Betsy Devos Will Destroy Public Education, The Bedrock Of Our Republic

“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”  Carl Sagan

Betsy Devos is actually being considered for Education in the Trump cabinet. Oh hell no. 

Let's consider the words of one of the founding fathers:

"I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness...Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance." Thomas Jefferson (letter to George Wythe, August 13, 1786).

Thomas Jefferson's lifelong belief in the importance of public education as the bedrock of a free Republic was shared by many of the founding fathers.  A major reason why most of humanity has lived in virtual enslavement for most of history is that the common people have been historically excluded from the education that was strictly reserved for the wealthy and priestly classes. As students of the Enlightenment, the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America understood from reading history - and through personal experience and observation - that the elusive key to greater liberty and equality for humankind has always been education.

Knowledge is power and education is the great equalizer. The founders knew that public education - the dissemination of the power of knowledge throughout a population of equals - was vital to a free and productive society. They believed that an educated citizenry was one of the foundational "common causes" behind which all citizens ought to throw their full support for the betterment of humankind and for the good of the new nation. 

They also knew that this public education - which would become the backbone of a more just and free society, the first of its kind in human history - must be protected from ideological influences and agendas. They had witnessed firsthand the oppression and tyranny that results when religious ideology is imposed upon a people, and they tried - via the establishment clause in the Constitution - to strike a balance between protection of an individual's religious liberty and the protection of the general population from any religious group which might seek to impose its religious ideology on the entire people. 

 "...kings, priests and nobles..."

"Kings, priests and nobles" -  and their modern-day equivalent: megachurch leaders, pastors and conservative religious hierarchies - have always known this and thus feared and hated the idea of an educated public. Elites do not want social equality. More social equality is seen by powerful elites as a zero sum game: more power and wealth for the general population means less power and wealth for them, which is why education has historically been the ruthlessly guarded privilege of those elites.  Throughout history, in many parts of the world, they made sure that it was actually illegal to educate the common people. 

Wealthy, religious elites - whose wealth is sucked out of the people over whom they have religious power - fear an educated population the most and, when public education is legally mandated (as in the USA), they will do their utmost to undermine and impoverish it. They know that an educated populace will inevitably lead to the disruption of their traditional power structures. They recognise that they cannot exploit the people if the people are educated. Educated people have access to the knowledge once exclusively owned by religious elites, and can separate facts from fiction. Educated people develop confidence, independence and aspirations. Educated people fight back against exploitation.  

A rare, true church sign slogan.

"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to ; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President (letter to James Madison, 4th US President, December 20, 1787).

Jefferson's insight no doubt informed religious conservatives in their strategy to undermine the Republic and reduce the United States to an authoritarian theocracy. They recognized that it really was education, primarily, which enabled millions of people to rise above the poverty and disenfranchisement which has been the fate of "common people" everywhere for all of human history. And it was education of the people which was helping millions of Americans enjoy a better standard of living - earned through their own well-educated efforts - which had been impossible when they were an uneducated peasantry whose life circumstances and well-being were entirely at the mercy of a culture which allowed all power and wealth to be concentrated into the hands of a very few, usually religious, elite groups.

...which is exactly what conservatives fear most!

It was this fact -  that free public education gives power to the people instead of to religious elites - which put the American school system at the top of the religious conservatives' hit list. Filtering information through their own self-interested Biblical lens, and keeping the vast majority of people fearful, ignorant and acquiescent because of the threat of eternal divine punishment had long been the primary means of concentrating power into the hands of the priestly classes, but public education -by giving the people access to the knowledge that once was the secret posession of the clergy, and the critical thinking skills with which to assess the claims and threats of religion - undermined the theological house of cards upon which church authority rests, breaking its stranglehold over the public psyche. 

Millions of educated people who are capable of understanding the ideologies and questioning the actions of powerful groups in their midst become far more difficult to control and exploit. Millions of educated people, who have been taught history and critical thinking skills, are able to recognise when the doctrine of a religious elite is immoral, self-interested power-mongering.  Therefore, it became the first priority of the religious right movement to undermine and discredit public education while simultaneously spearheading a parallel assortment of pseudo-educational systems with which to replace it.  The Christian homeschooling movement is not, and never was, a grassroots phenomenon. Likewise, the private Christian school and college campuses mushrooming up all over the country are a targeted investment in this strategy.

As they insinuated themselves into school boards across the country - running as fiscal conservatives to get elected only to turn around and concentrate on their religious agenda once in power - religious conservatives began a determined campaign to inject religious mythology into public school classrooms, inventing fake "controversies" over established scientific theories which conflicted with Christian beliefs, and often succeeding in forcing grossly misleading "information" into school curriculums. The ongoing effort of Christian conservatives to force the teaching of Biblical creationism in science classrooms, falsely presenting religious belief as a scientific theory to school children is a chilling example of this. 

Who needs public school when all you'll ever need to
know can be found in the Bible?

In addition to these determined efforts to force schools to teach a generation of American children lies and mythology as "historical facts" and "scientific theory" (which may potentially handicap them for life), conservative school board members in key districts have also moved to prevent children from learning vital critical thinking skills. The reason why the religious right wants to reduce or eliminate higher order thinking skills in the general population is obvious - as mentioned above, properly educated people are equipped to see through the religious right's agenda - but the unintended consequence may very possibly be a population rendered incapable of meeting the demands of a competitive global race for technological and scientific innovation due to huge gaps in their education.

Consider this plank in the Texas Republican party platform:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. (from a position statement in the 2012 Texas Republican Party Platform).

The Texas Republican Party is openly calling for a ban on the teaching of vital critical thinking skills. They are not shy about saying this - it is right there in their published platform statement - and, thanks to the current climate of rising authoritarian anti-intellectualism, they are not shy about saying why they want to deprive Texas students (and ultimately all students) of the right to a full education, including the development of the ability to think for themselves. 

...and only This...

They intend to change Texas law so that religious belief will replace scientifically verifiable knowledge. They intend to enshrine into law that children cannot learn anything in school which will conflict with Christian teachings. The reference to "behavior modification" is a dog whistle thrown in to arouse right wing paranoia. HOTS have nothing to do with "behavior modification"; that sentence makes no sense whatsoever to anybody who actually understands educational theory, but pseudo-intellectual sounding claptrap is the stock in trade of Christian conservatives justifying their rejection of any secular initiative. Likewise, the jarringly inappropriate reference to "parental authority" and "fixed beliefs" makes no sense, unless the crux of the position is that schools will be prohibited from teaching pupils anything at all other than what parents and churches have already told them is all they need to know. That would make public schools unnecessary and redundant. 

Which is exactly the point.

Preventing a generation of children from receiving a proper education is precisely the goal of the religious right. For those children that they have already siphoned off into fundamentalist Christian homeschooling and private Christian schools, the pseudo-education has already been well underway for more than a generation. It is the public schools which still vex them. Limping along, greatly hampered by the constant attacks, the draining of resources through determined conservative legislative attacks on the value and sincerity of public education and teachers, and the bleeding dry of funding and student enrollments via school voucher campaigns redirecting public funds into religious schools, the public school system has been under constant, vicious attack for over three decades. Unless the American people wake up and put a stop to it, the religious right may succeed in completely dismantling public education, leaving students to the deliberate miseducation of religious schooling, thus plunging the country back into a new kind of dark age, with both intellectual and social liberty lost.

...before it's too late!

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. this is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." Thomas Jefferson (letter to William C. Jarvis, September 28, 1820).

Ironically, although President Jefferson's considered opinion that a free society depended upon a publicly-educated population was the insight upon which the religious right based its attack upon America, as soon as they had achieved their goal of majority influence over school boards and state legislatures, they acted to try to erase Thomas Jefferson and other progressive thinkers from the text books which American children will study, replacing them with conservative idols and religious ideology. 

Nearly destroying the public education system in the United States was never simply a mildly-regretted, unintended consequence of the conservative Christian campaign to "take back over" America.  Preventing people from having access to a free and intellectually rigorous education was always their goal.  Millions of publicly-educated people are the only safeguard standing between a free, democratic Republic and an authoritarian, theocratic oligarchy. The self-annointed "moral majority" understood this back in the late 1960's when they launched their campaign to undermine the foundations of American society and transform it into a theocracy with themselves (naturally) in control. The first and most critical stage of that campaign strategy was to destroy public education - the greatest threat to their power - and in that quest they have had alarming success. 

Recommended reading (No seriously, I'm begging you: read these things!): 

A thoughtful, in-depth and very readable article on the conservative Christian strategy to rewrite history, erase progressive contributions and undermine the entire foundation of American society: How Christian Were the Founders? Russell Shorto, New York Times Magazine, February 11, 2010

Why public education must be preserved, Valerie Strauss, Washington Post.

Texas textbook standards revision story here.

PBS, School: The Story of American Public Education.

Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr.  The moral imperative for education policy.

Dr. P Z Myers, A well informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will.

Patrick Murfin's brief history of public education here.

Columbus Dispatch story

Louisiana private (religious) schools voucher story here.

"...improve the law for educating the common people...the people alone can protect us against...tyranny..."

Turns Out Roe v Wade Was Never A Guarantee of Women's Reproductive Rights

Individual freedom and the right to bodily autonomy - the principles behind our understanding of consent - were the principles upon which many of us assume the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision was based, although the case itself was focused on a citizen's right to privacy around making decisions concerning her bodily autonomy and medical care.  Laws which deny a woman the right to bodily autonomy - including laws that deny a woman the right to control what happens to her own body in favor of giving any potential fetus the "right" to use her body against her will or without her consent - are an unconstitutional denial of individual freedom because they relegate a woman to a legal status that is less than human. The legal precedent that a woman actually has the right to consent to the risks and responsibilities of pregnancy, and an equal right to decline consent to those risks and responsibilities was erroneously thought by many to be finally established. But since Roe v Wade was argued as a case for privacy, it has never been a guarantee of women's reproductive rights. It has always been vulnerable to attack, either through court challenges or through legislation which has chipped away at it.

One way or another, the
Republican Party will find
a way to control those sluts!

From the moment Roe v Wade was decided, the religious right began working to overturn it. Outraged that women had at last been granted the right to choose if and when to be pregnant -  a right which conflicted with the patriarchal order which demands that men have complete authority over women - the "moral majority" began a campaign of slut-shaming, raising the specter- never far beneath the surface in any misogynist culture - that uncontrolled women would engage in wildly promiscuous and "irresponsible" sex and darkly warning that the new law would bring about the downfall of American civil society  However, when this tactic initially only gained traction within the most conservative and misogynistic segments of society, conservatives realized that the problem was that a majority of Americans in the late 1970's actually respected a woman's right to choose - and that most Americans believed that the consensual sexual activity of women was no more society's business than the consensual sexual activity of men.

Religious conservatives soon zeroed in on "consent" as a potentially malleable concept that they might be able to use to drive a wedge between women and their human rights, thereby setting the stage to put women back in their traditional place.  In order to overcome the legal issue of consent, religious and political conservatives began working tirelessly - using tactics including slut-shaming, abstinence-only purity campaigns inserted into public schools, and falsely equating microscopic blastocysts with full term babies - to entrench the notion that recreational sex involving the conscious avoidance of pregnancy is shameful and that only marital sex which welcomes the prospect of conception should be recognized and supported by society. Their aim was to increase public acceptance of explicitly Christian sexual mores in order to garner voter support for their social agenda. The ultimate goal was to get this explicitly Christian theology enshrined into law: that whenever a woman has consented to sex, she has automatically consented to pregnancy, too.

That's right, ladies, when you consent to sex, you consent to
pregnancy. And when you don't consent to sex, you
consent to pregnancy, too! You and your uteri are in a perpetual
state of consent to pregnancy! Ain't patriarchy grand?

Eventually, extreme conservatives began to worry that exceptions for rape and incest could possibly become a loophole through which some lying women could escape unwanted pregnancy, leading to the push for the elimination of exceptions for rape and incest as legal justifications for abortion. Building on the false premise that a conceptus is equal to a full-term baby, conservatives argued that a fertilized egg, no matter how it came into existence, is an innocent life deserving of protection. Completely ignoring the question of whether a woman who has been raped is deserving of society's protection and adroitly sidestepping Roe v Wade, forced-birth groups wrote bills denying abortion rights to women even in the case of rape or incest which their political arm, the Republican party, sponsored in state legislatures. In one giant leap of cruel imagination, conservatives managed to establish as a serious idea that even when a woman does not consent to sex, her consent to pregnancy should be automatic in the eyes of the law.

Lest there be any doubt about the intentions of the religious conservatives and their hired guns in the state and federal legislatures to render the legal notion of female consent completely irrelevant and completely powerless, forced-birth organizations created "personhood bills" which they instructed their Republican lackeys to sponsor and pass in various states. "Personhood" bills, if signed into law, would confer the full rights of a "person" - a deliberately vague term, but generally considered to be equal to a live-born child - to all fertilized ova. Such laws would criminalize most forms of female-controlled contraception, emergency contraception, assisted reproduction and, of course, all abortions. They would also open the door to state-sponsored invasion of women's privacy and health care rights since legally protected "persons" could potentially be "murdered" before a conception is discovered to have taken place. Furthermore, such laws would criminalize anyone who attempted to help a woman abort the conceptus "person" either by performing a surgical procedure, providing medical abortifacents, or driving a woman across state lines to obtain an abortion in a non-"Personhood" state.

Got that, gals?

"Personhood" laws are the holy grail of the forced-birth movement and the ultimate goal of religious conservatives. If passed, such laws would strip women of all bodily autonomy in matters of reproduction. Women could be denied female-controlled birth control, they would be denied emergency birth control if their partner's birth control fails or he refuses to use it and they would be denied abortions - even if they are impregnated by rape and even if their health or lives are endangered by a pregnancy. In short, thanks to the twisted culture of "life" pushed so ruthlessly onto them by religious conservatives, women would be compelled to sacrifice their happiness, risk their health and even lose their lives because a single-celled conceptus has been granted a right to occupy her body which supersedes all of her rights including her humanity, her dignity and her right to life.

Keep that contraception out
of those sluts' hands!

The Republican Party, which has degenerated to little more than the political arm of the conservative religious right, has been striving relentlessly to ensure that women will be legally forced to bear all of the negative physical, social and most of the financial repercussions for any unplanned pregnancy, while the churches themselves underline and enforce the subordinate and inferior position of women in the culture. Through tireless efforts to withhold access to contraception from women, the religious right ensures that reproductive control remains primarily in the hands of men. Thanks to ideologically-driven appointments to the FDA and the business interests of both drug companies and the medical establishment, only male-controlled methods of reliable contraception are available without a prescription, forcing women to navigate (and pay for) "care" from layers of medical and pharmacy gatekeepers before they are permitted to obtain reliable female-controlled contraception.

Religious patriarchy allows society to label unplanned pregnancy a "women's issue" in spite of the fact that it takes both a man and a woman - both failing to use effective contraception - to create an unplanned pregnancy. The fact that society allows unplanned pregnancy to be framed as a women's issue reveals the depth of the unconscious misogyny which lays the responsibility for - and the consequences of - an unplanned pregnancy squarely in the woman's lap, while little thought - and almost no censure - is directed toward the "guilt", the "promiscuity" or the "irresponsibility" of the man involved.

The old joke about keeping women
barefoot and pregnant?
Not so funny anymore.

More insidiously, when pregnancy and the laws restricting women's rights over when and if they will become pregnant is framed as a women's issue, conservatives ensure that half the population at least may ignore the very real danger to women's health and safety. Few men pay attention when women's rights are being stripped away because the phrase "women's issue" is unconsciously received as a signal that the subject is unimportant and less than men's other concerns. Even men who love the women in their lives are lulled into a false sense of "nothing to worry about" as their wives, their sisters and their daughters are slowly but surely reduced to the legal status of walking wombs compelled under threat of criminal prosecution to gestate the offspring of any man who succeeds in impregnating them - whether by mutual and loving consent, by accidental failure of birth control or by force.

In this way, the religious patriarchy ensures both that women cannot control their own reproduction completely (since women - even abstinent women - can be, and often are, the victims of forced impregnation) and that no man - not even a rapist - needs to accept the decision of a mere woman on the question of whether or not he can use her body to reproduce. That is because the "right to life" of a conceptus is, in fact, really just an extension of men's rights. A conceptus is always some man's potential offspring, and at its core, religious teaching is all about enshrining the right of every man to reproduce. If women are allowed the freedom to choose, some men would almost certainly have difficulty finding a willing mate with whom to procreate. Religions which enforce the authority of men over women and which restrict the freedom and choices of women therefore speak to the root of cultural misogyny - men's fear of the potential power of women to control their (men's) ability to reproduce. "Right to life" is actually the trojan horse by which male rights over women are being inserted directly into women's uteri. That's right. It's a great big legal 'fuck you, women'!

While religions pay lip service to condemning male brutality and offer assurances on how a "godly man" behaves, they strenuously resist efforts to enact laws which could increase rape prosecutions or extend protections for women against sexual assault, citing concerns about - you can guess - men's rights. The ultimate social priority of religion is to confirm and enforce the authority of men over women. To that end, religious conservatives - and their men in government - are willing to grant even rapists and abusers privileges over women, to safeguard the authority of "godly" men. In short, in order to protect the privilege of all men, themselves included of course, even "godly" men who profess to abhor rape willingly award rapists and abusers the right to reproduce using women's bodies against their will. As always, there is no thought spared for the humanity of the women who would be sacrificed to this Christian ideology. At best, they are dismissed as the "blessed" recipients of a "gift from God".

This is already a real thing in
the conservative Christian world

In the Republican vision of the future - as in the past it idealizes - "freedom" and "rights" will only fully belong to men and to the potential offspring of men, while women will be, at best, reduced once again to second-class citizenship, and, at worst, returned to sexual and reproductive slavery. Political, financial and social oppression of women, reproductive slavery and viciously misogynistic church-mandated rules of correct behavior and dress (for women only) are the unceasing reality for millions of women in theocracies around the world.  All of these forms of oppression of women are rooted in the desire of these conservative societies to control the sexuality and reproductive freedom of their women. Almost without exception, societies based upon religious laws which both deny women fully human status and hold them accountable for the sexual activity of both genders strictly limit female freedom and impose exaggerated requirements for modest dress on their women and girls.  If a Christian theocracy is successfully installed by conservatives in the United States, ever-deepening oppression will become the inevitable future for women and girls here.

Religious conservatives want Roe v Wade overturned because they oppose the principles of individual freedom and the right to bodily autonomy for women upon which the decision was based. That denial of those rights would relegate women to less than human status is exactly the point. Second-class status for women would be a feature, not a bug, for Christian conservatives since the Bible commands that women are not equal but subordinate to men. Bible-based religion asserts that man is the original human and woman, taken from man, is less than human. This is the reality of Bible-based governance. It seems like a nightmare from the dark ages, or some dystopian futuristic novel, but this is really happening right now in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Isn't That Just Ducky!

Hello!

Hello Everybody!

I am so happy to see you again!

Do you see this dancing light? It looks happy and it is warm, too!

I like to sit in front of the warm, happy, dancing light.

I like to sleep near the Christmas Tree, too.

Mama says that the Christmas season ended yesterday on Old Christmas Day.

Nanny says that it was also Three Kings Day and there is a song!

A song for Three Kings Day!  Yay!

I will listen and you can too!

Isn't that just Ducky!!


We Three Kings of Orient Are

We three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts we traverse afar
Field and fountain, moor and mountain
Following yonder star

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy Perfect Light

Born a King on Bethlehem's plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again
King forever, ceasing never
Over us all to reign

O Star of wonder, star of night                            
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Frankincense to offer have I
Incense owns a Deity nigh
Prayer and praising, all men raising
Worship Him, God most high

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes of life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

Glorious now behold Him arise
King and God and Sacrifice
Alleluia, Alleluia
Earth to heav'n replies

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light.

- Rev. John Henry Hopkins, New York City, 1857

Thank Gods It's FreyaDay!

Good Evening, Humans.

I have had a trying few days.

My humans left me to look after the twins while they traveled to visit family over the holidays.

Those two are incorrigible, as you know. I did my best, and I will say no more.

Yes, of course my Human arranged for another human to also look after us, provide food and so on.

But let us be frank; without me, this household would devolve into chaos.

I managed beautifully, as always. And I am happy now that they are back.

Thank gods it's FreyaDay!



The Year of the Cat

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time 
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime 

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress
running like a watercolour in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations 

She'll just tell you that she came 
In the year of the cat 

She doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers 
And you follow 
'till your sense of which direction 
Completely disappears 

By the blue tiled walls
near the market stalls 
There's a hidden door she leads you to

These days, she says,
I feel my life Just like a river running thru

The year of the cat 

Well, she looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea
She comes in incense and patchouli

So you take her, to find what's waiting inside
The year of the cat 

Well, morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone 
And you've thrown away the choice
and lost your ticket
So you have to stay on 

But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day 
You know sometime you're bound to leave her 
But for now you're going to stay 
In the year of the cat

- Al Stewart, Peter Wood

Starfish Are A Beautiful Thing

While walking along a beach, an elderly gentleman saw someone in the distance picking something up and throwing it into the ocean.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young boy, picking up starfish one by one and tossing each one gently back into the water.

He came closer still and called out, “Good morning! May I ask what you are doing?”

The boy paused, looked up, and replied, “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”

The old man smiled, and said, “I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”

To this, the boy replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”

Upon hearing this, the elderly observer commented, “Do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile. It can't possibly make a difference!”

The boy listened politely. Then he bent down, picked up another starfish, threw it back into the ocean and said, “It made a difference for that one.”


I'm not sure what this post is about, really.  The post-holiday, pre-inauguration gloom is setting in and it seems like a good time for a little more beauty in the world.

Making a difference one starfish at a time is a beautiful thing.  We can do this, America.

The Secret Of Life - Perspective

As we inch our way into 2017,  a year that many fear may be even more challenging than the annus horribilis we just booted out the back door, it might help to entertain some fresh perspective.

Sure, the 2016 election and all the ugly, brutal months that preceded it, may have been the beginning of the end of the United States as we knew it, but from a universal perspective 2016 was an infinitesimal blip within the infinite expanse of existence. The universe, the earth and even these divided States we still hope to call America will survive Trump. They will even survive the band of sycophants and opportunists known as the Republican congress.

Life will go on and in a hundred years - still an infinitesimal blip of "time" - things may very well be better for this horror show. People may have learned from this catastrophic mistake and the study of civics and history may even be valued again. Who knows? Maybe the principles that our liberal and enlightened founders hoped to enshrine in the founding documents of these United States will at last be restored as our guides.

That's the hopeful idea I leave with you tonight - and for your Tuesday Tonic,  here is James Taylor crooning his thoughts on the secret of life.

New Year's Resolutions

Everyone is talking about New Year's resolutions and for once, I am making one, too.

I resolve to write more. (The secret real resolution is to write daily and post here daily - I'm on the fence about publishing that part for obvious reasons. Ha. We will see if this aside will make the final publishing cut, thus committing me to keeping the resolution or slinking away in self-induced public shame. Double ha)*.

An online friend posted some words of wisdom which I think is appropriate to share (with permission) at this juncture:

"Here is the trick to sticking with resolutions. They involve either making a new good habit or breaking an old bad habit. Research has shown fairly consistently that habit forming and breaking takes roughly 3 weeks to take hold, so if you make it 3 weeks you have a pretty good shot at keeping your resolution. But this is also part of why January 21st is widely regarded as the most depressing day of the year!"  lily cd re

So, there you have it, NiftyUniverse! Don't worry about sticking with your resolutions for a whole year. Simply resolve to do your new thing for three weeks, and the rest will take care of itself!

Isn't that just ducky?  Yes, faithful followers!  Here comes a Ducky photo!

 


                             2017


The New Year comes quietly

puppies sleeping, comfort and joy

Keep on, with courage and love.







And one more poem since I am in a philosophical mood! Remember, kids:

Burning the Old Year

Related Poem Content Details

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper, 

sizzle like moth wings, 

marry the air. 

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone. 

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers. 

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies. 

*(There, I did it.  Ha Ha Ha)

Happy New Year!

New Year's Morning

Only a night from old to new!
Only a night, and so much wrought!
The Old Year’s heart all weary grew,
But said: “The New Year rest has brought.”
The Old Year’s hopes its heart laid down,
As in a grave; but, trusting, said:
“The blossoms of the New Year’s crown
Bloom from the ashes of the dead.”                          
The Old Year’s heart was full of greed;
With selfishness it longed and ached,                          

And cried: “I have not half I need.
My thirst is bitter and unslaked.
But to the New Year’s generous hand
All gifts in plenty shall return;
True love it shall understand;
By all my failures it shall learn.
I have been reckless; it shall be
Quiet and calm and pure of life.
I was a slave; it shall go free,
And find sweet peace where I leave strife.”
Only a night from old to new!
Never a night such changes brought.
The Old Year had its work to do;
No New Year miracles are wrought.

Always a night from old to new!
Night and the healing balm of sleep!
Each morn is New Year’s morn come true,
Morn of a festival to keep.
All nights are sacred nights to make
Confession and resolve and prayer;
All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old come true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born.

- Helen Hunt Jackson

Happy Birthday, Giuseppe Verdi!

For your Monday Music: a feast for the senses!

Today is the 203rd anniversary of the birth of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. Most people know that Verdi was one of the greatest opera composers of all time, but even if Verdi's name doesn't ring a bell (or clang any anvils even), there are numerous hummable Verdi tunes that many people actually do know. They just don't realize that they have been humming Verdi until they hear the tunes performed (in a flash mob, for instance)!

Giuseppe Verdi had a long and eventful life. An agnostic atheist, Verdi managed to escape a lifetime of composing and performing sacred music for the church - the fate of most composers throughout history - and succeeded in earning a comfortable living. He was interested in the complex challenges of the human condition and one of the reasons for his outstanding success was that he broke new ground by exploring deeper ethical and emotional themes. Such work requires a depth of artistic honesty which would have been impossible in a religious context. As his first wife, Margherita, wrote:

“Never, absolutely never, would he [Verdi] settle in Busetto. Having dedicated himself to theatre music, he would succeed in that and not in music for the church.”. 

As if that wasn't all cool enough, Verdi was also a man who knew his way around the kitchen! He enjoyed cooking and dining with friends and family and he created many of his own unique recipes.  Here is one that I invite you to try to celebrate the great composer's birthday:

Risotto Giuseppe Verdi's Style
Ingredients
¾ lb. Carnaroli rice
2 oz. butter
3 oz. mushrooms
3 oz. asparagus tips
3 oz. Prosciutto di Parma
3 oz. canned tomatoes
3 ½ tablespoons light cream
4 cups meat broth
Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese to taste
½ onion, thinly sliced


Preparation:

(25 minutes preparation + 16 minutes cooking)

Clean and finely mince the onion. Clean and thinly slice the mushrooms. Clean and blanch the asparagus in salted water: cool them in water and ice. Mince the prosciutto finely. Blanch the tomatoes, peel, seed and cut them into cubes.

In a pot melt ¼ of the butter, add the onion and slowly cook it until soft and golden. Add the rice and toast it for about 1 minute.
Add the broth, 1 ladle at the time, waiting until it has been absorbed before adding the next one.

After 8-10 minutes, add mushrooms, prosciutto, asparagus and tomatoes.

Stir well, cook for another 2 minutes and add the cream.
When the rice is “al dente” (about 18 minutes), add butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, then stir well and cover with a lid. Let it rest for 2 minutes and serve. Serves 4.

(This recipe was created by the French chef Henri-Paul Pellapratt (1869-1952), the "father of modern French cooking", who dedicated it to maestro Verdi. via NPR)

Last and best of all - for your listening pleasure, here is a terrific video taken from the Metropolitan Opera HD series featuring the company singing "Va Pensiero" (also known as the "Hebrew Slaves Chorus"). It is hard to believe that this stirring piece - one of Verdi's most well-known and beloved - comes from one of the composer's earliest works. It is from Nabucco, Verdi's first successful opera which catapulted him to the 19th century equivalent of stardom at the age of 34.

Va Pensiero (English lyrics)

"Fly, thought, on wings of gold,
go settle upon the slopes and the hills
where the sweet airs of our
native soil smell soft and mild!
Greet the banks of the river Jordan
and Zion's tumbled towers.
Oh, my country, so lovely and lost!
Oh remembrance so dear yet unhappy! ..."

"You may have the entire universe, if I may have Italy." 

 -Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (1813 - 1901)

I'm With Her And We're Stronger Together!

(This essay was first posted in March 2012. Reposting with slight edits to reflect more recent historic events. :) )

On Shakesville, Melissa McEwan now and then posts a photo of my idol, Hillary Rodham Clinton.  She made a joke about how often she posts these photos and several commenters echoed what I was thinking - she could post them every day and I might actually visit her blog even more often, not less often! Hillary is that much of a draw to me.

I was one of those housewives Hillary did not choose to be like back in the 1990's (though my kids can tell you I was stronger on "exploring" and crafts than I was on baking cookies),  and yet I could not understand the uproar over her remarks back then.  That was my first glimpse into the hatred that conservative women have for progressive women and it was probably my first inkling of just how deep and complicated the schisms in American society have become. This will be one of many posts on this topic.

What Hillary was pointing to was the truth...

What Hillary was pointing to was the truth: in spite of the lie that we can "have it all", women can't be everything they would like to be - at least not at the same time - not really.  We can be full-time homemakers, but then we will not be respected as persons who have something to say outside of domestic issues.  We can be full-time employed workers (and obviously full-time moms still), but then we are vilified by the stay-at-home contingent as 'bad mothers'. Many of us can and must be something in between- struggling to be both full-time moms and part-time workers - and discovering the awful truth that we are not allowed to feel good about either of them. Hillary wanted to make a difference in this country, but she knew that in order to do that she would not be able to stay at home full-time, even if she had wanted to do so.

Many of us can and must be something in between- struggling to be both full-time moms and part-time workers - and discovering the awful truth that we are not allowed to feel good about either of them. 

I found Hillary refreshingly honest, admirably capable and formidably intelligent.  I knew what she was saying - women just don't get to do both of those things in our culture, not really, and she was speaking to that - I found her impressive and likable.  I heard in her remarks the painful conundrum that is a woman's experience in public life - no matter what she did, she was going to be wrong and ridiculed for even trying. And yet, she did keep working. She did continue to work and she did continue to put herself out there in public life. She has never stopped trying to make a difference for women in the world, and she has succeeded.

Women the world over are inspired by Hillary Rodham Clinton.  I am inspired by her.

Women the world over are inspired by Hillary Clinton. I am inspired by her. Men the world over are inspired by her, too, and this is a fact which has become even more evident in recent months as both women and men have lined up to endorse and support her nomination as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America.

Here is a short clip from the Women in the World summit held in March 2012 at the Lincoln Center. Hillary urges women to be "fearless"in fighting for equality, justice and civil rights for women.  Coming from someone who has had to be fearless in the face of unremitting attacks in the public sphere,  her words have particular power.

We are entering what is likely to be one of the ugliest and most exhausting presidential campaigns in American history.  I will have Hillary Clinton's back. More importantly, millions of men and women all across this country will have her back, too. They get it - we are stronger together.

Let's do this, America!

Clinton/Kaine - Let's Do This!

Loving Vincent - Bringing Painting to Life in Exciting Biographical Film

Starry Night Over the Rhone - Vincent van Gogh 1888-89

If this film project is even half as good as it looks like it will be, it will be worth clearing your schedule to go see it. The concept reminds me a little of the very cool and thought-provoking film Waking Life. Except in reverse.

Café Terrace at Night - 1888

Waking Life used animation software to convert actual film footage of live actors into drawn-looking, animated film.

Loving Vincent uses animation techniques to bring actual paintings in the style of Vincent van Gogh to life. The story of van Gogh's life is told with the visual component completely composed of modern artists' renditions of his famous paintings and then animating them.

This has got to be one of the most exciting forays into animated film that I have ever seen. The trailer is thrilling - the artist's style has been lovingly recreated and faithfully matched with the timeline of van Gogh's life.

I'm at a loss for words to describe how interesting this project sounds. Visually gorgeous, a compelling and fascinating story and a unique and groundbreaking approach to filmmaking.  It cannot arrive in theaters near me quickly enough!

Check out the trailer!