix.

Here's another story about cats and guns that I hesitate to link to (some will find it upsetting) but it raises some serious issues, about how we do, and do not, value our wild and domestic cousins.

ADDED 12 March: Don't Shoot The Cat

CAT TOWN pays tribute to Jerry Orbach.

Library Cats Map, via scribblingwoman

CATDVD, via Blogywood

Smart Cat Door, via Lifehacker

The Magic Kittens, via ollapodrida

Fluffy Kitten Name Generator, via The Generator Blog

This week's Carnival of the Cats: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV; Carnival of the Dogs; Friday Ark.

Montmorency gave a cry of joy -- the cry of a stern warrior who sees his enemy given over to his hands -- the sort of cry Cromwell might have uttered when the Scots came down the hill -- and flew after his prey. His victim was a large black Tom. I never saw a larger cat, nor a more disreputable-looking cat. It had lost half its tail, one of its ears, and a fairly appreciable proportion of its nose. . .   A cat & dog story, from Philobiblon

    

Interesting Reading

10 Things I Have Learned, Milton Glaser
via Lifehacker

Everyone always talks about confidence and believing in what you do. I remember once going to a class in Kundalini yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a more practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being sceptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between scepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins.

today as yesterday revisited, Chief Blogging Officer
via Sandhill Trek

What stands in the way is a little item called ideology. Call them belief systems if it makes you more comfortable. Americans, especially, seem to be made easily uncomfortable by talk of ideology. Like class, ideology is what other  people -- people somewhere "over there" -- have. Not us. What we have is the plain vanilla truth. This charming naivete quickly shades into the kind of unconscious arrogance that makes those other people over there want to blow up our buildings and give us all anthrax. Nasty, yes. Despicable, yes. Understandable? Unfortunately, yes. Because if you say you have no ideology, only the truth of the "way things are," then there is no possibility of having a conversation. Because if you say you have no "system of belief" but rather perceive reality as it truly is, then there's no use talking.

The importance of feminism to liberalism, Mouse Words

There's been a lot of ink spilled as of late bemoaning the lack of direction and lack of goals for progressives. This sort of thing really perplexes those of us who concentrate on feminist progressivism--I have no problem whatsoever stating what my direction and goals are for feminism. Feminists want full legal equality for women, parity between the sexes in every aspect of public life, social relationships between men and women based on equality, the rights of children to be acknowledged and respected, the right of women to use every tool science has to offer to maintain control over our bodies, wage equity, social policies to help parents, and healthy social attitudes towards sexuality. We also have tons of plans and ideas that we'd like to implement. You want goals and ideas? Feminists got 'em.

Squid? Or Octopus?, alphabitch
via Trish Wilson's Blog

It's not all that long ago (a few days? weeks?) that Pharyngula came to my attention, but I've become what I guess you could call an admirer of PZ Myers.  And since it's his birthday, and he likes cephalopods, I thought I'd post this story about a squid.  Well, it's not a squid, actually, but the squid plays a very important role.  Plus it does take place in Minnesota.  Well, my dad lives very close to Minnesota, anyway. Just across the river in Wisconsin.

Creating a Post-Civilization Culture, How To Save The World

Principles: Because it's so difficult to get consensus on principles, and because principles cannot be imposed, I think it's important that the new culture have as few principles, and as inclusive and intuitive principles as possible. The smallest set I can come up with that will do the job is these five, and they're all about responsibility:

• Legacy Principle: We must leave the world at least as healthy, abundant and well-off for future generations as we found it.
  
• Gaia Principle: We recognize that Earth is a single, self-balancing, self-managing organism of which we are an inseparable part, and we have a sacred responsibility to respect and live in harmony with all other life on Earth, not treat it as our 'property', and to waste nothing.
  
• Stop at One Principle: Until we can restore a healthy balance to life on our planet, and live up to the Legacy and Gaia Principles, we must procreate no more than one child for each two human inhabitants until our population is reduced to one billion.
• No Debts No Deficits Principle: We must always live within our means, be beholden to no others, and never encumber our descendants.
• Trade Only Surpluses Principle: We will buy from other communities only those things which we cannot reasonably produce ourselves, and sell to other communities only those things which we do not need ourselves.

The Religious Left, Salon

And yet there was a time -- not so very long ago -- when the religious left was a powerful institution in American society and politics, when the term "religious" was not immediately assumed to connote "conservative." Moral giants with names like Reinhold Niebuhr and Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr. led intellectual and social justice movements. It's nearly impossible to page through American history without coming across political causes that were driven either partly or entirely by progressive people of faith -- abolition, women's suffrage, labor reforms of the progressive era, civil rights, and any number of antiwar movements.

Snapshot 09 March 02005

There are dreams
but I sleep past them. I wake

in sun and pain. Joe
is dying and I ignore it. I bury

myself in books and
other distractions; in television

and other detachments.
My head is encased in foam. It floats