The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily’s guest writer every Monday.
THIS IS YOUR COUNTRY...
…in bits and pieces.
A lady in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was refused entrance to a courthouse ’til she removed her underwire bra which set off the security gate alarm. Gotta prevent them underwire bra bomber terrorists looking to take over Idaho and harming the baked potato crop.
Senator Hypocrita Clinton wants for us to make her Prez and turn the whole country over to her keeping when she couldn’t see what was right there under her nose (figuratively speaking) when she was last in the White House.
A new Walmart under construction required the use of dynamite, so the company went to court and forced the owner of the adjoining property to vacate home and land in case of accident. No mention of forcing Walmart to guarantee no damage. Not every home is one’s castle if Walmart’s involved.
Latest lead concern involves lipstick. From cheapest to designer brands, lead showed up in all those tested. Perhaps this explains how so-called “fashion” designers convince women to stupidly subject themselves to shoes with 5-inch heels. Lead does affect the brain.
Thanks to a recent Parade Magazine, we know another reason why the U.S. is in trouble around the world. A list reveals about one-third of our ambassadors are non-diplomats. Their qualifications? Buddies with Bush. For example, ambassador to: Australia, Skull and Bones with Bush at Yale; Poland, close Yale friend; Hungary, dated Bush at Harvard Business School; China, fraternity brother at Yale; Japan, partner in Texas Ranger ownership; Sweden, prep school friend and frat brother at Yale; Belize, Yale roomie. Don’t bother George with no qualifications crap.
Friday’s New York Post graced its front cover and two inner pages with photos of a Brooklyn guy running around naked in Times Square. But he did have his cellphone so he could yak as he meandered.
Finally, a recent WGBH gift catalog included a tee-shirt inscribed with what it called Vegetable Psychiatric conditions. Among others, they included:
fennel retentive
hummus-cidal
garlic depressive
pea-ness envy
Yup, all sounds like U.S. all right.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
of fallen apples and trees
While I am here ranting about my right to godlessness, my son, the OneTrueb!X, is posting some eloquent stuff about his “devout agnosticism.”
He writes of hope and purpose and dignity and choice, and quotes something penned by the should-be-more-famous Joss Whedon:
then the only thing that means anything is what we do.
And he offers something of his own well worth quoting:
Ah, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear him.
a little number crunching
I got this in an email and tried it.
AND IT WORKED.
I’m one of those people who still sometimes figures on her fingers, so I’m reluctant to speculate about how it works. (But I do think it has something to do with the numbers you use to multiply, add, and subtract.)
The point of it all is that one can tell your age by your preferences for eating out. Try it. You’ll like it:
1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to
go out to eat. (More than once but less than 10)
2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold)
3. Add 5
4. Multiply it by 50
5. If you have already had your birth day this year add 1757… If you haven’t, add 1756.
6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.
You should have a three digit number
The first digit of this is your original number. (I.e., how many times you want to go out to restaurants in a week.)
The next two numbers are YOUR AGE ! —— (Oh YES, it is!!!)
THIS IS THE ONLY YEAR (2007) IT WILL EVER WORK, SO TRY IT WHILE IT LASTS.
Who are the people who sit around and make up these things!!
godless money, godless pledges
That’s how the currency of the United States started out, you know — without that godawful “in God We Trust” marking. That didn’t start until during the Civil War, as some of the country’s leaders decided to cave in to pressure from the rising “religious sentiment” of certain groups.
And that slogan on our paper money wasn’t added until the 1960s. (See link above)
Now, onto the “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
[snip}
[snip]
[snjp]
And now, in the 21st century, Americans with political power continue to stuff religion down the throat of government because those with other kinds of power refuse to acknowledge the facts of history.
So, to those who claim god was a part of it all from the start, I say read up on your history. Check out the facts.
We don’t need god to make us good Americans, good citizens, good people. If believing in your god helps you to be the best of these that you can be, well that’s just great. For you.
As for me, I find inspiration, motivation, and hope in the best of the facts of our human history. Just the facts.
I’m militant about choice
Back in the 70s, I was a pretty militant feminist. I can’t help but imagine how great it would have been to have had a weblog back then.
My militancy then was about choice, in the broadest and narrowest and most personal sense of the concept. I wanted the right to make — and have respected — all of those choices that enabled me to be who I was and wanted to become. Problems only arose when others tried to impose their choices on me. Or I, on them.
(Now, let me add a caveat to all of this militancy by saying that in a marriage and in a family, often choices have to be negotiated because it is very rare that everyone in a relationship can have everything they want at the same time.)
I am still militant about choice.
It’s understandable that people who choose the same ideas, ideals, beliefs, and faiths gravitate to one another, form affinity groups, clubs, societies, parishes. Problems arise when those affinity groups get militant about imposing their dogmas on others. That’s true of prostelitizing atheists and agnostics as well as religious fundamentalists. A respect for choice requires tolerance.
I am obsessing on this because a family member sent me an email extolling the virtues of comments supposedly made by Ben Stein on a recent CBS Sunday Morning Program.
Interestingly enough, the emailed text of his supposed commentary was really a compilation of things he had said on several occasions. It helps to check on www.snopes.com to verify stuff you get in emails.
Stein’s homey and (on-the-surface) seemingly caring comments lead the listener to dangerous conclusions. For example he asks the following question, which reminds me of the old “when did you stop beating your wife?” He asks:
and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?
Do you get his manipulation? Of course lots of us are fed up with the media focusing on the likes of Nick and Jessica. But where in America are people not allowed to worship god as they understand him?? Putting those two statements together makes the second seem as true as the first. And the good sheep follow the misguided and misguiding shepherd.
The first settlers of America came here to escape intolerance. They came because they wanted to be able to choose how to live their lives and not be forced to accept a view of the universe espoused by those in power. They fled from a country where the Church and State were one and the same. Ironically enough, they wound up recreating in the government of their own communities what they ran from to begin with. That tendency might be a basic human flaw, and that might well be why the crafters of our Constitution made such an effort to separate Church and State.
Our Constitution protects choices made within the limits of law, with no preference given to those who believe in a god or who belong to any organized religion. With no preference given to the dogmas and tenets of any religious group. The spirit of our Constitution is rooted in lawful — not religious — personal choice.
Problems arise when a powerful religious organization imposes their Church laws on the State’s laws, when they forget their own biblical metaphorical admonition to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Problems also arise when the god-fearing draw erroneous conclusions from partial facts. While some of our Constitution’s framers were god-worshippers, there is no indication that they wanted to establish anything but a country that protected freedom of religion as well as freedom FROM religion.
If you want more documentation for this assertion, please check out my rant from just about three years ago, a post that received scholarly praise in an article no longer online, but quoted in one of my posts here.
There is a growing militancy among the god-less that needs to continue growing.
Choice and tolerance and respect.
Isn’t that why America was founded in the first place??
Mohonk in the mist
Even on a misty moisty morning, the Mohonk Mountain House and its acreage — both indoorrs and out — is a magical place. The movie The Road to Wellville was filmed there, exploiting both the natural and constructed opulence of what now is more than just a resort for the wealthy.
Although, I have to say that there were more Beamers and Benzs than I’ve ever seen in one parking lot, including several Mercedes-Benz $100K G-500 SUVs. .
Actually, there were a lot more less ostentatious vehicles from which folks of every age, many in hiking boots and gear, came and went. The grounds were almost overrun with kids, and as we walked along the path on one side of the lake, we noticed a cabin in which a nature program for children was underway.
My daughter and her family had to leave for home that afternoon, so we arrived in the morning and explored the grounds before heading in for the sumptuous (and expensive) Sunday brunch. ( It was just the four of us, since my mom was feeling too sick to come, and my brother stayed at home with her.)
The main dining room overlooks a range of the Catskill Mountains, and we were seated close enough to the huge windows to enjoy the view, fog and all. There were a number of young children (including ours) piling up plates of tasty buffet items, the most popular of which, of course, was the chocolate fountain in which they dipped strawberries and other fruits and fingers.
The two older women from New York City sitting by the window cooed over my grandson and offered to take our photo with my daughter’s camera if she would take one of them with theirs. They were up for the day as well and also making the most of what the brunch had to offer.
The hallways in the 19th century Victorian mansion that lead to the Mohonk House’s main dining room are lined with portraits of “rich old white men,” as my daughter commented. Actually we did notice a few colorful male faces, but those were few and far between and with names that looked Middle Eastern.
I’m hoping that my family will come visit again so that we can spend more time exploring Mohonk. Maybe not do brunch, but rather try the putting green, see the gardens in full bloom, take a paddle boat onto the lake. Maybe my grandson and son-in-law can fish, while my daughter adds to her collection of striking photos that she’s already taken of the unique surroundings.There’s a Picnic Lodge if we want to indulge our palates.
The website doesn’t say how much a day pass is just to roam the grounds (not hike, not with these knees) and luxuriate in the beauty of it all. It doesn’t even say if it has such a thing. Assuming that it does, I’m sure it will not be cheap. But it will be worth it to get out into that ear-popping mountain air and check out all the outdoor attractions that we couldn’t get to this time.
As long as it doesn’t rain.
blogging yin and yang
When I have time, I read a variety of web sites and blogs, each for a different reason. Two of my favorite non-blog sites these days seem to reflect the yin and the yang of my personality, each grounding me on either end of the spectrum of my passions and interests.
If you check in here frequently, you must have noticed that I post poems that Jim Culleny sends out daily in emails. While Jim’s site, No Utopia, started out as a blog, it has been transformed into an “Op Ed” type site that is a great place, not only to pick up tidbits of news and notions that work well as fodder for further blog postings but also to read insightful, creatively written, and painfully pointed commentary, sometimes his own and sometimes what he quotes from other sources.
This from Jim’s take on the new Hessians:
Now, thanks to the recurring cycles of time and history, the ways of politics, and the surly nature of god, I’m blessed with 1st-hand knowledge of what Miss Altenhaus was trying to tell me. The Hessians were hired guns –German mercenaries employed by the British to defeat the Americans. But the scent I was getting off the Hessians had to do with the “hired gun” part. Ok, ok, Miss Altenhause, I get it. Today we call our Hessians, Blackwater –an apt identity if ever their was one.
And on evolution
Why is it more scandalous to take the position that we evolved through natural selection than that we got here via incestous relationships among Adam’s and Eve’s offspring?
Beats me.
And this as he quotes Andrew Sullivan on Hillary Clinton:
The conservative Washington Establishment is swooning for Hillary for a reason. The reason is an accommodation with what they see as the next source of power (surprise!); and the desire to see George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq legitimated and extended by a Democratic president (genuine surprise). Hillary is Bush’s ticket to posterity. On Iraq, she will be his legacy. They are not that dissimilar after all: both come from royal families, who have divvied up the White House for the past couple of decades. They may oppose one another; but they respect each other as equals in the neo-monarchy that is the current presidency.
In addition, Jim occasionally offers the wisdoms of “Roshi Bob,” an illusive man-of-the-moment, described by Jim here.
So, that’s the yang of it.
As for the yin, wisewoman writer and elderbogger Marian Van Eyk McCain has a site that calls to the heart of women old enough to know. On her site, you will find:
A meeting place for women of age, maturity and wisdom.
A source of inspiration for women in – or about to enter – their ‘Third Age’
A node in a vast, international network of wise women, spanning the globe
A forum for discussion – a place to voice your thoughts on aging and “sage-ing”
An advertisement for the simple life – a rediscovery of the sacred in the ordinary
An oasis on the spiritual journey
Marian also has a personal weblog that gives us glimpses into her day to day life.
What I really like most, however, is the Elderwoman Newsletter, “an e-zine for 21st century elderwomen committed to radical aliveness.”
RADICAL |
ALIVENESS |
Ain’t that just the yin/yang of it!
we’re off and running
….to the doctor’s this afternoon…mom is running a temperature, is congested. I think it’s a sinus infection because she has a major post nasal drip and she says her eyes, ears, and even her teeth hurt.
No one here has gotten much sleep the last couple of nights, but we didn’t want to take her to the emergency room because every time we do, it’s an unbelievable trauma for her, both physically and mentally.
Geriatric patients need to be treated differently from younger patients, especially if they have dementia. I am wondering why hospitals don’t have geriatric wards. After all, they do have pediatric wards, and the special emotional needs of young children are pretty similar to those of very old adults.
I don’t know if the doctor will put her in the hospital, but I’m prepared if he does. I have copies of her medical cards and prescription drug lists packed as well as Excedrin for me. (Also, snacks, drinks, and books and knitting.) Whenever she’s in the hospital, we stay there with her, even if we have to camp out in the waiting room.
I want to post about our day at the marvelous Mohonk Mountain House, but that will have to wait.
Right now, we’re off and running, keeping her temperature down, propping her up so she can breathe, preparing for a few days not being here if that becomes the case. Chances are he will give her meds and send her home. I’m just concerned because she often refuses to swallow pills these days. Maybe he can give her liquid versions.
Just like for a child.
UPDATE:
— No hospital, just a liquid antibiotic.
— We also found out through an MRI, that she has a torn rotator cuff. Surgery is out of the question. We are looking into alternatives.
— And now she seems to have an eye infection, so the next doc visit will be the opthamologist.
— And then a CAT scan of her head to see if her headaches have anything to to with her brain. It should also tell us how much of her brain has atrophied.
Like Emily Dickinson, but for different reasons, my “…Life is over there — Behind the Shelf..”, behind the stacked boxes of yarn and rounded willow branches, between Wallace Stevens Collected Poems and The Shadow of the Shaman, under the Women’s Book of Healing and The Book of Lilith, under the Pilates Power Ring and two dusty five pound weights, buried under pots of plants that need to be tended before the snows come.
Being the prime caregiver for someone with physical ailments is hard enough. Add the dementia roller coaster onto that, and Life gets shelved for long periods of time.
Except when I sneak in a few minutes to play Scrabulous on Facebook with a few blog buddies.
Or blog.
once upon a….
The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily’s guest writer every Monday.
ONCE UPON A…..
We should pay as much attention to our falling nation as we do to autumn leaves.
As our country sinks slowly in the west, but — unlike the sun — with no promise of rising again tomorrow, we Americans pretty much sit around sipping a drink of ho-hum. We watch the disappearance being successfully engineered by a barely intelligent president (hell-bent on resuming the Crusades) and a box-brained veep who lives in a closet somewhere and only comes out at night (not really). That such a twosome is successfully dismantling the country is all the more astonishing. How can they be succeeding? Where are the checks and balances? Well…they’ve all failed to do their job because Americans largely haven’t insisted they do so. Like the civically lazy lardasses we’ve become, we’ve simply let go of our country from our grip.
Congress? Hah…corporate tools.
Media? Hah-hah. Also corporate and largely racing to reach tabloid dominance.
Citizen protests? Too much work, and besides, they’d be labeled as terrorism cuz we let this administration define everything in any manner it likes and we buy it — cuz we don’t wanna be unpatriotic.
Okay, then how about that worldwide, 21st century tool, the Internet? Works great for users to reach each other, work up ideas and plans. Unfortunately, it also keeps most indoors, physically isolated from each other. And even 10 million emails to the White House amount to nothing. They’re only a giant-sized Delete button away from extinction. Seven years of stasis supports the truth of that.
In another day and age, with a different kind of mentality with a sense of civic responsibility, the streets would have long ago been clogged with protestors almost every day. Media would have told the government to stuff its lies and evasions and coverage rules and would be hounding every government official trying to hide from the transparency the public is owed; photos of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq would be published daily for our eyes to see and our hearts to wince and our courage to grow. Congressional electees and staffs would have to choose between their corporate masters and saying the truth to a dogged media or to persistent gangs of protesters clogging their every path.
Sound like a fairy tale? Okay, let’s make it one…or at the least the start of one.
Once upon a time, there was a country that built itself on the amazing premise that its governance belonged to the people, not to some king or dictator or pea-brained despot. For a long time, that country flourished under that new approach of liberty and justice. Then one day…
You finish it.
my Mohonk extravagance
I will post about our day at the Mohonk Mountain House after I rest up from a weekend navigating the inner workings of the well-know sandwich between my 91 year old mom, who has caught a bad cold, and my funny and energetic five-year old grandson.
This is him thoroughly enjoying the strawberries that he dipped in the chocolate fountain and covered with whipped cream at the famous Mohonk (and, yes, expensive) Sunday Brunch. He’s wearing the tie dyed t-shirt that I bought him at the Groovy Blueberry and mugging for the camera with his chocolate covered mouth.
I will post more after I download the rest of the photos and have a chance to REST!!