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.

Public and private

I was a little flip with the DQ's drama teacher. I had once had aspirations to going on the wicked stage as an adolescent, I said to her. But I became a minister and journalist instead.

"It's all about performance" I said smugly. Of course, acting isn't "all about performance" any more than journalism is -- and ordination is supposed to be a calling, isn't it? I think we all have a calling -- or maybe that they change as we transition from one place in our pilgrimage to another. Putting clergy in that artifically high place only means that when we/they fall, we/they fall from a higher place. And sometimes a call has nothing to do with work -- it might be a vocation to being a parent, or a niece, or one who serves.

But sometimes it IS all about performance, Fr. Cutie in Florida being a case in point. As with many clergy who end up compromised, his public persona was one thing -- and his private behavior another. It's probably no accident he got caught. Rare the man or woman who can juggle two personalities for a long time without the stress becoming too much.

Bus stop

I didn't intend to be at the bus stop at all this morning. I had told Mr. C that if I was still showering, he should walk up himself. I don't think he heard me say that his lunch was in front of the door. He actually had to walk over it to get out.

When I realized he had not taken his cheese and grapes, I dashed out in my car, with roughly 3 minutes to spare. Watching him run for the bus with the other local kids, I had a moment of envy -- for their gossip, their homework assignments, their boundaried concerns.

So much is still possible for a ten year old or a 13 year old. Decades older, we know how much we can't control. But I didn't ponder myself into a blue funk. I turned around the car in the street and went home -- to find that somehow one of our cats had seemingly pushed the lock on our screen door -- and now smugly slept on my son's bed or the couch, while I pulled and poked and finally snuck in through the back door. Fooled him, I thought -- sometimes I can still beat the cats at their own game. But not all the time. Particularly when I don't know how to play.

Scrambled eggs?

When I told my ex that I thought I came from a pretty eccentric family, he laughed. That's a revelation?, he asked.

Actually, it's not. But sometimes the facts stare me in the face.

Take my aunt. Aunt Marilyn moved to Los Angeles about three years ago to be near her kids. She'd lived in Brooklyn all of her life, so leaving her old house, relatives and friends was very brave. But she didn't seem scared. She's got a sense of adventure that makes her very flexible -- and a penchant, like my mother, for attracting peculiar situations.

And she's adjusted very well. A former high school drama teacher, she still recruits people for amateur productions -- in Brooklyn, she held them in her living room or a local church. Somehow she's run into a traveling veterinarian who is a friend of a famous dog trainer and "whisperer", Cesar Millan. Apparently this veterinarian has gotten Cesar interested in filming Aunt Marilyn and her aged mutt, who has recently broken a leg. "I'm going to be the wicked owner" she tells me, unsure of whether she wants this kind of fame at 81.

But that doesn't explain the chickens. You see, my aunt's dog broke his leg chasing a chicken. Now, one wouldn't expect to see chickens who live and reproduce right off Ventura Boulevard. In fact, no one knows how they get there. And Marilyn's not pleased when the folks who stop and want to pose with the poultry talk about "her chickens." But she knows she can't get Animal Control to come get them -- some of her neighbors would be distressed.

I don't wonder how they got there. Anyone who knows my aunt, or knew my mom, wouldn't wonder, either.