oldmeshikee

With the 06 election of some reasonable people to Congress, I'm not ready to say things have turned around, but I do admit they show a little promise now. At least we have a few positions of leadership filled by people who care more about ethics, oversight of the executive, and balancing the budget than the Republican leadership has cared since before Gingrich.

Still, I don't think the voter has seen any GOP scandal that they will remember through 2008. I mean, there are plenty of scandals, but corruption scandals don't shock America like they should; they touch nothing primal. Progressives still haven’t learned how to speak to that primal level; we still believe in making rational arguments, in active listening, and collaboration, while the conservatives--far more savvily--always go for sex and fear.

This is why the GOP can say getting a hummer under the desk is an impeachable offense, and many voters will listen. (Though let’s remember that a majority actually did not agree.) But cooking intelligence reports, invading a country, domestic spying, suspending habeas corpus, extraordinary rendition, billion-dollar no-bid contracts--those only undermine our highest principles. They don’t speak to the gut of the average voter. There’s nothing a U.S. conservative likes more than getting steamed about someone else’s sex life, or than thinking God feels threatened by non-Christians.

What’s a rational citizen to do?

Mr Ed says, "Listen, Wilbur. I'm a horse. What use is an improved mind in a stable?" A friend of mine, who works for the Mennonite Central Committee in Uganda, answered, "Mr Ed should realize that an improved mind can transform a stable." A lovely, high-minded sentiment, and I think it focuses my problem: as a good progressive, I do try, but I have SO much trouble believing in transformation.

Evolution is clear enough to me, certainly. Revolution, yes. Tipping points. You know, when I was coming to consciousness in the early 1960s, Jim Crow was the law in a quarter of American states. Now we have African Americans not only voting but holding office in those states, and some of them are Republicans. They still have trouble getting a cab, but evolution is a process, not an end. So I can go with long-term, plodding, detouring, distracted, forward motion.

But "transformation" IS an end, and it's the end that good-hearted progressives like my friend are after. And transformation requires both an improved mind and an active spirit, Mr. Ed. A heart for others.

I think Americans vote from something far baser than these. They vote creature comfort. They vote the status quo. They vote shock and awe. I mean: conservatives thought the first answer to 9/11 was to go shopping, and the next was to kill people. A huge majority of Americans answered “yes, give war a chance.” But these are precisely the impulses that need to be transformed. Can it happen? I don’t know.

The Rugged Individualist may be too large a part of our mythic identity for conservative Americans to realize at any deep level that, yes, they really are their brothers' keeper, that compassion is not just for bumper stickers. That, in fact, the Individual--the idea of "self vs other"--hides a false and spiritually destructive binary. Conservatives ignore even Jesus on this stuff, yet this is just the kind of transformation we ask for as progressives. We look to change hearts.

I think it’s a mistake to wish for it, even with Dems in the congressional majority. Politics is a career, not a crusade, and careers are usually advanced by protecting the status quo. Thus, one has to expect our politics itself to oppose transformation in the stable we call America.

I can't get excited about it.

With Pelosi values running the Congress, I can only think there will soon be gay pride marches in every grade school in America. Mandatory sensitivity training and wine-tasting classes.

We've just elected a band of atheist baby seal lovers who'll make us hug a tree and sing the national anthem in Spanish. College basketball players will have to marry each other before they can slap a bottom.

I'm worried about the troops. What will they think when they hear we've given a whole third of the government to the loony liberals who want to cut and run them home from Iraq in a few years?

And I'm troubled about the economy--what happens when we end a perfectly profitable war? I'll tell you what happens. This could crush the investments of a full two or three percent of the American ruling class. Halliburton could have a down quarter.

I don't know. Now that the moderate wing of the Democratic Party has defeated the moderate wing of the GOP . . . well, I just don't like radical change.

1. critical race theorists
2. fake boobs
3. the tenure process
4. Islamic fundamentalists
5. Christian fundamentalists
6. how Mormon girls poof up their hair at the back of the head
7. the GOP winning another election
8. Lynn Cheney's historical fiction about lesbian pioneers (_Sisters_, selling for $1500 each, used)
9. new parents in their 50s
10. President Condoleeza

september 11 2006, and we're so much safer thanks dear god thanks to the pre-emptive policies of our beloved leader and the boys who do his thinking for him. so much safer, though not yet fully safe, which is nobody's fault---not even the romans. the trouble is that not enough has been preempted.
i'm thinking we're going to need to strike at the heart of the beast itself: we need to suspend the constitution. i mean, we're at war, are we not? in fact we're at three or four wars: terror, drugs, poverty, cancer, gum disease, you name it. and when you're at war, you gotta sacrifice a few things.
the u.s. embassy in pakistan has the right idea. they've stopped two american citizens of the islamic persuasion before they could board a plane homeward to california. we're not sure why they were in pakistan---can't be for bible camp, can it?---but we do know that they're muslims.
now our constitution says that, as american citizens, they have the right to go where they like without interference from our govt, but i'm thinking that's a mistake, and the ambassador evidently agrees with me on this. he's pulled these two so-called americans out of line at the airport and asked them politely to take a polygraph test to answer questions about just what they been doing in pakistan. they declined. i don't know about you, but i find that suspicious.
i know the constitution says we can't just grab people off planes and interrogate them without cause and without a lawyer, and i know it says they have a right not to be forced to incriminate themselves, but those were iffy ideas in the first place. we're at war, and we need to think outside the box.
really the only way to make this country safe from terror is to make every nonwhite citizen answer a battery of questions about what they do on vacation, who they see, and what they said. names and addresses, dude. are you now, or have you ever been a terrorist sympathizer? if they have nothing to hide, they shouldn't mind answering a few simple questions.
i mean, it worked with the west coast japanese in the 1940s. some of those families had been here a hundred years, but let's face it. as they say here in utah, if they don't look like us, they sure don't think like us.
the g.o.p. is right. the only way we can make the country safe from terror is to lock up everyone who doesn't look like us. lock em up, or lock em out. that's why i say.
america: love it and lock it down.

see, the thing is, we think that spring "begins" on the equinox, when it's obvious that we can have winter long past that date. and then we say the solstice is the "first" day of summer and we also call it "midsummer," which of course is bogus, too---can't be both? so i think we should just declare tomorrow, 22 May, the first day of summer. by coincidence, it's also my mother's birthday, the most summery person i ever met. here's to you, mother dear, and may the cubs win the pennant.

sammie and i took last week away from work and didn't go anywhere. we made a deal for this year: no santa fe for the opera in august; no wine tour in june; no mediterranean cruise; no camping in the himalayas. what did we do instead? we sat at the kitchen table and wrote. it was the greatest week i've had in years. she's working on a biography of sagwitch (shonshoni leader of the 19th century) for elementary students, and i've started another YA novel. laptops, lunch plates, books, cups, papers, cookie crumbs, and dead wine glasses. she finished 10,000 words and i got about 9,000. nothing fuels the creative like carbs and good company.

mt. fuji in clouds
snows of kilimanjaro
tissues and thick steam

spring's dainty flavors
scents, aromas, odors, stink
impervious schnozz

a nose?? a land mass!
jetty, cape, peninsula
cyrano, my twin

We got six inches of snow last night, and it looks like six more may drop tonight, even as spring approaches from the South.

I love a late snow, and though I'm sure this indicates some hidden moral weakness in my character, I can't help it. (This is in addition to all the obvious ones.) While most of my pals are aching for summer, I enjoy the illusion that the earth has slowed its spin, that life isn't fleeing quite so quickly to the rear this year. Somewhere, Lillian Hellman says "a month is a moment," and she's righter every year. Six inches of snow last night, and I got a great deal of work done at the office today.

We woke this morning to find our friend, family member, naughty girl, and official meet-n-greet lady had passed away of natural causes in the night. She was 15.

A registered Pembroke Corgi, her AKC name was "Taflar's Red Toffee," but she always went by Corky. Not that she answered to anything unless she saw an advantage to it---usually involving food. She is survived by Rider, her life-companion; by her human pack; and, somewhere, by a litter of Corgi-Chow love children. The story of her one night of passion she takes with her to the other side.

Rest in peace.

Nancy asks:
> does boston charlie actually mean anything, or is it just a nonsense
> phrase?

Following is a quick index of literary referents in Monsieur Churchill LaFemme's most famous verse, the "Deck Us All." Before that, though, the text itself of the first quatrain, then a brief close reading. The work is of course much deeper than can be explored in a single blog.

Deck us all with Boston Charlie
Walla Walla Wash. and Kalamazoo
Nora's freezing on the trolley
Swaller dollar, cauliflower, alley-ga-roo!

Deck us all with Boston Charlie

Clearly, LaFemme alludes here to the protagonist in a 1950's folksong, Charlie, who gets trapped on the Boston subway; the call to "deck us all" echoes the solidarity of the mass transit ridership against the gouging capitalist system that raised fares, trapping Charlie, as described in the folksong made famous by The Kingston Trio. (Well, did he ever return? No, he never returned...)

Walla Walla Wash. and Kalamazoo

Two famous U.S. towns with especially enigmatic names, which appear occasionally in Churchy LaFemme's work, and which by some reports symbolize the peculiar baptisms conducted among Pogophiles (walla walla washings, they are called) in their secret enclaves. Incidentally, and no doubt this is intended to obscure deeper meanings, they contain syllables that sound no worse than "fa-la-la-la-la."

Nora's freezing on the trolley

A familiar astronomical reference in C. LaFemme's oeuvre---cf. "O' roar a roar for Nora, Borealis in the night." In addition, "trolley" rhymes with "jolly" and with "Charlie" if said in a New England accent; though LaFemme was a citizen of the Okefenokee, Walt Kelly is said to have lived secretly in Connecticut.

Swaller dollar, cauliflower, alley-ga-roo!

The well-known ancient Roman hazing practice---to swallow a large coin followed by cruciferous vegetables---later imitated in fraternity initiation rites of the early 20th century. "Alley-ga-roo!" is the cry made by the initiate when later passing the coin, and incidentally the victory call of a booster at an Ivy League football game. (This interpretation is confirmed in the second quatrain, not reproduced here, but which ends "Boola-boola, Pennsacoola, folly go through!" Exegesis of that quatrain must wait for a later time.)

We sang so much as a family when Jan and I were young. I assume this was owing in part to the era—the 1950s and 1960s, the Folk Music Age—and not only the era but the remoteness of our location as well. People who are isolated have to entertain themselves. For us, our entertainment was singing. We sang in the car, in the kitchen, in the living room, in church. But of course it was also due to the particular make up of our family that we sang so much. Mother’s personal identity was bound up with music already by the time she was in high school, and you could see her blossom as she grew older, moving from church music to serious choral work to a mature repertoire crossing several genres including classical, opera, and Broadway. Father was a great appreciater of folk music, of spirituals, and he had more experience of the classical repertoire than one would predict for a child of the Wisconsin woods. This was a legacy of his grandmother, Evelyn, I would guess. There was a piano in her home, which I believe she played, and her son Art (Blind Uncle Art) learned it as well. My father’s uncles all played instruments, and his mother Estelle is said to have been a very talented pianist, though he would never hear her play. So our parents brought a great love for music with them to the marriage, if not a lot of recordings in forms that we recognize today—CDs, MP3s, downloads, etc. In fact, I can remember the first hi-fi we owned as a family, circa 1958, and the very first LPs, which we played over and over again. But if I can remember these things, that means there was little recorded music in our early childhood, in a family that loved music. Instead, we sang. Hymns, folk songs, spirituals, snippets of art songs that Mother was learning at university (with apologies to Mozart), Norwegian folk songs for children. We filled our bodies with music until it was a natural as breathing.

In her last days on earth, Mother wanted us to sing to her. We sang together around her bed, till the hospital staff asked us to keep it down. I sang softly to her, and Jan probably did too, at odd times of day and night in the quiet hospital, while she lay listening comfortably behind her oxygen mask. “Yeah, that’s a good one,” she said one afternoon. “But sing me that one about the lawyer who marries a widow.” And later, “play the Mozart CD again; I learned Comme scoglio when I sang in Cosi. You remember that?” Yes, I remembered.

We make such a big deal about the Quest in our culture. The grand search for meaning. Even I have written a novel about this. But what I really believe is that our spiritual journey need take us only across the room. When I listen, when I sing, when my whole body begins to resonate like Old Meshikee’s drum, a window opens in the back of the house, and I can slip through music into eternity itself.