Songcatching

I've been fascinated by songs and ballads for a very long time now. I grew up in a singing household and we sang songs that we heard on Peter, Paul & Mary albums, Joan Baez albums, Pete Seeger and the Weavers albums and other music of the so-called "folk revival" of the 1960s. So I was lucky to have a lot of exposure to music and singing growing up, and as I have grown older, my fascination for songs has grown considerably. I have had the privilege, for nearly 20 years now, to study at the Augusta Heritage Center in at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, WV every summer during their "Irish Week" and have studied under some amazing instructors, masters in their fields. Perhaps the one who has most influence me over the years is the late, great Frank Harte, who died a few years ago, sadly, but left behind a rich legacy of songs passed on and a love of collecting songs that I seem to have captured. In recent years I've made more and more of an effort to look for good - and obscure - songs to sing. A great many of the songs I know I learned from Frank or from those who learned them from Frank, but I have also listened to singers over the years and learned their songs as well as doing on line research on various web sites. One of the best I stumbled on not long ago was the John Quincy Wolf Collection of Ozark Folk songs : http://www.lyon.edu/wolfcollection/songs/songs.html. There are some well known and lesser known songs to be had there and old recordings of folks singing them, some of their voices sounding a bit raw, but that's what's appealing about it, the fact that they are live field recordings made in the 1950's and not gussied up studio recordings. Those are often the best kind of recordings because they are, as my brother would probably say, "the real thing". I've listened to a number of old field recordings made by musicologist Alan Lomax and they are really great, too. I have a terrific CD of the 1947 Alabama Sacred Harp Convention of a bunch of folks singing old shape note hymns, a very raw and real sound punctuated also by people offering praise to God in their unmistakable southern way. A friend made me a cassette tape of Lomax's Irish songs collection and I wish I could find the CD of it, which I am sure is out there somewhere. This is the best way to do some good old fashioned "song catching" without having to leave home and go out and do field research - find old field recordings of just folks singing songs they've known since they were children. There seem to be plenty of resources on line for doing this and I plan to do a lot more looking for good songs to learn and share. After all, Frank Harte always said that all songs are living ghosts longing for a living voice. I couldn't have said it better.

Texas sized misunderstanding

OK, for those of you who took umbrage at my comment in the previous posting that said that Texas is a pretty useless place and that we ought to just give it back to Mexico, I wonder: can you not see the sarcasm that I was trying to express? It was meant purely tongue and cheek, honestly. I've only set foot in Texas once, and that was while flying home from Florida via Houston, but the state has produced some mighty writers and artists that I respect and admire greatly. It has also produced its share of really lousy politicians, and those are the folks that I can pretty much do without. Of course, every state of the Union can be said to have produced lousy politicians, so this quality is not exclusive of Texas necessarily, but some Texans have often kind of considered themselves to be a breed apart, real Lone Star types who espouse the "my way or the highway" philosophy of life. Again, this can be said of many states and not necessarily exclusive of Texas. So please don't think I'm singling out Texas for condemnation of any kind. It's just that some of the politicians that have come to national prominence from that state have had Texas sized egos and tend to give the state a bad name as it is. The Current Occupant comes to mind, in particular. I mean, here's a guy that seems to want to run the world by cowboy rules and sees the world in purely black and white terms, the white hat sheriff and the black hat bad guy, like a bad western movie, when it's not that simple, really. He misses the subtle nuances of grey in between the black and white and as a result, misses a lot of the important facts in how things run. So as far as I am concerned, Mexico can take back Crawford, Texas, at least, and take Dubya with them, with our blessings. He's been the worst thing to happen to this country in my lifetime, far exceeding the Reagan years in mishandling things. So to those of you who want to condemn me for what I said about Texas, well, it was said purely in sarcasm. So there you have it.

COPYING BEETHOVEN

Last night I watched an interesting DVD called "Copying Beethoven", starring Ed Harris as the famed composer. The storyline is about how Beethoven is writing his famous 9th symphony and needs someone to write it down for him. He's been relying on Herr Schlemmer to do it, but he is dying of cancer, which Beethoven can't seem to accept, so Schlemmer asks for a composition student from the music conservatory in Vienna to take over for him, as his health prevents him from being of further service to Beethoven. Along comes 23 year old Anna Holtz, whose father has sacrificed a great deal to get her to conservatory. Schlemmer is horrified that she's a woman and is convinced that there has been a terrible mistake, but Anna goes to Beethoven anyway and offers to transcribe his work. After a bit of a battle, Beethoven agrees to take her on. She proves herself to be up to the task but is horrified to find Beethoven to be so ill mannered and living in such squalor. Eventually she does help write down Beethoven's work and ends up helping him to conduct it in its premier, and it turns out to be a huge hit. Beethoven wants to move on to try to change the direction of music and Anna does not understand where his music is going. Meanwhile, she wants to compose work of her own, and when she presents her music to Beethoven, he ridicules it as simplistic and she is crushed. She ends up writing a good composition that in a way, copies her mentor, Beethoven, who ends the movie by composing his "farewell" piece, "Grande Fugue" before dying. The film, while a tad far fetched in its story of a young woman who writes Beethoven's music down for him and assists in conducting the 9th Symphony, nonetheless is visually beautiful and has Beethoven's music interspersed all throughout it, and very much like "Amadeus", which tells the tale of Mozart, this movie's main star is the music itself. I'd never heard of this film until I saw it on the shelf at work, and it apparently was made in Hungary. It never showed in US movie theaters, so I was wholly unaware of its existence. If you like Beethoven's music, I think it's easy to say that you would like this movie, even if the story is fictitious.

War and Remembrance

Last night, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Kent held a lovely concert of readings and music to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. I read three selections from Henry David Thoreau's "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", which I felt was apropos because of the fact that he inspired the peaceful and non violent protests of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I also felt it appropriate because of the fact that it was written as a result of a night spent in jail by Mr. Thoreau for not paying his taxes in protest of both slavery and the outbreak of the Mexican War, which he felt was an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, which in fact, it was, as part of the United States' Manifest Destiny land grab. It ended up giving us Texas, which some of us joked last night still belonged to Mexico, because of how many Mexican Americans now live there and populate the state, prompting us to think that perhaps we ought to cede Texas back to Mexico with an apology for stealing it in the first place. That way, we'd be rid of Dubya when he retires to his ranchette in Crawford next year. We could keep Austin, land of progressives galore, like the late Molly Ivins and populist writer Jim Hightower, but other than that, the rest of the state can go back to Mexico with our blessings. It's a pretty useless place as it is, so Mexico, we're sorry we made such a dumb mistake, we're sorry that we stole your land, see, it was all a part of our vision of Manifest Destiny and, well, we kinda got a bit greedy as a result, grabbing up land that belonged rightfully to others, so, it's like this: you can have your land back, just let us keep Austin. Or, we can find another place for all those Texas progressives to live. Hell, let's bring them up north and transplant them to Cincinnati, Ohio, badly in need of a good progressive infusion. So, Mexico, it's all yours. Take it back. And take Bush with you, while you're at it. He's all yours, with our blessings.

Anyway, there were also some other good readings and pieces of music last night. Readings, aside from my Thoreau pieces, included a War Prayer by Mark Twain, read by retired neurobiology professor Ted Voneida and a poem called Dedications to Bashert by Irena Klepfisz, read by the Rev. Melissa Carvill-Ziemer. Saunis Parsons sang a haunting song by Ewan MacColl called "The Dove" (which I now find I must learn!) .There was a lovely variations on the song "We Shall Overcome" for piano, there was a snippet of a Chopin piece, that the piano player later confessed to me that he blew (maybe he was either nervous, or just blanked out, sounding very much like something I'd do), and the pièce de résistance for the evening, music-wise, was a Pasacaglia and Fugue for the victims of Bush and bin Laden, written by a Cincinnati composer named Rick Sowash, who, apparently, has his works played on WKSU a great deal and are rather popular as well. The program was well attended and also well received, and it turns out that ours is the only church that did anything of this kind, having a war memorial like this. We did this a few years ago, I think on the first anniversary of the war, and I also read a snipped from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" for that as well, and it was one of the three selections from that essay that I also read last evening. I'm immensely proud that I go to a church that does this kind of thing, holding memorial concerts, vigils and other commemorative events regarding this war. I just hope that there will come a day when it will all be over and peace will reign again in the Middle East, but I highly doubt that will ever happen. There are too many centuries of old hatreds and blood and tribal feuds for that to ever occur. But maybe, just maybe, in my lifetime, a Department of Peace will form in the United States and it will find a way to put and end to all the bloodshed, violence and hatred around the world. Well, I can always dream, can't I?

Wading through the morass of the health care system

It's so hard to believe the rigamarole that I have to go through in order to get a pair of shoes, then be able to wear them. Since I have an inch and a half discrepancy of my left leg due to a long ago accident, I have to wear a large external lift on my left shoes. However, in order to get them put on, I need a prescription, and the one I have is now 10 years old (the original prescription given to me by my primary care physician) and apparently is no longer acceptable, meaning that now I have to make an appointment with my orthopaedic surgeon (can you say, co-pay? cha-CHING!) and get a prescription for shoe lifts every time I want to buy a pair of shoes and have them modified. And to add insult to injury, my health insurance does not cover orthotics, even though it is a medical necessity for me (more cha-CHING!). I simply cannot fathom why it is that I have to jump through so many hoops and spend so much money just to get a pair of shoes modified for me to be able to wear them. It just doesn't make any sense. Even if I go to an insurance approved orthotics provider, insurance won't pay for the lifts, and none of this makes any sense to me whatsoever. Is it any wonder that I have so few pairs of shoes, and the ones I do have, I tend to wear until they are just about unwearable? It's tough enough to afford shoes these days as it is, since everything's become hideously expensive due to rising energy costs, but now, to add to my misery, if I want to buy a good pair of shoes that will give me maximum support and motion control for my habitual supination, this will be costly enough without having to cope with the additional costs of having my left shoe modified. Good shoes can end up costing me well over $200. Add to that a cost of up to $110 for a lift and you can see that a good pair of shoes can end up breaking the bank for me. It's ridiculous that my insurance considers this to be an "exclusionary cost" when it is, in fact, a medical necessity.

This is just one of many reasons that our health care system needs serious reform NOW. Along with higher education costs, health care costs are another soaring expense for many families and are running completely out of control with no end in sight. No one seems intent on stopping the bleeding because of how much money is being thrown down the drain to fight an illegal war that also seems to have no end in sight. We're so in hock to China and Saudi Arabia that if they ever want to collect on our debt, this country would go bankrupt overnight. As it is, the Feds bailed out Bear Stearns in order to prevent a complete collapse of our economy, but they won't bail out homeowners who are victims of bad Wall Street investments and rampant greed. Nothing in this economy makes sense anymore, nothing. Everything's gone topsy turvy, with the rich getting richer and the poor being screwed. It boggles me why, time and time again, people vote against their own economic self interest, and then when their jobs are sent overseas and their homes are foreclosed on, they continue to do the same stupid thing over and over again, voting in Republicans whose only interest is in enriching the rich and screwing the poor. It makes no sense. But then, nothing in the past 7½ years has made much sense. I just hope that this time, people are waking up to the hard reality of who they've been voting into office and what those folks have done to screw things up so badly. Then again, P.T. Barnum said it best when he said, "There's a sucker born every day."

Digital photography

My mom bought a new Panasonic Lumix digital camera, so she gave me her other one, a Fujifilm FinePix A205 digital camera. Now, this isn't loaded with lots of bells and whistles, but it's still a sight better than my old Vivitar 35 mm rangefinder, which I will still keep. It's nice to know that from now on, I don't need to worry about whether or not I have film in my camera or somewhere around the house if I want to take a picture. This camera has in it a 64MB memory card, allowing me to take at least 100 pictures and even shoot a little movie if I want to, then download it all to my computer via a USB port. This is so very cool and I am over the moon about having this little camera. I have a large learning curve on what all I can do with it and I am still learning the fine art of using it and taking different kinds of pictures (I'm debating whether to buy one of those "Dummies" books on digital photography, but they probably have more info than I really need and are probably not worth spending the money on anyway), but I have already messed with editing photographs on my computer that I have taken. I don't have anything fancy like Photoshop on my computer but it did come with something called PictureIt! Express, which is an photo editor that I guess came with Windows 98SE. I took two photographs that I took of my brother's cat that were too dark and managed to lighten them up using PictureIt and they look great. I've taken a couple of bad pictures of myself, but then, I never did photograph very well to begin with. So anyway, what I look forward to being able to do is to upload pictures to this blog and maybe something like Flickr or some other web site that allows you to store pictures on line. So from now on, when I travel, this little camera is coming with me. I'll just learn to do different things with it for now by trial and error and see what I come up with. Sure, this camera's obsolete compared to today's high tech models, but I still plan on having a lot of fun with it as I learn this new way of taking pictures!

AND IT GOES ON...AND ON...AND ON.....

Will this campaign season never end? The next primary isn't until April 22nd in Pennsylvania and the two Democrats continue to snipe at each other and try to tear one another down. If you ask me, this is very bad for the prospects for capturing the White House in November if the Democrats can't come together soon and form a united front against the Republicans, who are stumbling and wounded due to Dubya's bumbling and ineptitude. Already, Republican candidates are distancing themselves from him, and rightfully so. McCain may be a war hero, but he proposes to stay in Iraq for 100 years or more, and that's just a continuation of the Bush doctrine of Middle East domination and bowing to the will of Israel, who wanted this war and probably helped push the US into it in the first place. Anyway, so on this primary season goes and no real unity among Democrats is harming our chances for not only a larger Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress, but being able to capture the White House as well. God forbid that McCain wins in November - that would be disastrous. He's a loose cannon if ever there was one and not to be trusted. Oh, sure, he's been regarded as a maverick and a straight talker, but....I don't know, I just don't relish the idea of him being President for the next four years. I hate that he's been cozying up to the Religious Right, who he's always been critical of, just to win votes. He should stay critical of them and keep distancing himself from these crazy loons that seek to create nothing short of a Christian theocracy in this country. I know that they're in the distinct minority, but they're vocal, they're powerful and they're well heeled, as in, they've got bucks, and lots of them. Heck, I don't like this injection of religion into politics, period. It has no place in our government. I won't stand for being told what to think and what to believe and who to worship or what church to attend. And neither should anyone else have to do that, either, just to win public office. That candidates have to openly declare their Christian faith these days just to be elected is a bunch of bunk. OK, so I will step down off of my soapbox now and allow you all to have your say.

Race matters

At the end of the Civil War when the slaves were emancipated, well meaning whites formed Freedman's Aid Societies to assist newly freed slaves with assimilating into society by providing them with whatever they needed to ease the process. Frederick Douglass, himself once a slave, was opposed to these measures on the basis that he did not want the former slaves to continue a pattern of dependence. Rather, he felt that it would be better for these newly emancipated slaves to make their own way in the world and learn for themselves how to manage and to pull themselves up. However, the Freedman's Aid Societies persisted and eventually, blacks did make the transition into freedom, but they still faced a great deal of discrimination in so doing that persisted, and persists even to this day, although perhaps not as blatantly as occured back then. Supposedly, the Civil Rights movement of the late 1960's changed a lot of that and gave blacks a lot better opportunities than they had ever had before. But the stain of racism and slavery still persists, and sadly, it would seem that there are many who use this as a way to continue placing blame on what our ancestors before us did even though we ourselves are not guilty of the sins of our forefathers.

The most recent brou-ha-ha over racism arose recently when Barack Obama's former pastor spoke some rather nasty and negative words condemning America and what it has done to the black people, and this has caused quite a stir among commentators and editorial writers, not to mention the impact that it has had in the recent Presidential campaign. Obama gave a stirring and eloquent speech that gave address to the painful realities of racism in this country, and I was most impressed with his words, but allow me to add a few of my own thoughts to the whole matter before us. Perhaps Douglass was correct when he opposed Freedman's Aid Societies. In a way, I almost feel as if we've kept the black community dependent via welfare, food stamps, Section 8 and other social programs. This hasn't lifted anyone out of poverty - rather, it has kept people in a pattern of dependence instead of making it more possible for people to get up out of the projects and make an honest living. Oh, sure, racism still exists, and yes, there are people who will not hire a young black man out of some kind of misplaced fear, but blacks have got to stop viewing themselves as perpetual victims. That kind of negative thinking is only going to keep them down instead of lifting them up. Blacks are also partly responsible for their own problems, and no one is willing to admit this. Witness how they promote the "gangsta" culture by glorifying rap artists who spew misogynistic lyrics and wear "gangsta" clothing like droop pants (which came from the prison look because prisoners cannot wear belts to hold their pants up) and do-rags and are heavily tattooed and talk in "ghetto speak". Is anyone going to hire a young man who walks around looking and acting like that?

And why is it that they are so suspicious of education? Why is it that a young black boy with a book is frowned on, but acting and dressing like an urban thug is considered "cool"? Why is talking in normal, correct English labeled "acting white" while speaking some almost undecipherable "ghetto-speak" is OK? Racism cuts both ways. There is anti-white racism in the black culture, but why doesn't anybody see that or talk about it? And when they do, like Bill Cosby, they are frowned on and condemned for what they say? It makes no sense to me. I mean, I truly understand black anger, but no good ever came of staying and acting angry all the time. Sooner or later, you just have to get over it and move on. When you have religious leaders like Rev. Jeremiah Wright out there spewing such hate speech, well, it's no better than that being spewed by others who have an ax to grind against some culture or religion that they don't agree with. However, religious leaders carry the moral weight of this country because of how many people look up to them and hear them preach on Sunday mornings in churches and on Friday afternoons in mosques and on Sabbath in the Synagogues. Preachers have to be very careful what they say and choose their words with great care. Most of them do, but in this case, there is one who just happens to be associated with a very prominent political leader who has said some rather divisive and angry words that are now being associated with that political leader, even though the words have been roundly and soundly condemned by him.

In this campaign, I would just hope that people can move beyond the race and gender matters that threaten to destroy the Democratic Party and put the White House further out of reach in November. Sure, Hillary is a woman and Obama is a black man, but more important than that, they are two Democrats running for President who just happen to be a woman and a black man, but their blood runs red the same as you and I. They are people first, then Democrats second, and third, a woman and a black man. If people could view it this way, maybe all of the spew and brou-ha-ha would cease and desist and this campaign could move forward with some hope that the Democrats will stop trying to tear each other to pieces and instead come together to find common ground to heal this country that has been so badly wounded and abused by a criminal administration for the past 7½ years. It's time to end all the negative campaigning, end all the finger pointing, accusations of wrongdoing and other manifestations of a campaign and move forward with a sense of hope that we can turn this sinking ship around and make it once again the beacon of hope to the world that it always has been.

I just want a decent pair of athletic shoes!

I've been working out with a trainer now for the past year and a half. I've gotten into really good shape and I feel better and stronger than I have in a very long time. I've lost weight and kept it off and that's also a very good side benefit of working out. Motivation to eat better is also something good that has come out of the whole experience. The problem? The shoe you see above, a K-Swiss classic tennis shoe, is what I wear for workouts, because it has a flat enough sole to have a 1½" lift fitted on to it. I'm told now that I really need to be wearing a good pair of training shoes that will offer better stability for the tendency of my feet to supinate (roll outward) and will do a better job of cushioning as well to protect my bad knee. The problem here is that most training shoes are not outfitted for having a lift put on them. I've been spending days on line searching for a shoe that might work, but to no avail. Having one short leg is frustrating enough without having to worry about shoes, but when I have to go and look for something to wear, I have to inspect every single shoe I am interested in buying to see if a lift could possibly be built on to it. It severely limits the selection of shoes available to me and it just makes me crazy whenever I consider trying to find shoes, and the worst are athletic shoes, because they're all so specialized now. They've got air, gel, foam and all kinds of stuff built into the soles to provide cushioning and stability, but none of them are able to have lifts built on to them. So I am left with having to choose shoes that are wholly inappropriate for what I want to do. Well, I just scheduled an appointment with an orthotist who I hope will be able to point me to some athletic shoes that can be outfitted with the size of lift I need, so we'll see what happens. The problem is that now I need a prescription for the lift, meaning I may have to schedule an appointment with my orthopaedic surgeon before then, and he's next to impossible to see on a next day basis. I don't know if he'll be able to just write a prescription for me sight unseen, but I'll ask. If I can't get it by the time I see the orthotist, maybe I'll see if he can do the measuring himself and then we'll go from there. After all, it was when I went to the orthotist in the first place that I found out how much of a discrepancy I did have, so maybe if I can't get a prescription, I can ask them to do the measuring themselves. We'll see.

SCRABBLE HELL

Lately, whenever I have dinner over at my mom's house, the after dinner activity is to play what usually ends up being a somewhat cutthroat game of Scrabble, played between my mom, my brother, his girlfriend and myself. Cynthia, the girlfriend, is probably the best and most savvy Scrabble player I've ever been matched against, and I am still learning the little techniques that will score me big points. Sometimes, I'm just screwed by the letters I end up getting and I really struggle to find a word that I can form on the board, but it always seems that the minute I have something really good, Cynthia's turn is up and she screws me over by using a vowel or a consonant that I was going to play to form a word. I've come up with some good words lately, though, in spite of it all: Quid, Viper, Rank, XRay, Zone, Doge, Chad, Lasso (formed by putting an "s" at the end of my brother's excellent word, "Burqa", allowing me to get the points for that word in addition to my own), just to name a few. We usually have the dictionary handy to look up words we want to be sure are legit and it's getting really comical now that our family is learning how to play against Cynthia and make really savvy moves. I haven't won a game yet, but I'm beginning to catch on to all those little strategies that Cynthia employs in order to rack up big points. Sometimes, it only takes a few letters to really drop a big points bomb, as I am finding out. I guess we all just need more practice, and goodness knows, we're sure getting enough of that lately! I'm really enjoying this nightly activity and finding that even a good vocabulary as mine is no match for when you just have a bad run of letter draws. Some nights, you just can't win. Some nights, you get a good run going and you're off and going with tons of points. It's all the luck of the draw that counts, and you can't control that, unfortunately. You just have to make do with what you've got and make the best word combinations with them. That's the trick of this game that I am slowly learning.

Happy (white) Easter!

So we didn't get a white Christmas, but by golly, we sure did get a white Easter. It snowed rather heavily overnight Friday night, and I awoke yesterday morning to a world covered in a fresh layer of snow, glistening white in the morning sun. We probably got about another 4 inches, but it is well in the process of melting, as the temperatures the past two days have been well above freezing and should remain that way for the week coming up. So by this time next week, it may (hopefully) look a bit more like spring, which arrived on Thursday with the Vernal Equinox. I never like these early Easters because it invariably means colder weather and my desire to dress up for church just disappears entirely. I just wore a sweatshirt, cotton pants and tennis shoes this morning, my usual weekend (and weekday) attire. I agreed to sing with the church choir today for both services, meaning I had to get up extra early to be at a rehearsal about an hour before first service. I hate having to get up early on weekends anyway, so it was extra hard this morning because I worked out with my trainer yesterday afternoon and then drove to Massillon to help a friend move, and unfortunately, found no one there when I arrived, so I left a note and turned around and came back home exhausted. So today I find myself very sleepy and achy and wanting to do nothing more than curl up on the sofa and sleep the day away, but we're having Easter dinner later on at my mom's, so I suppose I ought to stay awake for that!

The sermon at church this morning was really wonderful. So many of us Unitarian Universalists are healthy skeptics regarding Christianity, but I suspect that it's because that religion has been largely corrupted in recent years, particulary by the extreme right. They worship Jesus almost as a god himself instead of a wise teacher, which is more how I see him. I don't think that Jesus would have wanted people to worship him, even though he is often quoted, "I am the way, the light and the resurrection", or something like that. People take that stuff far too literally and don't seem to realize that a good deal of the Bible is probably written largely in allegorical language, because, after all, the four Gospels were written largely to sell early Christianity to different audiences, so they had to appeal to those cultures myths. They were also written for the audiences of the day, making whole sections of it irrelevant to our lives in the 21st century. Even as a child in Catholic school, I was a healthy skeptic who couldn't buy into the whole resurrection myth, which probably comes from the Roman Mithras legend, but you have to remember that the Roman Empire was still in existence at the time of the writing of the Bible.

Our minister's sermon this morning focused on getting past the literalist interpretation of the Bible and looking at things in a different light, that we can say "Jesus is Lord" and mean it in a different sense than what we hear other mainstream Christians say. What she means is that Jesus's message was of turning anger and violence into non-violence and peace, and thus, we can say "Jesus is Lord" and mean that he is our exemplar of living a life of dedication to peacemaking. And she also explained how we can view the Resurrection in the idea of life eternal, how spring and new life return every year, how death does not have the final word, that we live on forever in the hearts and minds of those who know and love us, and in the impact we make on the world while we live in it. We are also the product of all those who came before us, not only our blood relations, but those who lived before our time, like those who built our church with the wish that it should live on after their passing. We are the inheritors of their legacy, we carry on the work they left unfinished by their passing to carry it forward for another day. And so, death does not have the final word. There is always life eternal, and what we do with it and make of it matters. Thus, by this way of thinking, Jesus's resurrection makes sense. We don't have to take things literally and try to make sense of them. Goodness knows, I never bought into the whole saga, even as a child. It never occured to me that one could view things allegorically and find some sense in it all. Now as an adult, the Bible can be a far more approachable book than it ever was when I was young, thanks to a church that does not question my skepticism and encourages me to explore my own belief systems and how they fit into the larger picture. For that, I will always be grateful.

The New Deal, dismantled

I am a beneficiary of the New Deal, for which I will always be grateful. My father died when I was 4 in a car accident, leaving my mother widowed with three small girls, ages 5, 4 and 1, and a baby on the way, my brother. Daddy's Social Security and VA survivor's benefits allowed my family to live in dignity without a breadwinner and a single parent as head of household. We grew up in a very small, story and a half Cape Cod bungalow with four bedrooms and one and a half baths, my elder sister and I sharing what would probably have been the master bedroom upstairs. The houses in our neighborhood were built in the years immediately following WWII to house returning veterans and their young families in those early years of the Baby Boom, of which I am a product. They're nothing fancy, and as I understand it, the upstairs rooms were unfinished when they were built to allow the new owners to decide for themselves what to do with those rooms. Our house had been occupied by only one other family since its completion, and we made some necessary modifications to it in order to make it more to the needs of our young family. But for as small as it was, it was a great house to grow up in, even for its occasional lack of privacy. We also always had a lot of books in our home, as well as pets (usually a dog and two cats, but at one point, we had three goats, four flying squirrels, nearly 100 mice, the occasional rabbit, hamster or guinea pig, depending on how long they lived in addition to the cats and the dog, earning our house the nickname around the neighborhood of "the zoo"), plenty of music, either singing or instrument playing or the radio blaring either classical, folk or some form of popular music of the day and we never wanted for anything in the way of food or clothing. I think we could have considered ourselves middle class, even though my mother did not work in our earliest childhood years so that she could be both full time mom and dad to us kids. This was thanks to being able to have Daddy's survivor pensions available to allow us to maintain a decent lifestyle in dignity instead of abject poverty.

What I do not understand is why my generation seems so hell bent on dismantling all of the social safety net programs that were put into place by our parents generation to make sure that we would have something to fall back on in case of tragedy, disaster or misfortune. Perhaps some of them see folks like me as moochers off of the government. Sure, Uncle Sam paid my entire way through college, via my father's VA and Social Security survivor pensions, and there are probably some who wonder why I didn't pay my own darn way through school like so many others have before or since. Well, the fact is that at the time, despite a college education being a relative bargain compared to nowadays, I still couldn't afford it on my own. My mother had four children to get through college - do you at all think that she could have afforded to pay all four of our ways through university? Not on your life, she couldn't. The fact that the government made an investment in us and allowed us to complete our college educations debt free meant that all four of us could become useful, taxpaying citizens who were not a burden on society. None of us have outstanding college loans to pay off, either, like today's students will have for years and years to come, cutting into their abilities to earn a decent income if they can even find a good high paying job when they are done with school.

The fact is that the social safety net that the FDR administration put into place allowed a burgeoning middle class to emerge and become the most prosperous and well educated generation ever to come out of the 20th century, and in turn, gave birth to us Baby Boomers, who enjoyed prosperity and comfort that was the direct result of the sacrifices that our parents made in WWII and our grandparents made during the Depression. So what has possessed our generation to trample on those social safety nets and want them torn down and destroyed? Why the meanness of spirit toward those less fortunate than ourselves? Why deny them the same benefits that we enjoyed growing up, the knowledge that come what may, something would be there to catch us should we fall? Is it the misperception of welfare abuse and what some people regarded as "welfare queens" living high off the hog, driving Cadillacs and owning state of the art home entertainment systems, all the while doing nothing to earn those things working for a paycheck? Maybe this is what led to what I perceive as a bunch of "angry white men" who took over Congress in 1994, utterly determined to begin the complete dismantling of Roosevelt's social safety net programs. They seem to have largely succeeded, perhaps, except for Social Security, which they tried to privatize after the Bush victory in 2004. People were at least smart enough to recognize a scam when they saw it, and it went nowhere. But Hurricane Katrina once and for all blew the lid off of this administration and revealed it for what it is: incompetent, uncaring and negligent.

A new New Deal to save the ravaged Gulf Coast and put people back to work again rebuilding that part of the country is just what is needed right now. A new New Deal to rebuild our country's crumbling infrastructure would also be a great way to spur the economy back to solvency is also something that the next administration ought to look into doing. Sending us all checks for a few hundred dollars and urging us to go to the mall and spend it is the wrong answer to jump start our sagging economy. There need to be more long range answers to our fiscal woes than to tell people to go to the mall and buy more junk they don't need. Many of us are going to use our tax rebate to pay off bills, not buy junk. That's my plan for my little windfall. I have medical bills left over from last year that need to be paid down, and now, so that's where my money's going. And I'm sure that I am not alone, either, in wanting to use the money for just that. So don't look for any big bump in the economy this year from our little tax windfall. Put people to work, don't just give them a few hundred token bucks and tell them to go shopping with it. Utter stupidity, but then again, what do you expect from such an incompetent, uncaring and dumb bunch of idiots who run the country right now?

It's still the economy, folks!

The almighty dollar is sinking like the Titanic. Oil is at record prices. Groceries are costing us through the roof. Medical costs are rising far too fast. College tuition is rising faster than the rate of inflation. See any patterns here? This is what happens when you elect Republicans. OK, not all Republicans, but people like Dubya and his NeoCon cronies. I read in the newspaper this morning that we're in an economic crisis second only to that of the Great Depression - oh, great, just what I want to hear as I approach the final five years of my career and head toward what was supposed to be retirement, but is looking more and more like leaving one job and going straight to another one. I can't even begin to express my outrage at the current administration and what deep damage they have done to this country's economy. It will take literally generations to repair the damage, and I am in the autumn years of my life heading toward what I had hoped would be the golden years of retirement and leisure but is looking more and more like spending the rest of my days working until I drop. I like to think that one of the current Presidential candidates will be able to repair some of the damage should they be elected, but I can see that Bush & Co. will have left a legacy of severe damage to this country and to the world both morally and fiscally. People are genuinely angry at paying higher prices for basic commodities, for health care, for gas and for everything else, but they keep going to the polls and voting against their own economic self interest, and it boggles me that they do this over and over again. Two of the best books I have read on this topic are Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and Joe Bageant's "Deer Hunting with Jesus : Dispatches from America's Class War". If you haven't read either of these books, I highly recommend them as a way to understand the "red state" mentality. Remember, it's still the economy. I will refrain from calling you "stupid", because I don't like calling anybody names. It serves no purpose but to continue to inflame more anger, and heaven knows, we've sure had enough of that these past 7½ years.

The switch

For a very long time now, I have been meaning to make the switch to compact fluorescent lightbulbs in my apartment, so I began this process yesterday, when my last incandescent bulb burned out in the lamp on the table next to the sofa when I first got up yesterday morning. I had a 75 watt CFL (compact fluorescent lightbulb) that I was given at an environmental table at the Kent Heritage Festival last year, and it being the only bulb left in the house, I installed it in my lamp. However, it failed to be bright enough to read by, but I figured it'd suffice until I could get to a store to buy a brighter one, so after work yesterday, I went to the store and bought two packages of 100 watt CFL's that only use 26 watts of energy, thereby saving on greenhouse gas emissions from the production of electricity. These bulbs last for literally years, meaning I won't have to buy lightbulbs again for a very, very long time, so there will be further energy savings there as well. We've completely switched to using CFL's at church, so I figured that there was no time like the present to start the switchover at home. When each incandescent bulb burns out, it will be replaced by a CFL until every light has one. I turn on lights very seldom in some rooms, so it may be quite a while before the complete switchover is made, but at least I have made a start, trying my best to do my part to curb global warming. My car, a 2007 Hyundai Accent hatchback, is also an ultra-low emissions vehicle and has a "superior green rating" from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, so I'm trying to gradually be more environmentally sensitive to what I do each day. This switch to just one CFL will save 450 pounds of emissions of greenhouse gases, and if each home in America switched just one CFL, the savings would be enough to light 3 million homes for one year and would prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of 800,000 cars! Just think of what we could do if we all made the switchover. Sure, they're a little more expensive and they can be tough to dispose of because of mercury contained in them, but Wal-Mart surprised the heck out of me yesterday by telling me that when my bulbs do burn out, to return the bulbs to them and they will recycle them properly. OK, so Wal-Mart is the store we all love to hate, but maybe they do some things right. In this case, by properly recycling CFL's, they're doing their part for the environment, so thank you, Wal-Mart. Let's hope you're true to your word.

OHIO LIBRARY COUNCIL NE CHAPTER CONFERENCE

Yesterday, I went to the Ohio Library Council's annual Northeast Chapter Conference at Kent State University. I always enjoy going to this event because the KSU Student Center is within walking distance to my house or a very short little hop of a drive, a few short minutes, from my house, meaning I have more time in the morning to read the newspapers and enjoy my breakfast. It's also fun to meet other folks who work in libraries and to learn new things that I may or may not be able to apply to my job. Yesterday, I went to sessions on genres of Christian fiction, a growing area of demand among our patrons and an area with which I am not at all familiar, a session on books that should have made the bestseller list and were, as a result, sort of "under the radar", a session on surviving customer service, an increasingly necessary skill to have as people grow increasingly more rude and demanding of people who work in service professions, and finally, a session on TV series on DVD, something I am noticing more and more people wanting to check out. People spend whole weekends holed up on their sofas vegging out on old TV series on DVD and doing nothing else but that. Is it any wonder that America suffers from burgeoning rates of obesity and higher health care costs? These TV series on DVD are encouraging more and more people to become full time couch potatoes, as people are very passionate about their favorite TV shows and want to see the whole series start to finish, and heaven help you if one season's worth of a TV show is either checked out or missing. They want it NOW! And won't be happy until you produce it NOW! How many times have I wanted to bellow, "Well, if you want it that bad, go to Blockbuster! What do you think we are, a video store that guarantees that your movie will be in?" Or, "Hey, just spend the money and join Netflix!" Honestly, it makes it so much more stressful now that so much more is expected of us in libraries. I'm almost looking forward to my retirement in 5 years, trust me. Still, it is fun when you find a die-hard reader willing to take the plunge into a book that you recommend and they come back to you and tell you how wonderful it was. That's enough to make my day and make this profession rewarding for me. I am tired, though, after 25 years in the library, and look forward to finally having time to read all those books I've promised myself I'd get to when I retire!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

To all of you 40 million plus souls in this country who can claim Irish ancestry, and to all of you who wish you were Irish for just one day, Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all! It's the one day out of the year when being Irish is considered cool, where the wearing of the green is a tradition and where drinking green beer and singing bad Irish-American songs is a foregone conclusion. Bars will be hopping tonight, but for the fact that it's spring break at the local universities. I usually awake to the sounds of people partying on their front porches in my neighborhood, but they've all gone home for break, so this morning was unusually quiet. Just as well. I weary of the beer bottles and cans littering front yards after every weekend revel, and I would imagine that all those who have gone south to Florida and other parts where there are warm beaches to be had are reveling today in the all day drinking that typically characterizes St. Paddy's. Fine, as long as they're not doing it in my backyard, that's OK by me. I can live with a quiet evening tonight on my street and no litter to deal with tomorrow. Let them trash the Florida beaches and the hotels they are doubtless filling up all along the coasts of warm places. They can sleep off their hangovers tomorrow morning in their hotel rooms and then hit the beaches in the afternoons when they've sufficiently recovered.

What I find so odd at times about St. Patrick's Day is the fact that when the Irish came to these shores in the 19th century, they were greeted with signs announcing No Irish Need Apply and they were treated as the lowest of the low. They were largely Catholic and people were suspicious of their papist loyalties. Some spoke Gaelic, so they also spoke a funny language. In fact, it wasn't until recently that I found out that by saying that someone was speaking with an "Irish brogue", that it was in essence an insulting term. You see, the word "brogue" in Gaelic means "shoe", and the English said that it sounded as if the Irish were speaking with a shoe in their mouths owing to their sometimes thick accents, thus, a "brogue". I'm glad I found this out now, but I suspect that I've told more than one person that I liked hearing their "Irish brogue" without knowing what it meant. So now I know, and I won't use that term again! But people still use it not knowing what it means, and I don't know if it is still met with the same derision as I am sure it once was. But still, I shall refrain from using it nonetheless, out of respect for the meaning of the word. Being of Irish ancestry myself (on our mother's side), I try to imagine how hard it was for my forebears to come to these shores and be met with a less than warm welcome. The Irish were badly mistreated, put down, often poor, crammed into teeming urban slums, thought to be dirty and less than industrious because of their reputation to drink and more. Now, everyone wants to be Irish for at least one day a year, and Irish music, language, dance and song are going strong in this country, so the irony of St. Patrick's Day is never lost on me. In the space of a few generations, the whole world loves the Irish and wants to wear green for a day and utter inane phrases like "Faith and Begorrah!" (the more proper exclamation being, "Jaysus, Mary and Joseph!", but you probably wouldn't want to say that within earshot of a fundamentalist!).

So to one and all, a Happy St. Patrick's Day! May you all be Irish for one day and be blessed by good luck the whole year through!

The battle against rosacea

You can't really tell by this picture, but my rosacea, which I had managed to successfully keep in check for so long, has returned with a vengeance on the left side of my face. I'm doing everything that the doctor tells me to do - wash my face using mild cleanser, use the prescription face medication (MetroGel 1%) twice a day and faithfully moisturize against the dry, cold winter air, but it's come back anyway. I'm extremely disappointed and frustrated and I don't know what's causing this most recent flare-up. I don't know if it's diet or the rigorous exercise I do or my hormones or what, but it does seem to be at its worst during certain times of the month, indicating to me that it's purely a hormonal thing, and that seems to be something that nothing much can be done about. I've been exercising for over a year now with no adverse affects to my rosacea. Sure, I've kind of kicked it up a notch and gone to work out a bit more during these long cold winter months in an attempt to keep off the usual winter weight gain, and maybe that's a contributing factor, but I hate the idea of not exercising just to keep my face clearer. It just frustrates me to no end feeling like a teenager battling acne again at my age. I hate having the red blotchiness on my face when I have always felt like I'm not terribly attractive to begin with, and this just exacerbates the feeling. I do not want to take oral antibiotics for the rest of my life, and besides, my doctor dislikes the idea because it would put me at risk for an MRSA infection, the methicillin resistant staph that can eat flesh and cause other bodily damage. I don't care to take antibiotics a lot anyway because they tend to wreak havoc on my digestive system and I just don't want to go there. Overuse of antibiotics is the reason we have superbugs like MRSA and others. So I may either seek out alternative medicine to deal with this or consult a dermatologist and see what they may offer in the way of solutions. All I know is that I want the clear skin I had at one point last year, and I don't know if there's any way to test for possible irritants that are causing these flare-ups, but I want it gone and soon. I simply hate it and find it embarrassing.

KSU'S OFF TO THE BIG DANCE!

Kent State handily defeated the University of Akron in last night's MAC Championship basketball game, 74-55, earning them a spot in the coveted NCAA Tournament, known fondly as "The Big Dance". This year's team has four dominant players reminiscent of the 2002 championship team that went to the NCAA that featured Trevor Hufman, Demetric Shaw, Eric Thomas and Andrew Mitchell. The "Big Four" of this year's team are MAC Player of the Year Al Fisher, Chris Singletary, Mike Scott and Haminn Quaintance. It sure would be neat if this team could repeat the success of the 2002 team that went deep into the NCAA, all the way up to the Elite Eight, before being defeated by Indiana 81-69. It'd be even neater if this team managed to go even deeper than that and make KSU Basketball history. Of course, if that does happen, Coach Jim Christian will be courted by other colleges and universities with big fat offers of tons of dough, just like when Stan Heath took the team to the Elite Eight. He was courted by Arkansas and left to go there. Christian has already fielded some other team offers, but he's stayed loyal to KSU and turned them down. I just wonder how long that will last. Well, we'll know very shortly who KSU is playing in the first round of the NCAA's and I'm sure that everyone will be able to guess who's going to win that round. If KSU is pitted against some big time school, they're going to have to hustle to win or just hope that they don't go down in flames and give it a good shot. Well, as I write this, the selection show begins very shortly, so we'll know very soon who's playing whom in this crazy thing called "March Madness". I am sure that there is, as usual, a "Selection Sunday" party someplace in town where the faithful have gathered to find out the brackets and how KSU is "seeded" in the tournament. So stay tuned - it should be an exciting and nerve wracking week for the basketball faithful!

ADDENDUM: Kent State University drew 9th seed in the Midwest division of the NCAA tournament, one seed higher than the legendary 2002 team that went deep into the tournament to the Elite Eight. They drew the UNLV (University of Nevada-Las Vegas) Rebels as their first opponent in the tournament, and if by some miracle they defeat them, they will face the victor of the Kansas-Portland State contest. The Kansas Jayhawks are the #1 seed in the Midwest division, so if Kent and Kansas do end up somehow facing off, it's going to be a tough go for the Flashes. Stay tuned....March Madness continues!

Sometimes I wish I had HBO.....

Starting this Sunday on HBO, a mini series called "John Adams" begins airing. It's based on the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the same name by David McCullough, and it stars Paul Giamatti as John Adams, Laura Linney as Abigail Adams, Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin and David Morse as George Washington, among its huge cast. Having watched the trailer and a short featurette on the making of this movie, I wish like mad I had HBO so I could see it. I have to admit to knowing next to nothing about the Revolutionary period of our country's history but I still find it intriguing nonetheless. Oh, I suppose this series will eventually find its way to DVD, at which time I can finally see it, but that may take a while yet. I love any kind of historical saga and this one looks particularly good. It's amazing how they were able to do so much CGI work but I would imagine that it'd be difficult for an actor to work up against a "green screen" over which an image will eventually be projected later on in the film editing process. These kinds of movies are very expensive to make, so they have to resort to a lot of special effects to make up for not having huge buildings, towns and interiors to build, and large "cast of thousands" scenes where tons of extras need to be paid. So they do all these computer generated effects instead, thus saving the cost of being able to film these historical epics in the first place. I don't know how they did it in the days of Cecil B. DeMille, when they truly did have casts of thousands, like in the movie "The Ten Commandments", which will probably be aired sometime this week, it being "Holy Week" which leads up to Easter. (This movie, by the way, is one of my favorite "so bad it's good" movies that I see each and every year during this season.....who can forget Anne Baxter as Nefretiti and her melodramatic pleas of "Oh, Moses, Moses!" every time she's in his arms. And Yul Brynner constantly uttering his staccato, "So let it be written! So let it be done!" There are some wonderful parodies of this movie available on YouTube, my favorite of which is called "Ten Things I Hate About Commandments". I laugh out loud every time I see this!) So anyway, I guess I am just going to have to wait until this series on John Adams comes out on DVD and hope that there isn't a long waiting list of people dying to see it. I can always look for it at my local video store, probably sometime in the summer, at the earliest.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

KSU Flashes go to MAC Championship Tourney!

Tonight, the KSU Flashes men's basketball team will play for the Mid-American Conference championship against the University of Akron Zips at Quicken Loans Arena ("The Q" for short) in downtown Cleveland. It should be a good game and although I will not be there, I will doubtless read about it online or in tomorrow morning's newspapers. This team has all the look of the team that a few years ago went deep into the NCAA tournament, all the way to the Elite Eight, before being defeated. For one brief week until they were defeated by Buffalo, the KSU team was nationally ranked at #23. They lost that ranking upon their defeat by a lesser team, but I think that people will take them seriously for an NCAA bid if they win tonight. It's been a few years since the team was chosen for the NCAA's and they've had to settle for the National Invitational Tournament instead for post-season play, and they've never gone past the first round of that, as it is. The NIT is a second banana to the NCAA "March Madness" tourneys, but I am sure that it's every bit as exciting for those who are playing in the brackets. Still, the media pays more attention to the NCAA's than the NIT, so it ends up flying very much under the radar as a result. Smaller leagues from lesser schools typically play in the NIT, and it's a shame that not more attention is paid to the mid-majors like the MAC. Maybe KSU will make them sit up and take notice this year that mid-majors deserve as much to be considered for the NCAA as the big leagues are.

MORE WORKOUT NOTES

I've been battling such insecurity about the whole working out thing, but I am finding that when I go to the Women's Fitness class at Breakaway, I feel better about what I am doing as opposed to working out with Joe's Speed and Agility class, which is mostly kids. So far, the women's class has consisted of myself and Alexa Bush, a middle aged mother of several children who is closer to my own age. She's probably in better shape than me from playing tennis as long as she has, but at least I don't feel so aware of my age and my short leg when I am working out with someone who is closer to my age and a woman as opposed to a bunch of middle school aged boys who are younger, tougher and stronger than me. Having just two of us also means getting a lot more individual attention from Jason, something I need a lot more of to feel like I am getting somewhere with all of this. When we were finishing up with some abs exercises today on large green balance balls, he helped me to get the right form and placement on the ball to maximize what I was trying to do. Alexa relentlessly pushed me, too, wanting more reps of each exercise and wanting to do different things on it as well to get the most out of working the core to get it fit, something most of us women really need to do. Sure, I kept thinking, geez, the woman's a glutton for punishment, but I need to be pushed beyond my comfort zone and do the really tough stuff. I'm stronger now than I have been for a good long while now, and I can only hope to continue strengthening, firming, toning and keeping my weight at a reasonable level. The main thing I have to work on now is getting over my complex about my short leg and the lift on my shoe. I have to remind myself that it's not as much of a big deal as I make it out to be in my mind. After all, most of this is a mind over body thing. And I need to remind myself of what progress I have made since I began working out in the first place. I've come a long way. And all I can do now is to continue to improve, stay strong, stay fit and stay healthy.

Patience! I'm still learning!

Just an addendum to the post below on changes to the blog settings here: Owing to the prompting of the same poster who encouraged me to change my comment settings, you can now view my e-mail address on my profile and send comments there if you are too shy to post them here publicly. And never fear, I am one of those people who regularly checks her e-mail. I get annoyed with folks who tell me, "Oh, don't bother, I never read my e-mail anyway!" Well, that's not me. I do read and respond to my e-mail on a regular basis. Thanks again go to those who are teaching me how better to blog here. I'm still on a bit of a learning curve, so I beg your indulgence and your patience as I learn how all the features here work. Thanks again for visiting, and enjoy these daily rants, thoughts and meanderings through the daily maze of life, the universe and everything else out there. I'm impressed at what an international crowd seems to have dropped by so far - folks from 38 countries around the world have stopped by here at least once, some times more. Nice to know that I have something worthwhile enough to say that so many have come by and visited, and thank you!

What was he thinking?

You've got to wonder what motivates some of these powerful politicians who get caught with their pants down being unfaithful to their wives. The latest case of this is, of course, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who had a promising political career ahead of him but instead decided to squander it on a liaison with a high priced call girl. It boggles the mind. What are these guys thinking? Why do they do this? Is it for the thrills of doing something forbidden and dangerous? Is it some kind of power thing? And why is it that, when they they're caught and have to step forward and make their public apologies, that their wives stand stoically next to them looking for all the world as if they still support their wayward husbands? If that were me, I think that I would be as mad as a wet hen and that I would refuse to stand there looking stoically at my husband as he admitted to infidelity for all the world to hear. I know that somehow, this is expected, that the wife is supposed to look as if she still stands by her man, but honestly, what woman would do that if her husband had an illicit affair, especially with a call girl, to boot! And the day before Valentine's Day on top of that! I mean, if that doesn't add insult to injury, I don't know what would! Why can't these guys just keep their pants zipped and their sexual appetites in check? Is it that their wives have gone cold and don't want sex anymore, or have their sexual lives gotten unbelieveably boring and they want something more exciting than their spouses can offer them? Is it the midlife crisis that hits so many men and makes them act like risk addicted adolescents again? I don't know, I just don't pretend to understand what drives some men do to this sort of thing. All I know is that everyone involved in this sad saga had better be sure to be tested for HIV/AIDS and deeply examine their personal lives to figure out what made them act so irrationally. I just don't know if I would ever trust my husband again if I were one of these poor wives whose husbands were caught with their pants down making it with a much younger woman. I think that my inclination would be to request a quick divorce and get it overwith so that I could just get on with my life and find someone a bit more risk averse to spend the rest of my life with.

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES!

By request of one of the comments made on my previous post, I have changed my setting to allow anyone to comment, regardless of whether you have a Google account or not. So if you have something to say or to add to what I have already ranted on about, feel free to speak your piece. I always enjoy hearing what other folk have to say about either the "topic du jour" or whatever it is I am commenting on. You may even comment anonymously if you don't feel like leaving your identity here, which I completely appreciate and understand the desire to do. And if you have a blog of your own you'd like me to read, let me know. I'm always interested in seeing what others have to say on any variety of topics. For those of you who are regular readers, thanks for coming to my blog on a regular basis and reading it. I wasn't sure whether anyone would be interested in what I have to say when I started this thing. It was mainly just a way to vent or speak up on something of interest or just speak my mind on whatever it is I am thinking about at the moment. So thanks for reading on this far and feel free to leave a comment or two from time to time.

Gas pump sticker shock

The price of a gallon of gas went up today to $3.45 a gallon, up from $3.19 yesterday. I can't say that I really understand why these sudden price jumps occur, and what I hear from the media is everything from the instability of the Middle East to the falling dollar against international currencies. Apparently, the Saudis trade oil in American dollars, and when our currency weakens, the price of a gallon of oil goes up. I don't know what would happen if they traded oil in stronger currencies like the Euro - after all, I'm no economist, but nothing makes any sense to me anymore. The stock market keeps losing value (although the Dow-Jones Industrial average went up over 416 points today - coincidence?), the dollar keeps weakening, oil prices are skyrocketing, causing the prices of everything else to go up, and yet we're told time and again that the economy is in great shape and that we're in no recession. Well, people are hard pressed to believe that stuff anymore. They are seeing how far their earning power has fallen, how hard they're struggling just to keep up and how high gas keeps going, and going, and going, with apparently no end in sight. What does not help is that before the invasion of Iraq, oil was trading at $25 a barrel, now it's well over $100 a barrel. There must be some correlation here; in fact, I know there is. This is a war, after all, that costs us billions - yes, that's billions with a "B" - per day, and will end up costing several trillion until our country gets it through their thick skulls that this war is slowly bankrupting us. We're playing right into Osama bin Laden's hands. This is how he brought down the Soviet Union, by bankrupting them via a long war in Afghanistan that finally ended up such a drain on their economy and resources that the whole Soviet Empire became an untenable situation, and thus, it fell. Well, since the Current Occupant and his sycophantic supporters were so gung-ho for this war and bent on Empire building they are slowly driving us into the same fate as the Soviet Union. Fortunately, it reassures me to think that history will not treat this administration kindly. These rising gas prices are bound to cause such an uproar that something will need to be done, quickly, before people just won't take it anymore.

The whole upside to this thing is that maybe it will at last force home the whole issue of the extreme need for conservation. People still run out and buy oversize pickups and SUV gas hogs and insist on owing the road with them. Americans have a long standing love affair with their cars, but you can still have fun and drive a smaller vehicle. My 2007 Hyundai Accent hatchback (pictured here) is one such example. It's sporty, it's pretty, it's fun to drive, it has Euro styling, it's fuel efficient and it's surprisingly roomy for such a little car. I notice heads turning when I drive it down the road. The bright green color is a real eye catcher. It also has the added advantage of a Superior Green Rating from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy! That's because it comes equipped with an ultra-low emissions engine. This car has turned out to be a smart investment, if you want my opinion. I expect to be driving it well past its 100,000 powertrain warranty. I still don't see a lot of smaller cars on the road, and the ones I do see the most frequently are the supposed "American" vehicles, the Ford Focus and the Chevrolet Aveo. Well, have news for you - there is practically no such thing anymore as a purely American car. So many of them have enough foreign made parts to make them practically a foreign car. In fact, in one amusing story, there has been some ongoing "discussion" in our funny little "Sound Off" column in our local paper that stems from someone complaining about someone flying an American flag with a foreign made car in the driveway, and there are have been many follow up opinions rendered on this situation since, many of which are either annoying are at the very least amusing to read.

Well, I guess we'll see how bad gas gets in the coming days and weeks. It's going to put the big kibosh on a lot of folks vacations this summer, perhaps even mine included. I'm debating whether or not I will be able to afford any travel this year as gas prices continue their uncontrolled skyrocketing. So much for an economic stimulus! The government is supposed to send us tax refund checks soon as a way to spur us all to do some spending, but I suspect that most of us will either use it to pay off long standing medical debt (since our health care system is also irretrievably broken) or other bills, or will stuff it away in savings and not spend a dime of it. The best way to jump start the economy would be to drop the price of gas $2 a gallon back to its pre-Iraqi invasion prices. Everything would benefit by just such a stimulus. Everything we buy depends on the price of oil. Everything. If gas continues going up uncontrollably, it will send the economy into such a tailspin that we could well go into another Depression like we haven't seen in over 70 years. Bush could well exit his presidency with the label of another Herbert Hoover. So many similarities to what happened then, especially the credit crunch brought about by the subprime mortgage crisis that has spiraled into other sectors of the economy. All I can say is that it's going to be a rough ride, and who knows how long it will last. Bush and friends are probably laughing all the way to the bank - after all, they are oil men. I hope that this administration has taught people the importance about being careful and judicious about who you choose to run the country. Just because someone seems like a great guy to have a beer and a backyard barbecue with does not necessarily mean that they have the skills to run a country. This past eight years serves as the best argument for the restoration of the teaching of history in elementary and secondary schools and at colleges and universities. May we never repeat this same mistake that we've made these past 7 years trusting our country to a bunch of liars, thieves and scoundrels.

Calm after the storm

The big snow is over at last. We probably got close to two feet of snow during the entire thing. I've been snowed in for several days now and it looks like today, I'll finally get dug out. I've been having a bad case of cabin fever for the past few days as I've been cooped up too long in this tiny apartment with dwindling provisions. It's taken the city quite a while to getting around to plowing this street because of how many cars have been parked along it throughout the storm, despite the fact that the city is supposed to enforce a parking ban whenever snow exceeds two inches of depth, but I often feel as if our street is ignored by city services because of its heavy student residency. We don't get leaf pick up in the fall and we're often one of the last streets cleared after a snowstorm, and only because I complain about it. It gets wearisome feeling as if our street is skipped when it comes to vital city services, probably because of a perception of students not paying city taxes or something. Well, I have news for them - many of them work at jobs in and around the city and do contribute their fair share of taxes, so we ought to receive the same services as the rest of the city! But it's going to take some work on various people's parts to bridge the town-gown gap that has existed for so long now, but that's an issue for another blog.

GET OUT YOUR RAY-BANS!

The sun is out today with a mixture of clouds, and with all that newfallen snow, it's awfully bright out there today. I remember last year when we had a big snowstorm on Valentine's Day, the sky was crystal clear when it all passed, so I wonder if all that weather clears the atmosphere and gives us crystalline skies the next day. It always seems that way after any bad storm passes, whether a winter storm or a spring or summer storm. The next day is always beautiful. If anything, I notice that the bright sun has already begun to melt some of the snow, making removal a lot faster and easier. By week's end, the temperatures are supposed to soar into the 50's, meaning that all this melting snow could cause some serious flooding. At least all the recent precipitation we've gotten lately has brought the declining levels of the Great Lakes up again, which is always a good thing. I hope that this is the last big snow we have for the season, but that would be a fool's optimism, to say the least. I'm sure we'll get at least one more good whallop before season's end, but maybe we'll get lucky and this will be the one big storm of the season. At any rate, I've had about enough of snow for the season. I'm more than ready for spring, warm weather, and end to coats, boots, hats and mittens. We already had one good teaser day not long ago where temperatures climbed into the 60's, but they rapidly fell back into more seasonable temperatures a day or two later. That was just enough to make me long even more for spring and long warm days. Soon. Very soon.

Thunder snow?

I awoke early this morning to find out whether or not I would have to report to work. If so, I was going to call in sick, not that I am feeling all that bad anymore, but I have been feeling achy despite the fever being gone. So about the time the alarm went off, I heard what I thought was thunder, only it was snowing pretty heavily. So I then thought, well, maybe it's a snowplow at one of the nearby fast food joints digging them out, but I know the sound of plowing and this definitely did not resemble it. Shortly thereafter, still lying in bed wondering what to do, there was a bright flash of lightning and then more thunder amidst the heavy snowfall. I told myself, now I know I did not imagine or dream that, I am fully awake, so indeed, we did have "thunder snow" this morning, a rare meteorological phenomenon that, according to what I have read, occurs only in a handful of places in the world, and the Great Lakes region is among them. Usually when there is some bizarre or unusual weather occurance, the Record-Courier will consult Dr. Thomas Schmidlin of Kent State University who will doubtless explain to us in tomorrow morning's newspaper what happened and why. This area has a penchant for weird weather anyway, which makes it an interesting place to live, to say the least.

AL GORE, COMPROMISE CANDIDATE?

There is talk that if, by the Democratic convention in Denver this summer, the great divide between Hillary and Obama cannot be resolved, that a compromise candidate could ostensibly be chosen, and the talk is of having Al Gore be that candidate. Now, whether or not he'd consent to being the nominee after this bruising primary season is over is anybody's guess, but I suspect that even supporters of Hillary and Obama would happily vote for Gore if that were to become the case. Many of us feel that he deserves his rightful place in the White House after having the election of 2000 stolen from him by the Supreme Court. He would surely be able to restore moral leadership to the country and to the world and could also probably beat McCain rather handily in the November general election. I don't know what Hillary and Obama think about this kind of talk, after all the campaigning and fund raising they have done. They might reject a third candidate being proposed at the convention unless they can somehow come together across the great divide and stop trying to tear each other apart and work instead toward criticizing the Bush administration and its disastrous policies. I rather doubt that Hillary will sit for such a thing, frankly. There seems to be a mindset among the Clintonistas that they deserve a Restoration of sorts, a vindication from the bitter impeachment fight that raged when the Gingrich Congress took power. I know that there is no love lost between the Clintons and Gore. Imagine how angry Hillary would be if the convention decided to go with a "compromise candidate" and nominate Gore, contingent, of course, on his agreeing to be said nominee, which, from the sound of it, is dubious at best. Obama would probably take such a defeat gracefully and return to his work in the Senate, but as they say, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. So the race for the Democratic nomination goes on and on in the coming months until the eventual end of the primary season. Who knows what the eventual outcome will be, but I'd rather see the two contenders, Hillary and Obama, criticizing the failed policies of the Bush administration instead of trying to tear each other down in a bid to win the nomination. It could well end up that a "compromise candidate" will become a necessity in order to unite the Democratic Party once and for all, but I really hope that it doesn't come to having to resort to that in the end. I just don't want to see a repeat of the contentious 1968 election, where back biting, disagreements and disunity among Democrats basically handed the Presidency to Nixon. I don't exactly relish the thought of a President McCain, and I'm sure that I'm not alone in that thinking.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....

Today and tomorrow, we're supposed to get "the big one", the annual St. Patrick's Day blizzard (I know, St. Paddy's is still ten days away, but close enough, anyway!). The forecast says that we are supposed to get up to a foot of snow. I suppose that will make all the ski-bunnies in the area happy. Some people aren't daunted by weather and hit the slopes whenever they can during the season. Well, good on them, I say. Some folks just live for winter, and frankly, I find it the perfect time to go into hibernation mode. This weekend may be no exception. I am supposed to work tomorrow, Saturday, March 8, but I'll have to call the work weather line to see if we're even open at all. I half hope that we're not because frankly, I am in no mood to go out and do battle with the weather digging my car out and then having to fight bad roads to drive the 15 miles into work. I find that personally stressful and it never gets my day off to a particularly good start. The storm has already begun as it is snowing as I write this. Earlier this week we had an ice storm that left the trees glistening and ice covered, some of which got knocked down by the sheer weight of all the ice coating, but it's still really pretty to see when you're out driving. A lot of folks are still without power as I write this and the power companies are still out there trying to restore electricity to whole parts of the county that were heavily hit by the storm. And now we're due to get a foot of snow, further complicating matters. The salt trucks are busily out trying to clear the roads but it won't be until this thing passes sometime tomorrow before we will know the total storm accumulation.

HOME SICK AGAIN

I went to hear "The Boys of the Lough" last night at the Kent Stage and toward the end of the concert, I found myself not feeling particulary well. I chalked it up to being tired and a long day, but when I got home, I felt achy all over. Everything all the way down to my toes hurt, and that's unusual enough for me to be concerned, so I took my temperature, and sure enough, I was running a fever. So I dragged myself to bed with every bone in my body hurting and slept quite soundly, considering how crummy I felt. When I awoke this morning, my temperature was normal, but then, your body temperature drops when you sleep anyway, so when I began to move around and get breakfast on, I started feeling bad again. Taking my temperature, I found that it had gone back up to fever level, so I decided that the best thing for me to do was to take a sick day and stay home from work. Given the weather outlook, this probably wasn't such a bad idea. The fever, which spiked again this morning, seems to be gone, but I still ache like mad, my throat is scratchy and I'm coughing, so I'm obviously trying to come down with something. After I called off work, I went back to bed and slept until noon, unusual for me, but not when I am ill. I don't know about working this weekend, between not feeling well and the bad weather forecast. If we by some chance are still open tomorrow morning, I may just call in sick again if the weather looks bad. I'd rather nip in the bud whatever my body is trying to come down with than go back to work prematurely and be sick longer than I'd like to be. Rest is the best thing I can do for myself when I am feeling even the slightest bit under the weather. After all, I have more than ample sick time built up, I am retiring in 5 years, so I may as well begin the process of using it up before the end of my career.

The Democrats Dilemma

Should the Democrats nominate a white woman, and thus appear racist, or a black man, and thus appear misogynistic? Does a woman stand even a snowball's chance of breaking through the ultimate glass ceiling, or will men continue to run this country? Can a black man overcome centuries of racism to be elected to the highest office in the land? These are some of the dilemmas faced by the Democratic party as Obama and Hillary duke it out for enough delegates to be the party nominee for the Presidency. And frankly, as a woman, sure, I'd love to see a woman President at long last. The time is long overdue for this country to get over its paternalism about women in power, but it's also time for it to take a black candidate seriously that would send a message that our country is ready to enter the 21st century for real. So what's a good Democrat to do? It seems that if you are a woman, you are kind of expected to join the "sisterhood" and be a Hillary supporter, whether you are black, white or any other nationality. But some of us women find her grating and irritating, and maybe she has to be in order to run in what is basically a man's world. Maybe she has to kind of act the "bitch in the house" role to come across as tough enough to be President and Commander in Chief. But I can't say that I find it the least bit attractive. Maybe that's just me, but I am weary beyond belief of mudslinging and negative politics and fearmongering and all the other crap we've had to stomach these past 8 years. So it pretty much goes without saying who I am supporting during this primary campaign season. Still, my big fear is that the warfare between Hillary and Obama for the nomination, if it lasts all the way to the convention this summer in Denver, will tear apart party unity and will result in smoky back room decision making on the part of the superdelegates. No one wants it to come down to that, I am sure, but that is my fear. This election season is far too reminiscent of the one in 1968, when we were also mired in an unpopular war, and the party tore itself to pieces and allowed Nixon to win the election. I just hope that 40 years later, with two top drawer candidates running for the party nomination, that there can be some healing before the summer convention. Otherwise, it could get very ugly and basically hand this election to McCain, and no one wants to see that happen - well, at least not good Democrats, anyway!

Ohio primary day

Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic nomination isn't quite dead yet. Yesterday she scored three primary victories in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island (Obama did manage to score a victory in Vermont), which to me comes as a huge surprise. Unfortunately, it seems that she had to stoop to using fear tactics as a way to vanquish her foe in these elections by airing an ad featuring kids sleeping in bed and the red phone ringing in the White House at 3 a.m. signaling a national crisis and asking who you'd want to be answering that phone in just such an event, implying that only Hillary is equipped to do so and keep our nation safe from terrorists. It's the same old tactic used by the Bush administration for the past 7 years to keep us afraid and to keep the Republicans firmly in power, and anybody who does that is not worthy of my respect. This election should not be about fear or any other negative emotions, it should be about turning the page and restoring hope to our battered country that has had to deal with the sheer incompetence of the Bush administration for the past 8 years. And if Hillary insists on moving her campaign forward using national security as her trump card, then I can't say that I would ever change my mind about her as a candidate. It even more firmly cements my place in the Obama camp as one of his ardent supporters. I'm tired of fearmongering and being afraid and color coded alerts and all that crap. Yes, we should be afraid of terrorists, I don't dispute that, but we as a country are purely responsible for creating them. There was no al-Qaida in Iraq before the invasion. Now it's become one of their primary recruiting bases. The wave of anti-American sentiment around the world is even greater than it was before 9/11. So if anything, we've been responsible for making the world less safe than before. And if Hillary insists on stumping on national security instead of focusing on our pressing domestic needs here at home, then I'm sorry, I can't support her candidacy at the time being. We have too many things here at home that have suffered neglect under the Bush administration that have reached a crisis level and must be fixed now. So, it's on to this continued primary race and an ultimate winner, but I sure hope that Obama can score more knockout punches to Hillary and put her away once and for all. Either that, or they can run as candidate and running mate, and I'm sure that such a thing would more firmly cement the Democratic Party and build enough unity to win in November against McCain.

WOMEN'S FITNESS CLASS

Last night was our women's fitness class at Breakaway. Our normal trainer, Jason, was sick, down with the flu, so his brother Jon took over as our trainer last night. I really like him and wouldn't mind his being our trainer if Jason decided to stop teaching this class for some reason. He's really funny and a terrific trainer. He came up with some pretty tough things for us to do, working the total package - upper body, lower body and abs, which is what I need. My "core", that being my abs and back, are really weak and need to be strengthened. I'm also surprised at how weak my upper body is, given how much lifting I've been required to do on the job. But this is precisely the kind of workout that I really want, one that will work all areas of my body and will be a well balanced workout that focuses on where women need it the most. I really don't care about speed and agility, as I'm not an athlete bent on fast footwork and explosiveness. Oh, it's good for the cardio aspect of the workout, but mostly, I need to focus more on strength training as I enter my middle years and face the fight against osteoporosis when I begin the entry into menopause. Weight and strength training are your best weapon against that and I hope that we do a lot more of that in our women's class. It's also nice to be working out with people who are closer to my own age instead of working out with a bunch of little kids who make me feel like an old woman and reinforce how much I have lost with age in the way of speed and agility. I'm never going to be 20 again and I'm never going to have what I did at that age. For a 50 year old, I do pretty well, all things considered, but still, a class that focuses more on women's needs is a lot more my speed, and I am glad that Breakaway now offers that. It's exactly what I need at this stage of my life.

The old lady

In recent weeks, a new women's fitness class has been started where I work out at Breakaway Sports Training. I really like being back with Jason, my physical therapist. He used to teach a general fitness class on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings, but that's now become a Speed and Agility class taught by a young trainer named Joe, a high school senior and a certified personal trainer. While I like Joe, I prefer working with Jason because I have a long history with him as both PT patient and trainee and I feel more comfortable with someone I know like that. As it is, I've been wrestling with a lot of insecurity being in a class full of kids, so when the women's class began a few weeks back, it came as a major relief being able to train with people closer to my own age. Well, now I come to find out that I am the oldest participant in the whole Breakaway program. Oh. Great. Just the thing I need to find out to further increase my insecurity. I've been wrestling with this for a good long time now, and part of that insecurity also comes from my left leg being shorter than my right leg and the large lift I have to wear on my left shoe, and the fact that as a result, my left leg will always be weaker and will tire faster than my good leg. It limits what shoes I can wear and when I see what kind of tennis shoes everyone else is wearing, some of them especially made for the kind of fast footwork type of stuff we do, I feel even more frustrated by the fact that I can only wear maybe one or two styles of tennis shoes, and only ones with a totally flat sole that a lift can be built on to. I can't wear any kind of cross trainer shoe, nothing with gel or air or anything of the kind. I often feel like that heavy lift makes my leg slower as well as making it tire faster and that gets to me on occasion as well.

Lately, when we've been taking our water breaks, it takes me a bit longer than others to get to my water bottle and I often want to drink a large draught of water before going back to the exercise floor. Jason is always yelling at me to hurry up and get back over to start another exercise, and I always joke, "I'm coming, I'm coming, just be patient with the old lady, now!" I try to make light of it but that heavy lift on my left shoe and my often more tired left leg slow me down sometimes. I'm not as light on my feet as I was 20-25 years ago now. I do OK for someone my age and I'm proud of what good shape I'm in compared to so many other people I see out there, but I get sick of feeling like my left leg slows me down so badly. If it's not that, it's my right Achilles tendon, which has been paining me badly for some time now. Jason gave me some good stretches and exercises to do for it and I've really got to get around to trying them to see if they will relieve a lot of the pain I've had in that tendon lately. I wonder if I've got a touch of tendinitis there, given how tender it's been lately. It hurts just to touch it, and that concerns me. I'll try to remember to start doing the exercises Jason gave me and see if that works, and if not, I suppose I'll have to wear an ankle support when exercising from now on. Push comes to shove, if it doesn't improve, then I'll see my doctor about it and see what he says, but for now, I'm going to try a little PT on it and see how that does. So Breakaway's resident "old lady" will probably still be limping toward the water bottle for a while yet!

Change I can believe in

Universal health care. Schools that teach actual subjects instead of just teaching test taking. Investment in a trustworthy infrastructure. Green technology that will grow new jobs and bring about an end to dependence on foreign oil from hostile regimes. Affordable college tuition for all who want to go. A return to Constitutional law and the system of checks and balances written into our nation's founding documents. Greater availability of mass transit and pedestrian friendly cities. Less sprawl. Safe and adequate housing for all. These are just some of the changes that I believe in, and that I doubt will come about regardless of who wins the Presidency. Oh, some of them might, but not all of them. For instance, I sincerely doubt that we can ever have real single payer, not-for-profit health care without the involvement of Big Pharma and Big Insurance. Their lobbies are just too powerful and too monied to be completely overcome. And Big Oil will not go away that easily, either. Too much money there and too many hands in the cookie jar from members of our government who want to keep their hands there where they can collect their riches when they need campaign money to get re-elected. I can hope that some of these things will get accomplished in the next administration, but what people forget is that Presidential candidates may make a lot of fancy sounding promises of what they will do, but without the cooperation of Congress, they can't do much of anything themselves....well, not unless you're George W. Bush, that is, who seems to pretty much think that being President of the United States means getting to do any damn thing you please no matter whose toes you step on in the process. But that's not the way that the Presidency was originally meant to function, which is why we need a return to the rule of law and the balance of power between the three branches of government - executive, legislative and judicial. So we'll see who wins on Tuesday in Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island, and if a clear Democratic nominee arises from it all. And we'll see, if they do win November's general election and become President, what promises they will be able to keep, if any. I'm none too optimistic that much of anything will get done in a usually gridlocked Washington, even with a new administration, because the Democratic majorities in both the Senate and Congress are too slim to overcome the Republican minorities, so it will take a lot of reaching across the aisle and a willingness to do so in order for the current stalemate in Washington to be overcome. Stay tuned. It probably isn't going to happen anytime soon.

IT'S MARCH MADNESS TIME AGAIN!

This time of year inevitably means a lot of Irish music as St. Patrick's Day approaches. Last night I went to hear The Chieftains at the Palace Theatre in downtown Cleveland. Kevin Coneff and Paddy Moloney were the only two original members of the band in attendance, as the rest of the group were apparently "indisposed", but they brought with them some fabulously talented young Irish, Canadian and American musicians and dancers, some of whom I met at Irish Week at the Augusta Heritage Arts Center last summer, so the evening was not lacking for sparkle, excitement and positively grand music and dance. I almost began to wonder if, knowing that none of them are getting any younger, the original Chieftains are grooming their replacements as age takes its toll on them. Already, one of the original members of The Chieftains, harper Derek Bell, has passed away, leaving the other four original members of the group, that has been in existence for 46 years, to carry on.

Last night we saw, as I mentioned, some fabulous young talent in harper Triona Marshall, fiddle player and dancer extraordinaire Jon Pilatzke, dancer and singer Cara Butler, dancer Nathan Piltatzke and three other young musicians whose names I did not catch, a piano player, a guitarist and another female fiddler, as well as a young woman from Scotland whose name I do not remember who had a lovely and ethereal voice. I met Cara Butler and the Pilatzke brothers last summer down at Augusta and Jon Pilatzke, who I had a chance to chat with after the show, recognized me from last summer. I asked if he and his brother would be back this summer and he said as far as he knew, yes. He urged me to sign up for their dance class, since I mentioned that in the interim since last July, I'd been working out a lot and getting really strong. Well, I don't know if my knees are up to it, but maybe if I feel like it by then, I might just give it a go! Oh, and as for the picture, on the far left is harper Triona Marshall, next to her is dancer Nathan Pilatzke, sitting is a guitarist named Jef McLarnon, behind him is singer/dancer Cara Butler, then playing the fiddle at the end is Jon Pilatzke. The name of their band is "The Tread" and this is their album cover. I bought it last night and have yet to take a listen, but given the energy that I heard from several of these band members last night, it ought to be a rolicking good time!

Dydd Dewi Sant

And if you don't know what that means, it's Welsh for "Saint David's Day", which is today, March 1st, the Welsh national holiday. It's akin to the Irish St. Patrick's Day in Wales and it is tradition to wear a leek and to eat cock-a-leekie soup to commemorate this holiday. St. David is the patron saint of Wales and apparently lived around the 6th century and was a monk, abbot and bishop who spread Christianity among the pagan Celtic tribes through out Wales. I always celebrate this day by hanging my little Welsh flag in my living room window. I'd love to hang it outside, but my fear is that it'd get ripped off by roving college student drunks, especially because this is the weekend, the traditional party time for college kids on this street. I doubt that any of them would know what kind of flag this is or what country it's from, but it has a very cool red dragon on it and it would probably appeal to those folks who are into fantasy novels or who like to play Dungeons and Dragons, if anybody even does that anymore. So for the sake of safety, I hang it instead in my window for all the world to see, but I rather doubt that passers-by know why I do that or what country it's from. Still, as someone who can say that I am descended from Welsh ancestors on both sides of my family, this is the one day each year that I can proudly display that part of my heritage. Oh, sure, I always wear green on St. Patrick's Day and everyone wants to be Irish on each and every March 17th, but how many people can proudly claim Welsh blood and hang their red dragon flags like I do each March 1st? I can't say that I'll wear a leek today or eat cock-a-leekie soup (known as cawl in Welsh), but at least I have some way to display my pride in my ancestors who emigrated to these shores from Wales so long ago. As Saint David always told his followers, "Do the little things", which is now a common Welsh expression. So I am doing just that today in commemoration of this, the holiday that celebrates his memory.

"THE POETRY OF BARACK OBAMA"

The comic strip "Doonesbury" is having a lot of fun regarding the intense rivalry between Hillary and Obama and the language of their respective campaigns. This past week has been about a class offered (I suppose at Walden, the university usually featured in "Doonesbury" strips") in "The Poetry of Barack Obama", a class apparently very difficult to get into, and another class called "The Prose of Hillary Clinton" which, as you can see from today's strip, is a real snoozer. Naturally, one of Hillary's weapons that she's using against Obama is his soaring rhetoric vs. her practical experience. In one of her attack speeches against him, she said, “Now I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s just get everybody together. Let’s get unified. The sky will open. The lights will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.’ I think that she sees the writing on the wall, that she's not a terribly inspiring speaker, that she can be very polarizing and can sound downright strident on occasion, where Obama comes off as cool, collected, occasionally funny and inspiring. "Doonesbury" seems to be having a lot of fun with this "war of words" between the two rival Democratic candidates and I'm loving every minute of it. I can't tell exactly who Gary Trudeau seems to be leaning toward in the way of a candidate, but something tells me he's probably in admiration of Obama as well, given his portrayal of Hillary's speeches as dull as dishwater. So it boils down to this: practical experience vs. inspiring and fresh ideas. Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I think it's time for fresh ideas and a good dose of inspiration after these dark years of the Bush administration. Obama's always positive tone sure beats Hillary the attack dog. And I think that's kind of what "Doonesbury" is getting at here. There are other strips that are also having fun with the current political environment, but none quite like my favorite "Doonesbury".