BUT, WHICH TEAM IS HE PLAYING FOR?

during this week i have been:  Alexander Hamilton, from the Which Founding Father Are You? quiz via John Scalzi;  Albert Einstein, from Cheese Louise's What Famous Leader Are You? and Simone de Beauvoir, from Which Western Feminist Icon Are You?  quite a group.  i feel vicariously pretty smart and famous.  and dead.  what's with all these silly quizzes?  is there one that asks  Which Infamous Historical Scoundrel and Blackguard are you?  probably.  anyway, this morning i am my silly old self, off to my saturday  class, which was mercifully changed from starting at 8 am to 9 am.  i was able to just rest and drink tea all yesterday, so i feel marginally better. 

i probably won't be online much until next week, so i'm leaving you this totem for sunday's game.  we live in a great country, don't we?  free enterprise can bring us the most amazing things, n'est-ce pas ?  don't get all outraged or indignant here at ME.  this is Bobblehead Football Jesus, which you can find, AND buy ($14.95), right here.  should this not satisfy your Bobblehead Jesus needs you can also get a Giant Life-Size Jesus Bobblehead, weighing in at 300 lbs and costing a mere $2750.  check it out.  life is good.  (Coming soon Hockey Jesus!!)

Calling All Tree-Huggers, Damn Hippie Liberals

i've said this several times before in this journal, and i have the feeling i'm going to say it several more.  for me, the environment is the single biggest issue in this election.  if we terminally f-up this planet, none of the rest of it matters: economy, civil rights, immigration, war and peace, supreme court justices, et al.  or, as Mark Morford puts it..."if there is any better time in American history to proudly announce yourself as an environmentalist, this is it.  It really doesn't matter where you stand on other issues.  Because when that beautiful bitch Mother Nature really begins to strike back, nothing else will matter." 

and so, the fact that the energy bill is being brought back into play for yet another vote very very soon is something we need to think about.  do something about. i received an email from the Natural Resources Defense Council group Biogem Savers today that i have sent on to many people in my address book.  it asks us to take a relatively simple action, by which they will send a letter or fax to the senators from our state, over our signature.  it's a request not to vote for this evil bill.  it failed to pass by a miniscule margin before the recess.  you know the oil/gas/coal/etc industries are going to be wooing congress to get a few votes to change.  we need to speak louder than these industries, for the sake of our children, ours and all other species, the planet itself. please stop by here and send your letters.  your grandchildren won't have to pay off the deficit after all, or do much of anything else,  if there isn't any air to breathe, or water to drink, or food left unpoisoned.  

and maybe that's what all this new enthusiasm for heading out to the moon and mars is all about.  we've trashed this planet, time to move to the next one.
(the picture with this entry isof the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.)

whine. snivel. gaack. pule. snuurrrpp.  oh, excuse me, hello!  don't mind me.  i have turned into the snot monster from hell.  and that's probably more than you wanted me to share with you, yes?  halfway through class last night my voice completely left me, between one utterance and the next....nada.  gone. this is one serious drag, on a par with, and probably related to, the weather.  what a frigid mean-assed cold windy frozen day we have here.  classes were delayed two hours again this morning, but i schlumped in for my 10:30 group, then came home to drink huge glasses of juice. yes, tedious subjects, weather and health, or loss of it.  i just need a little intensive ranting here and i promise i won't speak of the cold, the wind, the snot, nyquil, dayquil, or ice, ever again.  dayquil.  what a strange concept.  but it works, which is even scarier.  for exactly four hours, and then....BLAM, it wears off and i metamorphose back into...well, you know.  that monster. 

so it's Kerry ahead by a head, huh?  if he's the candidate i'll get behind him all the way.  but it's early days, kids, early days.  when we lived in MA and he was our senator we used to hope he'd be a presidential candidate eventually.  he was a good senator.  and his environmental record is outstanding. but, about this war, John.....????

here's something:  there are two sets (that i know of, anyway) of internet blog awards going on.  the 2003 Koufax Awards are for liberal/progressive blogs, with one for right-wingers just for noblesse oblige, in various categories.  the other, the 2004 Bloggies, is for every kind of blog you can imagine, some you maybe can't.  even if you get overwhelmed (i did) and give up on voting, you will find a lot of interesting new places to visit in these lists.

so, here we are.  waitin' for the train.  that is to say, the New Hampshire train.  i have never felt so much like a bird on a wire over primaries.  well, i have never felt that an election mattered so much.  a week to go until our primary here in Delaware.  and i'm still not sure who i will vote for.  not that Delaware's votes will have that big an influence on anything.  still, it's my vote, and that counts.  Progressive Musings has the antidote for anxiety here, in this link. i laughed til i choked.  (if you can't get this link to work from my journal, go here, to fdtate and try it.  i don't know why it works on his journal, and doesn't seem to on mine.)

the college had a 2 hour delay this morning, which effectively wiped out my only Tues morning class.  so i get another morning off.  i will have a class tonight, and i doubt it will be cancelled, unless the temperature drops and the roads freeze up. since i have a viscious cold i may not keep them the full four hours.  i'm beyond wretched.  just came back from taking the dog for his second constitutional (G took him for his first).  that was no fun at all.  something small and frozen is falling from the sky, and there's a biting wind.  Honey (dog) didn't like it either. cranking and whining.  you know how it is when a cold takes over your entire being, body and soul.  think i'm gonna go turn on the TV and see what the Talking Heads have to report from NH so far.  snort, sniffle, hack, phlllfff.

i've been up off and on through most of the night, checking on the snow.  at 5:30 i called the college and got the inclement weather message:  all classes, day and evening, cancelled.  a plow came by on the main road in front of the house soon after that, and i have seen a car or two come by since then.  people in the upper midwest or new england would die laughing at how people down here panic at a little snow.  there may be four inches out there, and everything shuts down. it is supposed to become freezing rain about now, however, and that will be much more dangerous.  mainly because people don't know how to drive on icy roads. i'm mostly glad the p.m. classes are cancelled; last winter one of my p.m. students had a bad accident on black ice on his way home from class, totalled his car.  i felt somehow responsible, even though i'd let them out early because of the ice.

so here is our message from mother nature:  stay home, drink tea,  make lentil soup,  watch the birds at the feeders.  i filled them all yesterday afternoon, put the heater back in the birdbath, put suet in the baskets.  there's a grey squirrel who is managing to get most of the suet blocks, no matter how far out of reach i think i put them.  he, or perhaps she, can hang on to a branch by one toenail and grab pieces off the block with front paws, munch away. in my secret heart i have to admire this determination. 

it will be light pretty soon, i'll be able to see how much snow there actually is out there.  it looks like enough to go x-country.  if only we still had skis.  i think G has a set in the garage; i sold mine before we left massachusetts.  the boots had about disintegrated and we didn't know where we would end up settling after the time in the motor home. (which is a long story from our life that i might just try to tell here someday.)  and seven years later i still don't have new skis.  there's a beautiful place nearby, Redden State Forest, that would be heaven to spend the day on skis.  we walked there with the dog after a big snow last winter, breaking tracks in the snow, the first and only humans in the big woods. 

LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, MAYBE

i'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but....it's cold. it's really so friggin' cold.  we're waiting to see if the promised (threatened?) winter storm actually arrives this evening.  it was supposed to start this afternoon, now they're saying tonight.  snow, with sleet and freezing rain.  through the night and into the day tomorrow.  it's always a temptation to root for school cancellation, a snow day at home: hot chocolate, watching the birds at the feeders, curling up in front of the fireplace reading. but with sleet and freezing rain there's the possibility of tree icing, broken power lines, curling up in front of the fireplace in order to try to cook over the fire, by flashlight.  not so much fun. 

the worst ice storms i've experienced have been in Texas.  they are winter's worst gift to the Lone Star State.  we had one in Dripping Springs, a Hill Country town west of Austin, about 8 years ago.  we were staying out in the real boondocks, steep rocky dirt road to the house, miles from stores and other people.  the storm knocked out power and phone lines for close to a week, and the weather stayed cooold.  we huddled in blankets, tried to cook over the cedar log fire in the big stone fireplace, cursed our foolish plan to spend the winter in the country.  the devastation to trees all over the Hill Country was awesome, in the true sense of the word.  snow seems benevolent by comparison.  though a late winter/early spring heavy wet snow can do the same kind of damage. 

and, given the accuracy percentages for weather forecasts, we may just get some flurries.  we're going to hope for the best for the afternoon and go stock up on pet supplies, bird seed, and take in a movie.  it's between Big Fish and House of Sand and Fog.  after all my dithering about it (Sand and Fog) in The Biblio Philes i think i will see it after all.  last weekend we saw Calendar Girls, because we are Ladies Of A Certain Age ourselves and could identify.  if you're young and firm and fit i don't know that you'll feel the same way.  it was funny and poignantly moving at the same time.  but then, i'm a serious Helen Mirren fan.

it's snowing like crazy here, and i had to get up in the freezing dawn to go to the weekend class i'm taking.  it's an Educational Technology Certificate course, i'm working on the first level.  today's class was Computers for Morons, and we had covered the objectives by 11 a.m.  so we fooled around with various tech toys for a while after that and called it a day.  hallelujah.  this will go on through April, the classes for the first level certificate.  two saturdays a month.  from here on i will be learning something, as everything i know is selftaught and i think we came close to reaching my limit today in Computers for Morons.

so now i'm home, G is making a whatever's-leftover-in-the-fridge pasta for our lunch, the snow is lovely, i have a good book to read.  life is good.  except for my dilemma of only having a little over a week to decide who to vote for in the primary.  David Corn has a good column today about Our Boys in NH, how they're looking and sounding, the various flavors of Populist, and then there's Joe Lieberman.  interestingly, he reminds me that Paul Tsongas won NH in 1992.  we all know how far that got him.

all right, i'm getting political in my book journal.  go check this out, you guys.  i'm gonna get you there one way or another.

Tomato

hmmmmm. looks like nobody cares to contribute anything to the Meher Arar discussion.  okay then.  so, after an evening of watching political debate (dems at St. Anselm's college), political q & a (Dean somewhere in NH alone, evidently with mainly his supporters, and a bad cold), and a morning of reading iraq blogs, i'm in such despair and angst that there was nothing left to do but take the fruit quiz.  have you already done this?  am i the last to know?  if not, go do it.  i have to say that my results are totally accurate.  sad, but true.   

           TOMATO:  You are indecisive and sometimes pretend to be something you are not.  You are unpredictable.

update on my previous entry today re the Meher Arar case, it was Sixty Minutes 2 where i saw coverage on this story last night.  again, it was Obsidian Wings that gave me this information. i'd still like to know if anyone else saw it.....?

and, i keep forgetting to say:  happy Asian New Year, everybody.  lunar new year, year of the Monkey.  i was born in a year of the Goat.  it's another occasion to celebrate, if you live close to an Asian community get out there and eat some moon cakes!

Heads UP everybody

many of you are probably also members of moveon.org, so you may already know this.  i've just gotten an email from the moveon gang to say that CBS will NOT be showing the winning moveon.org ad during the Superbowl, as we had hoped.  they're asking their members (and supporters) to sign a petition to CBS to reconsider this decision.  you can see the ad (if you haven't yet, it's quite chilling) and sign the petition here.  i just tried several times to do so, but it was busy every time.  this is good, lots of people signing.  the email tells me the surprise news that CBS is in bed with the devil on this.  however, what motivates them is consumer noise, so let's make some, good and loud.

and look!  i'm online at home.  you can't know how happy i am about this.  it was AWFUL.  i don't have an office at the college, as a lowly adjunct faculty member i can share a tiny office with one phone and computer with all the OTHER adjunct faculty, but no thank you, i'd rather not.  so i was going to the library to use a computer. the library is a lovely space, but i keep getting interrupted by students and other faculty wanting to chat.  and, you know, i worry they'll turn me in to John Ashcroft if they read what's on my computer screen.  and the chairs are just really uncomfortable.  and there's no cats or dogs.  so, yay!!!, i'm home.

thank all of you for your kind words after my preceding post.  i was in a very bad/sad mood, not the least of which was (and still is) withdrawal symptoms at not being able to access the internet from my home computer.  this situation is ongoing, and perhaps it's even healthy as an object lesson to me in how addicted to the internet, and to Journals, i am.  i'm in the college library again, finished with classes for the week (yeeehaaaaw!  so there!), catching up on email, reading some journals, blogs, internet mags.  i'm nervous doing it here, the sorts of things i read are likely to get me reported to the gestapo as a Suspicious Person.  i might even read The Old Farmer's Almanac sometimes. 

so, anyway, i'm glad Arianna H. is finished with being a candidate and all that entailed and back to writing her weekly column.  she currently has a good one, on what she calls the "No Bride Left Behind Act."   in my funk at not being able to get online last night, and since i had finished The Murder Room, i actually turned on the TV and surfed around.  did anyone else catch whatever newsmag program that was with Maher Arar telling his story?  imagine my surprise to see him there on network TV.  if you are not aware of his story, and didn't catch him being interviewed, here is a series of 16 blog entries from Obsidian Wings that will bring you up to speed.  and then you can join me in wondering how much of this is going on?  is this a sub rosa policy of this government?  sending Suspicious Persons to countries where torture is a routine affair? since of course it's not what We Do Here to obtain information or confessions.  but, i guess it's okay if the Syrians or Saudis or Jordanians do it for us?

a few miscellaneous things

after i made my last entry i went and got what is supposed to be my yearly mammogram, like a good girl.  like a bad one, i skipped it last year, not on purpose, but because i just never got organized to arrange it.  if you are a woman, if you know and love a woman, or several of them, make sure everybody's doing the right thing and getting their mammaries on film.  a friendly reminder.

i'm back in the library, about to head  to class.  not like you care, but i just want to tell you guys (whoever you are) that i'm posting quite a lot lately in my book journal.  because reality has been difficult to swallow, and because i really am enjoying having a book journal.  there have actually been several times in recent weeks when i've been tempted to delete this windmills journal and just keep the books/reading one. 

any of you who are readers are invited to swing by often, leave comments, suggestions, tell me what you're reading and what you think of it.  also thoughts on books made from movies, of which there are quite a few currently on the screen. 

obla-d, obla-dah, life goes on, yah, lalalala life goes on.  crazy drive to NYC in first sleet, then snow, then more and more snow, big accident on the NJ Turnpike, delay at the Holland Tunnel, creeping thru the snowy NYC streets looking for the address where we were staying,  finding it w/out much problem, changing into our finery, heading back out in the slush to get a taxi to ChinaTown. China Town! a world within a world. the banquet itself is possibly beyond my powers of description.  i spent the whole time wishing for a camera with which i could make a documentary of this event.  it will take an entry of more than 2500 characters, and more time than i have right now.  i'm in the College library, because the phone jack my home computer uses is down and out.  i hope that will get fixed tomorrow, and yes, i know i should move into the new century and stop using a dial-up connection.  someday i will.

spent last night checking in on the Iowa situation from time to time and getting ready for a new week of classes.  Kerry's win was a surprise to me, but as everyone has noted, winning this historically means little to nothing. at least the field is narrowing down, i'll stop getting email from every candidate's campaign.  how they all have me on their lists is a mystery, but they do.  i'll be teaching tonight during the SOU address, but i'm giving coffywoman's scorecard to G to keep track.  i'm actually glad to have an excuse not to watch it, i get so passionately full of wrath listening to the shrub.  it's really bad for my health.

until i can use the internet at home i won't be posting much.  i have roamed around and caught up on some journals, and will continue to do that as i can.  it's amazing how two days out of JournalLand put me out of the loop. 

Big Apple

pretty soon we'll head out in the sleet to New York City for MinXin's wedding banquet.  i really love this kid, or i certainly wouldn't be doing this.  it's truly nasty out there.  the AOL welcome screen has some tasty dishes for Asian New Year, which whetted my appetite for this evening's festivities.  it will also be good to see G's niece, her husband and son, though we won't have much time with them.  we'll have breakfast together tomorrow since it's a holiday, and that's about all. we haven't seen their new place in the Village either.  and if we have any time in the morning perhaps we can do a little bookshop crawling.  that's enough to get me out on the road, weather be damned.  we're so bookstore deprived here.

so, stay warm, celebrate the life of Dr. King, hope that his legacy will live on, hope especially that the black electorate will be galvanized into registering and voting Democratic this year in unprecedented numbers.  Martin Luther King, be with us now!

Well, there goes perspective! - Part 1

Whoops! no sooner do i calm down and gain a little perspective (see previous entry),  than i start rummaging around in political blogs and catch up on The Slacktivist.  The Slack lives in Delaware, as do i.  i think he lives in the northern part of the state, i live in the southernmost of the three counties.  bear in mind how small this state is, okay?  a few days ago he referenced a couple of articles from The Wilmington News Journal, which have freaked me out royally.  a little background for those of you who don't really even know where DE is:  the Delaware River runs along the coast of this state and empties into the Atlantic down here past the Delmarva Peninsula.  another thing to bear in mind about the DE River is that the DNREC has previously asked the EPA to declare it "impaired" because of signs of "chronic toxic pollutants."  the beaches of southern Delaware are called the Summer Capitol, because they are where DC residents go for relief from the heat and humidity of their town.  upriver from all this beach-resort-vacation-home expensive real estate  there's a place called Delaware City, and just looking at it you know it's an outpost of Hell.   smoking chimneys, flashing lights, chemical plants, waste treatment plants, environmental disaster in one of the loveliest areas of wetlands and coastal plains you've ever seen.

so now comes a plan to ship a lot of something you've probably never heard of, Liquid VX, to a waste treatment plant in Delaware City to supposedly be rendered harmless.  okay, what IS Liquid VX?  "...it ranks among the military's most lethal chemical weapons, with a fraction of a drop on the skin likely to be fatal."  Ohio has already vetoed letting this stuff be treated in their state, out of fear for the safety of its citizens.  why were we looking for WMD in Iraq?  read this and realize where the WMD we should be fearing really are.  Indiana, on their way to Delaware.

(Continued below in Part 2)

Well, there goes perspective! - Part 2

from another WNJ article i learn that from DE City now, the Federal Gov't is planning to ship up to 20 railcars of deadly chemicals from an abandoned chemical plant (Metachem! do you like that name?) to a chemical plant in El Carmen, Mexico.  trainloads of killer chemicals crossing the country every which way, eh?  in Delaware these cubes of stuff are toxic waste; for purposes of shipping them to Mexico they have been declared "a product."  why is the plant in Delaware City abandoned?  the owners declared bankruptcy and just walked off and left what amounts to a huge superfund site.  it gets better and better too - before Metachem the plant was owned by Standard Chlorine of DE, which produced ingredients used to make Agent Orange!  you remember Agent Orange fondly, don't you? 

so, perhaps my grandchildren, nieces, nephews, won't be frolicking in the waves at Delaware's beaches this summer.  those waves look lovely, they soothe my soul, but they're Toxic Soup, baby.  any question why this state has one of the highest cancer rates in the country?  

A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE

Who are we?  We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
                         -Carl Sagan

Continuing to whine and bitch

alas, no snow, no sleeping late.  we got a little dusting after classes started this morning, a few mean little flakes.  and that's it.  iron cold reigns in the land, the birds are flocking to the feeders. it's soup weather, that's the pleasant part of cold.  i love to make soup, usually inventing my own recipes. yesterday i made a potato, pea and roasted onion soup (vegan!  using soy milk.) that we had for supper and which i'll have for lunch pretty soon.  to fortify me for heading out in all my wraps and layers to shop for An Outfit.  one of my former students has invited us to a wedding banquet in New York City's China Town on Sunday, and my wardrobe is strangely lacking in winter dressy thingies.  we're pretty excited about this invitation  (wedding banquet! China Town! the food, the food, and the food!), and hope the weather will not conspire against us.  we'll drive up Sunday a.m. and stay over that night with G's niece and her family in the Village.

for the reasons about which i whined in the preceding entry, i'm not doing much political chatter lately, but here is an article i have to mention.  the headline: "Bush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Marriage."  yes, the Less Government party, the Republicans, say that.... "they are planning an extensive election-year initiative to promote marriage, especially among low-income couples, and they are weighing whether President Bush should promote the plan next week in his SOU address."  Tellingly, and far more to the point, "The proposal is the type of relatively inexpensive but politcally potent initiative that appeals to WH officials at a time when they are squeezed by growing federal budget deficits."  really, just go read the damn thing.  relatively inexpensive, yes i guess so, compared to, oh say, "reconstructing" Iraq.  but i think what $1.5 billion could do in a state the size of DE for all kinds of true social needs, or even, maybe, education, and today i don't want to weep, it's more homicidal that i feel. 

Funk Confession

just came back from taking the dog for his evening constitutional, and i'm trying to thaw out.  it's cold out there, i'll tell you what. and going to get colder.  perhaps a little snow tonight and tomorrow morning, and since it's Delaware, where snow always seems to come as a big surprise, this may mean the treat of sleeping late tomorrow.  it's weds pm and i'm already worn out.  a new semester is always like that, though.  takes a few weeks to get into the groove.  the groove only lasts a little while, then comes terminal exhaustion towards the end of the semester. my first spanish class was last night, something about which i was very nervous.  needlessly, however.  it's a big class, 26 people, all of whom seem enthusiastic about learning the language.  we all seemed to enjoy the class.  my ESL classes are smaller than usual, a good thing, as i can pay more individual attention to the students.  with only seven in my writing class we should be able to do good work.   

my actual life is just fine, but i am in a dreadful state of despair and depression about things political and social in this country, this world. the more i read news, especially alternative news, and commentary on news in the online media sources upon which i depend, and in blogs and journals, the less able to cope i feel.  also the less able to add my voice to the swarm of comment and discussion swirling about us.  so much distresses and enrages me, i don't know where to begin, how to deal with it.  so i read Atrios, Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman, Orcinus, Old Hickory, Progressive Musings, Common Dreams, True Majority, Truth Out, etc (all available in my sidebar links). i suppose it's a source of comfort that there are so many intelligent articulate voices speaking out, holding the administration accountable. it should be impossible to feel alone in the wilderness with the voices growing into a chorus. sadly, i am feeling that we're all in a terrible and hopeless wilderness from which we may not emerge any time soon. 

 

Suggestions for Scalzi

John Scalzi has a journal entry (with a mighty cute cat picture, too) where he's asking for some suggestions on five things.  here are my choices to answer his five queries:

1.  A movie:  The Station Agent, not out for home viewing yet, try to catch it at a theatre.  if not, snatch the DVD or video up as soon as possible.

2.  A book:  Bangkok 8, by John Burdett.  detective fiction as you haven't experienced it before.  set in Thailand, Buddhist detective, action, corruption, ambiance.  best book i read last year.

3.  Music:  any album by Keb' Mo'.  jazzy blues, bluesy jazz, very cool dude all around.

4.  AOL Journaler not yet on JMS' sidebar: Blackblog.  coffywoman in California is a many-splendored woman: a BurningMan participant, vegan, political progressive, techie. 

5.  Something to do for next two months:  take up cross country skiing, if you continue to have a snowy winter.  the world's best exercise, great way to experience nature in the winter, burns up so many calories you can eat all the cookies and hot chocolate you want when you come off the trail!

These are great questions for the months of january and february, i'd like more suggestions for all these things myself!

a lovely weekend here, cold notwithstanding.  the yard full of birds enjoying the feeders and the open water in the birdbath.  nothing out of the ordinary: american goldfinches, cardinals, house finches, bluejays, mockingbirds, mixed sparrows, mourning doves and a gang of ruffian blackbirds that kept spashing all the water out of the bath.  i think we filled it back up four times saturday.  not the birds i want to invite, but they're creatures too.

on Sunday we went in to DC to take my sister (with husband and daughter) out to lunch for her birthday.  a surprising amount of frozen water along both shorelines of the Chesapeake to be seen from the Bay Bridge.  a large flock of Canada geese coming in to land on the ice on the near shore.  this is the first time we've seen it frozen in the five years we've lived here.  all the rivers we crossed on the way were mostly frozen too.  today and tomorrow will bring a warmup, temps above freezing, but the worst of the cold is yet to come later in the week. i'm hoping for snow to come with it, insulation for the roots of things.  a kind covering for the stony frozen ground.

and now, i'm off for the first day of the new semester.  at least today i'll be teaching classes i have taught before.  though for me teaching is a constant proof that you never step into the same river twice.  every class is always different, because each group of students creates a new dynamic, and for me that dynamic shapes the class, directs what i emphasize, the pace, and even, to some extent, the content.  i don't even have class lists yet (well, i didn't even know what i'd be teaching til Friday afternoon! class lists?  don't be silly.) so today will be an adventure. 

and, yes, the Eagles beat the Packers (thanks to fdtate for keeping me abreast of important news).  my ESL students won't care about this, but everyone else will.  the ESL students universally follow world soccer, and i stay far more aware of what's happening in that form of futbol than in the American version.

Back to Reality

so my month-long timeout from the real world is over.  i spent most of the day in interminable faculty meetings, discussing the same old agenda in the same old futile fashion.  we talk and talk and never seem to have time to really make the changes we talk about.  we have a new adjunct faculty member this term, she's teaching ESL in several places in Maryland and will teach the Friday morning writing class i taught last term.  i'll teach an evening section of the same class, and have Friday off this term!  i may live through this one without turning into a monster.  a three-day weekend will certainly help. it was good to see my fellow faculty members, many wearing Eagles sweatshirts/hats, etc.  i guess the Eagles are doing well?  shows what i know about football.  i follow basketball to a certain extent, baseball to a bigger extent, but just can't gear into the football thing.  as DE has no football team, most sports fans attach themselves to either the Eagles or the Ravens.

this semester i'm not teaching in the Adult Ed division, the noncredit evening classes.  so i won't have as much contact with undocumented immigrants as i have been having.  nonetheless i am always interested in immigration issues, and this whole brouhaha surrounding W's Bright New Idea about immigration reform.  i'm not really sure it's his idea, since i find it hard to believe he has any ideas (yes, saying mean things about the president, so sue me) himself, but, whatever.  this is a site that was opened in late summer/early fall to follow the building idea of the Immigrant Workers' Freedom Ride from the West to NYC, and remains open for discussion on issues pertaining to immigrants.  right now, as you might suppose, it is full of commentary from different sources on this proposed change in the law.  some voices you won't hear elsewhere.

i have finally wrestled my linking project into some semblance of order.  it's as finished as it gonna get for a while.  this is, of course, an ongoing project.  the more i use the internet the more sites i discover.  it seems there should be an end to this at some point, but really, there isn't. (death, maybe, would do it.)  a link i would like to point out to anyone interested in politics to the left of the center line is the Lefty Directory.  it's an enormous (nearly 500 sites) compendium of links to left/progressive-oriented blogs and sites big and small.  some you already know and frequent, others you probably never heard of. many are possibly nutcases. it's impossible to get to all of them, and most likely entirely unnecessary.  but i intend to sample thru the list from time to time.  i thought about a "columns" link, but Common Dreams has in its sidebar a list w/links to all the columns i might think of, as well as all the newspapers, magazines, media, etc.  it is one of the most indispensible links for me.  and, like Progressive Musings (john scalzi highlights PM today!), i think i may start highlighting some of my favorite links from time to time.  a way to call attention to them. 

so, that's it.  all the news today makes me want to weep or hurl, maybe both, so i'm going out to check my birdfeeders and baths (i have one with a heater in it) and go see how cold it is by the ocean.  it's damn cold here, that's for sure.

well, how to choose among the offerings of the season.  how about this one, a quote from the very reverend Pat Robertson about his anointed president, dubya:  "The Lord has just blessed him.  I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it.  It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad; God picks him up because he's a man of prayer, and God's blessing him."  now, aside from the terrible syntax, just think about this. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad?  hello?  what strange brand of religion is this, anyway?  well, far more clever pundits have already commented on this quote, and i give you Robert Scheer from Working for Change, and Matt Bivins, of The Daily Outrage.  while you're at Daily Outrage go back a few entries and read the one where he talks about Laura's revelation to Tim Russert that her darling hubby did not pen the sweet bit of doggerel verse that awaited her on her return from her European trip last summer.  Matt has a good time ruminating on which White House gofer got the assignment of writing the "my lump in the bed" poem and how he or she went about this task.  it's fun, yes, but does this administration have to lie about everything? even the doggerel?

 

where the grapes of wrath are stored

if you don't already have a subscription to Salon.com, it's time to get one.  i think mine is up for renewal soon, and you bet i'm renewing it.  this article is an example of why i now feel i can't possibly live without Salon.  as we go through the coming year leading up to the election, this is one of the places where i know i will find news and opinion that won't be found too many other places.  this article, "Avenging Angel of the Religious Right" will blow your socks off.  about a man i've never heard of, Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. (if you are Bruce Miller you will know him, living in CA and reading everything published on the face of the earth), a SoCal millionaire now bankrolling the possible schism within the Episcopal Church, after having bankrolled all kinds of other delightful efforts within his home state.  this one comes under the heading of "know your enemies," though Max Blumenthal has managed to write the article in perfectly even, seemingly objective, terms.  i'd pay my ridiculously low subscription rate for this one article alone.  go there, do it.  now.

Concatenation

my current project is one i cribbed from fdtate at Progressive Musings, yet another journal, this one solely for links.  there just isn't enough room on these AOL journal sidebars for all the links i have accumulated.  so i'm assembling them by category and putting them in entries in the link journal.  then i'll put the categories on the sidebar, and have hundreds of possibilities!  it will mean an extra click to get to a link, but i think that's bearable. this is an ornery job, especially since my journal has not recovered from the latest problem (utility buttons not working, inability to enter, read comments, yada yada yada) and i have to work around it.  i've only gotten two entries done so far, Comadres Y Hermanas, and AOL Journalers.  Obla-d, honey, if you're visiting the windmills and miss your journal-link, just want to let you know, you're in "Comadres y Hermanas" now. 

anyhow, that's what i'm doing, as well as trying to get stuff outside ready for the reeeeelllly cold weather that's moving in tonight.  it's been so mild, i've neglected things like taking in hoses and covering the herb garden with evergreen branches.  guess i'll take the swags off the doors and turn them into garden coverings. 

The Incredible Lightness of Children

this picture is from the mid-December trip in to D.C. to visit with sisters and children.  these are the children in question.  holding a seance?  telling fortunes?  in their own movie?  the last, for sure.  under the tutelage of the oldest of the trio, my darling niece N, the two littler girls dressed up that afternoon and evening in an endless series of costumes, then descended from the second floor to present...sometimes a short ballet, sometimes a playlet, sometimes simply a little mise-en-scène.  N used to do the very same when she was a younger, and only, child.  now she has a little sister and a cousin, she gets to be producer, director, costume designer, scriptwriter.  it was one of the more entertaining evenings i've spent in the theatre recently.  we see the actors and director relaxing here for a spot of drawing and coloring in M's room.  M lives in DC, N and L came up from Texas,  for a holiday visit and because their parents were going to the Simon/Garfunkel concert.  we, alas, had to return to the delmarva to finish up the semester on monday, so no concert for us.  my sisters and their husbands enjoyed it enormously, for the Texas contingent it seemed to have been worth the trip.  for me, the performances by The Nieces were, as the Master Card ads say, priceless.

Absolute Friends

it's one of those days when everything seems to connect...here is an interview with John le Carré in Salon Books.  his novel Absolute Friends will be released in this country (it's already out in Britain) next week and if you have read bruce miller's lengthy review/analysis of The End of Evil   (as i commanded you to in the previous entry), you will see what i mean by seeming to connect.  the interview is by Laura Miller, and from some of her questions to le Carré it would seem she has been scared by the fanatical idealism shown by our neoconservative leaders in that book.  as well as, of course, in many other places and events.  i have loved le Carré for as long as he's been writing, and he just seems to get better and better.  he certainly is getting more and more outraged by the leaders of both his country and this one.  so, i await this book with eagerness and trepidation. 

Imagine the chutzpah

i'm doing 1000 things at once today, it's the beginning of reentry to the real world.  one of the things i've just done is read Old Hickory's eleven part (yes, eleven!) review of The End of Evil, by Frum and Perle.  my own title to this entry is my opinion of anyone who could name a book, let alone a whole system of world-planning, by such a title.  yet they have.  and i urge anyone who browses my journal to leave immediately and go read bruce's eleven parter. 

today begins the fingerprinting and photographing of most "foreigners" entering U.S. airports.  a procedure which slots neatly into the thinking of these Charters of World Destiny.   this is fanaticism at a level as scary as that of militant Islam, in my notsohumble opinion.  thank you, bruce, for this extremely thorough analysis.  to anyone who hasn't heard it yet, it's a real wake-up call.

A Zen New Year to all

The sun rises, the sun sets.
Watch it and see.
River and moon,
Pine trees and wind,
All old poems to me.
Who needs words for the New Year?
                               -Tao Kai (1065 -1123)