“The post office sent me a card telling me how to recognize ‘dangerous mail,’” says Stephy. “I threw it away, because I’m not playing that game.” Stephy has posted a lot of valuable stuff about the Ashcroft too-much-darn-freedom crusade. You should check it out.
Archive for October, 2001
Harriet
I’ve been reading Harry Potter to Laura a little bit — only when she brings it to me; I don’t bring it up myself. It’s not that I mind it so much, but I wonder if other people who have read Douglas Adams or Fay Weldon or C.S. Lewis find this Potter stuff as skim-milky [...]
Fragile
The Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study “follows approximately 5,000 children born to unmarried parents in 20 cities across the country to learn more about the circumstances and experiences of these families.” It has some interesting numbers.
We just live in it
Next item on the war agenda.
Fairest of us all
“Primary school students are the unrecognized cutting edge of social thought, because ‘fair’ and ‘not fair’ have yet to be layered over with social rationalizations.” A moving letter from an English teacher to a former student who was imprisoned two weeks ago for refusing to join the Israeli army.
Embedded
I was pretty sure the cracks would start appearing fairly soon in the media war-hype machine. This, for example, in the Christian Science Monitor last weekend. It’s little, but it’s a crack: “[The] US media is spending so much time flag-waving, or covering the story of the minute until you’re tired of hearing about it, [...]
Schedule
A spam that has been making the rounds (thanks, Rachel):
Many of you have heard Dr. Laura, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and others speak of the “Homosexual Agenda,” but no one has ever seen a copy of it. A friend of mine recently obtained a copy directly from the Head Homosexual. At long last we will [...]
Kazakhstan
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 19:56:54 -0700 (PDT)From: theokuster@usa.netSubject: on scheduleWe are on schedule. We keep up the pace. People continue to invite us over, and we continue to overeat! Yesterday we had horse during the first course, and then a large carp, smoked with tomato and pepper and basil. That was only the second [...]
All over it
I hear the FBI is now saying the anthrax letters are probably domestic in origin. That’s a relief. In view of the great job they did on the Eric Rudolph investigation, they should have this one wrapped up in no time.
Cat’s away
Mary and Lillian have been in Atlanta all week, schmoozing it up at the American Public Health Association convention. It’s been pretty hard, not for any practical reason — things have gone very smoothly for me and Laura so far — but because I love them both so much and like having them around. Laura, [...]
Zoomers
Op-eds replete lately with ex-peaceniks doing variations on, “Now that I’m no longer draft age, I’ve discovered how much I like war.” Hell no, we won’t go — we’ll send somebody else. Because we’re going to be busy watching that Peter Paul and Mary reunion show on PBS. Reminds me of a 20-year-old who said [...]
Yeah right
My big sister says this in response to this:”Speaking of propaganda, have you heard that the Age of Irony has come to an end? Here is a link about saying what you mean. What do you think about that?Love, Jo =:-)”
Four chairs no waiting
Paul at his sharpest: “What Betsy Ross once pieced together is bright but facile, and served the barber pole best.” Ouch.
Propaganda
About every other week Laura and I go to the branch library, which has evening hours on Wednesdays. Lately we have been taking Lillian along, which means we get less reading done at the library. We make up for it by taking out more books. Laura is pretty much finished having me suggest books for [...]
Security
The things the House and Senate are about to do should be of immediate concern to anyone who uses the Internet. Which, I believe, means you.
Root causes
Why do I always assume this guy is going to be obscure? Some clarity from Humberto Eco in La Repubblica last week:
“What is confusing is that often we don’t understand the difference between identifying with our own roots… and distinguishing good from evil.”
Larry
Yesterday (the 11th) was Larry West’s birthday. Larry is Laura’s namesake. (Is that how you say that? She is named for him, I mean.) Laura’s birth, and her getting Larry’s name, did a lot to help me get over Larry’s death. The world still doesn’t feel complete without Larry in it, but it is much [...]
St. Woody
Dave Marsh in Counterpunch: “The first time ‘God Bless America’ became a hit, around 1940, Woody Guthrie grew annoyed at the sanctimonious jingoism and wrote an answer…: ‘This land is your land.’” Woody is sort of our household saint, I guess. It’s good to see him being invoked now. He has so much more to [...]
Censorship
An alert from my friend Peter in Brooklyn. I naively thought this would be cleared up by now (Peter wrote about it last Thursday) but the strip is still not back in the paper. Apparently the cartoonist is being penalized for drawing attention to U.S. government complicity in promoting terrorism. Of course, if one comic [...]