September 6, 2008 archive

Sep 06 2008

Sobriety & the U.S. Presidential Race

No, this is not a post about alcoholism, and the only drunkenness to which it might refer is the manic inebriation that comes with the exercise of great power.

As the U.S. presidential race settles into its pattern of opposing camps supposedly at great odds, especially every four years — of conservative against liberal, hawk against dove, progressive versus reactionary — it is good to be reminded that underneath all of the hullaballoo (and I agree it’s hard not to be caught up in it, as detestable as Bush’s GOP has been these last seven years), that nothing about this race will really change how the U.S. is run, or rather who runs it.

Along those lines, I’d like to refer to a succinct statement of this issue from Chris Floyd, who himself quotes the insightful Gore Vidal. Reading the following, inspired by Floyd’s coverage of the U.S. intervention into Somalia and the subsequent human rights disaster that has followed, is like a splash of cold water, of stone cold sobriety regarding both the festivities and inanities of the past two convention weeks.

Sep 06 2008

Pony Party: Surfin’ the Bay

On a warm San Francisco night.



(credit: husband)

Sep 06 2008

Friday Night at 8: Sacred

I’ve done a lot of blogging this week, about Hurricane Gustav, about New Orleans, about Haiti.

It’s Friday night, and I’d like to write about something that doesn’t have so much to do with current events and politics.

Although I am no longer an observant Jew, I was brought up in the Jewish faith and still have a great love for it.

In my family, my mother would light the candles every Friday evening to begin the sabbath.  My mother wasn’t always a happy person and she had a terrible temper … but when she lit the candles, no matter what mood she was in, it was an awesome sight to behold.

She’d put a white silk scarf over her head and take a match to the two white candles, then make a gesture with her hands over the candles as if beckoning the flame.  She did this three times.  Then she put her hands over her face and recited the blessing.  She’d stay there a little longer after making the blessing and I found out later from her that she used that time to pray for specific people who were having troubles, or for something on her mind.

She always looked so peaceful while saying the sabbath prayer, after she took her hands away from her face, it glowed.

She learned the Jewish prayers from my grandfather on my father’s side, who was a rabbi, but worked as a shoe store salesman and didn’t ply the rabbinic trade.  She had a great love for him and told me he was a wonderful teacher.

When I asked her what she said in her prayers, I found out she said very simple things, like “may she be well,” or “help him with his problems, please.”  She was always a woman of few words, so I wasn’t surprised by that.

Sep 06 2008

Friday Philosophy: Stone Soup

My brain seemed barely capable of stirring together a topic for this evening.  But that was this morning.

Time to make stone soup?  Maybe.

I had some set-ups, like buhdy’s piece about why he is a liberal, like the wholesale denigration of community activists I’ve heard about, or like even Governator Palin, but to be honest, I avoided the RNC broadcasts as much as possible.  Their message never changes.

_ # ^ &  _ # ^ &  _ # ^ &  _

The WeaveMothers were one and several.  The several part was not without its danger.  Getting lost in the a reality of a happentrack was an ever-present  possibility.  When that happened, sight of the larger tapestry was usually lost.

And when that happened, there was danger of the tapestry unravelling.  There was even the danger that what had already going to be happening could be forgotten, so that it would never actually ever reach the state of having happened.

They came back together determined to repair the snapped thread.  Raveling was kept to a minimum.  A dropped stitch or four would have to be picked up.  But only a few realities had ceased to exist.  The WeaveMothers mourned the consciousnesses that were still.  The Greataway would be poorer for them never having existed.

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