If I had my way by Patty Griffin

Bees

An extremely important documentary: The Vanishing of the Bees

http://www.vanishingbees.com/

See also my post on this blog of January 8, 2011, "If they kill the bees, they kill us."

VCU

VCU is in the Final Four. Virginia Commonwealth University made it to the Final Four of the NCAA Division I Basketball Championship. The Richmond, Virginia, school plays Butler, another Cinderella story, on Saturday. The winner of that game goes on to play the winner of the match up between the University of Kentucky and the University of Connecticut for the national title. What a dream come true!

VCU grew out of the 1968 merger between Richmond Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the Medical College of Virginia (MCV). I went there for my senior year of college, and my B.A. degree in English was conferred by VCU. The school is extremely highly ranked in art and design, a legacy from its days as RPI, and its professors engage in a very high level in quantity and quality of research, according to the Carnegie Report. I had almost all good professors there, but some were outstanding. I studied two semesters of the history of the Renaissance and the Reformation under a truly gifted teacher, Dr. William Blake, and two semesters of formal logic in the philosophy department with another exceptional professor, whose name I have lost. But I learned a great deal, and what I learned has stayed with me all these years. I also studied the history of the English language and the teaching of reading and remedial reading, and that's what got me a job upon graduation. The physics class I took was for pure pleasure.

Grace Street, long ago, and one of my favorites

VCU offers degrees from its College of Humanities and Sciences, which contains University College, the School of the Arts, the school of  Government and Public Affairs, School of Mass Communications, and School of World Studies. The Monroe Park Campus also has a School of Education. MCV is a very good medical school, and the hospital is a Level I trauma center. There is s school of Allied Health Professions, which offers programs in many therapies. MCV also has Schools of Nursing, Dentistry, Engineering, and Pharmacy. There is a School of Social Work and a School of Business. All in all there are over 211 programs offered to students at VCU, and all of quality. The University awards Bachelor, Masters, and Doctoral degrees.

VCU men's basketball is very popular. The Rams have won seven conference championships, most recently in 2009. The Rams have the 11th highest home court winning percentage in Division I basketball with a winning percentage of .846.  Shaka Smart has coached the Rams since their previous coach Anthony Grant went to coach the Alabama Crimson Tide. The tennis team is popular and successful, and there is also women's basketball. And I am told that the school will finally get a football team this fall!

VCU Campus

Monroe Towers

The campus of VCU can be enchanting, and it breathes history. It is located in Richmond, Virginia, right in the city,  in the Fan district, which is a late Victorian, early twentieth century residential neighborhood. Many administrative and faculty offices were in old Victorian mansions with beautiful woodwork, stunning staircases, and so much "ambience." The Fan is called that because its streets begin on Belvidere at Monroe Park and then fan out to the west toward the Boulevard. It is filled with cafes, parks, and tree-lined avenues. Development of the Fan, an eighty-five block area, followed the  tracks of the nation's first electric streetcar, which began running in Richmond in 1888. The architecture is of great variety, including Richardson Romanesque, Queen Anne, Italianate, Colonial Revival, Tudor, even Arts and Crafts, and more.

Franklin Street West

A residential neighborhood

Fascinating architecture

Homes in the Fan

More homes in the Fan

Part of Richmond's Monument Avenue, including at least three monuments, falls inside the Fan, adding to the sense of history.

One of the Confederate Monuments on Monument Avenue

The Fan was a bit of a bohemian village, a hippie village, when I was there and before, an artsy place, and most students that I knew were either apolitical or left-leaning. There was much fun, much indulgence, and I have many wonderful memories of time spent outside of class. I met many wonderful people. The year I was a student at VCU, students ran for student government, as they always do, but upon election their first major act was to dissolve student government. It was kooky like that.

The Village

My friends and I spent a lot of time at a restaurant and bar called the Village, just a block off campus. There was a poet who was in there all the time, sitting in a booth at the back, drinking and writing. The Village decorated for Christmas that year by hanging its Christmas tree upside down from the ceiling and then leaving it up all year. I loved the silliness of that. It was educational, too. The Ladies Room at the Village was the first Ladies Room I had ever been in where the wall were written upon just as obscenely as in any men's room. The Fan is just full of small independent restaurants and bars.

The Village

Beautiful homes in the Fan

 Sometimes I rode my bike to the Floyd Avenue Post Office and to campus from my apartment just across the Boulevard from the Fan on Patterson Avenue near another hangout called Ciacco's, just around the corner from me on Kensington and something. I have wonderful memories of that place, too. I was running from a broken heart and needed the lightheartedness of that year, needed it very badly, as much as I needed my degree.

I was a work study student, and my job was to tutor English in the University's Special Services Program. This was a program that allowed the school to admit a number of underprepared students each year and then provide special services to them for their first two years. The students then made it on their own in their junior and senior years. I loved my students and was intellectually intrigued with their educational problems. That work study job started me in a professional direction that would last throughout my work life.

VCU now has over 30,000 students and the third largest research library in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It's amazing to me that they are in the Final Four, and it's fun. Just fun. I hope they win they whole thing!!

Architectural interest in the Fan

Forsythia and cherry tree

Japan Quake Map

An unbelievable 805 quakes since March 11. See them timed and measured graphically on the map at the link below:

http://www.japanquakemap.com/

What a tragedy and catastrophe...

History is weighing on me tonight

A Facebook friend of mine whose sister was one of the students killed at Kent State on May 4, 1970, posted a video this afternoon. Students at Kent State were protesting the invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon had announced on April 30. The Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds into the crowd, killing four unarmed young people and wounding nine. Some who were shot were not even participating in the protest, but just happened to be nearby.

As if that weren't heavy enough, the video she posted was Dion singing "Abraham, Martin, and John," live on the Smothers' Brothers Comedy Hour, a show I loved. I listened to it, and then went to You Tube and found a video of the original recording of the song, which I still cannot hear without tearing up. This video was all photographs of each man as his verse came by. In Lincoln's eyes, you could see the pain of his migraines, depression, and the weight of war. I think he is our greatest president. I'm not one of those Southerners who sees honor in the Confederate flag. The fight was treason, an act of war by traitors against the United States of America, not the action of patriots and heroes, and the only states' right they cared about was the right to own African human beings as slaves. Lincoln gave everything to save the Union.

ABRAHAM
Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery on Thursday, November 13, 1863. His words say all that needs to be said about why that war was fought and show all that needs to be shown about why he was a great man:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Yet this great man was shot as he and his wife watched a play at Ford's theater in Washington on April 14, 1865, five days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. The assassin was John Wilkes Booth, and Booth did not act alone. Lewis Powell was to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward that same night, but only wounded him. George Atzerodt was to be the assassin of Vice President Andrew Johnson, but he chickened out and ran away. The men were part of a plot to prevent the South from accepting the surrender. President Lincoln died the next day, a tragedy for everyone, for history.

MARTIN
We just celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, eighty-second birthday this past January 15th, and we will commemorate his passing, his murder, his brutal assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968, in just a few days. MLK's teachings of nonviolent protest and nonviolent civil disobedience, following the model of Mahatma Gandhi, were sorely missed in the years after his loss. Our country was wounded, nearly mortally, and some stupid people didn't even know it. How many people remember that MLK received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work? He will live on in his deeds and in his words, especially the "I have a dream" speech, given to a crowd of over 200,000 on the Washington, DC, mall -- from the steps of the Lincoln memorial --  on August 28, 1963, and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," also from 1963.

King began his speech on the mall by referring back to Lincoln's signing of the the Emancipation Proclamation "five score" years ago. His rhetorical style was much like that of the Baptist minister that he was. And then he said

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

JOHN
As Dion sings, the first picture you see of President John F. Kennedy is one of him and his daughter Caroline. You can tell he was a hands-on father, a real father. I've seen pictures of Caroline crawling all over him. You can't fake a close and comfortable relationship with a child. His children loved him, and he loved them. Of course there are words I remember him by, his definition of a liberal, his first inaugural exhortation to us all:  "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

Here is his part of his definition of a liberal, given as a presidential candidate in September, 1960:

But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

I remember well the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin Wall, Jacqueline Kennedy's grace and beauty, the birth of Patrick in 1963, who lived only two days, and Camelot. I was in the ninth grade when Kennedy was killed. Our principal announced the news of his death over the school's intercom. Many of the students in my class burst into applause, and our class became infamous for that, as they acted out the hatred they had learned from their parents. I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now. It makes me ashamed of my school, my town, my classmates. My best friend Susan and I idolized Jackie Kennedy, her noble bearing throughout the assassination and funeral.

I was 50 when JFK, Jr., left us in the summer of 1999. His plane left New York for the Cape on a Friday evening in July. By Saturday morning, everyone knew the plane was missing. I went out to dinner that night at at very nice restaurant in Washington, DC, where I lived at the time, Nora's I believe it was. I know the Clintons had eaten there with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. I ordered soft-shelled crab but could not eat, I was so troubled. My friend and I talked about the Kennedys, the tragedies, so many plane crashes, so many losses, about how John's mother had made him promise not to take up flying, she feared so for his safety. He was such a handsome young man, the most handsome of all his family. It was as though President Kennedy didn't really fully die until JFK Jr. died. And then he was totally gone. I shed many a tear over that young man's death and felt the horror of Dallas in 1963 all over again. The finality of death hit hard. The death of dreams and hopes, too, that Camelot might live again.

BOBBY
Bobby Kennedy was my favorite Kennedy brother. Robert Francis Kennedy was born in 1925,  the year my mother was born, and he became a civil rights activist, Attorney General during his brother's presidency, and for nine months Johnson's, a Senator from New York and a presidential candidate.  As Attorney General he was tough on organized crime and was his brother's closest advisor. He was easily the most powerful attorney general we have had. He worked hard to enforce civil rights. He represented what he called the disaffected, the impoverished, the excluded. As a candidate, he met with Cesar Chavez. He opposed the war in Viet Nam. When he declared his candidacy for the presidency he said,

I do not run for the Presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can.

Robert F. Kennedy said, quoting George Bernard Shaw, "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."

I can still remember the morning my mother came in to wake me and told me that RFK had been shot the night before just past midnight on June 5, 1968, after winning the California primary. Shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant, Bobby died early in the morning of June 6. I remember receiving a letter from a college friend, her name was Joy. She was devastated. She said she could hardly bear to live in a world where a human being could do such a thing as had been done. And it came too soon after Martin and John for us to handle.

The heroes of a song, the heroes of a kid of the Sixties, the heroes of a senior citizen of the 2010's. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Dion and Aaron Neville sing Abraham, Martin, and John

Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word

Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word

Seems like only yesterday
I left my mind behind
Down in the Gypsy Café
With a friend of a friend of mine
She sat with a baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
A phrase in connection first with she I heard
That love is just a four letter word

Outside a rambling storefront window
Cats meowed to the break of day
Me, I kept my mouth shut, too
To you I had no words to say
My experience was limited and underfed
You were talking while I hid
To the one who was the father of your kid
You probably didn’t think I did, but I heard
You say that love is just a four letter word

I said goodbye unnoticed
Pushed towards things in my own games
Drifting in and out of lifetimes
Unmentionable by name
Searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried and failed at finding any door
I must have thought that there was nothing more
Absurd than that love is just a four letter word

Though I never knew just what you meant
When you were speaking to your man
I can only think in terms of me
And now I understand
After waking enough times to think I see
The Holy Kiss that’s supposed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke, its destiny
Falls on strangers, travels free
Yes, I know now, traps are only set by me
And I do not really need to be
Assured that love is just a four letter word

Bob Dylan 1967

The Shopaholic

Oh, dear. I saw THEM yesterday. The boxes. I went into my attic to retrieve a bouquet of silk daffodils, can't bring the real ones into the house because the cats try to eat them, to place in a vase on the kitchen table. When I reached the top of the stairs I saw the boxes. They took me back to late November and early December when I became, temporarily, a compulsive internet shopper. A shopaholic. Yes, it was bad. Very bad. But it's okay if you laugh at me. I am laughing at myself. And I'm okay now.

Lenox Autumn

It all started because I had only four incomplete place settings left in the china pattern I had chosen when I was eighteen years old, plus it just wouldn't do anymore. It no longer was me. And, although I  am ashamed to admit it, I felt a twinge of self-pity for reaching this age, this stage of my golden years, and not having a complete set of lovely, gracious china to hand down like all of my friends. Whether I needed it or not. So I ordered a brand new set, eight place settings, of a gorgeous pattern of fine china from Lenox. It's predominately blue and off-white but contains small touches of red, yellow, and green, and it is called Autumn. I wanted to be economical, so I ordered several serving bowls and platters in a less expensive co-ordinating solid color design from another company. I was so proud of myself for that cost-saving move. But then, I liked that design so much that I just had to order a mini-set, place settings for two, in the dishes in that pattern. I love the cups. Somehow this had flipped a switch in my brain, and I could not stop, didn't even think of stopping.

I ordered a lovely tablecloth from Macy's, with matching napkins, of course, and then a Christmas centerpiece of live greenery from L.L. Bean in Maine. And then I thought about my everyday dishes. Were they complete? Did they need attention? Yes, they did. I didn't have a gravy boat. Oh, no. So I ordered one. The small, nice regular cups and saucers I have had for years, but I had no mugs, nothing you could get a good, hefty cup of coffee in on a lovely winter morning. And that was remedied. I ordered eight mugs. I had to rid myself of several old mugs to make space for them in the cabinet. Well, for seven of them. One still won't fit, so I just use at least one at all times.

Next, I ordered a new coffee maker, a grand machine that grinds the beans and then makes the coffee all in one. It is still in the box in the attic. I already have a coffee grinder. I already have a coffee maker. This was pure shopaholic behavior. Still, it could have been worse. I almost chose one of those new-fangled Tassimo gourmet single-cup brewing systems that makes one cup at a time of a variety of beverages from K cups, little packets, of expresso or whatever you desire. I resisted this coffeebot, but instead I ordered a separate expresso machine. It is still in the box in the attic.

Well,  I now needed new demitasse cups and saucers for the espresso. In my new china pattern they were $100.00 for each cup and saucer. I may have gone slightly mad, but not that mad. I wasn't about to spend $800.00 on expresso cups. My old ones wouldn't do (they weren't me anymore), so I searched high and low until I found the perfect cups, simple lines and soft white in color. I ordered a set of eight. When they arrived, one saucer was broken. I called the vendor. They told me not to return anything and that they would send me a replacement. I thought they meant they'd replace the saucer, but in a few days, a whole nother set of 8 cups and saucers arrived, so now I have service for fifteen. This box is not in the attic; it is unpacked, and the cups are in a kitchen cupboard that I have to stand on something to reach.

Espresso Spoons

Of course, everyone knows you can't use regular-sized spoons with demitasse cups, right?  I had to order a set of expresso spoons. Eight of them. So I was all set for expresso, but what about other beverages? Over the years, all of my crystal has been broken, and I suddenly felt the great loss. And how would my beautiful new china look with my everyday glassware? I ordered from Lenox fine white wine glasses, red wine glasses, champagne glasses, water glasses. Being a good Southerner, I even found iced tea glasses. Some of the wine glasses fit into my china cabinet in the dining room, but there is not a square inch of space left in the kitchen for anything else. I WILL figure out something! You can bet on that. Most of the beautiful new glasses? They are in their boxes in the attic.

At this point, my mother held a one-person intervention and brought me down to earth. (She still doesn't even know about the coffee and expresso makers yet.) She asked me to promise to stop buying. I couldn't say no. I promised her that my shopping spree was over as of that moment. And it was. Not that I haven't ordered anything, but I haven't bought too much of anything since I made that promise to my mother. I have shopped like a normal person would. Mostly.

You see, I hate to shop. I have never liked "going shopping" like some of my friends do.  I would go if I knew what I was going for, but to go to a mall and just wander through the stores and shops, maybe try on a few things, hoping you come across something you like, well, I get bored with that in ten minutes and am ready for the food court.

But then I learned about Zappos.com. I found I liked getting all my shoes by shopping on the internet. If you are a Zappos VIP customer, you get overnight delivery and free delivery. If you don't like them or they don't fit, there's free shipping for your no-hassle return. I may have overdone the shoes a bit, but that's been under control for months. I'm doing fine. Then I tried sweaters, blouses, slacks, from all my favorite vendors or makers and found that I loved it. Even for intimate apparel.

I just bought a new carpet sweeper online. It came yesterday, but I haven't had time to unpack and use this new wonder machine that's designed especially for homes with pets and pet hair. With black as my favorite color for clothing and two predominately white cats and a long-haired white dog, this vacuum could be a godsend. And I bought a bicycle tire pump online. Reputable companies always accept returns and give full refunds without batting an eye. And UPS or FedEx brings it right to you door. Many companies offer free shipping. It's just too easy for people like me

So, I'm trying to shop only for what I really need. I like shopping on the internet. It is great fun. But I am trying to avoid any more spending sprees like the one before Christmas, although I have to say I love that china and tablecloth and am thankful to have them. Oh, the digital meat thermometer. I forgot to tell you about my digital meat thermometer. But really, I'm cured. I don't think I'll ever do that again. I have nowhere to put another thing and no more spending money.  Check back with me in six months. I promise I will be able to tell you I've been good. Someday I may tell you about the rug....

Spendthrifts

We fired 112 Tomahawk missiles at Libya today in ten minutes. Each Tomahawk missile costs $1 million. So in ten minutes, we spent $112 million, but we can't afford Head Start? John Boehner says we can't afford both war and Social Security. We'll fight these wars, cut Social Security, and put Grandmas on a diet of catfood.

Why? Are our national interests at stake?

When did Libya attack or invade us? When did Libya threaten to attack or invade us? Why did we intervene here, but we still haven't saved New Orleans? Why do we need three wars? Weren't two enough, even for the most bloodthirsty of the reich wing? When did Congress, the only entity with the Constitutional power to do so, declare any of these three wars?

Oh, oil.

Operation Iraqi Liberation. OIL. Eight years ago today.
Operation Intervention in Libya. OIL. Now.

My county is out of step with me.

Austrian

Ok.

I want to be fair. So I have to acknowledge that on a trip to Europe in early April, 2009, President Barack Obama said the following in response to a question from an Austrian reporter:

"There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian -- wheeling and dealing -- and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics."

So I guess he thinks Austrian is a language. As a friend of mine said, let's hope he brushes up on his Brazilian before he heads to Brazil this weekend!

Michele Bachmann and What?

               


      

Some years ago, not too many, but some, a young Michele Bachmann was a little girl in elementary school, and I am sure at least one of her teachers taught her Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride." That poem begins this way:

"Listen my children and shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the Eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year."

Yes, sir, Paul Revere told his friend to hang lanterns in the belfry of the Old North Church in Boston, Massachusetts, as a signal if the British were coming: "One if by land, and two if by sea." One lantern if the British attacked by land, two lanterns if the British attacked by sea. Revere promised that he would be "Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm." Among the villages in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, were two called Lexington and Concord. Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.

Revere told his friend goodnight and rowed his boat across the bay to the Charlestown, Massachusetts, shore. The friend heard men, and arms, and the tramp of feet. He climbed to the tower of the Old North Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He looked. He listened and then

"[S]uddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats."

Paul Revere and his horse are restless and ready on the other side.  Suddenly Revere sees a light in the belfry of the Old North Church in Boston, Massachusetts, and then - a second light. They are coming by sea! He mounts his horse and begins his ride, reaching Medford, Massachusetts, at midnight. The poem says

"It was one by the village clock.
When he galloped into Lexington."

and

"It was two by the village clock
When he came to the bridge in Concord town."

Longfellow presumes to say

"You know the rest in the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,---
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and barnyard wall.
 ...
So through the night rode Paul Revere,
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm."

Of course by now it is early morning, the wee hours of April 19, 1775, the day that went down in history for the battles at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, and the Shot Heard 'Round the World - it was that important. The American Revolution changed the course of history, changed the destiny of mankind. That first shot reverberated around the entire world.

All of us learned about that shot and the war it started, not just from Longfellow's poem but in our history and social studies classes, too. All of us learned about the beginning of that truly revolutionary Revolution. We all learned that the following year, a Declaration would be signed, a Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. We learned about the winter at Valley Forge, about General George Washington, about his crossing the Delaware on Christmas night, about Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell, and so much more that is our shared knowledge of our shared history.

On Saturday, March 12, 2011, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a possible presidential candidate, visited Manchester, New Hampshire, in the state that hosts the first primary of each election cycle. She stood before a crowd of conservative activists and students and said, "What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty. You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord."

How could she? How could anybody? Massachusetts, Massachusetts, Massachusetts.

She thought Lexington and Concord were in New Hampshire? Did she think the Old North Church is in New Hampshire? Does she think that Boston - - no, surely not. This was no slip of the tongue either, this was no error of exhaustion. This was from a prepared text, a written speech. Neither she nor her staff caught the error. She stood there in New Hampshire and congratulated the state for the shot heard around the world. And she did it again the next day, no one bothering to correct her speech. The fact that the shot heard round the world was fired in Massachusetts is something every school child knows.

Isn't it?

It is, isn't it?

Isn't it?

"I don't have no poetry in my soul"

Eric John King, Dead Man Walking

Eric John King, 47, is scheduled to be executed in Arizona on March 29, 2011, but this case may be a tragedy in the making.

On December 27, 1989,  witnesses say that two black men robbed the Short Stop convenience store on the corner of 48th and Broadway in Phoenix, Arizona. A total of $72.00 was taken. One of the men obtained the security guard's gun and shot and killed both the store clerk, Ron Berman, and the security guard, Richard Butts, with that gun, a .357 revolver. Witnesses say the shooter went back to Butts' body and brushed fingerprints off the gun's holster. Then the two men fled. One of the men was wearing a sweater with a white diamond design. One witness described a black man with high cheek bones.

The next day Eric John King and Michael Page Jones were arrested and charged with the crime. King was already a felon, having only recently been released after serving 7 years for rape and kidnaping in what activists have call a shaky conviction.

There is no physical evidence against King. The gun was never found. No witnesses could identify him, and the stores security tape was so distorted that no identification could be made from it. All relevant witnesses were interrogated by Detective Armando Saldate. Saldate neither audio nor video tapes his interrogations. He paraphrases them.

Jones was allowed to walk provided he would testify against King. Jones' testimony was clearly given under duress as he would be charged with capital murder if he did not testify, yet his testimony did not fit the known facts. Jones and Saldate claimed that Jones waited outside in the parking lot while King went into the convenience store, never even entering the store, and that he had no idea what King was going to do until he heard the gunshots. He then ran alone away from the scene. But witnesses all say that 2 men were in the store, and 2 men ran away together.

A second piece of questionable evidence against Eric King came a few days after the crime when his girlfriend, Renee Hill, told police, after watching a TV news report of the crime, that she had seen King throwing a clear plastic bag containing a gun and a sweater with a diamond design into a dumpster. No such bag, no gun, no sweater were ever found. The girlfriend tried to retract her testimony and she, too, testified under duress, bound by Saldate's paraphrased statements.

The third piece of evidence, the store's security tape is a copy, not even the original. It is so distorted that no reasonable evidence can be gleaned from it.

The prosecutor was so unsure of Hill's and Jones' testimony that he laid the groundwork for it in his opening statement. He told the jury that there was no telling what these witnesses might do, whether they would come through for the State or not.

That's it. A black man with high cheek bones that don't even look that high to me.

Eric King was convicted on September 5, 1990, and sentenced to death on March 4, 1991. In his appeals, King's attorneys have claimed that there was insufficient evidence to convict. Just an "accomplice" who walked for testifying and whose testimony contradicts the facts, a girlfriend claiming a gun and a sweater went into dumpster, although there were not found in that dumpster, and Saldate's "paraphrase" of King's own statement. They are arguing that some of the evidence was improper in their attempt to be heard before Arizona's highest court. The most recent motions were filed on March 3 and March 11, 2011.

King stated, "I am an adult and is responsible for my situation of caged like a beast, who the government feel they have the right to murder me." He claimed he was being railroaded because of his race. But he maintains his innocence.

"As you know I'm Eric, age 42, basically no education at all, have always tried to be fair and honesty. I got put on death row in 1991 and so for no break with my appeals and I don't have no poetry in my soul--but I have an an opinion on every topic," Eric posted on the internet in 2005. "We all make mistake some costier than others everybody should seek safety and happiness?" He reads the Bible and the Quran occasionally.

"Where is the forgiveness?," he asks. Death row has been so bad that at times he thinks his execution would be a blessing compared to the loneliness of his situation. He feels abandoned by his family, but says he knows they love him; they're just busy with their own lives.

And so are we all while an innocent man may die in Arizona on March 29, 2011, for being black and having high cheek bones.

ADDENDUM: They did it. The state of Arizona executed Eric John King right on time.

Chris Hedges

I'll write a book review when I finish reading Empire of Illusion. Chris Hedges is very smart, and he cuts to the quick, pulling no punches. I'm sure this will be a stimulating, possibly infuriating read. Our culture is in so much trouble. I will get back to you on this one. I promise.

Today would be the 66th birthday of my precious cousin Linda. She passed away when she was 58. She died alone, in her bed, surrounded by her high school yearbooks and the papers showing her purchase of her burial plot next to her parents. There was no autopsy. She suffered greatly from clinical major depression and was on disability because of this. This photo shows Linda, second from the right, on her 50th birthday, which she celebrated by traveling by train with her friends Diana and Debbie, from the left, to Washington, DC. For fun, they dressed up in hats and gloves, like back in the day, for the train trip from Richmond. I was graced by their presence at my apartment on Capitol Hill, and we did the town - the mall, the monuments, the Viet Nam Memorial, the museums, Georgetown, Dupont Circle. And the pubs. That's me on the right in the picture. It was 1995.

Parents

Things are looking up. My phone call to my dad tonight lasted a whole seven minutes and 46 seconds! That's wonderful for us. He had a nice day today and was glad to hear that I had gotten Kia walked this evening before the rain began. I told him that the forecast is for very heavy rain tonight, and that forecasters have warned that trees may become uprooted and fall from the saturated ground.

I had been to the dentist this morning, so I told him about that, and Dad offered to help pay for the work I had done. He's been so generous to offer to help me in any way that he could the last few years, since I became disabled. He wanted me to keep my house in Boone, and he would have made the mortgage payments for me, but I felt it was more sensible - and more honorable -  to sell and buy a smaller place closer to home, one that I could afford without a mortgage.  He says, "Well, you're the only child I've got." I told him tonight that he needed four or five kids at this stage of his life. He'd be a lot less lonely. He laughed and said he didn't think he could handle that many. He's very much a loner.

Dad looked great when I saw him yesterday. I went home for the day to take my mom out to lunch and to the grocery store and then to visit Dad at the nursing home. He had on chino pants and a blue and white striped shirt. Very stylish. He wanted to know if I had brought the dog, but I had not because it was too warm to leave her sitting in the car. Dad was so happy to see the three bags of Hershey's kisses that I brought him. I told him, "Now these need to last three days," and he laughed, so I knew he got the joke, which doesn't always happen. He has a sweet tooth, my dad, and he will go through the candy too fast, but not that fast.

I took my Mom out to lunch and to the grocery store. We long ago settled the question of who pays the check. She looked beautiful in mint green pants and a top that her friend Nancy had given her for Christmas. The color went so well with her hair, which is the color of pewter. She left the house carrying her white cane with the red tip - the type of cane that's carried by the blind. Mom is legally blind from macular degeneration, although she can still see a bit. She hasn't been able to drive for about two years now. I think having to give up driving has been the biggest challenge she's ever faced because it has meant she lost her independence. She is now totally dependent on other people for everything all the time. And my family is not a giving, loving family. No one offers to help. My aunt has her hair done every Friday by the same woman who cuts Mom's hair, but she has never once offered to take Mom along so that Mom could get hers done, too. That's typical, just an example. So we get by with just me, friends, and a volunteer group called Caregivers that provides transportation for the elderly at minimal cost. No family.

We had a lovely lunch. It was a short-sleeve day, much more like April than March, but Mom was freezing the whole time. Of course that didn't stop her from drinking iced tea with her lunch. We are Southern, after all. We enjoyed our time together so much. We talked about our beloved Becky, who passed away on Friday night, and many other, happier things.

Some trips are very hard and unpleasant, sometimes I come home and cry, but yesterday was a piece of cake. A few precious moments with each parent, each doing well, looking good, acting happy. A return to Kia, who had handled being left alone for an extended period perfectly and two cats who met me at the door. That makes this a rather boring post. Just a simple day appreciating God's simple gifts.

Support Bradley Manning

Call the White House comment line every day and tell President Obama to stop the
cruel and dehumanizing pre-trial treatment of PFC Bradley Manning. Remind them that Manning has only been charged with but not convicted of any crime.
The number is 202-456-1111.

Please contact Manning's Elected Officials:
His Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Phone: (202) 225-5341 / Fax: (202) 225-0375
His Senator Barbara Mikulski, Phone: (202) 224-4654 / Fax: (410) 962-4760
His Senator Benjamin Cardin, Phone: (202) 224-4524 / Fax: 202-224-1651

Ask them to
1. Join Manning's legal counsel and PsySR calling for "a revision in the conditions of PFC Manning’s incarceration while he awaits trial," and
2. Demand due process under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including speedy adjudication of the motions filed on Manning's behalf.

Forsythia!

Becky

My friend Becky, about whom I blogged on January 7, passed away last night from her inoperable brain cancer. God bless you, Becky. I love you.

Sinead O'Connor The Streets of London

This song was written by Ralph McTell, an English folk singer and songwriter, in 1969 and has been recorded by over 200 artists. Sometimes I think I've heard them all. But I have to say that this cover by Sinead O'Connor is the most beautiful and haunting, as special as McTell's own version, truly lovely. Listen to the lyrics.

7 o'clock

Oh, 7 o'clock came too soon...again. But dogs must be walked, so I had to get up. Kia is very patient. She and the cats have their breakfast before she goes for her walk, and that gives me time to wake up a bit and to nuke a cup of yesterday's coffee for a quick boost.

I made a mistake straight out of the box. I didn't wear a hat. Didn't think it would be that cold, but I had a warm, faux fur coat with a hood, and Miss Kia and I set out for the dog park.

Kia acts like we've been doing this for years instead of just over two months. She has the routines down pat. I love the clicking of her toes on the pavement of the driveway that separates my neighborhood from the park. She prances in excitement. We walk briskly in silence. She needs no directions or instructions. At the entrance, she turns right in, and we walk in side-by-side. We had the park to ourselves.

But this morning - it was the birds. The birds were singing everywhere. Even Kia noticed. Her ears were up. She ran ahead, just the length of the retractable leash, looking for the location of the dog whistle. But it was a bird, and he sounded exactly like he was calling her. She walked and trotted and ran all through the park this morning. As I watched her, I listened. There must have been 20 or more all singing at once, singing different songs, or at different places in the same song. It was glorious. It was beautiful. It was perfect.

And there in the dog park, I had one of those moments. I was happy just to be alive. To be there to hear the birds in the early morning cold.

It didn't matter that I'm getting old, that it's too late to fix most of my mistakes. It didn't matter that I'm disabled or that I had a howling migraine that moment. It didn't matter that I have two elderly parents whose needs outpace my abilities. So most of my dreams aren't going to come true. So what? I was thankful just to be there in the dog park with this magnificent dog who rescued me, both of us listening to dozens of birds singing out their calls, watching this morning come alive.

We DO know Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Right now pundits are all atwitter about Mike Huckabee's unconscionable behavior on Monday when he falsely asserted on WOR's Steve Malzberg Show that President Barack Obama grew up in Kenya with his Kenyan father and Kenyan grandfather. The two men spoke as though Obama's life were a great and deep mystery. But it is not. And they know better. Obama has written two memoirs and numerous biographies have been written about him.

When I hear the host interviewing Huckabee express a desire to know more about Obama, I want to scream: "READ!" Huckabee didn't say that; he, too, claimed to feel the mystery.  He said, "I would love to know more. What I do know is troubling enough." Then Huckabee said that the president's growing up in Kenya would have given him a perspective on the British colonials that is very different from the average American's view. Huckabee mused that Obama probably "grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather" by learning of the Mau Mau Revolution from his father and grandfather and other Kenyans in his childhood environment.

How can so little be known about a man about whom so much has been written and said? Willful ignorance. It allows the right fringe, which is now almost the entire right, to make Obama "The Other." He's not like "us." He's alien, foreign, exotic, dangerous. He's Muslim. He's Kenyan. He's not one of us. He wasn't born here. He's Black. And he has no right to sit in the Oval Office. This is the motive to stay ignorant. Or play ignorant.

Let's look at a brief sketch of a normal American man.

Barack Hussein Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, to an eighteen-year-old Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama, Sr. His parents had met in a  Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1960 and married February 2, 1961, when his mother was three months pregnant. His father was a foreign student from Kenya on scholarship. The small family continued to live in Hawaii until Obama's father went for graduate study at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and left his wife and child behind. Obama was two. Obama's parents divorced in 1964, when he was three years old. When Barack was ten, in 1971, his father visited him in Hawaii for the only time. By then Obama, Sr., had remarried and had returned to live in Kenya. But the son would not see Kenya for many years to come, and by then the father would be dead.

After the divorce, Obama's mother married Lolo Soetoro, who was from Indonesia and was studying at the University of Hawaii. In 1967, all Indonesian students studying abroad were called to return to Indonesia when Suharto came to power. Lolo took his family, including his 6-year-old stepson back to Indonesia with him. There the young boy attended an Indonesian public school and the St. Francis of Assisi School, a Catholic, not Muslim, school. The Indonesian school was Muslim only in the sense that most of the students were Muslim, which is to be expected in Indonesia. The school was not an indoctrination program. It was not a madrassa. Obama NEVER attended a madrassa. Four years later, Barack returned to Hawaii without his mother. He went to live with her parents, his grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. He attended Punahou School, a top private school from grades five through twelve, graduating in 1979. An American college prep school in the United States from grade 5 through grade 12.

In the fall of 1979, Barack Obama left Honolulu, Hawaii, for Los Angeles, California, to attend Occidental College. 1981 was a big year for Obama. He traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and half-sister, making stops in India and Pakistan. Upon returning home, he transferred from Occidental to Columbia University in New York City, graduating with a B.A. in political science with an emphasis on international relations in 1983.

From 1983 to 1988, Obama worked, spending two years at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group. In 1985 he became Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago, the beginning of his career as a community organizer. In 1988 he took a trip to Europe and Africa, including Kenya, for the first time. Also in 1988, Obama was baptized at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

In the fall of 1988, Barack Obama entered the School of Law at Harvard University, and he was named editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, the first black to earn that honor. He spent his summers in Chicago. He worked as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin. There he met Michelle Robinson.  In 1991, he had begun teaching at the law school at the University of Chicago and was working on his first book.  Barack and Michelle married on October 3, 1992. He joined the law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland in 1993. The couple had two daughters, and Obama served on many boards in the Chicago area.

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, where he served until he was elected to represent Illinois in the United States Senate in 2004. That summer, before the election, he was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Barack Obama served in the U.S. Senate until he was sworn in as President on January 20, 2009. On October 9 of that year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. His primary place or worship is now the Evergreen Chapel at Camp David.

Huckabee compounded his original sin by lying again yesterday and again today, saying that Obama didn't have a normal American childhood with Boy Scouts and Rotary Clubs and ball teams. WRONG. Obama was a member of the a Boy Scout troop in Indonesia. There have been Rotary Clubs in Hawaii for a hundred years, and Obama played on his high school championship basketball team. Most of us didn't go to madrassas, said Huckabee. Neither did Obama, Mike. It's dishonest to imply that he did.

There are no gaps in Barack Obama's biography. There's nothing sinister here.

Where is the mystery?

What is the mystery?

The mystery is a made-up weapon used by the right fringe to bludgeon our president, but it won't work. It's made up. He's as American as you or I.

Shadowcat

My handsome boy, Shadow

At my front door this morning. March is starting out very well, indeed.