pomegranate

Katrina

I've been reading the stories, looking at the pictures, not having a personal connection to this city, either the place or the people.  The closest I come is the A's third base coach, Ron Washington, is from there.  Thankfully his family is safe.  But they say he hasn't slept for several days.

So, everything that I could think has been said and will most likely be trite.  I will say that I had planned to watch the Braves play the Nationals before the A's played the Angels tonight, but when I turned on the game, the announcers were commenting on the hurricane, and saying that only Venezuela had pledged support so far.  "Why do we help other countries and no one wants to help us?' a broadcaster said.   I picked up the remote and changed the setting to the DVD player and watched another episode of Season 4 of "Curb your Enthusiasm" while I ate dinner.  If I was going to watch someone make jackass comments, it might as well be someone doing it from an ironic point of view.

I've been thinking a lot about the human nature, how so many people stayed because there had been false alarms lately, and they hadn't wanted to go through the ordeal of the process again only to find that it wasn't really necessary.  People are stressed normally, tempers are short under the best of conditions.  Dehydration causes anxiety and panic.  People are put in intense survival mode.  People are having to face corpses of unnecessary deaths.  I'm not excusing anything that's going on there, but I can understand it, and I wish it wasn't happening.

While all this has been going on, I've felt anxious and blue and bemused at myself for being that way when I am here, away from that fray, tremendously lucky and blessed.  It's been one of those taking perspective moments, to read about this disaster in our country.

On an Ostrich named Hanky Panky

When we were on the cruise, the last night before dinner, they presented a comedy show.

I wanted to go. My friend decided to pack instead.

So, I sat down and wondered about language.  This comic was advertised as being someone possessed of "zany antics."  Those types of words set off alarms in my head.  But I wanted to sit back and watch comedy.  I wanted to laugh.

The comic began his show in a loud yellow jacket.  The alarms in my head went off again.  He began talking about a bird that he knew, and then went offstage and came back with an ostrich puppet named Hanky Panky.  The sirens were really loud now.  My friend came down to check on me.

"Look," I said, "Avert your eyes from the jacket and notice that's he's carrying a feathered puppet, an ostrich that he calls Hanky Panky."

My friend looked, said he should get back to his packing, and stood up and left.

I watched for a while.  I thought "I am experiencing schtick."  I thought, "This is like watching a really bad Ed Sullivan show."  I thought, "I wonder if I really remember what the Ed Sullivan shows were like."  I thought these things and then the comic said, "Now I want to do an impersonation of a liar."  He said, "This liar grew up in Arkansas."  He said, "His name is Bill Clinton."

That's when I booed.  I didn't even know I was going to.  The sound just seemed to escape from my mouth, but I did, and the comic looked up as if he had just been roused from a deep slumber, and he said, "Are there some Democrats in the house?"

I found myself clapping vigorously.  I heard scattered handclaps around the room.   Definitely an elephant crowd, I thought, and I left quickly before I would have to hear the impersonation, before I booed or yelled or said anytihng else.  I stood up and walked away, a Democrat leaving a particularly lame comedy show.

Our State of the Union

I had hoped to write this earlier, but work conspired against me.

But amidst the deadlines, I've been thinking about the state of the union, how there was no way in Hades that I was going to watch it, how I didn't want to hear the commentary, or much about it at all.

I thought it might be a nice time to be kind to myself.  So, I started making a list.  Here's some items:

take a long walk, watch the sunset, admire the beauty of the world around you.
take a long, hot bath.
play with the ever playful cat.
continue reading The Isaiah Effect (more on this letter)
have food ordered in
play harmonious music
sit for a while with your feet up

Have a nice night, everyone.

Not One Damn Dime

I got this email from several people.  Make today--what the Marks on Morning Sedition called "Ignore-aration" day--"Not One Damn Dime Day."  Don't spend any money.  Make an economic protest.

It's something I've been thinking about as a general way of life.  There's a Web site, Buy Blue, that lists companies that support Democratic interests and those that give money to the Republicans.  I used to buy many gifts at Amazon.  I will be trying out Barnes & Noble and Borders in the future.  And I was happy to see that Netflix gave to the Democrats.

So, today, I wanted to participate in Not One Damn Dime, even though I knew that I actually would spend 50  dimes today, the price of parking my car in the lot for work.  I thought for a while about even staying at home, but I couldn't afford to take the day off without pay, and the notion of calling in sick, when I felt perfectly fine just seemed ultimately against the whole principle of the thing to me.

But I had my provisions, the Christmas coffee, the fettucini alfredo that me and a friend had made the night before, some broccoli, some graham crackers for an afternoon snack, water, soda.  I was ready.

Then I made a mistake.  I was emailing a friend today about a birthday gift that I needed to buy.  We figured out the ideal gift, and then I wrote that I would order it in the next day or so, since I was participating in Not One Damn Dime today.

in reply, my friend, known to me as a curmudgeon, issued a sardonic, "Have fun."

I decided to leave it at that, although I privately wondered why I had ever mentioned it at all.  The weird thing is that it was fun.  It was great to plan and to have everything I needed.  It felt good not to spend money.  It didn't feel like any sort of a sacrifice.  It just felt like the right thing to do.

On Rome and France and America

Lately, I've thought if I could go back in time and change what I studied, I would have majored in American history.  I would have learned about our country, backwards and forwards.  I would have it all highlighted in big, fat history books. 

"But what would you have done with it?" a friend asked.

"I would have been an academic," I said. 

Even in my alternate fantasy lives, I don't make the big bucks.

Yesterday, I stayed home from work.  We had a surprising holiday.  Usually, as transcriptionists, we work on Martin Luther King, Jr's  Day.  But this year, our office building was closed.  I stayed home and discovered the History Channel.

It's not like the History Channel was never there before.  I've just never noticed it.  But yesterday, while my clothes went through the dry cycle, I watched an hour show on Caligula.  Later on, I watched a two hour show on the French Revolution.  I had never known that much about Caligula before a week ago, when I watched "I, Claudius."  This filled in more of the sketch.  But long ago, I had studied the French Revolution.  I remembered "Liberte, egalite, et fraternite."  I remembered the names, Danton and Robespierre.  I remembered "Let them eat cake."  I knew that was a myth.  But I didn't remember what happened when the National Assembly took over.  I had forgotten about the Reign of Terror, and how once the violence began in the uprising, it seemed hard to stop it.

It seemed ironic on Martin Luther King, Jr's day to learn about such bloody times.  It seemed comforting in  a strange way in this preinaugral week to hear about other corrupt governments, to know that this has happened other times in history, have even manifested itself in more extreme manners than what we currently experience, that we are not alone in our feelings of sadness and anger, and that perhaps at some later date, things can right themselves again.

On Learning Things

Last night, in conversation, I realized one good thing that I have gleaned from this administration.
It has made me want to think.

Before Bush came into office, I was not interested in politics.  I found it depressing and upsetting, and I would rather just not know about it, thank you very much.  Then when this administration came into power, it seemed important to have information.  I began to want to read about current events.  Then when the Republicans kept control of the White House and Congress in the past election, I still wanted to know about things, but I often found the news almost too much to bear.  So, I would read it in little drabs.  And I developed a yen for learning about American history.

So, I'm beginning to read.  I'm watching documentaries from Netflix.  If it feels to hard to immerse myself in current events, I can at least have a context to place things, and that seems to comfort me.  And it seems that the more I give my brain things to think about, the more it wants to learn.  It's like an "eat your vegetables" sort of things.  After a while, you develop a taste for greens.

Sorry Everybody and Apologies Accepted

These are old hat Web sites by now, even though they're only a few weeks in existence, Sorry Everybody, the 48% response to the world, and Apologies Accepted, the world's answer.  It's such a simple concept, photographs of Americans with signs expressing their sorrow over the election and then pictures of people from all the world with their signs saying it's okay, maybe it will be really hard, we've got it bad, too, yes, we know he's a monkey, don't give up, we know you tried, work for 2008.

I've found myself at these sites for a while, clicking on picture after picture.  Reading the news, it's easy to forget how many people share my viewpoint.  It's a way to look in strangers' faces and know that they understand.

F is For Fraud

These days, if you're a liberal, the cool thing to say is that you think that there were election irregularities, but the vote wasn't stolen.  And when you say those last words, it's best to have a tone in your voice as if you're verbally raising an eyebrow or make it sound really intense like you're some stark raving person writing in a blog or something.

Right now, the people who believe in the f-word, who believe in the fraud, the fix, are looked upon as hysterics, people who can't realize that a Kerry win is numerically impossible, given the numbers.  Those last  three words should prompt a guffaw, I believe, as the numbers seem to change every day, all over the country, when people take a second look.  And it seems odd to me, that the crooked numbers seem to always favor Bush.  But let's not say the fraud word.  Sure the election office in Warren County, Ohio was locked down and monitors and the media were not allowed in, supposedly by order of the FBI, in light of a "terrorist alert" ranked at 10, and we have never found out what that was about.  Sure, the Republicans in Congress made sure that legislation mandating a paper trail for voting machines never got out of committee.  Sure, Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org is now having a heck of a time in Florida trying to get information her organization asked for through the Freedom of Information Act.  They're giving her falsified documents, and she's finding ballots and poll data dumped in trash cans.  So, yeah, they're right.  Anyone would have to be loony to think that anything fraudulent occurred.

Things to Do When You're Blue

Everyone needs a coping toolbox.

There are some of the things that I've found helpful in the past few days when I've needed cheering up from national policies:

1)  Lasagna in a bowl helps. 

2)  The bean dip with the cheese and the guacamole and sour cream that you can buy at Trader Joe's is also great comfort food.  The cashier today told me that he always it with TJ's black bean spicy chips.  I'm trying that on my next trip to The Store.

3)  Earlier on in the conversation, I told the cashier I had made a mistake by getting into this line.  He looked a bit dismayed and confused, and then I pointed out to him that at his checkstand, TJ's had placed  a not to be missed display of dark chocolate ginger bits.  The checkstands nearby had candy cane displays.  That would have been easy to resist.  I brought the dark chocolate ginger bits home with me, and have to say they're quite delicious.

4)  Stand up comedy on DVDs.  I watched Chris Rock's "Bigger and Blacker" the other night with a friend and really laughed.

5)  Also watching things really removed from the situation. RIght now, I'm watching "Brideshead Revisited"--not a laff riot by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a journey to a very different world, and I'm grateful for that.

6)  I've really been enjoying the company of my friends.  I can have logical conversations with them.  I see how they're honest and decent folk.  With them, I can see some of fhe humor of it all.

7) Walks work.

8)  Animals are a comfort.

A Couple of Things

Move On is compiling a petition to send to Congress to investigate the vote.  If this issue concerns you, you can sign up here.

I didn't like the opening to this piece in Salon.  But Dan Carol quickly won me over.

I think that's it for this space for the week.  There's a little something on Truffaut on my other blog.  This morning, his work reminded me how life can be beautiful.  Take care.