Saturday, September 29, 2007

pick your battles

Today I got an email petition from a relative. Sign this if you want to save our Social Security system from illegal aliens. I try to stay away from these things. I don't want to argue over whether it should be called a Christmas tree or a holiday tree (my cousin from Texas) or whether Hugo Chavez is a totalitarian dictator (a friend of my Uncle Joe's) or whether Saddam Hussein is al-Qaeda (my hairdresser in Philomath.) But today I couldn't hold myself back. I replied-all to point out that the petition was
1. inaccurate (they do pay taxes)
2. meanspirited
3. whoever wrote the petition didn't even use correct punctuation. You do not use an apostrophe to make a plural, for crying out loud

Friday, September 28, 2007

killing monks


They're killing monks in Burma today. Monks, reporters and unarmed demonstrators. The journalist reporting the story said that people appeared to believe that once the United States knew about it, we'd do something to help.

Monday, September 24, 2007

his ecstasy of feeling nothing while so much is felt


Bible Study: 71 B.C.E.
by Sharon Olds

After Marcus Licinius Crassus
defeated the army of Spartacus,
he crucified 6,000 men.
That is what the records say,
as if he drove in the 18,000
nails himself. I wonder how
he felt, that day, if he went outside
among them, if he walked that human
woods. I think he stayed in his tent
and drank, and maybe copulated,
hearing the singing being done for him,
the woodwind-tuning he was doing at one
remove, to the six-thousandth power.
And maybe he looked out, sometimes,
to see the rows of instruments,
his orchard, the earth bristling with it
as if a patch in his brain had itched
and this was his way of scratching it
directly. Maybe it gave him pleasure,
and a sense of balance, as if he had suffered,
and now had found redress for it,
and voice for it. I speak as a monster,
someone who today has thought at length
about Crassus, his ecstasy of feeling
nothing while so much is being
felt, his hot lightness of spirit
in being free to walk around
while other are nailed above the earth.
It may have been the happiest day
of his life. If he had suddenly cut
his hand on a wineglass, I doubt he would
have woken up to what he was doing.
It is frightening to think of him suddenly
seeing what he was, to think of him running
outside, to try to take them down,
one man to save 6,000.
If he could have lowered one,
and seen the eyes when the level of pain
dropped like a sudden soaring into pleasure,
wouldn’t that have opened in him
the wild terror of understanding
the other? But then he would have had
5,999
to go. Probably it almost never
happens, that a Marcus Crassus
wakes. I think he dozed, and was roused
to his living dream, lifted the flap
and stood and looked out, at the rustling, creaking
living field—his, like an external
organ, a heart.



Sharon Olds, “Bible Study: 71 B.C.E.” from Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002.
thank you, Poppi and Tom, for sending me this
and Rob Howard for the photograph

Saturday, September 22, 2007

they don't deserve books


Today I bought two books at the library book sale: Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler and Tales of the Master Race by Marcie Hershman. They were $3 each. The woman next to me said to her husband, "Three dollars for a paperback! That's ridiculous. I can get them for nothing at the Senior Center." Three lousy dollars for a whole book. Since when did people start thinking they shouldn't pay for books? How do they think publishers and writers and printers and booksellers and all the people who work to make a book get paid? Plus, it was a benefit for the library, for crying out loud. Come on.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

we have all contributed


I will not remain silent in order to protect my hero's status, not will I forfeit my conscience to hide the truth under a shroud of patriotism.........The fact that I contributed to what history will someday remember as a societal travesty on par with Nazi Germany's Holocaust will torment me for the rest of my life.
~Timothy J. Westphal
Former Staff Sargent, US Army
letter to the editor in The Nation (Sept 24, 2007)

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

What Man Ray says


I know everyone is wondering why the heck I hardly ever blog here anymore. Is it because all my blogging is directed towards my witty, new pit bull site, www.peteywasapitbull.blogspot.com?
Nope. A while back I set up an RSS feed on Amazon, so whatever I blogged here wound up on the Amazon pages that sell my books. So suddenly I thought I could only write if I had say something interesting and smart to say about writing. I had to say something that would make the person reading it inclined to buy a book. And then, there's the voting thing. What is with voting in this country? People don't vote for their elected officials, but they vote for the next American idol. They vote to kick someone off the island or out of the Big Brother House. They vote on netflix. How many stars? And on Amazon. They vote for restaurants and hotels. Is it so that we feel like we are in charge of something? At any rate, on Amazon, people rate your blog entries. Geesh.
Today I figured out how to delete the RSS feed so now it's just you and me, privately. I don't have to try to sell books and you don't have to tell me if you found this interesting or not.
This is what Man Ray says about criticism: if you don't like something, walk away from it.