Written Rebellion

In Other Words,

an amazing, independent, non-profit, feminist bookstore in Portland, Oregon.

They are also a community center and sponsor all sorts of events, including:

Poetry Readings

Meditation Classes

Yoga Classes

Non-sexist Children's Story Hour

Feminist Author Readings and Book Signings

You can order any book in print from their website, but you'll have to check them out on Killingsworth Street in order to get a feel for the culture of this one-of-a-kind establishment.

(Photo: My Own)

Some readers may have had a chance to catch some of my reflections on my dad in a previous post. (See my comments entitled Ode to Dad on May 4, 2006.) Those words pertained to his recent retirement and my reflections on the influence his work career had on my youth.

My father helped to raise my brother and me under very difficult circumstances. Divorced from my mother, he tried in all the ways he knew to be a stable presence in our lives. Often this meant that he had to navigate awkward circumstances alone. It was my life, and it's just my opinion, but I think he did a pretty good job.

Obviously, the totality of the impact my father has had on my life is not limited to those comments, or, for that matter, anything I will post today. However, there are some things for which I am grateful that were omitted from the previous post, and I would like to begin to redress that fact here.

Dad, I am thankful to you for:

• Caring enough about the grey matter in my head to repeatedly rebuff my pleas for cable television. The half a dozen episodes of National Geographic Explorer that I watched over and over and over again on VHS were more than enough "down time," and I remember them all with fondness: Sadako and the thousand paper cranes, the making of the Monterrey Bay Acquarium, the man who dared to ski down the vertical walls of snow.
• Trying your very best to always make sure that I ate a balanced meal. Vegetables dipped in Ranch dressing are still vegetables, and this is still how I eat asparagus.
• That one time, in eighth grade, when I accidentally washed and dried a wine-colored lipstick with my white, Guess jeans, and somehow (still considered by me to be miraculous), you were able to remove the dozens of polka-dotted stains from every piece of laundry in that load.
• The fact that you didn't enforce the bedtime rule when you knew I was reading by the light of a flashlight under the bed covers. I fell in love with reading while thinking I was outsmarting you.
• And speaking of reading, thanks for encouraging my love of used books by taking me to the fantastic, poorly-lit, musty-smelling books stores of downtown Portland. I still love to browse in places like those, opening the covers of the hardbacks to see the date on the inside inscriptions.
• Telling Tim Daughtery that you would hang his balls on a string if he tried anything with me.
• Teaching me to drive a manual transmission. Lord knows that little piece of knowledge has come in handy over the years. Remember the poem I wrote about our adventures on Cemetery Hill? Maybe I'll post it up here one day.
• Sharing your love of the outdoors with me: for teaching me to camp, to fish, to light a fire with just one match. Thank you for teaching me that you must always pack out the garbage you pack in. Even though we often don't agree on political policy, you are the first environmentalist I ever knew.
• Handling my first menstral cycle with such grace.
• All those thousands of miles you spent in your car, alone, picking us up or dropping us off.
• Taking care of Kit-Cat when I was gone off to Spain. Thank you for burying him and for erecting the monument. Even if it meant nothing to you, it was a big deal to me. I like to know that his bones are back there, in the banks of the Walla Walla River bed.
• Sending me Tapatio and other hot sauces while I was studing in Europe.
• Deciding to come to my wedding with Ryan. Even though that relationship dissolved, it is still important to me that you were there to experience that day with me. You looked so handsome all dressed up.
• Meatloaf. Fuzzy Bangs was right, yours is the best ever. I think of you every time I make it, and I will never change your recipe.

Happy Father's Day.

I love you.

~M

In May 2006, 2916 people donated $362,787 to make this film a reality: I was one of them.

From the Financial Times:

President George W. Bush, fresh from a surprise trip to Iraq, on Wednesday sought to lower expectations of what should be defined as success in the country while sketching out a future strategy that did not appear markedly different from the past.

Americans should not have a “zero violence expectation”, Mr Bush said in a news conference.

“Winning means a government that can sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself, and an ally in the war on terror, and we will help this government do that,” he said in a significant departure from the rhetoric that accompanied the 2003 invasion.

Mr Bush on Wednesday said he had a message for the enemy: “Don’t bet on American politics forcing my hand because it’s not going to happen. I’m going to make decisions not based upon politics, but based upon what’s best for the United States of America.”

Okay, so, we win the war on terror when Iraq is an ally in the war on terror. This really clears things up for me. Thanks, Decider-In-Chief.

The results are in from the annual Pew Global Attitudes poll. The fifteen-nation survey asks all kinds of things, and the report shows some very interesting trends. Looks like thinking people all over the world aren't as supportive of US imperialism as our own government would lead us to believe. Apparently we're the only ones who still believe we have a moral mandate to "spread freedom and democracy" to the uneducated, non-capitalist masses. Oh, and India. They're a big country, so I guess that counts as a majority.

Further, the attitudes of the international community are going the way of Bushy's domestic approval ratings. According to Rasmussen Reports, only 20% of Americans give the Decider-in-Chief the "strongly approve" nod. (40% of Americans strongly disagree.) This leads me to wonder, as others have, who these 20% must be. Surely Haliburton can't have that many employees.

Another unrelated by equally disturbing finding from the same report: only 19% of Americans believe global warming to be a great concern, the lowest amount of all 15 countries. Considering that the US is the world's largest contributor to global warming, we're in deep trouble.

UPDATE: If you have found this site because your bowser brought you here, please leave a comment and tell me why you were searching in the first place.


Today I rec'd this picture via email.

The email stated that this flag is part of a flower field near Vandenberg AFB. According to the chain email, "the 2002 Floral Flag is 740 feet long and 390 feet wide and maintains the proper Flag dimensions, as described in Executive Order #10834. This Flag is 6.65 acres and is the first Floral Flag to be planted with 5 pointed Stars, comprised of White Larkspur. Each Star is 24 feet in diameter; each Stripe is 30 feet wide. This Flag is estimated to contain more than 400,000 Larkspur plants, with 4-5 flower stems each, for a total of more than 2 million flowers." (Aerial photo courtesy of Bill Morson Soldiers' Prayer)

Now, this is the kicker. At the end of the email someone wrote, "For our soldiers...Please Don't Break It" as an encouragement for me (and others) to send this picture to everyone they know.

Now, I've heard of spurious relationships among variables. For example, one study found a positive correlation between birth rates and stork populations in Ireland. However, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what relationship could possibly exist between the circulation of this picture and our soldiers.

I suspect that the people who believe their patriotism is tied up in such nonsense are also the same people who feel that granting gay people the right to marriage will cause the destruction of modern civilization.

Ridiculous.

From American Society of Authors and Writers:

"Today marks the birthday of an extraordinary young writer. Born of Jewish parents, Otto and Edith, Anne Frank received a diary as a birthday present on her thirteenth birthday, 1942, and she immediately began writing in it. At the time, she was living with her family in Amsterdam, where they had moved to get away from the Nazi advance—but the Nazis followed after them.

From 1940, Anne had been living under Nazi occupation, although her life was still fairly ordinary. Her earliest journal entries talk about her grades and her classmates and the boys that she knew from school.In one early entry, she wrote that since she did not have any close friends, she would treat her diary as though it were her friend, and she began addressing it by the imaginary name of "Kitty." She wrote, "I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me." Less than one month after writing those words, the Nazis began deporting Jews to concentration camps, and Anne and her family went into hiding in an attic above a store where they lived for the next two years.

The family had prepared for that day since 1940, when Adolf Hitler and his troops stormed into Holland and quickly imposed a series of curfews against the Jews living there. He dictated where they could shop, swim, and go to school as part of everyday Dutch life. Aware of where the restrictions might eventually lead, Otto Frank spent a year preparing and stocking an annex behind his business office at Prinsengracht 263, turning it into a well-concealed hiding place adjacent to Otto's office.

Life in the annex quickly settled into a monotonous routine. The residents woke at 6:45 a.m. By 8:30, they all had to be quiet as the workers showed up in the warehouse beneath them. Breakfast came at nine, and afterwards, the stowaways stopped all unnecessary movement until 12:30 when the warehouse closed for lunch.

During the group's quiet periods, Anne wrote in her diary not only about the Nazi persecution and the experience of living in secret but also about the day-to-day details of her adolescent life. She wrote about how much she hated potatoes and how her older sister was clearly her parents' favorite. She described the jokes people made and her brief romantic flirt with Peter, the son of the other family living in the attic.

More than anything, she wrote about her struggle to be an individual despite her lack of privacy. "Everyone thinks I'm showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I'm silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I'm tired, selfish when I eat one bit more than I should, stupid, cowardly, calculating....I really am trying to be helpful, friendly, and good, and to do everything I can so that the rain of rebukes dies down to a light summer drizzle."

In 1944, she heard on the radio that people should retain their war letters and diaries because they would become historical documents someday. She began thinking about trying to publish her diary or to turn it into a novel.

But on August 4, 1944, the annex was discovered and raided by Nazi police, and Anne and her family were among the last Jews shipped out of the Netherlands to concentration camps. Originally, they were held at Westerbork before being shuttled to the infamous Auschwitz, where most were killed. Anne died of typhus in Belsen-Belsen six weeks before the camp was liberated by the Allies.Her father was the only member of the family who survived. He traveled back to Amsterdam to find that his secretary had saved Anne's diary. He took several weeks to read it, because he could only bear to read a little at a time without breaking down. He made copies for family members before a Dutch university professor who read the diary urged Frank to publish it.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was published in 1947, and it was an immediate bestseller. It was translated into more than 50 languages. The entire first printing of the English translation sold out the day after it was reviewed in the New York Times. It was made into a play and then into a movie, and it has since become the standard book used in schools for introducing children to the Holocaust. To date, it has sold over 25 million copies."

Had she survived the terrors of the Holocaust, she would turn 77 today.

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.”

- Julius Caesar

"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering, second in command of the Third Reich

From Democracy Now!:

"The House voted on legislation yesterday that could determine the future of the internet and public access television in this country. In a vote of 321 to 101, the House voted to pass the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act, known as the COPE bill. This controversial telecommunications legislation would permit phone and cable companies to operate Internet and other digital communications service as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. The bill would effectively end what is known as "net neutrality" which is the concept that that everyone, everywhere, should have free, universal and non-discriminatory access to the Internet. The bill would also cut back the obligation of cable TV companies to devote channels to public access and fund the facilities to run them. And the COPE bill would replace local cable franchises with national franchises."

For a nation that fights wars in order to preserve, promote, and protect "freedom," the list of freedoms we currently enjoy keeps getting smaller and smaller.

From NPR:

"Morning Edition, June 9, 2006 · Tom DeLay's last day as a member of Congress has arrived. During his 22-year career, he rose through the House ranks to become a dominant figure -- serving as Majority Whip and as Majority Leader. His tough tactics were legendary. But he leaves under the cloud of an indictment in Texas."


In Mr. DeLay's goodbye speech to Congress he hailed the Republican legislative agenda (italics and colored commentary supplied):

"We lowered taxes to increase freedom (for the richest American individuals and corporations);

We reformed welfare programs that, however well-intentioned, undermined the dignity of work and personal responsibility and perpetuated poverty (and we continue to perpetuate poverty by obligating our nation's poor to become indentured servants in welfare-to-work programs, refusing to raise the minimum wage so that those who work full-time will make enough money to bring them out of poverty, and making it harder and harder to afford any sort of higher education.);

We have opposed abortion, cloning, and euthanasia because such procedures fundamentally deny the unique dignity of the human person (while at the same time uniformly denying the unique dignity of the human person to make decisions about what happens to his or her own body); and

We have supported the spread of democracy and the ongoing war against terror because those policies protect and affirm the inalienable human right of all men, women, and children to live in freedom (freedom from foreign invasion and global monopoly imperialism don't count)."

What about my right to live in a bullshit-free environment?

He went on to say that the "victories" since 1980 speak for themselves:

" millions of new jobs, new homes, and new businesses created thanks to conservative economic reforms; millions of families intact and enriched by the move from welfare to work; hundreds of millions of people around the world liberated by a conservative foreign policy’s victory over Soviet communism; and more than 50 million Iraqis and Afghans liberated from tyranny since September 11, 2001."

I wish I had time to disect the ludicracy of such statements.

Excuse me while I go throw up.

From www.weather.com

Right now for Palm Desert, CA (92260)

105 degrees F
Precip: 0%