CHANGES

"Changes"

I still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets…

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man…


I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware
of what they're going through…

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't tell them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Where's your shame
You've left us up to our necks in it…



Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Oh, look out you rock 'n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Pretty soon you're gonna get
 older…

DAVID BOWIE Lyrics

           

 I still don’t know what we were looking for.  Did we really think our public servants would serve us?  What, in the recent past, points to any sane, well-placed hope of that?   It seems it has all been said.  It seems futile to see our representatives as the heirs of those who wished that America be better.  It feels familiar, this almost indifferent despair, an oxymoron metaphoric of  “OUR PUBLIC SERVANTS.”   

This “sequester,” a word more appropriate to its application defining the forced isolation of jurors to prevent tainting the process of coming to just decisions, was hopeful in the extreme, and hopeless in reality.  But, to be sure, we have come to know that those so entrusted with the real well-being of real human beings would default, would disappoint, would destroy. 

And, I do believe, this dangerous group, capable of saying anything, doing anything—no matter the dire consequences, no matter where the pieces of shattered reason and civility will scatter—are bucking real change.  Yeah, change that they do not want to accept.  Change that scares the hell out of old, rich, powerful, white men.  Change that feels like a battering ram to their elite status.   Colorful change, not exactly the shades on their conservative palettes.  So, we get fucked, filibustered, and hear fanatical, fantastical rhetoric from token characters, like Republican Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who bears frightening resemblance in the lack of reasonable, needed boundaries in his impassioned and irresponsible rhetoric, as much as he does facially, to Joe McCarthy.

         “Friends Of Hamas?”  Are you fucking kidding me?  Or is it now, “…are you now or have you ever been, Chuck Hagel, an anti-Semite on terrorist payrolls?”   Thank you, Breitbart and bloggers for that sarcasm-turned-red meat sound bite, used, I hope, to the outing of the severely insane and dangerous in our legislature and their equally insane and dangerous constituents.  If you are that hungry, if your constituents are that hungry for hatred, lies, distortion, and destruction, I’ll sit by while public opinion against you gathers to critical mass, and sell tickets to your public damning.  IGNORANCE ought to be combatted, not used as a "viable" political strategy!!!  FOR THE AMERICA OF LINCOLN:  IGNORANCE IS NOT AN OPTION!!!  STAGNATION IS NOT AN OPTION!!!  We grow from CHANGE!!!  I so wish now that I was blogging way before coming back today, and that my blogs would have been so highlighted.  For honesty and well-considered insight, for bravery not bullshit.  For an embrace of the changes that the fearful crazies are falling all over themselves—and us—to buck.  To all of you I say, that the people that you spit on are quite aware of what they’re going through as they try to change their world.  Where’s your shame?  You’ve left us up to our necks in it…A million dead-end streets you lead us down...Trying to make us lose belief in CHANGES.  I stand committed to see you choke on CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES!

            Change.  The Catholic Church’s pope is “retiring.”  Not in the code book, Benedict.  In a world that has always been devastatingly influenced by religion, as much, if not more, as it has been healed or aided, this is a dangerous, disturbing development.  You should have, from the beginning, from your days as the Prefect of the Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith—otherwise known as the Holy Inquisition, which we all agree, needed a make-over—when you stated that sexual abuse cases must be directed to you, to your office, you should have defrocked “priests,” had them put to trial, and made to register as sex offenders, after serving prison sentences.  Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa...You protected them over the children—THE LAMBS OF GOD!!!  And then the Conclave makes you the Good Shepherd???  So inured are you and the Vaticanisti to the prevalence of this horrific crime, you accept the white dress and the scepter, but you must also accept the SIN!!!  Since God is truth, where’s Truth now, then, throughout your prefecture and papacy???  If God is love, where’s the Love for those victims?   You, so erudite, so brilliant, so much better suited for professorship, why did you accept the papacy if you could not live it out until death, suffering as Jesus did, unto death?  You abdicated responsibility in every way that most matters, if we are to believe in the basic tenets of Catholicism, decency, and the essence of God.  Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa...  And now you abdicate when a “reformed,” “modernized” (a shout out to the Second Vatican Council; now I believe we need a Third) ancient religion can serve as some kind of balance to the fanaticism of extremism in Islam—the fast growing religion in the world, with this small segment terrorizing its true adherents and the West, the East, the North, the South.  So, now off you will go to a cloistered nunnery, take the robes of a monk, and retire from the world for a life dedicated to prayer.  Well, pray hard, Joseph Ratzinger.  Pray for something good to come from the abdication of implementing canonical law, protecting criminal “priests,” but, most of all, pray for those Lambs of God and the renewal of goodness, and greater progressivism (yeah, right), and the uplifting of women religious (yeah, right!), and inclusion of homosexuals (YEAH, RIGHT!).  Again, CHANGE is a motherfucker.  BUT, so is karma (a most catholic—read that as small "c," “universal”—Truth, which has its counterpart in Catholicism as well, but does not nearly sound as clean, clear, or pretty...Purgatory anyone? How about Hell...).  Yeah, the children that you spit on are quite aware of what they’re going through.  Where’s your shame?  You’ve left us up to our necks in it…A million dead-end streets you have led us down...Trying to make us lose our religion as you fight CHANGES...

            I don’t know what I was looking for.  Decency?  Constancy?  Consideration?  Fairness?  Humanity?  That those who take SACRED oaths to SERVE, in Congress or Conclave, ought to adhere to them and do their just service?  To expect is to risk disappointment.  BUT, why should we abdicate the reign of Reason, and believe it is too much to expect?

            I don’t know why I waited so long to commit to writing again.  I have been falling under the well-designed acts that the unreasonable hope will lead to despair.  I admit, I have been feeling that the weight of “fighting the good fight,” in a world so ass-backwards, so difficult, so filled with power in the hands of the irresponsible and selfish has hurt me, held me under.  For that, for my “abdication,” I am sorry.  But, at least I found the strength to surface.  I hope I can hold my head above the troubled waters for more than just a little while.  Change is a motherfucker, but, at least I’m fighting the good fight: to try to make it happen.

Thanks for reading,

Joan

"This Is The Hour Of Lead..."

“…This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow
First-Chill-then Stupor-then the letting go…”

                                                                                         By Emily Dickinson

            We have had another death to deal with in our extended family.  Nicole, my cousin’s girlfriend, lost her mother.  It was not expected.  She had been physically well.  She died in her sleep, most mercifully.  But, now our Nicole is suffering an unbounded loss.  And, I have no words to say to her to make anything better.  I have read Shakespeare, the Greek Philosophers, a zillion others, too, and not a thing they have written give me solace, except the universality of the experience, the shared nature of it.  But, to be honest, who the hell cares about these truths at times like these?  I lost my father when I was 18 years old.  My sister, Ann, was 16.  People who tried to comfort me back then said stuff like this that made me crazy, and my mind responded in ways they would not have imagined:

“He’s in a better place now.”  My mind’s response, “Fuck you.”

or

“God called him home,”   My mind’s response, “Fuck Him.”

or

“God does everything for a reason,”  My mind’s response, “Fuck His ‘reasons.’”

Please keep in mind I was very young, very young.  But, so was my father.  I had no patience for those typical offerings of condolence. I had no sense of grace or how to grieve.  I was stuck in the easiest stage of grief without knowing it: anger.  Anger feels like strength, but it isn’t.  Anger feels like protection, but it isn’t.  Anger feels better than pain, but that is what it is really masking.  You want to yell and scream and strike out and hit things and curse people and beat the shit out of anything stupid enough to get in your way, but it is only the first of many stages of grief you will have to live through; and the longer you stay stuck in this one, the harder it is to get on with the rest.  When my father died, I was just a kid.  A teenager.  And, for teenagers, anger is often the safest, easiest emotion to have.  As I did whenever something went wrong in my teenage life, I turned to words and music for comfort:

“Oh very young ,
What will you leave us this time?
You're only dancing on this earth for a short while,
And though your dreams may toss and turn you now

They will vanish away like your daddy's best jeans,
Denim blue fading up to the sky,
And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will, you know they never will
And the patches make the goodbye harder still…”

                                                                                         “Oh Very Young,”  by Cat Stevens

My father only danced on this earth for a short while.  He was 53 years old when he died. We had a difficult relationship, like the metaphorical faded and patched jeans of Cat Stevens’ song; and, yes the “patches” made the goodbye harder still.

I loved my father dearly, but I was, in some very important, difficult ways just like him.  To quote Bruce, I was Adam’s Cain:  

We were prisoners of love, a love in chains,
He was standin' in the door, I was standin' in the rain,
with the same hot blood burning in our veins,
Adam raised a Cain.

My little sister, Ann, at 16, had more sense than I, and a better relationship with my father. My father’s death and the devastation of that loss were exquisitely translated for me by one single act that has forever stood as the representation of love and loss throughout my life.  She changed the carnation in his lapel.  People were all over the place.  They had to open up three chapels. It was back in the day where you had 2 or 3 day wakes before the funeral.  It was brutal.  And, in the overwhelming crush of condolences and the smell of funeral flowers, I see my little sister changing my father’s carnation.  Because she wanted him to have a fresh one.  Because she wanted him to look handsome.  Because, even in death, he was still her father and she loved him and did for him.  She took care of him.  He was, and always will be, her “Daddy.”  She was doing the loving while I was doing the warring.  As a result, she was able to send him off without any stain upon her conscience.  I, The Angry, was too busy plotting my revenge against God, too busy hating Him, too busy hating the guy at the gas station who wouldn’t sell me gas because there was gas-rationing going on at the time—1979—and the wrong last number on my dad’s license plate prevented the attendant from filling up the car.  I remember I got out and went after the guy.  “My father just died.  I need gas to get to his wake.”  “Sorry.”  “What?  What did you say? Didya hear me?  MY FATHER DIED!  YOU FUCKING MORON!  MY FATHER DIED!  FILL UP THIS CAR!  WHAT?  WHAT?!  FUCK  YOU!  FUCK YOU…”  my aunt told me to get back in the car.  Yeah, I was too busy hating the world to spend those last moments with my father in some kind of loving peace. 

My sister changing his carnation was the simple act that powerfully brought me into reality, and will remain the singular representation of real, enduring love to me throughout my life.  I love my sister.

I wrote an autobiography ten years ago.  Writing it was truly a labor of love.  It did strange and magical things to me.  For my Aunt Sue’s 75^th birthday, my cousins threw her a surprise party. Almost all of our vast number of relatives came.  At one point, my cousin Susan played a slide show of great family pictures, set to very moving old songs.  I started to cry and found I couldn’t stop.  I was crying from such a deep place, sobbing actually, and only figured out months later that I had reached the place where all the love and the pain was.  A metaphorical door opened inside of me and out came a book.  I have been up since 4 a.m. trying to decide if I should do this, should share any part of that writing more publicly.  I am struggling over doing this.  I want to know that I am not doing this gratuitously.  I know I am not writing for the masses, that very few people actually read me, but excerpting my book makes me feel very vulnerable and open to criticism.  I am not convinced that sharing it may help anyone who reads it to have some kind of catharsis.  But, I don’t know what else to offer, so I am offering a part of me, to whoever will let me in.  I only hope you  get something out of it.

……………

My father’s death.  Here is how it went:

            Two phone calls I can’t get out of my mind…My cousin Maria answers…a hot, cold streak of fear runs through me…“…but they can’t be in Puerto Rico that fast…” I go into my parents room, fall on my knees before the plaster saints on my Dad’s dresser, praying…the phone is ringing again…I stumble, trying to go from kneeling to running, and bounce into the hallway wall…Maria is crying, and still, but for a brief and bare second, it does not register… “Joanie, I’m so sorry, your father passed away…” that’s my Aunt Sue crying out these words to me…I feel like I have a concussion…I feel like I don’t know anything…don’t know anything but…but… “…I prayed…but I prayed…I prayed…to You…I prayed to You…You… “God Bless the Reale Home”…from a gilt-edged plate, a handsome, serene Jesus looks down on me from the lintel above the doorway to the kitchen…

Excerpt:

“Maria crying, Aunt Sue telling me she’s sorry, sorry that my father passed away, “Joanie, I’m so sorry, your father passed away.” Passed away. Passed away. “NOOOOO! NOOOOOO! I BEGGED YOU!  I BEGGED YOU! ON MY KNEES!  ON MY KNEES!  FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER! FUCK YOU!  OHHHHHHHH NOOOOOO!  NOOOOOO!  NOOOOO! NO! NO! NO! NO! YOU BASTARD! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! Me, to the picture plate of Jesus saying “God Bless the Reale Home.” Punching the metal pantry doors like a punching bag. Punching and punching and punching and punching. And cursing. Spitting. Bleeding. Crying. Blind. Blind. With rage. With grief. Impossible grief. Breaking the doors. Aunt Sue crying. Telling God, “Oooh, please forgive her.” Roaring, roaring like a wounded, bleeding animal.  “FORGIVE ME? FORGIVE ME? I DON’T FORGIVE YOU! I DON’T FORGIVE YOU! I DON’T FORGIVE YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! Jumping.  Jumping.  Fists flailing and bleeding. Jumping, swinging over Aunt Sue’s head. To punch Jesus, to knock that serene face from its broken promise. To try to kill Him. Kill God. Who deserted me years ago. Who proves I was right.  Today.  Today.  After years of hoping I was wrong. To be right. Like this. Today. “FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!”  Aunt Sue and Ann trying to stop me.  Trying to grab me. Hold me. Pulling me into the hallway, the bathroom. Slamming into the walls.  With my head.  Everything immoveable is God.  And I am His enemy. Banging my head. Wanting to feel the walls give.  My tears flying everywhere.  Landing on the edge of the tub.  Ann and Aunt Sue trying to hold me down.  Ann on my left arm. Grabbing the towel rack, with my right hand, nearly pulling it off.  Water running.  I can’t see.  I can’t see.   I can’t see...

                                                         

            And it is as if I have not seen past that day, that moment for all these years. All these very many years. Still smelling the flowers from the wake on my black jacket. The one I threw in the corner of our room and wouldn’t let my mother clean. The sickening smell of something dying. The dream two weeks before. My father in a light blue gray suit and hat. He never wore hats. And a cane. A matching cane. Like someone from another time. Getting into his new, blue gray Bonneville. Me, asking, “Dad--where are you going?”  He, smiling, telling me I can’t go with him. Me running to the car as he gets in. His casket, blue gray.  The suit my mother picked for him, blue gray. Ann changing his carnation, so small and all alone.  Before the crowd arrives.  She is not afraid to love, I’m thinking, my little sister, just sixteen, doing this aching and beautiful thing.  It is the most loving gesture.  The most heart-wrenching.  The one that tears me apart, over and over, each time I think of it.  Thinking of it always, it representing the moment I realize he is gone.  From this world.  From us.  Forever.   Thinking of Ann and my mother the first day of the wake. Seeing them kneeling, crying. My mother talking to him. Me, running. Running up the aisle. Trying to run out, run out, run out of there.  Running back to the grave. After finding the card from our cross of white and red flowers. From Ann, Tuffy, and me. Wanting him to be buried with it and finding it on the ground as we were leaving. Running back to the grave to throw it in. People running and grabbing for me. Scared I was going to go crazy, throw myself in. Showing them the card. Letting me go. Alone to the grave. To deliver this last message. This goodbye. The only goodbye I’d get to deliver. Walking to the limo alone. To him and from him through the stages of my life.

……………

Talk about anger.  Talk about sorrow.  Talk about regret and the need for forgiveness. Talk about reflection and the grace Time gives us.  The only way out of it is through it.  The only way out of it is through it.  Give yourself that gift.

            I hope anyone who has suffered a great loss can empathize with my experience.  I hope anyone who reads this can access feelings that need to be let out.  I hope anyone who reads this gets some small measure of healing from this sharing.

……………

To Terry,

            I will remember your warmth and sweetness whenever we were together.  I will remember the pure joy you showed, in a face lit up by a great inner light, when you opened the Christmas gift from Karen, Emmie, and me.  An Italian horn, a perfect fit.  But there is something else I want to say to you today:

Thank you for Nicki.  She is your gift to us, and a perfect fit. Let me tell you what a woman you raised: Nicole is an exquisite human being.  She is one of the rare, great ones that grace us all too little in life. Nic is a blessing.  Her spirit and smile are offered to anyone, everyone.  She is truly there for others.  She is gentle, generous, and a God-given gift to this world.  Nic is humble and gracious.  She lives to love others better, setting the great example of fulfilling God’s Golden Rule.  Nicole is love personified.  We are truly blessed to have her as a part of our family.  As you look down upon us from that most perfect place, may you empower the rest of your lovely family to gather together and help Nicole to get through the business of the living, which always remains.

May you rest in perfect love and perfect peace,

Joan

We're Livin' In Some Future Where None Of This Has Happened Yet

"...Woke up Election Day, skies gunpowder and shades of gray
Beneath a dirty sun, I whistled my time away
Then just about sundown
You come walkin' through town
Your boot heels clickin'
Like the barrel of a pistol spinnin' 'round

Don't worry Darlin', now baby don't you fret
We're livin' in the future and none of this has happened yet
Don't worry Darlin', now baby don't you fret
We're livin' in the future and none of this has happened yet..."

"Living In The Future," by Bruce Springsteen



            I hate Ann Coulter.  Wait, let me catch you up. So, I’m a little behind since my “hiatus,” which just means my day job prevents me from writing when I really want to.  Bear with me.  I’ve had something to say to Ann Coulter for quite a while and just have to get it out of my system.  Context:  Coulter on Fox’s Hannity  discussing  Herman Cain firing up the GOP before he flamed out.  Cain was being exposed for extramarital affairs and sexual harassment, a witchy-bitchy excoriation from the evil Democrats, according to Coulter (too bad for her that it was true).  On Hannity she was asked why she thought Herman Cain was being attacked: 

“…Coulter brought things back to race, saying that some women had been quick to forgive Bill Clinton for his sexual transgressions, but were attacking Herman Cain. "If you are a conservative black, they will believe the most horrible sexualized fantasies of these uptight white feminists," she said.  Hannity wondered why liberals were, in his words, so "threatened" by Cain. Coulter was blunt in her response:

Our blacks are so much better than their blacks," she said, speaking of  Democrats.”

And, my Pop is bigger than your Pop.  OK?  Now, Ann, or, if you prefer, Missus Massa, maybe I’m not taking enough gingko, but I can swear we had that big war in the 1860s, the one that settled the question of slavery and saved our Union?  The one that led to the 13^th Amendment (abolishing slavery for all time), and the 14^th Amendment (giving freed slaves full rights, privileges, and immunities as U.S. citizens).  Yeah, Ann, out went that awful compromise in our Constitution—know that document?—the one where we first had to cater to the South by keeping taxes low and counting slaves as three-fifths of a human being to get the thing ratified?  You know, I just got an astounding idea that might be right up your alley:  maybe your folks in the GOP might like to make workers less than human.  Oh, I forgot, you already did.  Nevermind.   But hey, according to your rhetoric, none of this has happened yet, none of this has happened yet. The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Movement, the end of segregation…but, I seem to be getting ahead of myself because, by the way you speak, I could swear I’m living in some future where none of this has happened yet; so, don’t worry darlin’, and don’t you fret, in your delusion, none of this has happened yet.  Man, if this is my dream, Martin Luther King Jr. would  just be thrilled.

And, Ann, if I’m scarring you out of your dream-state by showing the love to Lincoln, I will say this, before you get your panties in a twist—that is, if you remember those little aforementioned things as events that have actually happened, actually passed in the plain of Time where the lives of well respected others and I have lived:  yes, I know Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.  Only thing is, that party has changed so greatly that it now resembles the Democratic Party of today in matters of social justice.  Say what you will, Abe is mine, not yours, no way, no how.  Want to duke it out over this one?  Yeah, I can just see it now, a Democratic fundraiser, rubber chicken and all, and you, the Barbie doll—who is not aging well, I’ve got to tell you, honey; you should try some of the unregulated, fountain-of-youth skin creams out there—ok, and then there would be me, the Uptight White Feminist.  Place your bets, everyone.  Now, who you think gonna win that fight?  Ann, if I were you, I would bet on me.

A little Show-and-Tell, if you will:

                     

                                 Her…

  …or me…

…Kidding…

…This is me…in front, holding my friend's baby, with my beautiful girlfriend in the background…

Ok.  I have digressed.  Forgive me.  I just got carried away by the visuals.  If you know me, you know why.  And I really can’t stand the Barbie-Bitch.  Her new book is called, Demonic:  How The Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.  I don’t know, Ann.  I mean, I’m for heating oil for the poor, investment in state-of-the-art education for every child in America, healthcare and social security and affordable medicine for our elderly, protection of saved assets from corporate degenerates…Oooh, how demonic of me… 

Uh, Ann, you better get the hazmat suit ready.   “Our blacks ….” Really, now.  “Uptight white feminists.”  Really, now.    “…speaking of Democrats…”

Yeah.  Ok, Ann, let’s see.  AND, just for the record, we call black people African-Americans nowadays, and, uh, they're free--nobody owns them anymore, but since you set the rhetorical terms here, for the sake of rhetorical symmetry, I'll follow along; so, OUR AFRICAN-AMERICANS (just a sampling): 

Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Dred Scott, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner-- who would be Democrats today; Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson, Rosa Parks, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin (who spent, “Time on Two Crosses,” the title of his autobiography, because he was African-American and gay), Medgar Evers, Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls (now Bethune-Cookman College) in 1904, a leader in the black women's movement who served as president of the National Association of Colored Women, and worked as an adviser to FDR,  James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Ernest Green ,Elizabeth Eckford , Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed , and Melba Pattillo Beals –the underlined nicknamed “The Little Rock Nine,” who put to the test the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas Supreme Court decision, victoriously argued by Thurgood Marshall, leading to an end of the “separate but equal” laws by repealing the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling; Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School; Homer Plessy—plaintiff in that case;  Linda Brown, who is the “Brown” in the Supreme Court case that ended segregation; Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisolm, Thurgood Marshall (1st African-American Supreme Court Justice), James Meredith (1^st African-American to enter the University of Mississippi, under National Guard),  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Coretta Scott King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, Patricia Roberts Harris, the first African American female cabinet member when she was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter, Alexis Herman—Secretary of Labor, appointed by President Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Major Owens, Ron Brown, Ed Towns, Cornel West, Maxine Waters, Marian Wright Edelman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, and many, many others.

            Now, Ann, honey, that “..uptight white feminist…” comment, well… ummm, I just can’t let it go.  I feel this compulsion to just fuck you up.  I mean, that and the our-blacks-are-better-than-your-blacks comment.  That kind of rhetoric gets me going.  Gets me fired up.  You want to see me go “demonic” on you, sweetie?  Want to come here and pull my pants down?  Ooooh, would I love that, you have no idea. The Democratic National Committee is getting a copy of this, to be sure. SO, back to cogent argument:  Without feminists, darlin’, you would not have a voice, no matter how excruciating it is to hear; without feminists you would not have your lucrative book deal; without feminists…you know what?  I don’t like you.  I’m not gonna make a list of my dislikes—it would take up too much of my precious time. 

       You call me and mine Uptight White Feminists.  Well, we have some African-American, Latina, and Asian sisters, too. And that’s an understatement.  And they are pissed not to have been included.  And, if you ever want to spar, I’m ready for ya.  See, I figure it won’t take much to reduce you to doll parts.  Because that is what you are: doll eyes, doll mouth, doll legs, doll arms, dog bait, you want to be the girl with the most cake…and yeah, they really want you, they really want you, white girl, in the GOP.  I’m gonna invite Courtney Love, and ALL our Uptight Feminist sisters to our match, if you take me up on the offer.

Your boot-heels, darlin’, might click like the barrel of a pistol spinning ‘round, but, my boots were made for walking, and one these days--I think today, in fact--they’re gonna walk all over you.  Yeah, I think I’ll start a-steppin’ here…see, darlin', the future waits for no one...and you can just eat my dust.

...I guess I'm back...



Say Goodbye to Hollywood…

     “So many faces in and out of our lives…

      

Some will last…

“…Some will just be now and then…

                                             Mitt Romney

                                         Newt Gingrich

                                          Rick Santorum

 “Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes…

Tim Pawlenty…

                                    Herman Cain

                                                Michele Bachmann

                                          Rick Perry
 

 

                                            Jon Huntsman

                                         

 

   “… I’m afraid it’s time for goodbye again…”

 

                               Sara Palin

   “…Say goodbye to Hollywood…”

            Since I have laryngitis and have not written in such a long time, I decided to keep this return less verbose, less trying, and figured I would just “show and tell.” (Ok, I tried). I hope everyone gets the sort of hidden message herein:  true leaders need no introduction. 

            To our first president, I say, thank you for showing us that the peaceful exchange of power was indeed possible: you would not allow a pseudo-monarchy to be made out of our new-born democracy; you turned down all persuasion and refused to run for a third term.  Your farewell address is as powerful today as it was when you made it.  You have my gratitude for it and for fighting, as general, for the pay and equipping of soldiers.  You have my gratitude for your military brilliance, making a motley crew, so seriously out-numbered by the British, a majestic and victorious bunch. 

           To Thomas Jefferson, I say thank you for the eloquence that declared our independence and explained our revolutionary actions to an imperialistic world so forthrightly, so justly that the nations of the world could not reject us out of hand, but would concede to take measure of the brave upstarts we were, and allow themselves to trade with us.  I thank you for delivering to such a world the message that all men are created equal, not easy for any empire to accept, but you did declare this most decidedly, and it has become the catch-phrase for freedom and equality everywhere and for all time. I thank you for your inventions, your rhetorical brilliance, your enduring example of diplomacy as our first Secretary of State, your “Jefferson Bible,” which ought to be more than little known, as it extrapolates from a book of fantasy the philosophy all of us could live by, for your desire to build, if it were possible, a wall between church and state, and for the Louisiana Purchase.  I thank you for way more, but I promised to make this brief. 

            To Abraham Lincoln, I say thank you for making the aforementioned ideal of equality a reality with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, finally settling the question of slavery by abolishing it—something that political realities of the times would not allow our Declaration or Constitution to do— weakening the South by it so the Union would prevail or we would not be here today, calling ourselves citizens of the UNITED States of America. It got you killed, but it set us free—all of us; for, “no man can be free while others are oppressed.”  I thank you for the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th amendments.  I thank you for your rhetorical brilliance, as well, citing here that, yes, leaders ought to know how to speak and write so gorgeously; I am always challenged by your words to live up to the better angels of my nature.  And…thanks to Billy Joel for his lyrics.

To Tim, Herman, Michele, and Rick P. I want to say thank you for saying goodbye.  To Jon, the least egregious of them all, I say too bad, at least you have a sense of reason. To Mitt, Rick S. (scary little man—only for your faith, your idea of family, and freedom only to those who conform to your beliefs, I wish Thomas Jefferson was here to kick your bigoted, parochial ass), and Newt (please…don’t let me start…), I hope we will be parting ways very, very soon.  To the others in the GOP, I wish for the same.

I hope to be back to this page soon.  I hope you hope so, too.  It is so difficult to teach and find the time to do anything else.  I started this blog in the summer, when I had time to research and write.  I am passionate about it and can become monomaniacal, too, writing for hours on end and way into the night, making my study an unmitigated mess of books, parchments, napkins and newspaper ends I scrawled all over, thinking I should really use the Kindle I was given, but hate because it is not a BOOK, and luxuriating in the lovely weeks off to do this, my writing, in the hope that I might do some justice to some issue, and be worthy of the time you take to read me.  Thank you, really.  If not for you, I would be “talking” to myself.  

Now, here's to those who are truly worth our attention and admiration...



P.S.   GO  GIANTS !!!

Stuck In The Middle With You

“…Here I am stuck in the middle with you
Yes I'm, stuck in the middle with you

And I'm wonderin' what it is I should do…
Tryin' to make some sense of it all,
But I can see it makes no sense at all…

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right,
Here I am stuck in the middle with you…”

“Stuck in The Middle With You,” by Stealer's Wheel

            While there is a wide swath of “independents” who will need to be courted by candidates for their votes in order to win the 2012 presidential election, the extremists hold hard and fast to their wingnut positions without regard to that truth.  And, their rhetoric, while offensive to most who still have a sense of reason, continues to be unbelievably, well, crazy. 

Here is Michele Bachmann on Hurricane Irene, using this tragic natural disaster to let us know why fiscally conservative CEO God is acting out as He is, presumably having explained Himself to Bachmann during one of their chats on the bat-phone:

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people, because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet, and we've got to rein in the spending."

           
            Now, call me crazy, but when Jesus went around telling his disciples that, having received their divine power to heal freely from God, they were not to take money for their acts of kindness:  “You have received without cost,” He said, “Now, do without charge,”  He was not exactly the Republicans’ ideal of the model CEO. What kind of fiscally conservative CEO would shoo away profits?  Michele, just who the hell have you been talking to?  Jesus, the Socialist, is decidedly NOT on that bat-phone talking to you.  I think you, doll, are probably confusing Him with Talky Tina. Just note this, next time you think you’re speaking to Him; it’s a good guide for knowing imposters from The Real Thing:  Jesus does not come with batteries and has no looped string in the back of His head.  Maybe you were talking to Chucky, a.k.a. Grover Norquist? You gotta get out of those chat-rooms, Michele. I don’t think Jesus trolls the web looking to hook-up with you.

Michele, you went on to say:

" If people are looking for someone with a proven track record to trust with the highest office of the land, someone who means what they say and says what they mean, I do that.

 Then why, in God’s name, did you follow your idiocy with this explanation, when you got a smackdown?

 "Of course I was being humorous when I said that. It would be absurd to think it was anything else," Bachmann said on Monday on a campaign stop in Miami. "I am a person who loves humor, I have a great sense of humor."

Michele, I’m not laughing.

You see, I do not think there is anything remotely funny about the deaths of at least 24 people, homelessness, catastrophic destruction, innumerable injuries, and YOU.  Every time you tap that bat-phone, Michele, I’m pretty sure you’re getting the wrong number.

            Yet, those Republicans just go on putting God all up in our grill. They lovin’ themselves some God, there.  He’s their campaign manager, you know?  Well, they got some contradictory words, actions, and policies that I don’t think The Big Guy would go for.  Loving your neighbor as you would yourself is not exactly a biblical maxim the Republicans ascribe to.  They are NOT into the Golden Rule, you know, the one that says you must treat others as you would want to be treated yourself.  And, it is worth noting, that the only fair trade policy Jesus was into was to sacrifice Himself for everybody else. Not exactly Eric Cantor’s position, lobbyist Norquist’s position, the Republican Party’s position, or the position of the wealthiest 1% of  our citizenry.  Here is what House Majority Leader Cantor’s position is on giving aid to Hurricane Irene’s victims:

According to Reuters: “…Cantor told Fox News that disaster aid in the wake of Hurricane Irene should not be funded with borrowed money. Instead, Cantor said Monday, all federal assistance should be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget.”

From “The Week” website:

Cantor is putting politics ahead of victims: "Just as Republicans held the country hostage over the debt ceiling," says Michael Stickings at The Moderate Voice, "Cantor is now trying to do the same over disaster relief." Hurricane Katrina taught us that the only way to save lives and relieve suffering is to get food, shelter, and help to victims immediately. Cantor either didn't learn that lesson, or he just "doesn't care." This is "political hostage-taking with lives and livelihoods in the balance."

Distinctly different from his stance on federal aid when Tropical Storm Gaston hit his Virginia district in 2004:

From, “The Hill” website:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's insistence that federal disaster aid be offset elsewhere in the budget runs directly counter to his position in the past when the money went to help his Virginia district.   In the summer of 2004, after Tropical Storm Gaston slammed into Richmond, Cantor was on the front lines of efforts to secure millions of dollars in federal assistance to clean the wreckage and repair damaged infrastructure. Although the funding was not offset, Cantor cheered its arrival.

"The magnitude of the damage suffered by the Richmond area is beyond what the Commonwealth can handle," Cantor said in a press release at the time, "and that is why I asked the President to make federal funds available for the citizens affected by Gaston."

When you swing from one extreme to the other, purely because you are being manipulated by a highly influential lobbyist, I believe you have to do some self-reflection and find that the moderate middle ground is more sensible to just about everyone.  Except, of course, your Grover, who, last time I checked, did better as a muppet than yours is as a person.  Have you folks no discretion?  Haven’t your mothers taught you to play well with others and not talk to the strange man who might touch you in places strange men ought not to?

Here is another example of the abandonment of moderation, of middle ground taken from the transcript of last Friday night’s PBS NewsHour:

 

MARK SHIELDS:
Rick Perry comes in, in 2012 -- or the 2012 campaign, he accentuates the differences. I mean, he is for no federal role in education. He wants to repeal the 16th and 17th amendments* to the Constitution. This is take-no-prisoners kind of conservatism.

JIM LEHRER: David, does President Obama deserve any praise or credit for what happened in Libya?

DAVID BROOKS: I think he does, and a lot more than he's getting, actually.

You have to remember, when the -- Gadhafi was marching on the rebels and threatening to massacre them, a lot of people in this country wanted to do nothing. A lot of people in Europe who were more upset about it just wanted to have sort of a no-fly zone.

And Obama has pushed them more aggressively than they wanted to go, so it wasn't just a no-fly zone. Were -- we actually ended up helping the rebels. We ended up helping the goal of regime change. And people have criticized whether it is was slow enough or fast enough, whether it was more aggressive or not.

But I think, more than anybody outside the country, I think Obama does deserve a lot of credit for showing that you can do an intervention reasonably well, achieve at least the first step of your objective, and do some large good for that country and potentially the region…

But I do think, it wasn't only him being right in calling for something pretty aggressive. It wasn't only him being right in calling for regime change. I think Secretary Clinton has to get a lot of credit for what was done at the U.N., the way the NATO alliance was handled.

MARK SHIELDS: …

So, I -- you know, I don't think he's going to get a political bump out of it. But he can point to the fact that there is no Osama bin Laden and there is no Moammar Gadhafi. And it happened on his watch.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

Why is it that the Republicans don't give him credit?  

(LAUGHTER)

JIM LEHRER: Oh, is that...

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Do you have to ask that question?

JIM LEHRER: I can -- tell me, David.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Well, you know, there's the obvious political thing.

JIM LEHRER: Yes…

DAVID BROOKS: And so, as usual with Obama, he was stuck there in the middle, and without anybody.

So, Obama gets no credit for Libya, according to David Brooks of The NY Times, just the most reasonable Republican around—like, what’s new???  And, Mark Shields reminds us that there seems to be no middle ground, no moderates left in the Republican Party.  Maybe, like dinosaurs, they will become extinct?  And, both see the reasonable man the president is and believe he is very much alone.
Well, Mr. President, You are not without anybody.  I declare, quite decidedly, that I am stuck in the middle with you.  Yes, there are clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right, but I am right here, stuck in the middle with you.

*A little about the Constitutional Amendments Rick Perry would like to see repealed:

16th Amendment
In 1895, in the Supreme Court case of Pollock v Farmer's Loan and Trust (157 U.S. 429), the Court disallowed a federal tax on income from real property. The tax was designed to be an indirect tax, which would mean that states need not contribute portions of a whole relative to its census figures. The Court, however, ruled that the tax was a direct tax and subject to apportionment. This was the last in a series of conflicting court decisions dating back to the Civil War. Between 1895 and 1909, when the amendment was passed by Congress, the Court began to back down on its position, as it became clear not only to accountants but to everyone that the solvency of the nation was in jeopardy. In a series of cases, the definition of "direct tax" was modified, bent, twisted, and coaxed to allow more taxation efforts that approached an income tax.
Finally, with the ratification of the 16th Amendment, any doubt was removed. The text of the Amendment makes it clear that though the categories of direct and indirect taxation still exist, any determination that income tax is a direct tax will be irrelevant, because taxes on incomes, from salary or from real estate, are explicitly to be treated as indirect. The Congress passed the Amendment on July 12, 1909, and it was ratified on February 3, 1913 (1,302 days).

---

17th Amendment
One of the most common critiques of the Framers is that the government that they created was, in many ways, undemocratic. There is little doubt of this, and it is so by design. The Electoral College, by which we choose our President, is one example. The appointment of judges is another. And the selection of Senators not by the people but by the state legislatures, is yet another. The Senatorial selection system eventually became fraught with problems, with consecutive state legislatures sending different Senators to Congress, forcing the Senate to work out who was the qualified candidate, or with the selection system being corrupted by bribery and corruption. In several states, the selection of Senators was left up to the people in referenda, where the legislature approved the people's choice and sent him or her to the Senate. Articles written by early 20th-century muckrakers also provided grist for the popular-election mill.
The 17th Amendment did away with all the ambiguity with a simple premise — the Senators would be chosen by the people, just as Representatives are. Of course, since the candidates now had to cater to hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people instead of just a few hundred, other issues, such as campaign finances, were introduced. The 17th is not a panacea, but it brings government closer to the people. The Amendment was passed by Congress on May 13, 1912, and was ratified on April 8, 1913 (330 days).

---

            So, what does this all mean?  Well, let’s look at the 16^th Amendment: the taxation of property funds public education, something Rick Perry wants to see destroyed, although some pretty smart guys, like Thomas Jefferson, thought otherwise:

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”  ~ Thomas Jefferson

“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.   This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”  ~ Thomas Jefferson

“The tax which will be paid for [the] purpose[of education] is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”  ~ Thomas Jefferson

            Knowing that our democracy would choose its leaders from its citizenry, men like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Noah Webster, and Horace Mann wished to see education for all Americans.  Thus, with such impetus, the public school system came to take hold in the United States.  No wonder ignoramuses like Perry, or the paranoid wealthy—who would not like to see 98% of the masses challenge their children for jobs, positions of leadership, etc.—would be the ones most in favor of seeing to the destruction of public education. 
           
             Yes, I know the litany of public education’s critics:  I am a teacher.  I sometimes feel like the conquered of a vanquished country, who, being found by the victors, hears their leaders tell them it is just fine, just A-OK to abuse me as they wish; for, to the victors go the spoils.  So, I am abused, unconscionably abused.  People think teachers are responsible for all that has gone wrong with their children.  To those fools I say:  You are in the greatest denial.  It is you, THE PARENTS, and THE POLITICIANS, who dare not call you out for your abdication of responsibility, who wrong your children.  I am paid less than a garbage man.  Yet, I have over 300 college credits that I had to earn and pay for myself, pass national exams, put up with asinine administrators more interested in getting away from your children than hanging in there, in the classroom, and teaching them.  The tsunami I and my colleagues are up against includes, parental neglect and the ensuing hurt and anger your children feel and displace upon us, cell phones, i-pods, drugs, poverty, guns, knives, collective disrespect—must I go on? So, here’s what I think my critics ought to do: serve in an inner-city public school for a month.  Then come to me and tell me I am not worth much more than I am getting paid to do the most noble and important job of all.  Stop slinging shit and get yourselves into a high school classroom in one of the poorest districts in our country and see how you fare. Remember to bring your own supplies, because the education cuts will not provide you with what you need.  Scotch tape?  Are you kidding me?  Notebooks?  Pens?  Pencils? Rulers?  Staplers? Oh, and most of you will find there are no phones in your classrooms.  And, sometimes there is no heat or air conditioning or anything that resembles a classroom at all.  You might be teaching in a closet or a bathroom, without enough books, either.  And, a kid might be doing drug transactions on his cell phone, but don’t you dare confiscate it—he has rights.  Or, maybe one of your students tells you to go fuck yourself, or pulls a gun out in your classroom.  What you gonna do?  You are going to teach.  Yeah.  And, you are going to be judged by how well those kids do—even the ones who live on trains, get raped in group homes or by Mommy’s predatory boyfriend, or the ones whose parents tell you, “He’s your problem now.  I DON’T want you calling my house again, motherfucking asshole, you the reason nobody wants to go to school, FUCK  YOU.”  Sound like fun to you? Sound PROFESSIONAL to you?  Sound SANE to you? Sound ACCEPTABLE in the richest country in the world to you? Yeah, so, I say, go do your civic duty and spend a month or two in my shoes.  And, when you are running out clutching your bowels, don’t let that school door hit you in the ass.  Oh, and please, refuse your check because, let’s face it, you ain’t done nothing worth getting paid for.  Here me now? Oh, and don’t you forget to call your state senator and demand that funding for education be slashed because, as you have just experienced for yourself, there is just too cushy an environment in schools these days.  I mean, who do teachers think they are, demanding toilet paper and running water, safety and supplies—corporate bigwigs? Pshaw!

           Now, the 17^th Amendment is a problem to a lot of people.  It seems, to its critics, to expand federalism, and to curtail the power that they believe ought to redound to states.  You can look into it more, if it so pleases you, but I am going to give myself a reprieve here.  After what I have written about schools, and knowing that I am less than a week away from heading back to work, I think I need to go to sleep for awhile.

           As for Bachmann, Perry, and God, well, I kind of feel sorry for God, you know.  He just seems to be stuck in the middle of some very unsavory characters, and, unlike myself, can’t just shut off His computer and take a nap.  Sorry, Man, I guess that’s just the way it goes when You’re God.

As for the victims of Hurricane Irene and their loved ones:  I will fight Eric Cantor’s Un-Americanism, and fight to see Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano get the funding she is calling for to help you in your time of great need.  We, for I am not alone, will see to it that you are not stuck in the middle of bureaucratic machinations that are trying to pass for something “responsible.”  We know just what Eric Cantor, et al, is trying to do, BUT, being responsible is not the word.  It is ___________.  I’ll leave you folks to fill in the blank (the one on this page as well as the one in the middle of his head).