JUST SAYING HELLO

I'm back, a great time was had by all, and now there's the devil to pay.  it's such a gorgeous day that it seduced me outside to start the momentous task of getting ready for spring.  i wore out, but G's still out there pruning!  she'll be sorry later.  news from outside:  the crocuses (croci?) are blooming!  the daffodils have buds!  the buds on the japanese quince are full and fat, ready to pop!

no real posting possible now, no no, i must do work for school for the rest of the afternoon, in order to be able to catch at least some of the Oscars.  a quote to ponder:   "The penalty good people pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by people worse than themselves."   -Plato

now, how long ago was Plato?  nothing changes much, does it?

BOOK FUN! AND CRABS!

Thank you all for playing along and listing your anecdotal reading piles over at The Biblio Philes!  it was a lot of fun.  if you didn't get there yet, come on over and add yours.  and one more fun thing on the book journal, this quiz "What Book Are You?"  leave your results; so far everyone has been something different.  i was, amazingly, Ulysses (James Joyce) and G, my partner, was The Sound and the Fury (Wm. Faulkner). 

i'm off tomorrow to Baltimore on a bus trip with our International Club.  this is the organization for our ESOL students at the College.  i'm glad to find out that the bus is full, it can be hard to get this group together because they all work so much.  many have two jobs, one on the weekdays, one on the weekends. this will take the entire day and leave me totally exhausted, but it's going to be fun.  we're going to the ice rink, the National Aquarium, and Harbor Place for eating and shopping.  they're a crazy bunch, and i love them.  i also love B'more, a city with serious art museums (where, alas, we won't be going), great seafood, awful traffic, and Harbor Place for fun.

it may be Monday before i'm back in journal-land.  i'll need to catch up on schoolwork Sunday, and, of course, on Sunday night i'll be attending the Oscar ceremonies.  i grumble every year about them, but i always end up watching.  don't you?

I'll show you mine, if you show me yours!

Humor me, darlings, please.  come answer this question. it can't all be global warming, pestilence and doom. 

ADDENDUM TO ICE AGE STORY

other folks are picking up on the global climate change story (see previous three entries).  this link is from alternet, but the story is from The Nation.  with interesting repercussions for our friends at the World Bank.  

and arianna huffington weighs in with her column today.  i just found it in my email, but here's a link to it on Common  Dreams.  in the column she gives a link to Andrew Marshall's report for the DOD.  you can read it for yourself.  wouldn't it be swell if this would become an issue to rival, and perhaps overtake, "gay marriage" in the coming months?  i keep saying this:  if we don't have a planet to live on none of these other things will matter.  

2/26 - here's the most thorough of the articles written in response to the Pentagon's global warming report yet, from TomDispatch.  everyone seems to agree, this is far more a threat than terrorism.  and yet, the mass media and the administration continue to ignore it.

THE ICE AGE APPROACHETH? Part 1 of 3

(re picture:  Emperor penguins, whose population has declined 50% due to melting of sea ice with resulting loss of food sources.)

So bushgreenwatch has scooped me this morning on a story i've been researching and working on for a couple of weeks now.  and that's okay; it's their job.  but I see that it's time to get this story written, a story about global warming that is now making even the Pentagon sit up and take notice. the administration itself has not yet changed its attitude of denial and distortion on this question.  and the Pentagon is only paying attention because the scenario involved could create great problems for that most sacred of cows, national security.  the fact that global warming stands a good chance of affecting life itself on this planet hasn't seemed to move the government to a position of caring, let alone action. but let our "national security" be threatened and suddenly it hits home.

I first read this scenario in an article by Thom Hartmann called "The Ice Age Cometh."  it's adapted from an updated version of his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.  the thesis has to do with a phenomenon called "The Great Conveyer Belt," a current in the ocean for thermohaline (heat and salinity) circulation, which carries as much water as 100 Amazon Rivers and is a crucial factor in shaping the Earth's climate.  this current includes what we call the Gulf Stream and is responsible for keeping much of Europe and the East Coast of North America temperate. ( a short simple explanation of the Great Conveyor can be found here, as well as references to other information about it.) 

(Continued in parts 2 and 3)

THE ICE AGE APPROACHETH? - Part 2 of 3

As anyone even vaguely familiar with news about global warming knows, the polar ice caps and Greenland's glaciers are melting.  this cold water flowing into the northern Atlantic could shut down the Gulf Stream and the worst-case scenario for the results of this would be a "full-blown return of the last ice age -- in a period of as little as 2 to 3 years from its onset -- and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the 'little ice age' of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world."   (Hartmann)

Recently developed advances in drilling and sensing equipment have enabled scientists to analyze ice core samples from the most ancient accessible glaciers.  through this analysis they have discovered that the transitions in time from ice age-like weather to contemporary-type weather were brief and rapid.  scientists aren't sure what caused the tripping of the cycles between ice age and temperate weather in the remote past, but "the data from the Arctic ice and other sources suggest the atmospheric changes that preceded earlier collapses were dismayingly similar to today's global warming."  (Fortune magazine article)  the earlier changes were caused by unknown natural effects, but the one looming before us today undoubtedly has more to do with human activity, principally the burning of fossil fuel. 

here is Hartmann's description of how this happened in previous cycles, the possibility that likely faces us, sooner rather than later: "The spring would come late, and summer would never seem to really arrive, with the winter snows appearing as early as September.  The next winter would be brutally cold, and the next spring didn't  happen at all, with above-freezing temperatures only being reached for a few days during August and the snow  never completely melting. After that, the summer never returned:  for 1500 years the snow simply accumulated and accumulated, deeper and deeper, as the continent came to be covered with glaciers and humans either fled or died out."

(Part 3 continues)

THE ICE AGE APPROACHETH? Part 3 of 3

Fortune Magazine is the only organ of the American media to have taken note of this story.  and then only because it "would be the mother of all national security issues."  David Stipp's article centers on the Pentagon's concerns, as put forth in an unclassified report by Andrew Marshall.  in this report Marshall foresees that as soon as 2020 violent ocean storms could be destroying levees, disrupting aqueduct systems, causing huge and widespread dust storms and soil loss.  Megadroughts would affect the U.S., especially in the southern states.  the U.S. would need to become a fortress, keeping our resources in and the world's evermore desperate have-nots out. nuclear arms would proliferate in countries seeking to shore up their energy supplies and defend themselves in this global crisis. the end result looks like this:  "the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water and energy supplies."

according to the bushgreenwatch post this morning, "The Bush Administration has yet to publicly acknowledge the Pentagon study or reverse any of its positions which oppose taking action to address global warming.  In fact, as reported yesterday.....it is threatening to undermine an international treaty that has proven widely successful in reducing worldwide production of methyl bromide, the most potent ozone-depleting chemical still in widespread use."

The Bush Administration is more concerned with banning gay marriage than reducing the effects of burning fossil fuels and ozone-depleting chemicals,  more concerned with abrogating the rights of dissenting citizens than with changing the standards for automotive emissions and fuel efficiency, more concerned with exporting corporate capitalism to wartorn feudal societies than with working to make this planet a place where our children stand a chance of growing up at all.  the bushgreenwatch site offers you the chance to notify your representatives in Congress that it's time to make some changes.  we either become activists now, or we kiss our butts goodbye.  quite possibly a lot sooner than we thought.     

ABSOLUTE FRIENDS REVIEW

okay, that's off my chest.  three-part review of le Carré's opus begins here in The Biblio Philes.  all you political types who may not usually read fiction need to check this out. and enjoy.  i'm off for some sunshine on the boardwalk and some Thai food.  

SOME KINDA FUN

this evening i entertained myself by a.) seeing Mystic River, and b.) finishing Absolute Friends.  to top off the evening maybe i'll go out and lie down in traffic for a while.  man, neither of these was light entertainment.  as a serious Dennis Lehane fan i'd read Mystic River  when it came out, which was long enough ago that i'd forgotten what a bummer story it is.  as for the le Carré novel, i'll be writing about it tomorrow.  too mentally and spiritually worn out right now.  wow.  like being dragged across Texas behind a Buick, tell you what.

a couple of notes here before i head out to my Saturday a.m. class in "educational technology."  which i'm taking because i figure having an "Educational Technology Certificate" will look good on a resumé; i have yet to see any other point to it. 

you know how i'm always referring to Bill Moyers' PBS Friday night magazine show, NOW?  it's my voice in the wilderness, my beacon on a darkened shore.  and now i get the news he's leaving his lengthy career in broadcasting after the elections in November.  whatever happens?  even if we have four more years of a Bush admin?  oh no Bill, you can't leave me like this!  he wants to do other things he's had in mind while, as he says, there's still some grains of sand in the hourglass.  well, he's done his time speaking his truth via public broadcasting.  i can only wish him many grains of sand left to do whatever else (first project seems to be writing a book about LBJ) is on his personal agenda.  but you bet i'll be catching every edition of NOW until November.

second note, if you've been following the "Sideshow" section of AOL's Election Main page, the place they promise to publish AOL political journals focusing on the election, you may have been disappointed at the paucity of liberal journals selected.  i haven't given up checking in there, and yesterday i was rewarded by finding that my buddy (in reality as well as virtuality) Tank Gurl's very liberal journal is a current choice.  Tank Gurl's Two Cents, go check her out, leave comments.  i've told her to write like a maniac, it's her fifteen minutes of fame, take full advantage.

ANOTHER END-RUN AROUND THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

well, i'm back from doing my Great American Duty and taking the moveon signatures/comments to Biden's office.  i'll say more about that later, all i want to do right now is have a tantrum in print about the fact that that viscious criminal weasel has DONE IT AGAIN. another recess appointment to get one of his biased right-wing federal judicial appointees into office.  William Pryor will now be on the federal bench in Georgia  at least until January 2005.  doing his best to roll back advances in civil rights, environmental law, womens' rights, and anything else that he can get his hands on.  most presidents NEVER take advantage of this potential power, and this one has done it twice in a few months.  he knows he's never going to get these bigots past Congressional review, so he just takes the ace out of his sleeve and makes recess appointments.  ohhhhhh.  i'm so mad i could spit nails.  big ones, too.

MOVEON.ORG WALK-IN

A couple of days ago i got an email from moveon.org asking for volunteers to go to their senators' home offices  (they're out of DC on recess right now) tomorrow, Friday Feb. 20.  the idea is to have a massive walk-in to senate offices all over the country by volunteers carrying chunks of the petition signed online by over 500,000 moveon members asking that the Senate censure GWB for "misleading the country about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."  

well, i have no classes or committments right now on Fridays, so i emailed them back and said "sure, you bet!" today i am printing out, even as we speak, 19 pages of DE signatures and comments, which tomorrow i will take to Wilmington to Joe Biden's office.  each volunteer is supposed to spend five minutes speaking to anybody we can get to listen, there is a list of talking points, as well as delivering the packet of signatures and comments.  ask me how good it feels to actually be doing something concrete about my feelings, instead of talking to the four walls, typing into cyberspace, etc. 

you KNOW it's good!  i'm so excited!!!!

i'm reading comments here from these pages, zounds, they're fine!  i just signed the basic petition myself, without adding any of my own words.  now i regret that.  i'm gonna put some of them in an entry to share with other like-minded souls.  we're not alone!  even here in tiny little conservative DuPont-controlled Delaware there are plenty of kindred pissed-off spirits. 

(Comments follow in next entry.)

WALK-IN - Petition Comments

From my stack of signatures and comments:

"Please consider this proposal to censure this president.  This man has blasphemed the goal of peace among nations.  He stood square in the spotlight when his 'War on Terror' brought the masses to feel a sense of justice.  But when confronted with evidence of the falsified and exaggerated reports of the threat to our national safety, he passed the buck.  While an investigation will undoubtedly reveal a conspiracy to defraud the people, this president must take responsibility where he would otherwise take credit."  (Timothy Craig, Middletown, DE)

"If Congress found fit to impeach the last president for a peccadillo, surely it should censure this one for undermining the strength of our country by means of a war waged for purposes of personal revenge and rewarding friends with lucrative contracts." (David Zozinski, Wilmington, DE)

"Please help save this nation from the disasters of continual wars, poverty, and arrogance.  We must stop this Bush dynasty before we are all faced with a nuclear holocaust." (W.H. Giles, Wilmington, DE)

"This is worse than what Nixon did....please take action."  (Ivo Dominguez, Jr., Georgetown, DE)

"Do the ends truly justify the means?  We beseech you to fight to end these times of media manipulation and censorship to justify the cause of a man who has shown time and again blatant disrespect for civil rights, environmental concerns, and, most importantly, the common sense and intelligence of the American People.  A man with a past which is hidden from his consitutents is no leader.  Please censure him now before he continues to believe there is no boundary he cannot cross, no line he cannot step over."   (Joe Cimino, New Castle, DE)

GREEN SUVS? Part 1

Justcherie, one of my favorite journalers, has an entry linking to a Grist Magazine (one of my favorite online sites) article on "green SUVs."  the article mentions two hybrid vehicles that will be emerging soon, one from Ford, one from Toyota.  i have been keeping up with this subject myself for some time now.  we wanted to get a hybrid vehicle when we bought our last car, specifically we wanted the Toyota Prius.  the dealer closest to us didn't have any to sell (only a demo he wouldn't even let us drive) and said he couldn't get us one for at least a year.  so. as Toyota loyalists we bought a Matrix.  which we love, and which gets great mpg, especially on the open hwy.

at the present time we both live close to where we work, and don't have to do that much driving regularly.  when i'm selling plants at the farmers' market in the summer i need a truck to haul stuff around in, and for that we have our older vehicle, a Mazda pickup with close to 200,000 miles on it.  we take one long road trip about every two years, and shorter ones every couple of months.
     (Part 2 continues below.  and there's only two parts!)

GREEN SUVS ? Part 2

we are planning a move to New Mexico in one to two years, at which point we'll have to get rid of the pickup and get a 4-wheel drive vehicle.  to that end i have been keeping up with the progress of the hybrid Ford Escape since the beginning of its development. you can check it out here if you want to know more.  the newsletter (called "Unplugged") on the site has the information.  Ford, the maker of some of the biggest gas-guzzlers on the market, both SUVs and trucks, has a long way to go to convince me of its environmental responsibility.  and this hybrid Escape will only get 29 - 31 mpgs on the open road, not much better than its conventional sibling.  it may not be the answer to a light-hauling, 4-wheel drive vehicle.  my research continues.

an interesting note....the Grist article mentions the Evangelical Environmental Network, the folks who started the What Would Jesus Drive campaign.  so, without mockery or snickering, i went to the WWJD site to see what it was all about.  they've got a damn good blog there, with an entry re the NYT article on the "green SUVs."  

steps in the direction of creating vehicles that don't contribute to both our dependence on petroleum and the ruination of our environment seem to be baby-sized. i believe that the automotive industry could turn it all around in a couple of years if they wanted to.  certainly in this nation that can send intelligent robots to Mars the technology exists to put earthly commuters into a whole new breed of transportation.  but it will take either some global catastrophe or a real revolution to accomplish this.  a few "hybrid" vehicles here and there may be a tiny step in a right direction, but they certainly aren't the solution.

NOT-ENUF-SNOW DAY

my hopes for a snow day today have been dashed, the only concession to the weather is an hour's delay in classes this morning.  we got a few inches of thick wet snow overnight, but they got the roads cleared quickly and the temp is rising.  but oh my, it's beautiful out there.  it's the kind of snow that stays on tree branches and shrubs, especially evergreens.  i've been watching the morning light come up from the east, everything is glowing in this soft rosy light.  it will all be gone by this evening, and tomorrow is supposed to be in the fifties.  so, a brief lovely gift this morning.

and yesterday i saw a group of robins in the backyard, cavorting at the heated birdbath;  flocks of migrating blackbirds are wheeling through the skies, landing in the fields, over-running my feeders.  i don't like those blackbirds, they make an incredible mess, but they're a sign of spring anyway. and those daffodils are six inches tall already.  they'll have buds in no time.  i'm hearing my resident mockingbird right now, in the holly outside the window.  spring is on the move.  it's time to plant lettuce. 

OUR BODIES, OUR BURDENS

More feelbad stuff here today.  i'm a little surprised by the number of people who still seem to think "pollution" and "environmental problems" have to do with litter.  we've moved so far past litter that it seems like a garden party by comparison.  what's going on now is not fastfood trash on the roadside, Wal-Mart bags hanging from the treebranches (yes, of course that's still going on, and worse than ever.  but it's so minor compared with the REAL environmental problems.).  some of what's going on now will be revealed to you here, where the Environmental Working Group's BodyBurden study documents the horrifying burden of chemicals each of us now carries in our blood, our cells. i first heard about this study, as about so many other things, on Bill Moyers NOW.  he was a participant in the study, his results are on the site.

you can also take a little test, not a fun one (no movie stars, rock groups, historical personalities), to get a general idea of your own body's chemical burden.  lots of technical data about the different chemicals, their harmful effects and so on.  this is just from the things we absorb into our bodies in our daily life.  those of us who live in places like Delaware must have 100 times the burden.  the DuPont state!  better living through chemistry!

HAPPY PRESIDENTS' DAY, Y'ALL

PREFACE TO "CRIMES AGAINST NATURE"

this is to introduce a long 5-part article about environmental crimes perpetrated by the administration and the Dept. of Defense.  i began the day by reading the email from Bush GreenWatch which i mention in the next entry. it filled me with such rage and despair that i really didn't know what to do. what i did was spend the day writing the series of entries following.  it eased my feeling of helpless despair, but it will only matter if it finds readers in you, the guests who visit this journal. it will only matter if you join with RFK, Jr., with the members of NRDC, EarthJustice, Environmental Defense, Friends of the Earth, Defenders of Wildlife, etc., to take action to stop these depradations.  the links on my sidebar under "Environment/Conservation" will take you to many of these organizations. 

my love for this earth is boundless, but i am past middle-age, my time left here is obviously limited.  for all our children, what will be left?  we are burning down our house, sinking our only ship.  read it, and weep.  and then, let's get to work.

(Five part series "Crimes Against Nature" follows below.)

CRIMES AGAINST NATURE, PART 1

i have been waiting for the character limit to lift before writing this piece, accumulating articles, notes, links, quotes, for weeks now. an email notice received today from Bush GreenWatch has, however, pushed me over the edge, so i’ll follow Old Hickory’s example and write a ten-part entry if that’s what it takes. (you’re my journal hero, Bruce! you say what you need to say, character limit be damned. you write on!)

i begin with some quotes from Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s article "Crimes Against Nature." the article has been published several places on the Internet, but was first published in Rolling Stone Magazine. it’s a very long article, 21 printed-out pages, but i believe it’s the most important  (because comprehensive and published in a widely-circulated above-ground magazine) treatise of its kind available. Kennedy is legal counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he is doing important work to try to safeguard environmental law. he’s in a difficult position, watching much of the work he does go up in flames. the article opens with these words:
               George W. Bush will go down in history as America’s worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America’s environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country’s air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation’s most important environmental laws by the end of the year.(the piece was written in November ’03.) 

(Continued in following entry.)

CRIMES AGAINST NATURE, PART 2

i continue to quote from RFK, Jr:
 .......The attacks began on Inauguration Day, when President Bush's chief-of-staff and former General Motors lobbyist Andrew Card quietly initiated a moratorium on all recently adopted regulations. Since then, the White House has enlisted every federal agency that oversees environmental programs in a coordinated effort to relax rules aimed at the oil, coal, logging, mining and chemical industries as well as automakers, real estate developers, corporate agribusiness and other industries.
.....Today, with the presidency and both houses of Congress under the anti-environmentalists’ control, they are set to eviscerate the despised laws. White House strategy is to promote its unpopular policies by lying about its agenda, cheating on the science and stealing the language and rhetoric of the environmental movement.

i cannot urge you strongly enough to read the entire article, with its documentation of this administration’s intimate ties to the very industries destroying the environment, whether EPA, the Interior Dept, Fish and Wildlife, Fedl Energy Regulatory Commission, on and on. all are run by former industry moguls or lobbyists, and certainly all are snugly in bed with the corporate polluters.

However. What is not addressed, even in this lengthy, and comprehensive document, is the environmental destruction being wrought by the arm of government which for most of the past year has seemed to actually be THE governing branch: The Defense Department, the Pentagon.

(Continued in following entry.)

CRIMES AGAINST NATURE, PART 3

As a member of the NRDC i regularly receive email notices and updates from them. last November i received an email entitled "Marine mammals are innocent victims of war on terror." i have saved that email, printed it out, have most of it by memory now. from that email:
           Under the cynical pretext of protecting national security, the Bush administration strong-armed the Senate Armed Services Committee into approving the most far-reaching rollback of marine mammal protection in the last 30 years. It exempts the U.S. military from obeying core provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.
          Because these unprecedented exemptions are part of a "must-pass" defense bill, they were quickly approved by both the House and Senate, and President Bush is sure to sign the bill into law.

These exemptions from the provisions of the two Acts mean that the military can use high-intensity sonar and detonate explosives underwater, practices that disturb, harass and kill marine mammals, the dolphins, whales and others. probably many of you reading this have gone out of your way to visit the playgrounds of these creatures, taken whalewatch boats along the Atlantic or Pacific coasts to see the awesome antics of these beasts.

if i forget everything else i’ve ever done or known i will probably always remember my first whalewatch boat out from Cape Ann, MA, the first sight of a humpback whale breaching right beside the boat, ancient massive body encrusted with barnacles, huge watchful eye looking right at me from feet away, fins slapping the water. it was a primeval connection to something so beyond me, to life itself, to the enormity of all creation. today these creatures are increasingly beaching themselves to die upon the shores of North and South America, Australia, New Zealand. pods of whales come ashore where i lived on Cape Cod, groups of people are organized to try to save them, and no one knows exactly why it’s happening. it doesn’t take much imagination to connect this behaviour with their being driven suicidally mad by Navy underwater sonar, by gigantic underwater explosives detonations.   (Continues)

CRIMES AGAINST NATURE, PART 4

Under this same defense bill the military is now allowed to destroy the habitat of endangered birds and animals that live on the 25 million acres of land under the Pentagon's jurisdiction. which brings me to today's email from Bush GreenWatch. the title of the article was mystifying: "Administration Failing to Meet Bird-Bombing Deadline." what? is the administration bombing birds? where? why? huh?

Ah! the National Defense Authorization Act granted the Pentagon a temporary one-year exemption from complying with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. but, as part of the law, the Pentagon and the Interior Dept were supposed to draft a plan to minimize "bird bombing." It was supposed to be completed by last December. but guess what? oh, come on, guess. YES! it wasn't. Interior says it would be done "soon." 
from greenwatch:
              Since the war on terrorism began, the Defense Department has argued that complying with environmental laws interferes with military readiness. It has lobbied Congress to exempt the military from environmental laws ranging from the Marine Mammal Protection Act to the Clean Air Act.

(Continued in following entry)

CRIMES AGAINST NATURE, PART 5

During a case involving the U.S. military's bombing of an island in the Pacific, an important nesting ground for migratory birds, Earth Justice successfully argued that the bombing of the island during live-fire training constituted a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The attorney for the Pentagon was William Haynes II, whose nomination to a federal appellate court position is pending in the Senate. and here we have an example of our Defense Dept's environmental thinking. Haynes argued that conservationists actually benefit from the military's killing of birds because it "helps make some species more rare and 'bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one.'"  hand to god, people, this is what he said.

now, after you read Robert Kennedy's article on crimes against nature, your next assignment is this. if you haven't already seen it i want you to rent, purchase, steal, a copy of the film "Winged Migration."  make some uncluttered time when you can sit down with someone you love, maybe even with your kids (warning: there is one extremely sad moment late in the film when "nature red in tooth and claw" could upset a young child. it certainly did my little niece, she cried for hours. it upset me too, but not for hours.) and watch this miraculous piece of film. it's nominated for Best Documentary Film this year, and it deserves to win every bit of attention and acclaim it can. after you see this film you will find it impossible not to want the Migratory Bird Act upheld everywhere in the world, by every legal body. this film shows what a miracle migration is.  the fragility and strength of these birds, their vulnerability and determination, will take your breath away.

we cannot let this White House continue to cynically exploit national defense as a convenient way to give the Pentagon a free pass to trample our environment, harass and massacre wildlife.  it's time for us all to become activists.

Cultural Bullying, Part 1

why is it so impossible to hope that an election campaign could be conducted on real issues?  as far as i can tell the issues, for the american media, if not the american people, are:  was young Dubya AWOL from the Nat'l Gd?  was young Kerry in bed (figuratively speaking) with young "Hanoi Jane?"  do homos have a right to the same civil benefits through union that hets have?  or should they become the objects of constitutional scorn?  what Old Hickory fabulously calls the "Republican Mighty Wurlitzer of sleaze-slinging" is in full bellow already.  how much worse, given time and Karl Rove, will things get?

the Democrats cannot allow this to be the way this campaign is conducted.  i have been in a relationship with another woman for aeons, but i see this whole "gay marriage" thing as a red herring to divert us all, whichever side we are on, from the pressing issues of the time. social, environmental, economic, international, educational issues in need of immediate attention, if this country is to continue to exist with any pretense of democracy, any hope for quality of life for our children, our own old age, the continued financial solvency of the middle class, etc etc ad infinitum.

(continued in next entry)

Cultural Bullying, Part 2

thanks to a comment by fdtate on another journal, i found an essay by Sam Smith, editor of the Progressive Review.  it speaks, with fundamental reason and civility, to a policy the Democrats would do well to adopt concerning the "gay marriage" cultural jihad.  in case you can't get to the PR to read the whole article, called "Handling the Bullies," i'd like to just give a few introductory quotes from it. 

Smith speaks of changing the ground of the argument..."Instead of letting the GOP define the issue as between morality and sin, the Democrats could reframe it as a debate between extremist bullies on one hand and moderate, fair-minded Americans on the other."  He imagines a candidate asked "What do you think about gay marriages?" answering thusly:
       " I'm a heterosexual and I'm married so I don't think about it much at all.  What does bother me is when one group in this country tries to foist their personal values on another, and even tries to enforce it with a constitutional amendment.  That's about as un-American as you can get.  If you don't like gay marriages, then don't become gay and don't get married.
        .....what i'm asking you to do is to be good, decent and fair-minded Americans and practice the sort of reciprocal liberty in which citizens say to each other, I will respect your liberty because i expect you respect mine....
 ...........As a public official I will not debate the issue of gay marriage because it is not the business of public officials.  It is the business of religions and of the individuals involved.  If the state can write a church's rules on marriage, it can determine how holy communion is performed and how its bishops are selected.  But it can't do that because the consitution says it can't."

How i hope this essay falls into the hands of John Kerry, or whoever ends up as the Democratic party candidate, that it happens soon, and that he will give deep and serious consideration to deflecting the bullies from making this the only thing American voters read/hear/think about for the next 8 months.

FEH, SENTIMENTAL CLAPTRAP!

our Muse of the AOL journals seems to be caught up in the romance of the season, journaling her way to Valentine's Day.  she has an intriguing question for us today...can we pin down our favorite love song?  she can, and it's a good one. i have no hope of ever picking ONE of anything.  so, my list of favorite love songs.  a song for all seasons!

Hopeless Love:  "Long, Long Time"  - Linda Ronstadt

Sentimental Love:  "A Case of You" -  Joni MItchell did it first and
                best, but i also like Diana Krall's version.

Raunchy Kickass Love:  "Shut Up and Kiss Me" - Mary C. Carpenter

Love Song to Remind Me of My Youth:  "If Not For You" - Bob Dylan

Classic Love Song:  "So In Love"  - Ella Fitzgerald
(this one's the Real Deal - hard to pick the best Cole Porter 
           lovesong)
 

                mondays and tuesdays are my long crazy days, so no heavy lifting today either.  i just wanted to say that when i came in with groceries after this morning's class i noticed that the daffodils by the kitchen steps are showing.  green tips already several inches out of the ground.  it's a place that's sunny, warm and sheltered, so this is not a  general trend elsewhere yet.  but it's hope springing eternal from the seemingly cold dead ground.  in another month or so there will be drifts of smiling yellow faces to greet us when we come home.  guess i'll keep getting up in the morning after all.

NO HEAVY LIFTING TODAY

Which Silver Screen Siren Are You? 

i would so much rather have been Kate Hepburn.

THERE'S BAD NEWS, AND THEN THERE'S MORE BAD NEWS

unlike many journalers, i  work in an environment where i'm not connected to a computer most of the day.  i'm in the classroom during the day, with occasional trips to the Learning Ctr and Library.  so when i can, i try on weekends to catch up with news and views online. i've just spent the morning journeying through environmental and political sites, magazines, blogs.  now i need to go find a large stash of ecstasy.  either in pill form, chocolate, or negative ocean ions. you know me by now, it's gonna be Bethany Beach today.  and there better be some really big smashing crashing waves.

but here's the good news about the bad news:  there's some real information available to us out there on the net.  stuff you're never going to hear on the news.  at least i certainly haven't.  a site that will be indispensable to me from now on is Bush Green Watch, "Tracking the Bush Administration's Environmental Misdeeds."  this site is updated daily, and thoroughly, with good references and links.  todays update discloses how Bush has underfunded the National Parks, and undercut the Endangered Species Act.  read this back issue about drilling on Padre Island National Seashore in the nesting grounds of the endangered Ridley Turtle. 

on the sidebar of this site i found this one, Save Our Environment, A National Coalition for the Environment.  here 20 some environmental groups have joined to create a site for taking action on the growing list of administration misdeeds.  you can sign up to take action on every imaginable environmental issue, send emails and faxes to administration officials, members of congress, etc.  it's also possible to link to all the groups making up the coalition.

CITIZENSHIP CLASS, FEBRUARY 2003, Part 1

a year ago i was teaching an American history and government class for immigrants interested in learning the material for the Citizenship Exam.  not everyone in the class was eligible for citizenship, some were undocumented, some waiting for green cards, some on student visas.  but universally they wanted to learn the history of this Promised Land, wanted to learn it with a fierce intensity. 

at the same time, as you will recall, under the fear, the paranoia, engendered in and by the Justice Dept, the creation of the Homeland Security Dept, elements of this history were being repudiated, disassembled, disregarded.  my supervisor in the Adult Ed department  (a rightwing Christian Republican) remained in the room, at her desk and computer, while i taught the class.  and right outside the door was another office inhabited by a department (not mine) head who kept an autographed photo of Shrub, in hunting gear holding a shotgun, on his always open door.  this guy routinely commented to me on how much he liked to hear me teaching my citizenship class, how much he could tell i cared about my students. so i knew he was listening.  my freedom to ad lib my thoughts about current history was seriously limited.  i made it thru the semester as best i could and at the end i told my boss i couldn't teach that class again, at least not without my own editorial input.  and i told her why.  to her credit, she understood.  to her credit, as a Constitutionalist she even agreed with me. then i could only wish i had talked to her much earlier.  in any case, i'm not teaching citizenship this year. 

i wrote the poem in the following entry while anguishing over how to deal with the situation. 

CITIZENSHIP CLASS, FEBRUARY 2003 (Part 2 - Poem)

They bring me presents, small things:
books, pictures of their countries, food.
They call me Teacher, a title of respect;
I try to learn their names, and use them
often, though some are nonsense
to my tongue, Korean, Arabic, Thai,
and some, the Haitian and Latino,
fall easily into place:
Jong Ja, Semina, Mi Sook, Bassam, Jean Elie,
Jamil, Fritz Alcé, Begum, Patareeya, Ana Luz.
For two hours, every day this term,
we gather in the dusty light,
the adult education room.
Each week the class grows larger,
we must share copies of the text.
They come with greedy eagerness,
bring brothers, mothers, friends,
hungry for the stories, for the myths.
So far I've been okay, been honest, more or less:
Columbus, Indians displaced by Europeans,
Jamestown, Pilgrims, tea and taxes,
midnight riders, war.
But, soon we will be reading Independence,
Constitution, Bill of Rights.
How can I teach those ten amendments
now made feeble by our Homeland zeal?
What can I tell them, what can I say?
"It is still better here than in your country,
but don't expect too much.
Be careful, quiet, keep your heads down."
Is this our lesson for today,
the way I must now teach survival,
teach truth, teach citizenship?

WILL YOU TAKE A DETOUR?

three part entry here today, on stuff i've been saying i'd discuss eventually:  film of House of Sand and Fog, and T.C. Boyle's novel Drop City.   and...that's all she wrote, for now!

GREAT OLD BROADS of the world, unite!!!

So, I have found my spiritual home, both on the web and in real life.  now i know who, and what, i really am.  i'm joining the group, i'm subscribing to the newsletter, i'm singing and dancing in the rain.  i have known for some time i am a Great Old Broad, i just didn't know how much company there was out there.

P-DAY

a day of pouring rain splashing into the  puddles created by the melting snow.  a day of leaping from the college thru the parking lot to the car, from the car to the primary voting site at the elementary school, to find i was  (at 11:30 am)  only the 30th person to have shown up.  the ONLY person voting, at that particular moment in time.  yes, it's a small town, yes it's crappy weather.  but, c'mon folks, this is your citizen privilege!

so, the x is marked, the button is pushed, the primary vote is cast.  and i ended up, after some gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, voting for John Kerry.  i could have cast my vote for the candidate of my true heart, Kucinich, but i didn't.  i want this party to coalesce around one candidate, and i want it to be the candidate who has the largest chance of winning the national election.  that's all i care about right now.  and, to me, right now, it looks like that is Kerry. several things i've read lately influenced my vote, here is one of them, from Denis Hayes in Grist Magazine.  here Hayes, instigator of the first Earth Day in 1970, now chair of the Intl. Earth Day Netwk, speaks of Kerry's devotion to the issues of the environment in a very convincing fashion.  as there are many voices, both in AOL journals and internet blogs, devoting space and energy to most of the other issues, i have decided to focus on the environment as my issue of choice. 

Grist Magazine also has a new weekly feature they are calling "Interactivist." it began this week, with an interview with Hank Dittmar, head of Reconnecting America.   he is an interesting example of the new breed of young environmentalists who see people, and the human community, as integral parts of the environment.  i find his viewpoints give me much food for thought. you can email questions to him via the link above, and at the end of the week the answers will be posted.  this promises to be a lively dialogue.