Another attack

Details here

new to blogroll

I've just added Burb Rocking to the blogroll. It's not political, (yet), but it's a group blog my older sister started, and I'm a contributor, so I have to blogroll it. Plus, there are pictures, which I like but use sparingly myself (as you may have noticed).

John Roberts

Information on the nominee.

If he gets on the court, which is likely, we shouldn't be surprised
to see not just an end to legal abortion in the U.S., but an end to
legal contraception* and affirmative action. Bad news for American women and American minorities

*If Roberts is in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, who Bush calls
his "ideal", he does not believe the Constitution grants any right to
privacy, although what does Article IX do but say that the people have rights that are not enumerated within the Constitution. Since it is likely that Roberts is an "ideal" Bush jurist, he should be questioned strongly about not just his judicial decisions, which are limited as he's only been on the bench for two years, but whether he agrees with the expressed judicial opinions of Scalia and Thomas.

UPDATE: I took out some erroneous information. 20.9% of American women have abortions. That's still pretty significant, and you probably know someone who has had one. (If not, hi, nice to meet you, I had an abortion. There, now you know someone.) The Alan Guttmacher Institute is a fanstastic resource for information on reproductive issues, and that's where I got my updated information. Thanks to John Howard for making me take a second look at the numbers.

Drat

It's not Edith Clement Brown, after all. It's a smug looking bastard instead.

The nominee

Edith Clement Brown is the nominee for the opening on the Supreme Court. She doesn't seem to have rendered any opinions on many controversial subjects, which I suspect is why she was chosen.

I don't like her. She's a Republican, she's a Bush supporter, and a member of the Federalist Society. I don't trust people who support George Bush. IMO, if you support George Bush, that's evidence of a problem with your judgement.

ETA: maybe she's not the nominee...yet...but the rumor mill is swirling.

The human body is 70% water

Except for mine, which is about 20% water right now. The rest of the water that used to be inside my body came out in the form of sweat today, as Loki and I spent 5 hours (there and back) in our non-air conditioned car, in the about 3968% humidity air of New York. We passed by 2 boroughs as we drove on the NE Thruway and we couldn't see either one of them because of what appeared to be smog.

The good news is that Sio is winging her way across the Atlantic Ocean right now, and will be landing at Heathrow in about 3 hours or so. Although it will be 1am her time when she lands, she did have the foresight to spend the entire car ride asleep in the sweltering heat of the back seat. She's supposed to call me when she gets to Corfu, which should coincide with the time I am eating breakfast.

It's still damn hot and humid here in CT, and to add to the joy, I can smell a goddamn skunk right outside my kitchen window. I hate summer in New England.

On the road again

We're leaving in a few minutes to take Sio down to JFK. She'll be flying to London this evening, and tomorrow morning she'll be going to Greece. On Wednesday, she'll be taking a boat to Albania for an overnight stay. Then back to Corfu. They'll be taking day trips all over Greece while they're there.

When she goes back to London, she'll be staying with a friend of mine who is going to take her on a tour of University College London, which is Sio's first choice for college. After a few days with my friend, she'll be staying with family for the remainder of her trip.

Please think good thoughts for Sio on her travels, that she stays safe and has a great, life-changing in a good way time.

Gone swimming

I'll be at the beach for the rest of the day.

Seen and Read

SEEN

Loki and I saw Batman Begins on Friday night. Christian Bale is an interesting actor, IMO. There is something reserved and tightly contained about him, but his character's emotions are not far from the surface. I felt enormously sympathetic towards his Bruce Wayne, and I didn't expect to feel so moved by a comic book movie.

Great things about the movie: In addition to Bale, Gary Oldman reminded me of what a fine actor he can be. Morgan Freeman doesn't even have to say anything to win the audience over - he is casting shorthand for "good guy".

Good things about the movie: Michael Caine was pretty good, although a little obvious in some of his delivery.

Not so great things: Tom Wilkinson was in the wrong Batman - his performance was jarringly kitschy in an otherwise realistically presented film. Katie Holmes made me really hope she and Bruce wouldn't get together. I couldn't take her baby-voiced self-righteousness seriously.

Things I haven't decided are good or bad yet: Cillian Murphy gave a fine performance, and he his limpid pools of blue are deeper than Elijah Wood's, but I had a hard time buying him as a prominent psychiatrist because he looks like he hasn't started shaving yet.

I recommend, primarily for Bale - he provides an emotional center to the story that I think previous Batman movies lacked.

(Something that made me wish for an alternate universe: imagine Christian Bale playing every big role Tom Cruise has ever played. Bale has intensity to rival the wee Clam, but so much more depth.)

(I was thinking that Freeman should play a bad guy, just to go against type, but then I remembered Nurse Betty, where he's a cold-blooded killer...who I still felt incredibly sympathetic towards. He just emanates warmth.)

READ

I just finished reading Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. The violent faith in this book is the Church of Jesus Christ and Ladder Day Saints. Krakauer weaves the history of the Mormon faith together with a contemporary story of a brutal murder commmitted by Ron & Dan Lafferty, two members of the fundmentalist Mormon community. While Krakauer is careful to note that most Mormons are industrious, cheerful, and wholesome, he explores the history of the religion, which includes fraud, massacres and sexual abuse.

Krakauer's focus is on the fundamentalist Mormon community, which split with the main church when the latter denounced polygamy. There are fundamentalist communities in the United States, Canada and Mexico, which practice "plural marriage", sometimes marrying girls of 13 or 14 off to men who are not only generations older than them, but oftentimes related to them.

The Mormon faith believes that followers have a very personal relationship with God, and they consider themselves "prophets, seers and revelators". In the case of Ron Lafferty, he claims God revealed that he should "remove" his sister-in-law and other people who Lafferty believed encouraged his wife to leave him. He shared this "removal revelation" with members of his fundamentalist ward, yet no one attempted to stop him.

The courtroom scenes were particularly interesting to me. The defense attorney wanted his client deemed not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecutor took the tack that millions of people believe in God, and perform rituals and practices that could be deemed insane when taken out of context (transubstantiation, anyone?). In addition, aside from his religious beliefs, which were way out of the mainstream, he wasn't at all insane - he had qualities of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but he wasn't schizophrenic or psychopathic. He followed the faith her learned from his family and community, and that faith led him to commit an act of extreme violence. Essentially, the prosecutor argued that if we were to believe that Ron was insane, we would necessarily have to deem any person of faith insane.

I recommend the book if you are interested in the topic of fundamentalism.

One Stop Shopping

There was a time when I started my blogging day by heading over to Daily Kos. But those days are gone. Now I head over to Shakespeare's Sister, and blog posts like this one are the reason why. She's a daily necessity, and if you aren't reading her, you should amend that immediately.

On Rove

I am loath to get too excited over the growing furor about Karl Rove - bags of scum are slippery, after all. He may well survive this.

And if Rove does resign or get fired because of the Plame leak, I don't think that means he is done playing a role for this White House. Even if he ends up in big trouble (of the prison variety), I don't think that would make the current administration shun him.

No, this has to be tied to the whole administration. It will not be satisfying to me if Rove gets frogmarched out of the White House only to continue his role from behind bars. I want this story to tie together with all the other scandals (OBL still free, no WMD, billions missing in Iraq, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, DSM, etc.) to besmirch this whole foul administration. The cancer in this administration is not a tumor called Karl - the whole stinking body is riddled with the disease.

Music History

or the soundtrack of my life, inspired by a post at Pandagon.

1969-1976 - Country music, variety show acts, showtunes: Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, The Osmonds, Sonny & Cher, Bobby Vinton, the Jackson 5, soundtracks to the Wizard of Oz, Sesame Street, Bambi, Lady and the Tramp. Also Irish music - The Dubliners, The Savage Brothers, lots of people whose names I can't remember.

1977-1978 - I started choosing my own music, and even then, I mostly liked people I could sing along with - Billy Joel, The Beatles, The Kinks. I listen to certain David Bowie over and over again, writing the lyrics down until I've memorized them.

1979-1981 - I am obsessed with Led Zeppelin and The Who. I think Mick Jagger is sex on two legs even though I'm not quite sure what sex is. This somehow morphs into interest in Black Sabbath and other metal bands that I can't quite remember the names of.

1981-1983 - Somewhere in there, my older sister and I saw David Byrne on TV, and we were hooked - Talking Heads and the B-52's. I don't understand why everyone likes the new version of Michael Jackson, when it was clear to me that he wasn't singing anymore, just making noise.

1983-1984 - my Duran Duran years. My best friend in Jr. High also introduced me to Prince and Parliament. I loved Midnight Oil. Also listened to The Thompson Twins, Eurythmics, U2. I resist all things related to Madonna, but I am fond of Weird Al.

1984-1986 - Teenage angst - yes, I listened to The Cure. My cousin moved back to the U.S. from Ireland and got us hooked on The Jam. I start listening to punk - Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Clash, PiL, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, Black Flag, etc.

1986 - I spend the summer at the Center for Creative Youth and become obsessed with Bob Dylan.

1987 - my senior year of high school. The Violent Femmes, Frank Zappa, still listening to punk and Dylan.

1988-1989 - I introduce my new boyfriend, who loves Styx, to good music. He is so grateful that he knocks me up *and* marries me.

1989-1996 - Loki will refer to these as the dark years. Showtunes, showtunes, showtunes. I listen to every Stephen Sondheim show over and over again. Sio knows all the words to Black Boys from Hair. March of the Falsettos, Ain't Misbehavin', Little Shop of Horrors, Ruthless! the Musical, etc., etc., etc. I also listen to lots of k.d. lang and Tori Amos. I get interested in traditional Irish music and start listening to The Chieftains and Cherish the Ladies.

1997 - the year Monkey was born. I don't know if I listened to anything while she was getting tested for every disease under the sun because she wouldn't gain any weight.

1998-present. Fairly eclectic. I still listen to almost everything listed above. Ben Folds, Nellie McKay, Outkast, Marvin Gaye, White Stripes, Incubus, Stevie Wonder, I could go on.

If I'm quiet today

It's because I'm making arrangements for Sio to stay with various friends and family members when she goes to London in a couple of weeks. She'll be there for 6 days, she's planning on touring UCL with my friend who works there on the 28th or 29th, and then she's on her own as far as plans. She's done a bunch of touristy things there before - museums, the Eye, etc., but I'm sure she's keen for suggestions, so if you have any, please leave them in the comments.

BTW, just to show you how lucky this kid is, she's going to Greece before she goes to London. Yeah, we could have used the money spent on this trip (less than $1K) to fix up stuff around the house, or as a downpayment on a new car, but I'm a more grasshopper than ant.

My London

My first trip to London was in 1988, the year I got pregnant, got married, and dropped out of college. I went to England and Scotland on tour with my college Madrigal Choir and Orchestra - we were a 16 voice choir and a 20+ seat orchestra, performing songs by Vivaldi, Aaron Copeland, Benjamin Britten and Brahms, among others. We traveled north and then swung back around to spend the last 4 days of our trip in London. We stayed in a hotel that was rather fleabaggy, but was a short walk to the Paddington station, and that wonderful tube opens up the whole city for you.

I have a couple of indelible memories from that first trip - I learned how to play poker in London, and I got my first legal buzz in a nightclub somewhere near the Piccadilly Circus station. Our first night in London, we went to see 42nd Street at the Drury Lane Theater. After the show, we were walking by a rowdy pub and saw a dwarf get tossed through a window.

Our last day in London, we had a concert scheduled at the Royal Festival Hall. The weather during our trip had been almost miraculous - 10 days of sunshine as we traveled around England, our only wet day occurred on a day long stopover in Windemere, a rest stop before we pushed through to Fife, Scotland. This last day, the sky was threatening rain all morning. By the time we arrived at the RFH, the sky was done threatening and let loose a torrent. We set up the Orchestra and warmed up our voices. We were all feeling blue that our trip was nearly over, but we put our sadness aside to focus on the music.

The last number we performed at that concert was a rousing gospel song (which I can't quite remember the name of, which is going to drive me nuts). As we sang the words (that are on the tip of my tongue but not quite there yet), the clouds parted, the sun came shining through the rain, and I swear to all the powers of the universe that a rainbow appeared over the Royal Festival Hall.

My second trip to London was quite different. Loki, Sio, Monkey and I went to England during February vacation in 2003, just a few weeks before Bush officially launched the Iraq invasion. We initially were going to tell people we were Canadian, but we didn't, and we ended up having some wonderful conversations with folks we met all over the country about Bush and the war and how many Americans were still sane.

That vacation started in London - we stayed at the County Hall Travel Inn, just across the river from Big Ben and a quick walk to the London Eye. We were only there for an overnight, and then we rented a car and drove all over the place. We went to Stonehenge, Bath, Glastonbury, and after 4 days we made our way back to London to visit with my family. We were going to stay at the County Hall Travel Inn again, but my cousin Eileen and her husband Mick insisted we stay with them.

Although I'm only first generation American, I have a lot of Yankee in my personality, and I am sometimes standoffish around people I don't know well. This was the first time I met Eileen and Mick, and we clicked like we had grown up together. We stayed with them for 4 days, 4 days of Mick's whistlestop tour of *his* London, a city for which his love was boundless and contagious. 4 days of staying up until 2 in the morning laughing and talking and singing. I went to England to visit museums and see the sights, and instead I had the best time of my life sitting with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits in a kitchen in Winchmore Hill.

I hate terrorists

The fuckers are at it again.

If I seem quiet

It's because my blogging muse has done and left me. Meanwhile, my fiction muse is working overtime, so I've been working on a couple of short stories. One is about a Martha Stewart type whose "to-do" list includes murder; another is about a future where Oprah is the Goddess of the most prominent religion. If I decide they are worth finishing, I'll post some excerpts at some point.

In the meantime: there is no one who makes me want to believe in Hell more than Karl Rove makes me want to believe in Hell. The idea of him roasting for all eternity makes me feel so happy and peaceful inside. The fact that people like Rove aren't smited down on a routine basis is evidence against the existance of God.

Feminism

Amanda at Pandagon, riffing off an article on Salon, was writing about feminism this morning, and her post reminded me of the first time I encounted a negative reaction to the word feminist.

My older sister tells people that I was a born feminist. Like most children, I was exquisitely aware of what was fair and what wasn't, and I could see that girls were treated unfairly as plain as the nose on my face - we couldn't play baseball, we couldn't play football, we had to wear shirts no matter how freaking hot it was outside, we were admonished as unladylike when we climbed trees or caught snakes or did any of the things that I, as a young tomboy, thought of as fun.

I remember my temper rising in CCD as we learned about Adam and Eve - how dare the church pass off this ridiculous story as being truth? Women have the babies, so they had to come first - it seemed obvious to me that Adam must have had a mother, he had a bellybutton just like the rest of us - and I knew how we got our bellybuttons, so I was not impressed by the supposed Word of God.

Anyway, I identified strongly with the concept of feminism, because it's common sense - if everyone doesn't have equality, then no one has equality.

When Sio was a year old, I got a job at a newspaper. I worked in Classified advertising with a bunch of women - the supervisor, also named Maureen, who was an older woman who raised 5 kids by herself when her husband died from an allergic reaction to an anesthetic when he went in the hospital for surgery; Judy, who was raising 2 kids by herself because her ex-husband was in jail; Ethel, a Norwegian woman who was devoutly Christian and always looked like a million bucks; Cheryl, who was kind of ditzy and couldn't quit smoking even after she had part of one cancerous lung removed; and Sue, who was married to the mayor of the town and worked part-time now that her children were grown and out of the house.

These women were all really lovely to work with, and we had a lot of fun as we worked. Maureen was a tough old broad on the outside, but was absolute marshmellow on the inside, and since we shared both a name and a birthdate, she took an instant liking to me.

One day we got on the subject of feminism, and I was shocked to hear Ethel and Sue speak so negatively about feminists. "But you're women!" I said. "That's like saying you're against yourself!"

Sue said I was too young to understand. "The feminists were just really radical," she said.

"Well, I think they'd have to be," I said. "Look at how long it took for women to get the right to vote. You need radical people to get the ball rolling! Should Maureen make .30 cents less than a man in her position, just because she's a woman?"

"Hell, no!" Maureen said.

Sue didn't like confrontation, particularly not with the supervisor, so that was the end of the conversation. Her husband, the mayor, turned out to be a crook, so she ended up getting divorced from him a few years later. I wonder if she ever thought back to our conversation as she tried to recover her life after a divorce that cost them everything?

I don't want to go back!

Loki and I had such a lovely weekend - hanging around the bookstore, going to the beach, taking the ferry to Block Island...I'm not ready to get back into normal life again!

Light Posting

Despite the potential deliciousness of Karl Rove getting frogmarched, there will continue to be light posting through the next 2 days. My excuse: it's in the low 80's and sunny, with a beautiful breeze and low humidity. That weather combination happening on a holiday weekend when for all intents and purposes Loki and I are childless is too good to pass up.

Ode to a Goldfish

I won't speak of justices leaving the bench
or whether the new guy will be bad or a mensch
I can't talk of justice deferred or denied
For Fiona, the calico goldfish, has died.

For nearly six years, she lived in a bowl
with green pebbles and plants and a shell that we stole
from Bahamian beaches, in sunnier climes
Where we traveled with family in money-er times

She almost died twice while under our care
Fi floating on top of the water did scare,
but a call to the vet fixed her problem with ease
We relieved her "fish gas" with beans and with peas.

For six years her bowl sat near our kitchen sink
The cats left her, (tho from her bowl they would drink)
There will be sorrow and tears will be shed,
For Fiona, the calico goldfish is dead.

RIP, Fiona (Oct. 1999-June 2005)