Just Between Strangersmusings tossed into the void . . . |
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Two developments in the legal world that ingrigue/perplex/amaze me, in various ways:
(via A.W.A.D.)
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an
injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are
aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons,
especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.
- - Thomas Szasz,
author, professor of psychiatry (1920- )
For no apparent reason this morning, flashes of recall of two grandmothers. Me set up with a snack tray on the screened-in porch while she mends and he reads the paper; the magic of a musty drawer full of things collected to fuel my imaginings. A cup of tea for three generations of ladies, discussing books; her amazement at the prowess of my generation with all things. Two grandmothers who in different ways made me feel capable of anything, interesting, followed with admiration.Are we really taking this thing seriously? 'All men are created equal.' And that means that every man who lives in a slum today is just as significant as John D., Nelson, or any other Rockefeller. Every man who lives in the slum is just as significant as Henry Ford.Yeah, still doesn't feel like our operating principle....
Today I deleted all my personal files from a computer I've had for some sixteen years and got it ready for Craig's List or donation. I've switched computers plenty of times through the years, but this was the only one that ever made me feel misty, and I even put off shutting it down for the last time.
Have wanted to write something since Saturday, to rage at the right-wing machine that has been spewing violent language directed at liberals and Democrats for years (great summary from 2010 here) and then disavowing and link when crazies take them literally and hurt somebody. But most of that has probably already been said. How they can continue not to see their own role in fomenting terrorism amazes me, but there's plenty of precedent for such blindness, so it's unlikely to be cured now.It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman's act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge.The point that this language really comes exclusively from the right these days, despite the media's preference to talk about "the partisan divide" or "polarization on both sides" or whatever, is made very well in Gabrielle Giffords and the rightwing hate machine.
...The right’s messaging infrastructure, meticulously constructed and refined over decades, promotes an image of liberals as traitors and America-haters, unworthy of their country and bent on destroying it. There is simply no comparable propaganda effort on the left.I noted some of this previously when gun-toters started showing up at Obama events and the like; not feeling much more chipper about it now...
The imbalance is stark: Democrats and liberals rail against the right’s ideas; the right rails against the left’s very existence.
pink glow of morning over the rooftops --You can be on the side of angels without having to be cautious, indecisive, and paranoid all the time. The angels actually want you to be scrappy and assertive.
In the past 15 years, claims about hardwired differences between boys and girls have propagated virally, with no genuine neuroscientific justification. In reality, culture, attitudes, and practices influence boy-girl academic gaps far more than prenatal testosterone does. The sooner teachers open their eyes to such influences, the sooner we can bring out the best in every child.
(via the CSLewisDaily Twitter feed)
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
- - C.S. Lewis
Our society really has some crazy mental blockages when it comes to physical integrity and what constitutes rape. I really can't improve on this explication at Feministe, which might have introduced the definitive simile to help the slow-witted with this one.Indeed. Here's wishing you whatever whiff of pine or line of song helps you find your way there.may the smallest most tender
memories of Christmas
tie our hearts to both seen and unseen miracles.
(via A.W.A.D.)
All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with;
all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong,
or deny to be possible.
- - George Santayana,
philosopher (1863-1952)
The last few months have seen the continued emergence of your independent self, more distinct in its tastes and more feisty in its demands. For the first time, you're willing to play by yourself for stretches of time; you'd still like a spectator, but you're willing to build structures for your frogs yourself and narrate their activities. You've also mastered a host of new skills, from jumping with two feet (still an iffy proposition) and pedaling your trike (a stretch) to blowing your nose (a fall cold made you a real expert). You can come along to a few restaurants and eat off the menu right with us, all nonchalant with your fork and cup. And you now lie next to your heap of sleep friends, rather than on top of them, and have even taken to using a pillow at night -- just like real folks! hah.
Other times, it seems a natural extension of your existing interests -- for example, you love to give naturalist lectures based on the book of North American birds (with special attention to the "gaberhorn" category that you invented), jumbling together facts and phrases from all kinds of sources. You're also starting to play with language a bit, making up your own exclamations ("seds!") and playing with nonsense sounds, much to your own amusement. You're also a sponge for idiom, and sometimes leave acquaintances agog when you come out with some ornamented turn of phrase they absolutely weren't expecting from a toddler. (Luckily, to date, nothing profane or embarrassing to parents, at least as far as we know.)
I reject entirely the idea that there can be any community consensus about what – beyond the provision of love and care – constitutes a good mother. I reject entirely the idea that we can or should judge each other as mothers, beyond the obvious and most basic standards of care, and even then, I reject entirely the idea that any one of us is so perfect that she could throw the first stone without hesitation.Amen. We all have aspirations, and we all sometimes just have to Get Through the Day. Nobody's perfect.
And yet, one supposes that Washington will not hear... Thanks for trying, Holbrook, although your case might have been stronger made in person on the airwaves!
Apparently my ability to blog is a bit broken. Or at least constipated, to judge from all the tabs I pile up with good intentions. Anyway, enough with the grumpy! Let's have some cheeful and interesting stuff from the last week or two!Create in me a divine cooperation: from
many selves, one voice, one action.
An empty Washington Monument would serve as a constant reminder to those on Capitol Hill that they are afraid of the terrorists and what they could do. They're afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism -- or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity -- they will be branded as "soft on terror." And they're afraid that Americans would vote them out of office if another attack occurred. Perhaps they're right, but what has happened to leaders who aren't afraid? What has happened to "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?Nobody's going to close the Washington Monument to make a point, but is it too much to hope that there's still time for sanity to return, and for discussions to get beyond the hysterical?
(via whiskey river)
You Learn
After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
and you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises,
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes open
with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
and you learn to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure.
That you really are strong.
And you really do have worth.
And you learn. And learn.
With every good-bye you learn.
- - Jorge Luis Borges Veronica Shoffstall
(via A.W.A.D.)
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
- - Alexis de Tocqueville,
statesman and historian (1805-1859)
Lots of ongoing kerfluffle on the Interwebs about the TSA's porn-or-grope screening procedures. Here's a round-up of some of the more interesting bits:Other passengers may substitute car travel for air travel. But this too has its consequences, since car travel is much more dangerous than air travel over all. According to the Cornell study, roughly 130 inconvenienced travelers died every three months as a result of additional traffic fatalities brought on by substituting ground transit for air transit. That’s the equivalent of four fully-loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year.
One, a timeless LOL-cat that appears to be about Mondays and/or parenting.(via whiskey river)
The task of genius, and man is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously.
- - Henry Miller
The problem isn't scientists learning how to tell cool stories, which is a skill of great value in any society because humans relate and learn through stories, but that America has raised generations of people to make fun of anyone who cares about shit enough to learn something complicated and be passionately engaged with their work, and marginalize and ignore what they have to say.
''If we amplify everything, we hear nothing," he said, adding: "Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people but to the racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate."Q: will sanity spread? (sigh.)
(from The Heron's Nest, Vol. XII:3)
autumn air . . .
the diminishing trail
of voices
- Mary Davila
If they didn’t intend to make a movie that was interrogating toxic masculinity and its effect on women, they managed to make a movie where that theme is the main one that everyone who leaves the theater appears to be discussing. At a certain point, the thing that is most notable about "The Social Network" might just be the thing that the movie is about. Or at least one of the things.Worth reading the piece for its thoughts about movie- and TV makers, and what they're trying to make their audiences feel, as much as for anything about this film itself.
(@Eschaton)
I wonder what younger people (teens) think about why the hell we went to war in Iraq. I lived through the whole nonsense as an adult and I still have no fucking idea.
- - Atrios
As though the generation of crappy mortgage loans and the foisting of their risk onto investment funds weren't crooked enough, banksters couldn't be bothered to keep records of their shenanigans, so nobody's sure who actually owns the loans on many homes faced with foreclosure. I agree with Digby that it's time for some jail terms and a lot fewer handouts to financial geniuses!! (via whiskey river, celebrating 10 years of spiffiness)
But we still find the world astounding, we can't get enough of it; even as it shrivels, even as its many lights flicker and are extinguished (the tigers, the leopard frogs, the plunging dolphin flukes), flicker and are extinguished, by us, by us, we gaze and gaze. Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.
- - Margaret Atwood
When conservationists argued for the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone Park, I think they were concerned mostly with the fate of the wolves themselves, but they surely thought also of the burgeoning elk population in the park and the diseases to which it had become susceptible. Still, they must have been pleasantly surprised when the benefits trickled down to songbirds and the formation of ponds and rivers in the park. A reminder that ecosystems are closely interconnected, and, as the writer notes toward the end of the piece, a prod to further thought about how we might best deal with coming climate change.2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
If you treat finishing like a skill, rather than simply a step in the process, you can acknowledge not only that it’s something you can get better at, but also what habits and thought processes get in your way.
I'm afraid that Josh has a point here. Getting rid of Santorum really mobilized PA voters, but now an even scarier guy, Toomey, is in the race and barely making waves in either the media coverage or the sense of widespread Democratic ennui. I know the Tea Partiers have been claiming the Crazy Right mantel, but that doesn't mean that these Club for Growth creeps should start being viewed as moderate!
I know that Chicago has had a Daley as mayor for 50 out of the last 60 years, so they're used to having autocrats in power. But still, would they be excited for Rahm Emanuel? Perhaps Chicago is more forgiving of personality (relative to prowess and policy) than some places...(via A.W.A.D.)
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
- - Desmond Tutu,
clergyman (b. 1931)
I think progressives in general have to decide whether to work when the work is easy, or work when the work is hard. It was definitely comparatively easy to work for Obama two years ago, because there was idealism, hope, and a kind of certainty that if only we could elect him, then everything would change and it would somehow be easy, despite the campaign's best efforts to tell us that change is hard. It hasn't been easy, and now we're witnessing a population make the choice on whether to roll up their sleeves or sit on their hands.I also think there was such relief to be rid of Bush (and to have avoided the bullet of McCain) that we wanted to bask for a while. But the opposition made sure we didn't get much to wallow in, and we can't let their obstructionism get the upper hand. Tally ho!
The very definition of news is "something that almost never happens."
(via whiskey river)
It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.
- - Jeanette Winterson
Interested in local politics of Philadelphia and/or PA? Check out A Smoke-Filled Room
The regional heavyweights are summarized at
Those who would trade an essential freedom for temporary security deserve neither freedom nor security.
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