How Can We Be Silent?

I noticed a lot of people read my last entry, but not too many people commented on it.  I feel like I've broken some kind of rule.  Everybody is sick of the divisiveness caused by the election.  Believe me, I tuned out of the election rhetoric weeks before the actual event.  I couldn't stand the constant sniping and negativity swirling over the airwaves, either.  But the horror of the Iraq war did not abate on the morning of November 3rd.  It keeps on going, from bad to worse to unbelievable.  How can we, in good conscience, shove this abomination to the backs of our minds, in the name of restoring unity in this country?

What really frightens me is that, as the situation in Iraq deteriorates, it seems to have the effect of convincing people that Mr. Bush was justified in invading.  People are adopting the attitude that the factions in Iraq are so lawless and bloodthirsty, that we needed to go in there and show them how civilized people behave.  And how IS that, exactly?  Like the soldiers at Abu Graib?  Like the marine who murdered a wounded enemy in cold blood?  Are we naive enough to think these are isolated incidents?  The flow of information out of Iraq is being tightly controlled.  If news of these "few" atrocities performed by American forces has leaked through the information blockade, how much more of this must really be going on?

I hate that the American military can no longer even pretend to be the good guys.  I hate that we can no longer claim the moral high ground among nations.  Most of all, I hate that the man on the American street has developed such a lust for violence and vengeance, that he no longer cares that we have lowered ourselves to, or below, the level of the most contemptuous of our enemies.  Who cares what we do, as long as we win?  As long as we can pay back some of our 9/11 anguish?   

And we're supposed to shut up about this.  In the name of unity.  It's all I can do not to stand in the streets and scream at the top of my lungs... 

Abomination

 

Updated: 01:38 PM EST

Aid Worker Held Hostage in Iraq Believed to Be Dead

Videotape Appears to Show Murder

By ROBERT H. REID

BAGHDAD (Nov. 16) -- Al-Jazeera television said Tuesday it received a videotape showing the slaying of a woman believed to be hostage aid worker Margaret Hassan. Hassan's family in London said they believed the longtime director of CARE in Iraq was dead.

 

How well do President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Vice President Cheney sleep at night?

Yes, it IS their fault this woman is dead. This is the cost of "pre-emptive" war. Margaret Hassan’s work, and her life, were violently pre-empted, as a direct result of Mr. Bush’s lust to establish a US presence in the oil fields of the Middle East. Bush, Cheney, and Blair killed this woman as surely as if they held the gun that shot her in the back of the head.

Yes, Mr. Bush. The WRONG war. In the WRONG country. At the WRONG time. You WILL be judged for this. Perhaps not by the sheep who re-elected you. Perhaps not even by history. But surely by the God you claim is on your side…

"...the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."  Luke 12:48 

 

Short and Sweet

I have about seven minutes to compose a quick entry.  Now that my business in "on hiatus for the next few months, I've been suffering from a debilitating lack of structure in my life.  I don't function well at all when I have nothing pressing to do.  I seem to need deadlines and schedules to keep me moving. After about a month of feeling scattered and unmotivated, I sat down last week and wrote myself a schedule, complete with actual times blocked out for certain activites.  Worked like a charm.  I got a lot accomplished last week, including painting my dining room (the Dining Room Door Project is at last successfully completed.  It took, what, about two months?) 

My watch just "beeped" 7:00.  Which means I have to wrap this up, hop out of bed, and start my day.  The first hour of every morning, I have to don my "zookeeper" hat, and deal with feeding, medicating, and cleaning up after the furry horde.  Having so many animals to keep track of at least gives me some measure of job security.  

Above is a picture I took last week on an incredibly nice day for the middle of November.  Took the dog for a walk and dragged my camera along.  Autumn is a protracted affair here in the Pacific Northwest.  There will still be leaves clinging to some trees at Christmas.  Oops...five minutes over time already.  All right, I'm going... 

Give It Up For The "Nerds"

Last night, we went to the season-opening performance of the Portland Youth Philharmonic. We managed to find a cheap ticket deal while cruising the "Portland Events" calendar online. Our "cheap tickets" were front-row center; which, if you’ve ever attended an event at an "intimate" venue, you know are a little awkward. You’re basically almost eye-level with a platoon of black-shod feet, and you’re peeking under pianos and between chair legs to take advantage of your "close-up and personal" view of the orchestra. I started out griping about the seats, but as the concert progressed, I changed my tune. No heads in front of us to lean around, and all the foot room we wanted. And I really enjoyed being so close to the young musicians.

Those kids are truly amazing. At one point, my husband leaned over and asked me, "How many combined hours of lessons and practice do you suppose we’re looking at here?" The conductor and music director, Mei-Ann Chen, partially answered this question when she explained that the young piano soloists had basically "given up their summer" practicing their piece—Francis Poulenc’s Concerto in D Minor for 2 Pianos and Orchestra. I was not familiar with the composer or his music, and usually I don’t care for "modern" orchestral music. But the piece was pleasant in places, dramatic in others, and, it seemed to me, very complicated for two teen-aged pianists performing with no sheet music in front of them. To say I was impressed is an understatement. And after intermission, the two medal-winning soloists picked up their other instruments—violin and cello—and joined the rest of the orchestra for the second half of the concert. Did I say "impressed?" How about "gob-smacked?"

Of course, the evening’s entertainment got me to thinking…where were the media? Why were there not press and photographers and TV and radio personalities hovering around, focusing on the talents and dedication of kids like this? Why are they camped outside places like a grade school in the inner city, where police are taking heat for "tazering" a six-year-old who was holding them at bay in the principal’s office with a shard of broken glass from a broken pictureframe? If you think about it, this showcase of outstanding youth, which barely filled the seats of a small auditorium, spoke volumes about our society in America—both the good and the bad things about it.

That there are enough such kids to even populate an orchestra is a good thing. But, one would have had to be blind not to notice that at least two out of three of the young musicians were of Asian extraction. Though this says good things about Asian-American culture, what does it say about the rest of us? A hundred years ago in this country, music was considered an integral part of a "classical education." Rudimentary mastery of an instrument like piano or violin—or even accordion!—was as much a part of growing up as going to school (uphill both ways in the snow) and sandlot baseball games. Learning to play required an investment of discipline and dedication that we don’t require of our kids today. OR of ourselves. Are they too busy? Are we? Doing what, exactly?

I have to admit, my parents dropped the ball on this one. Musical instruments and/or lessons were considered "luxuries" that we couldn’t afford. Fifty years ago, our parents were already becoming so brainwashed by our consumer culture that the importance of exposure to the arts was being steadily eclipsed from their everyday lives. Our society has filled that void with…what? A pop music culture that has throngs of adolescents drooling over icons like Brittney Spears and Eminem? You know, I’m sure there are plenty of kids with real talent out there, playing to empty seats in concert halls. But the media would have you believe that what there is, what is all-important to today’s teens, are those semi-talented children making more money than God, trotting around onstage half-naked, performing acts that showcase an almost pedophiliac sexual suggestiveness. Or violence that should have put them behind bars or in padded rooms long ago.

So, let’s hear it for the "classical music nerds." The ones in the slightly ill-fitting formal wear, sporting "violin hickeys" just under their jaws on the left sides of their necks. They started out life like any other kids. But they’ll have a foundation of education, discipline, manners, and international experience upon which to build the rest of their lives. Wouldn’t we all like to give our children these toolsin today’s world?

'Tis the Season

From the time I outgrew the kiddie seat in the shopping cart, I have loved to shop. Clothes, jewelry, home décor and garden goodies are my biggest cravings. I LOVE clothes. If I won the lottery, I would have to buy a house just to store all the clothes (and shoes) I would stockpile. It’s a good thing I don’t look like Cindy Crawford, or I would have gone broke years ago draping myself in designer finery. Luckily, my short, slightly dumpy figure doesn’t really lend itself to "haute couture." And after spending a score of years treading concrete floors for ten or twelve-hour shifts, my feet are too persnickety to tolerate much in the way of fancy shoes. But that doesn’t mean that the quest for the perfect outfit or pair of shoes hasn’t become a favorite pass-time! I crave fine, "petable" materials—like satin, fleece, and velvet (you can keep your scratchy old wool or cotton sweaters. Give me acrylic—soft, colorfast, and wash and wear.) I love silver, gold, or anything that catches light and turns it into a shower of sparkles, whether on fabric, around my neck, or on my fingers (or feet!) Try and make me walk past a jewelry store window without stopping, goo-goo eyed, hypnotized by the "pretties" in the case.

When I was in junior high, there was only one indoor shopping mall in the whole of the Chicago area--a quirky little oddity with two anchor stores and maybe a dozen smaller shops in between. By the time I graduated high school, there were at least half a dozen malls, large and small, within a half-hour drive in any direction. (Twenty-first century retail philosophy has turned the malls—the ones that are still standing—into dinosaurs. "Big box’ stores like Old Navy, Linens ‘n’ Things, and Barnes and Noble, and huge "outlet store" centers, are the present fad. And the newest thing is these trendy little "shopping villages," or whatever you want to call them. Little groupings of high-end stores cunningly arranged to look like the downtown of some quaint hamlet of a bygone era. Long on charm and short on parking. And you have to walk outside to go from store to store. Excuse me, but in the Pacific Northwest in the middle of a sodden winter, I don’t find that particularly charming.)

Of course, being the "mall groupie" I am, Christmas was always the crown jewel of the calendar year. It’s like the shoppers’ Boston marathon. All the shopping you do the rest of the year is merely training for this one event. Or, it used to be. I’m middle-aged and childless. By my age, most women have shopping lists that have grown exponentially with the numbers of their progeny. If Christmas is for children, it doesn’t have much relevance for me in that respect. And we’ve been doing the "draw a name" thing with my sisters and their husbands for years, so there’s no help there. (On Thanksgiving, we put everyone’s name in a bowl, each person draws a name, and that’s who you buy for. The result is that each person is charged with buying a gift for a fifty-ish sister or brother-in-law who basically already has everything.) And, between my husband and me, holiday shopping has been distilled to which expensive home improvement we are going to embark upon this year, and call it our "Christmas present" to each other. Eminently practical, but utterly devoid of magic. Bleah!

So what’s a shopping junkie to do with herself of a Christmastide, when there’s no shopping to be done? It’s really pretty funny. I have to literally tear myself away, with a big sigh and eyes nearly welling with tears, from displays of shiny Christmas wrap, fancy ribbons and packaging gewgaws. "Now, you don’t use those, anymore, dear. You know buying them would just be a waste of money…" (Not to mention I have stacks of the stuff left over from decades ago, when I actually did still buy and wrap gifts.) That rules out a second aspect of "The (Retail) Magic of Christmas."

Still, I can’t not shop. So, I see a new pattern emerging. Christmas ornaments. I love them. I can’t have enough of them. I already have so many that I would need a twenty-foot tree to accommodate them all. And since I don’t have a twenty-foot ceiling in any room in my house, I have solved that problem by simply adding Christmas trees. Two years ago, we inaugurated the "bedroom Christmas tree." This year, in the family room, where I have been making do with a little three-foot table-top model, we are upgrading to a full-size (albeit "slim profile") artificial fir. I’m even thinking of getting a couple of those pre-lit "corner" trees…one for either side of our new glass door in the dining room. Over the top? Absolutely. But until I can drag myself to a twelve-step-program for shop-a-holics, I have to channel thatretail addiction somewhere. And it’s CHRISTMAS! "It’s only once a year, Mr. Scrooge…!"

Twofer

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. ---Plato

Okay, so I haven't entirely abandoned political commentary.  This is a little message of inspiration for those of us who are smarting about the election and wondering what we should do now.  And a reply, of sorts, to those who are exhorting us to sit down, shut up, and line up behind the President.

Moving Ahead

Eight of my last ten entries have been of the political bent.  Not surprising, given the high-pitched emotions surrounding last week's election.  "Our side" came up short, to the crushing disappointment and disillusionment of many of us.  Days after the election, I was still steaming along, cranking out the political commentary.  It took a huge piece of my personal sky falling on my head, to bring me back to myself.  I've decided it's best to crawl back inside my own skin and tend to issues a little closer to home for awhile.

We're finally getting a taste of more seasonal weather.  Our first frost didn't come until the night of the election...but old Jack has returned every night since then.  Mornings have been cold, foggy, and frosty, which makes for a dark, half-blind, slippery commute for the husband.  The sun generally makes an appearance around mid-morning, its slanted post-equinox rays providing the perfect spotlight for the trees that are still enrobed in their autumn brocades.  I've been trying to get outside and just bask in it.  It's actually been an uncommonly long dry spell for this time of year, and one needs to get outside and soak up the vitamin D when the opportunity presents itself, this time of year in the Pacific Northwest.

Appreciating the little things, the exquisite little gifts that life holds when you take the time to look for them, has helped me to dispel the heaviness of my surprisingly personal reaction to the election. Friday night, husband and I called a "date night."  We dined at our favorite little Chinese place, and then moved on to a quiet antique bar in Old Town (St. Helens!) for a drink and dessert.  Back home, we sat on the floor in front of the fire, with kittens tumbling over our laps, and one jealous canine and six big kitties vying for a little of Mom and Dad's attention.  All I could do was sit there and smile, near to tears.  I felt like I was living in a Christmas card.

Husband and I have decided to make a real holiday of the Christmas season this year.  We're going to go out and about and enjoy the yuletide entertainment offerings of the greater Portland Metro area.  Tickets to several concerts have already been ka-chinged to the VISA.  (I will not be wanting to see that bill in January...)  I'm going to drag out every sequin, diamond (cubic zirconia?) and bangle I own, and wrap myself in velvet, satin, fleece and/or leather depending on the venue and the weather.  It's going to be celebrate the season, or die trying! 

 

Mandate? I Don't Think So...

They’re telling us that President Bush has received a "mandate," by virtue of receiving more popular votes than any elected president in history.

What they’re not publicizing is that John Kerry also received more votes than any elected president in history. Including Ronald Reagan’s "landslide" victory in 1984.

2004— George W. Bush-59,247,194

John Kerry-55,710,000

2000-- George W. Bush-50,456,002

(Al Gore—50,999,897)

1996-- Bill Clinton-47,402,357

1992--Bill Clinton-44,909,326

1988--George H.W. Bush-48,886,097

1984--Ronald Reagan-54,455,000

Lots of people cared deeply about this election. Lots of people cared enough to turn out in record numbers to make their voices heard. NOT just Republicans. NOT just people who stood strong for four more years of wars, unbelievable deficits, building discrimination into our state constitutions, and turning our nation into a Christian theocracy.

The Democrats, the "Libruls" turned out, too. People who wanted to stand up and be counted for change. People who wanted to see Mr. Bush fired for his hand in the huge backslide this country has taken in the last four years. LOTS of people. More than 55 million of them. What are you going to do about us, Mr. President? Pretend we don’t exist? Pretend that now we’re going to "get behind you" because you lied and arm-twisted your way to a popular vote victory (your first?)

No, sir, we aren’t going away. We aren’t shutting up. And we aren’t jumping up on the bandwagon behind you. Nearly half the country vehemently disapproves of the job you have done so far. And we are going to continue to work as hard as we can to thwart you at every turn. Since we love our country, we have no other choice.

Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. 

--Adlai E. Stevenson

I posted this comment in Tressa's journal just before 9:00 yesterday morning. Scant minutes after the election was conceded to Mr. Bush:

"I can't wait for them to start going around polishing their "mandate" from the voters."

And, of course, here’s a little comment made to the press shortly thereafter:

"President Bush ran forthrightly on a clear agenda for this nation’s future, and the nation responded by giving him a mandate." –Vice President Cheney.

Ugh! Can I call them, or what?

It's Over. Or NOT...

This morning, in the pre-dawn darkness, I lay awake, dreading the news of the election results. Wanting to know, but not wanting to know. Wishing I could put it out of my mind for one more hour, and close my eyes to a pleasant dream. I tossed, turned, threw a pillow over my head as my husband was getting ready for work. Finally, I sat up and turned on my laptop. With my pulse steadily picking up speed, I signed on to the internet. I just wanted to get it over with…find out for certain who had won. And, lo and behold, they didn’t know. At 6:00 this morning, west coast time, the news-folk were still loath to declare a winner. Once burned, twice shy, I guess. A novel concept for today’s media.

I decided I would let the dawn be the omen. If we had a spectacular sunrise, no matter who won, things were going to be all right. A rainy, drizzly, weeping dawn would foretell of dire consequences for our nation. Funny thing…I knew the forecast was for sun today…knew the rain had stopped and the clouds had scuttled away before we went to bed last night. I think I was creating a scenario in my mind where my "good omen" daybreak was more than likely to happen.

But we didn’t have a spectacular sunrise. The day dawned bright and brittle. The sun just marched up over the horizon, cold and hard in the east. And it frosted last night…the first frost of the season. The bright hard rays of the rising sun glittered off the sodden masses of my garden flowers that were killed by the frost. So, tell me…what kind of omen is that?