Dogpaddling

There's a certain voyeurism about reading this tale. And yet it's an uncomfortable emotion, like finding out the neighbor next door is having an affair with a fourth grade teacher at your local elementary school.

If a NYT finance reporter, who should have known much better, went under water, could it happen to us? He identifies one of the forces that pushed him under as love, and he should know (more than me). But here's what I think I perceive, too -- the desire to recreate your life, and somehow seal off the challenging remants of the old one, is sometimes too tempting to abjure.

Great quote of the day

"With the movie “Angels and Demons” opening on Friday, he has been
issuing public broadsides and giving interviews on radio and
television by the fistful, pounding at what he says are historical
distortions about the church’s history in the book’s plot. “They even
have a scene where rats eat a bunch of cardinals,” he said. “Can you
imagine any other religion where this would not be viewed as rank
religious bias?”




Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, profiled in the New York Times

A real Steele

Michael Steele (chair of the RNC, not the DNC, in case you didn't notice)is a total loose cannon. Read this paragraph from a recent AP article:

"Remember, it was the base that rejected Mitt because of his switch on pro-life, from pro-choice, to pro-life," Steele said. "It was the base that rejected Mitt because it had issues with Mormonism. It was the base that rejected Mitch, uh, Mitt, because they thought he was back and forth and waffling on those very economic issues you're talking about. I mean, so, I hear what you're saying, but before we even got to a primary vote, the base had made very clear they had issues with Mitt because if they didn't, he would have defeated John McCain in those primaries in which he lost."

Here's the whole article, in case you wish to be further entertained. I know he must drive some of the "base" crazy, but the guy's candor is quite rare in a world in which Democratic and Republic pols (well, maybe not Jim Bunning) watch every word that comes out of their unnaturally whitened teeth because they are so concerned about what some Beltway bloggete will write about them. I mean, Mitt Romney is likely to be a Presidential candidate in 2012. If Steele lasts that long in his post, he's going to have to get his name right...

Small choices towards less stuff

I wanted to contribute to the viral nature of 20 minute (don't say I didn't warn you) video of what happens to the "stuff" we want, and buy, and then dispose of -- it's simple, but powerful -- a kind of simplicity that hits you right on the kisser.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/


You probably won't get rid of your favorite things, but maybe...you'll hold on to that cell until the contracts up (or past the date)...use one water bottle instead of buying 20 at the store every week...store your food in china bowls instead of plastic. One step at a time. I think I better look for new pillows. The DQ says she's sleeping on the floor from now on.

Mothers and aunts

When my grandmother got old, and we didn't feel great about the crime in her neighborhood, my folks and my aunt decided she had to move. My aunt and mother must have worked something out, because we were fortunate enough to have grandma move in around the corner. And then, fairly soon after, my Aunt Jennie left her Flatbush apartment to move to Lincoln Place.

We'd go visit them and drink weak tea, eat cookies, and tease my grandmother, or look at my great aunt's afghans or needlepoint. Grandma was always getting us to sign a petition or take some pamphets on a sane nuclear policy -- her home was a haven in which all of us wildly diverse idionsyncratic nieces and sisters and cousins sat peacably at dinner, trading stories, teasing each other, linked in love. Sibling rivalry dared not speak its name.

If my mother had lived, my sister and I probably would have battled to get her to move in with us. So it is with the women and the few elderly men on that side of our family.

Isn't she lucky to have children who both wish that she'd live with them? said a friend of another, older friend we both think is fabulous. But I think it's more than luck that both her kids would love to have Peg. It is a mystery -- one created long ago, in a mother's compassion, humor, and ability to love through rage and chill and thunder into reconciliation. She is the tie that binds these children.