Religious Leaders Offer Solutions to War, But No One Cares
I am posting the following as copied directly from an email I got asking for my support in sharing this information. I am posting the following because several people who left comments on burnigbird's blog said that they wish someone would make some positive suggestions for solutions instead of pointing fingers. Well, what if the world's religious leaders got together and vowed to take a unified stand on dealing with world violence, but nobody cared? Apparently they did, and nobody does.

THE ASSISI DECALOGUE
by David Waters, a columnist for the syndicated Memphis, Tennessee Commercial Appeal

What if leaders of the world's major religions got together one day and denounced all religious violence? What if they unanimously agreed to make this plain, clear and bold statement to the world?

"Violence and terrorism are opposed to all true religious spirit and we condemn all recourse to violence and war in the name of God or religion." It could change the world. At the very least, it would be big news, wouldn't it? Apparently not.

More than 200 leaders of the world's dozen major religions did get together Jan. 24 in Assisi, Italy. Maybe you missed the story about it the next day. Most newspapers didn't carry it. And it was hidden inside many of those that did. There was a lot of other news that day. The Enron hearings opened in Washington. John Walker Lindh made his first court appearance.

It's no wonder the largest meeting of world religious leaders in history couldn't even make the front page. Pope John Paul II and a number of cardinals were at the meeting. So was Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of all Orthodox Christians. So were a dozen Jewish rabbis, including some from Israel. So were 30 Muslim imams from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan. So were dozens of ministers representing Baptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Disciples of Christ, Mennonites, Quakers, Moravians, The Salvation Army and the World Council of Churches.

So were dozens of monks, gurus and others representing Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Zoroastrians and native African religions. They ignored the personal and political risk of attending such a high-profile gathering.

They convened and talked and prayed. They unanimously agreed to condemn "every recourse to violence and war in the name of God or religion." They also said, "No religious goal can possibly justify the use of violence by man against man." And that "Whoever uses religion to foment violence contradicts religion's deepest and truest inspiration." They called their statement the Assisi Decalogue for Peace. It consists of 10 mutual commitments to work for peace and justice in the world, including this one:

"We commit ourselves to stand at the side of those who suffer poverty and abandonment, speaking out for those who have no voice, and to working effectively to change these situations." On March 4, the Pope sent a copy of the to all of the world's heads of state.

Maybe you missed the story. It didn't even make the newspapers the next day, hidden inside or not. There was a lot of other news that day. Seven American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Israeli troops killed 17 people in the West Bank. Mike Tyson got a license to box.

What if leaders of the world's major religions got together one and denounced all religious violence---and no one cared?

DECALOGUE OF ASSISI FOR PEACE
1. We commit ourselves to proclaiming our firm conviction that violence and terrorism are incompatible with the authentic spirit of rreligion, and, as we condemn every recourse to violence and war in the name of God or of religion, we commit ourselves to doing everything possible to eliminate the root causes of terrorism.

2. We commit ourselves to educating people to mutual respect and esteem, in order to help bring about a peaceful and fraternal coexistence between people of different ethnic groups, cultures and religions.

3. We commit ourselves to fostering the culture of dialogue, so that there will be an increase of understanding and mutual trust between individuals and among peoples, for these are the premise of authentic peace.

4. We commit ourselves to defending the right of everyone to live a decent life in accordance with their own cultural identity, and to form freely a family of his own.

5. We commit ourselves to frank and patient dialogue, refusing to consider our differences as an insurmountable barrier, but recognizing instead that to encounter the diversity of others can become an opportunity for greater reciprocal understanding.

6. We commit ourselves to forgiving one another for past and present errors and prejudices, and to supporting one another in a common effort both to overcome selfishness and arrogance, hatred and violence, and to learn from the past that peace without justice is no true peace.

7. We commit ourselves to taking the side of the poor and the helpless, to speaking out for those who have no voice and to working effectively to change these situations, out of the conviction that no one can be happy alone.

8. We commit ourselves to taking up the cry of those who refuse to be resigned to violence and evil, and we are desire to make every effort possible to offer the men and women of our time real hope for justice and peace.

9. We commit ourselves to encouraging all efforts to promote friendship between peoples, for we are convinced that, in the absence of solidarity and understanding between peoples, technological progress exposes the world to a growing risk of destruction and death.

10. We commit ourselves to urging leaders of nations to make every effort to create and consolidate, on the national and international levels, a world of solidarity and peace based on justice.

Please share this with all those who, as far as you know, yearn for peace and freedom from terrorism of all kinds.

And, for a really far-out plan to end violence, check out this site on How to stop terrorism without resorting to military action.

Eavesdropping on the Pro-Israel Rally
The Jerusalem Post reports on the Pro-Israel rally that took place in Washington D.C. today and includes the following, which I find very disturbing:
When House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Missouri) said the US is committed to preserving and strengthening Israel's security, the crowd erupted in wild applause. But when he spoke about securing a just and lasting peace for all, the crowd fell silent. [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz, a staunch supporter of Israel, was heckled nonetheless when he said Israelis are not the only victims of violence in the Middle East and that the majority of Palestinians want peace.

When he started a sentence, "The people of Israel and Palestine..." some in the crowd started screaming "What Palestine?" Another, appearing dismayed, said, "This is Wolfowitz?" "No double standards," people chanted as Wolfowitz spoke.
The chanting was so distracting that Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Presidents Conference, asked people at the end of his remarks to stay silent until after the speakers were completed.

I'm not given to prayer, but I think it's time that even I start praying for peace. It doesn't sound like the Pro-Israel people are.

History in Song and Shadow
In Googling for the lyrics of the song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" to cite in the post below, I found it on a site called History in Song, which chronicles history-related songs from the American revolution through the Viet Nam War -- a war which I protested with all of my small voice and big mouth. In surfing that site, I found this entry related to the massacre, by our American soldiers, of the inhabitants of the village of My Lai:

According to accounts that suddenly appeared on TV and in the world press …, a cam-company of 60 or 70 U.S. infantrymen had entered My Lai early one morning and destroyed its houses, its livestock and all the inhabitants that they could find in a brutal operation that took less than 20 minutes. When it was over, the Vietnamese dead totaled at least 100 men, women and children, and perhaps many more. Only 25 or so escaped, because they lay hidden under the fallen bodies of relatives and neighbors.

The America GIs raced from house to house, setting the wooden ones ablaze and dynamiting the brick structures. Others routed the inhabitants out of their bunkers and herded them into groups....

Few were spared. Stragglers were shot down as they fled from their burning huts. One soldier fired his M-79 grenade launcher into a clump of bodies in which some Vietnamese were still alive. One chilling incident was observed by Ronald L. Haeberle, 28, the Army combat photographer who had been assigned to C Company. He saw "two small children, maybe four or five years old. A guy with an M-16 fired at the first boy, and the older boy fell over to protect the smaller one. Then they fired six more shots. It was done very businesslike."

The site shares this disturbing satirical song, sung to the tune of a popular romantic piece, "Wake the Town and Tell the People”
Strafe the town and kill the people
Let's declare a massacre.
Lay napalm in the square,
So you'll know that Jake was there,
Drop the candy in the courtyard,
Let the kiddies gather 'round.
Crank your twenty-millimeter,
Gun the little bastards down.
Come 'round early Sunday morning,
Catch the village unaware.
Drop a bunch of cluster bomblets,
Get 'em while they kneel in prayer.

As a species, we humans keep denying our shadow side, and in doing so, we allow our demons to rule our souls.

It is just this type of mother image that Kali represents. Starck and Stern say "Kali-Ma, the Dark Mother, holds the two edge sword; she has the power to slay the demons as well as the ability to be compassionate. At a certain point it becomes necessary to take Kali's sword and cut through the illusions that protect us from seeing and acting on the truth."

We, who do not learn from history.....
When an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps..... And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence. That is not peace.....We are approaching a major turning point in world history, in the history of civilization. It has already been noted by specialists in various areas. I could compare it only with the turning from the Middle Ages to the modern era, a shift in our civilization. It is a juncture at which settled concepts suddenly become hazy, lose their precise contours, at which our familiar and commonly used words lose their meaning, become empty shells, and methods which have been reliable for many centuries no longer work. It's the sort of turning point where the hierarchy of values which we have venerated, and which we use to determine what is important to us and what causes our hearts to beat, is starting to rock and may collapse.

These are the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, from a yellowed Monday February 28, 1977 newspaper article that my mother unearthed this morning in cleaning out her stack of old newspaper clippings. He was writing about communism back then, but he could be writing our world situations today. When will we ever learn; when will we ever learn.

This is from a letter to the Editor...
...in today's Times Union:
To avoid the continuation of the unacceptable status quo, Israel has only two choices: to accept the creation of a Palestinian state and a reasonable resettling of the refugees, or to drive out or kill all the Palestinians in theWest Bank and Gaza Strip, an act akin to the Nazi Holocaust.

Let us hope that the assertion "never again" applies to everyone.

We have been here before, you and I, in our lifetimes.
Read b!X's concise chronicling of reports on current atrocities in the Middle East.

I will not take sides
I resent being prodded to take sides in the Middle East conflict. I have said before in these words, that I don’t support “the weary dreams of men reduced to war,” no matter what side they’re on. I don’t pretend to understand what drives the MEN who are the leaders in these conflicts to so willingly march their people to destruction. As a woman, I don’t share their testosterone dreams.

However, despite the fact that I protest war, if I found myself, my family, my community being systematically persecuted and destroyed, if I found myself facing a future of cultural and national annihilation, I might, indeed, resort to violence. I might, indeed, strap explosives to my body. BUT, I wouldn’t go and kill innocent people in a marketplace or bus stop. What I might do is enlist myself as a Mata Hari type and do what is necessary to get close to the murdering tyrannical bastards, and then I’d blow THEM up, sacrificing myself if I had to. (I guess you could call those estrogen nightmares.) Desperate people are driven to desperate, even self-destructive actions. It’s not right, it’s not moral. But if it’s war, that’s the way it is. Waging war has consequences. Suicide bombings are one of them.

I am monumentally grateful that I have never found myself in the position to make that choice and don’t believe I ever will. And I am profoundly disappointed that those who have never personally experienced the personal horrors of what is going on in the holy land are so willing both to take sides and to condemn someone like me for not.

Killing innocent people is wrong. It's wrong for the Palestinians and it's wrong for the Israelis. But if neither side doesn't want to deal with the consequences of warring on their neighbors, then they should simply stop making war and resolve to negotiate.

Personally, I think they should do what b!X suggests and put all the guys who want to fight in a big Thunderdome and let them wipe each other out. The proceeds from the tickets to watch the Final War to End All Wars can be used to help those Middle Easterners who want to live peacefully side by side to do so.

Voices from behind the front lines
I call your attention to the web diaries of the The Electronic Intifada Presents: Live From Palestine site.

When journalists can’t get in, local residents take over.

Most of the writers posting here are not professional journalists and their ability to confirm information in a warzone is often very limited. Despite this they represent a vital link to the beseiged towns that is almost entirely absent from the commercial media.

Residents of the occupied Palestinian territories are invited to submit accounts of developments on the ground to diaries@electronicIntifada.net.

Read.

Encounter with a poet from my past.

Our paths cross every decade or so. Today it was in the lobby of the college where she was giving a reading. She was coming out of the ladies’ room; I was coming in the front door. The first thing I noticed was that we had both become blonde.

I first met Lyn Lifshin in the mid-seventies, when she had just begun having her poetry published and was giving writing workshops locally. (One of the other -- at the time -- young women in our workshop has since gone on to win writing awards from both the MacArthur and Guggenheim Foundations. I envied Alice Fulton even back then. She was beautiful, an amazing writer, younger than I, and unmarried. She’s now a Professor of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and she continues to write and publish. I don’t know if she ever married.)

But that summer in Albany, New York we were poets, each struggling to find her own voice. And we couldn’t have had a better workshop leader than Lyn, who had – and still has – a poetic voice as sharp and distinct and irreverent as her arresting face.

Her face today is the same as I remember: jutting cheek bones, dark eyes rimmed with kohl, long hair – once dark, now blonde – parted in the middle and falling across her stare with purpose and precision. She is dressed in black – a leather micro-mini skirt, tights and boots. Over her black leather jacket she wears a purposefully fake vintage leopard-look coat. I can’t help noticing that she is even thinner than ever, her hands clutching her bag of books are gnarled and claw-like. She is the millennium’s Hecate incarnate. Crone of Crones. She is who I once thought I might be. We walk together into the classroom, two blondes of similar age and obviously dissimilar inclinations.

I take my seat among the scattered audience – many of whom could be, well, under certain circumstances, my grandchildren. Even in jeans and a sweater, I feel too coiffed, too ordinary. Not looking exotic enough to ever be taken for a real poet. Real poets look like Lyn – live like Lyn – certainly, write like Lyn.

She reads poems that I hadn’t heard – or read -- before, talks about her choice to have cats instead of kids, her choice to love men often and well, her choice to open her wounds into her words and stare daringly into the faces of those who made them, even as she tosses those loaded words out to the whims of the world. She accompanies each poem with sinuous leanings of torso and hands, carefully placed intakes of breath, pauses to hold attention. She is who I once thought I might be.

One of her poems makes me think of Meryl Yourish and her anguished blogposts about the Holocaust. I Remember Haifa Being Lovely But ends with
once you become a
mother, blue numbers
appeared mysteriously
tattooed on your arm.

Lyn’s book the Blue Tattoo focuses on images related to the Holocaust.

As I leave, I buy her new book and she signs it for me. She says that she and her male partner (she uses his name, but I have forgotten it) will be moving back up into her house that is not too far from where I live. She needs to buy a new refrigerator. Where’s the best place to go for that? Sears, I say. I’ve always found good appliances in Sears. Well, she says, someone mentioned Home Depot. Yeah, I say. You should check them out too.

When I get home I take my mother outside to sit and snooze in the sun while I sit next to her and read from Lyn’s new book, Before It’s Light. The title of the first section makes me smile: “Blonde to the Bone.”

I’ve got the kids, you’ve got the cats, I think, as I get to her poem, “Cat Women.” I think of Anita Bora and her blogger cats project.

And then I get to its end:
……………..We’re mystical
about cats because some nights
we become one, slither away from
a lover’s side, wild to explore what
we sense in darkness, starved for
the prowl, the chase, the leap
from a life so domestic some of
us need to regrow claws, survive
on prey, give up safeness

Well, I, too, have a cat. And once I had a most remarkable growl. I'm sure it's still in there, somewhere.

It's a toss-up
Check out b!X's two satiric extreme solutions to the extreme satanic situation in what was once a holy land. In case you can't get to the whole post (there's some problem with getting his new system working consistently), here's the gist of it:

Option one: Give the land back to God.
It's quite clear that neither side in this age-old conflict is behaving like anything resembling God's children. If they're all so damned certain that this is Holy Land, and that God cares about who lives there, then perhaps we should just clear them all out and let God live there by himself.
Alternatively, we could give just it to Buddhists.
Option two: Build a dome over the entire region and sell tickets.
AOL Time Warner, in conjunction with Walt Disney, presents Holy Land. Two religions enter, no man leaves. Let them fight it out as intensely as they please, while the world pays $50 a head for dome-side seats and watches the carnage from within a disposable comfort zone of hotdogs and beer.

Honestly, I no longer know if I'm kidding or not. I'm simply unsure if either side deserves anything other than scorn, contempt, and a major international shunning.

Everyone over there is full of holy shit.

Our fathers, who art in heaven…
My condolences go out to Halley Suitt, whose father passed away today. My posting of my poem about my own father’s death was unfortunately prescient. But for today, I offer this for Halley.

Let Evening Come
--by Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
Let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

In response to Mike’s request for support for Meryl, I offer this litany:
I will do everything in my power to make sure that there are
no more holocausts
no more racism
no more bigotry
no more ethnic cleansing
no more genocide
no more economic slavery
no more religious persecution
no more terrorism
no more dogmatism
no more sexism
no more national chauvinism
and most of all
no more holocausts

Voices from The Blog:
For some reason, during the past week there have been a series of eloquent and loving tributes to parents and grandparents as they age and begin to leave us behind. I linked to Jeneane’s below, and there are others that I was so glad I found, posted by Halley and Heather and Barbara and Lisanne.

And Esta posted some touching verbal family snapshots taken from a younger, brighter perspective. Here are two that I particularly liked:
-- Mastering the chain stitch, and feeling the instincts of several generations awakening in my fingers.
--The two women after whom I was named running all over my house and exclaiming with delight over it.

And I found this ingenious way of sharing books and connections as a result of linking over to Willa’s site. She got it from Tish. Love that blogrolling.!

April: the month for poets.
In an article in today's local newspaper, columnist Diane Cameron, again, shines her own unque light on a blurry issue: National Poetry Month. She quotes William Carlos Williams:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems.
Yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found here.

And she ends with :"...poems can help and they can heal, and sometimes they can communicate what no treatise or speech ever will."

Amen.

Setting death ablaze.
Writer Helen Cixous says "The only book that is worth writing is the one we don't have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed."

With both skill and courage, Jeneane Sessum posts about her father, about death. She stirs up memories of my father's death and inspires me to stir around my stashed pile of poetry until I unearth this:

Testament
1.
I will bury the tuber of an arrowroot
at the head of my father’s grave,
where my brother enshrined
a cluster of quartz,
where my mother stands, each time,
wondering aloud about
what he looks like, now.

“There were signs, ” she says,
her words muffled in the upturned collar
of the coat I have outgrown
and she has shrunk to fit.

Above her breath, four crows
defile the lacework
of a snowy sycamore.

“One day I saw three small doves
flying above his car.
And then there were the crows.”

A nervous rustle. A shift of feathers.

“They gathered in the trees behind our house
on the day he came home the first time.
Thousands, like charred leaves.
like black snow.
He had gone alone to the back porch
to face the sun.
Suddenly, he was in the doorway,
his face dark with anger.
He said the noise was killing him."

From the snow, a frozen sigh.
The cold of the grave
claws at my boots.


2.
And when they folded him neatly,
barefoot and grim
into that final silence,
there was no space left to tuck a cry.
We fed him to winter,
to the honest needs of roots.

On Easter Sunday,
her bread wouldn’t rise.
She stood at the window
and stared at the crows.

She set the prayer plant
from his hospital room
beside his empty chair.
If the crows saw the leaves
turning dark and silent
they never said.

3.
I will bury the tuber of an arrowroot
near the stone of my father’s grave.
And hairs of the tuber
will twine with his hair,
beckon the rain
and dance with the worm.
And the tuber eyes
will watch in his place
for the message of the great crows
who keep vigil in all seasons
from the crotch of a crooked bough.

And I will buy her a new maranta
to pray in the tuber-mind.

And I will lie on my father’s grave
and listen.

copyright 1987 Elaine

The innate poetry of the blog.
in my ongoing quest for "olderwiser" bloggers, periodicallly I check the Ageless Project just to see if there are any new registrants. In linking to someone in NYC who's even older than I am, I discovered a link from that blog to Ron’s amazing poem generator, which uses a software program to make a poem out of anyone's web site. So here's what Ron's cyberpoet did for kalilily time:

kalilily time I were
born on is to make an
Easter Sunday sermon years
older than enough, technology optimism”
to us, the original
post? for you live in.
a chance to buy Hess gas anyway,
since been wrong,
turn on my regular
work on me at least
get that from the
online adult population that poverty But an
Easter people. His methodology is also
honest, open, LETTER
TO a new hip
and stems2000: roughage1970: popping joints1970: our neighbors. As
we live in 1969.That when the
voices and adventuresome will have enough.”

Click here and get a "poem" spun from your blog. I hope it's better than mine.

A money-saving idea that just might work.
I don't know who Phillip Hollsworth is, but an email I got pointed me to a creative idea he posted on how Americans might band together to stop escalating gasoline prices. Read his post for the whole campaign, but here's his basic point:

For the rest of this year, DON"T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do!! Now, don't whimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

His methodology is one with which most e-mailers are familiar. I figure if I put his link on my blog, I'll have met my requirement to share this call to arms with ten other people. (Ten, huh? I wonder....)

I tend to buy Hess gas anyway, since it's just down the block from me. I'd be curious to know where Hess gets its gas from.

I have only this to say to Dorkvak:
READ MY BLOGLIPS! Or at least get a blog of your own so that we can deconstruct yours. In the meanwhile, keep writing about us. Even without your linking to us, the curious and adventuresome will track us down. We win anyway.

What a weenie!
"Dorkvak" -- another winner from Jeneane of BlogSisters.

We forget that we are on the far side of the Divide.
The Digital Divide is loosely defined as the disparity between those who have access to Internet technology and those who have not.

If you live in America and have access to technology that makes it possible for you to be reading this blog (using statistics reported in a survey I read about on alternet.org but for which I lost the actual page link) you are:
--in the 38 percent of the poorest Americans, those earning less than $30,000, or
--in the 82 percent of Americans in households earning $75,000 or more, or
--in the 15 percent of the 65-and-up group, or
--in the 75 percent of the 18-29 age bracket.

In April of 2000, Forrester Research issued a study on the digital divide that said that income is the determining factor for engaging with the Internet, followed by age, education and "technology optimism."

The Pew Internet & American Life Project, which tracks Internet usage and habits, indicates that the online adult population has hit 56 percent, totaling 104 million adults.

So, we are the lucky ones, right? We belong to that better-than-half of the American population that has enough money, enough education, enough youth (heh -- except for me and a few others) and/or enough “technology optimism” to be wired enough into the Google universe. And because of all those things we have enough of, every day brings us closer to understanding how we are the same as, and how we are different from, and how much we can learn from our intra-planetary neighbors. As bloggers, every day gives us a chance to learn how important it is to be humane in a world of governments that seems to be increasingly lacking in humanity.

We don’t only have “enough.” We have more than enough – more than enough, certainly, than those other Americans who don’t have the money because they don’t have decent jobs because they didn’t get a good education because they went to schools in urban neighborhoods where school budgets were too low to support good teachers, and good libraries= and well-equipped science labs and up-to-date computer labs…….

No, access to computers and the Internet will not solve the problems caused by poverty. But computers and web access in every school located in areas of poverty might be able to give children whose lives are confined by that poverty a chance to better understand the choices and the chances that exist in the larger world -- a better chance to understand the cultures of their neighbors, both in the next block and on the next continent. As they learn to journey the web, they would have a unique chance to hear the heart and humanity in the voices of the people of this planet, a chance that exists no where else. And they even might have a chance to develop their own voices and to discover that there are people out there who will listen to what they have to say.

Now, maybe that isn’t enough. But it sure could be something really good!

I think that Weblogs in Education is on the right track. And the kids' version of Small Pieces that David Weinberger is working on is also on the right track. I wish I could figure out how to get them into the main education station.

The Quick and the Deadly
My mother always tells me that I’m too quick to make decisions, move on things. When a friend of mind came over this afternoon to see if he could fix whatever it was I did to screw up my computer, he made the same sort of comment. After he worked his magic on my computer and left, I started to work on several things at once and almost messed it up again.

I’m trying to remember if I’ve always been too quick and too close to deadly. I know that when I used to write poetry, I would spend slow, easy hours sitting, doodling, ruminating, incubating. Time. I took the time.

I think I began picking up the pace when I started the job from which I recently retired. That was more than twenty years ago. I stayed that much longer than my originally-intended five years because my boss, a woman only a couple of years older than I, gave me plenty of room to innovate, create – as long as I got my regular deadline-sensitive work done. So I learned to juggle many completely unrelated tasks at the same time – each with its own set of deadlines. I had to work quickly, think quickly, decide quickly. I developed a range of unrelated skills. I was good in a crisis, and I loved push-the-envelope kinds of challenges.

I don’t have to be that quick anymore. I can’t function well at that pace anymore. But 20-year old habits are hard to break. As a result, I screw up my computer, among other things.

And I transferred that break-neck pace at which I used to work to blogging. Like I still have something to prove. I don’t have to prove anything. I don’t have to prove anything. I don’t have to prove anything. That’s my new mantra (well, I didn’t really have an old one). I don’t have to prove anything.

Burn the Floor
I'm leaving shortly to meet some friends to see a production of Burn the Floor. That should psych me up to get some dancing of my own in this weekend.

Why is being wrong so hard to admit?
b!X posted something yesterday related to a specific incident of someone pulling a post because he was wrong about something. bIX says: Much is made about how one of the strengths of weblogs is the direct access they give us to a vast expanse of voice. But it's not voice if it's not authentic. And it's not authentic if disdains responsibility.

Why it so hard for most of us to admit that we have been wrong, interpreted something incorrectly, made a assertion based on insufficient thought or evidence. Sometimes we shoot from the hip and totally miss the point. When this happens in our blog, why don't we just write another post that explains what happened rather than "pull" the original post? We are all fallible; we are all human; we all make mistakes every day. Personally, I prefer an "Oops, did I goof!" or a "Wow, I took a wrong turn on that one!" rather than denying, or, just as bad, ignoring that it ever happened or ever was said. Admitting we made a mistake and explaining the turn of mind we took to get that wrong place demonstrates that the sky doesn't fall if we make an effort to create a little more honesty between ourselves and the rest of the world.

"Voice" continues to be a topic of rich discussion on any number of weblogs these days, and I especially was drawn into Sessum's recent post on BlogSisters. Strong, authentic blog voices are potent models for those still struggling to find their own voice, to discover, through writing, who they are at their cores. Some of these strong, authentic blog voices are also honest, open, and responsible. Now that's something we should all strive for -- on and off the Blog.

bIX and the internet: born on the same day
On b!X's newly redesigned blog What Planet Is This, he cites dates that ought to be considered holidays for this new world we live in. One of these is when the first network connection was made. He says:
...the Computer History Museum says:
"After installation in September, handwritten logs from UCLA show the first host-to-host connection, from UCLA to SRI, is made on October 25, 1969. The first ‘Log-In’ crashes the IMPs, but the next one works!"

In short: The Internet and I were born on the same day in 1969.

That wasn't my due date for b!X. I was in low-level labor, so the decision was made to induce. That decision must have sealed his fate, since he's been inextricably bound to the net since they discovered each other.

Things like this are what make life so mysteriously magical.

Just a little chuckle for April Fool's Day.
What a difference 30 years makes! (Of course, I don't identify with ALL of the 1970 references!)

1970: long hair
2000: longing for hair

1970: the perfect high
2000: the perfect high mutual fund

1970: keg
2000: ekg

1970: acid rock
2000: acid reflux

1970: moving to California because it’s cool
2000: moving to California because it’s warm

1970: growing pot
2000: growing pot belly

1970: watching John Glenn’s historic space flight with your parents
2000: watching John Glenn’s historic space flight with your children

1970: trying to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor
2000: trying NOT to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor

1970: seeds and stems
2000: roughage

1970: popping pills, smoking joints
2000: popping joints

1970: our president’s struggle with Fidel
2000: our president’s struggle with fidelity

1970: Paar
2000: AARP

1970: killer weed
2000: weed killer

1970: hoping for a BMW
2000: hoping for a BM

1970: the Grateful Dead
2000: Dr. Kevorkian

1970: getting out to a new hip joint
2000: getting a new hip joint

1970: Rolling Stones
2000: kidney stones

1970: screw the system
2000: upgrade the system

1970: passing the driver’s test
2000: passing the vision test

970: "Whatever…"
2000: "Depends"

Funny Bunny
Got this from Tish. He's a persistent bugger, but if he catches you, you can shake him off if you try really hard. Happy Bunny Day.

We live in a Good Friday world, but we are Easter people.
I'm quoting that from my local newspaper today -- a column by Diane Cameron, who is quoting something a minister said in an Easter Sunday sermon years ago. As Anita and others look at the glass, trying to decide whether it's half-full or half-empty, it's nice to have another metaphor to think about, one that reminds us of our human potential to rise out of our own ashes.

Are you feeling a little altruistic today?
Many of us, including me, blog because doing so gives us a sense of self-satisfaction. But that’s not all we can accomplish through these writings of ours. Sometimes we can help to do some good for someone else.

This is a site that went live yesterday, and many bloggers have made it their mission to get the word out as widely as we can to generate support for this amazing boy. I’ve had information about this effort from someone I trust, so I know that is a real project to help Thomas Pacheco, a very real boy in very real need. So, check it out, please.

Happy Eostre
This is from a pieceabout the origins of Easter.
Spring holidays have been celebrated at least since the beginning of recorded history. They all mark the end of winter when the earth sleeps and the start of the spring session when everything seems to be reborn.

Early people believed that each season was ruled by a certain deity. There was a deity called Eostre, the goddess of spring, who was worshipped in the northern and central parts of Europe. Her name is believed to have come from the word to describe the direction of the sunrise - "east." Some think the word Easter came from the same source. Every spring people in these regions held festivals to honor and thank Eostre. They offered her cakes that are similar to hot cross buns.

Some early tribes believed that things found in nature, such as bodies of water, mountain and trees, had their own spirits. It is believed that the May Day festivals started as a tree worshiping rite. The ancient Druids, a pre-Christian religious sect found mostly in Britain and France, thought that trees, and most especially oak trees, were sacred objects. The Druids prayed to the trees for sunshine, rain, and to make the earth fertile.

Ah. Sychronicity. (See previous post.)

March winds are blowing, but at least it’s not snowing.
It is 65 degrees in Albany, NY today, and I took my mom out for a walk around the building, where we ran into Alice, a lovely woman whom my mother met when she first moved in here. So I left them to sit in the sun together and proceeded to take a more energetic 3-mile walk on my own.

There is a short path through a wooded area that I often like to take to have a least a brief illusion of being away from cement and human structures. I was remembering the secluded house I used to own in the country, set up on a hill where an ancient oak presided in its enduring solidity. In moments of despair or sadness or even boredom, I used to stretch my arms around its trunk (I could barely reach an eighth of the way around), lean my cheek against its weathered bark, and breathe into its essence whatever it was that was keeping me from engaging with the vitality of my life. In those intimate moments with that stoic oak, I understood the reverence that the ancient Druids felt for the divinity inherent in nature.

So on my trek through the woods today I looked for a replacement for my old confidant, and I found one – younger, less imposing, perhaps less divine. I don’t know. But as I stretched my arms around its trunk (I could reach almost half way around) and leaned my cheek into its rough hide, I again felt that mythic connection to its fundamental durability, its elemental link to the very heart of this mother planet. Like the priests at Dodona, I asked for truth. And the March winds continued to blow.

Don't Do It, Burningbird!
Shelley says that she's going to exercise her right to spontaneously combust her weblog. Among other stresses of life, she's intensely job hunting. Lately she's also felt the heat of heavy criticsm over the wires. I hope that she also can feel the heartfelt warmth from those of us who admire her courage to speak truths others don't want to hear, her articulate cybertongue, her fiery heart, and the inspiration she have given us to reach for our own blog potential. For many many of us, to have her leave blogdom is like a death. If she has to leave, for all kinds of reasons, then I hope she knows that we will welcome and celebrate her resurrection when it comes.

This is not a black and white world.
I've heard it said that there are always three sides to every story: his, hers, and the truth. In this case, it's not even that simple. But there are two very clear sides, two very real realities, and I cannot help but hear the point that this side is making. In an interview with CNN's Bill Hemmer, this is what Usama Hamdan, a spokesman for the Palestinian terrorist group, had to say about the situation in the Middle East.

HAMDAN: I am not talking about eliminating Israel. I am talking about fighting for freedom against Israel's occupation of our lands. Israel is always, always trying to talk about (Palestinians wanting) to eliminate Israel. But as Palestinians, we are talking about the occupation.

The Palestinians will continue their struggle against Israel until they reach their goals. The main goal for the Palestinians now is to repatriate their lands and have their own state.

HEMMER: If there's any chance of Israel returning the West Bank and Gaza, there has to be some sort of cease-fire worked out, and then a peace agreement worked out after that. So why not hold back on your fire and see what can happen at the negotiating table?

HAMDAN: You are talking about cease-fires. Two months ago, (Palestinian leader) Yasser Arafat announced a cease-fire, and for three weeks no attacks were launched against Israel. But after three weeks, Sharon attacked the Palestinians -- he killed two of their leaders, one from Hamas and the other from Fatah.

After that, we understood that there is no real cease-fire with the Israeli government, that they want this cease-fire as a trick to continue their operations against our people. So if they want a real cease-fire, they are supposed to withdraw their tanks from our cities.

They are supposed to announce the cease-fire from their side first. We are not asked to do that because we are under occupation. You can't ask us, with the knife on our neck, to raise up our hands -- we must fight not to make this knife cut our necks. So you can't talk about a cease-fire while he's killing our people.

For the Palestinians, that is their side of the story. That is their reality. That is their truth. It is as true and real for them as their enemy's reality is true for that side. Neither group is willing to relinquish any of the "truths" that it insists are the only real reality. It's like a street gang war magnified ten thousand times. It is men-who-should-know-better taking testosterone-driven street-justice to its inhuman extremes. What in hell do they think their almighty God thinks of what they are doing!

No wonder I tend toward female chauvanism and irreverent non-belief.

Oh, this is just too perfect!
I used to have something on my site to keep track of the number of hits, and I probably will put it on my newly designed site when it's ready. But I'm afraid that I'll start posting things that will push up my hit numbers rather than stay true to the whole reason I started blogging originally. I have to admit, however, that Mike Sanders' suggestion for a "Google Persuader" is priceless.

Here's what he says to do:
Go to this page of popular Google Search terms and try to use every term in a paragraph on your blog. If you can use them in the same order that they are listed, with as few words as possible, it is even better:
[example] The Oscars awarded Halle Berry a pre-Easter present as well as bringing Elin Nordegren and Jennifer Connelly to our attention. I don't know much about Alex Baroni or Ostern, but Passover is coming and I think Ali G and Celine Dion are involved in some sort of controversy.

Ya gotta love it and love Mike for thinking it up.

As time slips into the future.
More of my past is gone again, with the passing on of Dudley Moore (just four years older than I am now) and Milton Berle. Uncle Miltie was a weekly staple on our black and white miniature TV back in Yonkers, New York in 1948. He brought transvestitism into our very living rooms and we loved it. He is the icon of Drag Queens. He played right to the camera with his zany "off-side" remarks, and we laughed and loud and loved every minute of his stap-stick antics. Good-bye Uncle Miltie.

In many ways, the importance of the deaths of these two extraordinary men pales in the face of the deaths of thousands upon thousands of good and ordinary people. But there is always the Big Picture and the Little Picture for each of us. Moore and Berle now. My mom, I imagine, within the next five years, and then it's me and my generation waiting at the finish line. I can't help think about that and what I want to do with the years I have left. I can't help wonder if some of what I'm doing is what I should be doing.

David Landsman tells a funny-but-oh-how-true story on his blog today about the conversations of a couple of check-out girls about "old people." Yes, it's relative. But yes, it's also all too real when it's real.

What's your number?
Got tothis enneagram test via a link from Tish.
I came out a Two.
Twos are defined by their empathy of other people. They are uniquely gifted at tuning in on the feelings of others. This makes them great networkers. They feed on their connection to others, love of friends and family. However being too caught up with other people can drain them, and cause them to lose track of their own personal well being.

Sounds typical for all of us actively "sandwich generation" people.

I keep forgetting that this is not the old real world.
In the old real world, I used to dream of having a forum – maybe a column in a newspaper -- that maybe thousands of people would read. I could put all of my views out there and people I didn’t even know would read them. And maybe I could persuade them to agree with my point of view. Or maybe I could inspire or encourage people who think as I do to speak out as well. But these people really wouldn’t know anything about me personally, so, if I wanted to, I also could risk irritating, antagonizing and, disagreeing with them with all the verbal vehemence I could muster. In the old real world.

In the old real world, before email, before blogging, I used to write letters. All the time. Letters to old college chums, old beaus, former students – people who knew me long and well. I could say just about anything I wanted in those letters. I knew that they would understand that sometimes I get carried away and get confrontational, aggressive, hard-headed. They would know how to call me on it without taking it personally.

Sometimes I forget that this is not the old real world. This is the web. And this is the blogging network on the web comprised of tenuous connections with only partially understood personalities. And that partial understanding works both ways.

I find that I am trying to make old dreams real in a world that is not the old real world. A blog is not a newspaper column with a lot of anonymous readers. And it is not a letter that I am writing to someone who has known me long and well and will understand that sometimes I come on really strong – and will forgive me.

I guess I have am finally coming to personal grips with the intellectual and intelligent discussions that have been going on ever since blogging started. What is it? Journalism? Diary entries? Commentary? What is our responsibility to our readers? Do we have any responsibility? I don’t know the answers. But my putting myself in the middle of some serious and uncomfortable blog dynamics is finally making me take these questions to heart. I suspect the wise path would be let allow my heart to figure it out.

Why do I always miss the good stuff?
While I’ve been riding my feminist bloghorse, there have been much more important issues being wrestled with on some of the blogs I most respect – and they all seemed to have checked in on the issue in the Comments section of burningbird’s blog – here and here and here. In a way, it might have been fortuitous that I missed it all because I tend to shoot off my mouth from the hip when I get caught up in the heat of the moment. (Heh. What an image that conveys!)

So now that the ashes are down to a smolder, I’ll state my position in less fiery terms than I might have had I dashed into the fray earlier. I made this comment on burningbird’s blog, but I think I need to say it here more publicly:

I have very strong viewpoints about any number of things, but I never would pull anyone's blog off my roll because they disagree with me. What I might do, however, is make a separate blogroll section called "dissenting opinions" or something like that if I wanted to make sure that my blog was not directly associated with theirs -- although they would have to be really extremists on all fronts before I'd relegate them to the hinterlands of my blogroll. …I not only agree with burningbird's "viewpoint," but I'm more and more despairing of the America in which I want to be a proud citizen. Our government has definitely let its shadow side eat up its heart and humanity. We are reaping what we have sown. My American countrymen/women who are still suffering the aftermath of 9/11 should not lay the total blame on the terrorists; they should look into our own government's heart of darkness. So, we (some of us bloggers) will all be in good company when we join each other on America's growing "blacklist" and mourn, together, the death of freedom and our country's part in the murder of innocents.

And I add here, as well, that I see that same shadow devouring all of the parties who continue to escalate the situation in the Middle East. There are no good guys in any of this – at least no good governments. Whatever good is left in any of us is hiding in our individual hearts, cowering in fear of being labeled “enemy sympathizers.” Except for a few brave souls who still remain true to The Golden Rule or the ethic of reciprocity, which is found in the scriptures of nearly every religion. Perhaps we have finally succeeded in killing all of our gods and our humanity as well.

History, whether fact or myth, is the story according to whoever is telling (or writing) it.

Tonight’s “biography” segment on the A&E channel was on Jezebel, the Phoenician princess whom the writer of her story in the Old Testament labeled a “harlot.” According to A&E, Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, King of Tyre and Sidon, and wife of King Ahab of Israel (869--850). She introduced Phoenician habits (and religion) to the capital, Samaria, thus earning the undying enmity of the prophet Elijah and his successors. After Ahab's death, Jezebel was the power behind the throne of her sons until the usurper Jehu seized power in an army coup. He had Jezebel thrown from a window, and trampled her to death under his chariot.

The perspective of the A&E biography is the story of the woman ... who rose to infamy as the queen of Israel. Being a foreigner, a woman, and one who worshiped foreign gods, Jezebel was a triple threat to the people of influence in Israel. From the moment of her arrival in Israel, her independence, aggressiveness, and desire for power earned her archenemies dedicated to her overthrow. After surviving economic and political turmoil, she finally met her match with Elijah, one of Israel's most revered prophets. Ultimately, she was murdered, leaving behind a legacy that remains today. But was Jezebel truly an evil despot, or simply a misunderstood and unappreciated woman who was ahead of her time? [emphasis mine]

As is its custom, the “Biography” program interviews various teachers, researchers, and writers with some expertise on the life and times of the person whose life is being examined. In the context of the current blogversations in process about religion and spirituality (all from the perspective of male-dominated religious persuasions), it might be worth those involved in these conversations to take a peek at these biographies scheduled for this week on A&E’s “Biography:” Mary Magdalene, Salome, Adam and Eve, and repeated on Easter Sunday, Jezebel.

Because of one-sided history telling, today, any woman who has strength, a voice, who has power and who is at odds with a political or religious establishment is likely to be called a “Jezebel.” Yet, there is enough research to suggest that the original Jezebel was, instead, a strong, courageous, loyal woman who stood up for what she believed in, who remained loyal to her father’s house, her family, and her religion, and, as a result, she was murdered at the hands of General Jehu, who was sent to commit the deed by the famous biblical prophet Elijah.

Jezebel was no angel. She had her armies fight and murder her enemies, just as her enemies in Israel did the other way around. She fought and killed in the name of her Gods, just as the Bible says the Israelites fought against her in the name of their Yahweh. But somehow she winds up as the “Queen of Infamy” while Elijah is hailed as a great prophet and leader.

Guess who wrote down that story.

For a broader perspective on Bible-based stories and other cultural mythologies, check out the scholarly publication edited by Carolyne Larrington, The Feminist Companion to Mythology.

The Lies We Watch
As the Academy Awards play out, I share herewith exerpts from a text of a local public radio interview with Steven A. Leibo Ph.D.,Professor of International History & Politics and Chair, Division of Social & Global Studies at Russell Sage College. His remarks were shared via email by a mutual friend.

I am always searching for ways to make the past more meaningful and to help people better understand the present -- constantly on the lookout for historically based materials that might excite my students about the wonders of our relationship with the past – to find works, from novels to films, to get them involved. And if some of those works perhaps distort the past, get it wrong because their creators are more interested in commercial advantage than educational advance – that is not a problem. Rather, it is something I can fix later, after the students -- inspired by seeing The Name of the Rose on medieval Europe, or the film on Gandhi on South Asia -- are finally listening.

And so it is not surprising that I went off last weekend to see the film We Were Soldiers Once, ironically doing so just as another generation of Americans were apparently dying in the snowy mountains of Afghanistan, fighting and dying as they did so often during Vietnam from the doorways of helicopters. And in truth, I had little choice about seeing it. After all, I had spent years studying and teaching about that struggle and leading groups of vets and teachers throughout Vietnam every year, and I know I would be asked constantly what I thought. So with some optimism, I set off, thinking perhaps that after so many years the pain that distorted and politicized so many earlier Vietnam films -- from the Deer Hunter to Platoon -- would have subsided and we might have a more nuanced presentation. And there is plenty of need for such a film – one that would depict in a more balanced fashion that struggle that began with so many good intentions.

That seemed a reasonable enough expectation, after all it was based on that powerful book, We Were Soldiers Once and Young by Harold Moore, the battle’s commanding officers and Joseph Galloway, a reporter who took part, and it is set in early 1965, before the anger and cynicism born of later frustrations had begun.

So I set off, not with any particular mind set, though I had read the book and met people who took part, had myself wandered in the Valley of Death it depicts, waiting to see what the film’s producers had done with our newest effort to tell the story of those young men who went off to war, valiantly hoping to defend the values of America as their fathers had once fought in World War II and Korea.

But what I found, after two hours of extreme bloodshed, was a film still too tied to the controversies of that era, that was afraid to even mention them -- a film that chose to simply let the flow of blood so graphically recreated for us by the makers substitute for real understanding of the sacrifices and patriotic motives of so many who fought in those early ears of Vietnam struggle.

In fact, not once in the entire film is there a discussion of why any of this is going on, not even that good fight against Communism, whose later collapse in the face of its many mistakes ultimately confirmed the importance of our struggle against it. But the film is afraid to even make the statement -- literally to even say the word. And what of the larger issue – that 20th-century-long planet-wide effort to end western colonization, which provided so much of the motivation among the Vietnamese for their struggle first against France, and then later the United States. It has been buried as deeply as anti-communism.

Not even for a moment do the producers try to enlighten us -- even as they so expertly show bodies blown apart and strong men dying stoically – with even a few of the reasons behind all this violence. And to make matters worse, fearing to explain the real issues, the producers fall back on the old cliché of turning the enemy into animals. The film opens in fact with a group of charmingly western French soldiers being ambushed by Vietnamese fighters, without even giving us a moment of reflect on what the French might be doing there, claiming curiously that the French did not know the terrain -- as if they had not held Vietnam as a colony for a century and were not, even as that very scene played out, trying to regain their colony lost during the Second World War. There was no effort to explain that embarrassing reality.

We are merely shown over and over again the word “massacre” printed neatly as a caption in an old French book on war, making it clear to everyone in the audience -- in case they later somehow managed to fall asleep during the constant images of swarming North Vietnamese soldiers -- that the Vietnamese just don’t seem to like westerners and have an especially rude habit of killing any western soldier with the temerity to show up armed on their territory. And those images are so vivid – those images of swarming Vietnamese – that it makes the occasional effort to portray the Vietnamese as humans look like sops to an after-the-fact political correctness committee.

And so I left the theatre, a theatre filled with young people on dates and a few older Americans sitting quietly alone deep in their own thoughts, wondering when or even if we would have a real film on that era – a film that would actually help us understand what happened in southeast Asia so many years ago …..

So, what are we left with in this age, so unwilling to look honestly and seriously at anything substantial – an age when the idea of a big event is staging a boxing match between Amy Fisher and Tanya Harding, when ABC’s Nightline is threatened with cancellation to make way for David letterman’s stupid pet tricks.

I, Faithless
Jonathan Delacour and Mike Golby continue their examination of spiritual beliefs. I have come to a place similar to Jonathan's, largely by the same Catholic route, through Jung, but then onto other kinds of books -- Merlin Stone, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Robert Graves, Elaine Pagels, Annie Dillard....

What research and writing ultimately shows, it seems to me, is that we humans continue to create and re-create our gods in our own images. And then, when we allow our worst human nationalistic tendencies to motivate us to commit crimes against those not of our politics or faith, we can say -- not "the devil made me do it" but "it is the will of god." In his almighty name, we kill for land, for economic, political, and cultural control; we kill because we believe that we are right and "they" are wrong, because the god they created doesn't exist but the one we created does. Many individual members of organized religions live as good, moral, and compassionate people -- but not necessarily because of what their religious institutions are and have been, but rather in spite of them. Whether consciously or not, they live by the universal golden rule of "do unto others...." And in doing so, to me they prove the basic irrelevance of organized religion. (Except, of course, these institutions do provide employment for scholars, writers, monks, and clerics of all persuasions. And they give people a sense of belonging. I can get that from blogging.)

I place my faith in the wisdom of poetry. I breathe what I am: the first and last of all things. (Theodore Roethke)

There is no messiah but us.

Whatever World This Is, I Want to Be a Part of It
Spurred by David Weinberger's new book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined , there is all of this dense discussion still going on among webloggers about the nature of the "web." In her post on "Figments of Reality," Daniela of livingcode discusses these discussions. Her words reflects why I am so engaged in weblogging and its potential for human/e development. She says:

It is a temple that transcends space and territory. It is spaceless in the sense that not one person can claim this space as in the real world. But it is also a place that a lot of people want to partake of, and do so very well. It is extelligence. Is it for the lack of such physical spaces that we seek a virtual one? Or is it because we feel comfortable on neutral teritory, where the possibility of a superculture transpires more readily?

Extelligence. Superculture.

Does that make Blogtank the Extelligence Superforce?

Sunday Morning Coming Down
Unnhh. Too much sugar on that bus trip yestersay. Chocolate chip cookies on the bus; Pepsis at the Flower Show; chocolate mint fudge and m&m covered pretzels after lunch and on the way back. I look at Marek's post, including instructions for signing up at the new Blogtank and I want to go back to bed. (What am I doing here? I know what I'm doing here. This is not my world. This is my world. Marek's mania is contagious.) Boy, he must really crash after one of those manic caffeine-high pseudoterraforming binges. He could have flown all the way to Poland on his own last night.

Unnnhh. I think I bruised a rib the other day when a door I was pulling open rebounded and smacked me on my left side, head included. (I had stashed something behind the door and didn't realize it was sticking out that far. See, older isn't really wiser, is it?)

Halley and I Missed Our Big Chance
Halley Suit and her family were in downtown Boston today. Just think! We might have had a chance to meet if we only had known.

October Sky in March
On the way back on the bus tonight from a long day at the big Boston Flower Show, we watched the movie October Sky, about the kids who were inspired to figure out how to build their own rockets after watching Sputnik sail across the sky in October of 1957. I had seen the movie before, so I allowed myself to doze on and off while I listened to the sound track of my life at 17 as a freshman in college -- sorority rushing, falling for a fraternity guy, getting pinned, going to formal dances, learning how to drink lots of huge 10 cent glasses of beer without getting drunk, cutting classes on Friday afternoons to start the weekend's dancing, getting unpinned, and barely making the 2.5 grade point average that allowed me to go back the next year.

Like a lot of people, I review my life in the context of the songs that were popular in each of my life’s eras. Last week, I heard on the radio a bunch of Simon and Garfunkel songs, and they took me back to when my marriage was breaking up – Sounds of Silence, The Dangling Conversation, Bookends, Patterns, Cloudy. Every time I hear those songs I’m back being 33 again and watching my life fall apart around me and my two kids. When I hear For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her I have a good cry for the romantic girl I once was who thought love would be all I needed, that love would be enough. And every time I hear early Carly Simon, or disco's Donna Summer, I am back re-inventing myself into several different people at the same time so that I can explore so many of the things in life that I missed as a young and totally clueless wife.

And every time I start to wonder if the choices I made were the right ones and to fret about what the future might hold, I play my all-time favorite song as sung by Mary Travers. It reminds me that when one door closes, another door opens. We just have to keep going.

All my life's a circle/ Sunrise and sundown/ Moon rolls thru the nighttime/ Till the daybreak comes around./ All my life's a circle/ But I can't tell you why/ Season's spinning round again/ The years keep rollin' by./ It seems like I've been here before/ I can't remember when/ But I have this funny feeling/ That I’ll be back once again./ No straight lines make up my life/ And all my roads have bends/ There's no clear-cut beginnings/ And so far no dead-ends.

She's Baaack
My mom is back from my brother's. So that's the end of my marathon two-day writing spree.

My brother took my mother back to where she used to live to visit her older brother, who is living alone with his yappy dachsund and shouldn't be. It's heartbreaking to think of all the older people lost to themselves and the world. Long ago I bought the book Final Exit. Of course I plan to go out either blogging or dancing -- or maybe playing with my (soon-to-be) grandson -- but I figure I'd better be prepared in case karma takes me elsewhere that's not so much fun.

Oh well, tomorrow I am going, for the day, to Boston on a bus with a bunch of other women. I need to laugh, giggle, spend a few hours with some flesh and blood. Then, I have to tackle my taxes AGAIN, since my preparer can't find what I sent her. Bummer.

Blogtank continues to bubble, bubble and soon it will come to a full boil. And then what?

I finally downloaded an FTP program that I think I can use. But I'm waiting for b!X to finish designing my new blog-integrated site. I've seen a draft of the blog part. It is ME!

Spartaneity.com. That's my boy!

The Last Frontier of Romance?
(With a Capital “R”)

[What follows is what I have submitted to the regional dance magazine for which I write a monthly column. I was stuck for a topic until burningbird posted her thing about Romance. Thank you muchly, Shelley, for the inspiration.]

I have two obsessive activities these days: ballroom dancing and blogging. No, not clogging, blogging. It’s a way of communicating over the internet using online diaries (web-logs) that hyperlink to each other. Shelley, one of the young women whose blog I enjoy reading because she’s such a good writer, recently wrote this in her web-log: (I quote from it with her permission.)

Is romance dead? I'm not talking about a trip into Hallmark, resulting in the dispersal of either quick wit or Profound Thought of the Moment. I'm talking about moonlight and roses, dancing until dawn, looking dreamily into each others eyes. Romance. Capital 'R'…. Movies from the 30's and 40's showed ladies in long dresses being waltzed around the room by dapper men in tails…. Then the 50's made romance silly or crude, the 60's made it obsolete, the 70's made it either trashy or angst filled, the 80's put a price tag on it, the 90's made it depressing or trite, and now here we are in a new millenium, and I'm not sure if romance, or I should say Romance, will ever show itself again…… There's this little secret part of me that longs for the beautiful dress and being whirled around the room.

I couldn’t help noticing the point she made emphasizing the capital “R.” I assume because the difference between romance and Romance is that “romance” is what you have with one special person, if you’re lucky, while “Romance” is more fantasy. It can be staged -- the illusion created with music, lights, clothing, and demeanor. Needless to say, I responded by suggesting that she try getting into ballroom dancing. It certainly has all the potential for bringing a little Romance into one’s life.

Women seem to like “Romance” more than men. Most of us like to dress up, look elegant, and feel graceful. Men hate putting on tuxes, but we love how they look in them. It’s like going to our senior prom all over again – or maybe for the first time.

Recently I bought my mother a collection of music called “Voices of Romance.” As I listened to Perry Como sing “And I Love You So” and “It’s Impossible,” it occurred to me that today’s music doesn’t lend itself to the same kind of Romance as those sweet songs of the 30s and 40s. These days, the only places that create any kind of Romantic ambience and play the kind of music that makes you want to do sweeping waltzes and exquisite fox trots are ballroom dances.

I’m with Shelley about longing for the beautiful dress and being whirled around the room. But I don’t make any secret of it. Get out and dance, all you young Romance-hungry Shelleys of the world!

Of Fishes and Ponds
There are times when I have thought that I’m just really not that ambitious. I retired from a job where my boss was a woman just a couple of years older than I. We worked great together. I like being a lieutenant instead of the captain. (I think that’s an appropriate analogy; I don’t really know how that military hierarchy goes.) I had a great deal of influence, but no real power. And the buck didn’t stop with me. It was a fine trade-off as far as I was concerned, and I stayed for 20 years in a job that I originally had planned to leave after the fifth.

I also have made conscious choices so that I would set myself up as one of the bigger fish in a variety of little ponds. That way I could have some status without really putting myself in competition with the really big fish in the really big ponds. Life is less stressful that way.

Suddenly, I find myself spilled into this breathtaking tank, this vat without walls, this pond-of-all-ponds. I’m this little fish pretending I know how to swim in water more than two feet deep. I want to go back to my safe shallow pool, where I know the rules and I can touch bottom.

Except my little pond is drying up fast. The future is in that vast, still unknowable space in which the Blogtank itself floats, full of fish still finding each other. I’m swimming as fast as I can, but I don't know if it's fast enough.

When I was young/er, I used to say that I wanted to be either famous or infamous. Either one would do. Anita Bora just interviewed me via email for a feature that the online magazine she works for is doing about older people and blogging. Heh. Maybe I should have been careful what I wished for.

Ok, now you'll really think I'm weird.
Every once in a while (starting about three years ago) I go through a series of incidents where the the numbers 11:11 or series of 1s come up -- sometimes it's the change I get when I buy something. Sometimes it's what my purchases cost. Often I just happen to look at a digital clock or my car's odometer when it happens to say 11:11. It hasn't happened in a while, and now it's happening again. Here's the even weirder part. There are web sites out there that say this is happening to other people. Here's one. I'm beginning to think it's some kind of "Devil's Tower" thing like from Close Encouters of the Third Kind. Being a non-believer in things mystical (I just love the mystical for its poetry and drama) I sure would like to figure out what's going on. Now, I know the theory that maybe I have those numbers stuck in my head and I subconsciously grok when those numbers are likely to appear on clocks and odometers, and so I wind up looking at them at those times. But that wasn't the case the first time the series of "encounters" happened. And then I forget about it all until it starts happening again. Now that's weird. That's really weird. I don't like it. I don't like it because I can't explain it in ways that make sense to me. But there it is. I hope that you'll be my friends, anyway.

Blogtank: Better Than Sci Fi
It's better than any social science fiction book I've ever read because it's happening right now, joining not-so-small scattered blogpieces into a power-packed change-focused system that has never existed before.

In the words of its founder, Gary Turner: Day zero saw blogtank open up offices in over 10 countries around the globe with fully staffed divisions covering americas, europe, asiapac and africa operating 24 hours around the clock. A panel of 24 expert consultants have now joined our ranks, pooling experience, knowledge, expertise and all manner of almost superhero powers into one zero cost, zero infrastructure organization, hell bent on challenging the supremacy of the likes of accenture and ernst & young to name but two.

Who would have thought that, a year into retirement from 20 years struggling to be creatively productive within the immutable and frustrating contraints of a conservative government agency, I would wind up here in total free-fall freedom with a bunch of zero-fear webventurers. Life. Ya' can't help but love it.

So what am I doing in the middle of this? At the moment, I take my place in the rocking chair, over there by the window, where I can play the little old lady who sits and knits and listens. And then, when everyone else feels overwhelmed by all of the incredibly amazing ideas and concepts and solutions being shared, I stand up, click my knitting needles for attention, and organize the creative cacaphony into clear, precise, and implementable strategies. Then I rip off my cozy shawl to reveal a short, spangley party ensemble, I put on my dancing shoes, and we all go out and party. Bloglife. Ya' gotta love it.

Stay tuned for the further real life adventures of the Blogtankers: Our Force is With You.

Happy Birthday Fellow Picean!
It's Denise's birthday. "Sto lat," as they say in Poland, for which Marek is shortly leaving to visit his family. Have a safe trip, Marek.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
"Where else could a global reach consulting team, with offices in more than 10 countries, staffed by 20+ experts in a variety of fields and professions, with round the clock continuous operation come into being in under a day with next to zero infrastructure costs?"

The answer, of course, is BLOGTANK! --creating a new breed of superheroes.

My First Officious Proclamation

WHEREAS
I recently have been announced as “President of Blogsisters” by Jeneane Sessum, CEO of Blogsisters and Blogger Extraordinaire, and

WHEREAS
I have accepted the highly valued invitation from Gary Turner – revered, sneaky and cunning Blogstickers entrepreneur -- to join the ranks of his brave and notorious Blogtankers, and

WHEREAS
I have laid claim to my own domain, kalilily.net, and as soon as b!X finishes designing my virtual principality, I will assume regal leadership,

THEREFORE
I hereby officiously proclaim myself Elaine of Kalilily, Resident Crone of Blogdom, with all of the rights and responsibilities thereunder.

So Mote It Be.

Buncha stuff
Aaarrgghh. My tax preparer lost all of my tax stuff. Now I have to go and put it all together all over again, and I don't even know if I kept copies of everything. Is someone else's "god" punishing me for Blog Sisters or something?

Mike Golby grooves again. I thank you, Blog Sisters thanks you, and we hope that you'll come over and Comment anytime you want.

Romance. OK. Here's where I really show my age. I bought my mother a Reader's Digest music complation of Voices of Romance and I'm sitting here listening to Perry Como sing "And I Love You So" and "It's Impossible." Now, that's romance. Makes me wish I had a "personal" life.

End of Work In his compelling, disturbing, and ultimately hopeful book, The End of Work (1994), Jeremy Rifkin argues that we are entering a new phase in history-one characterised by the steady and inevitable decline of jobs. I read that book when it first came out. I think it's time for people to start paying attention to his predictions and recommendations.

Another Aaarrrgghh. Can any of you sweet young techies tell me what I have to do (in very specific terms, like codes and where they go in the template) in order to get my narrow right column back to the little wider width it was before?

Talk About Getting Organized!
Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Check out Blog Sisters' first official press release. No stopping us now.

That's My Boy!

Of course, some boys grow up to be really cool men.
I learned everything I know about the web and blogging from him. And this is what he does? YES!! That's my boy!

And I've been so busy trying to ferment revolution that I haven't been keeping up with my favorite blogs the way I usually do. However, I did get to some of the post from Mike Sanders about our blog identities (true or false or somewhere in between) and blog relationships.

I can tell you that what you see here in my blog is what you get if you meet me in person. This is who I am. Actually, this is more of who I am. A ballroom dance acquaintance of mine happened to find and read my blog. When she saw me last week she expressed surprise that I would put all of that personal stuff out there. Actually, if my face-to-face acquaintances ever asked me, I'd tell them the same stuff. Only there never seems to be any time or place for those kinds of conversations in most of my real world. I do, of course, have some close friends who know exactly the same things about me that I've blogged. So, I guess it really is a fascinating new dynamic out here in blogdom for many of us. Our readers, whom we'll probably never meet (except that I am absoutely going to have to meet Jeneane face-to-face at some point; she could be my much younger twin sister [huh?]), know more of our true feelings than most of the people we deal with in person. Absolutely psychologically fascinating!

Eureka! I Found One!
Or rather he found me, thanks to Denise's complimentary post.

Tom at insiteview.blogspot.com is another over-60 blogger, articulate and "authentic" (to use a word that he seems to like and so do I.) So I'm adding my first older&wiser blogger to my blog roll. It's a start.

Boys will be boys, I guess
So, I get home tonight and check into Blogsisters, and discover that there are a few guys who are putting us down. Now, we all know the reason some people put down others, don't we?

Jeaneane's response on Blogsisters says it all and says it all too well. And good old non-Blogsister Burningbird put it out there beautifully as well (with 28 Comments added on!!!) But I will add my two cents here anyway. (Did you think I wouldn't?)

I cordially invite those men who don't know what they're talking about because they have not felt compelled to look at Blogsisters to do sp. And, just in case you don't want to, here's one of my recent posts, and Blogger doesn't seem to want to let me hyperlink to it anyway:

********************************************
Once upon a time, there was a clever young blogger whose address was www.opinebovine.com. She's disappeared off the web as far as any of us know, and she disappeared purposely. She made herself disappear because, as she explained before she packed up her bags and blogs and moved on, that she was being cyberharrassed and didn't know how to make it stop. It makes me so mad to think that all of that pain is following us here. Is there so safe place for women?

I ask because I believe that Jeneane saw Blogspot's Blogsisters as a space where web-savvy women (or, in my case, aspiring web-savvy women) could share what they have in common and explore, together, what they don't have in common.

I can't help wishing that more of you would share, in both real and web life, what makes you angry ? What drives you crazy? What drives you to Prozac? What do you wish there were more of? Can we, collectively, become a force on the web?

Here's an example of what we might blogjam on:
I happened to stumble on this as I was looking at some stuff about gender differences in learning:
We've had an interesting experience with a listserv here. The listserv services a computing subject with a mixture of students - young, old, internal, distance education, male dominated but some female. A mature female de student sent a friendly "hello, I'm so and so, I have x kids and a dog", sort of message and got FLAMED by two younger (we think) males who rubbished her and said who cares etc etc and complained that a listserv should only be used for content not social things.
Interesting sociological research potential. If women arguably need the chatty, supportive side to their learning, will being flamed by young males result in dropout?

On the other hand, I dropped out of a listserv of all women that had no intellectual content whatever. It was more "supportive" (virtual hugs) than any actual support group I've ever seen.

Research shows that women, generally, learn, communicate, and solve problems differently than men. Not necessarily better or worse; just differently.

We each have our own strong blogvoice. Blogsisters gives us a chance to make some really jazzy music together. I thoroughly enjoy solo performances. But there's nothing more energizing than a good blogjam!

***************************************
As a researcher and writer with the New York State Education Department, years ago I put together a report that included research data on the different ways boys and girls learn, communicate, and solve problems. Even grown up boys and girls. Of course, the findings are generalizations, and there always are individuals who are a breed apart. My post quotes an issue and question I found on the web about distance learning and gender issues. I might have posted it on my own blog, but I was more interested in just getting a female perspective, the benefit of the experiences of the techie females who blog there. Even though there are so many of us brazen females out there boldly asserting ourselves among the equally assertive guys, there are also some female bloggers who are reluctant to launch themselves into the sometimes dangerous co-ed blogseas for all kinds of personal reasons. Blogsisters is a "relatively" safe place for these women to begin asserting themselves online. A teacher by nature and profession, I see such a place necessary and valuable.

It also kind of reminds me of the old days when my college dorms were not co-ed, or when I lived in the sorority house and we could all hang out together without guys around and talk about anything that came into our heads. What the guys wouldn't have given to be able to eavesdrop on those conversations! Hey, now's your chance.

Nights like this, I wish I were twenty-something again.
I just got back from a ballroom dance. There are two young men dancers I just adore, and they make me wish I were, well, more their age than mine. John just got his PhD. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in some computer field that I never could understand. He's from Equador and has that incredible Latin look and movement on the dance floor. I've known John for years; as a matter of fact, he doesn't have a car, so I used to drive him to and from dances with the understanding that I could get some good dancing in with him. Well, he told me tonight that he has two job offers -- one with ORACLE in San Francisco and one with OCLC in Columbus. It sounds like he's taking the Columbus one because he discovered some great dance places there. The only thing is, they don't do Salsa, and John is HOT in Salsa. I told him he could start a new dance trend out in Columbus. So, I guess I'm going to have to transfer my daydreams to the new West Coast Swing dancer/teacher. He's even younger than John, but I love the way he leads improvisations in just about any dance. Hah! There sure is a dance in the old dame yet.

A challenge to the Blogsisters:
This is for women only, so guys, don't bother reading this.

I've posted something on Blogsisters to which I would like their response. So, BSs (that's my contraction for Blogsisters), if you haven't checked the site in a while, please pop over. If you'd like to join, please let me know.

And, NO, this is not a veiled attempt to get Blogsisters into the top 40 at DapPop. However, if it turns out that way, well, then it was just meant to be.

This is why Jeneane is Queen
...at least for me.

Jeneane Sessum blogs meaningful words, truths from her very heart, and this post, and this post, really got to me today. She's top notch when she taps into her willfull wit, but she's absolutely outstanding when she shares who she is at the core.