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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! I provided a link to Bill Clinton's You Tube video at The Flatland Chronicles and some brief commentary. Today is my birthday and this was one of the highlights. In the darkest hours of my life that are yet to come, let me remember the sight of Bill Clinton morosely watching his laundry spin.
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Brief commentary on a multiplicity of issues---it's so hard to stay caught up with things when I never have time to blog properly during the week.
Did I ever mention that I cast my first vote ever for Gerald Ford? It's true. And I still don't like Jimmy Carter, however good a person he may be. He made a crap president and was the impetus for the Moral Majority which morphed at some point Christian Right. That was back in the days when the Republican Party was still the party that believed in individual rights of privacy, of course, before Ronald Reagan decided to get in bed with the Moral Majority (okay, there ought to be a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not up to finding it) and show them where they really belonged.
I didn't like Barry Goldwater, even though I was well under 10 years old. I didn't like him because we had African-American nannies, and they didn't like him. What they didn't like, I didn't because when I was very young, I was closer to these amazing women who were paid very little to spend all day looking after me than I was to my parents (or anyone else, including God).
So my first political argument ever with my parents was over Barry Goldwater when I was in elementary school, and I've been arguing ever since, even though I signed on temporarily with the GOP when I first started voting because I didn't like Jimmy Carter. I still don't much, though of course I honor his humanitarian and diplomatic undertakings.
But now Barry G. is looking pretty good.
Anyway, this round up demonstrates why I am no longer a Republican and doubt I could ever vote Republican again, unless of course Goldwater comes back from the dead to lead us back to the source.
CLICK HERE TO GO TO VERSUS/REVERSUS, WHERE I STRUGGLE TO MAKE SENSE OF THE CURRENT POLITICAL REALITIES.
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Cutting edge comedy? In Studio 60 last night, the crack team of comedy writers decided that the opening skit should be based on a reworking of Gilbert and Sullivan's "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General." I am not sure a G&S song that was featured in an episode of Frazier years ago---and that was parodied very effectively by the Animaniacs sometime in the 1990's---qualifies as "cutting edge."
Actually I liked the episode fine, especially whenever Perry or Whitford, or Perry and Whitford, were front and center. A note on Studio 60, here.
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I've taken lots of photographs of Florida landscapes, especially North Florida landscapes. I have always tried to take photographs of non-obvious things, but of course there's a point at which anything you would consider photographing is, in that sense, obvious.
But I have always been attracted to old houses and I think I know why. When I was a child, my parents had one of those New Yorker collections with cartoons and covers in it. I don't know when this particular collection was published, but I'm guessing sometime in the Sixties.
My parents kept it in the living room (which might as well have been roped off) which contained very old family furniture too fragile to sit in and various breakable objects we weren't supposed to breathe on. I wasn't meant to look at The New Yorker, I remember, and---unusually---it was my father who laid down this injunction; I suppose because it was expensive and he didn't want me to get my grubby little chocolate-covered paws on it. They weren't bothered about my reading things that might corrupt my childish mind as they took the enlightened position that if I was old enough to read it, I was old enough to read it. Neither had the heart to stop me reading The New Yorker so I spent many fascinating hours sitting on the living room floor with their New Yorker compendium.
I liked the cartoons, but I loved those covers. I was 10 or 11 at the time and I didn't understand a lot of the cartoons, but I loved looking at the pictures. Especially this one (the cover by Roger Duvoisin for the October 23, 1954 issue). That cover painting fascinated me as much as any picture has ever done. I used to sneak the book into my room, prop it up on my dresser, and leave it open so I could look at it while I was doing my homework.
Oddly enough, the feeling it evoked, though I was only 10 years old, was one I didn't know how to name at the time: nostalgia. Specifically, it reminded me of a beach trip I barely remembered to a cottage we'd only visited once, on Edisto Island, South Carolina. I remembered digging a hole near the ocean with the green shovel that came with my green and blue tin bucket; at some point, a blimp appeared in the overhead sky. I don't remember seeing it at all till it was directly overhead. I was frightened, but I remember my father explaining to me that it was a blimp. It didn't mean a thing to me, but I was duly impressed and rather frightened.
Then later, when we walked up to the house, leading the body of water I believed was called "The Atlanta Koshen" behind, I also left the green shovel behind. Later, when my mother asked me where it was, I remembered. "Well, it's gone now," she said sternly. Which was the first time anyone ever explained to me about tides. I felt terrible---for the shovel. I didn't cry or anything, I don't think, but I remember feeling very empty inside, reflecting on this lost shovel. Where would it end up?
So when I was ten---that is, at least twice the age I'd been on the blimp/shovel day---the sight of that particular cover brought it all back. I didn't know then why it seemed so significant any more than I do now. But I sat there wishing I could step into that picture. I went back over and over and just sat on the living room floor, gazing at it. I remember telling myself that when I grew up I would live year round in a house like that (which has not come to pass, or not yet).
I think my feeling for the mysterious attraction of weathered old houses, particularly if abandoned or boarded up started then. When I started doing photography in the mid-nineties, I took dozens of photographs of derelict houses, including two that had been gutted by fire. And I have always been drawn to the type of Florida painting that features a broken down Cracker House with an upended canoe in the yard, a glimpse of the swamps, and a red sky.
I also liked houses that weren't derelict but just old and honorably and---to me---attractively raffish and faded. For example, this and this. A friend of mine who was an artist once told me that this reflects a decadent streak, though perhaps he was just making a pun.
The two photographs I posted today fit into the category I call "old houses photographed in the late afternoon light. These are two of my favorites: two completely different old houses on two completely different afternoons.
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So first I read the article in The New York Times about the National Intelligence Estimates, which didn't surprise me, but which made unpleasant reading anyway. Having your worst fears confirmed by credible evidence isn't quite the same as just having the fears with no confirmatory evidence, is it?
Anyway, I don't have much to say about it---as my latin-loving lawyer friend says, "Res ipsa loquitur!"---but I wanted to record the information in Versus/Reversus for future reference and for future mulling over. (After all, this IS an almanack.) So I posted this.
Anyway, it somehow set me thinking about the whole Iraq debate and how when I listened to Sandy Rios discussing it the other night during Real Time with Bill Maher I had the same feeling I always have: that people who are "pro" and the people who are "con" are talking about completely different things. They sound as if they are talking to each other and they may even appear (occasionally) to hear what the other one says, but it doesn't matter, because they are talking about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS.
So then I wrote this as well, discussing why they don't listen and what they are talking about when they talk about the war that's different from what the other side is talking about. And hey, I think I've cracked it, Bill!
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Since I'm not able to blog much during the week anymore, there's always way too much catching up to do on the weekends.
UPDATES TO VERSUS/REVERSUS:
So...the magnificently principled stand by a trio of Republican Senators ends in....this. For someone who is desperate to see someone take a nonpartisan position for the long-term good of the country----with due reference to its international reputation----this is a letdown to say the least. As for the Democrats? The bloggers at The HuffPost are busy ripping the party a new one for sitting the whole thing out and assenting to the outcome. If I correctly understand the meaning of the accord, I have to say it's not what I was hoping for.
But on the plus side, here's a comment on Bill Clinton's interview with Fox News, where he rips them a new one. Bonus link to the full transcript, published at "Think Progressive." Being a centrist, not a true progressive, I still love BC, so I was happy....
Finally, I hate to have to call out my own dear husband, but I couldn't let his "Reality Check" blog stand without comment. I disagree with him about racial profiling, even when airport secuity inconveniences his beloved J.K. Rowling.
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I keep intending to turn the "Chronicles" into a "slice of life" journal sort of blog and then imagining some person I don't know well who might not particularly like me---harmless as I am---finding out about it through some well-intentioned well-wisher of mine. And reading it.
SO, A LINK TO MY MOST RECENT UPDATES TO "THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES...."
Real writers can't afford to worry about that sort of thing, but bloggers who view blogging as a fun and fulfilling hobby had damn well better worry about it. There are some things I'm just not prepared to put on the line. But I wish I had the freedom (and the courage).
Partly I'm inhibited by the views of Nick and some of my other friends about what one of my friends refers to as "self-referential bloggers." One friend is fond of reading aloud in a sneering tone from two or three blogs she's targed as particularly egregious examples of this. And while I shouldn't let this deter me, it does, it does.
Anyway, some thoughts on this subject and on blogging generally in The Flatland Chronicles. I manage to tie it all in to Laurie Anderson and William S. Burroughs, which I think is pretty good going.
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Floating moons, antique cufflinks, candles, strange artifacts, wax flowers, stained glass, digital jewelry.... When I have a spare moment, or am feeling particularly stress, I spend some time with paintshop pro and my digital art. Then I post the pieces I like best in the "Blog Art" blog. I have faith that someday, someone will find these pieces and find a use for them!
LINKS TO NEW CONTENT IN MY DIGITAL GALLERY OF DIGITAL ART....
I decided I won't keep listing individual pieces here because it's too time-consuming and doesn't really give an idea what it's all about anyway. But if you click on these links, you'll see the most recent pieces, along with all the rest.
I still find it really fulfilling in some right-brained unarticulable way to do this. I've talked before about the joy of making things, even trivial things, and how that can be an end in itself. Look at the homepage to see all the most recent additions (I'm now almost up to 300 images) or check out the categories below....
There have been updates to all these categories this week. In addition---though there haven't been very recent updates, you might check out:
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LINKS TO NEW CONTENT IN "THE DISQUIETING DAMOZEL":
For quite awhile, I've been thinking about writing up my experiences last year with the panic disorder that seemed to come out of nowhere to disrupt my life. It lasted for months, until I at last became miserable and hopeless enough to admit that it wasn't something that I could control or that would go away on its own. Finally, after months of misery---for me and my husband---I finally allowed myself to be put on medication to control my anxiety and magically, it went away.
Though life goes on being uncertain (as adult life is) and riddled with pitfalls and the potential for disappointment and unhappiness (as all life is), I now feel that I can cope with the troughs and enjoy the crests. I no longer yearn for mere stability and I'm able to enjoy a certain amount of uncertainty. The thought of having to deal with change doesn't overwhelm me as it used to----and that, for me, was the basis for my panic attacks.
My problem was (probably) caused by my sudden withdrawal from the estrogen therapy I'd been on for the years following a complete hysterectomy. But there can be other causes. And---I've noticed just from observing my friends---the disorder tends to creep up on you.
The people I've known who have suffered were all people who had coped with loss, illness, or bereavement really well, according to observers. One of them, a man, had accepted with initial fury and then silent indifference the marriage of a woman he'd dumped and was no longer in love with but still relied on; the panic attacks started half a year later when he decided to quit his job and make other major life changes. Another, a woman, had stoically endured treatment for cancer without telling anyone and had spent the two years that followed mediating between other family members who relied on her for her patience, kindness, and support. Another was a remarkable young man who had been in a relationship with the same woman since high school; when she decided to end their life together, she ended the only life he'd known since adulthood. And so on. The one thing they had in common with each other and with me was that after long months and years of endurance the attacks seemed to come out of nowhere.
What brought it on? Suppressed rage? Unacknowledged grief? Who knows? And really, who cares? If panic is just the symptom and not the disease, it's the part that hurts the most.
It took me a long time to admit that I had a problem that was different from the problem that I was used to coping with (epilepsy) and that I had long ago publicly acknowledged. I wanted the symptoms of panic disorder to be epilepsy because everyone already knew about that----a fact I already found sufficiently humiliating----and I didn't feel I could cope with having yet another disabling problem.
In the end, the solution for me was simple: [1] Admit I couldn't cope; and [2] Take medication. The fact is, the transformation from panic to nonpanic felt like a magical transformation. But first I had to admit that I had a problem that was different from my previous problem and that I couldn't cope with it.
I wrote this note so other people who are going through panic attacks (or any other form of anxiety disorder) will be assured that what they are going through is normal (for people with anxiety disorders, anyway) and that it is, or is becoming, fairly common. In my immediate circle are many solid citizens who have silently endured months of misery because they saw their problem as a sign of some sort of character defect.
For anyone in the same boat, it really does take finding out that waking up in the morning in a cold sweat feeling as if you are going to die of fear isn't a unique experience or a sign of incipient psychosis before they are usually willing to seek help. Or at least that's my experience.
So I wrote about my experiences here, in my anxiety blog. If you know what I'm talking about, please check it out.
LINKS TO NEW CONTENT IN "JUST EAT THE DAMN PEACH"....
Having watched and rather liked Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, I propose a much more problematic venture for the really good together Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford. I mean, it's a good show for the networks and so on, but if you've watched The West Wing, nothing that happens on this show will surprise you except, perhaps, for the saintly network president played by Amanda Peet. Really? A saintly network president who sweeps in on her first day and sets everything to rights over the objections and trepidations of the stock corporate weasel who hired her?
She's a female Hollywood version of Jeb Bartlett only of course---as she is a woman--- much younger and comelier and free of crustiness and so on. What was that line from the old Dorothy Parker review (of The Admirable Crichton, not that it matters). "You can practically see the stigmata." You can't see any stigmata on this glossy creature; she doesn't look as if she'd bleed if you cut her; but you can practically see wings and a halo. I like her character because how could you not? Which is one problem I had with the pilot.
We've all seen this character before, as well as all the others that populate this very well-written and engaging show. I'm not saying I won't watch it, because I quite like it, but it's Perry and Whitford who made it credible (to the extent it was).
See my further thoughts here.
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