Best Blogroll I've Ever Seen!
Got this from stavrosthewonderchicken. Start with this homepage and then check out the blogroll. Love it.

Big Picture, Little Picture
Little picture: RIP Basil. And tomatoes. A couple of inches of snow and two nights of frost will do it. As in life, timing is everything.

Big Picture: Madeline Albright rightfully calls the Bush administration “bi-polar.” I was pointed to this from b!X, who is finally posting again, which makes me happy because I rely on him to keep the big picture in front of my nose. (The struggle of libraries to maintain their strong support of intellectual freedom is another important issue dear to my heart that he recently posted about.)

"They talk about the importance of the rule of law, but seem allergic to treaties designed to strengthen the rule of law in areas such as money-laundering, biological weapons, crimes against humanity, and the environment," Albright said in a commencement speech at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

I don’t agree with all of Albright’s positions, but in this case, “You go, sister crone!”

OK. Here’s the thing…..
I’m obsessing over what really is a compliment about my writing from Mike Golby (see previous post). I’m not sure why I’m obsessing. I think it has something to do with my really wanting to be a female version of RageBoy but not having the balls. (heh)

It’s got something to do with being super-sensitive to the privacy issues of the others in my life. For example, I’ve never blogged about my brother. You don’t even know I have a brother-who-makes-me-crazy, right? And I rarely say anything about my ex-husband. He guards his privacy jealously. And I don’t use my last name very often because it’s my ex-husband’s last name and I don’t want to infringe upon his privacy. B!X reads this blog; but he’s a remarkably accepting guy and has never even suggested that I censor what I write.

Last night I dreamed about blogging, and I woke up wondering if Mike Golby’s wife reads his blog and if so what she thinks. I think we all know what RageBoy’s heart’s desire thinks. I doubt if Jeneane’s family (other than her husband) reads her blog. If they do, what do they think? Does she care?

I never wrote about my father until after he died. My mother’s still here, and I only write the most general things about my life these days with her, even though there’s an awful lot of frustration and sorrow and even anger that my gut would probably like to spill out on these pages. I don’t know why I don’t do that. Maybe those are the in-the-world details that I choose to omit. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? (Am I a good witch or a bad witch?)

Maybe my blogging reticence does have something to do with my need to keep a balance, not fall off the edge and take anyone with me. Maybe it’s because I have done that in the past and don’t want to do it here. Maybe it does have something to do with the “wisdom” of age.

Well, Mike, I’ll bet you never thought that your insightful words would cause such a stir in my psyche. And, you see, that’s what I really like about blogging – the interchange, the stirring up of ideas and perspectives and feelings and ideologies. The interchange. The Comments.

It occurs to me here that Shelley and Halley write beautifully and personally and balanced, and they get lots of Comments anyway. They spark interchange.

The question for me still remains: Do I want to stir things up or do I just want to write the kinds of “personal essays” with which I seem to be most comfortable. Sometimes too much comfort gets stale and boring. Just something for me to think about.

Golby Explains Why My Blog Has So Few Comments
(Actually, I had been wondering about that.)
He says:
Unlike, as Nithia and I were discussing, our friend and resident crone of the blogs, Elaine , I am not an 'holistic' blogger. Sorry, Elaine, we were talking male / female, yin / yang, and you came up as the perfect example of the complete blogger. You're open to the Web in a private way, you give all sides of yourself while retaining those in-the-world details you choose to omit. You are, or have become, extremely difficult to comment on because you generally paint a full picture without compromising yourself.

Hmmm.. Hmmmmmmmm. Mike Golby makes me think about that. He’s right. I don’t compromise myself.

Hmm. I guess that’s true. I write my blog like a newspaper commentary. I omit details that would compromise me. Hmmm. Because my kids read my blog? Because non-blogger friends read my blog? Because I am manipulating what you think of me? Because I am inventing myself as I want to be rather than presenting myself as I am? Because I really am balanced and holistic?

So, this is what I Commented back to Golby:
Heh. Balance? I've been through depression, divorce, deaths.... just like so many others. I spent several crazy years drinking and disco-ing and "dating" (that's a euphemism) even a little toking -- and this while trying to raise my two incredible kids. I've come a long way, baby, and if I seem more balanced now it's because I had a lot of professional help getting through my dark night of the soul. But don't put me on any pedestal yet. I've got a few more wild dances in me to set the scales askew.

These days, however, my life is constrained by the fact that I live in a small one-bedroom apartment across the hall from my mother so that I can do what needs to be done for her. (Imagine living across the hall from your mother; it’s very inhibiting in any number of ways.) To make room for my sewing machine and the various artsy/craftsy stuff I do, I only have one twin bed in my bedroom. And there’s no one around here with whom I’m likely to have a relationship that would necessitate a bigger bed. I’ve sort of taken a hiatus from ballroom dancing because I can’t find anyone to dance with who’s really fun and sexy and worth spending time with. My thirty-something attitudes and energies have nowhere to go in this confined lifestyle. I miss the passionate life that I once led . And so I keep as my mantra lines from Theordore Roethke’s “The Lost Son” – A lively understandable spirit / once entertained you. / It will come again. / Be still. / Wait.

Balance. Yes. That’s the one thing that “aging” (god, I hate that word) has helped me to better understand. But just to throw things off balance for a minute, let me share some “poetry” I wrote not that long ago in response to a challenge from an distinctly unbalanced poet/colleague/friend to do an erotic poetry chapbook in collaboration with him. Here were some of my contributions to “Eating Disorders and Other Mastications,” which is what I titled the chapbook.

1.
something about turkey necks,
gizzards nestled in palm of hand
stroked with oil
moist heated,
until firm, juice-laden,
ready for needing,
nibbling, gnawing --
lip-licking
fine night dining,
giving thanks.

2.
no skinny men, please,
unless they’re hairy
from their necks down
(so that I have to hunt
for distinguishing features)
even on their backs,
like beasts to groom
with taming tongue,
or stroke against --
sweet skin on fur
smelling of caves, leaves,
banked fires.

3.
My mother’s words
were words of fear:
stay away from dark
eyes, streets, corners, bars,
skin, moons, hearts –
things that lurk, lure, linger.
And so, of course,
I conjure shadows,
wait at crossroads,
shrive the stranger
of a heart gone wild.

4.
unsatisfied still after
too much plum wine,
steamy rice,
bold-faced fortunes,
I let you (lead you
bring you)
stave my hunger
with your limpid kumquat,
leave me dripping
with the dredges
of those hot green teas.

5.
Saturday Night Fevers

Those were the nights!
tho’ I never did the coke
in the shadows behind the bar
where the blue-eyed bouncer
(strategically sun-bronzed and bleached,
macho-hot in open shirt gleaming gold)
found new places for fast hands.
But I’d arrive gone already
from toking on the road,
primed for fast stepping,
skirt hiked high on thigh,
smile that said ready
to hustle me dizzy,
spinning close and low,
dropping now --
all arms
and sweat
and bass-booming blood
binding me to the heat
of those gone dancing nights.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose. Now is the time for balance. At least most of the time. Sigh.

I'm Going Where Bob Dylan Went
That's up to the Caffe Lena in Saratoga, which is the oldest continuously run coffeehouse in America. According to its history page, Bob Dylan played there on his first tour of the East. Don McLean first played "American Pie" on the Caffè Lena Stage. Arlo Guthrie sang there long before the rest of the world heard his music.

I'm heading up this evening with some friends to hear a friend of theirs, Joan Taub, whose unique and powerful alto voice has been featured recently with the Four Fabulous Females. Her vocal style has been described as a smokey Patsy Cline, crossed with the strength and sweetness of Georgia Brown. This is her first solo performance, featuring warm love ballads and breezy boppin' blues.

Of course, I'm taping the series finale of X-Files, even though I haven't watched it much since Duchovny left. But, hey, this is IT, folks.

Rage on, Mick.

Mick Jagger, now 60 years old, is going on tour with his Rolling Stones. Some think that he’s too old. I agree with Providence Journal columnist Mark Patinkin, who had this to say in a recent article:

Years from now, if the Stones need walkers to dance across stage, perhaps even I’ll admit it’s time. But if you can still play the game, there’s room in this culture for those who choose not to retire gracefully from it.

Tina Turner and Mick Jagger, my esteemed contemporaries. Maybe I shouldn’t look to rock stars as role models, but they are the ones who are push the envelope on the stereotypes of "older" people. That’s what I like about their personas. That and they’re not afraid of getting in the faces of their critics. They’ve still got it and they flaunt it. Flaunt. Flaunt.

Yes, indeed, rock, roll, and rage on.

What it means to be a Crone.
When God was a woman, she was worshipped in three aspects: Maiden, Mother/Warrior, Crone – the original Holy Trinity. Over the millennia, just as older women became less and less honored and respected, so did the image of the Crone-as-Wise-Woman become tarnished.

To be a Crone is to no longer be either maiden or mother; to have moved past those female roles into a place of personal freedom, self-knowledge, and deep experience; to understand the dark places, the dream places. The archetype of the Crone brings death so that there can be rebirth.

What does a Crone look like? She can look like Margaret Thatcher, Bella Abzug, or Janet Reno. She can look like your favorite grandmother or your little blue-haired neighbor. And, in this day and age, she can also look like Tina Turner or Judy Dench, Julie Christie or Blythe Danner, Jacqueline Bissett -- or even me. (I was going to mention Marlo Thomas, Jane Fonda, and Dyan Cannon --Cannon is the same age as Janet Reno and me --, but they’ve had too much surgical enhancement to qualify as authentic.)

So, when I promote myself as the Resident Crone of Blogdom, please don’t imagine the patriarchal stereotype of the “old hag.”

And, as Halley Suitt continues to cast her version of Anything Goes, I’m auditioning for the part Mitzi Gaynor* played in the movie. I am a dancer, after all.

*In 1989, when she was just about my age, Mitzi Gaynor embarked on a 36-city, 11-month tour with Anything Goes.

It's Snowing on My Tomatoes!!
Forty years ago, by early May, we would throw on our shorts and tank tops, take our books and Coca-Colas out to the quad and start working on our tans and cramming for finals. As I sit here deciding whether to turn the heat on or not, it's snowing on my six beefsteak tomato plants, eighteen basil plants and assorted other herbs. The parsley will make it; it made it through the entire winter. I did mulch. In Jeneane's world it will never snow on tomato plants.

Last night, I had one of my recurring dreams: I parked my car (white 2001 Subaru outback sedan, loaded) in some parking lot and then couldn't find it. At one point I was walking down to the parking lot after work in very high heels and slouch socks which kept falling down. I saw my reflection in a store window and was embarrassed at how tacky it looked. And then when I got to the huge parking lot, it was dark and I knew that I had to change my shoes so that I could walk around and look for my car. I spent the entire rest of the dream trying to change my shoes. I never did find my car.

I have had frequent dreams about my car ever since I was married and we lived out in the country and only had one car -- which never seemed to be available for me. I used to dream that my husband would pack up the car into a briefcase size and leave with it. Heh.

Elsewhere in cyberspace, Halley Suitt and Chris Locke attempt to exchange brains. Personally, I think the only way it will work is if we do a massive cyber-ritual where we all get online and chant Boy George lyrics.
Ain't nobody's business
How I live my life
I learnt my lesson
Whether it's wrong or right
Ain't nobody baby
Gonna tell me how
I should live my life
Do live my way now

Satisfaction can be hard to find
I go crazy keeping it all inside

Funny. I've never wanted to be Chris Locke. At various times, I've wanted to be Tina Turner or Erica Jong. Today, I like being a blonde, sassy, sexy Crone -- a dancing Coyote Woman (I saw a t-shirt with an image of that and now wish I had bought it) and, mostly, today, I just want it to stop snowing on my tomato plants.

And, personally, if we're going to use technology to create the kind of male mate all of us (well, almost all of us) heterosexual females wish we had, I opt for the cyborg in Marge Piercy's He, She, It. Drool.

The World According to Jeneane

I had a good cry today – the kind of cry that you feel building inside your chest, rising up into your throat, linking the pain in your heart with the hurt in your head (the one that swells just behind your third eye when you try not to cry over what you don’t want to feel).

Jeneane blogged a world that made me cry like that, made feel forgotten yearnings for deep and safe connections. Made me remember how I thought those connections would be there with husband and family, how during the ‘60s we used to fantasize about gathering all of our kindred-spirit friends and seceding our little 1/3 acre of house and trees from the Union. How now my women friends and I sometimes imagine that we might someday find land and build places for ourselves around a central room so that none of us would have to grow old alone. And all of that time in between, trying not to think too much about just how far I had wandered from the kind of world that would give me a safe and connected place and yet not steal my soul.

The world according Jeneane is my dream too:
A real place, a magical place that nurtures the ebb and flow of bloggers, our dreams, a place of potions and remedies, a healing place, a place we could all come, give, take, then go—or maybe never leave.

Go and read Jeneane’s world-dream. And if the cry builds from your heart until it hurts your head and forces out the wet sobs you’ve been holding in for longer than you can remember, then you’re one of us, you have a place in this world too – a place in a magical connected world that not only doesn’t steal your soul -- it gives it space to soar. Welcome to Blogaria.

Hail Halley, Full of Grace
Halley Suitt begs my forgiveness missing my phone calls when I tried to reach her from my daughter’s in Boston. Hell, Halley, I’m disappointed, but not discouraged. We’ll get together yet. And with my forgiveness and AKMA’s blessings (they DID manage to get their families together in New Haven), thou art definitely blessed among women (bloggers).

Believe me, I know the way that six-year-olds have of stimulating an occasional need for a hide-under-the-covers afternoon. Heh. Just imagine what it was like trying to mother a 6-year old b!X.

Now, about your RageBoy wannabe urge. We might have a way………

The Master's Voice
It's more Chris Locke than RageBoy, but it's still THE "voice" that we all know and love speaking the truth of the web. And you can even hear his actual mellow tones as he talks to Tess Vigeland on NPR's Morning Marketplace about the marvels of weblogging. According to Chris, the program's editors cut out a lot of his references to specific webloggers, but what they left in is his right-on take on what's really important about weblogging, and that's what matters most. It's worth the listen.

Vote for zefrank
When I first started blogging I stumbled on www.zefrank.com and spent a whole evening giggling and popping from one page of his to another. It's a virtual playground. His sections on "Annie" still make me laugh, and if you're a cat lover, be sure to check them out. And then go and vote for him in the webby awards. The instructions on how to do so are on the first page of his site.

The Vagina Knows It’s Beautiful

Do I have your attention? Today is “Turn Beauty Inside Out Day.”

As I drove out yesterday to visit my pregnant daughter in Boston, I listened, on NPR, to a presentation by Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues. You can access the whole presentation, either to read or listen to. She’s worth listening to.

Meanwhile, think about some of these things that she said:

I often hear women in the West talking about the terrible lot of women in Afghanistan, but are you aware that 700,000 women in America are raped every year? We all have different forms of enforced burqas. Every culture has it. Whether it's an idea or a fascist tyranny of what women are supposed to look like - so that women go to the extremes of liposuction, anorexia and bulemia to achieve it - or whether it's being covered in a burqa, we all have deep, profound, ongoing daily forms of oppression. If you're a 13-year-old girl in this country and there's an ideal of what you're supposed to look like, do you really have a choice to look like yourself? The pressure of capitalist consumer culture is more than any 13-year-old girl can bear.

The interviewer for a New York Times Magazine piece kept saying to me, "You're so dramatic." I finally realized what that means: You're really alive. Things really bother you. Things really move you and excite you. Look at teenage girls. They get crazy, excited, pissed off, and they do it all the time. Then the world comes along and shuts it down and clamps it and punishes it, makes it immoral or too sexy. Then we get to be good, contained, quiet, behaved, then disappear.

We have been trained as women to divide against each other, to fight for each other's space, to not believe there's enough for each other.

If you're jealous of your sister, if you think she's shinier, bigger or more fabulous than you, get over it. If you can do anything for a sister today, if you have a moment of jealousy or competition, give her something. If I feel competitive, I just give it away: Have it, take it. Otherwise, I'm saying there's only room for me to shine and not for you to shine - and we all have to shine right now. Remember that Afghanistan is everywhere and that all of us get to be big, so that we can take back the planet.

I don't think women should spend their time recovering and surviving. We have better things to do, like feeding the planet, nurturing, creating, envisioning. If we bang, beat, burn, mutilate and destroy women, we've destroyed everything. If we really put our attention on stopping violence toward women, it would be like bringing back the sun or earth. It's not coincidental that the earth is being destroyed as women are being destroyed.

Know and love thy vagina, and hold it sacred. Do not give it to anyone you do not want to give it to. I mean that as a metaphor. So much of what happens to girls is that we don't know our desires and bodies. We don't know what we want, so we enter the world in a haze. I love college students: They have cunt clubs and big vagina parades and balls, and they have speak-outs. They wear vagina pins. They're outrageous and they're fully here. I look at them and think, What happened to all of us? When did we lose this? Be as revolutionary and passionate as you are, and don't let anyone talk you out of it.

One of the last things Eve Ensler says is this:

In the process of doing "The Vagina Monologues" I have met so many tender, seeking, loving men who really want the world to be better for women and men. We have to allow them to find ways to embrace their own vulnerability and tenderness. We have to stop shaming them for not being these superheroes and power creatures that they're supposed to be.

My soon-to-be grandson has one of these exceptional men as his father. Somehow my son-in-law manages to be a “regular guy” who is tender and sweet and easy and beautiful inside. (And he’s cute, too.)

I spent the past day with my beautiful and pregnant daughter. I held my hand on her belly and felt my grandson respond to my touch. I looked at my daughter, no make-up, hair up in a straggly ponytail, sweat pants hanging below her incredible roundness, glasses sliding down her nose -- and my heart hurt from the beauty of it all -- and her spirit, her heart, her humor. Sprawled across the couch in gestating disarray, she looked more stunningly lovely than she ever has even during her years of modeling and acting and glamorous headshots (which, by the way, cost me a fortune!) And when my son-in-law came home at looked at her, put his hand on her belly, well, it still makes me want to cry from the sweet, sweet beauty of it all.

*********
And that brings me to Chris Locke’s most recent Topica essay, in which he admits “God I do love women” and goes on to yearn for that as yet unmet “partner-in-crime” who will “cover his back,” knows how to be tough as well as tender, knows how to be his best friend.

She says, "You got that certain something..."

"What you give me," I say, "takes my breath away."

I check her eyes to see if she's lying. Gypsy woman. Girl that can tell my fortune, read my future.

Locke’s yearning narrative is seductive because it is what we all yearn for – someone to watch our backs; playfully go toe-to-toe with us; stand with us and by us and for us -- protect us and accept our protection – a partner, a best friend who shares our passions and understands our prisons. The key to our locks. The keys to Locke.

Cast the sticks, pick a card, read the runes, toss a coin. It’s such a crapshoot, isn’t it?

But if you win, it’s absolutely beautiful, inside and out.

The Blessings of Rain
It's pouring in Albany, NY today and it will rain for the next couple of days. Great for my garden. Not great for my trip to the Boston area tomorrow for an overnight to visit my 7-month pregnant daughter, probably for the last time before the big event. While I'm there, I'm going to call Halley Suitt, although I probably won't have time to see her in person. I also talked to Jeneane on the phone a little while ago. There is something special about the company of special women, even if it's virtual.

Which leads me to bring up a very interesting article I stumbled onto last week that I'm trying to wade through because, while pretty dense, has some exceptionally interesting things to suggest about the way women blend their virtual and real lives. I'd love to have some others read it and give me their opinions. In addition to including some good related links, Feminist Cybermaterialism: Gender and the Body in Cyberspace offers some fascinating theories, such as:

.... we have the feminist analysis of cyberspace which very clearly takes the point of view that the male in cyberspace is attempting to transcend the body whereas the female or the feminine is attempting to use the technology to bring the body into cyberspace and cyberspace to the body.

and the idea that cyberspace is liminal space -- a place that is neither here nor there -- and

...people in liminal space have no responsibilities; they are beholden to no one. They are completely outside of society. But what happens is that, when they come back, they have a renewed appreciation for the order of the society in which they live.

All of this is relevant to the conversation going on in the Comments on Shelley Power's blog.

Hooooo Hoooooo
Stay tuned for the “Mothers Day 2000” report from OWL (Older Women’s League), which will soon have, online, its analysis of how Bush’s hopes to privatize Social Security will devastate the financial stability of older women. From the OWL site:

Social Security Privatization and Women
As OWL members know, women are the face of Social Security, comprising 60 percent of beneficiaries over 65 and 72 percent of recipients over 85. Women depend on Social Security's guaranteed, lifetime benefits: 27 percent of women over 65 rely on Social Security for 90 percent of their retirement income. A comprehensive discussion of Social Security and its future cannot be had without women's realities, perspectives, and needs being made perfectly clear. OWL's 2002 Mother's Day report will prove instrumental in this discussion.

For those of you not versed in feminist mythology, the owl is associated with Lilith, the first “uppity woman,” whose identity merges with that of the Crone.

Blueprint for Children

Tonight, David Letterman begins his monologue with “Tomorrow is Mother’s Day – that’s the day we honor the person who we blame for all of our personal problems.”

I was one of those kids who felt as though she must be a changeling or else adopted. My dreams were never my mother’s dreams. My “otherness” confused her, angered her, frustrated her, disappointed her, made her cry. My mother seemed to see me as an appendage of hers; she couldn’t understand my independent will, my need to separate myself from my family’s strong conservative attitudes.

I couldn’t wait to go away to college, but as glad as I was to leave home, I still wished that my mother would somehow come to understand me and accept me for who I was. And so, my freshman year, I sent her a copy of Kahil Gibran’s The Prophet for Mother’s Day.

And on the book’s flyleaf, before my signature preceded by “Love,…” I copied the following from the section On Children:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Since my mother has always been a committed Catholic, I figured that Gibran’s language style and references to a capital He might make the passage have the ring of “sacred truth” for her. It didn’t work.

It didn’t work for her, but it worked for me and the way I have tried to view my own children.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

Today CNN reported that A U.N. summit approved a new blueprint late Friday to improve the world for children in the next 15 years. The agreement came after contentious negotiations between the United States and other nations on sex education, abortion and the death penalty.

Succumbing to conservative pressure, the United States stood in opposition to the180 nations that adopted – by consensus and with a round of applause -- the final summit document, "A World Fit For Children." However, at the insistence of the United States, the intent of the original document regarding "health and reproductive services" was diluted to skirt the issue of abortion counseling, and, in addition, the United States is excluded from a requirement barring the death penalty or life imprisonment for those under the age of 18.

"A World Fit for Children" – except if they live in the United States, where an adult minority of small minds and stagnant souls refuse to acknowledge that life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

A Basil Reader

I planted my garden today. That’s the grave-sized garden that we who live in this hotel-sized, up-scale senior warehouse are allotted if we sign up before they’re all taken. (The only reason I I live here because I take care of my 86-year old mother, who lives across the hall from me. I try not to dwell on where I dwell.)

I planted my garden today, and that means that now I have an excuse to dig in dirt, sweat in sun, smell growing things -- parsley, that, having weathered the winter, already has claimed its place at the center of things – new lavender buds poking through old growth – melissa (lemon balm) that I plant in honor of my daughter – the usual rosemary, sage, and thyme – and most of all basil. Lots of basil. Basil for pesto. Basil for tomato sauces. Basil for cold chicken and pasta salad. Basil for herbed vinegar. Mostly basil. And tomatoes. Beef steak tomatoes to eat with the basil, fresh mozzarella, and olive oil.

I planted my garden today. It’s mostly basil. According to a website called Horsetail Heaven, In Italy, a pot of basil placed on a balcony signaled that a woman was ready to receive suitors…. In India holy basil is considered a sacred herb and at one time was used to protect the dead from evil. It is still found growing around temples ….Early Greeks and Romans believed that a good basil crop would only develop if the gardener shouted and cursed while sowing the seeds.

I neither sowed nor cursed; I went to the local greenhouse and bought a dozen basil plants. And six beefsteak tomato plants. That pretty much takes up most of a grave-sized garden.

Except for Pan (and a pink calla lily bulb that a friend of mine gave me). An infant Pan has reigned over my basil-laden herb gardens for the past five years, which seems appropriate, given his connections to the Mediterranean region from which basil mythology springs. Each year, I plant him to watch over my grave-sized garden. Perhaps, one day, someone will think to plant him on my garden-sized grave. Along with basil. Lots of basil. And maybe a pink calla lily.

Gonzo for the public sector?
Based on my experiences working with "public information and outreach" for a government education bureaucracy, I've been doing lot of thinking about how very appropriate Cluetrain's philosophy and the Gonzo Marketing approach is to the public sector. Does anyone one know if there's been any thought in that direction?

Macromedia sticks a toe in the Gonzo Marketing sea.

Well, they at least them seem to be trying to get the first part of what Chris Locke has been saying to businesses in Gonzo Marketing. An interview with Locke in the current online issue of The Guardian (which the Bombast guy calls the “best article on my checkered career to date") includes the following quote from Locke that pretty much sums up that first part.

What I'm telling them is: drop this invasive, intrusive advertising - it's not going to work any more - and build relationships around shared interests, and that will create good will towards your company. Instead of turning people off, you can turn them on by hooking them up and getting out of the way. And if this works, I see trillions of dollars shifting towards a bottom-up artistic web renaissance. What could come out of that is a cultural flowering that we can't imagine, just as the middle ages couldn't imagine the Renaissance. I don't think that's a whacked-out vision.

According to wired.com, Macromedia (the company that makes Flash and Shockwave) is going to use weblogs to provide a forum for the managers to discuss the new products, show developers how to use some of the new features and answer questions. Most importantly, the community managers would write like bloggers, with that casual, this-great-idea-just-occurred-to-me tone which sometimes makes weblogs so addictive…… Macromedia asks only that its bloggers keep their postings relevant -- no blogging about what they ate for breakfast, in other words. They're free to discuss any aspect of the software…

I think that it remains to be seen whether Macromedia will be successful in getting to the next level that Locke insists is of utmost importance – keeping the “voice” free. As reviewed online in Tom’s New Commonplace Book, On one level, Gonzo is a mythic tale of the reallocation of voice. The power to speak that the giants of mass marketing and mass media tore from us – the rape of voice – is envisioned restored to the multifarious intelligences of the Net.

One can’t help waiting to see just how much freedom Macromedia will allow its blog voices.

Tin Men and Fallen Angels
There are certain men that capture my attention and interest almost immediately. My women friends tell me that, from their perspective, it is the “arrogance” of these men that attracts me. And, for sure, on the surface, there is the appearance of arrogance. But is it only appearance.

Tin Men and Fallen Angels
She is drawn to the dramas
of Tin Men and Fallen Angels,
the loose threads of their dreams
tangling too easily
with the thickets of her own.

Their gestures hint at faded grace.
Their eyes belie the freedom of their stride.
Their touches fire the sun,
birthing shadows fierce as flame.

She flies into those shadows
like a bat
out for blood.

And so she cannot turn her hand
from the sweep of sky
that sheds his battered wings,
cannot hide from his shadow,
so dense it masks her senses,
stretches the edges of scars,
stirs her skin open
to the haunting lure
of a lone tin man,
a feckless
fallen
angel.

During the twenty-something years after my divorce, I managed to get entangled with two such men. I’ve lost track of one of them, although I believe he still spends the summers in the cabin that he remodeled into an elegant A-frame. He is the one who gave me the antlers. He is the one with whom I once spent April in Paris. We went dancing in a ballroom on the Champs Elysees after a day of window shopping among all of the best designers. Rode up the Eiffel Tower late at night, lost in the lights of the city, in the drama of the journey.

The other I keep track of on the web. He’s an ex-priest and astounding artist. He finally married the ex-nun who continued to love him through all of his various adventures, one of which was me. I run into them every once in a while. She looks at me coldly. But he and I still smile at the strange, short, and passionate time we spent together. I stirred his interest in non-Christian mythology, some of which he began to incorporate into his paintings. He paints big – I mean BIG. Canvases that cover walls. At least he used to. He lives big, open. At least he did. I don’t know how he lives now, and I haven’t been to one of his exhibits in a while. I only know how he still paints. And how he stirred my soul.

Pan Makes a Personal Appearance
To think it was you I summoned!
All those incantations,
those spells dispatched
to shift the stars,
returned as this immortal face,
this ancient tale.

To think the gods still answer prayers!
Make bright, deft-handed landings
right before my eyes,
fall haloed and goat-footed
deep into my mark,
breathing mischief and mayhem,
and bold, bewildering dreams.

Angel, satyr, shepherd,
your music stirs the skin.
Play your syrinx
now for me, my kin.

We will dance, dance,
to your tune.

Reading Chris Locke’s/Rage Boy’s Bombast Transcripts brought me eye to word with someone whose persona, at least, seems to define him as one of those men who, indeed, are so open to, in love with, entranced by, plagued by life, the world, people, contradictions, possibilities, ……..that their passion and energy pull like a magnet, make us want to know more about what’s under the next layer, and the next, and the next…..

On the oldies radio station I have on, Don McClean is singing “Vincent.” Poets and artists dancers and ranters. Tin Men and Fallen Angels. Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t live without ‘em.

(poetry copyrighted by Elaine Frankonis)