I tried to resist

I place all blame on bad influences. You know who you are.

AN INTERESTING CONSERVATIVE I HAD AROUND FOR SOME TIME

I dated a Republican for 4 years. In fact, a Republican politician, local level, though his term of office had just ended and he'd decided not to run again, by the time we had our first date. He's definitely one of the good guys, and, while we were ill-suited as a couple, we got past it and he was a truly good friend during my life implosion of 1994.

When we first went out, the Bork nomination had just been rejected, and was still a hot topic. My take on politics was still pretty simpleminded and I was furious with Reagan, but my friend asked me to consider the possibility that Reagan was a shrewd politician who nominated Bork both to play to the anti-abortion voters, and, quite intentionally, to fail the approval process. Equally shrewd liberals, he claimed, would know that it was a political maneuver designed to keep the anti-abortion people placated and the Court centrist.

I still watch the process with his words in mind and wonder how often either party is really trying to get something done, in a system where failure can sometimes score you more points with voters.

AN INTERESTING CONSERVATIVE I ATE

Forget whatever you're thinking. I'm counting the alligator I sampled at the Gator Cookoff. I mean, alligators are the quintessential conservatives. Firm believers in private property, absolute freedom within that property, local control. Surely they believe in Intelligent Design. They consider their design so intelligent that they haven't seen any need to change it in 60 million years. Strong opponents of redistribution of wordly goods. Traditional values.

INTERESTING THING I DID WITH A CONSERVATIVE

With the Republican boyfriend, I attended a Barry McGuire concert. Barry, famous for Eve of Destruction, became a Born Again Christian in the early 70's. This concert, in around 1990, involved a lot of talk about his beliefs and experiences and a few songs. McGuire is skilled with an audience, animated and jocular, but his jokes veer into obnoxious insults of people with different beliefs. It was one of the rare occasions on which we agreed about the whole evening. It was interesting, disturbing, and musically dull.

A CONSERVATIVE IN A MUSEUM

A CONSERVATIVE IN ITS NATURAL HABITAT

Michigan??

All I can tell you is that I have three online conservative friends. They are all in Michigan. And the Republican boyfriend mentioned above? Born and raised in Michigan.

First things first

Chris Clarke, who writes a very nifty natural history blog, started passing around this animeme, and tagged people I know. Next thing I know I get roped in by both Sherwood and Dann. So I'd better get on the job here. I will however, tag no one else, since most of the people I know who blog are already victimi- I mean tagged. Actually, my biologist brother might have some fun tales. I'll have to email him, though he's often on the road doing field work.

AN INTERESTING ANIMAL I HAD

SPARKY, circa 1972
Sparky, like many of my animals, adopted us instead of the other way around. This was around my 7th grade year, 1966-67 or so. He lived several streets away but had a devoted relationship with a girlfriend, Spooky, who lived 2 doors down from us, and he simply bunked at our house so much that his family called up. The kids are grown, they said, he's always at your house, shall we just bring his stuff down? He became our dog. Mine most of all.

He and Spooky were a lifelong couple. When he was injured in a fight with a Saint Bernard (Yeah, really. Brave or stupid. We could never decide), Spooky came down to our house and stayed next to him, while he lay in his basket on the porch fighting a nasty infection from a really big bite.

He looked like a beagle, but his original family said he was actually a dachshund/basset mix. He was kind of an Eeyore dog, looked gloomy most of the time. My mom recalled a kitchen incident in which a mouse sauntered along the wall and disappeared behind the fridge, while she said to Sparky "Catch it!" and he looked at it, then at her like, "Oh please. Must I?"

He vanished a week before Christmas 1973. A week stretched into two. Surely he was gone for good.

New Year's Day, 1973, I went mountain climbing with friends. Sort of. OK, really just a big hill there in the Carolina Piedmont. Came home to find ...

Sparky, thin and exhausted!! He'd staggered back onto the yard and pretty much collapsed against the brick wall. He mostly slept for the next week. And we can never know what happened or where he was. But we've always joked that somebody, as my grandfather had suggested, had make the mistake of catching him to hunt rabbits. And had discovered, as with the mouse, that he looked at the kidnapers as though they were insane, and they either let him go or he escaped.

He was mine. I was his. I spent a lot of time with his head resting on my knee. He was getting quite old by the time I finished college, and had one last burst of energy Dec 23 1977, when he chased and was hit by a delivery truck. We buried him in the damn snow. That Christmas sucked.

I want to see all my animals again in whatever the next life is, but he's the one I want to see run out and meet me first. He appears in my dreams often to this day.

AN INTERESTING ANIMAL I ATE

This would be marinated alligator, at a Gator Cookoff. Chewy.

AN ANIMAL IN A MUSEUM (OR ZOO)

One fun day during our NJ years, Larry and I took the kids to the Philadelphia Zoo and went into the Lorikeet Aviary. These little birds are hilarious. Here's a picture from another aviary, showing someone feeding one. You get a cup of some kind of nectar-y stuff they love and they land all over you and battle each other to get to it. Hard little claws. Pushy, funny little guys.

AN INTERESTING THING I DID WITH AN ANIMAL

Our neighbors had a daughter with birth defects, and built a backyard swimming pool for her. It was a homemade pool, rough concrete walls. She grew up and got married, they sold the house to us. We'd drain the pool for the winter. In spring we'd clean and paint it and try to seal out the water leaks.

One spring a mole got trapped in it. I don't care how destructive moles supposedly are. I'm a bleeding heart. He was adorable. He scrabbled blindly around the concrete walls, lost and helpless outside his environment. I followed him with a bucket trying to catch him. Finally he bumped against the arch of my foot and just ... stopped, too tired and discouraged to move. I remember his hard, weirdly human little hand and the fine velvety texture of his fur. Scooped him into the bucket and tipped him out next to the fence, which he scurried under, and presumably dug his way to happiness.

AN ANIMAL IN ITS NATURAL HABITAT

Meet Betty.

PHOTO BY LARRY, 2007

Our tidal marsh is rather brackish, not an alligator's favorite thing, but once or twice a year, Betty hangs out for a few days to check out the local edibles. She solved the nutria-invasion problem in short order. This picture is from January -- she was around a couple weeks ago, but we couldn't get a picture. And since we fear for both Scooter and our feral cats, it's just as well that she didn't come in too close or stay too long.

My heart's in the highlands

Little Switzerland, NC, October 4, 2007

[date corrected!]

There's something about a vacation.

We didn't need to leave home to see natural beauty. We're surrounded by coastal tidal-marsh beauty. We didn't need to leave home to take a break from work. Leaving home didn't really put any of the stresses we've got on hold. They were all just a cell phone call away, and always are.

But it was delightful. Cooler, drier air. Not much fall color, just a hint, but beautiful mornings with mist cloaking the mountains. Lots of so-so pictures taken by me with my inexpensive camera and my not-real-steady hand, and great ones taken by Larry, but with few exceptions you're gonna get mine, so try to bear up!

More later, as I get my picture act together.

It's the perfect week

...to read a banned book!

Have a good one, everybody!

A poem

I oughta save this for Mother's Day but
A. Mother's Day is a dumb Hallmark holiday anyway, and
B. it's a long ways off.

To say I know the poet would be kind of an exaggeration. We were co-staff members of a poetry magazine in college, only 6 of us, but she and I were not paired on a project. She's brilliant and shy and I never got to know her there. But I've watched with interest as her award-winning work has given me a glimpse into a talented mind and heart. Her books have a strong autobiographical thread through them and tell, among other things, about her deep desire to have a child. At the end of the last collection I felt so sorry that she was still waiting for her dream, and so happy when this new book arrived and I saw she finally, at age 45, had a son!

This poem, from that new book, made me smile.

CHERRIES

Rocked in my mother's pregnant amble,
and born into forty-five years in the dark,
the egg this child was also swayed in the arts
of lovers I took before you, fed with me

in the public markets of Baltimore and Denpasar
on oysters and rambutan, woke with me each year
to new waves of wander, fish and flower,
liqueur of each region, and bread of each village,

each cup of moonlight in the long sward
between my window and the Wannsee.
The egg he was heard the voices
of everyone I desired and held itself

in some deep hormonal bloom,
taking whatever was remarkable
in my life into its possibility.
We learned not to hurry in Balinese rain,

to listen for the rumble of wild boar
in the Malvan woods. We climbed
into planes bound for cities we'd never
visit again and skin we'd summon

with sobbing. And so, my husband,
as you dream of owning this child,
remember that he has ridden in my fire,
bathed in my blood, and sipped

at the breath I drew the first
time I saw what Rodin had clawed
from stone before he turned from Claudel
and went home for dinner and a clean shirt.

Remember that this child is collage
of everything before you, frangipani
and escargot, five-for-a-dollar boxes
of macaroni, and French cherries

from an old woman in Auvergne
who insisted on the gift
because it was so marvelous
to see a woman travelling alone.

-- Leslie Adrienne Miller

from The Resurrection Trade. Graywolf Press, 2007.

You can get the book at Books-a-Million, B&N, or Amazon.

Bottlecap philosophy of the day

.
From a bottle of Honest Tea [TM ] "Green Dragon" tea with Passionfruit, part of yesterday's nutritious lunch at the health food cafe.

The bad news:

there is no key to the universe.

The good news:

it was never locked.

Turns out that Swami Beyondananda is a comedian: click here for his website!

My, um, exciting week

MONDAY: We repaired the screen door (which a raccoon had torn right through to raid the bird seed) and cleaned the porch. At last, it's porch weather again! In SC, spring and fall are the seasons for it. In between, the heat is usually too much. Now we're getting slightly cooler days.

Time to eject a cat from a lounge chair and get comfortable to...

ALL WEEK: ...proofread and edit a manuscript for Larry. I'm not the greatest copy editor. I can't maintain my ability to focus very well, so I miss typos, have to do a lot of backtracking. But I do make some good suggestions and weed out a fair number of typos, and I work cheap! The plan is to finish this project before we head for the mountains for a week, so I can take my own work, and some fun reading with me. Most of Larry's writing is fun to read but nothing is fun to edit - I was not built for detail work.

FRIDAY: My mom turned 80, and that gives us four parents in their 80's.

SATURDAY: As we're loading our car in the grocery store parking lot, a guy comes running out, with 3 store employees after him. He crosses the 4-lane highway, disappears through the trees into the neighborhood beyond and they lose him. We've got the car running by now, so we leave the store, cross the highway, cut through a parking lot, and there he is, strolling across in front of us and letting himself into a house. Back at the store--where they had not only devoted the 3 employees to the chase, but had called the sheriff --we gave them his address.

Later on Saturday, a friend of my brother's came to visit my parents. He had kind of a troubled family and spent a lot of time with us as a teenager, grew quite close to our parents. Hadn't seen him since my brother's 1994 wedding, so it was a cool visit.

SUNDAY: Today was Larry's birthday. The gods smiled - we had no accidents, auto or otherwise!

This date has been inordinately accident-prone. In 2000, our neighbor locked herself out, came to our place to use the phone and tripped on the sidewalk, breaking a wrist and a cheekbone. That was a rental complex, so we had plenty of sympathy and no liability. She and her husband took us to dinner afterwards. Then in 2004, and again in 2005, SUV's backed into us. On his birthday. Who the bleep uses a drive-through ATM, and then backs up?! That was the 2005 incident. Only someone sent by Satan to crunch our front bumper, though one reason we let it go is that the decorative front plate took the damage. The guy offered me $20. I said, "It's a custom plate." "Will you take $40?" I agreed.

By last year we were scared to leave the house.

But 2 years in a row have been incident-free. We finished the day at what used to be our favorite restaurant. We still like it but they had dropped prime rib from their regular menu about a year ago, breaking Larry's heart. They do have it as a special on occasion, and derned if tonight wasn't one of those occasions. Which means this blog has entered the darkling plain of my telling you what we had for dinner!

Woulda coulda shoulda

This is a picture of pretty much nothing. The eaves of our porch. Well, pine trees. Trees are nice. But yesterday, and for a couple months, we've had a big beautiful garden spider living there. Now she's gone.

We may be too emotionally involved with our wildlife around here, but aside from the fact that, thanks to her, no annoying flying insects have come in our front door to divebomb us--not one all summer--we just loved her. We watched her and her downstairs "sister" build their webs. Larry took care when weeding around the downstairs lady not to disturb a line of weeds that anchored the bottom of her web. We enjoyed the drama as a collection of small males sidled over to each web, hinting around for the privilege of being her lover and her next meal. (Actually in the wild, the female only lunches on the guy sometimes. But if I'd gotten a good photo of the suitors, I still had an "eatHarmony" post all planned out.)

In the AA program I learned the dangers of "woulda coulda shoulda." All the things we wish we could go back and do over. They can drive you crazy. Some of them seep through anyway.

We got back from the grocery store yesterday and there was the Termite Guy.

This isn't our house. My parents own it as a guest house and we live here gratis which makes it possible to meet a lot of our obligations, especially medical ones. It's wonderful. But it's their house and we do things their way. My dad loves lawns. Larry and I both hate 'em. Someday in our mountain acreage we'll have woods and gardens. No bleepin grass. But we keep up the lawn here. OK, Larry does it. 8~)

In our own place, we'll avoid chemical pest control as much as possible. But the folks send the Termite Guy around periodically and it's OK. We did stop the inside spraying long ago. We figured that termite damage affects the house, but inside, chemical sensitivities take precedence. We've got cats for that anyway. Somehow we both thought that ended everything but the termite service itself.

So yesterday we waved Hi at the Termite Guy, said hello to our pretty spider, went inside and put the stuff away. After awhile the bell rang. Termite Guy said "OK, your termite inspection and pest control are done," presented me with the orders to sign, we bantered about the weather as per usual and he went cheerfully on his way. I didn't think to look over at our lady on her web. Though it would have been too late then.

We didn't notice till this morning that our girl and her whole structure were gone. Pest control had done its work. Her sister downstairs was cleaned away too. The words suddenly came back to me: "Your inspection and pest control are done."

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. "Hey we like the spiders so don't bother them, OK?" If I'd thought of saying it when we saw him in the driveway, they'd still be there, munching happily and making eggs. He didn't attend to them till after we got back. Upstairs Girl was still there when we went up with the groceries.

You wouldn't believe how much we care. Larry called the pest people up and told their Saturday answering machine never to bother our spiders again. I went out, looked around hoping she'd escaped, but knew that Termite Guy wouldn't have been doing his job if he just said "Shoo." Our 2 spiders are dead. No rewind.

I sat on the steps and had a good cry, helped some by the cat pragmatism of Scooter who mewed irritably and headbutted me: "This isn't about me so it can't possibly be important. Scratch right here." Then I walked around and visited the three who had not built on the house itself and thank God, they were well and happy.

There's one:

But the two on the house -- they shouldn't have died, damn it.

A nice break from errand-day

Just had a couple of days too boring to go into -- cat-loosened computer wires ("What the bleep is the matter with this thing?!"), Vista-incompatible programs, errands, lost orders (though we found the stuff eventually). What a great day to run into a fun timewaster website over at Nellie Blog.

I decided to Simpsonize myself over to my favorite mini-mart for my drug o'choice, a fountain Diet Coke fix. 32 oz., only a little ice, and a shot of Full Throttle [TM] energy drink mixed in. Good, stuff, man! Now i'm ready to put my achy head to bed early.

Unringing a bell

You can't.

There's plenty on the too-early death of Centennial Park bombing hero Richard Jewell, who apparently succumbed to diabetes and renal failure this morning at 44. Why add to it?

Just to rant. The injustice done to Jewell has burned me for years.

Don't get me wrong. The FBI had to look into every potential suspect. It's irresponsible not to. It was their leak to the media of their suspicions that led to Jewell's villification. This article in Vanity Fair blames the media, which certainly lived to regret what it had done to Jewell. But what can a network or paper do with a leak? Ignore it? Say "We'll wait for confirmation"? I'd guess that such a decision rests on the authority wielded by the source. This was the FBI. If they say it and if they give it to the media, they must be pretty damn sure.

So if the FBI has to investigate this suspect, and the media has to be able to judge a leak worthy of publication, based on the quality of the source, then what's wrong with the picture?

I can't even pick which soapbox to get on, here. The media is trapped in profit-making, and profit comes from keeping the hot story alive even when it's in preliminary process. Even when an investigation is in the hypothesis, evidence-gathering stage. And the viewers/readers don't see it as prelimnary, but as The Truth unfolding before their zombified eyes.

Then again, a better education system could train our minds to see a process as being a process, and not a final answer. You could illustrate this in a classrrom with a simple damn coin toss -- toss it a hundred times and show that it will turn up heads or tails about 50-50. But that if you tried to decide which would turn up more often based only on the first ten tosses, you'd get a skewed result. Gather all the evidence before you judge, kids! The early evidence might just tell the opposite of the truth.

And politics. Damnable politics that pressures a federal agency to make it look like they know something we don't. Your government wants you to know that you're in good hands, folks. You silly masses might be fooled by this guy's heroics, but we know, like, psychology stuff, so he won't fool us. We'll protect you from his kind.

Profit, politics, and public emotion-based unthinking stupidity all came together to prevent the truth from getting heard. In a nice blog entry, ronnie recounts "a miscarriage of justice" of a whole different kind, yet not so much. It demonstrates the essential wrongness of the death penalty. You gotta wonder why there is a death penalty, and the only possible answer, to me, is emotion. The desire for a "justice" that really cannot bring justice about, that couches rage, fury, desire for revenge in the too-polite term "justice." If somebody killed my loved one wouldn't I want to see him fry? Sure. Your point? My point is that justice, for Stephen Truscott, Richard Jewell, or anyone else, can never be achieved while we have an emotion-based society that devalues thought and reason. It will insist on hot sensational news stories. It will insist on premature closure. It will insist on white-hot revenge instead of coolheaded reason. And while the job of the justice system is to detach from victim emotion and stay evidence-based and cold (Yes. Cold.), that system is selected and pressured to respond to emotion, and gradually becomes emotion-based.

The Jewell case shows how that bell is never unrung. Once cleared he never got back what he'd lost. That's how it works. He got money. He sued all over the place. Michael Moore gave him a cameo, Saturday Night Live gave him a walk-on. He had a little fun. But his hero status never returned.

Jewell had dreamed of a law enforcement career. He'd been turned down by the local police department, but you could say that some kind of Plan put him where he was needed. Because in his role as a private security guard at Olympic Park, he saved 50-100 lives that day in 1996 when Eric Rudolph set off a bomb. So the good news is that we can't unring that bell either. A lot of people are alive because of Richard Jewell.

So it's a life well-lived. Rest in peace.

Oh well.

I wasn't using my foot stool anyway.

It's been a long time comin'

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..

..

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And it's gonna be a long time gone.

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Lunar eclipse 8/28/07

Spiritual paths - with a shopping mall detour

I'm surrounded by people with a wide spectrum of religion, or lack of it. It pretty much keeps me from spending any significant time inside any religious comfort zone. And this is good. It's important, I think, to step into other peoples' worlds.

My friend Leila has kind of a zen view. I like her philosophy of charitable giving: "Give where you are spiritually fed," she suggests. We have interesting talks in which she tries to explain to me the state of existence above the plane of duality where there's no good or bad, things just "are." I'm more backward than she is: I keep saying "But if something isn't bad how can it not be good?? And if that plane exists, then there's the plane of duality and the plane of non-duality, which is a duality." It's OK. If it's a spiritual direction in which I need to go, then I'll evolve to it at my own pace. Then there's my ardently anti-religion husband -- he bought a "Born Again Pagan" t-shirt for amusement, but even paganism is too religious for him -- and my conservative Baptist brother.

It was with my brother's family that I just saw my first full-immersion baptism. My niece, who's 11, was baptized this past weekend. I got to be there for something that means the world to people I love, but that's a foreign experience for me, and to see it through their eyes.

My bro and I were raised in the Episcopal church. He was an acolyte. I, 7 years older, wanted to be but this was a closed door to girls in the 60's, in the south anyway. It was for the best though. My interest was a whole lot of desire to be on stage, and no conviction.

Anyway, I'm used to much formality, and to infant baptism. Confirmation for us was at age 12-ish, in 6th grade. We underwent lots of preparation, lots of ceremony. I had a new white dress made out of that 1966 Fortrel (R) stuff that resembled foam rubber, and my first "heels," only an inch and a half tall. All followed by a back yard cookout with gifts -- religious gifts, but gifts nonetheless.

Sunday school "confirmation class" was a year-long thing we took seriously as our key to an important rite of passage. Though once we'd been confirmed and they still expected us to attend confirmation class, my same-age cousin and I decided that was ridiculous. You don't have to keep submitting applications when you're in the club, fer cripes sake. So we would get our bottled Nehi's out of the fellowship hall vending machine, but instead of moseying over to class, we'd go back out to the parking lot, hide on the floor of our parked car till classes started and the lot cleared, then sneak across the street to play in the park.

Circa 20 years ago my brother became a Baptist. Such decisions are highly personal. I've never talked to him about whatever experience moved him to do this.

My default setting is that, in our varying concepts of God or of whatever drives the universe, we each have strictly a "radiant" relationship with it, meaning that each of us is like a wheel spoke. We radiate from the wheel's hub. The other spokes have their own direct connections to the hub, they don't go through me, and their perceptions of that hub's nature should not be challenged by me. I don't consider myself to have the authority or the right to try. This is why I'm pretty much anti-evangelical. Faith is something that can be shared, sure, but that does not need to be.

My bro and I remain close because we give each other full space and acceptance of the different paths we've taken. Anyway, I'd been to a couple services in this church, including my turn as their bridesmaid in 1994, but did not know exactly what to expect from a Baptist full-immersion baptism. I was invited to be there with them so I got ready for a road trip.

[FASHION STUFF ALERT - GUYS CAN IGNORE THIS NEXT PART]

The first thing guys would groan about is that I had time to either get the oil changed, or buy a dress. I bought a dress.

My problem is that I'm not fashion-oriented enough. All my dresses are 10 years old. Outdated style is not a problem in itself. But being age-inappropriate is.

Saturday morning I hauled out my dress options and had to accept that the lacy bibs and flouncy sleeves just do not work on a 53-year-old woman. I came out and said to Larry, "I have to go buy a dress." He said, "I'll come with you and we'll use the Magic Card." At J. C. Penney, I left him the shoe department, hit the sale rack, and, lo-and-behold! found something right away. Simple, nice, and reduced from $70, to $17.49! He got just as good a deal on some sneakers.

[OK, END OF FASHION STUFF]

Next was to gather up the music-to-drive-to CDs I'd spent Friday compiling and burning (instead of checking my wardrobe), and get on the road. It's about a 5 hour drive from here to my brother and sister-in-law's little NC town. When there's no tourist traffic jam, that is. My trip was closer to 7 hours. The CDs didn't play. Well, one did, but much as I love Billie Holiday, I was pretty sick of it by the time i got home.

Rolled into town, and this cool car, which does not resemble anything that occurs in automotive nature, was waiting at the town's one-light intersection. By the time I got the camera on I was too late to capture what Larry tells me is important identification information - the headlights and grill. He says it's a custom or a kit car.

My bro was away till late evening doing biology field work, so my sister-in-law took me and the kids to a local Italian restaurant. Here in this tiny town was this nice little place where they make everything fresh, have their own garden behind the restaurant for fresh herbs and salad veggies. Which I missed photographing because we were around the block before I got the camera out of my purse and turned on. My next camera will hold a charge for an extended time, blast it, and let me leave it on for unexpected shots.

Next morning was the service.

Superficially, the lack of long study and ceremony can make a Baptist baptism seem downright casual.

It's not. Not at all. It's a decision so important that it must be made by you, not for you. But it's also more emotional and less studied. No year-long class. No test on the Apostles' Creed or other doctrine. No set age, though about 7 -- the age of reason -- seems to be the minimum. Each child, or adult, undergoes baptism when he or she is moved to do so. My niece had announced her readiness and gone to the altar to profess her faith at the end of service a couple weeks before this, rather surprising her parents.


She and the pastor are standing in the baptismal pool here. The ceremony is brief. The pastor says a few words about the congregant, and asks her to state her "profession of faith." Then he lowers her into the water and lifts her back up.

Because my niece has all these weird Episcopal relatives, she had gifts to open. No other kids had gifts, they just towelled off their hair and proceeded with a normal Sunday. And I needed to get back on the road to get home before dark.

By the time I'd listened to my 2 listenable CD's (one homemade and one commercial) for the umpteenth time I was on the lookout for a place -- any place! -- to buy CD's. But on the tourist-avoidance route I took, there was not a single mall, WalMart, Kmart or Target.

Wonderful little rural towns dot the route.
But no music stores.

But the drive was smooth and easy. A sullen Graymatter shunned me for 5 hours after I got home, making me wonder what kinds of punishment she'll dole out when we take a week's vacation. I'll think about it later. This was a good weekend, a unique experience for me and very beautiful.

Window wildlife of the day

This morning's visitor was a praying mantis.

Blast from the past no. 2

More from the "things you find when you're looking for something else" files ...

Happy Birthday (in a couple days) to the bane of our 70's feminist existences, Phyllis Schlafly, born August 15, 1924.

I've saved this cartoon for 28 years. It's by Mike Peters and all I have is a photocopy, so I can't source it. It's from page 76 of something. Most likely a news magazine. The only date up there on top left is "1979c."

If anybody does not know who Phyllis Schlafly is -- she was an ardent opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, and of feminism in general. And still is. As of this writing she's still kicking liberal ass, on most every topic. And I still disagree with her on most every topic, but you know what? Schlafly seemed extreme and outrageous to me back then, but now in the Coulter era I miss those relatively (relatively!) thoughtful reasoned days of issue-based discourse. Ya know?

Blast from the past no. 1

From the "things you find when you're looking for something else" files! I didn't know I still had this thing, but I was excited to find it because, simple and primitive though it is, I couldn't reconstruct it now if my life depended on it.

Well I recall -- I hate admitting this -- the major brain contortion that this assignment required of me in 1981. This is an information retrieval program. Part of the library science degree. It assigns search terms to a list of (entirely fictitious) journals, and lets a library customer find them by topic.

I got an A, I'll have you know. I wrote in a provision for the searcher to use a search term not found. And I looped it so the searcher didn't have to re-log-in to do another search. Why is that impressive? Because my super-smart friend Eve, who was the class star, got an A-minus for having it log off after each search.

This was the one and only time I did anything better than Eve did. Yes, I still remember that!

Strawberries and honeysuckle

I woke up to find a wonderful addition to my breakfast waiting for me on the kitchen counter. Larry, who's out filling bird feeders, walking Scooter (they take a morning constitutional, out to the marsh and back, then yard rounds), and tending the gardens long before I'm even conscious, had harvested our first strawberries for me.

It's a tiny berry patch. That's the whole patch right there. It won't yield enough for a pie, won't accumulate for cereal topping. The number edible at any one time would even get lost in a yogurt cup.

So there was nothing to do but .... eat them. Bite into a berry, no ups, no extras, and get a delicious bit of flavor that I would have missed if I'd mixed them into something.

This made me think about my honeysuckle experiment. I was about 8 or 9. All us south'n kids knew how to pick a honeysuckle blossom off its stem, pull the stamen out which raked out a tiny drop of nectar, and catch that extreme sweetness on our tongues.

I'm a kid. I'm thinking, Wow! I bet a whole spoonful of this would be even better than my standard for gourmet flavor - a Nehi Grape soda.

I got a spoon and proceeded to spend, God knows, maybe 20-30 minutes accumulating the tiny drops of nectar in it. By the time I was fed up with this slow process, the bowl of the spoon was only about half full, but close enough. I'd get a sizeable sample of nectar. I gulped it. Horrors. The cloyingly sweet, slightly musty flavor nearly gagged me. It wasn't quite as bad as Creomulsion For Children, but it was bad enough.

Gorging just doesn't work at all for some things - they need to be tasted in tiny exquisite amounts. Others, like fresh-picked berries, would be fine by the bowlful, but can be little marvels one unembellished berry at a time.

Arithmancy 101

When I started this blog I didn't intend a real focus, just whatever I felt like yammering about. But I did figure a theme that would pop up now and again is how I juggle being a Christian and a liberal. Not a problem, till you get to St. Paul. Paul has been evoked to keep women out of the priesthood, to say slavery isn't so bad, to call gay relationships an abomination. He's not the only, or the original, source of any of this but mention his name and lots of people understandably look daggers at you.

And that meant at some point explaining why I think St. Paul is neither God-appointed, nor Satan spawned. A half-done version has been sitting here in my word processor, inspired by a neat history book I found and wanted to share. Then the subject came up elsewhere, so maybe its time to dust this off.

I wondered for a long time why exactly we're supposed to treat Paul's words as The Word of God. There are plenty of sources on the formation of the New Testament canon, but I ran into some clues by accident, in this nifty little book that I read for a whole different reason, i.e., that I like book stuff.



BOOKS AND READERS IN THE EARLY CHURCH: A HISTORY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN TEXTS. HARRY Y GAMBLE. YALE U. Pr. 1995. (All quotes are from it, unless otherwise indicated.)

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Nascent Christianity was a scattered and, in the Roman empire, an outlaw movement.  So.  How do you keep a group not only going, but on the straight-and-narrow? Pressure and influence are comin' at it from all sides. Authorities who want to wipe it out. Local gods. The general tendency for any belief system to evolve and fashion new interpretations and rituals. You have to train it like a vine.

Today you'd keep your movement in-touch and on-message by internet and cell phones. In the 1st-to- 3rd centuries it was done with writing.

These numerous and far-flung Christian congregations, large and small, nevertheless retained a sharp awareness of their collective identity as the ecclesia katholike and affirmed their mutual relations through frequent communication.

Till the second century CE, the book as we know it barely existed. A "book" was a scroll. Cumbersome, single-sided, you needed both hands to hold it, you had to rewind afterwards (!) and forget leafing back to a previous passage if you needed it. It's not real hard to see why the codex --the bound pile of leaves between covers, essentially the book as we know it -- took over.

And early Christianity had a lot to do with that. Codices had been used for books before, but hadn't caught on much, and were primarily a way to make early blank books for people to take their own notes in. Then the Christian movement came along.

The short version is that their literature needed to be easily portable, easy to reference, and easily hidden. You could get more text in the same space using a codex than using a scroll. If nothing else, you used both sides. You could also more easily flip to whatever passage dealt with a specific question.

Enter Paul. Advantage number one: he was one of the very earliest to write to far-flung congregations and guide them.

Advantage two: He struck exactly the right note:

One of the most urgent tasks of the Christian movement in its infancy was to support its convictions by showing their consistency with Jewish scriptures. ... Proper interpretation of scripture was...vital to their identity and agency as "the true Israel."... Paul frequently resorts to Jewish scripture in writing to Gentile Christian congregations.

Advantage three: He was considered just as "apostolic" as the Twelve. Eusebius says as much (Church History 3:24, written before 325 CE).

By Paul's self-proclamation, he equated his experience on the road to Damascus as delegation by God of the same level of authority that the Twelve had been given. His --to church authorities-- unimpeachable personal conduct and theology supported this. But another little factor plays in here.

Advantage four: The Mystical Number Seven

There is an old theory, mentioned in a number of ancient Christian sources, that the apostle had written to seven churches and that therefore, because the number seven symbolized totality or universality, Paul had addressed the church at large.

(This would have been an early ten-letter collection [1], some of which were attributed to Paul at the time but were later disproved.)

If the edition had consisted of a group of codices or scrolls, even so small a group as two, it could not have signified Paul's catholic relevance, for nothing would prevent the individual codices or scrolls from being taken separately and the sevenfold disposition of the letters thus being obscured or lost. ... The very nature of this edition therefore required its presentation as a physical unit, a single book.

This reverence for the number seven was pretty powerful stuff to the ancient world mentality. Heck, we're not over it yet. That Paul had been moved to address all of Christiankind only enhanced his reputation as one chosen, set apart.

Paul's Greatest Hits collection was too big for one scroll. Its total length would have been at least double a useable size, and triple the size of an average scroll.

It was almost certainly passed around instead as a codex, a non-traditional format at the time, but one that allowed the collection to maintain that mystical seven-based integrity by existing in one volume. There's evidence -- though no surviving full copies -- that a single-volume "seven churches" edition of his letters was a familiar book by the early 2nd century when the pseudonymous writer of II Peter proclaimed Paul's apostolic status in 3:15-16.

Glimpsing what's behind the canonization of Paul's work actually helps me like the guy better than most liberals probably do.  The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but we pretty much all do the best we can, and Paul felt pressured.  He believed the second coming was imminent, and -- now we're into my opinion here -- that changing societal or gender roles was pointless.   Get the message out, people, we do not have time to quibble about who teaches and who does the cooking when society is about to end anyway.   While he tells one community not to allow women any authority, he acknowledges woman deacons in others (Romans 16, and possibly 1Timothy 3).

What does it add up to? To me it makes sense as an instruction to not waste time sweeping a house that's about to burn down.  However things are, leave them be, and put the effort into the real job.

His condemnation of same-sex relationships stems, I think, from the idea that God creates things to operate exactly One Correct Way, and that any small population that statistically diverges is "unnatural" and has to be the work of Satan. On this I have no trouble dismissing Paul without despising him for it.

Sometimes letting daylight fall on and dissolve the magic is a very good thing. Till we do, the choices falsely appear to be: take his words as those of God Himself ... or dismiss him as a power-mad fraud. Neither is necessary.


[1] Corinthians (1 & 2); Romans; Ephesians; Thessalonians (1 & 2); Galatians; Phillipians; Colossians & Philemon (grouped together).

High drama, 1928

A hazard of selling books is that you want to keep so many of them. I can't sell this! It was one of those delightful junk-shop finds: a 1928 book of sample letters to help you write your way through absolutely any personal or professional crisis.

Sure, it tells you all the proper forms. And some situations are awkward, so guidance in what to say is nice to have. For example, how do you offer condolences to a friend who's suffered catastrophic monetary loss?

Although the blow has been a severe one, there is the great consolation in knowing that your conduct has gained the ungrudging praise of everyone.

But it goes much further. The book must have been a boon to people who just have no clue how to express themselves: what to say in a love letter to your fiancée overseas enclosing a Christmas present; what to say in a casual chatty letter to your daughter who's away at boarding school:

My dearest Mabel,
....I was so glad to get your letter yesterday and to hear that you are quite well. Aunt Jane was here yesterday and asked after you very kindly. She says they are all going to Montreal for August. How is Elsie Fielding? Her mother says she is thinking of going to Vassar when she leaves. I suppose she is very clever. Do you find your clothes lasting well?

You get full-text examples, with various possible replies from yes to no to maybe, and they add up to series of wonderful little soap operae: I find myself getting involved with these people. I'm very happy for Robert J. Smith, who passed his exam with flying colors. His friend Edward Green congratulates him, Robert writes Ed back to say thanks and mention how nervous he was, and Robert's mother is very proud.

There's something for everybody on every side of a transaction: How to solicit for a charity:

Dear Mrs. Mandell,
....As you are no doubt aware, the distress in this neighborhood is becoming very intense, and I have determined to make a special appeal to my parishioners in order to raise a fund to buy blankets and coal and food for the poorest of the poor. I should feel most thankful for any contribution, either of money or of the articles themselves. You can have no idea of the terrible state of poverty that I find on all hands. Many men are out of work and all this falls bitterly hard on the wives and children.

How to say yes:

Dear Mr. Fairchild,
....I enclose herewith a check for $5.00 which I earnestly hope may be of some help. It is indeed a distressing state of affairs. I hear on all hands the great need of the laboring people due to the lack of work and I am glad to do my bit.

How to beg off - man, this is a bit chilly:

Dear Mr. Fairchild,
....I have read your letter with great pain. It is indeed a terrible state of affairs, but it is my firm conviction that indiscriminate giving is the worst possible thing for the poor. The only real cure is to make certain of the continuity of employment. I would gladly subscribe to any scheme to bring that about. In the present condition of the labor market I feel sure that it would be useless to do anything that will merely temporarily alleviate and not definitely eradicate poverty.
...............Yours very truly
.....................Marion Mandell

Now here's a situation where proper wording is vital: "Letter of proposal from a gentleman to a young lady he has met on only a few occasions."
(I worry about Paul and Mabel. Really, I do):

Dear Miss Lucey,
....I fear this letter will surprise you very much but I trust that the genuineness of my feelings will excuse me in your eyes. I first met you at Viola's dance in April and since then I have seen and talked to you on three separate occasions only. But the impression you first created in my mind was so powerful that I have thought of nothing else since then. Each time I have seen you since I have been more and more assured that you, and you alone, are able to give me that happiness which is every man's goal. I will not beat around the bush any more but will ask you straight out--will you marry me?
.....I implore you to think it over well. I cannot explain in writing how passionately I love you and with what joy I would dedicate my whole life to you.
....Although not rich I am comfortable situated and quite in a position to support a wife. I want to come in person and urge my suit and await therefore with profoundest anxiety an answer to this letter.
................Yours devotedly,
.....................Paul Carlson

This sample answer is purportedly a "yes":

Dear Mr. Carlson,
....I hardly know how to answer your letter. It is quite true that we have met very seldom but I already feel as if I had known you for years. I will not say any more now but come around at eight o'clock tonight and you shall have your answer.
...............In haste,
.................Mabel Lucey

Here's how to nix the idea but leave some hope:

Dear Mr. Carlson,
....I need hardly mention that your letter came as a complete surprise to me. Al though I realize the genuineness of your sentiments and feel flattered that they should be directed toward me, I must tell you at once, both for your sake and mine, that all such ideas are quite out of the question. I do not believe in love at first sight and certainly would not trust my happiness to one whom I know so slightly. Forgive me if I appear to speak too plainly but I am convinced that it is the right thing to do. Such an acquaintance as I have with you has been a pleasure to me and I hope we may see more of one another. As for love it is really idle to talk about it.
....Please let us remain friends.
...........Yours always sincerely,
................Mabel Lucey

Then again, despite telling him how to propose, the author of Supreme Letter Writer is also fine with telling the lady how to write an "Angry reply":

Sir:
....I have read your letter with the utmost astonishment. I consider it a gross impertinence. Please do not address me again either in public or by correspondence. You have greatly misjudged me if you consider I will tolerate such liberties. I would have handed your letter to my father to answer if it had not been for the trouble and annoyance it would have caused but if you address me in any way again I shall not hesitate to lay the matter before my parents.
.......Yours truly,
..........M. Lucey

And don't forget that you guys out there must make a lifetime commitment to a woman before you seek permission from her father to "pay her attentions" at all:

Dear Mr. Shaw,
....I am writing about a delicate matter because I feel it is the honorable course to pursue. It is this: I want your permission to pay attentions to your daughter Peggy. I have known your family now for over six months and from the very first I felt sure that Miss Shaw was the only girl I could ever love.

Favorable reply from dad:

Dear Mr. Bently,
....I am in receipt of your letter of the twenty-first, for which I thank you. I consider that you have behaved in an honourable and straightforward manner. Could you come round to my office in Ross Street at five o'clock tomorrow and talk this matter over. If, as I have no doubt will be the case, you can supply me with satisfactory information about your position and prospects, my wife and I shall have no objections to your paying suit to our daughter.

(Just wait everybody! 1929 is coming!)

And if you don't know how you feel about a man's proposal - have Mom tell you!

Dearest Mother,
.......I told him that I could not give him any definite answer then and that I must think it over. I have known him only a short time, and yet I seem to know him so intimately. You will ask me, what are my feelings toward him. Well, that is just what I find it so hard to know. I think I care for him very much but he is so different from anyone else I have ever seen that I sometimes mistrust myself and imagine it may be only the effect of his delightful manner. Dearest mother, what answer should I give him? I resolved I would lay it all before you.
........With fond love
...........from your affectionate daughter
...............Sally

Mom actually seems to be OK with this, though she diplomatically throws in a caution:

My darling Sally,
....Take a few days to think it over but if you are certain that it will be for your happiness do not hesitate to accept him. Remember, dear little daughter, that marriage is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse on earth.
.......Ever your devoted mother
............Mabel Hill

Then again, if the kid has to ask, she shouldn't do it:

.....I am convinced that you will be doing the wisest thing if you refuse him. If he is still resolved to win you, this will not definitely retard him and with a further knowledge of one another you will understand your own hearts better.
............With deepest love
................Your devoted mother

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Middle-aged people, of course, are not troubled by such passions. Or they aren't supposed to let on, even when proposing:

Dear Mrs. Ryder,
....I venture to address myself to you in the following manner because I know you will not misunderstand what I am going to say.
....You and I have both known the joys and sorrows of matrimony. We have both known many years of happiness and we have both lost the partners of our lives. And now in our middle age we are both living lonely lives, with nothing to look forward to but lonely old age. Is it not possible that this may be remedied?
.........Believe me, dear Mrs. Ryder,
.............Your sincere friend
....................Martin Chenney

Hey, if you can't get her interested by other means - depress her!

And in this sample acceptance, is there the subtle subtext of "OK, I'll darn your socks but you're not gonna get any"?

Dear Mr. Chenney,
....I will answer your letter quite frankly. I believe that it would be for our mutual happiness to marry. It would be absurd to pretend that we can look upon it with the same rapture as young people do but I sincerely think that we could be a help and comfort to one another.
........Yours very cordially,
..............Olive Ryder

Last but not least, the kind of letter I'm so very glad my boss can't send me, because I'm self-employed:

Dear Mr. Mason:
....Although I have spoken to you several times about your lax attention to your duties, I have been unable to notice any improvement in your conduct. I have therefore come to the conclusion that I must ask you to leave my service.

Well then, I guess I should get back to work...

Gotcha!

A mimosa tree stands right outside my office window. I get the totally cool experience of having hummingbirds hover 2-3 times a day, a few inches from my foot, with 3 layers of window -- glass, screen, shutter -- between us.

Considering the frequency of these visits, you would think a picture would be easy to get. But mimosa doesn't turn them on enough for them to linger and allow me to turn on the camera,

persuade a cat to get his head outta the blasted way (a much better hummer shot got blocked here by dear Downy),

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and snap. So getting that top shot at all was a joy!

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