Recipes for a winter's day

Lots of action at the Bird Park today. It's been snowing and the birds are hitting the feeders hard. Even the pigeons are mining the snow for bits of fallen sunflower seeds. I put peanuts out a while ago and a group of magpies instantly appeared and carried them off. There was a one I'd never seen before, a fellow who's left leg is a stump ending just where the foot would be. He's plump though and did alright at the suet cage. I've seen magpies raid other magpie stashes as soon as they fly off but, until this morning, never saw one come back and dig a peanut out of an old hiding place. That caused a stir. He got chased like Little Jack Horner with a plum on his nose. The sun is out now and everyone is gone for the moment. But they'll be back. Oh yes. They'll be back.

I buy suet for the birds and always feel bad about it. I'm vegetarian and hate supporting the meat industry, but it's hard entirely avoiding its byproducts. I've stopped using leather bags but I still wear leather shoes. And I buy dog and cat treats although I stick to the fish flavors. I eat fish myself so what can I say? But buying those little packages of slaughterhouse suet really bothers me; each one chuck full of murrrrrder. I wince whenever I plop one into the basket.

However, I just found a recipe for vegetarian suet credited to ornithologist John Terres. I read that birds love it and it's cheaper than commercial blocks. Wonderful. I'm always looking for ways to be cruelty free.

PLEASE NOTE: Birds have tiny, little throats and have been know to choke to death on peanut butter. While Marvel Meal is a safe recipe, especially designed for them, it's always a good idea when feeding it to make water available as well. ALSO NEVER GIVE BIRDS SALTED FOOD. IT'S VERY BAD FOR THEM.



Marvel Meal

Mix together:
1 cup peanut butter (crunchy or plain  but USE ONLY UNSALTED PEANUT BUTTER.)
1 cup vegetable shortening (cruelty free)
4 cups cornmeal (yellow is higher in vitamin A)
1 cup white flour
It makes a soft dough that you can put in a suet log or basket.
Store in the refrigerator or freezer.

~ by ornithologist John Terres

Marvel Meal has the full blessing of Louie, Guardian of the Bird Park.

Big names, bad poets

Billy Collins was US Poet Laureate from 2001–2003. He was replaced by Ted Kooser, a retired insurance executive. Both men are oozing academic credentials, adoring fans and accolades from all the right institutions. They are also bad poets. Their poems are safe like the dead organisms that inoculate and make people immune to the living ones. Naturally, its easy to take pot shots at famous people. It's a lazy man's sport, like fishing a stocked lake. And it's sad in a blowsy way to criticize the successful. After all, do they not set the bar? Have they not risen above us all precisely because they are more worthy? But the husk also floats to the surface and all too often famous poets poison the art. A few years ago Drunken Boat published a wonderful critique of Billy Collins. Paul Stephens wrote it. I just read it today; a forward from BeatBaby, aka Mr. Lee. I'm posting an excerpt from it here. Perhaps it will help to inspire some someone to risk entering the cold fire.

An Apology for Poetry, or, Why Bother With Billy Collins?

Billy Collins is to good poetry what Kenny G is to Charlie Parker; what sunset paintings at the mall are to Jackson Pollock; what Rod McKuen is to Walt Whitman; what Tori Spelling is to Lana Turner; what the burka is to lingerie; what the Backstreet Boys are to the Beatles; what George W. Bush is to the art of extemporaneous speech; what Osama bin Laden is to women’s liberation; what Dan Quayle is to spelling; Billy Collins is to poetry what the New Age/Mysticism section in the bookstore is to the Philosophy section, assuming that those two sections haven’t been conflated yet down at your local Barnes and Noble.

I could go on with list. But I don’t mean to suggest that Collins is kitsch, for though Collins may sometimes make gestures toward kitsch, he is very much working in a quasi-high culture mode, even if he occasionally tries to hide the fact. Many of his poems are supposedly witty responses to earlier famous poems (e.g. a poem titled "Dancing Towards Bethlehem").

Collins may not be a very learned poet, but he is not kitsch; Collins is much less interesting than kitsch–he is strictly banal, he wants us to know how uncomfortably banal poetry is, and he does a very good job of making us not want to read poetry any more. The banality of the title of his new Selected Poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, pretty much says it all. The problem is that with his newfound prestige Collins is no longer sailing by himself."

The New York Times recently published a review of Collins's latest book, 'The Trouble With Poetry'. Their articles get archived quickly so I'm including it here in its entirety. It's also worth a read.

Charming Billy
a review by DAVID ORR / published in the NYT January 8, 2006


I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you

is how the first poem begins
in the new book by Billy Collins
called "The Trouble with Poetry."

It is a typical Collins beginning -
a good-natured wave
across the echoing gulf that stretches

between writer and reader,
as if to suggest
the poem itself exists

in that uncertain, cloud-strewn gap,
and we, as readers,
are very nearly poets ourselves,

even if we are unlikely
to receive recognition as such
in the form of a generous grant

from the Guggenheim Foundation,
which is not to say
we would turn one down, mind you.

Anyway, it is a tribute
to the former Poet Laureate
that he is able to make us believe,

despite our anxious response to poetry,
that we are participating
in each Billy Collins poem,

and that the humorous touches -
like calling a book of poetry
"The Trouble With Poetry" -

are a kind of knowing salute,
one writer to another.
It is a technical achievement

all too easy to underestimate,
and it involves a special sensitivity
to the nature of reading, of hearing,

which is perhaps the reason
so many Billy Collins poems
are about the process of poetry,

as when, in his poem "Workshop,"
he makes the poem itself
a history of its own unfolding,

a strategy that appears again here
in slightly altered form
as the opening to "The Introduction":

I don't think this next poem
needs any introduction -
it's best to let the work speak for itself,

a suave parody
of the nervous preambles
one hears at so many poetry readings,

and exactly the kind of beginning
that allows us to chuckle gently
as a convention is tweaked,

almost as we chuckle gently
in anticipation when we realize
that the book review we've been reading

is about to turn the corner,
and begin placing a writer's shortcomings
alongside his virtues,

by observing, for instance,
that Billy Collins too often relies
on the same blandly ironic tone

and the same conversational free verse,
loosely organized in tercets
or the occasional quatrain
when an extra line jogs onto the page,

or that his poems often begin well
and then spiral down
into unsurprising images

like exhausted birds
unable to stand for anything
beyond the simple fact of exhaustion,

or that, most important,
he is often humorous
without actually being funny,

a difference that depends largely
on a writer's willingness
to let his violent, comic sensibility

turn its knives on the reader,
on the poem,
and on poetry itself,

which may seem like an odd complaint,
given Collins's reputation
for teasing our stuffy poetic traditions.

But the teasing this writer does
is harmless, really, and contrary
to what some critics have suggested,

the problem with his work
is not that it is disrespectful,
but that it is not disrespectful enough;

it never cracks wise
to the teacher's face,
but meekly returns to its desk,

lending itself with disappointing ease
to the stale imagery
of teachers, desks and wisecracking.

In the end, what we need
from a poet with Collins's talent
is not a good-natured wave

from writer to reader,
or a literary joke, or a mild chuckle;
what we need is to be drawn

high into the poem's cloud-filled air
and allowed to fall
on rocks real enough to hurt.

Year end report

"Pride cometh before a fall"
I'm not into the Christian bible but this particular quote often whispers in the vast inner darkness of my mind. Good thing. I tend to take myself, too seriously. However, the beginning of the new year is supposed to be a time of review, house cleaning and renewal so here is my abbreviated Ashabot year end financial report. This is the sum total I made writing poetry in 2005.

$10 from ByLine Magazine for one poem, Writing Instructions. Can't get too puffed up about ten bucks so I'm probably safe posting about it here.

As for 2006, a guy from alt.zines recently emailed me and asked if I was interested in doing a monthly podcast on his site. Could be interesting. We'll see how it goes, if it even happens.

Black holes, winter sun and dogs

My son and his wife left early this morning after an all too brief visit. I always get depressed after from one of my darlings leaves. This afternoon I sat outside and consoled myself by writing some dark words. After my guts were exposed, I let the sun work me over for a while. It was so hot and so bright I was nearly delirious but it did the trick. I'm out of the gloom (almost) and back in the moment (pretty much).

So, on with the celebrations. January 29th is the Chinese New Year and 2006 is the Year of the Dog. If you were born in 1922, 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, or 2006 - you are a Dog. That's suppose to mean that you are honest and faithful to those you love. Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were born in the Year of the Dog. Now, I respect Bill Clinton and no offense to the dogs of the world, but if these guys are Dogs it's with a small "d".

New year's greeting

Happy New Year and Good Luck
~ from the staff at the Language Barrier~
Swami, Molly, Joe, Hank the Duck,
Louie-Guardian of the Bird Park,
Panda Dog and Uncle Monkey

Slow motion adventure

I love Ashland Oregon. I lived there a long time and still need to visit occasionally to spend time with old friends like Bob the Cat and get my Ashland fix. Where else can you count on seeing more than one PETA bumpersticker in a day or ever? Kindness and compassion are everday occurances in Ashland, not exceptions. But the good news is ...we're back in Nevada! It's a long time gone counting the two months we just spent in the Yucatan. Add the ten days we spent in rainy Oregon during Christmas and by Friday all we wanted was to be home by the end of the year. We are both so sick of the gray, the cold and the wet. Hurricanes and tropical storms chased us prematurely out of the Caribbean and an almost constant rain chased us out of the Rogue Valley. Usually it takes us less than six hours to get back. This time it took nearly eleven. To begin with, I-5 was closed just south of Ashland. Mud slide but not a trip ender. We decided to take Hwy. 66 instead. It goes east over the mountains to Klamath Falls and Lakeview, then south to Nevada. A bit longer but no big deal. At the end of the valley, just before the road begins its ascent, there is a small creek that feeds Immigrant Lake. It had risen into the trees but we crossed with no problem and began climbing up out of the valley. Cars were coming down the hill so we felt like geniuses. Briefly.

What we didn't count on was the strain very wet snow puts on trees. When we got to the Green Springs Inn at the summit we learned that the road ahead was closed. Trees, over-burdened by heavy snow, had fallen over the road, plus two vehicles had spun out of control and were also blocking the highway. With no snow plow or road crew in sight we turned around and headed back down. Our plan now was to get back across the creek and over to Hwy 140 as it goes in the same general direction.

Hwy 66 is a narrow band etched into very steep terrain. For the most part, there are no guard rails, no pull outs and turn-arounds are miles apart and the drop from the side of the road is chillingly steep. On our way down, cars were coming up. A good sign. The creek was still crossable. However, when we got to the bottom we were greeted by another surprise. Immigrant Creek had flooded the road carrying a snarl of logs and brush along in its muddy torrent. Someone told us that the road up top was now clear so … up we went … again. Our other option was to sit in the jeep and watch water gush down the hill on our right and rise up onto the road on our left.

A lot of cars were parked at the Inn but we were in no mood to wait. The jeep is the right vehicle for a situation like that but we'd burned a lot of time going nowhere and at some point we were going to run out of daylight. The trees had been cut away only enough to make a narrow passage and the open road wasn't much better. Of the few vehicles out, most were cars and they were fishtailing in slow motion or stuck on small inclines without chains. It was a mess. It's one thing speeding along at 70 mph with a belly full of Christmas cheer, the music and heat cranked up. It's another when you are suddenly forced out of that bubble. One guy was in the snow, no coat, no gloves, drenched, freezing, putting on chains after he got stuck. Bad idea. On this road, tow trucks and snow plows are not standing by and it's not Christmas. It's winter.

But no matter how well prepared you are there is always the unforeseeable. We got to Lakeview at twilight, by that point debating whether or not to stop for the night. Mr. Lee's argument was that we were now below the snow line and on a straight, desert highway. What could possibly go wrong? Sounded good. Once we had driven an hour into dark nowhere we found out. The headlights stopped working. He managed to coax them on, over and over, and I sat with the giant flashlight to ward off cars, just in case. Finally a big rig turned onto the road and we stayed behind that, using it as a shield until we got near Susanville.

Susanville is an armpit on a good day but I wanted to stop there for the night anyway and drive home in daylight but the possibility of being trapped over New Year's waiting for a garage and parts made Mr. Lee crazy. He wanted a coin toss but, by that time, the lights had worked for over an hour so I agreed to keep going. I wasn't in the mood to let a fucking coin decide anything. We got home by midnight. Delicata was snuggled into her hot hut. The lights, heat, water and internet worked. I call that good.

It's not New Orleans and it's not as bad as '97, but Carson City has declared a disaster and there is flooding from Reno to Gardnerville. In hindsight, I see that the whole way home the door was closing behind us but now, finally, the rain has let up so this morning, this first day of 2006, here's a toast to narrow misses, happy endings and a great new year. Remember to eat your black-eyed peas for good luck!

Oregon fog

Christmas night. We have been submerged in fog for the last few days but tonight it has lifted and the lights on the opposite hill are visible again and lovely floating in the darkness beyond the window's glass. All in all, it was a good day. We had a delicious Tofurky dinner this afternoon with family and friends and, other than the fact that I am miserable from over eating, I happily report that no animals were harmed in the making of the feast. Later on I phoned my brother. Among other things, we talked about Delicata who, at this moment, is tucked into her cozy hot hut home back in Nevada. He complained that I don't update her diary more often. I am flattered to hear he reads it at all. So, as I won't be adding an entry until I get back home later this week, I thought I'd do a quick update here. This one's for you, little brother.

Cockroach Diary 12.25.05
This Christmas is the third anniversary of Delicata, Nugget and Ha'penny joining us and this Christmas Delicata is the only one left. Nugget died this September and Ha'penny the September before. Delicata is an old lady now so this may be her last holiday but I did everything I know to make it a good one. Before we left, I gave her a sweet, fat, juicy, fresh slice of orange, her favorite.

There was, however, a small catastrophe the day before we left. I cracked the side of her terrarium when I accidentally knocked a rock off the top of it. The glass broke, exploded actually, with a terrible sound. It was such a drag. Delicata's world is a peaceful place. Plus, she is a member of an ancient species that has lived peacefully on earth since long before we swaggered out of the jungle and that will most likely live peacefully here long after we stagger off into oblivion. Thinking about her simple life gives me a bit of relief from the unrelenting, mind boggling, soul draining shit storm of human news and events. When I cracked the terrarium I not only violated her tiny sanctuary, I violated the vicarious refuge I find there. To make matters worse, like a fly to shit, Mr. Lee instantly zoomed into the room and, seeing how distraught I was, could not help suggesting that perhaps one of Delicata's tiny legs would get stuck on an edge of tape and be ripped off. Evil bastard! But the tape is tight and smooth and the cracks are contained. I ran my hand over and over the surface checking for splinters or glue and found nothing. The rest is up to the god of small beings.

Happy New Year, cracked glass and all!

Happy Winter Solstice

Text version of this poem here

I wrote this poem as poet-in-residence at Actor's Theatre in Ashland Oregon (thanks Michael) and added the graphic later. It's from a photo I took in a canyon in the Nevada Great Basin. It was a magical place, ridiculously difficult to get to even with a rugged vehicle and off-road driving experience. After a few unusually wet springs and flash flooding, I doubt access to it exists anymore.

In any case, this is my favorite holiday so.... happy winter solstice. Here's to a better world.

Found writing

I was at the second hand store the other day when a cheap little sports purse caught my eye. I like bags and am always looking for ones to add to my collection so I checked it out. In the pockets were 2 pennies (they were both heads and go towards my next hexgram from the street thing), an eyebrow brush, lots of crumbs and that rare item, a scribbled piece of "found writing", perhaps composed by the girl who formerly owned the purse.


It's a sad, little composition:

"a single diamond tear emerged from the red eyes, rolled down the bland face, and shattered into a million pieces on the rocky asphalt The wind played with her hair. She suddenly knew what to do. Her feet guided her though the Prowlers & the terrys. Row after row of trailer disappeared behind her. "Don't give me that bullshit" echoed in her head. "You can't get me now dad. I'm free," she thought."




I hope she is free, but more likely she still has a very long way to go.


Ps. The winter solstice is in 2 days. That's the center of my holiday season! Happy Winter Solstice.

Fur farm hell

Click here




Barbaric Trade

In the summer of 2005, investigators from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) traveled to an animal market in Guangzhou in Southern China and reported that:

"Dogs and cats crammed were in tiny wire-mesh cages, and were visibly exhausted. Many had been on the road for days with no food or water. Some were so lethargic they could barely move. Others were aggressive and fought constantly, having been driven insane from confinement and exposure. They were covered in gaping wounds. Many animals slowly perished in their cages; other dead bodies were piled on top of the cages. Some of the animals still had collars, a sign that they were once someone's beloved companions.

As many as 8,000 dogs and cats were loaded onto each truck in crowded cages stacked one on top of another. One by one, the cages were tossed from the top of the truck to the ground 10 feet below, often shattering the legs of the animals inside. The animals were lifted out with long metal tongs and thrown over a seven-foot fence to be killed and skinned. They were bludgeoned, hanged, boiled or bled to death, and strangled with wire nooses. Many were still alive while their skins were peeled away.

The fur stripped from these poor animals is often deliberately mislabeled as fur from another species and exported to other countries to be sold in retail stores worldwide.




In the photo on the right Rick Swain is holding the pelt of a skinned cat, Heather Mills McCartney is holding a coat made from 31 brown cats and Rick Wakeman is holding a rug made from 4 golden retriever dogs. At the conference, Struan Stevenson MEP also showed a coat made from 42 alsatian puppies.

78 animals had to suffer a cruel, vicious death to make 4 garments ....... Please help put an end to this barbaric trade.

Watch the footage on Peta TV

Hell on China Fur Farms
Chinese Dog and Cat Markets
Cruelty to Cats and Dogshttp://www.furisdead.com/feat/ChineseFurFarms/http://www.furisdead.com/feat-dogcatfur.asp

China's official response
In November 2005, a spokesman for the Chinese Ambassador in London told BBC News,

"Though cats and dogs are not endangered, we do not encourage the ill treatment of cats and dogs . . . But, anyway, the fur trade mostly feeds markets in the US and Europe. This fur is not consumed in China. So the Americans and Europeans should accept the blame… We have no plans to clamp down on this internally that I am aware of - it is for the US and Europeans to take their own action. They should boycott fur as a fashion material."

The Chinese government's unwillingness to stop animal abuse makes them as guilty of these horrendous crimes as the people committing them. Please write a letter to the Chinese ambassador in your country and protest China's apathy and total lack of compassion for the needless suffering of innocent animals. In the US write:

His Excellency Zhou Wenzhong
Ambassador of the People's Republic of China
Embassy of the People's Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20008

202-328-2574
202-328-2582 (fax)
chinaembassy_us@fmprc.gov.cn
Also sign the online petition
to the Chinese Embassy in the US.

Get informed. Join ban on the entire fur trade. They are deplorable relics of a savage past. Life is life. No animal should suffer living or dying in those conditions. Boycott those who support the fur trade.

Other petitions against fur traders:
EU Commissioner, Markos Kyprianou
Burlington Coat Factory
A petition to ban seal hunting in Canada

Report on the global fur industry (in German and Italian)

Information on petitions in other countries


Now that you've worked so hard signing petitions and writing letters, relax and have some fun kicking the Fur Ho's ass!

Dec. 14th speech another Bush evasion

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Pres. Bush made a show of taking responsibility for invading Iraq under "wrong intelligence" in his speech today. It was just another carefully worded evasion of the truth. Bush and Company didn't invade Iraq under "wrong intelligence". They made up the so-called "wrong intelligence". In other words, they lied to the American people about Suddam Hussein in order get support for their invasion of Iraq. When will people get that through their heads?

The fact is Suddam Hussein had NOTHING to do with the terrorist network. Bush and Company are oil men. They are the ones who sell us gasoline. They wanted to secure the oil fields of Iraq for their personal economic advantage, i.e. to stay billionaires as long as possible as oil reserves dry up. They tried when Bush Sr. was in power but Sr. had enough sense to see we can't conquer Iraq. Iraq is at war with itself. Attacking Iraq only means inheriting its ongoing civil war. Saddam, bad as he was, kept that at a simmer. Bush is like a guy who throws a brick at a bee hive so he can steal the honey. It's stupid and dangerous. You can't win in a fight with a swarm of pissed off bees. It's stupid and dangerous. There are smart ways to do business with bees. Bush is a stupid thief and a traitor. I'll listen to him when he takes responsibility for the outing of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame. Not a second before.

We need leaders who will stimulate the development of alternate forms of energy instead of miring us in an unwinnable war for what's left of dinosaur oil.

The Virgin of Guadalupe's day

Today is the anniversary of the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe 464 years ago. She is much loved, especially in Mexico where the day is observed all over the country with festivals. Mexicans have parades and celebrations constantly anyway but today is an extra special day. The Virgin of Guadalupe is the patron saint of the country. I decided to post a few of the photos I took when we drove to the Yucatan this fall. Her image is everywhere but on the mudflaps of trucks.

As the story goes, she appeared on the hill of Tepeyac, once the site of a temple to the Aztec mother-goddess Tonantzin. She told the pious Aztec convert Juan Diego to go to Bishop Zumarraga in Mexico City and tell him that she wanted a church built there. Juan Diego did as he was asked but naturally the Bishop rejected the request. He insisted on a miracle for collateral. The next day she filled Juan Diego's cloth roses that did not grow in December and when they spilled out at the feet of the Bishop, her now famous image was imprinted on the cloth. I've left out a few details but that's the gist of things.




I'm not into organized religion. It's corrupt, sexist, inspires violence etc etc. And I don't believe she's real but still I like what the Lady of Guadalupe represents. She is kind and she is safe. But, I'm a realist. I suspect old Bishop Zumarraga adapted her message to better serve the land grab and genocide the church and Spain were in the middle of, otherwise why would she encourage barbaric foreigners who where plundering her native land and killing her people to build their church on top of the pyramid of the goddess Tonantzin, a place sacred to her people?



In any case, these days the old, bureaucratic Church still does it's damnedest to own her, but I don't believe it can. The Virgin of Guadalupe is independent, something they despise. They tolerate her because she is the refuge of the soul of Mexico. Anyway, whatever did or didn't happen on December 12, 1531, today is her fiesta. Hope you had a good day.

International Animal Rights Day

To live is so startling
it leaves little time
for anything else.
-- Emily Dickinson


Ethics and society.

December 10th, is International Animal Rights Day. Light a candle. Write a letter. Make a donation. Sign this petition. Give your pet an extra pat.

McDonald's scalds chickens alive to make their McNuggets. Labs and schools dissect animals while they are still alive and fully conscious. Unimaginably cruel tests that are redundant, unnecessary or merely padding for an institution's research budget continue to be performed on animals around the clock. If you don't believe in this, sign the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights . Contrary to public assumptions, vivisectionists are not strictly regulated. The reality is that in the lab virtually anything goes, and animal researchers are a law unto themselves. For example, New York's Columbia University is guilty of committing grotesque abuses to animals in their laboratories including routinely performing invasive surgeries and leaving the helpless, suffering animals to die in their cages without any painkillers.

In labs worldwide, animals are cut open, poisoned, and forced to live in barren steel cages for years, although studies show that
because of vast physiological variations between species, human reactions to illnesses and drugs are completely different from those of other animals. This is beyond barbaric.

Today's non-animal research methods are humane, more accurate, less expensive, and less time-consuming than animal experiments, yet change comes slowly and many researchers are still unwilling to switch to superior technological advances. Animal experimentation is not only preventing us from learning more relevant information, it continues to harm and kill animals and people every year. read more

Christmas past

Bird in the tower - Mexico

judybluesky recently posted about the "sense of need that I will never forget". It got me thinking about Christmases past. When my kids were little I was a single mom and we were very poor. Yes, we all had feet and we all had shoes and we had a roof over our heads. I don't take that for granted but I couldn't even afford to buy new shoelaces. I pulled them off of the shoes that ended up in the Co-Op free box. You can pontificate all you want about "true spirit", Christmastide around our house was always a bit sad.

In a good year I might manage to save up fifty bucks by Thanksgiving for Christmas gifts but that money had to be spread between several people. I was always, and to this day, too ashamed to tell my sister I couldn't afford to exchange gifts so, besides my own three kids, I bought presents for her, her husband, their three kids and my brother. Actually they all came first because their gifts had to be mailed. Everybody got shitty, little things from the second hand store. I admit I didn't want to abandon the tradition because my sister sent nice things which was a big treat for the kids. Not only did they get something new and cool, they got cash and, more importantly, they were reminded that they were part of a bigger family that also loved and cared for them. My sister also occasionally sent us a supermarket gift certificate, her way of making sure the kids got a hearty holiday meal and, I suppose, that I didn't blow the Christmas dinner money on booze. My brother sent cash for Christmas. Sometimes it was a hundred, sometimes two but it was more likely to arrive on Christmas eve or after Christmas than before. That genuinely sucked. I needed it to buy the "real" gifts for the kids.

To brighten the holidays I went to the Welfare office every year and signed the kids up to receive presents from the "Tree of Joy". Perhaps you know how that works. Children are represented on the tree by little tags that say things like, "Girl, age 9 - Likes books and games" with addendums like, "Needs winter hat" added at the prompting of a grown-up. That kind of thing. Good-hearted people in the community pick a tag and buy that child a gift. A few days before Christmas, a smiling old couple would appear at our door, usually Soroptomists, with three gifts. They were very nice. It was very embarrassing for the whole family but I couldn't talk myself out of these sad attempts to make Christmas look "normal". I also signed up for the Welfare department's Christmas food voucher. But, in spite of my efforts, Christmas was never the best of times.

This is my twentieth sober holiday season. The kids are grown and gone on to their own lives. Life is generally good these days but for the shame and regret I have over my failings as a parent and that (horrible) "sense of need I will never forget" that judybluesky mentioned. It's irrational but I sometimes feel apologetic that my standard of living has so dramatically improved since those days. I wish the changes had come sooner, when the kids were still little, but things happen in their own time. It's better today so we go from here. Besides what choices do I have? Like they say, reality is for people who can't handle drugs.

I didn't go with the bird party photo for the birthday card the other day. I used this one instead.

Task of the day

I begin with what must be done, carving it out of all that should be done. And among what must be done I look for a thread with which to unravel that crucial first step because without defining a simple starting place I will get nothing done, no matter how urgent. I have come to accept this about myself.

Today the time-sensitive task is making a birthday card and wrapping the present and, most important, mailing them by the end of the day. I already have the gift. I need the card so the first thing I have to do is select the photo. I am thinking about using this one that I took last winter but perhaps it's not right? I have one hour. If I accomplish this, I will count the day personally productive. A small measure for a priceless and irreplaceable day in one's life but nevertheless it is the task of this day.

In case you're wondering, I have already done other things today. It is not that I just woke up from too much sleep, or sobered up to be overwhelmed by the life awaiting me. No. But I am in shock at all the Xmas tasks awaiting me on the living room floor, the piles of gifts sorted out by name and family. And my motto for the season is "keep it simple". But today, the birthday gift must go and to that end so must I.

Street scenes, Mexico

Here are a couple of photos I took in Mexico recently. To me, these two particular images have a lot in common.

No exit strategy

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Which idiot would make a better president:
Alfred E. Newman or George W. Bush?

(I realize it's a tired old comparison
but we still haven't gotten it right. Otherwise,
why don't we impeached the bastard?)



Here's a nice photo from Variety.com showing Mr. Spaz and President Hu Jintao sharing a chummy photo during Bush's recent visit to China. Now check out our dingbat President struggling to get off the stage in this clip at FuckBush.com. This man is our "leader".



Alfred E. Newman? George W. Bush? Who would be a better president? After all, Alfred doesn't even exist. No problem. Neither one of them are real. They are both idiot media creations. Alfred. at least, would be doing a lot better job than Dubya. He isn't a lying, draft-dodging, high rolling, war mongering traitor.

Home again

We're back from the Yucatan. Over the all, we drove about 10,000 miles so my photo to miles ratio held at 1+:1, the 1+ plus being the number of photos and the 1 being the mileage. Not bad. I've deleted a lot and will delete many more. Then there are the ones that make sense only to me. I'll keep those. Among the remainder, there are a few worthy of presenting to you, the rare, much appreciated, occasional visitor to this tiny outpost border crossing. Also, naturally, I have a few things to say about the trip and, for your traveling convenience, I have compiled a list of tips for people brave enough to leave the gringo trail and travel in real Mexico. All this to come. At the moment, I must get coffee. Outside of tourist joints it is nearly impossible to get a good cup of coffee in Mexico, the land of coffee, a fact I find nearly impossible to comprehend.

Get it RIGHT. Get us OUT.

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Go sign the petition at MoveOn.org. Tell Congress to get us out of Iraq. I did. Here's my letter:

"Get us out of Iraq NOW. We should have NEVER gone there in the first place. You were all FOOLS to go along with Cheney and Bush. Now get it right. Get us out!"

It only takes a few minutes and it is the very least we can do so now you send one.