"Uncontacted" Amazon Tribe - What Is Right?

If you click on the title above you will come to the website for survival-international, which has been featured lately in the news because of photos of "an uncontacted tribe" living in the Amazon.

Did any of you see this? Deep in the Brazilian forest at the Peruvian border, live people who point their bows and arrows at a plane flying (for the second time) overhead, and paint their bodies red and black to show their aggression..Their houses look almost like termite mounds. Something about it makes me so sad that my stomach brain and heart ache.

I don’t know how I feel about preserving these indigenous tribes. Why? So a few select scientists can get PHds, or daredevil adventurers can plow through the jungle and, mingle and breed and photograph, making their money writing books about it? Loggers in Peru are moving closer and closer, not caring and not able to care about such primitive Indian tribes. Human nature being what it is, the natives will be exploited in the most insidious fashion one way or another as they die out forever. What does "protecting" them really mean?

Have these people erected astrologically significant structures,cathedrals, produced literature or music that speaks to the grandest reaches of human endeavor? Doesn't look like it, when you examine the photos. Do they sit around at night upon a vein of emerald, diamond, sapphire, gold, or valuable oil? Have they developed a language or a religion which could solve the world's problems? Are they heirs, through hope, of an everlasting kingdom? Sure could be.

But I see frightened people living in abyssmal poverty. Fascinating beyond belief, fragile beyond belief, vulnerable beyond belief. I went to the website and nearly signed up, nearly wrote a letter to the Peruvian president to stop the loggers, protect the native people and preserve their environment. But why? Is that what's best here? Leave them alone, put a barrier around them, so they can die out in peace?

Why not assimilate and integrate them gently, gradually, lovingly over several generations, with the hope that we can learn from them, comfort them, honor them, cherish them, save them and help them become part of, and enrich, the larger blended human community? Is it possible? We've all seen the trials and tribulations of assimilation and even of affirmative action, and we know it takes generations even under the best of circumstances. Can we start from scratch and only show them the best of what we've achieved? Maybe send them a revised edition of the Voyager Golden Record? Introduce them to opera? Rembrandt's most soothing art? Honey-Nut Cheerios? I doubt we have any drugs that are better than theirs, so skip that. Why contaminate?

My heart is in shreds when I think about these people. I would love to go there and be with them, feel and touch and warm with them around a fire, share their meals, stare and cascade into their faces. But that would never work or do a bit of good. They wouldn't be afraid of me after they got to know me, nor I of them, that I know. If I could do it, and survive to tell the tale, and adopt one of their children, Madonna-style, sure that would be a thrill of some sort. I would be enlightened by them no doubt, their survival skills, their nimble limbic structures, their crazy godliness.

Should we leave them alone because they may be superior to us in some ways? Who do we think we are? Do we have anything to offer them? From the looks of things, I'd say we probably do. But they should decide what they want to do about the world, and then we could help if they want help.

They have to have the same problems the rest of us have. They are no doubt slaves to their hormones and their appetites- they must have leaders who have developed based on physical qualities of strength, attractiveness,or less tangible qualities such as wit or wisdom. They must have birth defects, addictions, mental illness, anger, grief, insecurities, betrayals, successes, joys. They may be brutal, apparently we don't know yet. But they're only human.

And so, flying out of Brazil with my thrill, back to the "developed" world, my heart would be heavier than ever. Wouldn't yours? Because there is no answer. It's all just going to happen. Someone will take charge, laws and human nature will click into action, and what will be will be.

Many of us know or have encountered people whose ancestors a few centuries back were "indigenous peoples." Many American Indians are enjoying life in the world as we know it, contributing to the arts, culture, and business. They may wish at times, as most of us do, that they could turn back the clock to a more pure and authentic age. But we all learn eventually that time stops for no one. Honor your ancestors, whatever bits and pieces you can salvage of their goodness. Carry on.

Mother's Day on Whitsunday

Today I thank my mother and her mother and my grandmothers and all our mothers back through eternity who gave birth again and again and thereby gave me this great blessing of being a mother.

I wouldn't know where to begin to thank my children and their mates for all the happiness they have brought me today and always. I love you all so much, and thank God ceaselessly for each one of you, and for Maya.

It's thrilling to be a mother and to take part in the evolution of the species! Every one of you is raising the bar for humanity - adding humor, beauty, grace, intelligence, and making the world a better place.

Pentecost (White Sunday)happens to be today also. It is celebrated worldwide in various traditions as a time when the Spirit descends. Originally in the Christian tradition, the spirit descended upon the Apostles seven weeks after Christ's resurrection at Easter. White vestments are traditionally worn by celebrant priests and by babies being baptized.

So. Thank you, my children and all my mothers back into eternity, for making me into a mother. And for the blessing in churches worldwide, "May the Holy Spirit descend upon you and remain with you always."

Old Dogs

A wealthy old Gentleman decides to go on a hunting safari in
Africa, taking his faithful, elderly Jack Russell terrier named
Killer, along for the company.

One day the old Jack Russell starts chasing rabbits and before
long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a
leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of
having lunch. The old Jack Russell thinks, 'Oh, oh! I'm in deep
doo-doo now!' Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he
immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to
the approaching cat.

Just as the leopard is about to leap, the old Jack Russell exclaims
loudly, 'Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there
are any more around here?'

Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-strike,
a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees.

'Whew!', says the leopard, 'That was close! That old Jack Russell
nearly had me!'

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a
nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and
trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes, but the
old Jack Russell sees him heading after the leopard with great speed,
and figures that something must be up.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and
strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The young leopard is
furious at being made a fool of and says, 'Here, monkey, hop on my
back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!

Now, the old Jack Russell sees the leopard coming with the monkey
on his back and thinks, 'What am I going to do now?', but instead
of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers,
pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close
enough to hear, the old Jack Russell says...

'Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me
another leopard!'

Moral of this story:

Don't mess with the old dogs -- age and skill will always overcome
youth and treachery!

Bullshit and brilliance only come with age and experience.


-thanks to Carmen

To Thine Own Self Be True

"This above all: To thine own self be true,
and it must follow, as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", Polonious bidding farewell and giving advice to his son Laertes, who is about to travel abroad to France. He tells him to lay low, stay quiet, (listen more than talk), not draw too much attention to himself, dress conservatively (don't try to outdo the French when it comes to couture!), be careful choosing new friends, stick with tried and true friends, don't borrow money or overspend. Just be yourself. Farewell, you have my blessing:

Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for.
There ... my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!

-- William Shakespeare

Farewell Honna! My heart will follow you to India.

Got Out the Obama Shirt Again, Gonna Sleep in it Tonight

I almost gave up and thought we'd have to deal with Hillary and Bill ad nauseum. But then I saw what happened in North Carolina tonight, and I listened to Obama's speech.

He's remained cool, calm and collected. He hasn't tried to pretend he's something he's not. He's young and full of promise. As he says, he's not perfect. But we can support and nurture him. I believe what he says about truth and I don't think he and Jeremiah Wright or he and anyone else have a secret agenda. He's not so power hungry that he's sold his soul. He loves the country, and I believe that, when he says it. He can transcend and inspire. The world is better with him in it, wherever he is.

Let's see what happens now. By Jove, I think he's got it.

Obama-McCain will be a much more interesting and civilized race to the end. Won't it? Hope we won't devolve into another civil war.

You Were Always on My Mind

Sensitive to Springtime: Saved by Dogwood, Luscious as the Moon

When I was a young adventurer just in from California and Europe in the 60's, I drove to visit my grandmother one beautiful springtime evening. She was in bed listening to her radio preacher when I arrived. It was the 60's, and I had done some things I hoped she would never know about, but figured she probably understood through a veil, dimly.

I went into her dark bedroom, where she, hale and hearty at nearly eighty years old, had retired for the evening. I told her not to get up, just wanted to say hello and goodnight and see you in the morning. I saw her silhouette in the dim light from the radio and sat on the bed beside her, listening, but only a tiny bit, to the sermon in the box.

She held my hand and asked me how the drive was. I told her that the dogwood blossoms along the way had been so overwhelmingly beautiful that they looked good enough to eat.

She leaned back against the pillow, running fingers across her brow and through her long loosened grey hair, thinking that over for a moment. Then she said "Well, now I know that you are saved."

I was stunned, knowing in my heart that I could never meet the criteria imperative to her lifelong ideal of salvation. But somehow she managed to reach through eternity to my Druidic soul, and left me feeling open, forgiven, blessed and hopeful.

How did she do that? How did she jump from our preceding generations of indoctrination about what it takes to go to Heaven: daily devotions, church every Sunday, strict adherence to the Ten Commandments, unceasing prayer, hard work - to see that this little unfocused know-it-all lazy me, fragrant with the smells of the 60's, loving her, loving life, loving dogwood - was "saved", and part of God's eternal kingdom? And yet she did it, not through any dim veil, but with the wisdom of her years.

So if you believe, and if you know some young "sinner" who feels like eating dogwood, you can give him or her some hope for his future by taking a chance with your faith, slipping into his world for a moment, and saying something so truly forgiving, generous, loving, and kind.

Every time I see the dogwood bloom again in the spring, so tender, ivory, and luscious as the moon, I believe once again, thanks to my grandmother, that there's still hope for me, and of course always, for those I love.

Comfortably Numb: Live From Berlin- 1990- Roger Waters and Van Morrison

Celebration of the fall of The Berlin Wall- 1990- Roger Waters with Van Morrison et al

Breathtaking Human Beauty and Grace From China

When my daughter sent me this this morning, I saw the beginning of the piece, and had no idea what I was about to experience. Can Wu Zhengdan be the most amazing ballerina ever? Sit back and renew your sense of wonder. This video can make you feel just glad to be alive! It's a bit of Swan Lake by "The Great Chinese State Circus" or "Guangdong Military Acrobatic Troupe". I'm actually less frightened now at the prospects for the Olympics in Beijing. And now that I've seen such a magnificent example of true marriage (her partner is her husband), it kind of raises the bar.



Thanks to Lelah

Happy Trails To You Til We Meet Again

"Cool Clear Water" but not by Slim Whitman

This song was best when sung by Slim Whitman. But Randy Travis gives it a go here, with the real honest-to-God Roy Rogers by his side, off to the side a little too much to satisfy me. Maybe Roy was getting too old and addled to sing by then, maybe grieving Dale Evans, I don't remember, but he still looks very cool, doesn't he, to Randy's left?.

Imaginary Love: Being the Handmaiden

OK, you love your mate, you have a home and maybe a family. You have all the money in the world, well enough anyway, but you feel a little gap, a desire for humility but not humiliation. God forbid you're like me, and live alone, but even so.

Everything looks just about right to most observers. But there's a little something missing. The water-glass isn't beside your bed at night, full of cool clear water. The room isn't the right temperature. Your clothes, at least decent compositions of them, are impossible to find without effort in the morning. You wake up in the night to run downstairs and lower the thermostat. You worry about the electric bill. You wake up in the morning, and despite all your investments in supportive services and personnel, feel untended. You stop for the perfect cup of coffee, not at the kitchen table with an easy partner, but at the convenience store, where you know the clerk's quirks, and the clerk knows yours.

So far it's all ok. This is life. It could happen this way with no major mistakes. You're getting older, you understand things.You know that no one person can bring all your fantasies of perfection into this plane of existence where we are fortunate enough to abide.

But here's a game you can play, secretly, so as not to arouse suspicions of insanity: You pretend to be the gentle handmaiden for the love object of your dreams, thereby meeting your own needs by transforming your perception of the situation. You walk into your bedroom before the evening meal and you think "I am so sick of this s+++." But you change your tone and pretend to be the perfect handmaiden and you say "He likes it so-and-so. I will turn down these clean bedsheets and prepare the clothing for tomorrow. I will lay out a suggestion for the clothing for the morning, and the hairbrush will be close by. I will use the lint-brush and make sure there is no mark on the clothing from the dryer. I can take and update the beautiful leather Smythson year-long pocket calender that was a Christmas gift, and offer written suggestions on some pretty notepaper, or try to match the handwriting that drifted off before February, to mark the appointments he's been trying to remember from thin air.

I will make sure there are clean towels in the bathroom and that the razor's blade is sharp, and that the soap is sweet and fairly new. I will be sure that the magazine that arrived in the mail today is at the bedside,and I will rearrange into a more dignified position that book that was thrown into the blankets in a slovenly fashion late last night. I will try to reinsert the dropped bookmark into the most logical place.

I will be certain that the light will be appropriate when he returns from dinner to the bedroom, and I will lay the soft robe across the bed, in preparation for his coming there.I will be certain that required medications are in order and easy for him to find. Certainly a few Advil on the bedside table could come in handy. I will lay a pack of matches near every candle, lest the electric go.

I will try to lay a gentle vibe in the bedroom, and I will be certain to leave signature of my regard for all of his personal items. Then I will disappear gently. But if he starts to need me in the night, I will light a candle and I will be there, gently at his side.

It's still you. But it's the real you, you want to help your imaginary love, and there's comfort there.

Boomer Brain Reflecting on Human Achievement and Culture: Mick Jagger's Someone to be Proud Of

I was sitting in my beautiful marble and tile bathroom, for the very simplest of reasons, and, lost in thought, I put my head in my hands and rubbed my hands through my hair and across my forehead and temples. I became alarmed when I discerned I had a fever, like hot coals, but only in the pre-frontal lobe, and only on the right side, near the temple. That area was very hot, seemingly inflamed. I ran to the computer and searched. Wikipedia, for what it's worth, told me this:

"The most typical neurologic term for functions carried out by the pre-frontal cortex area is executive function. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes)".

Naturally we don't want to devolve into anything crumpled up and tortured, and we won't. When we Boomers suspect that our kids have started salivating at the thought of having us declared non compos mentis, it does give us a little boost, gotta pick up our heels. I realize, of course, that the current political situation has driven my prefrontal cortex to the brink of something from "Mission Impossible": "This tape will self-destruct in twenty seconds." I mean how much more can a sane person take? And, uh, what was that mission we were supposed to do, again? Oops too late. Brain's shorting out and getting hot in spots. But hold your horses kiddies, it's just a short, and there are boxes of new fuses down in the basement.

This Boomer generation, so well-intended, didn't get in on the inside track to save mankind, which is where we thought we were going for awhile, but we did ok. Like every generation of warriors before us, we too, like Odysseus, grow old and feeble, and die. Imagine Timothy Leary's ashes, by his directive, shot from some cannon into space orbit, his own little psychedelic redemption. Carl Sagan tried his best to legitimize some of his most far-flung thoughts, and helped NASA send out that Voyager Golden Record depicting our status here on earth. Aldous Huxley thought about it....he was right, we got our Soma, aka Prozac, and we became the Prozac Nation. But we still weren't saved. Who would have thought that some spaceship or some drug wouldn't have come along and rescued us by now?

I like to think at times of John F Kennedy, with his eternal flame at Arlington, fluttering at times, and Jacqueline, her dignified bones beside him, but then what? Then I remember Joe DiMaggio sending roses daily to Marilyn Monroe's grave. And Happy Birthday, Mr. President, courtesy of Jean-Louis couture.

I think of the poets and the playwrights, Shakespeare, Eliot and Yeats and so many more, who seemed so transcendent in my youth,and then I think, or rather I know with great sadness, that fewer and fewer people read and will be educated in such a way that these writers will ever matter again.

And what about our achievements in terms of perfecting the human body, those who have strived to reach the highest levels of physical aptitude? Well then I think about poor Marion Jones in jail. I read this week's Economist and am reminded of the Olympics in Mexico City 1968, Munich 1972, and what may yet happen in Beijing 2008.

We're just like any other athletes, dying young. Well. Younger than we thought we would, considering we thought we were immortal. The Rolling Stones are one of our best stabs at Boomer holiness, they will go on and teach the younger generations what it is to grow old, and what it can be, physically at least. Mick will strut and fret his hours upon the stage, and outdo all others. He'll be irreverent. He'll break rules and keep some. We can't hope for a whole lot more, out of the ashes of our generation's youth, than what old Mick Jagger does, and did. That's exaggerated, but he made people happy and brought them together. Martin Scorcese says the Stones' music helped him him through many a troubled time, and Scorcese will honor them with his upcoming movie.

Mick Jagger honored his father, took him along to Buckingham Palace when he became Sir Mick Jagger. He may have coveted and adulterated a wife or two, but he didn't kill anyone. That's at least a few of the Ten Commandments. He's got an awful lot of energy, it's got to count for something good. I wish I had it. This little flame on the side of my head feels a little better when I think of Mick Jagger. Which figures, since that side is associated with recall of music and art, albeit, if lesions, then losses.

So I rub the side of my head and wonder what's going to go next. No worries about the impulse to perform socially unacceptable acts, or to form new longterm memories worth acting upon, never mind, that's on the other side. I had a killer fever there long long ago. Next to go will be remembering who-the-heck-are the Rolling Stones.

My Master's in Psychology sticks with me enough that I know none of this temple rubbing and frontal lobe localized fever-stuff is really true. But it's fun to speculate about. Like old Heads used to do.

I'll just sit here and wait it all out. Luckily I don't mind playing solitaire.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And for those who didn't make it:

"To an Athlete Dying Young" by A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Hillary as Lorena Bobbitt, Cruella Deville, and Dr. Strangelove: Getting Back at Bill for Monica and the Cigar?

This is a repeat, back by popular demand

Hillary as Lorena Bobbitt, Cruella DeVille and Dr. Strangelove: Getting Back at Bill for Monica and the Cigar?

I used to believe that Hillary Clinton wanted to be President of the United States because she felt a higher calling to serve the people. I never doubted the sincerity of her earnestness. I admired her for raising a level-headed, highly motivated daughter. When she apparently forgave Bill for what he did in our nation's Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky and that cigar, I thought "God, that has to have been tough to rise above that, to be so high-minded to deal with the disgrace and humiliation brought upon her, her daughter, and the Presidency, by Bill's philandering, broadcast worldwide." How many women could do that?

But now, through a multitude of debates and because the media captures everything right up to the edge of toilet stalls, we've had a good look at the real Hillary. Despite her most recent civility toward Barack Obama, I find it hard to validate my previous admiration for her. My objections aren't particularly substantive, they're pretty emotional actually. It's just that Hillary's civility seems to be offered with clenched fists and gritting teeth. Her answers come too fast and smooth, verging on pathology. She's too glib. Her laughter is frighteningly manic. There's a Dr. Strangelove quality about her: I think of the way Peter Sellers would lose control of his arm and grab it back. She has used cut-throat Cruella DeVille sarcasm to deflate Barack Obama, subtly revealing how desperate, clawing, clamoring, bitter and vengeful she really may be.

Rather than devolving into Lorena Bobbitt with a butcher knife, she could be getting revenge another way. It's conceivable she rose above Bill's sexual escapades with the ladies, not because she has a well-developed spirit of foregiveness, but because she knew she was going to go for the top prize and that Bill, hate him though she might, would be her ace in the hole. He's pretty efficient out there on the campaign trail, albeit looking crazed and sexually frustrated, using skilled but convoluted tactics to get back to his easy chair on Pennsylvania Avenue. In his own wing.

Could Hillary be obsessed, using Bill to get the vote, with the ulterior motive of humiliating him once the Oval Office is hers? She will have the means at her disposal to do that.

Our Own Gladiators: Hillary and Bill by ten points in Pennsylvania?

Ok. So that's pretty much that. We are bloodthirsty Romans encouraging our gladiators to fight to the death. That's us. The Clintons have taught Americans all the worst things but Democrats want them back. We've seen Hillary lie, attack and undermine her own party. We've watched her acting like someone she's not, snorting down whiskey and telling tales about her days out shootin' with dad. Back in the day, Bill taught everyone forever, including our school children who took it to heart, that oral sex doesn't count as "sexual relations", and taught husbands everywhere that marital fidelity is not important in that regard. Hillary taught women that you don't have to love, you just have to use your husband, hang on to him for political and business purposes, even when he does very weird things in the highest office in the land, and says very strange and damning things out on the stump.

We read books and watch shows like "John Adams", full of self-regard for our ability to admire the high standards of the Founding Fathers, but our votes reveal our regard for profligacy and mean-spiritedness. Who are Americans these days?

Mad as a Hornet: Hillary Victorious in Pennsylvania? Where are the Gladiators and the mood elevators when you need them?

Thank God my father the doctor taught me to never throw out old medicine, the expiration dates are just the tricks of the voracious money-hungry pharmaceutical companies...because I'll be digging through my drawers looking for help from the 1990's tomorrow, now that I have got to accept the fact that the Democrats are no damn good either.I want to be a Democrat, I really do, and I have tried, I mean Georgie Porgie has made a joke out of the Republicans, but if you can't be proud of the Democrats either, then what do you do?

This has been ridiculous. The Democrats, hee-haw, hee-haw, donkey-time. Bill Clinton, oink-oink. The Republicans, asses and brain-washees, I can't take it anymore! Michelle Obama said she was proud of her country for the first time, I think maybe I've been proud of my country for the last time, and I can't even remember when it was. Maybe when Al Gore gracefully accepted the Nobel Prize. I forget. I've had it! I'm heading for the hills! How could such dirty politics as the Clintons play lead the voters to the booth in her behalf? I wasn't even that sure about Obama, but this victory for Hillary is enough to make me renounce my citizenship. I am a woman in a fury right now, and at least ready to throw it in and jump back to the Republicans, who rocked my cradle.

No doubt I'll erase this after I sleep on it, but as for now, I'm ready to fight it out for a hundred years. That's no way to go to bed, but there's no one in the bed to make up with, as mom always advised. Don't go to bed mad, they say, work it out, but guess what? Tonight I would take a tranquilizer from the 2000 election days, if I had it, and my brain's internal defragmenter would find what it needs in that old thing, and I'd start new tomorrow. Back to work, back to hope, back to dreaming through the day.

OK, Here's Pennsylvania's Primary at Last

Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe newsman, just said something really funny on Morning Joe. He said (I'm paraphrasing) that even if Barack Obama ultimately wins the Presidency and is in a limo going down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, the Clintons will be there, throwing down strips of nails to disable the limo...they just won't give up!

I'm amazed at the image being portrayed of Pennsylvania during this election, and particularly that Hillary, who should know better, is playing into it so voraciously. She's been trying to appeal to voters in Pennsylvania by pretending that she's a beer-guzzling, gun-toting hick. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and I know that this characterization is totally skewed. Sure there's a T-shaped demographic there that suffers more than most from poverty, but you don't have to play hick to get along with folks who like to hunt, fish and drink beer.

How did it happen that the Wellesley graduate reinvents herself as a working man's hero, and the street smart, albeit beautifully educated guy, who really did get down in the trenches and jive in Chicago, is now considered too urbane and elitist to win the common man's vote? It's a skewed racism played to the hilt by the Clintons! It's not really that she's the working man's hero, or a woman, she's been playing some kind of crazy white card in Pennsylvania,I just can't figure it out.

I still haven't been able to wear my Obama t-shirt, and I would never wear a Hillary one, she's sold her soul. So much depends on the Vice-Presidential candidates who are eventually chosen in each party. For now I'm lost but then may be found. Maybe we'll all be surprised and educated tonight when we find out what Barack's nine million dollar campaign in Pennsylvania could or could not do.

Giuseppe De Lampedusa's one-and-only Book "The Leopard"

Many of us in small picturesque towns like Cape May are, for some reason, of above average intelligence. Some of us have been here for generations and have been loving and contributing to the area forever. A number of us are baby boomers who settled here after weathering the sixties. People keep coming, with stars in their eyes because they see the town for what it is or could be - a little piece of heaven, a great place to pitch stakes and earn a livelihood. Whether we’re idealists who want to settle into paradise or the black sheep of our families, - eschewing cities, suburbs and tangled roots to plant morning glories by the seashore and escape into small town life – whoever we are and any way we got here, many of us are mighty smart, and full of longings still.

We’re all growing older together, and we all benefit from introspection about our lives and the currents of time that bring us to the present. Many local residents travel far and wide. If we had a huge world map at City Hall, and everyone rigged up thumbtacks and strings to show the towns they travel to each year, we would have an astounding tangle of strings: our beautiful minds working together.

We can always learn from others who have gone before us in other places and other times. One man in our last century who had an astonishingly clear sense of place in time and history, and a breathtaking eloquence to portray it was Giuseppe di Lampedusa. He was a Sicilian nobleman who died in 1957. Before he died, at the age of 60, he wrote his one and only book, The Leopard.

It is this book which has brought me out of years of intellectual lethargy and seclusion. This is not really a book review, but an exhortation and a trust that those of you who are thirsting for a phenomenal read will just go to Amazon.com or wherever you go, and thrill, as I have, to this piece of writing.

The story, as you might guess, is timeless. Although it’s been called Italy’s Gone With the Wind, it’s not: it’s short and easy to read. It’s very funny. The setting is Sicily in the 1860’s, during the unification of Italy and the death of the aristocracy. It’s written from the point of view of a Sicilian prince who, with great good humor, comes gracefully to peace with the losses and disappointments in his life.

The man is in touch, well-integrated. He has it together as a contributing member of society, well-respected, in good standing with the church and the state. He is an amateur astronomer, and ponders the celestial spheres through the telescopes in his study. Although his family is not turning out to be quite up to snuff, he doesn’t dwell on his disappointments, it’s not his nature. He delights in his adopted nephew, Tancredi, a budding revolutionary working against him, who captivates, enthralls, enchants, and loves his uncle and all those in his sphere. Although the Prince’s own daughter is in love with Tancredi, she is homely and cannot compete with the beautiful Angelica, and even the Prince does not begrudge his nephew the charms of Angelica.

On a nighttime carriage ride with his priest (as he goes to visit his mistress), the Prince observes the rebel bands at their small bonfires outside the city and realizes calmly “that perhaps Tancredi was beside one of those ill-omened fires, his aristocratic hands throwing on sticks being burned to damage just such hands as his.” The writing, as all of those English majors living here in the community could attest, is superb.

To read this book can be like lifting an illuminated manuscript into your hands and becoming intoxicated by your own understanding. All of the political, community, family and personal issues so brilliantly wrought here will ring true today with the most satisfying clarity. And I hope this book can edify, humor, and comfort many of us, cast now on our various shores.

Just for old time's sake

A little three minute flashback to 2001 Space Odyssey, including my favorite scene, the one I loved best, but could never really understand: the scene in the bedroom.

Losing your memory: In case you missed, or think maybe you missed, David Brooks' column in the New York Times last week

This is so funny, and mighty comforting to anyone having senior moments!

The Great Forgetting
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 11, 2008 in The New York Times

"They say the 21st century is going to be the Asian Century, but, of course, it’s going to be the Bad Memory Century. Already, you go to dinner parties and the middle-aged high achievers talk more about how bad their memories are than about real estate. Already, the information acceleration syndrome means that more data is coursing through everybody’s brains, but less of it actually sticks. It’s become like a badge of a frenetic, stressful life — to have forgotten what you did last Saturday night, and through all of junior high.

In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex.

Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots. On the one side are these colossal Proustian memory bullies who get 1,800 pages of recollection out of a mere cookie-bite. They traipse around broadcasting their conspicuous displays of recall as if quoting Auden were the Hummer of conversational one-upmanship. On the other side are those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on all day.

This divide produces moments of social combat. Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.

Your response here is critical. You want to open up with an effusive burst of insincere emotional warmth: “Hey!” You’re practically exploding with feigned ecstasy. “Wonderful to see you too! How is everything?” All the while, you are frantically whirring through your memory banks trying to anchor this person in some time and context.

A decent human being would sense your distress and give you some lagniappe of information — a mention of the church picnic you both attended, the parents’ association at school, the fact that the two of you were formerly married. But the Proustian bully will give you nothing. “I’m good. And you?” It’s like trying to get an arms control concession out of Leonid Brezhnev.

Your only strategy is evasive vagueness, conversational rope-a-dope until you can figure out who this person is. You start talking in the tone of over-generalized blandness that suggests you have recently emerged from a coma.

Sensing your pain, your enemy pours it on mercilessly. “And how is Mary, and little Steven and Rob?” People who needlessly display their knowledge of your kids’ names are the lowest scum of the earth.

You’re in agony now, praying for an episode of spontaneous combustion. But still she drives the blade in deeper, “That was some party the other night wasn’t it?”

You lose vision. What party? Did you see this person at a party? By now, articulation is impossible. You are a puddle of gurgling noises and awkward silences. After the longest of these pauses, she goes for the coup de grâce: “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

You can’t tell the truth. That would be an admission of social defeat. The only possible response is: “Of course, I know who you are. You’re the hooker who hangs around on 14th Street most Saturday nights.”

The dawning of the Bad Memory Century will have vast consequences for the social fabric and the international balance of power. International relations experts will notice that great powers can be defined by their national forgetting styles. Americans forget their sins. Russians forget their weaknesses. The French forget that they’ve forgotten God. And, in the Middle East, they forget everything but their resentments.

There will be new social movements and causes. The supermarket parking lots will be filled with cranky criminal gangs composed of middle-aged shoppers looking for their cars. As it becomes clear that a constant stream of blog posts and e-mails decimates the capacity for recall, people will be confronted with the modern Sophie’s choice — your BlackBerry or your mind.

Neural environmentalists will emerge from the slow foods movement, urging people to accept memory loss as a way to reduce their mental footprint. Meanwhile, mnemonic gurus will emerge offering to sell neural Viagra, but the only old memories the pills really bring back will involve trigonometry.

As in most great historical transformations, the members of the highly educated upper-middle class will express their suffering most loudly. It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most. First they lose the subjects they’ve only been pretending to understand — chaos theory, monetary policy, Don Delillo — and pretty soon their conversation is reduced to the core stories of self-heroism.

Their affection for themselves will endure through this Bad Memory Century, but their failure to retrieve will produce one of the epoch’s most notable features: shorter memoirs."

"The Doctor" by Sir Samuel Luke Fildes....(some history for my family)

If memory serves me, both sets of my grandparents had reproductions of Sir Samuel Luke Fildes' 1891 painting "The Doctor" somewhere in their environs. Theirs were probably tossed out years ago by disapproving offspring, for being kind of schlocky, but I love that picture and have loved it for a long time.(For a clearer view of the picture, click the title above.)

Fifty-some years ago I would stare at this picture and it would arouse tremendous feelings in me: a longing for love, and pity and concern for all involved: the poor mother collapsed in sorrow and fear, maybe prayer, at the table by the window; the father, ineffectual, at loose ends, standing by her with a hand on her shoulder, and another in his pocket, wondering if maybe he could, in good conscience, head off alone for the local tavern.

The doctor, the one with the power, brains, education, medication, and all the answers, sits puzzled but challenged and confident, pensive, powerful, beside me, oops, I mean beside the sick little girl. The girl is laying, feverish, in a humble and beautiful home I want still, upon pillows and a makeshift bed of beautiful chairs I want still, near I lamp I want still, with a bird in a cage and a glass of flowers in the window that I want still, and the attention of a man who is going to save her, which, well, let's face it, I want still.

A friend from gradeschool has written since reading this post and pointed out to me, most eloquently, that the loving family has made the girl's makeshift bed, using their finest Chippendale chair for her head, and the kitchen ladderback chair for her feet.

One of my grandfathers, Leroy Edgar Chapman, actually was a doctor, who had an office next to his home in Warren, Pa. where he saw patients, x-rayed them with his own little x-ray machine, and mixed up his own pink medication, mostly phenobarbital I suppose, and put it into corked bottles dispensing it to his patients, who absolutely thrived and adored him. He walked across the driveway each day to have lunch with my grandmother Lena, a Swedish woman of some intellect, who, despite having daily household help (from a dear Mrs. Bunck), nevertheless loved preparing the food and the table herself for her big old busy man. He did at least one emergency appendectomy in a patient's home in his sixty years of medical practice. He was proud to have delivered triplets in a homebirth. He was a towering man, 6' 3" or so, and beloved for his intellect, his great humor, his humble, dishevelled brilliant shambling ways, (his occasional whiskey and gingerale),and his years of contributions to the State of Pennsylvania.

My Grandfather Chapman spent a lot of time in Harrisburg while my father was growing up in Warren, serving in the Pennsylvania Senate for thirty-some years, and as Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He gave an impassioned speech to the Pennsylvania Senate back in the early fifties, extolling the history of our Founding Fathers in Philadelphia and urging the allocation of funds for the restoration of Independence Hall, which was falling into rack and ruin at the time. To demonstrate their gratitude for his service, constituents and state officials dedicated 800 acres of land, including a 68 acre lake to him, Chapman State Park and Chapman Dam, in Northwestern Pennsylvania, which has almost faded from my family's memory, since I settled at the Jersey Shore, away from my family roots. In any case, since he was a doctor, it's understandable that he had a reproduction of "The Doctor", (hanging crooked in his office as I recall), most likely the gift of a grateful patient, since he was not one to toot his own horn.

The reproduction of "The Doctor" in my other grandparents' home had a different flavor there. Those grandparents, David Raymond ("Bugs")Thomas and Emma Rebecca ("Peggy") Parsons Thomas, who had four children, were the ones by the window, the hardworking folk who were neat and clean and disciplined, notwithstanding the bottle of whiskey my grandfather kept hidden in the basement for occasional shots. Their "Doctor" print, which was hung in a little guest house, spoke to me of love, of the love my grandparents felt for their children,and probably even their grandchildren, (maybe even me!, little sickly me, when my parents were away and I stayed with them throughout first grade during one of my many bouts of pleurisy and pneumonia?) It spoke to me of the hopeful anguished dependence they had on their doctor, I still remember his name, Dr. Jacquish, in Punxsutawney, because my grandmother talked about him so often.

Once in childbirth, during my grandmother's apparently doomed labor, the doctor had given up, because the baby was a complicated breech. My grandfather "Bugs", occasionally hot-headed, didn't know nothin bout birthin no babies, and had been consigned to an outer room, boiling water in the kitchen maybe. But when he was informed of the situation, and that death was near for somebody, he stormed into the bedroom, said that nobody was going to die, and he pounced on my grandmother's stomach and turned that baby around. It worked. Two of their daughters eventually married doctors. No small wonder.

Imagine what Dr. Jacquish must have seen of my grandmother, a demure and pious Christian woman surely loath to share the required intimacies during those home births, and also during the influenza of 1918 when Dr. Jacquish asked her which of her stricken children he should save, the 4 year old or the infant, and she had to choose one, and asked him to sit through the night with the 4 year old, since she had known that one longer. And so the infant Linford Thomas died. Those were long and heavy-laden nights, and she talked more-than-fondly about that doctor until the year she died, in 1978.

My father William Leroy Chapman also was a doctor, a big-city specialist in Pittsburgh, as was his brother-in-law and partner, my Uncle Bill. There is a wing of Shadyside Hospital, The William M. Cooper Pavillion, named for my uncle. He and my dad and their other partners were top diagnosticians in the fields of internal medicine, hematology and oncology. My dad took early retirement at age 62, preferring golf and travel to work, while my uncle, highly motivated towards academic and professional achievement, decided to go to law school in his early sixties, and continued to work as a physician and attorney into his eighties.

Another uncle, John Urbaitis, the husband of my father's older sister, was a brilliant and well-respected psychiatrist, the chief administrator of Warren State Hospital, a beautiful place then with extensive gardens and old trees. My uncle gave my father a tour of the inner sanctums of the hospital before Thorazine came on the scene. I, five years old and holding my father's hand, (why didn't I stay back at the house with mom?)remember it maybe too vividly. Was there a huge screaming patient chained to a wall, as I thought I saw? No, my father told me many years later, that couldn't have been, no way and no how. But those patients were not looking quite as comfortable to me as the little girl propped on the pillows in Sir Samuel Luke Fildes' portrait of "The Doctor." My Uncle John's son, my cousin John Jr, also became a doctor affiliated first at Johns Hopkins, and later, as psychiatrist extraordinaire, world traveler, and urbane gentleman, remains settled in Baltimore.

So naturally I, who was talked out of becoming a doctor by my father because of what he foresaw as the end of old-time medicine and the beginning of the insurance companies' domination, have a copy of "The Doctor", which hangs above my piano. It's a big old wrinkled framed thing I found years ago in a junk store for fifty bucks...which means the world to me, and which I know will influence someone sometime, and certainly played into the unconscious of all five of my children as they grew up. The picture affected and influenced me profoundly as a child, for more reasons than one. I tell all these things about this painting principally for my family, because the stories are old and will pass away one day, but no need to let them fade yet.

Above all this, the painting gently conveys Sir Samuel Luke Fildes' compassion for the poor, and beyond that, his understanding of the anguish a parent feels when a child is in dire straits. Thank you Sir.

No way an elephant can paint! (Spoiler)

I just discovered how it's most likely done....it has to be magnets!

Elephant Painting A Self-Portrait?

Are you ready for this? There's almost no way you could be. Got it in my mail tonight, and it has knocked me for a loop. If it's real it's a psychological revolution, isn't it? It's definitely a revelation. As it says in the I Ching "Far-reaching speculations can be linked with this idea" ....I remember back in the day when I saw something in the eyes of certain animals that revealed they were so shockingly more aware and full of understanding than I was. I sometimes thought certain animals were trying to find a way to demonstrate how intelligent they were. Is this an example of that, developed by loving and caring tenders, or is it illusion developed from tedious and perhaps brutal training, as a money-making gimmick? Could such training exist? Is it an illusion? Is there a hand in a glove? You decide. I have no idea. But I do know it's one of the most interesting behaviors I've ever seen. If only the whole elephant were in view the whole time. And I would have liked to see his or her face, and to have locked eyes, as I have done with elephants in the past.




Thanks to Harriett and Chickenphish

*Day later Addendum: The more I remember my elephant friends, and looking in their eyes, the more certain I am that none of them had the slightest inclination, at any level, from cellular to cerebral, to become an artist, let alone to paint a self-portrait. There's no way this is true. I can't believe I could be so gullible in my old age, even for a moment!

My Favorite Love Song from Love Long Ago: Tammy Wynette and George Jones "Take Me"

Just a good old little love song from a day gone by



thanks to hellkitten23

Never Give Up! No Suicide Please! There's Always Another Day

I've had many occasions to be grateful that I've studied some philosophy and watched a lot of movies. Because whenever I'm having a bad, bad, really bad day, I remember a speck of philosophy and one line from one little movie. Both little specks are about how you just need to get through that day.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the existentialist German philosopher, had attained great success in his mid-twenties, being named head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Basel. But the poor guy had health problems and lost his mind eventually, imagining that he had enormous earthly powers and envisioning vast conspiracies against him. He lived out his life with his mother and sister, dying of stroke and pneumonia in 1900. He may not have been the cheeriest soul. But he obviously had a sense of humor. Out of his multitudes of writing, everyone remembers his idiotic "God is Dead." But I have more occasion to remember this speck: “The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night” That is really funny! Thinking of suicide is a solace and a good way to get through the night. Just don't act on it! This too will pass.

In the movie "Crimes of the Heart" (1986), three sisters (Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton, and Sissy Spacek) come together because the Sissy Spacek character just shot her husband and needs some family support. The Diane Keaton character, kind of prissy, has never married and has always taken care of their grandfather. While the sisters, who haven't been together in a long time, hash over old family history, they talk about the shame brought on the family by their mother's suicide many years ago when she stuck her head in the gas oven. Obviously it's had an impact on all of their lives, and they variously blame her or defend her according to their personalities. Jessica Lange's character, the black-leather jacketed, chain-smoking one who's been around the block, finally says languidly about the suicide: "Look. Mamma was just having a really bad day."

Those two specks have sustained me. I haven't seen the movie in 20 years and don't intend to, but I think my memory serves me well. I always loved this idea that life goes on, and you may as well go on too, because no matter how bad it seems, no matter how horrendous this day is, the tide will turn. There will be another day. Your number will be up eventually, but don't rush it.

And just for the record, I'm actually having a very good day. I'm just discouraged about the presidential campaign, but believe me, as my father said when when Jimmy Carter got elected (or was it Bill Clinton?), "Ah well,we'll get through it."

Bohemian Rhapsody for a Down Day

Sometimes this song can fill a void. Poor Freddie Mercury could sure pull your heartstrings. Freddie, born "Farrokh Bulsara" in 1946 to Parsee Indian parents in Zanzibar, attended British boarding school in India, and art school in England before his singing career took off, culminating in the band Queen. After keeping his personal and health issues secret for a number of years, he succumbed to AIDS in 1991.



video thanks to Frozentoast

Got My Obama T-Shirt but Can't Wear It

I don't know what's wrong with me. I just don't have the courage of my convictions. Or worse, I don't know what my convictions really are. I know I'm not a freak of nature, there are people like me all over the place these days, I hear them talking on the TV and out on the street every day, very few people seem 100% sure! I mean, now that Bill Clinton has basically endorsed both Obama and McCain by singing their praises, who wouldn't feel schizo about the political options?

Anyway, my Obama T-shirt finally arrived and I was going to wear it out to the grocery store a little bit ago. But I just can't get out the door. Agorophobic tendencies aside, I think the shirt has something to do with it. Do I detect tinges of fear in myself, Obama's grandmother's kinds of fears - illogical and apparently forgivable- of allying myself with Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, the Black Panthers, the SDS, Hells Angels and who knows who else? I can't make a stand. I started to wonder if I'd be more comfortable in a McCain shirt so I checked out their site, just for fun. Suddenly I felt old. The whole McCain image is a little too old-blue-haired-lady, clean-cut, Perry Como, white-shoed, wannabe-golf-clubsy for me. Although lately he's thrown a little dab of Apocalypse Now into his ads, which I find oddly appealing. What's it all about, Alfie?

At the online McCain store, I liked a nautical lapel pin, which says nothing, and apparently just spells out McCain's name in flag code, good for someone like me who likes mystery and equivocation, but that pin is $200, and I don't want it that bad. Why doesn't Obama's store have that? What's a girl to do? To make matters worse I watched the video of Hillary Clinton talking about her ideas for universal health care at www.nytimes.com and thought she looked tired but sounded right.

I give up. I'm heading for the hills. I'm gonna keep my mouth shut and my head down low. It's depressing. I feel like listening to Freddy Mercury's Bohemian Rhapsody, well the very last line anyway. Tomorrow's another day.

I'll wear it as a nightshirt. It goes halfway to my knees anyway.

No Holds Barred! So, Bill and Hillary, Now it's Obama Against the Catholics and the Jews?

This has to be the work of Bill and Hillary, right?. They would fight this dirty. News reports today are geared towards subtly alienating Obama from Catholics and Jews, by virtue of the fact that Jeremiah Wright has made some crazed remarks in the past about the Israelites and the Italians. Ok. Been there, done that. Even if it's not the work of the Clintons, and surely,there is that possibility, it's pretty easy to imagine them gloating. God knows I'm getting scared, realizing that Obama donated $22,000 in 2006 to a church that honored Louis Farrakhan with a "Social Achievement" award just a few months ago.

Bill Clinton said recently that America is "all about" the fight, and I guess he means, all about the nasty nasty fight he and Hillary are going to wage from here on out. No holds barred. Tyrants aren't born tyrants, they evolve from early power and learn how to take hold by cruelty, intimidation, selling people down the river. A report in the Economist this week illustrates how Zimbabwe's prime minister Robert Mugabe evolved from a bookish freedom-fighter into a murderous thug over twenty-five years. Not that Bill and Hillary would ever start killing us, but they are evolving into something much different than the idealistic intellectual do-good Yale students they once were. They may have many gifts, but they are definitely letting down the guard on their downright nasty side.

So even if it's not the Clintons who have spear-headed this latest rise in news about Obama's church, we know they are going for the jugular. And we've gotten a glimpse of blood, and I don't like it. Today I'm leaning off my chair and coming close to falling into the McCain camp. Why is noone ever perfect?

Johnny Depp, Neil Young and Jim Jarmusch's collaboration "Dead Man"- Influenced by William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

One of my all-time favorite movies, strange, I'll admit:

Wish You Were Here

thanks to Chartrand

Feeling Grateful that I Have Visited Rosslyn Chapel and Found True (A)Symmetry

I had a dream last night about Rosslyn Chapel. Like a lot of my dreams, it was simple and lovely and, well, ...dreamlike. I was just sitting there in the chapel, relaxing with the spirits of people I would have loved in life, the creators and builders of Rosslyn.

While my daughter was in college for four years at St. Andrews in Scotland, I went to Rosslyn twice. The Chapel, built in the 1400's, is just five miles south of Edinburgh. I had wanted to go there since a long-ago teacher enthusiastically showed our class her photographs of this deeply mysterious place.

But by the time I got there, it had become very famous, thanks to The DaVinci Code. I was almost embarrassed to visit, joining with the throngs of curious folk who had seen the movie and were probably hoping for a glimpse of Tom Hanks or Dan Brown. Ridiculously, I imagined myself to be just a cut above the tourists who would be thronged there for all the wrong reasons. After all, I was looking for clues to the deepest mysteries of mankind. But we all are, in one way or another. And Rosslyn's builders really did something about it. Rosslyn's a great pilgrimage, if you like puzzles and mysteries with a spiritual context.

My daughter and I first approached Rosslyn by a two-mile walk along a deserted road, having taken the wrong bus out of Edinburgh. There were apparently no busses directly to Rosslyn that day, and no cars passed us by during the approach to the village. We walked through the village and out the other side without seeing any major signs. The entrance to the hillside chapel was utter simplicity, very few markings. Yes, there was a small parking lot with a few cars, and a gift shop with a few idlers, and the chapel itself, not in the least crowded. Thanks to a preservation project underway to protect the roof in particular, there is scaffolding around the upper outside of the chapel, with a walkway along the upper scaffolding open to the public for up-close examination of the incredible carvings in every nook and cranny.

There's no way to describe it. There's no way to explain what a wonder this place is. There is a fabulous story of a carved pillar that I will let you learn on your own. But suffice it to say, the pillar was carved in the fifteenth century, and resembles a strand of DNA. There are carvings of corn, or maize, grown then only in North America, and supposedly unknown in fifteenth century Europe, before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Throughout the chapel are carvings of the Green Man, who appears around the world in oddly similar carved incarnations. There are carved cubes that seem to spell out a musical code, and one man has recently made a recording of what he believes that code is, after many years' work. There's a fanciful feeling throughout, (cartoon stars in the vaulted ceiling), but serious too, reminding me of the way Antoni Gaudi's architecture is fanciful and serious all at once, oddly out of place and time. But at Rosslyn, there is a sense that every millimeter of carving is heartfelt, thought through by an enlightened mind, never self-indulgent, and always serves a higher purpose, of worship.

But the biggest clue for me that I was walking through the handiwork of loved ones, the thing about it that calls me home, and makes me dream, and holds my heart still and very still, is what I love more than any other communication from the past: an apparent symmetry that is not symmetry at all, or symmetry only in the very largest sense, a sense that easily includes past present and future even now. If you look at the photographs of Rosslyn to the right of this column or if you stare at closeups of the entrances for awhile, you may understand what it is that I love. There's a sense of symmetry at first, but you will find if you start counting things, that, as in life, there's most often an aberration, an asymmetry that relaxes the overall effect. Six rosettes on one side, seven on the other. Four of these, three of those. One this size over here, one that size over there. I've gone out on a limb here, and into cliche, to try to explain the unexplainable. I can't explain it, but it's what I love.

I'm so grateful to have seen it. And I hope to go again and to sit in the comfort of that handiwork. In real time, or in a dream.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And if you're interested, here's a little video (maybe stretching it a bit but who knows?) about just one mystery in the Chapel-that musical cypher and the carving of the stave angel:



Thanks to Stuart7M (Stuart Mitchell, who has done years of research and published the CD last year.)

Hillary's Concession Speech: Imagine It!

David Brooks NYT column this morning is "The Long Defeat" - about what Hillary will drag us through in the coming months just for her very slim chance of winning the nomination. (Click on the title above to read Brooks' article.)It's a great article to get you started imagining Hillary's concession speech. Not that I'm indulging in schadenfreude or anything.

Could she ever concede the nomination to Barack Obama? She is a machine, a terminator, she will fight to the virtual death, won't she? Could she switch it all off and give a gracious speech, subduing the demons within? That speech would be self-serving as always, about how she will never stop fighting for the American people. Bill would be at her side, looking dogged and drawn, off-balance and slightly wasted as of late, thumb up though. Chelsea would be Chelsea, what we know of her up to this point, taking it all in, hatching a plan for her own campaign in years to come perhaps? Or ready to bolt?

Would Hillary "crack" a little during her concession speech? Just a little sob? Would her face look swollen from a sleepless night of crying? Would she stumble just a little as she leaves the stage, looking skyward and dodging imagined sniper fire? Will she let anything show? And then what? Would she take a vacation in the Caribbean, as Obama is doing now? Can we picture her relaxed on a pool lounge chair? Would we want to picture that? Or is it easier to picture her going out in a straight-jacket, and heading for a long, much-needed rest, just Hillary and a butterfly net, far away from the madding crowds?

Happy Birthday Lelly!

Were all Three Candidates' Files Really Compromised? Or is it just a Clinton Ploy?

I don't believe that all three candidates' files were breached at the State Department. I think there was quick action by the Clintons to cover up their own work. If they had been caught having one of their servile syncophants snoop into Obama's passport files, (and let's face it, they must have really good connections all over the place)- they would have been 100% FINITO! So if you're a Clinton, what do you do when you're in danger of being caught red-handed? You get the story out there right away that you are a victim too. Your files were breached too. And oh, let's throw McCain's files in there too. I doubt it! It's just a minor variation of the cowardly liar's "Deny, deny, accuse" tactic.

Chris Matthews made a tremendously strong denouncement of the Clintons this morning on Good Morning Joe. Although he was definitely not coming close to suggesting what I just said in the paragraph above, he was so fervent in his denunciation that Mika Brzezinski asked him if he was giving an endorsement of Obama (which he denied, of course). If it comes up on Youtube, I'll stick it in here.

Walter Shapiro's column, at Salon.com, made me laugh out loud this morning, when he said the Democrats are "down to seeds and stems." I don't think the fighting is as bad as people say, at least not where Obama is concerned. Yes, the Clintons are as bad as everyone says, but I just don't get the feeling that Obama is fighting the filthy tooth and nail battle that the Clintons are. He stays cleaner, cooler, calmer. I definitely would rather have him answering the phone at 3 AM!

Christ is Risen!

Did you ever go to a church and wonder what it was all about, why people came there, what they were doing, how they could believe all this stuff, how it has been going on for over two thousand years? A man, Jesus, lived and died and had an effect that has lasted for centuries, prompting people to build cathedrals and perform rites and share communion in His name until the present times.

He was supposedly born in a stable under a special star that guided kings and wise men to his little manger. He lived and walked among us, teaching and healing, even raising the dead. He was crucified dead and buried, then ascended into heaven. What really happened back then that meant so much? What could it have been? There's only one possible answer: It must have been true.

Who could do this nowadays? We have our eyes on everyone, for at least fifteen minutes. We have all kinds of ways to prove and disprove things. We have insatiable curiosity. We are skeptics but we want hope, and proof. And if someone lived among us and performed miracles, and then died and was dead for three days and then walked again among us, and then ascended into heaven, wouldn't people be profoundly changed, and wouldn't we talk about it, write about it, act upon it,for generations?

We would want to hear from his friends and the people who knew him, we would want to know more, we would want to know everything. We would read the accounts online, and enshrine them in special texts undiluted, preferably with red letters to highlight exactly what he said. If we were told about his instructions at the Last Supper, many would want to do what he said, and would create a ceremony, a sacrament, to break bread and drink wine. Some among us would try to discern, and taste, his flesh and blood in it, transubstantiated, in the mystery of faith. For many people there would be no need to go on a wild goose chase for the Holy Grail, because His simple instruction to "Love one another", and His promise of eternal life would be wondrous enough. "Remember Me."

There are so many galaxies in the universe, mystery upon mystery. Scientific theories are developing, beyond Einstein, about light and space and speed and time. The prospect of stem cells replenishing life, our nascent cloning experience, many other theories about quarks and black holes and magnetic forces all suggest larger mysteries than we are ready to grasp, here in our little speck of the universe. That life could be recreated and restored is part of the suggestion made by these sciences. And somewhere, with the communion of saints, why couldn't there be planets made of diamond, sapphire, ruby, emerald, and gold, and all the things that have been wrought by God....where the heavenly angels sing, where the good people go and have always been, where life is eternal?

It's simple really. Jesus came to us from another place, from heaven, to show us something, to interest us in love. He suffered, died, was buried, and then He rose again, to eternal life, and told us that we could do that too. He said all things are possible, if you will only believe. And Christ will come again. Alleluia!

The Great Easter Vigil

This is the ancient time of baptism and renewal. Wait for the resurrection!

"What I Have Lived For"- Bertrand Russell, looking back at life

Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher and mathematician who died in 1970 at nearly 100 years old, was a man who really thought things through, on a large scale. Russell co-authored “Principia Mathematica” and wrote “History of Western Philosophy.” Above and beyond his achievements in mathematics and philosophy, he was active in opposing the Vietnam War and nuclear armament, and he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. I used to read this to my kids when they were young.

The Prologue to the the Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

"WHAT I HAVE LIVED FOR"

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”

-Bertrand Russell

This Place Don't Make Sense to Me No More: Bob Dylan "Tales of Yankee Power"

fading away with Bob Dylan....the original version was so so powerful, but is not available on youtube ...and this version is still beautiful. Check out the lyrics below, kind of a final march to Calvary, when you think about it:





courtesy of adsaew

Senor, senor, can you tell me where we're headin ?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon ?
Seems like I been down this way before
Is there any truth in that, senor ?

Senor, senor, you know their hearts is as hard as leather
Give me a minute now, let me get it together
Just gotta pick myself up off the floor
Will there be any comfort there senor ?

There's a wicked wind still blowing on that upper deck
There's an iron cross still hanging down from around her neck
There's a marching band still playing in that vacant lot
Where she held me in her arms one time and said, Forget me not.

Senor, senor, I can see that painted wagon
Smell the tail of the dragon
Can't stand the suspense anymore
Can you tell me who to contact here, senor ?

Well, the last thing I remember before I stripped and kneeled
Was that trainload of fools bogged down in a magnetic field
A gypsy with a broken flag and a flashing ring
He said, Son, this ain't a dream no more it's the real thing.

Senor, senor, do you know where she is hidin' ?
How long are we gonna be riding ?
How long must I keep my eyes glued to the door ?
I'm ready when you are, senor.

Senor, senor, let's overturn these tables
Disconnect this cable
This place don't make sense to me no more
Can you tell me what we're waiting for, senor ?

If You Will Only Believe, by the Reverend Claude Jeter and the Swan Silvertones

Thanks to ArchieB9876

In January I sat with a friend and watched the video song above by the Silvertones, one of her favorite singing groups. We both knew that my friend's long battle with cancer was nearing its end. After the song was over,she said "So, tell me, what is that supposed to mean? Are you trying to tell me that if I would only believe, my cancer would go away?" We both knew it wouldn't.

I told her what I could, and we both knew I was trying very hard. She watched me carefully, and knew I believed it: that you just don't know what lies ahead, on the other side. It could be far more amazing than anything you've ever hoped for, far more wonderful than anything you thought possible. There's world upon world, world within world, music, science, math, art, earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, into eternity. "In my father's house are many mansions" (John 14:2), world without end, Amen. You could fly to God and sing in the heavenly choir, and dwell in the communion of saints.You could be with your loved ones forever, lifetime after lifetime, here there and everywhere in the universe, beyond time and space as we know it. All things are possible, if you will only believe.

Good Friday, from noon til three

Just be aware of the suffering that someone has endured for you. Think clearly, don't be sentimental. Watch the sky, the shadows and the light. Give thanks.

People who have to die willingly, courageously, triumphantly, sorrowfully, leaving love in this lifetime behind: Ah! se un giorno da queste ritorte

What if you were told that you had to die soon, not from illness, but because of the way you are, and the way people are, people who have misunderstood or mistrusted you. What if it was someone else's decision that you should die, and that person wasn't sure it was the right decision, and anguished over it, but decided against you. And then you had to walk to your violent death, let's say to be beheaded by axe like Mary Queen of Scots. How might you feel? In his opera "Maria Stuardi", Gaetano Donizetti imagines it expressed in this way, with the help of Joan Sutherland as Mary Stuart:




courtesy of goopera

Come to think of it, why haven't I gotten my Barack Obama t-shirt yet?

When I was feeling swept up in the Obama excitement, I ordered a Barack Obama t-shirt and some lapel pins from the Barack Obama website store. http://store.barackobama.com/ I wanted the Obama khaki "Face" t-shirt, like the one will.i.am wears in his "yes we can" video, available under men's t-shirts. The Obama website explained that the medium size shirt I wanted was back-ordered, and would take "several weeks" due to huge demand. Medium was on backorder, small was on backorder, large was on backorder, but there was immediate availability if you wanted extra-large,and so I did. I figured it could be a nightgown, and I'd have it day after tomorrow. That was February 6th. The money was deducted from my account two days later. Now it's March 20th. Still no shirt.

Yet every day I have gotten requests for more money, and letters addressed to me by my first name, in a familiar tone, and signed "Barack"- when I know he doesn't have time for such nonsense. The letters do not accord in tone with his speeches, and I don't even read them anymore. Even if he did have time to dash off a few letters daily to his millions of potential donors, does he really have to sign them "Barack"? What's wrong with saying something realistic like "Dear friends and supporters"- from Barack Obama? Are we such needy little simpletons that we are expected to believe the man is writing to us personally? Do his staffers think we are idiots out here?

This false familiarity really bothers me. Letters letters letters, but not one from the barack obama store about my shirt, other than the confirmation, six weeks ago, that I ordered it. Is this the real Obama support system? Can't they even put together a STORE?! Are they really so disorganized that they can't get it together to make up some t-shirts? I have some friends who could probably get it together and print up all the tshirts they need in a few weeks. I could wrap them up and go to the post office, and send them out myself, maybe ask one of my daughters to help me. No problemo. Unless I had gotten really knocked for a loop, and had bitten off more than I could chew, and was in way way over my head. Or unless I somehow lost the money that people had paid to me to make and mail the shirts. I must admit, I'm starting to wonder.

Fats Domino "Blueberry Hill"

Nothing much beats watching Fats Domino roll around at the piano with that sweet smile. I'm so glad someone made his dreams come true up there on Blueberry Hill.



thanks to marcellopresley

Ricky Nelson singing Lonesome Town right in the middle of a family sitcom

AH! Ozzie and Harriet. Those were the days - a little after-school or pre-prom get-together in the living room, dad coming home from work, everything just hunkey-dorey, a beautiful slow-eyed guy with a guitar starts singing like this and you just sit there, like a good little girl?! And then say okey-dokey, see you later, gotta run off with that funny looking guy now and do some homework and have some milk and cookies. Byebye!




Thanks to CrescentNoon

Obama's Historic Speech and Why People Must Find Fault With It

You remember. When you were in school, sophomore year, learning how to write essays, the teacher would say "If you want to write a book or movie review that gets attention, and if the book or movie is pretty good and therefore gets many good reviews, write a critical review, make it negative so that people will notice it." So it's a little sophomoric trick to go out of your way to find fault. It's attention-seeking behavior. We're seeing a lot of that in the wake of Obama's historic speech yesterday about race and politics in America.

If anything were to happen to our dear Mr. Obama, if he were sick or injured or unable to continue his campaign for any reason, God forbid, that speech would be enshrined in the collective memory of the world henceforth. But as it is, in our sometimes shoddy little media-driven process, news commentators and talking heads want their fifteen minutes of fame, so they are trying to get attention by dissing the speech, by ripping it to shreds, by finding the most picayune little quibbles with it. Even the Clintons will probably find some way to diminish its greatness eventually, though they are smart enough to acknowledge it and lay low for a bit. Hillary said, somewhat proprietarily, "I'm glad he made it." As if she had told him to.

Come on! Let's hear it! Give it up for Barack! As the New York Times editorial "Mr. Obama's Profile in Courage" says, for starters:

"There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.
Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better."

Let's face it. He's younger than Hillary or John McCain. He's less experienced than Hillary or John McCain. But he is the very substance of greatness. He will learn and grow and we can nurture him with our support. He's grown beyond the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And there's plenty of reason to believe he can grow beyond Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He could lead us through some meaningful change. I'm starting to feel it in my bones.

How Our Idols Crumble into the Sand: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All I Have To Do Is Dream- Harmony to Spare from the Everly Brothers

Thanks to Kilroy76

Feeling Special oh so Special

I think it's good that in the last week three governors have had to make shocking admissions about sexual liasons. Now all those poor young people messing around with governors, elected officials, celebrities and high-profile folk will realize that they are not necessarily so special after all. Innocent young things must think they're pretty special there for awhile, sneaking and tip-toeing through the corridors of power, wealth and fame to rub up against their needy little undressed idols. Why sell out?

The idols themselves, having forbidden trysts then being forced to announce their perversions or their infidelities to the general populace, broadcasting their sins - oh please, gag me with a spoon, who needs this? So you poor young things out there who feel so special, rich and powerful as you rush off to have sex with the rich and powerful - wake up and look around. The whole thing is not necessarily as wonderful as it seems, and neither are the objects of your interest. There can be love, of course. But it's kind of rare..and...well, special.

Sweetness for the Little Ones at Easter

Don't forget an Easter lamb in the baskets, cotton or candy, to teach the kids about the Lamb of God!

Easter Week, from man to God

I like the eternal verities, and seek them everywhere and in all seasons. Eternal verities, things that are always true, often hold true in regard to light and the shifting earth moon sun and stars. For me, Christmas is all about the solstice, the light shining forth in darkness, and the babe radiant in the manger under the shining star. Even Santa rolling all bright and cheery out of the dark chimney, and the festivals of light all accord with the solstice very well. A light shines forth in the darkness. Remember the Prologue to John. It's easy to keep a mystical perspective throughout the days of the season.

At first blush, equinoxes are a little harder to integrate into the grand scheme of things. At Christmas solstice we think of the transcendent Christ as the light of the world. In His death and resurrection at Easter it is the transcendent Christ again who embodies that mystery of eternal life. The vernal equinox is about new life in the spring, new life bursting forth in nature, flowers abloom, resurrection anew. Hold a barnyard egg up to the light, see the life immanent within. It's easy to understand that the egg is a symbol of the season and of Christ's illumination of us.

But in the week leading up to Easter, we think of Jesus the man. The man washing his disciples' feet, the man weeping in the garden, the man betrayed by his friends, the man being nailed to the cross, the man suffering. The great Easter Vigil, falling on the silent night before Easter as we await the risen Christ, is the historic time for baptism and renewal. We share in the shift from man to God.

I love the old Sunday school handouts from the 50's, before the pictures were so painfully politically correct, modernized and vividly colored. I love the old soft-toned simple drawings of Jesus coming into Jerusalem, of Jesus with the children, of Jesus praying in the garden, and the old Sallman portrait of Jesus that I accepted as fact when I was a child.

And so I immerse myself in the eternal verities as I see them, whenever I can. But this week I think of the historical Jesus, and of the concrete experiences of the man who was called to be an avatar of light and truth, a Christ.

Betrayals and reversals of fortune

Betrayal seems to be part of human nature, certainly at least part of the human experience. After Jesus marched in triumph from Galilee to Jerusalem, welcomed as the Son of God, everything went sour. Within days He was humiliated, beaten and crucified. What else could he do but accept it as God's will, forgive, and move on to Paradise?

When Caesar was attacked by his fellow senators on the floor of the Roman Senate, he began by fighting back, but when he saw that his dear Brutus was among the would-be assassins, he lifted his toga to cover his eyes, and relinquished himself to his fate. Shakespeare makes Caesar's final sorrowful words "Et tu Brute?" Suetonius said Caesar's final heartbroken words were "You too, my child?" What else could Caesar do but accept betrayal as his fate, cover his face, and succumb to death?

Peaceful Tibetan monks have begun marching from Dharmasala India to Lhasa in Tibet, a 5 to 6 month march that will culminate in their arrival at the time of the Olympics in Beijing in August. Meanwhile, at their destination in Lhasa, the killing has already begun. Chinese authorities proudly announce that they have contained the situation with tanks and guns and forced incarcerations of Tibetans. In recent years those same authorities built a railroad to Tibet and sent in Chinese residents to populate Tibet and marginalize Tibetans as violently as America marginalized the American Indians. The Potala Palace and the sacred Jokhang Temple, to which Tibetan pilgrims used to come for hundreds of miles by prostrating themselves body length by body length the whole way, are now surrounded by brothels and honky tonks catering to tourists. What else can the Tibetans do but foresee their possible doom, and resist it as long as possible, even unto death?

An innocent child or a happy and beloved adult gets a deadly cancer, and each must relinquish life to cancer's relentless appetite. What else can they do but hope for comfort and for their loved ones not to suffer as they have?

Elliot Spitzer, former Attorney General and Governor of New York, boy wonder, moral monitor, prosecutor extraordinaire, is revealed as a fraud, as a patron of common but well-marketed prostitutes. What else can he or we do but accept his slimy inner realities as part of the human condition? This stuff is nothing new. People go crazy for sex, money, power or revenge. Friends become enemies. They murder one another, they go to war, indigenous people are tossed aside for others' gain. A tsunami wipes away a few hundred thousand people. It's just the way it sometimes is. Life goes on. What else can we do but pray for forgiveness, ask for strength to endure or to make a change, and hope to experience laughter and loving-kindness? What else is there but to carry on the best we can until the moment we die, cherishing and giving thanks for the blessings we have?

Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry"

This is one of those musical moments that was perfect at the time and then provided lifetime fame. But poor Brenda Lee, just 16 years old, and only 4 foot 9, looks so unhappy here, as if someone was standing offstage who would beat her mercilessly if she didn't remember to get those hand movements right. But she sure did it, and whoever encouraged her to perform certainly realized she could. As far as I know, she lived happily ever after. So grab your hairbrush microphone and sing along! Courtesy of ForFarley

Awareness ad

Regarding the "awareness ad" below, one of my friends, a judge, said "Makes you think twice about eyewitness testimony."

Click the words "Awareness ad" in the title to watch the video
http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

Dirty Dancing in our Dotage

Went out dancing last night and had a repeat of what happened in November - same friends, same band, same fun, except this time, we danced all night long. So I will just repost that November blogspot to share some of the joy joy joy of being old - well, older - and dancing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Boomers can really dance for joy, it's an actual phenomenon. We've got rhythm and we've still got our moves. Give us a good band and we'll dance in circles til midnight unabashedly. We've got history galore and can do little moves from a hundred different dance sensations, we make funny faces, we're sexy as hell. Uhhh...that's true isn't it? You know, I think it is. Damn if it isn't.

After dinner and drinks last night, our group of four decided to peek in to the remnants of a party in an adjacent ballroom where a great band was still playing. We were welcomed by the folks there to dessert and the dance floor. Magic ensued. Johnny Cash's "Walk the Line" and some Chuck Berry got us going. We were transformed from a group of folks whose birthdates stretched from 1934 to 1954 into 20 and 30 somethings. (So actually, we were three Boomers and one Depression Baby.) Other dancers intermingled briefly in and out of our circle, and noone seemed to notice or care that we were interlopers from other generations.

It's heavenly to dance with abandon. All over the world and all through time, from ancient tribes in isolation to the highest spheres of civilization, from the youngest to the oldest, from the ridiculous to the sublime, we're all joined together in eternity by music and dance. We can't all be Nureyev, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, or Uma Thurman and John Travolta, but we can dance our hearts out and be ever so glad we're here to do it.

Grace be to God!

Remembering Grandma Peggy

I'm often comforted by the knowledge that my parents, all four of my grandparents and all eight of my great-grandparents were church-going and upright folk who worked hard, enjoyed a good meal, and loved a good song. I'm probably the first one in generations with a lazy streak, contaminated by a stray gene from another day and age. I can stare out a window at the rustling leaves for a good half-hour. I can leave the dishes in the sink until a better day. I can leave the Christmas tree stand on the porch until the beginning of March.

But my grandmother Peggy, born in 1896, would never do that. A card-carrying member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the good old WCTU, she had no time for slothful folks. She never stopped moving and working, except for the times she set aside for her Bible and her devotions in the morning, after a hot dinner at noon, and at bedtime. (The evening meal was "supper", not "dinner".)

"Learn to be neat!" was her refrain. As we took fresh-smelling bedsheets from the clotheslines on Mondays, she sang old hymns: The Old Rugged Cross, In the Garden, Blessed Assurance. She would call out happily to a flock of birds in the sky "My money! my money! my money!"- you'll someday get a dollar per bird, you know. She always wore a dress, stockings, and sturdy heels,even when working in the garden, her long gray hair piled in braids or a bun, she prided herself on her figure and her slim ankles. She was ladylike and happy.

After we made the beds, she would fold a small blanket at the foot of the bed with a precision I could never match. If I folded a throw blanket loosely and tossed it on the foot of the bed, she would take it up again and fold it right, with just the tiniest huff. I missed the gene that could help me notice such things, yet I learned to admire those who have it.

Now Grandma had her darker side, honed honestly and earnestly by religion and forebears who placed a high premium on working from dawn to dusk in order to be saved by Jesus in the end. She could be just a tad judgmental. I remember sitting smug in the car with my grandparents as we passed by a ramshackle house out in the country that had beer bottles and old cars in the yard. "Not fit to live," she said about one hapless resident, obviously knowing more about the man of that house than I did.

Occasionally Grandma would have a "sinking spell" which meant she had to sit down for a moment, and only very rarely, take to her bed. Once I remember her sitting on a bench in her gardens in the sunlight, combing out her long hair after washing it, and sighing "Ah! Fifty years seems but a day!" She did not like sinking spells in herself or anyone else. I, for one, given to occasional prolonged sinking spells, still feel very guilty when I give in to breathlessness or gloom. And I imagine my sister and cousins and all of us unto the fourth generation still feel guilty if we slack off for too long.

Grandma baked her own bread, made her own soap, killed her own chickens. Sunday supper was an event, 2:00 sharp every Sunday afternoon following three or four hours of church and Sunday School. She believed life should be lived close to the bone, close to nature, close to God. She had a mink coat that she wore to church and she lived in a beautiful home on many acres, but she favored simplicity. Her values were based on her Christian principles and her belief in the output of constant energy all day every day, except of course on Sunday. "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."

If I recall correctly, the framed needlework over her mantlepiece spelled out Christ's words: "Remember Me." I can't find the perfect picture right now,with just those words in a long horizontal frame, but I'll keep trying. I know He remembered her, and that she rests in peace.