Its the only Friday the 13th in 2008, or so says my Despair calendar....Tim Russert passed away suddenly today, which has left me with mixed feelings, sadness, and hours of tributes on MSNBC... But out at the chicken coop the sun is setting and the babies are getting ready to bed down behind the food can...the Frizzle Turkens are roosting up in the little hay barn, the little Seramas are in the nest boxes, and the roosters who are trying to ruin my life, along with their hens, are roosting outside in the porch coop...Its beautiful and cool out...and the babies, a mixed lot of fancy breeds and straight up good layers, are just about 2 months old...
The Chickens Come Home to Woost...Chicken Blogging in the age of Derangement (as Taibbi Might Say if faced with the Same...)
Its days like this, sunny and cool, Mother's Day, half-way watching the morning shows and half-way hearing that Obama is actually, really, realistically the democratic nominee, for whatever that's worth, that I gotta just take Frank Rich's advice:
While we wait out her [Hillary's] self-immolating exit, it’s a good time to pause the 24/7 roller coaster for a second and get our bearings.
To some that may mean reconsidering what year this all is comparable to; has there ever been a year like this? I mean, come on, hasn't this been the most unbelievable 7+ years in modern American history just due to the boldness of whats gone on if nothing else, capped by this year of...of...well, what would you compare it to? Sometimes I wonder about Rich,( I always wonder about Dowd, ) there is something a little wrong there, and his choices do it for me less and less these days.
Due to a real lack of free time, while spending a down and dirty year, quite by accident doing some hands-on helping of inner city kids and dealing with the system that is in place for the other America, Ive found myself with less and less time for bullshit. So, out of some sort of underdeveloped survival instinct, Ive been seeing what life is like to just not even waste time on silly busy work, like comparing this year to that year or trying to unravel the morning idiots. Blogtopia (Skippy!!) is no doubt full of people who can and will do that with one hand while doing real in-depth reporting with the other, so, I figure that I should aim my few still-beating brain cells at something or other that doesn't fill me with the equivalent of cheetos; air and oil and cheese powder. So, today, on this day-o-Moms, (and the sad last day of Sammy Seder's Sunday Show, 4PM EST,) its Mom's choice day.
Hearing Marc Maron this past week on Air America Radio also reminded me of the clarity that comes from focusing on the 3 or 4 things that are really happening, and using the rest of my confusing, mixed-up life for the sort of busy work that, for me, is somehow reassuring and calming. Marc seems to be soothed by focusing on his own neurotic self, but for me, if I can just try to get out of that a little.... I live in a sort of bohemian dream with chickens walking through scenes of dappled sunlight, and every day unfolding into some sort of mini chaos that allows for all sorts of doable problem solving, (if I don't kill myself along the way.) There is something about just doing the chores and keeping things running, that makes for sanity of some sort.
So, today I am doing a little chicken blogging, politics be damned. Ive got Mom here puttering round and trying to figure out what different animals mean by the tone of their cluck or growl, (I said bohemian, right?) and my sister , with hopes of a fancy restaurant up-by-her of course, while my slacker teen sleeps and the other one is lauding his "Mom" downtown, waiting to come back to the ranch.
I'm reading Tiabbi's new book, The Great Derangement, and Cliff Schecter's still fresh book, The Real McCain (see my Amazon widget on the right for that and more suggestions,) and trying to focus and project on whats ahead, while staying mindful of the ever changing textures here, where the leaves are out so quickly and if you didn't have rader of some sort, you could forget where you are in the mental GPS of things.
Spring at the ranch brings the inevitability of the arrival of a box o' chicks from the mailman and My Pet Chicken. This one contained 16 fluffballs of different breeds, from the Polish with the big puffy head feathers, to the Turkens with the naked necks (see pics of my actual Turkens below.) This year I got my mom some "real" chickens like she had in Illinois as a farmgal, (only till she was 12, as evidenced by the way she overheated and killed 10 chicks while I was at Yearly Kos last year,) in the form of 2 full sized white leghorns; they were out of Jersey Giants at MPC....oh well...there are always more chickens to be had, and here Ive got Favreolles, and d'Uccles, and all sorts of crazy brands, including the Americuanas which lay light blue and light green eggs.
************************clutch o' babies************************ ***********************Turken********************************************Polish*********************
*************************unknown baby; very cute and tiny**************** *************************Polish posing**************************
My new discovery this year, (last year it was ordering hatching eggs on eBay...hence the multitude of roosters; because you don't get just hens when you hatch eggs!)is EggBid, and the insane practice of shipping live adult birds in bird boxes. So, I won a trio of Frizzle Turkens, who are my absolute favorite creatures.
Now, some may call them ugly, and some may call them strange...but, this is the kind of thing that is right up my alley along with pin feathered baby parrots and hairless rats (or, as we call them around here, Chihuahuas.) I also got a real barred bantam Aracuana hen for my Coonie roo...oh this is starting to sound silly....but suffice to say that Ive been receiving birds in boxes.
Also joining us this spring is Blackie the hamster...don't ask me why I was compelled to buy another rodent when I had sworn them off, but Ben loves him and he is the cutest creature in the world. Ben named him Blackie the Token. I think Ben can do that, just like he can use the N-word (though hes not allowed to at my house at least...and its not his style anyway.)
And then there's Spike, who weighs just 2 lbs at 7.5 months old, and who was very, very sick, wasting away for months in a puppy store...and who is now much better, thank-you-very-much, and loves to jump on my keyboard and bully the big dogs, but who has managed to give one of my other dogs Giardia and worms and whatever else puppy mills spread around these days. I had a half assed plan that after my older dogs start to go, I might just consider a retired racing Greyhound, but somehow I came across the exact opposite, and the rest is history. So cute and self possessed is Spike, that he draws attention to himself so that its hard to get through a store without people stopping in awe. His size is a bit daunting, but hey, maybe he'll grow a little before hes 1...
This is my William on the right with his cousin Zach on the left....both are 14 and disgruntled, both over 5'10" and still growing like weeds.....Ben? Where is Ben?...oh OK... He is very shy lately, as they all are, so this is a little old, and it was actually taken upside down...I need some new pics where everyone doesn't look like they are being tortured.
I also have been keeping Poison Dart Frogs, which is something that has been in the planning for years (along with the reef tank, but that will have to wait.) The invention of a particular terrarium that has layers of different substances that, with a little misting, creates a self sustaining system that needs little to no cleaning, has made this easy; the invention of flightless fruit flies even moreso.
I used to keep Whites Tree frogs before we were struck with a quite strange and rare parasite in the form of a long worm that emerged from my frog's leg one day and that needed to be sent to some university for study, causing the frogs to have to be put to sleep, and I have done more reading about them than actually moving towards getting them. That is until Todd and I went to the reptile show to get some Jacksons Chameleons for the bird store. I became sort of fixated on the Black Jungle booth...and, well, you know.... And, now I want a Jackson Chameleon again after hanging out with the 3 that Todd bought. My old one Jaques, was a grand old man by the time he passed away a few years ago...I really enjoyed him.
Anyway, I'm sure that's not all, but I guess that puppy worms aside, I really enjoy the animals most in life.
Last night, in a sort of idyllic splendor, I grilled salmon while Will tossed a Frisbee with his friend. I was filling the chicken waterer with my Jardines parrot, Kitty, who has her flight feathers cut, or so I thought....well, a shocking sound sent Kitty flying in full arc around the house and up into a tree, just out of reach of me dangling off another tree with a rake in my hand....and then off she went again to an old hemlock by the road, on a level with the power lines...which was where I found myself teetering on the top of a very, very old extension ladder with my Mom and complaining son, (apparently a stick fell in his eye,) holding the the thing, reaching up towards her, just grabbing a tail feather or finger, to have her turn and squawk and try to bite me with that big beak...and finally yelling "Kitty, step up!" she did, and I grabbed her hard and shakily descended the ladder. It was up there on a level with the power lines, realizing that a fall from there could really, really hurt me...like, ambulance and hospital and casts, that I realized that I'm getting a little old for this stuff. But then, I also felt like I had solved a problem, (the bigger problem was solved in trimming her wing feathers this morning,) and that I have some control over my overabundant, crazy, confused life.
I suppose I don't have to go risking my life to feel that, but often I'm compelled by the moment, and ...whats a mother to do?....My Mom was standing below me shouting what seemed like inane directions to me, and she said "just let her bite you," which, if you saw her beak in person or have ever been bit by a parrot might sound sort of crazy, but I was actually thinking the same thing. And that's why we're moms, I guess...at some point you just put your hand in the poo or get bitten or hold a toddler while it projectile vomits across the room, and then methodically clean it up while weeping...today I'm covered with scratches and bruises, and so is my mom, though to a lesser extent...we did have some moments where the ladder swayed out of our control and we were trying to get ahold of it in a keystone cops manner, at one point with it falling actually on us, giving us matching shoulder bruises, with mine being worse and hers showing up more...but we lived to go and sit around the cluttered table and watch the large screen TV which only elicits talk of how things look rather than paying attention to the show thats on.
Happy mothers day to all you Moms out there, to all you dads who are also doing the mom job, and to all you folks who have the mother gene and express it on other's children and also on pets...this day is more about having a certain kind of empathy than a DNA match between one child and one woman....and a big part of that is about how most women are, (and some men too,) in taking care of business no matter what. That Mom thing runs deep, and its something to look towards in regards to regaining what America was before Bush drove this country into the ground.
And finally: Woostie still needs a home, I guess) He has been so bad lately as far as standing in the street stopping traffic and crowing at odd hours. Some of that has been solved with me caging him and covering him with a blanket at night, but he is still a handful here...and a great, loving guy, who is a good watch-bird... He just needs a whole flock of hens all his own!....
Midnight in America...Waiting for the Other Shoe...And Considering Obama Among the Wreckage....
...This is the America of the lucky, folks...the luck of the Russian-Irish/Catholic-jew, where a girl from Brooklyn wakes up in a cottage in the woods to find that her young hens have decided to start laying... How did I get here? Pure luck...hard work...kindness in the face of anger and dysfunction....but, probably really just sheer tenacity and luck... It's that pie-in-the-sky America that is hard for me to understand; like the lottery and the forces of nature that decided not to flood my basement or throw a tree on my house...or what made me live through it all, and how did I get through all of these years.
And its the middle management America of getting by, but looking towards the sky for the other shoe falling, while others who I have, by some sort of divine intervention crossed paths and become close with, can barely buy food or go to the doctor as opposed to heat and electricity...and what that could possibly mean in the scheme of the richest country in the world, that made me look to John Edwards as a light in the proceedings that have been grinding forth for these long months... And now? I'm waiting, like I always do, for the other shoe, whistling to earth like the road-runner's anvil, and in that Edwards will endorse Hillary, thus making my last drop of faith just a salty circle on the sand, proving that none of this is real or true, and all we can do is the busywork of trying to move, snail like, towards some outcome that will be a blip on future historical time lines of the rise and falls of empires just like this one... If this is the pyramid stone that we are spending our entire lives dragging across the desert in order to complete some monument to the empire, then so be it...Who ever told any of us that we were any more special than anyone else? ...our brothers and sisters who are hungry around the world, or those who live in war torn countries looking heavenward for a bomb, much less a shoe? Its all just luck...and we could be them, as easily as they could be us...and that "myfriends" is the very foundation of our society's more socialist tendency's, which are....surprise!...the very things that make us who we are!!
I know who I am. Who are you?
I'll just enjoy my eggs for now...enjoy my chickens...and try to figure what comes next. Of whats left in this race, besides the coming heartbreak of thinking one thing and the dawning realization of another, I like the danger of Obama. Tell me that you are not sure of his experience and if he can get anything done, and I am interested....because the safety of the same old beer with a buddy at the bar is what got us into this place, and the only times that America has really shone in its founding ideals is when some brave people took a flying chance and let the chips fall where they would. Sometimes thats a life or death decision, and sometimes its folly, but it always has historical significance, and more importantly, those moments have had a real effect on we Americans , and how we view the evolution of our society. In fact, those people and those moments have been the shining moments of discovery, invention, and the words and actions that make us who we tell ourselves we are...or who we strive to be...a more perfect union, and kinder, more humane, beings. When I was a young girl, I stood on a crowded curved street in Chinatown, holding my mom's hand, and watched as RFK Sr. drove through on the back of an old Cadillac convertible, waving. His brother had been shot, and he could've easily been shot there in the middle of the dense crowd, moving slowly past that old orthodox church with the tiny fair in the back complete with live goldfish to win and an erector-set sorta ferris wheel, knowing the danger and still grabbing hold of the moment to say the words that would be part of history....that would change my world as yellowing newspaper clips on the wall over Mom's old radio in the dark dining room in Brooklyn, where she sat for hours listening to talk radio in her grandmother's rocking chair.
So bring on the instability and unsureness of Obama over the same old Clintonian bureaucracy any day...bring it on quickly...because I've lost my faith in almost every part of this thing that I have been hanging on to and trying to believe in. And all thats anymore left is to tell myself that this piece of history is way to tiny for us to see the effect...way too tiny to matter in our lifetimes...and the real faith here has to be that what we do today will be realized by our children and their children...right?...and, that takes a kind of faith that I may spend the rest of my life trying to muster and I blindly move forward trying to divine whats right in this circumstance...as if we could ever imagine that what would be put forth would NOT be impeachment, criminal investigation, jail...a big change....Is there even a question? I don't know how to do anything else but watch and wait and chronicle this as best I can.... easy over or scrambled?
Debate Night Chicken Blogging.....RIP to the Clinton Era...
The chickens love to roost outside in the cold...up on their roost trilling and cawing, all puffed up and warm inside their feathers...this is the best time to grab them for a hug and a kiss! The rumpless Arcuna is my favorite! He spends alot of time outside my window here watching me write. *****************************************************
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********************************** Meantime, inside the silly little cottage in the woods, I've been watching the unreal New Hampshire debates, and weighing the very real differences among the democratic field...and the circus-like insanity of the Republican field as a whole.(Cue: circus music) I miss Mike Gravel, and am sort of thankful for Ron Paul. Besides his really deep insanity and spitballing on how things would be run if we lived in colonial times, he speaks some pretty heavy and fearless truth. Having him in any sort of decision making position in this country would be a disaster...but I love to hear him exclaim and then watch the scary, half/dead Thompson guffaw and respond incoherently. ***************************************
What I'm not hearing on either side here is how we are going to document the bold crimes that are still bleeding this country dry. I want some answers. I don't want to wipe the slate and move forward, trying to forget this brush with the pathological. I want it spelled out so that every grade school educated, under-served and under-represented citizen in the furthest reaches of America, can realize that they should never feel again like they have to vote against their own better interests in order to keep America safe.
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John Edwards is clearly the winner of this thing, if you're counting content and concrete plans that make sense. I love John Edwards...I have to say that he has really stood out in this process for me. I have no reservations about him. Why does the media work so hard on shutting coverage of him as a candidate out?
************************************** I am, as usual when watching anything on ABC, bewildered at the mono-tonality of the Charlie Gibson-Diane Sawyer cult. Even Georgie Snuffleupagus has taken on the hushed morning tone of people who live in high rises with vast shiny wood floors and ununsed surfaces or perfect temples made of bamboo and facing just so. I can feel the Feng Shui of the delicacy with which these people report the news. ***********************************************************
All in all, I've found this process to be fantastic, because we have had the great fortune to have had a great field up until Iowa and to have heard what they have to say. The concept of hearing ideas spoken in a public forum had fallen away. And in a world where the Republican contenders are a bunch of bumbling nuts, I have to say that we still have an embarrassment of riches, in the bold ideas being laid out here; Bold ideas being just pulling ourselves together and trying to get us back to some semblance of where we were trying to be, so imperfectly, too many years ago.
Its gratifying that Americans seem to really want change, but I hope that the difference between Obama and Edwards become as strikingly clear as they are to me and the rest of the political junkies out there. Look at the differences in policy on globalization, healthcare, and nuclear power, just to start. Take a look before they start to pull together too much, as they have already. Soon you wont be able to tell them apart; and they do make good counterparts. Its just too bad that they each need a VP who has some sort of older statesman thing going on. The two of them would be the most dynamic white house that we've ever had.
Hillary? She was just so-so...very heavy botox, lots of struggle, fighting back from the brink, and, I feel sort of sorry for her. The blog word is that the Clinton era is dead...RIP to the Clinton Era....
Ok...But just because you asked! No, this isn't the winter setup...or even the fall setup...It will be much more predator proof and have a few more layers of heavy gauge wire on it!...and I'm getting a little barn and a fence around the yard...and probably a pygmy goat because they protect from predators and are really cool little guys.
They dont all have names yet but there is a Pearl, Dandylion, Sunny, Arcuna.....suggestions appreciated...They are still babies...very sweet!
Off to the Yearly Kos...Welcome to Vincent Bird...John Edwards for President... and my Limited Experience With the Other America
Welcome to Vincent!! he is a baby Indian Ring Neck parakeet who has just come to live with us from Parrots & Co.. What can I say? Some things just make sense....and Vincent did.
What makes this guy able to change reports about the health of the American public, andisn't it rather Third Riech-ian to force department after department to mention the success of Bushco a certain number of times in each paragraph...? How can this be??
Here we are poised on the edge of the week that will feature the Yearly Kos, complete with all the major democratic candidates sniping at each other while looking sideways, shifty eyes to try to figure how that looks on them, and repositioning their bustles to march away with their various entourages...however that works....and I am slayed by the huge and disgusting specter of what Bushco has made of this administration and our constitution. Every blog, every television channel, for Christ's sake!!...every person that I meet on the street who sees my impeach button is just in sputtering disbelief. At least there is community in that, and there will be community at the Kos in that we feel that somehow we can do something in that all of our voices together have become very loud no matter how tiny any one of us is (thats me...the tiny one!)
Never have I seen such dripping contempt for the law, the branches of government, and the people, as I have with this crowd. The Nixon Whitehouse was absolutely liberal and socially correct, law-abiding and ...um...sweet, compared to this crowd. I just wanted a little something to sink my teeth into, not the fall of the empire!
I'm living in fast forward and as usual I have too many irons in too many fires, and too many feet in different worlds. I've not been blogging much this week because every time Ive made a draft, it seems that life moves past that place and it all seems quaint. So, yes, as of today I am apparently going to the Kos, and I wish I could say that Ive got all my chickens in a row and parrots standing at attention, but I don't...and this big messy life continues its course towards the nearest iceberg...if those even exist anymore. Maybe that's why the basement keeps flooding.
Jill did a fantastic job of encapsulating the democratic debate, as she has also been doing a great week-in-review thing at The Crone Speaks blog, and will have it up later on as an alternative to the reruns on 60 Minutes. The thing that struck me was that Edwards is getting fed up; I like him when he is fed up. When he says things like "aren't you just SICK of this?" it really touches me....I was sick of this from the get-go, and I want Bush out of office...people are dying, people are suffering, and our country is falling apart. But more to the point is that I have been trying to navigate some very difficult necessities with Ben's family, and it has given me full exposure to just a tiny part of what the day to day is like for people in the other America. For those of you who don't know Ben, he is my son Will's best friend,and has been a wonderful addition to just about every day of our lives in one way or another for the past 5 years. Lately its every day because, thanks to welfare reform, Ben's mom has completed a course in being a home care companion and now has intermittent work that she has to take in order to secure her benefits, which takes her away from Ben (her 6th kid, and the only one still at home...the rest are grown up,) and the 2 grandkids that she is raising. I'm talking about a job that begins early Monday morning and goes till Saturday morning, 24 hours per day. Who cares for the kids? Well, if Bill Clinton and the idiots who pushed this idiotic reform through ever asked that, maybe we would have less of a problem with kids in the inner city caught up in drugs, gangs, pregnancy, or just slipping through the cracks and unable to get their work done. An older gentleman, who is just wonderful, watches the children during the week at this point and one of Ben's older sisters has been around with her 3 kids, but he is old and she is screwed up, and her kids are problematic, and the house is too small. I take Ben because I want him and also because I don't want him to be there, doing nothing, and unable to read because its too noisy. Some of the kids go to the city camp, and some hang around. In general the grownups seem to be careful about not letting anyone go to the playground alone...but, how long can that go on? One girl is a beautiful, tall 13 year old, and one kid is a troublemaker...one of the cousins is a tiny girl who has been known to kill small animals, and the last time I saw the responsible older sister/mom person, she was sitting next to an open bottle of rum with a pack of Newports on the couch next to her, braiding a kid's hair painfully, and slurring about how she has lost her housing and is moving to Florida in a couple of weeks.
This is welfare reform up close. Mom is working, the programs are limited and there are few supplies because the high school kids come into the community center once a week and steal everything. The public school puts out its supply list in a week or so, and each list contains items that cost roughly $100 per kid if you get the cheapest items at Staples. Mom is not around, and the local Supermarket moved from 1 block from the "complex," to 2 miles away, across the street from another huge supermarket! So, Shoprite opened a humongous market on rt. 1, which was needed, and then Stop and Shop proceeded to close their store and move directly across the street. Where is the city planning committee when these things are decided? The "Village" which was built on the rubble of the high rise projects that used to be a fortress against the cops are cute little streets, like culde sacs, carved into the inner city, with white houses and some low-rise apartments and condos for sale, but are only notable in that they look good in a driveby or a flyover, but are so shabbily constructed as to be made literally of plastic. The door jambs are flexible plastic that have taken on the dirt of a million little dirty hands and when you go to press the doorbell the entire piece bends in and then pops out. The carpeting inside is white; enough said....the blinds are the cheapest mini-blinds and have long ago buckled under their own weight, much less being opened and closed. These small houses are "rented" to low income families who are giving a portion of their benefit check for rent, and so there is no extra money for upkeep. The city has seemingly done none themselves, except to keep the streets clean. There are no garbage cans on the streets nor are there mail boxes. One has to walk off the compound to go to the post office, much less the store or market. Going to the market used to consist of walking 3 blocks and pushing a cart back, but now it involves walking miles in the heat and pushing a cart back or taking a cab. Of course, one or two towers of the old projects still stand up the street, so these people are the lucky ones. The gardens are well tended and the residents of this place show alot of pride in their homes.
recently, the police came to the house next door to Ben's to find a guy who had an outstanding warrant for ...um...murder. he wouldn't come out and a bunch of guys came outside, a crowd gathered, and the new crop of Stamford police academy grads tasered a bunch of guys and threw some people around. This is the house next door that always has very loud rap music coming from it. The Bloods gang has a problem with certain Haitians and has shot guns in and around this area....and Ben feels like it is all very safe there. There is a strong Christian Haitian community down there, but Ben's family are not church members, so they keep to themselves and with their small group of friends and family.
In the time that this struggle has been going on with Ben's mother's work. I have continued to do what I have always done with them, which is to be their friend and to have Ben here as much as he wants to be with us. I also have, for the first time, helped them with doctors and groceries. A social worker who had hooked Mom up with the schooling and job that takes her away for entire weeks at a time was supposed to help get the Husky health insurance forms in...and let me tell you, these are complicated forms for ME to fill out...so, she found herself too busy and out of money and blood pressure medication. The doctor wouldn't fill it unless she went in and that cost $90, not to mention the medication cost. So, she ran out of meds and became so sick that she couldn't work, get food, get out of bed...and finally she called me and asked if I could front her the money to see the Doctor.
I did, of course, and I also got some food because the cupboard was bare! I then set about filling out the papers to get Ben health insurance from the state, and realized that she is also eligible as a caretaker...not to mention that the two grandchildren that she has custody of are already on it, and she should have been offered it long ago for her and for Ben. The problem is that the forms are crazy complicated and even with a highlighter and little stickies, its nearly impossible to get it all done in reasonable time when someone is gone 100% of the time during the weekdays. This is welfare reform....and I am keeping Ben up here while the others are left down there....I check the food, bring groceries, and hope for the best. I give the caretakers there my phone numbers and they lose them over and over...and finally we have a number of where the mom is working, so we can reach her. She got a cell phone but it is a pay as you go which is expensive, and she is only making $500 flat per week, which comes out to around $4 per hour....Oh, did I mention that this job is only temporary? Previously it was only the weekends, it may change again at the drop of a hat...who knows? Part of poverty and living in that other America is that everything is intermittent and everything costs more. Takeout or delivery food when the market is too far, taxis because you have no car, pay as you go phone at as much as 25 cents per minute because you cant guarantee payment in order to get an account with a cell phone company or don't have a credit card because you were offered many in the past and..... This is how it is.
Our social services that were so handicapped by the Reagan administration in the days of Manhattan with streets covered with the homeless and AIDS patients, have been dealt such a blow by this horrible administration that it is impossible to judge budget feasibility or where we stand in the larger picture of what social security was supposed to be in spirit in this country, and it is unclear to me if we can have any focus group look at things against the current backdrop and make improvements or to assemble a panel of great philosophical minds and try to remember what it is that America is...what we were...why we were formed...and what we want to be.
John Edwards is the guy to bring that conversation back to life. He has kept a consistent message since before this mess began, and even when the handlers got ahold of him, he has stayed on message.
Look, the majority of the country is on board with the anti-war, anti criminal behavior by our elected officials deal, and I'm not saying that we should let up in any way, but the important things to get done past that are diplomatic and having to do with how we will survive as a society if we don't honor the weakest among us. Wasn't the point of the formation of America so that everyone could have a chance at some sort of a life and the opportunity to achieve much more than that. Weren't these ideas formed by people who were fleeing a monarchical system that ensured a permanent upper class that one could only be born to, and a permanent underclass? Our constitution and laws are supposed to protect the rights of all people, and the aim of this government is supposed to be to perfect the original aim of the idea that everyone has the right to fulfill their potential in full while living with rights and dignity. I know that someone out there will bring up slavery and women's rights, but the point to me is that we are charged with the responsibility of working hard to perfect the tendency of humans to do what is the selfish, barbaric, and crazy thing. Isn't religion largely based on that? And isn't our government also based on that as well? Its the striving to overcome our own tendencies and to give everyone a chance...that would have to include putting a check on unfettered ...anything....we do not have the moral strength to do this internally...right?
I want to discuss the wealth factor in the Edwards equation, but I may save it for another post, because I am hoping that the issue evolves into the reality that they are ALL wealthy, and that the image of the slick lawyer who would take you to the cleaners is being exploited by the right here, and pasted on Edwards, with no real evidence that he has done anything to anyone...except to win against some large corporations. And since when does the average person care about large corporations being made to pay royally for mistakes that take people's lives? Especially when awards are decided largely next to a picture of how much a large corporation makes. You would think that Edwards was taking grandma's farm away because she bumped someone's car at a red light! Now, that's good use of propaganda...but it has nothing to do with reality. I hope that Edwards addresses this head on....and keeps up the good work like the great HAIR video:
Dowd and Rich and Gore and Live Earth and Celebs and Music and Chickens!!
I just damned Maureen Dowd to Hell because anyone that obsessed with someone else's haircut at a time when there is so much juicy goodness going on should really get a life, or go directly to hell. Its really getting pathetic and boring already, and...who cares what kind of ice cream John Edwards eats or if he likes Andie McDowell or not? If she has access to Edwards, lets hear some of his plans...is this fuckin' Tiger Beat? Once again the NY Times barely squeaks by with another excellent Frank Rich piece, but how long can he carry Dowd? It seemed to me like she had been moved to Sunday because she wanted a coveted top spot, but now Im thinking that it might have been more about her needing to be bolstered by Rich, Friedman, and all the other glossy offerings in there on Sundays because of a lack of readership or something....who knows?. I feel sort of bad for her...words like grasping and pathetic come to mind.
To catch these wonderful columns online (because without having Times Select or a friend with it who is willing to email you the articles, you wont be able to read them unless you buy the paper,) check out Free Democracy, where they are not posted yet but they will likely be...not that its even worth it to look at Dowd...but the Frank Rich is an excellent read about the cowardice of the President, and Friedman has a semi-clever piece about applying the concept of carbon offsets to all sins....ha, ha...if he had known about the damned to hell site linked above, he might have had it, but as usual, poor old Tom is just sorta lacking; almost there, but not quite.
So, I watched the Live Earth concerts yestersay... or I should say, what was shown of them on CNBC and MSN online, and various stations here and there. I kept turning it off because I was struck over and over at the vapid new music and the music of the 80's, in its repetitive lack of real message. A few pieces of it got me, though, and maybe its all just subjective in that I still have a VHS tape of Live AID, which I watched nonstop on network TV over a weekend, as I recall.... and I was actually at many of the NYC No Nukes shows (including right up front with Springsteen kneeling at the edge of the stage.) I don't know how I feel about Al Gore quite yet because I think that while this is good work that he is doing (as in any work in this direction is good work,) but I still have welfare reform and NAFTA stuck in my craw...and I'm not exactly sure with how he really feels about the war. Anyone can say to pull out now, and anyone can criticize what has been done, but where was he all along? This has not been a popular subject from the get go, and I'm not recalling exactly what he said and how he said it....and I don't hear him saying now that he was wrong. Its a measured response when you are possibly in line to take over an ongoing war and occupation, I know, but I still am not so sure that he is really willing to pull us out and let the chips fall on his own legacy. Im interested in courage and candidates who break out and take chances. I dont see alot of that, and I dont consider it courageous to come out loudly when the coast is clear. I so much prefer a candidate like Edwards who was dead wrong but who comes out and admits it. Anyone could do a better job than Bush, and with the right advisors, any democrat will probably do, as long as they understand that the immediate work is diplomacy, reversal, and clean-up.
Musings about Gore aside, I was pretty impressed at how well it went off. It was delayed all over the place, which I was just as happy for, because who wants to sit and watch set changes anymore?...Im just not that young and I've got work to do, so lets get to the meat of it. I was very impressed with young cutie John Mayer, who I usually dismiss as pilates music, in that my instructor often plays him in class, and his records dont much show how talented he is in their slickness. I downloaded some live stuff of his and it never quite got into my ipod, but maybe I will bump it over there now. Why cant I get jessica Simpson out of my head? Too much time in line at the supermarket!
James Blunt is obviously heavily influenced by Elton John, and I cant listen to him without hearing Tiny Dancer in my head...which isnt my favorite song, so its sorta annoying. I wish that someone had told Blunt that the real Cat Stevens was gonna appear because he tore Wild World apart (which I found to be a totally condescending thought at the time, and now when the real Cat sings it as a Muslim, I just find it to be ...oh, I don't know....the perfect end spot for the "little girl" culture...and it and it's brethren only made me want to be a "bad girl." In a world where Cat might stand by his death condemnation of Salman Rushdie for his metaphorical book about the Koran, its nice to hear him doing peace train, but I think that opening a dialog about extremism in its many forms might be nicer.
I feel for Madonna. I think she gets a bad rap in general, when she means well. I'm not at all into her music, except for a few really well written songs that are great as done by other artists and acoustically, but I do like to watch her dance and I like how she metamorphosizes and shows the world some interesting and edgy influences. She is also a good example of the proper use of plastic surgery and all that, I guess, but at some point, it seems like maybe she should let herself slide just a little into over 39-hood. That said, I was not impressed with what she did yesterday and I find the gypsy music thing a little squeaky and agonizing. Its like the Vivaldi of country music...almost bluegrass...and I just cant take much of it at all. The dancing was good though and she looks great.
The Police....well, what can I say about Sting? I don't exactly hate him, but I really dont understand him and what he seems to like. He is a hack, and thats about the only thing I can say. I am in awe of how scary he looks in his perfectly sculpted and yoga-ed physique, and his tantric sex honed country gentleman persona, superimposed on his Celine Dion-boring music. So, it was with recognition of that repetitive boringness that I reconfirmed what I always thought: The things that were/are great about the Police are centered around the brilliant Copeland drumming, which is so impressive as to be breathtaking, (and he is still the cute one, as far as I'm concerned,) and Summer's fantastic guitar hooks that became some of the most recognizable anthems of their time. As far as Sting's ability to write "well-crafted pop songs," or whatever, I don't buy it. he wheezes and whines and repeats the same phrase over and over until you're numb. I cant imagine wanting to see them in concert, but it was a nice blast to have a look there... And of course Sing has been very involved with the rain forest movement, so I have to at least appreciate his social work.
Kids these days....My 13 year old drummer of a son who is starting to look like a tall rock god on is good days, was temporarily caught up in AFI and whoever else was spouting that noise with those funny haircuts and...god, I don't know...I don't know. They just SUCK!! ...and not in the Elvs wiggling his hips sort of way...they just really suck....But after arguing serious music theory and the importance of drummers like Pete Thomas and Ringo Star, and lyricists like Lennon and McManus, well, I can't go there anymore. The thing is that the drummers are not as FAST as Joey Jorgeson of Slipknot; the lyrics of days gone by do not speak to a disaffection that us old folks couldnt ever appreciate...please! Even I could see the pathos of the Cookie Monster and the OCD of the Count all these years...Why can he not at least defer on a certain snippet of what may be the entire popular music canon, fer Christ's sake... So, when he gets up maybe I will scan through the clips on MSN entertainment and show him old Copeland saving his band and the world in his own little way.
Give me short, sweet and non-repetitive anytime...Elvis Costello in his prime, The Beatles...hell, even the Stones...and if its gonna be long, make it insightful, like a young Springsteen or Dylan doing Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, which took up a whole side of vinyl!
Sam Seder is on today at 4-ish, and I am so happy to not be in the city...and maybe have a chance to listen to him live and blog along or whatever...depending on how much I get done beforehand. This dearth of good liberal voices during the week is really dispiriting and wearing. How did it come to this? Why is it that so few entities control the output of so much information?
Back to work for me...I am going to post the pictures from origami and gay pride very soon...It seems like its been a long time and sooner than I know it I'm gonna be at YearlyKos hanging around doing not much...wasting carbon apparently
And yes, I finally ordered my specialty chicks!! I got around 9 of the most interesting types that will winter well, and that are especially friendly and cuddly. Im less interested in the laying, but I'm sure that we will get plenty of eggs. One chick will even lay light blue and light green eggs. Im just not sure how big they will be...but considering that I just made easy over Japanese quail eggs for the boys (an experiment from the Japanese grocery store,) I'm sure it wont matter.... I'm concerned with the security of these guys when they move outside, so when my friend brings the coop (that he built for someone else who has since sold the his house and moved,) I am goign to have it doubled up on the heavy wire and have a cement floor and sunken fence put in...Im hearing alot of horror stories abotu feet and beaks flung about and weasels who suck the blood and leave just the body...So I am getting a special security light and building a fucking wall if I have to! So much for the natural farm life of mini goats and chickens running round...I need a shotgun! (just kidding!)
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