THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Tell me you'll love me when i'm a totally paranoid raving freak.  which is any moment now.  or maybe, in fact, it's right now.  except, y'know, there's nothing paranoid about it.  it's reality, dude, it's not my imagination. 

from an ABC news article on the AOL news page, this:  The Weaponization of Space.  just go read it.  our masters at the Pentagon are planning things beyond our wildest dreams, my dears.  and under this Administration they've been working on them at warp speed.  if this gang gets a second term, there'll be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  for anybody.  after you read the ABC piece  (do it, now)  then go here and get some more hair-raising facts on this beyond-sci-fi scenario from the Union of Concerned Scientists. (you probably won't be surprised to learn that Donald Rumsfeld wants the US to have "space control," will you?) 

this Union of Concerned Scientists is, BTW, a great site.  i may be spending a lot of time there now that i've discovered them.

I'd like to put aside the many toxic shocks of the world for a moment, and call your attention to a little article from the April 5 issue of Time magazine (with, ironically*, Condoleeza Rice on the cover).  Entitled "Ten Questions for Gloria Steinem," it's a refreshing pause in the madness to hear a woman i've admired for well over half my life give some smart feisty answers to a variety of questions - political, cultural, personal:  from gay marriage to Diane Keaton to presidential candidates. Hard to believe Gloria turned 70 last week, she's an ageless icon to me.  and, i have to say of her, as i say of myself in my sidebar, there's a dance in the old dame yet.

if you happen to be reading this in NYC, git on over to Barnes and Noble, Union Square, where, at 7 pm Steinem and Ms Magazine editor Elaine Lafferty will be holding a discussion. 

*why "ironically," you may ask.  well, i respond, we finally have a woman in a position of great power.  just what feminists have worked and hoped for for decades.  and look what she does with it, look how different she is NOT from any other power brokers of her time. many of us dreaming feminists thought women in power would BE different, would MAKE a difference. there's a lot of thoughtful feminist issues that arise, i believe, from the puzzle that is Condoleeza Rice. 

ARMAGEDDON - Part 1 of 2

I began my day by reading this piece in Salon.com, and haven't really been able to think about much else since then.                  
   Welcome to Armageddon
A joint investigation by Salon and Rolling Stone reveals why the Bush administration hasn't found any weapons of mass destruction: It's looking in the wrong place.

the piece focuses on one wacko's hilltop laboratory outside of Newport, TN, with sheds full of something (new to me) called PFIB, a deadly lung-attacking gas, yard stacked with rusted leaking cylinders of other kinds of gases; just one of many such open sites.  a terrorist's smorgasbord of weapons obtainable just by hopping a fence.  i can't say any of this better than the article itself, so the rest of this entry is quote.  i do urge you to read the entire piece for yourself.  you'll need a daypass to do it, but - trust me, you really need to read this thing.   clearly we can't blame all of this on this Administration.  we CAN request that Homeland Security and the DOD start paying some serious attention to the threats easily at hand in our own country.

      "One of the ultimate ironies is that for all of the U.S. government's finger-pointing at Iraq and other countries -- nations we're challenging to account for every one of their weapons of mass destruction -- our country is riddled with similar weapons that our government itself can't even find," says Elizabeth Crowe, an organizer for the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a coalition of citizens living near chemical-weapons sites.

ARMAGEDDON - Part 2

   
     "And those 200 military sites represent only a small fraction of the U.S. facilities where chemicals with the potential to inflict mass casualties are manufactured. According to the Army's surgeon general, industrial chemicals in the United States are second only to bioterrorism as a threat to national security.
     By the government's own estimate, there are 15,000 chemical plants that contain large quantities of potentially deadly compounds. Many of the facilities have been shown to employ little security, offering terrorists easy access to chemicals that could be used as weapons of mass destruction.The military has a terrible track record at keeping tabs on chemical weapons stored outside its nine official stockpiles. From World War I through the 1970s, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, chemical weapons were manufactured, stored or dumped at scores of military bases, private contractors and other "non-stockpiled" facilities across the country. Because of poor record-keeping, most of the sites are dangerous question marks: The military simply doesn't know what's there.
     The military insists that it's unlikely that terrorists would be able to locate any of the lost chemical weapons, many of which were buried in unmarked and unmapped dumps, but the prospect of such a discovery is horrifying. Less than five miles from the White House, in an affluent neighborhood of Washington, investigators have dug up 75 shells and other containers filled with chemical warfare materiel since the 1990s. Some of these munitions contained mustard agent, an oily liquid that can cause severe blistering to the skin, blindness and death. Although the munitions were manufactured at a research facility that stood on the site during World War I, tests on some of the samples showed that the deadly compound "had not degraded at all over the course of 90 years," says Chuck Twing of the Army Corps of Engineers."

so, probably enough about tuna.  for now.

Friday night when we went out to dinner, as we usually do on Friday, unless we order in  -  because we're generally sick and tired of fending for ourselves and working and obligation -  i saw a totally humorless-looking woman wearing a t-shirt with this slogan:

 My imaginary friend thinks
 you have serious mental problems.

it was hard to tell if she realized she was wearing a funny t-shirt; it looked more like she just thought it was true.  anyway, i liked it.

enjoy what's left of the weekend.

HOTTER TUNA - Part 1 of 2

Here's an update I received yesterday from Bush Greenwatch on the mercury issue:

Backlash Builds Against Bush Plan to Delay Mercury Clean Up

Opposition to the Bush Administration's efforts to substantially delay a scheduled cleanup of mercury contamination gained momentum today when MoveOn.org joined forces with the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the Learning Disabilities Association and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner at a Washington, D.C. press conference denouncing the Bush plan.

MoveOn.org -- in partnership with EWG -- used the event at the National Press Club to launch a hard-hitting television ad campaign that takes the administration to task for continuing to place children at risk of learning disabilities and other developmental problems due to exposure to mercury-tainted fish. Scheduled to run on television stations in Washington, D.C. and New York City, the ad shows a poison symbol morphing into a happy face on a child's lunchbox, illustrating the danger from eating tuna fish sandwiches containing mercury-contaminated fish.

"Most people think about mercury as an air pollution problem, but it's winding up on the end of our forks, spoiling one of the best food choices on the planet," EWG President Ken Cook told BushGreenwatch. High levels of mercury can be found in a wide range of America's ocean, stream and lake-bred fish, including large-mouth bass, swordfish, catfish, tuna, some shellfish and trout.

HOTTER TUNA - Part 2

 

President Bush has proposed classifying mercury as "less hazardous under the Clean Air Act, so he can delay a previously scheduled cleanup of this toxin, which contaminates fish from coal power plant emissions," according to a MoveOn.org media advisory.

A separate print ad, developed in partnership with MoveOn.org and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is running in the New York Times. This full-page ad, under the headline "The Politics of Poison," outlines the administration's history of deceiving the public on toxics issues, especially arsenic and mercury.

MoveOn.org has already generated more than 180,000 comments to the EPA to try to stop the President from choosing large corporate campaign contributors (such as those in the energy industry) over mothers and children, who are most at risk from eating mercury-tainted fish. Mercury causes harm to the developing brain of the fetus when consumed (in fish) by pregnant women. Young children who eat fish high in mercury are also at risk for learning disabilities and other developmental problems.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week issued new fish consumption guidelines, advising pregnant women and children to stay away from swordfish as well as other types of fish high in mercury, and to limit tuna fish meals to no more than six ounces per week.[1]

The MoveOn partnership with EWG, NRDC, former EPA Administrator Carol Browner and the Learning Disabilities Association is another indication of the growing surge of opposition to Bush's mercury policy by the nation's environmental health community.

###

TAKE ACTION!
Protect our kids from mercury through MoveOn.org.

###

FISH STORY - Part 1 of 3

as one of six siblings in a 50's Catholic family, i ate a lot of tuna fish:  tuna sandwiches, tuna cassarole, tuna melts. no matter what kind of family you're from, i bet you did too.  bet you've also fed a lot of it to your kids, i know we have.  by now, however, you probably know that American's fish-of-choice, as Arianna Huffington calls it in her column today, is causing all of us to have elevated levels of mercury in our bloodstreams.  this is particularly bad news for pregnant women, or women of childbearing age, and for children, since it acts as a neurotoxin affecting brain development and function in fetuses and small children. "A January 2003 report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that one in six women of childbearing age have mercury in their blood above the level that would pose a risk to a developing fetus." (Mercury Contamination in Fish, NRDC)

 you've read this lately everywhere, i'm sure.  what i haven't read is that it additionally may be to blame for infertility, blood-pressure and memory problems in adults, as well as a probable link to heart disease.  it is, of course, not the tuna's fault that this is happening.  the primary source of mercury pollution is emissions from coal-fired power plants, and right behind that as a source for poisoning Charlie comes the chemical industry.  emissions occur in air, water and land.  the element builds up in the larger fish, which eat the smaller fish, and then in you and me, when we make a salad with the larger fish.

FISH STORY - Part 2 of 3

but, certainly our government, the EPA and so on, is doing something about this threat to our babies and children?  well yes, of course they are.  an EPA taskforce worked for two years to determine the best way to reduce mercury emissions, until it was disbanded and its recommendations tossed out in favor of a plan that was more to the liking of the power plant industry. in the drawing up of the admin's proposed new mercury rules, the lobbying and advocacy groups representing power and energy companies with a big stake in the outcome of the process were able to get their memos directly inserted into the proposed standards. 

what really matters here, anyway?  babies' brains?  or the power, coal and chemical industries' bottom lines?

don't be silly.  from Arianna, some startling information about just who is watching the henhouse:  "It turns out that two of the key EPA regulators overseeing the development of the mercury guidelines, Jeff Holmstead and William Wehrum, used to represent utility industry clients before Bush tapped them for high-ranking posts in the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation.  They were both attorneys at Latham and Watkins - a high-powered D.C. law firm that's been lobbying the administration to adopt the less stringent mercury standards."

FISH STORY - Part 3

but this is something that's hitting people where they live. it's our tuna-noodle childhoods they're destroying.  no, ours are but a memory; it's our kids' and  grandkids' lives they ARE destroying.  so MoveOn, Environmental Defense, NRDC, every environmental organization i belong to or whose website i visit online is working on this mercury thing. 

if you'd like to learn some of the startling facts, NRDC has a chart showing how much tuna is safe to eat, based on body weight.  not many sandwiches will be happening for most elementary school kids whose mothers are paying attention.  Environmental Defense has figures and tables of mercury emissions, air - land - and water, for all the states in the union (Texas is outstanding in this field, thanks to the previous governor of that state helping out his energy buddies there), scary stuff.  They also have a lengthy report available in pdf format called "Out of Control and Close to Home" which i've downloaded but not yet read.

it's a sad scary world when tuna-noodle cassarole,  cheap protein for many families, is a toxic shock.  even scarier that it should have to take a huge effort to get those responsible for our safety to care enough to protect our nation's children.

MAYBE YES, MAYBE NO, WHO KNOWS?

i'm never sure how much good this sort of thing actually does, but it can't do any harm.  MoveOn.org has certainly shown us the power of online community activism, as did the organization of Howard Dean's campaign.  so, i present for your consideration and perhaps your signature a petition, sponsored by the League of Conservation Voters, directed toward the presidential candidates.  the petition is to urge that the environment become a major focus in this election -and, one would hope, for many years following the election.  John Kerry already has one of the best voting records (click on "record" tab on this page) in the Senate on environmental issues, we have to hope he'd continue that stance if elected president.  George Bush - well, what can i say about his environmental record?  that is, what can i say without smoke pouring out of my every orifice?  so, i'm not sure how much he'd care how many petitions were presented showing that huge numbers of the electorate consider the environment of primary importance.  but, y'know, i'm a petition-signer and a poll-taker, every chance i get.  just like i vote in every election, no matter how small or local.  i figure i'll use my voice in every way i can.  if enough of us feel that way -  who knows?

ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR MUCH?

about once a week or so i forget where i parked my car on campus, and end up traipsing from one side of the place to the other.  sometimes i also forget whether i was driving the mazda pickup or the matrix, so i don't know if i'm looking for the wrong vehicle in the right place, or the right vehicle in the wrong place. yeah, i'm old, but not THAT old.  it's just that i'm usually wildly pulling in five minutes before my first class starts, leaping out and running in the nearest building without paying much attention to what i'm doing.  hours later when my mind and body are reunited for practical matters,  original parking is but a fuzzy haze.  and, when it's made even more complicated by something like leaving a night class at the break to sprint home and pick up a disc i forgot, then REparking and going back for two more hours of class - i'm truly screwed.

which was the case last night.  but as i was searching through the rapidly emptying parking lots (library?  Jason Bldg?  Student Services Bldg?) under the incredibly clear stars, wildly wheeling show of planets now occurring, i smelled THE FIRST SKUNK OF SPRING.  loud and clear, permeating all space everywhere, sharp and strong, an unmistakeable message.  and suddenly, even though the temp was dropping into the twenties - for the first time i believed that spring is here.  and had a little rising of the heart, a spurt of hope.  after a truly wretched day, i might add.   weird, huh?  crocuses, daffodils, robins, didn't quite get me where this sudden whiff of animal did - to a sensory realization of spring's arrival.

so, just wanted to say i'm here, busy and crazy, with hopes i'll return to regular posting soon.  13 class days til spring break.  oh, but, who's counting?

SHABBAT SHALOM

it's three o'clock in the morning, the house is freezing cold, i'm sitting here surfing around the political blogworld making myself crazier by the minute.  incapable of sleeping tonight - too much really good, reeeally hot, salsa at Doña Irene's with dinner tonight, too many shrubya re-election ads on TV (i have yet to see a single Kerry ad - what's up with that?), too much shrub himself finally figuring out a reason to visit wounded soldiers returned from iraq, somehow imagining that there's political hay to be made from those damaged young people at Walter Reed on Ward 57.  and what about those whose damage is too far inside to be camera-worthy?  guys like this, and all those who will do this to themselves or people close to them in the coming years?  

feeling much as i did a year ago when i didn't sleep for most of the late winter leadup to war and then all spring, the insane interior monologue of wrath and despair never shutting-up, raging on even in my dreams.  i can't let this happen again, it serves no purpose, helps nothing, changes nothing.  i've got to start taking time to center myself in some peace, start practicing tai chi again for one thing.  i stopped when i first hurt my ankle, but i think i could do a gentler practice anyway.  i also need to get active with the local Democrats, a fairly conservative bunch - they may not want me! and find a useful outlet for the energy of anger, before it eats me alive.

saturday Educational Technology Certificate class early tomorrow morning, what kind of shape will i be in?  perhaps i've worn myself out enough to sleep.  shabbat shalom, would that it were true.

Tonight, tomorrow, we mark the year's anniversary of the attack and invasion of a country that i learned in World History to call Mesopotamia, the Cradle of Civilisation.  

in April of last year Arundhati Roy wrote a piece for The Guardian called "Mesopotamia.  Babylon.  The Tigris and Euphrates."  she used these words quite deliberately, to call up the magical images those words evoke in those of us who have, to whatever degree, been captivated by early history.

This is her introduction to the piece:   "How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words? And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation."

i just reread the article, it is a fitting memorial for the day, worthy of attention for the first time, or the tenth. 

SIEGE OF THE SIERRA CLUB

The environmental writer Rebecca Solnit first alerted me to this situation earlier this week, in this article.   moveon.org is now alerting its members who may also be Sierra Club members to be aware of this attempt at a hostile takeover of the Club by anti-immigration activists running for board positions, looking to form a majority with some of the more dubious current board members, and outside organizations of a racist and white-supremacist nature. Solnit is never one to look at any issue in a simplistic fashion, and this article explores the history of the Sierra Club, and California with it, the place that immigration and national borders have played in that state's environmental politics. she states that
       "If you care about the environment, there are more relevant issues you might choose to take up before immigration.  If you care about stopping immigration, on the other hand, the environment is a touchstone of conventional goodness, or at least of liberalism, you can hide behind."

there's more information here, at groundswellsierra.org, a group organized to try to stop this takeover, and here, an article by a former president of the Sierra Club.  the Club itself cannot legally inform its members about this attempt to pack the board, so it's being done by other groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

The Sierra Club is perhaps the bestknown name in American environmentalism, please alert any voting members you know about this effort on the part of a handful of rightwing racist extremists to hijack this organization with its large membership and clout in order to further their own ends.

General Mayhem (Sir!)

no time right now for the kind of reading i need to do in order to write a coherent entry on any environmental topic.  i'm busy with school and life, trying to help my spanish class make it through this semester.  they're my main priority right now.  many of these people have never studied another language, seem to have no idea how a language works at all.  including their native one.  those who've had spanish or french in high school are doing better than the rest of them.  i'm giving remedial classes in my "spare" time for small groups, and spending a lot of time making handouts to help with grammar points.  the text we're using is not at all user-friendly, and they find it very confusing.  so, that's where i am. 

i've just done a long entry in The Biblio Philes on Life of Pi, as i AM doing sanity-reading. it's what got me through a difficult childhood and adolescence, here's hoping it'll get me through the semester and maybe even the months leading up to the election.  the few Bush campaign ads i've caught on TV have driven me to homicidal rage.  it's a wonder the TV screen is still intact.  why isn't that man's nose 18 inches long, i ask you?  i'm also trying to keep up with world news, another reason for keeping the sanity-reading. there are those who'd call it "escape" reading.  but they'd be wrong.  there's no escape, i'm afraid.  reality is everywhere, and it's all so frightening. 

our spring break is not for another three weeks.  everybody's kids who go to other schools are heading to florida, sun, fun, hangover heaven.  oh to be twenty again.  no, not really. just kidding.  but oh to be on spring break.  hanging on by my fingernails.  okay, enough of this.  is my real president on TV tonight?  going to check the schedule.  another escape fantasy, The West Wing.

A year later it's time to march again.  time to tell the Administration that we still don't think war is the answer.  United for Peace and Justice has a calendar of all the actions taking place next weekend, scrolling through it gives heart to those of us who sometimes feel alone.  we're not.  the world is once again mobilizing to make voices of peace and reason heard everywhere.  if there's a march, a rally, a demonstration, any kind of action anywhere near you please try to be a presence swelling the numbers. 

as a displaced Texan i sometimes suffer from the bad rep my home state has politically.  not all Texans are republicans, or oil magnates, or redneck dopes.  as proof i offer you the info on the Crawford, Tx march next weekend.  check it out.  look at all the groups organizing and supporting it.  then go visit the Crawford Peace House, a facility purchased and maintained by a couple of Peace centers, Dallas and Waco, as a way station for protesters and journalists needing a friendly safe space in shrub's "home" town.

                                                           

HANDS ACROSS THE WATER

If you read my book journal, The Biblio Philes, with any frequency, you know that i've recently joined an internet outfit called BookCrossing.com, an international website for "book lovers and book releasers."  it's a great plan for those of us with overstuffed bookshelves, a way to give books away and connect with those who "catch" them.  the huge membership extends all over the world, including, of course, Spain.  there has been a forum thread on the website for leaving messages of sympathy, condolence, support, outrage, for the people of Spain regarding the train bombings.  today on BookCrossing (i was making release notes on my second book let loose "into the wild" last night)  i found this message back from a Spanish bookcrosser.  and if anyone needs further proof of what a true global village the Internet has created, this would be it.  come read this lovely thank-you note, it's truly grasping a hand across the miles.  a very personal glimpse into the pain of a people, a pain we can so well understand.  my entry with Yago's message is in two parts, please read both of them.

for continuing coverage on the Spanish bombings, visit Old Hickory's Weblog frequently, he's reading the Spanish papers, scanning the Internet and giving us far more information than we'll get elsewhere.

PARA LA GENTE DE MADRID

Since i first read about it yesterday i've been able to think of little other than the ghastly tragedy in Madrid.  there's nothing to say, nothing to add to the terrible facts.  the perpetrators are as yet unknown, with both ETA and Al-Queda possible suspects. there's amazing photos here of thousands and thousands of anti-terrorism demonstrators in the streets of Madrid, under umbrellas in the rain, as well as in Pamplona and European cities. all i have to offer is this poem by García Lorca, the guitar weeping, weeping without stopping.

    

   La Guitarra
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Es inútil callarla.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora monótona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora por cosas
lejanas.
Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama.
Oh, guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.

mil gracias to those of you who are trying to help me with this stupid homepage/FTP problem. (previous entry)  it may be hopeless. mostly because i understand next to nothing about all this.  and if it involves "html" i understand less than nothing.  i'm about resigned to returning to pictureless limbo in my marigolds2 journals.  there are worse things. 

for anyone who read "Across the Gulf on a Wing and a Prayer" in a previous entry, i have discovered that it originally comes from The Nature Conservancy's spring 2004 magazine, and that they have a lot more information on the subject of songbird migration from Latin America over the Gulf of Mexico.  so, i'm giving you a link to some more info on the Nature Conservancy site. if you didn't read the article, you can read it there too.  and, really, it's so amazing.  how could you not read it?

DESPERATELY SEEKING ADVICE, HELP

i need help.  i'm entering here a copy of the email i sent John Scalzi yesterday in the hopes that someone out there can help me figure this out.  Scalzi is in NYC, and busy, so i don't expect to hear from him any time soon.  if you have some thoughts, please email me with them....thanking you in advance.

this is such a mess i don't know where to start.
okay:
1.) i had a home page through AOL Hometown where i put pictures that i wanted to put in journal entries.  today it wouldn't seem to take the picture i tried to put on it, so i thought it must be full. i've been doing this for a while. 
2.)so, i thought - okay, i'll start a NEW homepage and delete the old one, and start fresh.  so i made a new home page and put a picture on it that i wanted to use in today's entry.  and deleted the old one.
3.) when i tried to "add picture from hometown" in the journal entry, the old list of homepage pictures came up.  from the page i had deleted.  the old page really is deleted, when i put the URL in the address box, nothing happens.  it's gone.  but its memory lingers on.  in the form of old pictures that i don't want any more, and the inability to put any new ones on there.  and the new home page doesn't come up.
4.) so, what about FTP space, i thought.  let's try that again.  but...the same old thing happens that always happened before.  when i click on "my FTP" or "anonymous FTP" a dialog box comes up and says "invalid favorite place."  what  does THAT mean?
5.) how it seems to me is that now i don't have any way to get pictures into entries.  is there some way to get the new homepage working as my picture storage space that will come up when i click "picture from hometown" or whatever that says?
6.) do you even begin to understand this mess?
7.) URL of old homepage:  hometown.aol.com/marigolds2/myhomepage/garden.html
(gone, but the old pictures stored there still come up when i want to add a picture)
8.) URL of new homepage:
hometown.aol.com/marigolds2/myhomepage/index.html
(seems to exist, but doesn't come up in journal when i want to put in pictures)
9.) and WHAT about this FTP business?  why can't i get into it?

SHARING THE WEALTH

 

when i gathered my many links into a separate journal, back in january (and put category links in my sidebar), it was my intention to highlight some of them from time to time, inviting other journalers to check them out. it's time i put that resolve into action. 

so today  i'm featuring Bob Whitson's "Howling at a Waning Moon,"  in which he is "Tracking the Bush Administration's asssault on the environment, our health, and our children's quality of life."  Today's entry, "Across the Gulf on a Wing and a Prayer" is a thing of such heartrending wonder i urge you to find time to sit and read it, it's pretty long, so get a cup of coffee and settle in. especially true if you are a member of my tribe, a birder. from the essay:
     ..."But as the late-day sun finally broke through the clouds, the silent woods suddenly came alive. Flocks of black-and-white birds dropped wearily into the treetops—dozens of eastern kingbirds, their tails tipped with white. What had been a lifeless patch of woods was now brimming with flashing wings and buzzy calls. More and more kingbirds arrived, some hawking cold-numbed insects from the air; with them came orchard and Baltimore orioles, and a few scarlet tanagers the color of blood."

These journal entries are filed by category.  among such usual suspects as Candidate Watch, Endangered Species, Global Warming, you can find the surprising title Good News. with nuggets of hope to keep you going through the remainder of this Administration. (he also has an election day countdown calendar!)

MARCH ETERNAL - Part 1

to continue the theme i began this morning:  march goes on forever, doesn't it?  and ever and ever.  it's the hardest time of year for me, personally and professionally.  though the Bradford pears everywhere have fat buds waiting to burst into white clouds of blossom, it's been evilly cold and windy today, possible snow flurries tonight.  one of the reasons the month is so difficult for me is that my mother died (many years ago now) on St. Patrick's day, a day just like this.  she was the consumate gardener, a witch in the garden, magical with herbs and flowers. when i came into her hospital room that day she asked me what the weather was doing.  when i told her it was snowing, she exclaimed in despair.  she died late that night, and i can't help but think that weather report had something to do with it.

most schools have a spring break about this time, for very good reasons.  not DTCC, no, at this college they give an extralong break for the winter holidays, then we slog on til Easter.  and for me right now it's certainly slogging.  i haven't been exactly inspired in my journaling, no time to research, think, write.  it's midterms, make-up tests, student essays, that feeling of being stuck in the middle of something that's going nowhere.  yet i know that all too soon somehow time will accelerate mysteriously and i'll be panicking over uncovered material.  life, its own self.  (Continues in Part 2)

MARCH ETERNAL - Part 2

then there's the personal world.  in chaos and disarray somehow, the sunporch full of plants that want to get out of their pots into bigger ones, piles of books and papers and catalogs everywhere i look, the urge to burn it all down.  the yard:  where do i begin?  we've had a couple of sundays with the seductive smell and feel of spring, and we've worked out there, beginning the heroic, overwhelming cleanup of last year's garden/yard debris.  the vegetable/herb garden already has a sturdy crop of weeds, although nothing else.  i keep saying "time to plant some lettuce" but i haven't done it yet.

sunflowerkat has a two-part entry about her MO of gardening/yard work that shows me i'm not alone.  her style and mine are identical, down to her refusal to use chemicals in the yard.  and listen kat, about those dandelions, many bird species love them.  since the day (when we lived on Cape Cod) i found a flock of indigo buntings snacking away on the dandelion seedheads, i've felt different about them.  think of them as part of your backyard wildlife environment.  and it's that wildlife environment that, for me, makes up for the lack of suburban chemical tidiness.  a yard full of birds, rabbits, butterflies, damsel and dragonflies, even squirrels, on a july day is worth the weeds.  most of the time.  yeah, by august i've given up in despair and have to fight my way through the jungle to get the tomatoes and cukes, but by august in DE nothing really matters.  another hard month, when all that exists is heat and humidity and the company that keeps coming because we live near the beach.

All of Me, Why Not Take All of Me?

According to this quiz (Does Your Weblog Own You?) my weblog owns 37.5% of me.  that's kind of a lot, but actually less than i would have expected.  i've seen a lot of entries lately about our journaling habits and obsessions.  also our journal exhaustion and lack of inspiration.  yet, we press on.  i think it's the coming of spring that's making some of us feel edgy, cranky, uninspired, whiny. TS Eliot says "April is the cruellest month," but for me March has always won that title.  springlike one day, with birdsong, sunshine, the smell of earth and life, freezing rain and slushy snow coming in the next day's forecast.  a hard time of year, unless, of course, you live in southern California.  and if so, what's your excuse?

Judging from the underwhelming response to my previous post re International Women's Day, there's not much interest in this subject.  Which is pretty much how it is in this country, as Echidne of the Snakes says in this excellent post  (it's a March 8 entry, you may have to scroll down a little, i can't get the archive link to work) about the day, its history and celebration across the world yesterday.

Well, i'm interested, and this is my journal, so i continue with the subject.  with a link to Ms Magazine's winter issue listing of Fifty Women Who Made a Difference this past year.  It's a truly fascinating list of: "Movers and shakers, teens and grandmas, chess champ and golf pro, surgeon and artist, soldier and hugger -- these women, and more, changed our lives in the past year." 

A sampling of the list gives you:

 -Carrie and Mary Dann, Western Shoshone sisters in their 70's fighting government efforts to take away tribal lands and grazing rights.   
-Gurinda Chadha, the film director of one of my favorite movies of the year, "Bend it Like Beckham."  
-Shoshona Johnson, Army specialist and former POW, the first African-American woman ever taken prisoner in combat, less famous than Jessica Lynch because not blonde.  
-Samantha Power, Author and Academic, currently a lecturer at Harvard's JFK School of Government, author of A Problem from Hell:  America and the Age of Genocide; I've seen her on Moyers' NOW several times and she's dynamite.
-Molly Ivins, Columnist and author, my favorite Texan, voice of good-ol-girl reason, sanity and humor.

A mere five from the list of fifty - check it out, if you're a woman it should make you proud.  If you're not, well, hey, we hear about the guys all the time.  It's Women's History Month, our moment in the sun. 

Women most certainly make a difference.  And we should celebrate our history, our struggles, our victories.  But, the truth is, many of those victories are hollow.  The struggle continues, as in Afghanistan, and many other countries where women have nominally won suffrage.  This article by Kim Antieau, from Commondreams.org, is also something to be considered as we celebrate International Women's Day. We may have come a long way, but baby, we've got a ways to go.

UNDO IT!

courtesy of an email postcard from fdtate, a petition-signing campaign from Environmental Defense:  a petition to be sent to the (P)resident, your senators and representatives, requesting action be taken to undo Global Warming.  it's a small thing, filling in your info and sending it on, but as we all know, small actions on the Internet have a way of snowballing.  so, here's the site, take a minute and make a small stand against the corporate interests who are indifferent to the fate of the planet, caring only about the fate of their bottom lines.

SACRED THINGS - Introduction (Part 1)

If you visit with any regularity, you know i've been focusing on Things Environmental in this journal.  this is a busy week, no time for a long entry...but yesterday i bought a book called Sisters of the Earth, Women's Prose & Poetry About Nature.  when i'm too busy to research and write my own entries, i'm going to quote bits and pieces from it here.  we need information, but we also need spiritual encouragement  (i found a quote a while back that goes like this:  "I believe in God, but I spell it Nature."  i can't remember whose this is; i think it was Frank Lloyd Wright....anyone else know? it perfectly expresses my belief.).  so today i pass along to you the opening passage from Starhawk's 1993 novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing. 

as close to a "Credo" as i can get.  it's in the next entry.

 

SACRED THINGS - The quote (Part 2)

     The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred:  air, fire, water, and earth.
      Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.
      To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged.  No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.
      All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred.  No one of us stands higher or lower than any other.  Only justice can assure balance:  only ecological balance can sustain freedom.  Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.
      To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive.  To honor the sacred is to make love possible.
      To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices.  To this we dedicate our lives.
                                Starhawk, 1993

ROLLING UP YOUR SLEEVES??

 

("Dump Bush" Icon by Phil Marden)

DAMAGE DONE - Part 1 of 3

The International Club's trip to Baltimore on Saturday was a huge success.  the weather was perfect for such an excursion, everyone was in high spirits on the bus trip up, sound asleep with their mouths hanging open on the trip back.  in between there was ice skating at an outdoor rink - for most of these students it was their first time on ice.  i couldn't get on the ice because of a painful bonespur on my ankle (a boot would have been torture), but, as one guy said, i was the "coach."  only a few sat out the humiliation of falling and sprawling, the rest were great sports. then over to Harbor Place for lunch (a crabcake dinner for me, Chinese buffet for most of the students) and on to the National Aquarium.  i love the Aquarium, any aquarium, but this one is spectacular.  however.  there were a gazillion people in there appreciating it that day.  the heat was intolerable, the crowds literally breathtaking. after an hour without air claustrophobia overwhelmed me, and i split for Barnes & Noble, an iced latte and the huge magazine rack. 

and then the huge magazine rack overwhelmed me.  my choices doomed me to despair:  The Nation and Mother Jones.  i'd been wanting to read the RFK, Jr. article "Junk Science" in The Nation, and i did.  it's on alternet now, so you can go check it out for yourself. it's kind of a followup to his Rolling Stone article i referenced in a series of earlier posts.  it's about this administration's campaign to "suppress science... that threatens the profits of its corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda." and it's another terrifying read.  some quotes from the conclusion of the RFK article in............Part 2

DAMAGE DONE - Part 2 of 3

From "Junk Science:"  

   ...Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing world.  At their best, scientists are moral individuals whose business is to seek the truth.  Over the past two decades industry and conservative think tanks have invested millions of dollars to corrupt science.  They distort the truth about tobacco, pesticides, ozone depletion, dioxin, acid rain and global warming.  In their attempt to undermine the credible basis for public action (by positing that all opinions are politically driven and therefore any one is as true as any other), they also undermine belief in the integrity of the scientific process."
        ... The Bush Administration has so violated and corrupted the institutional culture of government agencies charged with scientific research that it could take a generation for them to recover their integrity even if Bush is defeated this fall.  Says Princeton University scientist Michael Oppenheimer, "If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge and in a search for the truth, this White House is an absolute disaster."

RFK, Jr. is becoming an ever-more-important voice in environmental politics today.  if our wildest dreams come true and a Democrat wins the November election, i hope there's a spot in the highest levels of government reserved for this Kennedy.  head of the EPA?  Secretary of the Interior? it's time that  undoing the damage of the past two decades of environmental evils assumes an importance on a level with Homeland Security, or perhaps even higher.

Continued in Part 3

DAMAGE DONE - Part 3 of 3

so, that was The Nation.  then i moved on to Mother Jones.  and opened it to a photoessay called "The Damage Done, America's Wounded Come Home."  this  is also online, on Mother Jones' site.   read the accompanying text too, after you look at the photos of these young men.  it's a powerful piece of journalism.  beyond heartbreaking.  from the article this quote: 
        ...many of these soldiers, like their counterparts in every war, can give us an incisive glimpse into a bleaker America than most of us have ever known.  For them, the military was a refuge as well as an adventure or an obligation.  The soldiers I mean come from a nation in social disrepair, rife with poverty and plagued with a lack of opportunity and expectations.  For some of these men, fighting for their country was also a way of fighting against it - against a future without possiblities, where the poor and uneducated, in keeping with this administration's pitiless version of Christianity, are simply left to get by somehow on their own.

i was physically exhausted by the trip, but when i went to bed Saturday night my spiritual exhaustion from the truths told by these two articles overshadowed the physical.  nonetheless i am deeply grateful that we still have media voices that dare to speak out in this fashion.  i would be spiritually far poorer without them.