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November 2009
 

slashfairy
Date: 2009-05-08 12:55
Subject: Friday, Friday
Security: Public
Tags:amazon, car, despair work, economics, fun, hope, peace-work, sleep, star trek, uni

The good news: my Facebook Cause, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is gaining members. You can be one!

The Happiness Project.

I managed to get the car to the mechanic's without its either blowing up or falling to pieces on the freeway. We'll find out what we find out, eh? It's an '88 Volvo wagon- I'm sure it's got a few miles left on it, if it can just find them.

Ah, what the hell. It's all good news, isn't it? The only thing is, I won't be seeing Star Trek today at 1:30, so that's $8.00 I'm considering donated to the cause of Hunter Urban's college fund. Just something to look forward to then, innit? Bones McCoy, I'm on my way.

Alrighty then. Since I can't ship any books, go to Star Trek, or stay up any longer, and I am graduating AND raising money for my Cause, I think I'll get some zzzzzs. Yay for nights off!

And blessings on your heads, y'all. Each and every one of you.

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slashfairy
Date: 2009-05-06 07:36
Subject: State of the Slashfairy, three weeks and counting
Security: Public
Tags:amazon, aoop, despair work, europe 2009, facebook, friends, life, peace-work, twitter, uni, wordpress

Yep, I'm graduating! have to pick up my cap&gown over at uni this week. If I remember I'll do it after work before my mammogram on Friday. *eyeroll* life of an older student.

EnjoyIt will go on vacation May 25th (last day I can ship) because I'm leaving for Europe May 26th! (London-Germany-Denmark-Germany-London) Home July 8th, back to work probably the 12th. Thank you every one who has bought or will buy, who has passed the word to friends and co-workers. It's been a real joy, becoming a book-seller, and it's made the difference between being able to pull off this trip nicely and have it be a grind and a worry.

Have started a WordPress Blog as a professional place to write; those of you who read along know that peace-work and despair-work are two lifetime interests/pursuits for me. My entire aim with pursuing my bachelors' has been to get the base for doing work in this area- yes, I know people do work in it without college degrees, but I want to change something in Nursing, open up a dialogue inside Nursing, so I thought I'd better get a bit more academic education in Nursing to give me some place to stand. It worked: I feel/AM better prepared to state my case. Now I'm making the place from which to speak. It's very satisfying.

Ok, I've a chance at an early bed this morning, and I'm going to take it. Blessings on your heads.

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slashfairy
Date: 2009-01-20 06:01
Subject: Change is gonna come, change is gonna come.
Security: Public
Music:Eisenhower: The military-industrial complex/MLK Letter from Birmingham Jail
Tags:change, despair-work, hope, peace-work, philosophy, political science, psychology

So it's probably no secret that, once Kucinich was out of the race, I supported Obama.

And it's probably no secret that I've got some major disappointments about the Bush years, and that I'd like to see criminal proceedings against members of that administration.

That said (and don't defriend me until you finish reading- come on now, fair's fair)- that said, I think it's important to say this:

Someone had to be that President. It was gonna happen- someone was going to be the one who pointed out what Twain said, what Eisenhower said: if we let the military and the corporations own the country, then we don't. There's money to be made in fear, in hate, in anger, in war and raining pestilence, and corporations care about money. And corporations, Departments of Defense (War), are big, are impersonal, don't care on the individual level. They can't afford to.

But we can. We can, and we have to.

So. Someone had to carry the weight of showing just.what.happens when we don't. It was almost Clinton- he signed NAFTA, he signed GATT, he signed Don't Ask/Don't Tell- but he was too pretty, too charming, and the weight of that got slimed off him with impeachment-over-foolishness. He could have been nailed for Afghanistan, for Somalia- but the opposition let themselves be distracted by the sleazy side of him, and thus: the weight was still there to be carried.

So George did.

Not elegantly. Not intelligently. But he carried it, and his administration made sure that we, the people, learned all over again that it's our government, not the Department of Defense's government, not FEMA's, not General Foods' and Bechtel's and the NRA's and FMC's or whoever they are today, the corporations that make weapons and sell them to anyone (that's prostitution, not business), that destroy farmland in the name of mechaniculture and agribusiness (that's not dominion over the earth, that's just waste of what's been given to us in stewardship), that steal work a person can do for profits an entity that exists only on paper can reap.

Someone has to manifest the shadow- the Imperial America (Manifest Destiny, anyone?), the "Leader of the Free World" that can't free its own people from poverty, starvation-posing-as-affluence, from ignorance-induced fear. Someone had to, and George did.

I don't envy him. I think he could have done that more intelligently- I think he had criminal advisors and took the easy way out, and I hope he pays. I hope they all do.

I don't condemn him. The shadow was going to be manifested- it had to be- and now it's happened. I surely condemn what he let happen on his watch, just as I condemn Clinton- a Rhodes scholar, for fuck's sakes- for being a vain, pompous idiot and wasting glorious opportunities. Someone had to manifest that, too, and damn, but he did a good job.

So let's get on with the rest of it. Let's get on with educating our people, with sorting our differences, with making a real country out of this huge experiment called a Representative Republic. Let's each represent what we believe in- if it's that God's on our side, then be a representative of the most humane, most compassionate version of that you know (Mother Teresa said once, when asked how she did so much, that "I do what is in front of me. I trust to God to do the rest." He can handle the big scale. We need to do what's in front of us). George H. W. Bush said he counted on the 1000 points of light to carry this country through- isn't now a good time to light up, to come together and light up the shadow of America, and really let this country shine in a way it never has before- not by denying the worth of others, but by celebrating it and working together?

I like Kucinich, for all he says he saw a flying saucer. Hell, I talk to ghosts, and more than once told Death to wait for a patient of mine- better the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God (or as the Quakers say, "so I do affirm") than to lie. Before Newton and Descartes were the saints and the mystics; before Mao and Lenin the grace of poets and farmers; before the 500 years of planetary war and slavery and commerce we could claim to be separate, but we are all related now- your history is my history, and my planet is yours, and even though I can only live where and when and in relation to this now that I'm experiencing, I can acknowledge yours.

We're here, now. Obama's being sworn in today. Whether it's for four years or eight, change is gonna come. How do you want to be part of it? Where do you stand? It's not about him, although it is- it's about the arc of this country, this experiment, this dream- and it's about who you want to be, in that moment before you die, when you say "This is who I was, this is what I did." In that moment when the truth is all you have, what do you want it to be?

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-12-27 05:26
Subject: Dave Eggers accepting his 2008 TEDtalks wish (I love Dave for 826 Valencia)
Security: Public
Tags:citizens' rights and responsibilities, ethics, peace-work, teaching, writing

Once upon a school (and the history of 826 Valencia and the Pirate Supply Store).


Thanks to [info]illuminated_sin for the Proliteracy.org link.

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-12-22 20:16
Subject: Do goats cry? El Lamento del Cabrón...the poet speaks
Security: Public
Tags:citizen's rights and responsibilities, despair-work, effort, ethics, history, peace-work

“El lamento del cabrón” from Perceval Press
text of article )

I'm not through translating this (for my own use, I'm not so good to try and translate it for everyone! but if someone DOES translate it, I'd love to see it) but essentially Sr. Gelman says Mr. Bush and his administration lie now, lied then, and have lied all along, about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and that for Mr. Bush to say that one of his main regrets about his presidency is the lack of good intelligence about that is like a goat crying. (Cabrón translated at wordreference.com- street meaning and formal meaning. crying goat, my ass.)

I got curious about the song El Lamento del Cabrón, so here is some information about that and the band Orthodox:
lyrics, english )

about the band:
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/albumofthemonth/1494
http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=109944
Orthodox performing on YouTube

for download (ripped from youtube)

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-11-09 19:14
Subject: (no subject)
Security: Public
Tags:citizens' rights and responsibilities, despair-work, government, healthcare, history, peace-work, politics

And how does the government pay for universal tax-payer funded
healthcare and universal tax-payer funded education? You might say it
is only a utopian dream, that it is naïve to ask for the government of
the United States of America to provide free comprehensive healthcare
and education for all of its citizens. I say that it was not dreaming
to expect Barack Obama to become president, and it is not dreaming to
expect the United States of America to behave like a modern, civilised
democracy. Where does the money come from? For one thing, it comes
from not bailing out the privileged few who have, through willful
mismanagement of their financial institutions and through corporate
piracy, raped and pillaged the nation's economy and robbed the U.S.
tax-payer blind with the encouragement of the government officials
whose campaigns they continue to fund. It does not come from
continuing to make a lucrative business of war-profiteering and
military-backed corporate imperialism, from perpetual armed corporate
robbery around the world, largely funded by U.S. taxpayers of today
and tomorrow.

Barack Obama received considerably more campaign funding from "Wall
Street" than John McCain did. Does this mean that he will
automatically bail out the rich who continue to steal from the hardly-
as-rich vast majority of U.S. citizens and their children? Ask him. If
he tells you that it is just too complex an issue, that bailing out
these for-profit failed capitalistic institutions and corporations is
a necessary stop-gap measure to save the economy, I would venture to
say that the answer is "yes". I would venture to say that he is as
bought-and-paid-for as George W. Bush, Bill "Nafta" Clinton, and every
other president in memory. Sadly, this would mean that "Change", that
word Mr. Obama so eloquently used - if often vaguely - as a
rhetorical cudgel to win the presidency and a chance to really make a
difference, is worth nothing more than a handful of pennies to the
economic future of the average citizen and to the hope of a socially-
responsible democracy. If the answer is "yes", then those who have
stolen Big will be richly rewarded and the profitable (for the
privileged, amoral few) military-industrial empire will thrive and
prosper as the noble dream of a just society suffers ever greater set-
backs. Let capitalism function as a responsibly-regulated system, not
as a costly welfare safety-net for billionaires and their capitalist
enterprises. We have a dream. It need not be further compromised by
the next U.S. administration. Sometimes the picture is quite clear.
Take a stand.

Viggo Mortensen


The People Speak

"Democracy is in dissent. Democracy is in resistance. Democracy doesn't come from the top: It comes from the bottom." ~~ Howard Zinn

Please. I know it can come off as ranting. I don't think it is. I think it's an impassioned plea for each of us to own our citizenship, to own the commonwealth that is ours by virtue of our labor, by virtue of our participation, however indirect it may seem to be, in the governance of and economy of our country.

I know it would be a long project, re-making the way we take care of our health as individuals and as a society. I am well aware of the limitations of "Universal health coverage" in Canada, in the UK, in the Scandinavian countries, and I can imagine as well limitations and risks of universal tax-payer funded education. But I like to think these are public conversations, conversations in the national interest as well as in the personal, and I hope that as I pursue my part in it my President-Elect, soon to be President, will be at least willing to listen while I speak.

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-11-07 23:00
Subject: From Perceval Press today:
Security: Public
Tags:citizens' rights and responsibilities, despair-work, government, peace-work, politics

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Please do all that you honestly can to bring to justice Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, William Haynes, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rice, Colin Powell, George Tennet, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzalez, Karl Rove, and numerous other members of the Bush administration since the start of 2001 who have either been directly responsible for or complicit in the numerous acts of treason, human rights violations and other crimes in the United States of America and abroad, including in but not limited to Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Colombia, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. There have been many violations of domestic and international law by the Bush/ Cheney regime, but the use of torture by this administration, in blatant disregard of long-accepted international and U.S. standards, is on its own enough to see many U.S. officials prosecuted and jailed. The energetic promotion and white-washing of torture by U.S. interrogators are not only reprehensible and damaging to the reputation of the United States, but have undoubtedly placed all of its citizens - military as well as civilian- in increased danger from reprisals and acts of terrorism for years to come. The war crimes and clearly-impeachable misconduct of the Bush/Cheney administrations cannot go unprosecuted and unpunished if citizens of the United States of America are to move forward with relatively clear consciences and the hoped for restoration of their country's relatively good standing in the community of nations. This is about moral responsibility, common decency, and historical legacy. Thank you in advance, Mr. Obama.

http://www.percevalpress.com

ETAThere are things about this that bother me. Worry me. I agree, emotionally and ethically, that there have been war crimes committed in my name. But I also worry that directing too much energy toward that, right at the beginning of what I fervently hope is, and will work for making be, a huge change in our national bearing, will steal from what needs to be done.

I trust Mr. Obama to do what he honestly can. I think he's well-educated, thoughtful, resourceful, aware.

I just wanted to put this out here, as an articulate presentation of one aspect of the effects of the last 7 years.

ETA2 I should mention, too, that Mr. Mortensen has a double degree, essentially Government or Political Science and Spanish, from St. Lawrence College in New York. I suspect that as angry as he is about this, he's put a fair amount of thought into this post.

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-10-16 04:56
Subject: Nobel Voices for Disarmament
Security: Public
Tags:despair-work, effort, history, peace-work

Smithsonian Folkways recently released Nobel Voices for Disarmament: 1901–2001 (SFW47005), a stirring collection of new and archival spoken-word recordings by the most prominent advocates for peace during a century marred by war and bloodshed. With thirty-nine tracks organized into eight chapters, Nobel Voices offers testimonials from luminaries such as Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, Jane Addams, Jody Williams and Linus Pauling.

Introduced and narrated by Academy Award-winning actor, producer and United Nations Messenger of Peace Michael Douglas, Nobel Voices honors the achievements of the last century’s Nobel Peace Prize winners in disarmament and arms control and those who have been inspired by their work. (Streaming tracks available at the moment.)

At times, because there is still a nuclear arsenal, and still countries who think that having MORE nuclear stuff is necessarily in and of itself a good thing, I am disheartened.

Then I listen to something like this, and realise it's an on-going process to keep things on an even keel. And then I can keep going.

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-09-21 23:04
Subject: PEDTM 21
Security: Public
Tags:economics, night shift, peace-work, pedtm

I seem to have muddled up my days somehow.

Or perhaps not. A seemingly unavoidable side effect of night shift is losing track of where, exactly, in the day/week/month we are.

So I start these posts when I get up, or when I get home, or before I fall asleep or just after I get things settled at work, and then don't finish them, and when I go to click 'post to slashfairy' it's another day.

Only, it's not. Because I haven't been to work or sleep or home or to uni or shopping or had breakfast or whatever it is that signifies that any given day is finished, ready to be turned over so the next day can begin.

Anyway.

I have some deep thoughts about the financial situation in the world, and some about the political situation, and the war situation and the health situation- but no words for them, at the moment.

Except Einstein's- You cannot simultaneously prepare for both war and peace- and my good friend Anne's- Save your money.

I used to wonder, in a Fredric Brown-ish sort of way, when the credit card companies said 'Buy now, Pay later!', when, exactly, Later might be, and who, if anyone, was going to pay then.

Seems we may be finding out?

be well, and blessings on your heads.

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-09-14 21:49
Subject: PETDM 14
Security: Public
Tags:despair-work, economics, health, history, movies, peace-work, uni, war

this is harder than it looks.

it would be so easy if there weren't so much i want to talk about, and if my brain would stay awake long enough to actually help me make coherent posts.

1) [info]tammy212 has better posts than I about the Health and Human Services "conscience rule". Deadline for HHS to decide is 10 days away now; Planned Parenthood Petition is here.

2) I love it when one sentence in a book opens the world tenfold for me. From The Wild Swan (my find from San Francisco last week) these sentences- just a bit of background information setting up Andersen's first round of travels as an adult: The Germany of independent states through which Andersen passed on his first visit was to be transformed within his lifetime. The Holy Roman Empire with its three hundred and ninety-six principalities, ecclesiastical states and free towns had been completely reorganized by Napoleon in 1806. After his defeat it was found impossible to restore the old order[...]

Which both reinforces that even in the known and incomplete history of the North American continent (about which, between Native American studies and Chicano/Latino Cinema, I am being given new points of view) there are orders and orders which came and went before Europe came; some of which is recorded, still, in the oral histories of the people still surviving and some, did we have eyes to see, in the geography and ecology of the continent itself.

3) I bought Miss Sarajevo. For a lot of reasons- because I have a good friend who is becoming a director of documentaries. Because people I admire and respect are involved in bringing his bookFools Rush In to the screen.

A lot of things about this film have made deep impressions on me, but the one that I'll mention here is the sight of the Bosnian National Library burning after being bombed, and Bill saying that '...with it burned basically all the history of Bosnia because Bosnia is a country with a lot of history written by monks and and clerics and whatnot and it pretty much is gone and that's a problem today because now you have a country with no real written history which can lead problems because it allows people to make up their own history and that is a problem in Bosnia today.' (quoted from the DVD.)

4) There are all kinds of ways history rewrites itself. Sometimes it's because one person pulls together threads and odds and ends of impressions and sees the pattern formerly woven that has been hidden from view by misdirection, by forgetting, by not-wanting-to-know.

My uncle, my father's oldest brother, was a bomber pilot in World War 2. I met him once. Over the years, in scraps of information from my father, I learned my uncle been shot down and captured at some point, came home very ill, and died young of cirrhosis caused both by starvation while he was a prisoner of war and partly by his drinking after he got home.

What I've put together since is this: he bombed Heroya, Hamburg, Paris, in 1943. He was shot down in France. He was held in one of the concentration camps, I don't know which one. I've walked in places that are changed forever because, before I was born, my father's older brother was dropping bombs on them.

I don't know what to do with that, really, or what it means, except that just as these two classes this term are giving me opportunities to re-view and re-learn, more globally, the smattering of history I've had in the past, so too this more personal connection to place, people, and history gives me opportunity to appreciate, to not take so much for granted, everything I have in my life.

Including my right to consider my body my own: not pre-or-post-pregnant, not a tool of the state or church or a man, but mine. I remember before Roe vs. Wade, before Planned Parenthood; I remember the thalidomide scandal and the deep shame that a man in our Friends Meeting, a physician who had prescribed thalidomide to mothers, felt as the facts came out, as he confronted what it meant to have been an unknowing part of that, and as he worked out how he, as a doctor, had to change his relationship to 'who owns the woman's body'.

This was in the 1950's. It was shocking and progressive and unusual that he spoke so, but I didn't know that- I thought it was part of some larger national conversation about how to be healthier, more intelligent, more compassionate, less insane.

And so here endeth PETDM # 14- with my (rambling, incoherent) plea to look again at what is being done in your name. I understand about conscience, I do- I could not give lethal injection. I have argued with surgeons about keeping some patients alive and allowing others to die. I recognize that there is indeed something precious and sacred about new life, and I'm not in a position to absolutely, categorically state when that life begins.

But taking away from the woman carrying the baby the right to determine her own health- that bothers me. Not developing the national conversation about the obligation of men to prevent unwanted pregnancy, to support the health and safety of communities, of mothers, of daughters- that bothers me.

So please. Go. Read. Take a stand, and stand behind it. You never know when, with the swipe of a pen or the pressing of a button, your life and all the lives you know are changed, irrevocably, and all you have left is how you've lived up until this moment.

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-07-23 12:31
Subject: Moment of Grace: Jill Bolte Taylor/My stroke of insight
Security: Public
Tags:despair-work, esotericism, health, peace-work, philosophy, psychology, spirituality

As a nurse, I'm firmly science-based. As a child of the 1950's, brought up on fairy-tales and science-fiction, poetry and reference books, geography and archeology, I'm equally at home in (or at least recognize some of the signposts and landmarks in) 'left-brained' and 'right-brained' experience. As a child of the 60's with my brief foray into psychedelics and a much longer, more careful sojourn in spiritual and esoteric study, I'm a believer that things connect- that living as though we are not all in relationship to each other, to all of life, all of time, all of space, lessens us.

From the TED website:

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness ...

Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the "Singin' Scientist."

"How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I've gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career."

Jill Bolte Taylor/My Stroke of Insight/ TED Feb 2008

Click )

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-04-17 04:39
Subject: sometimes studying is a bit more scary than i'd like
Security: Public
Tags:despair-work, economics, peace-work, political science

from our poli sci text

"Did you know... that an aide to President George W. Bush gave this succinct description of federal priorities? "It helps to think of the government as an insurance company with an army"?

no, i did not know that.

or, i did, but not in words.

oh, ow.

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-03-15 13:51
Subject: Ethics, politics, the world, fanfic, and music
Security: Public
Tags:despair-work, fandom, fic, music, peace-work, politics, reccies

the first three can be summed up here: Monks Protest in Tibet and Nepal. Candles vs. automatic weapons; bare arms and heads against full body armor; the search for compassion, connection, and peace vs. fear, loneliness, and hate.

and the second? Idaho Mortensen and the Obelisk of Osiris. As the author says, It's funny, it's cheesy, it's even work-safe.

Me? I've finished vacuuming the Mail program on the big computer. I've been swimming. I've prayed for my fandom. I've talked with friends about my trip to Europe.

And now I'm going to bed. Blessings on your heads, each and every one of you.

Ah. And, courtesy of [info]poetic_self: Ray LaMontagne, Till the Sun Turns Black.

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slashfairy
Date: 2008-01-15 15:57
Subject: Notes from Around Town [and LJ, and beyond] [apologies to the New Yorker]
Security: Public
Tags:compassion, critical thinking, despair-work, film, music, peace-work, plagiarism, politics, writing

Because I will be taking Political Science, and Critical Thinking this Spring Term, some things in my FL and around and about. (Sorry, no lj-cut today ;))

1) The gay rights meme: I dislike the wording of it [posted it last year, and had the wording pointed out to me then- a lot to think about since then]. Suffice to say my son's gay, and I do worry about his rights being restricted because of that.

2) Rudeness in LJ and other places: reading someone's journal is like anything else voluntary: You're free to leave, anytime. No need to flame them, email rude things, or start a brawl in comments. Save your sanity, and just leave.

3) notes from all over:

About the US elections:
from [info]ithiliana13: Gloria Steinem and Melissa Harris-Lacewell on race and gender in presidential politics. Ithiliana says: "Steinem has not done enough to think about racism and intersectional theory, and it shows."

from [info]dark_christian: Mike Huckabee, the Constitution, and 'God's Standards'

"(excerpt)[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
(thanks to [info]zorya_speaks)

from The New York Times: Dennis Kucinich battles for your right to hear all the candidates, so you can make up your own mind.

about US policy
US Joint Chief of Staff would like to see Guantánamo shut down (thanks to [info]nverland and [info]she_gollum for surfacing the story and for keeping Gitmo front and center in my thinking).

About thinking:
from [info]circe_tigana: A discussion (not stated truths) about the Cassie Edwards/Signet Publishing plagiarism situation, and secondarily, as Circe says, "a case study in the evolution of a created newstory in the internet age i[which] can't be beat." (linked with permission).
The Fallacy of Neutrality
Plagiarism is a Community Issue
The New P&P: Professionalism and Plagiarism, a not so classic tale of romance.

[A woman who, oh, 35 years ago, I took care of in daycare (and am still in contact with), is now a romance and sci-fi writer (among many, many other things), so I'm following this with particular interest because it is close to home.]

About writing:
from [info]penknife: prompts at the [info]potcfest as well as other ficathons are still available!
from [info]dorrie6 ! [info]axial_tilt multifandom pg fanfic exchange- today is last day to sign up</a>

Movies I recommend, or want to see, and what I'm reading about movies:
Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side; Wonders are Many by Jon Else; Black Light/White Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Steven Okazaki; Sweeney Todd; Comanche Moon;Women in Film by Jeannie Rose.

And what is a long, link-filled post without a present or two?
Ocean Surf: timeless and sublime by Dan Gibson (will reupload on yousendit soon); and Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye.


Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems)


blessings on your heads. all of you.

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