life of brian

ok, so the life of brian will be re-released this week........25 years after it was soundly dispensed from screens for utter heresy...........25 years ago.....i can recall seeing it on the big screen...and i found it to be irreverant in the very best sense...........in the same way that i like the last temptation of christ..............some things need to be seen from a separate perspective....and religious themes are especially in need of dissection................i will have to leave this blog and preorder the dvd.................

all set....

ok, so our itinerary is as follows....sunday and monday- holiday inn princeton......tuesday.....fairfield inn, new haven.....wednesday.......best western hotel tria (cambridge, ma)....thursday......hacienda howard (ecw's sister near troy, ny).........friday and saturday...on the way home..............could stay in cleveland (and then, maybe not....) on the way back..............

college visits...trying to get organized

ok, so the mm has spent this little minute on-line, getting all of the details for visits....tour hours....maps for getting to the place that the tour starts, parking information.......this much is true........these campuses now look alike to me.................maples in bright fall brilliance, brick walks/walls/buildings, expanses of green, students listening intently, professors teaching intently.......in fact, the campus of middlebury (from the on-line picture) looks quite like kenyon college in gambier, ohio...at least as i remember it when we biked by on the rails-to-trails bike path..........at some point the differences must become clearer......because at this point....................

dilemma

ok, so mm has a moral decision to make with regards to the yet to be written novel/screenplay....................my (millionaire) friend gail and i savored a quite glass of wine after work this afternoon....while we waited for an elderly, yet notorious customer to finally give up chatting and go home after 4.5 hours.............anyway.......we got to talking about a personal issue with one of her daughters...........and we even brought scw into it, to find out what he knew about it at the high school, and it occurred to me that there are so many issues that i am unclear about how to address......mostly regarding gender/sexual/financial issues...with regards to my workmates and their families...that i find myself editing out of this blog, and therefore this novel/screenplay...the very issues that gail and i discuss most often.................the premise of my book is about 2 women, who have more in common than they ever dreamed they had in common......find friendship/affirmation/support at work.............lots of standing around talking...but that is what most female relationships are based on..............i hate to lose the conversation we had this afternoon, but i am hesitant to record it for posterity given that it was her child and not mine we discussed.................i gues that is why so many screenplays/novels are fiction and not reality...................but we have material so much better than what we could ever make up.................

the itinerary.....

ok, so the trip is as follows.........sat- drive as far as possible after work... sun- drive to princeton, nj...monday- tour princeton; hopefully eat dinner with ivan and petra.....tuesday- drive to new haven, tour yale.......wednesday- drive to boston...tour harvard and/or mit.......thursday...drive to middlebury....tour the college and drive on to troy...friday and saturday...drive home.............i am looking forward to the princeton part, as ivan is a student and will give good perspective.......and i enjoyed the company of both petra and ivan on our jaunts around strasbourg, lambsheim, and amsterdam........going out for indian food sounds fun...just like harlaam, only without the cat prowling around the tables............

back to the bean trees/pigs in heaven........

ok, so my erstwhile familial book editors contine to insist that i cannot use the oprah show thing in my novel because barbara kingsolver has already done it...........and thus i must find another device to get things rolling........as well as a climax..........so far i seem to have just the funny filler stuff taken care of........

back to basketball.....

ok, so i really enjoyed the xavier/texas game last night...............not that i am such a basketball fan that i will watch any game just to get my fix.....but because xavier is located in cincinnati, my beloved's home town, and just down the road from our first apartment together........we lived there while he was going to graduate school.......and we used to go to sunday night guitar mass in the xavier chapel..............it was not enough to move me to embrace catholicism, but it was nice nonetheless..........anyway.....xavier was really on a roll......though i did not quite understand the double technicals called against the texas coach with 4 seconds to go...........he was ejected from the game, by the way....which seemed pointless with 4 seconds on the clock...........now xavier must beat kansas to get to the final four..........it would be so sweet for xavier to beat duke/uconn/st joe to win it all............

for your daily dose of political intrigue..........

ok, so mm heard about this web site on npr/day-to-day..on her way home from work.....www.fundrace.org.......where you can click on neighborhood...and your zip code and find how who has given what in your general vicinity.............in my county most people have given the maximum $2000 to Bush........in random zip codes...we found that the island of puerto rico is split between dean, kerry and bush.............................

drawing the line at middlebury............

ok, so mm has agreed to go on to middlebury college from boston............which would make the college-visit sequence...princeton, yale, harvard/mit, middlebury...............i will not.....i repeat....will not.......drive any further away from home......as it is, we will be at least 17 hours from danville..............luckily ecw's sister lives near troy, ny......on the way home...so we will have a friendly meal and nice accomodations before we journey south.....................

built to serve several generations.........

ok, so this is the one i want...........
Classic 43" English Fork -smith and hawkins

# 488940
$49.00
Whether you’re a devotee of English-style gardening, French intensive double digging, or the American eclectic school, these are the tools of choice. These tools are built to serve several generations. The square tines of the Garden Fork pierces soil easily, while the Garden Spades are solid forged, with treaded blades that won’t break. Fork heads measure 8” by 11 1/2”. Fork weighs 5 1/2 lbs. Spade head measures 7 1/2” by 11”. Spade weighs 4 1/4 lbs. Ash handles.

so funny.........

ok, so i have borrowed the following from the shouts and murmurs section of the new worker, for which i do subscribe.........

LIBERAL RADIO NETWORK EMPLOYMENT APPLICATION
by BRUCE McCALL
Issue of 2004-03-29
Posted 2004-03-22
We are an equal-opportunity, pro-choice, antiwar, non-smoking, non-sectarian network with a fiftyfifty male/female staff that recycles. Always remember to buckle up for safety!

Personal Information:

DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE

We respect your civil rights and your right to privacy and do not ask you to reveal any personal information. We rely on the honor system to inform us if you are a pervert, terrorist, or carrier of mad-cow disease.

1. Which statement below is incorrect?
(a) Ann Coulter is not an evil person.
(b) There is no need to raise one’s voice when arguing a political position.
(c) We must always remember that Abe Lincoln was a Republican.
(d) It’s important to respect opinions that are different from one’s own.
(e) Nobody is right all the time.

Answer: Maybe no statement is incorrect.

2. You’re at a Peter, Paul & Mary reunion concert when a right-wing militiaman bursts into the hall with an AK-47 and declares that he will hold everyone hostage until the U.S. government admits to war crimes against patriots and agrees to pay one billion dollars in reparations. Do you:
(a) Defuse the situation by asking the audience to join Peter, Paul & Mary in singing “If I Had a Hammer.”
(b) Confront the militiaman and ask to see his gun permit.
(c) Take up a collection among the audience to pay a token reparation.

Answer: Perhaps none of the above? Instead, why not call a town meeting and have a free and open debate?



3. It would not be nice for a liberal radio network commentator to mention:
(a) Strom Thurmond’s daughter.
(b) Trent Lott’s abrupt comedown.
(c) Halliburton’s overcharges in Iraq.
(d) George W. Bush’s military record.

Don’t know__ Not sure__ Let me think__



4. It would be nice for a liberal radio network commentator to mention:
(a) The eradication of polio.
(b) unicef Christmas cards.
(c) The bald eagle’s comeback.
(d) Increased car safety.

I think so__



5. If Rush Limbaugh were to call me a fuzzy-minded élitist knee-jerk bleeding-heart liberal sissy without cojones enough to support the death penalty, I would:
(a) Softly weep.
(b) Admit that he has a point.
(c) Ask what the A.C.L.U. would do.

Answer: All three could work.



6. If I hosted a liberal radio network talk show, my guests would include:
(a) Pat Buchanan. (c) Bill O’Reilly.
(b) Pat Robertson. (d) Karl Rove.

(If you checked none of the above, memorize the “Tolerance ‘R’ Us” poem posted in every liberal radio network rest room.)



7. From the list below, circle your five favorite words/phrases/names:
a) Volvo. (g) Henry Wallace.
(b) Ginseng. (h) Dog bandanna.
(c) Berkeley. (i) Tim Robbins.
(d) Canada. (j) “Sesame Street.”
(e) Hiking. (k) Dobro.
(f) Egg toss. (l) Vietnam.


8. The four funniest moments in PBS history, in my opinion, were:
1.____________ 2.___________
3.____________ 4.___________

If you cannot think of even one, perhaps we should delete this question from the application. What do you think?



well, i am a fan of public radio......despite the fact that i cannot think of any truly funny moments......unless you count the recipe for cranberry sauce that they replay every thanksgiving.....and the pretend dinner party at julia child............

more about digging.......

ok, os mm has dug up another 2-3 feet or so of yard/planting bed.....and i have yet to find the lateral line that i know is somewhere underneath.........the digging is hampered by the state of my tools......my trusty digging fork has become laughably bent...and the handle comes off of the tines about every third swoosh of dirt............this digging fork has a history...because it was not the one that i had requested as a birthday gift so many years ago.........my dear spouse was going up to cincinnati for a quick visit with his mother and father just about the time that smith and hawkins built a store less than 1 mile from their home.......and just about the time when thinking about birthday gift possibilities was in the air.............i asked for a smith and hawkins digging fork...the one that has the handle permanently doweled/bolted/forged into the handle...at the time it cost about $35......i had seen a similar one at the chelsea flower show, and was disuaded to put off the purchase, which would have required bringing the fork back from heathrow as checked luggage.........and don't you know.....my late mother-in-law talked my spouse out of buying it......said it was much too expensive....and steered him toward one from Frank's Nursery that undoubtedly cost much less.....which i use, bent and disassembled yet today................it looks just like the twisted and bent digging fork that i was using at the time i asked for the top-of-the line model............so....do i get on-line and order myself a better digging fork, or get in the car and drive to cincinnati in search of one....or go tomorrow to the local nursury and treat myself to the best that they have...................i will keep you posted.......for now, i am content to wallow in my angst about my pair of nearly useless forks.....as i continue to search for these elusive lateral lines.............

l'absinthe

ok, so today there was a woman dining alone at table b-3...on the banquette, with her back up against the wall....who looked so forlorn, and saggy-shouldered, and down-in the mouth...that it hit me just who i was looking at......edgar degas painted her in a paris bistro, drinking absinthe............the woman in the painting has the same look of dejection, hopelessness, and alcohol-enhanced apathy................so sad.............all that was missing was the hat....................

the pledge of allegiance

ok, so mm wants to weigh in on the pledge debate.................the pledge strikes me as so very nazi/stalinist russian.......i have no idea how we came to see a pledge as agreeable to a free society......alone one that requires the utterance of 'under god'......i say this as a christian who fully accepts that her god may not be the only god, and therefore we cannot go around making school children act like there is just one...............i am saddened that a child custody case is at the bottom of the court case..........another pitiful event in the story of the american family..........the amendment to outlaw gay marriage did not make it out of committee here in the bluegrass......which surprises me.........yet, lexington is apparently one of the top 10 locations for gay couples to relocate....according to my partner's partner..............i was under the impression that this nation was built on religious tolerance................not necessarily on christian principles..............ah well..................

bob edwards

ok, so mm emailed npr.org this morning to protest the early 'out-to-pasture' reassignment of bob edwards, who wakes her up so calmly yet enthusiastically every weekday............his reassignment actually made the frontpage of the lexington herald leader, as bob is a native kentuckian, and kentuckians really do take their public radio seriously..........wuky was the very first fm public radio station............and though wuky does not broadcast uk basketball games, there is still enough eclectic programming to satisfy a broad range of listeners...........

the inner goddess?

ok, so the back page of the new yorker, by roz chast is absolutely hysterical, with an 'are you entering your goddess years?' quiz, and humorous cartoons depicting typical goddess garb, such as tunics, bold jewelry, and ethnic hair........i, the mm, have no inner goddess...of this i am certain.....the only personality lurking inside is a travel agent/ tour guide.........and those who know me well, or who have had the ultimate pleasure of traveling with me, know that orchestrating travel is something that i live for....which brings me to this afternoon.......i am digging up the plantings in our side yard...the area that i call my bathroom garden because i can look out while i am getting dressed and see the lilac, the therese bugnet rose, the luneria, etc.........and the bushes that i am trying to preserve, now that i am told that they may be strangling the lateral lines of the septic system...........the quotation that we were given to dig down to the lateral lines would cover a trip this january to florence.....so i am digging it up myself.....so far i have uncovered a solid 12 inches of lateral line....and i am now taking a well-earned break...................i have no good place to put the dirt, as this is a well-planted area........with 16 years of established growth/root systems..............granted, one of the goddess qualifications involved 'extreme importance of the home and garden'.........well, my garden plantings are important to me.....and i will go to great lengths to avoid digging up my brick walkway.....lateral line # 1 is about 6 inches from the walk....i am praying that the leak will be on this line, and not on line #2, which runs directly under my walk and my rosebush..........yes, i could move the bush, but i like looking out on when it blooms.............anyway, back to the goddess thing......i despise herbal teas...................bring on the caffeine.........

change of plans

ok, so we are going to boston, and not to nyc..........that is just fine...might as well see harvard and mit while we are in the neighborhood.........as long as i see either winterthur and/or longwood gardens on the way home.........

saving the earth one stretch of road at a time.....

ok, so the c-w family went out this afternoon and picked up trash on rt 33 between the radio station and the vfw hall.........ecw has been riding his bike to work on nice days...and noticed the incredible volume of trash........a few running friends also showed up...numbering our clean-up crew 8 at one point.........we found a humerous array of stuff......a star-wars soundtrack audio tape (no case)....a cell phone......several full packs of cigarettes(soggy from rain...)......at least 12 pint-size whisky bottles, a battery-operated sex toy (i had never actally seen one, so this was the highlight of the afternoon......) an empty pill pack for an herbal version of viagra.....clearly not tossed out by the same person because if you have one you do not need the other......a christmas card from marty and nancy that described her rotator cuff surgury and subsequent therapy.............a green belt from someone's karate outfit.............in addition to numerous beer bottles, plastic mountain dew bottles, and fast food wrappers.............i am still cold, by the way...as the wind was vicious...................

so clever....

ok, so mm thought this poem, included in today's writer's almanac...was so very clever.....

Poem: "Permanently," by Kenneth Koch, from Selected Poems, 1950-1982 (Vintage).

Permanently

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing—for example, "Although it was a dark
rainy day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure
and sweet expression on her face until the day I perish from the
green, effective earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window
sill has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from
the boiler factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat--
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

new inspiration

ok, so the mm has been re-inspired to get back on line....and glean more personal memories from this very blog...and work on this blessed book/screenplay..........a long-lost friend showed up today for lunch...and i am always so glad when our paths cross....because she is a mover/shaker when it comes to getting to one's core.....i wish that gail had been working today so she could have met her.......

the road to hell is paved with works in progress........

ok, so the mm did not say that......it was said by phillip roth.....He published his first book, the collection of short stories Goodbye Columbus, in 1959, and it got good reviews and won several awards. But a few years later, he went to speak at a university in New York City, and the audience attacked him, shouting that he was writing anti-Semitic literature. When he tried to leave the stage, a crowd surrounded him, shouting and waving their fists, and he barely got away without being hurt. Later that night he said, "I'll never write about Jews again." He worked on a novel with no Jewish characters called When She Was Good (1967), but it wasn't any fun to write, and he realized that he couldn't give up on writing about his background. He figured that if everyone thought he was offensive, he might as well try to write a book that was as offensive as possible. He set out write a novel in the wild, obscene voice that he remembered from his childhood friends. He had started psychoanalysis at the time, and he got the idea of writing the book from the point of view of a patient on his psychoanalyst's couch.

That book became Portnoy's Complaint (1969), about Alexander Portnoy—his obsession with sex, and his struggles with his Jewish parents, especially his mother. It begins, "She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise." It was one of the most sexually explicit books ever published, and it became one of the best-selling books of the 1960s. Jewish critics attacked Roth for his portrayal of Jews, and others attacked him for his obscenity, but he had decided that he no longer cared if he offended his readers. He said, "I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you—it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists."

He has gone on to write many more novels, most of them narrated by a fictional writer named Nathan Zuckerman, including American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000). His most recent novel is The Dying Animal (2001). Roth said, "The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress."

think globally; act locally

ok, so my new hostess has some specific needs........for the her children...and they are as follows........the 11-year old boy needs spring/summer pants/shorts and shirts in size 14 or 16.........her daughter is 8, and wears 6 or 6x or 7......they attend toliver, so uniform items in khaki, navy blue, green or white would be appreciated..............she also has need of dressers for her children...and a microwave

nyc or bust

ok, so the mm wants to go to nyc instead of boston, especially if the scholar involved has no intentions of applying to mass schools.......we could go to the whitney exhibit described in my longterm cultural bible......the new yorker......for the un-informed......my relationship with this magazine goes back to 1978, when in graduate school at the cincinnati center for developmental disorders, housed at the university of cincinnati.....i would walk in the door on monday morning and find last week's new yorker on the coffee table......i took it to read, and sometimes remembered to bring it back for someone else.......my favorite framed art pieces are actually new yorker covers...............not originals.....but you have to get close to tell................for the record, several of the doctor's on our staff were holocaust survivors.....i have seen a prison camp tatoo only once in person, and that was in a case conference, when dr.oppenheimer's sleeve came up too high................i have calculated driving distances...and would desire to drive back from new haven more so than from boston.....but this is not my decision...........the scholar has the last word..............because.....i could just as well see the glass flowers at harvard (again) or the isabella gardiner museum (again), or the wonderful winslow homer pictures at the fine arts museum.....i have a lovely framed print by homer of two boys in a field that i purchased sometime in the early 90's.......it could be a portrait of my own boys...............so idyllic...............

quasi-post hippie

ok, so my new waitress, grace, from centre.....told me tonight that i seemed to her to be a quasi-post-hippie sort of person.........i like that description, being too young to have been a hippie in the first round.........and too old to be a post-hippie...or a neo-hippie.........the subject came up with the discussion of a common friend of grace and the bartender who recently left danville with his guitar for a rainbow reunion in utah.............oh, to be young and footloose........grace, ironically decried danville for it's lack of a feeling of community.........which i explained to her as merely her lack of putting down and roots here..................you ownly reap what you sow...................anyway, i am so proud of being categorized as such...............and certainly relieved to not being mistaken for some sort of conservative matron................possibly the worst form of insult in my estimation......................

sadness....

ok, so what does the mm do when she needs sympathy...............today i have this semi-overwhelming need to cry......though there is nothing profound enough in my life right now to warrant this emotion.......maybe it is the drizzle outside...mayhaps it is hormonal.....or another midlife angst moment...or the unfinished novel that dwells in my brain but cannot yet be commited to paper/harddrive........i need to just get over what-ever-it-is and move on with my day........

more thanks...

ok, so the mm would like to thank the contingency from brookside montessori who so graciously saved seats for the similarly small dhs delegation...at the governor's cup awards ceremony in louisville........congrats to sebastian pytek and hannah k-m on their placement in middle school competition...........i enjoyed getting to talk to mamma k-m....and i was pleased to be able to go up for the event, as well as to drive back home my boy...whether victorious or not.....this makes no difference in the end to a mother so proud of her child.........

thanks........

ok, so mm must thank the possibly-signing off l.o. for her inspiration......who would have thought that the blog you started so many years ago would have prompted a middle-aged, yet too young to write-off, woman to blog, let alone potentially string together enough blogs to birth a novel........i appreciate the spirit in which you savor your own creativity...............and i shall miss your insights should you opt out of the blogger's venue....................

denouement......

ok, so mm had an intriguing conversation with child #1, the english major, before he returned to school......must one's plot include a definite 'crisis' that requires resolution....... and must this crisis involve the main characters.........can it involve side-line folk whose welfare is of interest too the main characters? must gail and i win the lottery...or can this hope/dream remain unfulfilled as long as we resolve other aspects of our friendship?..........

a new twist

ok, so we have a new person working for us........a woman who has moved to danville from a spousal abuse shelter in lexington, and before that from parts unknown..........she does not know a soul in danville, yet seems relieved to be among reasonable people...she has read this town well........her two children are doing well in the city school system, and and has hopes of settling down.........others have taken to her as well......friday, the lunch wait-staff allowed her to 'take a few tables' so she could earn a bit of gas money prior to the weekend........i feel guilty, as a i could have sent home some leftovers had i fully understood the situation.......this is the scenario that brings the brutal realization....i live in a cushy reality, with a caring, equitable spouse...............and full support for my every whim........there are those who have never known such, and grasp for every shred of dignity .................my sunday school class is taking up a collection to buy her children easter baskets..................i hope that we can do more substantial things in the future..............

the unexpected pitcher

ok, so on the way to church, npr weekend edition profiled a fellow who is currently at the san diego padres training camp...hoping to become the first mit graduate to play major league baseball...........the joke was told....it may just very well take a rocket scientist to be a good pitcher........he may not just be a graduate, he may actually be a phd candidate, though i cannot be sure of those details......he seemed quite personable, and hopeful for this part of his career to 'take off'......at least we know this story to be true.....in sunday school, we were visited for the third-straight sunday by a largish lady with streaked purple hair........who seems to have a changeable story to tell, at best..........my teaching partner sat next to her.....and discovered that she may or may not live in a house she and her mother donated to centre college, and theymay or may not have had a beauty salon in a building that has housed a pediatrician's office for the past 25 years........and she may or may not donate easters to the local children's home.....she demured to comment when someone offered to take these baskets out to the campus, given that she no longer drives............we discussed these lapses at family lunch today...partly because they so trouble me, and also because i want my daughter to know that when she makes up stories, they are just as troubling to her friends...........this is the same person who last week was so gushy (along with her mother) about how true to the bible the mel movie was........these are the times when it is hard to love thy neighbor......and she is who is without sin shall cast the first stone.........my fear is that her stories may discourage others from coming to our class.........pray for us...................

wise words

ok, so albert einstein once said....... "If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut".............i have the hard work down pat, and maybe the play part........but keeping my mouth shut may never happen in my lifetime............

secret club

ok,so my millionaire friend gail and i have been writing the first and last pages of our screenplay/novel in my secret blog.........we like the start and the finish....................we decided to write the end, for the benefit of those readersd who read the last page first, to decide if the book is worth reading....................we also decided that certain details of our lives were not-oprah-worthy.......and would remain 'secret-club'.................

the troubles in spain....

ok, so mm feels badly about the troubles in spain , even though the trip to spain was over 13 months ago.....i looked into staying outside the madrid city center in 2003, and taking the train downtown....we saw e.t.a. graffiti in the basque areas near bilbao........we do not know what the writings said other than they were ended with exclamations.....................such things make me worry about trips that i have already taken, like paris, and trips that i am planning, like upeast..........we have already cut short the trip, as we(i) want to be back for easter sunday......boston is just too long a drive for one day..........we have been to the college web sites....neither princeton nor yale allow reservations for tours, which means that they could be free-for-with thick-lensed geeks jockeying for position with brutal fullbacks........well, maybe not,.........as the jocks will be looking elsewhere, surely............so...there it is......princeton and new haven........the president of centre ate lunch at trc today, by the way......and was encouraged that scw was sending his act and sat scores to centre.........such nice people at centre..................he likes my chicken salad................

spring break

ok, so mm is really looking forward to spring break....a week off from work, and a trip up eat to princeton, new haven and at least nyc if not boston as well........yes, the drive is long, but at least i will not be cooking..................i envision stops at winterthur, longwood gardens, maybe an adventure into nyc to see the cloisters..........

vita sackville-west

ok, so today is the birthday of vita, known best as a gardener/garden writer, but also as a novelist and erstwhile lover of virginia woolf...........sackville-west once said, "It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?"

more on the gospel according to mel............

ok, so mm is really encouraged at this point.....from denver........

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- About 300 people of different faiths turned out to clean up a synagogue vandalized with swastikas and Nazi symbols on the eve of the Jewish holiday Purim.

So many people showed up Sunday at BMH-BJ Congregation, where vandalism had been discovered the day before, that people had to stand in line for a turn with a brush and a can of paint thinner.

"This is a place for everyone," said Doug Mix, who is not a member of the congregation. "That is why everyone is here. There are Christians, Jews, Muslims and people who are not religious. We all came out here because America is still America, and we don't tolerate this."

A custodian for the synagogue discovered about 10 markings when he arrived Saturday morning. Purim was celebrated Saturday night and Sunday. Police had not made any arrests by Monday.

Holocaust survivor Fanny Starr saw the graffiti Saturday morning.

"I was just shaking and broke down," she said. "All the wounds, the old wounds starting open again."

Rabbi Daniel Cohen said the vandalism may have been sparked by Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which just finished its second weekend as the No. 1 movie in the country. The movie, which some believe wrongly blames Jews for the death of Christ, has been criticized as anti-Semitic.

Elise Zakroff said she was sure the film inspired the graffiti.

"What Mel Gibson did is terrible," Zakroff said. "It is happening all over. We are tired of anti-Semitism. All we want is peace."

Shortly after the movie opened, a Denver pastor outraged Jews and Christians with a sign outside his Lovingway United Pentecostal Church that read "Jews Killed The Lord Jesus."

He said the sign was inspired by Gibson's film and later put a sign of apology.

In 2002, anti-Semitic incidents rose 8 percent nationwide over the previous year, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Colorado had 35 anti-Semitic incidents.

more on gay marriage......

ok, so the new yorker is taking much of the mm's flack these days....this time...the baylor lariet is putting out liberal commentary as yet unknown to baptist doctrine..............

COMMENT
WEDDED BLITZ
Issue of 2004-03-15
Posted 2004-03-08
The deliberations of the editorial board of the Baylor Lariat do not normally attract widespread notice beyond the environs of Waco, Texas—or within them, for that matter—but these are not normal times, and the Lariat’s editorial the other Friday was not, in the opinion of some, a sufficiently normal editorial. After summarizing the events surrounding the current fuss over same-gender matrimony, the Lariat editors stated their view. “Gay couples should be granted the same equal rights to legal marriage as heterosexual couples,” they wrote. “Like many heterosexual couples,” they went on to conclude,

many gay couples share deep bonds of love, some so strong they’ve persevered years of discrimination for their choice to co-habitate with and date one another. Just as it isn’t fair to discriminate against someone for their skin color, heritage or religious beliefs, it isn’t fair to discriminate against someone for their sexual orientation. Shouldn’t gay couples be allowed to enjoy the benefits and happiness of marriage, too?


(This, by the way, was followed by a boldface tagline: editorial board vote: 5-2. Wouldn’t it be nice if the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal practiced this sort of transparency?)

The Baylor Lariat is the campus newspaper of Baylor University. Baylor, with fourteen thousand students, describes itself as “the oldest institution of higher learning in the state and the largest Baptist university in the world,” and is a bastion of Christian conservatism.

The unchristian kind, too, apparently. The president of Baylor, Robert B. Sloan, Jr., quickly lowered the boom. “Espousing in a Baylor publication a view that is so out of touch with traditional Christian teachings is not only unwelcome, it comes dangerously close to violating University policy, as published in the Student Handbook, prohibiting the advocacy of any understandings of sexuality that are contrary to biblical teaching,” President Sloan stated, adding darkly, “The Student Publications Board will be addressing this matter with the Lariat staff as soon as possible.” Sure enough, that same day, the Student Publications Board—which evidently functions in the Baylor context the way the Ideology Department of the Communist Party used to function in the Soviet context—announced that the Lariat had indeed violated “policy” and assured the world that “the guidelines have been reviewed with the Lariat staff, so that they will be able to avoid this error in the future.”

It was no great surprise that the Lariat’s foray into dissidence was promptly squelched. What was startling was that such a foray, in such a place, was ventured at all. It was more startling, in its way, than the pro-gay-marriage ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, three weeks earlier. Waco, after all, is far from Boston. And the vote in the Supreme Judicial Court was narrower—4-3, not 5-2.

The Lariat fracas is a small part of a large drama, but it is emblematic of an essential feature of the gay-marriage debate: the most salient divisions are not religious, political, or “cultural” but generational. To talk to younger people is to realize that for most of them, including many young conservatives, such notions as the idea that homosexuality is shameful, that it is a voluntary and/or contagious “life-style choice,” or that it is some sort of threat to something or other (public order, the family, civilization, God) are simply bizarre curios from the past, like the belief that masturbation causes blindness. And, for what it’s worth, anecdotal impressions are confirmed by opinion research. One particularly striking CBS News/New York Times poll, taken last year, asked respondents if they would favor or oppose “a law that would allow homosexual couples to marry, giving them the same legal rights as other married couples.” Among adults under age thirty, 61 per cent said they would favor such a law and 35 per cent said they would oppose it; among sixty-five-year-olds and up, 18 per cent were in favor and 73 per cent opposed. The numbers vary from poll to poll, but the huge age gap is always there.

The trend lines are clear: at some point in the fairly near future—maybe by the time those twenty-somethings are forty-somethings—gay marriage will be routine. (So will gay divorce, if the experience of straight marriage is any guide.) As for the legal status of homosexual unions, we are smack in the middle of a period of creative chaos. Family law has always been messy in this country, with marriages that are lawful in one state being unlawful in the next. Now it’s just messier. Some legislatures are passing laws forbidding gay marriage, others are experimenting with civil unions, still others are doing both; mayors, in acts of what might be called civic disobedience, are presiding at gay weddings; courts are issuing dicta for every taste. Last week, it was the turn of New York State’s crackerjack attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, who threaded the needle deftly by announcing that while it remains illegal for gays to get married in New York, gay marriages performed legally elsewhere are legal here, too.

There is ferment aplenty. But none of it exceeds the tolerances of America’s ramshackle federal mechanism. When divisions are rampant, passions on all sides are high, and no one on any side is suffering any palpable harm, the natural—and not necessarily reprehensible—inclination of politicians is to straddle. That is what Senator Kerry has been doing, and until recently it was what President Bush had been doing, too. But then the President’s poll numbers dropped, and his religious-right base—unsatiated, apparently, by the Administration’s record of crippling stem-cell research, packing the courts with troglodytes, funding “faith-based” services, and defunding family planning—grew restive.

The best that can be said for Bush’s sudden call for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is that, on some level, he seems ashamed of it. He went to the Roosevelt Room, delivered his prepared statement, and left without taking questions. The Times reported that “White House officials” thought that the President appeared uncomfortable. Vice-President Cheney, whose beloved daughter is openly gay, said stoically a few days later that he will support his President, but he could not quite bring himself to say that he thinks the amendment itself is a good idea.

It is close to a certainty that no such amendment will be adopted. There simply aren’t enough people who see gay marriage as a sufficiently dire threat to “the welfare of children,” “the stability of society,” and “the most fundamental institution of civilization” (the President’s words) so that writing bigotry into the Constitution itself is urgently required. Bush probably doesn’t believe that, and Cheney certainly doesn’t. They’re just trying to win an election, and they figure that the end justifies the means. We’ll learn in November whether their ploy was successful. Either way, the question posed in all sweet innocence by the student editors of the Baylor Lariat will remain: Shouldn’t gay couples be allowed to enjoy the benefits and happiness of marriage, too?

— Hendrik Hertzberg


ironically, the gay folk that i know personally claim to have no interest in marriage........however, after a recent jolt to status quo, i am certain that their level of commitment is every bit as solid as those married 15 + years..........

mm predicts...........

ok, so mm predicts that a question on the arts and humanities test at governor's cup finals in louisville will deal with people featured on the cover of sergeant pepper's lonely heart's club band album cover...............

mm as the anti-christ

ok, so mm got into a brief argument during sunday school, re: the passion of mel gibson.......a guest and her mother were ooohing and ahing about just how profound their experience had been watching the passion...........which was just fine...until they started in about just how biblical it was..........'it was just like it was in the bible......'......well, i have been studying/teaching the new testament for 16+ years......and i do know that the line in luke, for example...is 'and they took him outside and flogged him'.....just one line...........no 45 minute descriptive interlude of horrific brutality.............and.......every gospel account that we have was written after 70 ad........., which means that none are first-person accounts................luke was written in ad 85.......and most commentators agree that each of the gospels was slanted toward a particular audience...with episodes in christ's life included or omitted in order to fulfill a particular agenda........luke, for example, was written for the gentiles, not for the jews..............i fear that i was a bit harsh in my discussion of 'the opposing viewpoint'......but there it is.......i was quick enough to quote the new yorker article....as if this was not my radical left-wing opinion....................

drama, fit for a lifetime movie.........

ok, so i missed a major dramatic interlude at the restaurant last night, which was worthy of a lifetime movie..............i shall not blog about it yet, as the scenario has not yet played itself out.............suffice it to say that it has everything one would want for a climax to a certain screenplay..............in fact that was the first thing gail said to me this morning as she related the details as she understood them.........i have heard the details from at least 4 people thus far, and all are different..........so i am waiting for the final version to be decided upon before i record history, as it were, in this blog.....................

poor george w......

ok, so the scandal around the bush administration leak that led to the outing of the cia agent could be heating up just in time for the election.....this was on cnn.com this morning....

The grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's name subpoenaed a wide range of White House documents, including records of telephone calls from Air Force One and information relating to an internal working group dealing with Iraq, government sources confirmed to CNN on Friday............between this sleeping dog, and the furor over bush's use of 9-11 footage in his first campaign ad........he has a real uphill battle if he wants to retain the white house.......

fridays

ok, so mm has begun to look forward to fridays........as the older son tends to come home to find a quiet place to study.....and there is usually 5 for dinner...a full table at our house.........the discussion last evening was about ecw's high school in cincinnati- walnut hills.....a city-run college prep high school with competitive entrance, but not with the big tuition of private high schools.......according to memory, the makeup of this school was about 1/3 jewish kids, 1/3 black sports ringers, and 1/3 everybody else.........he recalled that during a gym class baseball game, he was praised for 'running pretty well for a white boy'.............and there is always the story of the 'jewish blond bombshell' that he took to prom one year.......my children love that story..........for the record, walnut hills is the alma mater of steven speilburg's mother, and sarah jessica parker's mother.........how do i know that?...because i read the alumni newsletter when it comes.........the entire discussion came up because ecw had a couple wearing matching black adidas track suits come into the bike shop to look around......turns out they were in town overnight with their son, a football player who is looking at centre college.....the father is an athletic director at a high school on the west side of cincinnati.....a place that ecw calls the wrong side of town solely because he was from the east side of town, and in those days the twain did not meet.......anyway.......he sent them over to trc to look around and consider happy hour and/or dinner..........also turns out that they are staying at the b&b run by our not-so-beloved mayor.......anyway, should i start to wear matching black track suits....at least when my spouse is wearing his black track suit, then it is time to pull the plug.............please put me out of my misery.......................

more on mel's movie

ok, so mm has read an insightful article in this week's new yorker.......cut and pasted for your enlightenment........

Last week, while the critics, the clergy, and the professional opinion-providers were caught up in the opening, on Ash Wednesday, of “The Passion of the Christ,” it seemed a good idea to ask Elaine Pagels, a renowned historian of the early Christian period, to see the film and offer her reaction. Scholarship on the quick, admittedly. Professor Pagels, who teaches at Princeton and is the author of “The Gnostic Gospels” and “The Origin of Satan,” seemed hesitant at first. But one evening she viewed “The Passion” with some friends, and afterward she called to say that she was, well, disturbed. And not just because of the unremitting and brutal flaying of Christ, “though my friends said that anyone who had really endured that kind of torture would have been dead a lot earlier in the movie.”

Pagels is both a scholar and, in her way, a practicing Christian. Usually, she is measured, soft-spoken, but there was the slightest tone of agitation in her voice: “It’s important to remember that this is Lent, and meditations on the Passion of Christ are an important part of the cultural interpretation of human suffering. There’s a context for the movie in the history of art. When Christians read the Gospels as historical acts, they will say what Mel Gibson says: that this is the truth, this is our faith. But the important thing is that this film ignores the spin the gospel writers were pressured to put on their works, the distortions of facts they had to execute. Mel Gibson has no interest whatsoever in that.”

Pagels explained that the four gospel writers of the New Testament probably wrote between 70 and 100 A.D. These were the years following the Roman defeat of the Jews, which left the Temple and the center of Jerusalem in ruins. Acts of sedition by the Jews against their conquerors were met with swift execution. As a result, Pagels said, the Gospels, which were intended not as history but as preaching, as religious propaganda to win followers for the teachings of Christ, portrayed the conflict of the Passion as one between Jesus and the Jewish people, led by Caiaphas. And, though it was the Roman occupiers, under Pontius Pilate, who possessed ultimate political and judicial power in Judea, they are described in the Gospels—and, more starkly, in Gibson’s film--as relatively benign.

“Our first informed comment on Pilate comes from Philo of Alexandria, a wealthy, influential Jewish citizen who was part of a delegation sent to Rome to negotiate with the emperor,” Pagels said. “The delegation saw the Emperor Caligula in the year 40, seven to ten years after Jesus’ death, and Philo writes that Pilate was stubborn and cruel and routinely ordered executions without trial. The other great historian of the period is Josephus, who wrote the history of the war between the Romans and the Jews. He tells us many episodes about Pilate that also go against what the Gospels tell us—that he robbed the public treasury, that he deliberately incited the Jerusalemites. Josephus tells us that when people rioted in protest Pilate sent his soldiers to beat and kill them. So he was far from the man depicted in the Gospels.

“Mel Gibson denies any anti-Semitism, and I can’t speak to his motives,” Pagels went on, “but there are narrative devices that are clear. The more benign Pilate appears in the movie, the more malignant the Jews are. To deflect responsibility from the Romans for arresting and executing Christ, which Gibson takes from the Gospels and makes even more extreme, is contrary to everything we understand about history. It is implausible that the Jews could be responsible and Pilate a benign governor. There are many examples in the film of a preposterous dialectic: the bad Jews and the good Romans. When the Temple police arrest Jesus, Mary Magdalene turns to the Romans as if they were the policemen on the block, benign protectors of the public order. But the very idea of a Jewish woman turning to Roman soldiers for help is ridiculous.”

Unlike many of the critics, Pagels was hesitant about analyzing what effect “The Passion of the Christ” would have on its audiences. But her tone was one of regret.

Pagels pointed out that the history of western art is rife with representations of the Passion that avoid divisive sentiment. “In the ‘St. Matthew Passion,’” she said, “Bach was very aware of the problem of arousing anti-Semitic feelings and he wanted deliberately to avoid that. So at the moment when there is the cry to crucify Christ, the call comes not from an identifiable group of Jews but from all, from the entire chorus. Bach demonstrated what Gibson claims that he wanted to show, the inclination of human beings, universally, to do violence.” There were other artists, too—from Palestrina to Bill Viola--who depicted the Passion in a similar spirit.

In the end, she said, “Gibson’s movie is no more subtle than ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ There is the side of good and the side of evil.”

— David Remnick

on the other hand, the new yorker also ran a piece about yeardley smith, the voice-over actress who 'plays' lisa simpson in the long-running animated series.........lisa is someone who doesn't just pay lipservice to taking the high moral road, she has done so through her actions in every episode since 1988 (or so.....)........several who have encouraged me to see the mel movie this week spoke of how real and true it was on the screen.....yet have no clue about the actual message of love, acceptance, commitment, and faith...........actions will always speak louder than words...or brutal flaying scenes........

poor martha

ok, so mm is feeling somewhat charitible toward martha stewart, with her multiple guilty verdicts.....she will appeal, of course.............when i say that i feel charitable, it is not about the pickle that she is in, but about the strange scarf she wore coming out of court...it was brown....was it fur, was it puffy nylon......was it chocolate......was it a strange stuffed teddy bear?............on-line it is so hard to tell........of course, she may have made it herself, and the step-by-step directions are posted on her website.......what was she thinking?

deleted blogs

ok, so mm has had a horrible day, and had actually blogged twice, and deleted twice, because no one should have to read such dismal fodder, especially on a school night................

my friend gail

ok, so over our after-lunch rush break, my friend gail and i reminisced about the 26 pages of notes that i cut and pasted from the first 6 months of my blog........things we had both forgotten about, but that are significant to our 'story'.......after this blog i intend to work on the next 6 months, until i am up-to-date, and have something in hand to physically cut-and-paste into an order that pleases me.....then...all i have to do is tie it together...piece of cake, right? i realize that this task could be done with ms word......but somehow the tangible quality of words on paper seems more better......

daffodils

ok, so mm has enough blooming daffodils to pick a bouquet and bring them inside.......we also have crocuses (?croci), and little white flowers i cannot identify just right this minute.......neither are tall enough to pick...sadly.......the bed where the daffodils bloom so early is southern-facing, protected on 3 sides from wind.....it is quite close to te bed where my early-bloomer rose bush resides.......we consistently have a blooming stanwell perpetual prior to may 1, which is like having crocus bloom- the blooms are almost too tiny to put in a vase...........

technology

ok, so i heard on the morning business report this morning a piece about women and technology......that women USED to lag behind men in terms of embracing technological wonders like cell phones, email, palm pilots, etc....but that women are now catching up.......as i get older (read this as becoming more of a curmudgeon....) i find that i prefer less, rather than more technology.......i do not keep on my cell phone......anybody who wants me knows that i am at either of 2 numbers......i do turn it on in the car if and only if i am expecting a call from a child who needs a ride.......i did not replace my food processer when it died.........i just chop with a knife....imagine.........i did not even bother to replace the inserts in my daytimer......what dates we need are on the calender in the kitchen....the one where we also keep rtrack of whose turn it is to set the table and do dishes...........when my book club suggested that a certain book was available for download onto a palm pilot, it just laughed.......i have no use for a palm pilot.......it amuses to think that some of my emails are sent by palm pilot.........but read on an old-fashioned p.c................on the other hand....i spent quality time on sunday sending actual handwritten notes of encouragement to friends, as well as overdue thank yous.............some things are best left low-tech...............

you say it's your birthday....

ok, so mm wants to wish the loyal opposition(l.o.) a very merry birthday...........

meanmamma's gonna brag...................

ok, so if you can't handle a bit of maternal bravado......click on over to cnn.com................mm's middle child has qualified in 2 events for the state governor's cup competition in 2 weeks in louisville.......he finished first in social studies in our region.....and third in arts and humanities.......a new category...which somewhat replaces the category in which he placed 3rd in the state last year....general knowledge.....now g.k. requires math..........need i say more...the fact that he placed 3rd in the state is big considering the math..........but arts and humanities......now that is his forte............who said what, who painted what, who designed what.....who wrote what.......that is the stuff that the c-w children were teethed on........and that is not even his best category.............social studies..............where in the world...what in the world....that is what he knows best.................i cannot wait...................

bad news travels fast.....

ok, so the big news in the danville restaurant millieu was about freddie's......whose female owner has filed a restraining order against her spouse/erstwhile partner.....and has moved to arizona with her child to live out her days........she has an inoperable tumor on her heart, and has not been given much hope since she returned from the mayo clinic.......since she is credited as being the brains behind that operation........not much hope is given to this classic downtown danville eatery.........which still has those lovely chrome pedastal seats in front of the counter........i am putting together a book of digital photos/recipes/serving descriptions for my partner...for him to use spring break, and in case i am ever hit by a bus..........i have only missed 3-4 days in 4 years of operation..........my travels have been while we have been while wew were closed................so i must prepare for the worst case scenario.....that he must make the quiches/crepes/chicken artichoke pies.........etc.................speaking of travels....i am livid that my return trip from france on air france did not yield any delta airmiles............i thought they were partners...........of course, this return flight was ever so much more pleasant than delta would have been..it was an airbus plane with in-seat video...i watched 3 marvelous films...including the quiet american with brendan frasier that is on my book club list..........now i will not bother to read the book because i haven't the time and the film was so good.........not that the flight was worth 4500 or so airmiles.......i am close to another free trip.....and this is a major set-back..................

too many dogs...........

ok, so we have an extra dog, now that my mother is on an extended tour of western states/friends/kin...........and this additional dog is already on my last nerve.......partly because our older dog, a wired-haired terrier, has developed some joint/ligament problems, and the younger, portly yellow lab has been getting into numerous neighbor-dog's food, and making himself sick by the time he gets back home..........the extra dog has been poorly 'trained'..............enough said..........it has only been 48 hours................

fatigued with joy

ok, so mm stayed up til 12:30 am to watch the oscars....to see peter jackson enjoy the fruits of his vision and multi-years of hard work.....such a gamble, but such an incredible trilogy....of course, we (collective...) cannot wait til both the dvd and extended dvd's come out..........i enjoy watching this spectacle, not just for the drama, but also for the dresses....so lovely this year....except for uma thurman...what was she thinking........i could have had a better night's rest if not for the phone call at 5:20 am....i did star 69 after they caller hung up, as our upstairs phone lacks caller id.......and later on this morning i did the reverse phone number trace on-line.......these are people to whom i have no knowledge or connection....so it must have been a mistake..................who knows who they tried to call this morning at 5:20 am.........