I noticed today that they’ve got a block of parking spaces fenced off in front of the grocery store. They do this every year, to make room for their Christmas trees. Buying the family tree from Albertsons – I don’t know. Seems spiritually risky to me. … Well, I guess anything you do with love can’t be wrong.

A few years ago, I sat in the Starbucks in that shopping center, looking out at the phony lighted wreaths on the lampposts, in sight of that stand of trees, and wrote this poem … to someone long lost and gone.

HYMN OF STONES

As I sit and write to you, it’s dark.

I’m in a coffeehouse: reggae, earth tones,

teenagers. Night stands up behind

Rincon Hill like an old man rises

from beside his bed after praying.

I think of your delicate throat. There are

Christmas trees for sale outside

in the parking lot. I should mention

that I love their smell, mingled as it is

with car exhaust and tar. I remember

your face, like fog in a morning orchard;

so gentle and still and forming in my mind

until the trees begin to ring.

A soft hymn of stones

may answer from the shrouded hills,

but we will be asleep by then.

“This week, President Bush tapped Condoleezza Rice to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State, the nation’s highest cabinet post. Her performance as National Security Advisor has raised questions about her credibility and competence. Critics point to her mismanagement of crucial intelligence leading up to 9/11 and say she misled the American people about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. NOW takes a hard look at the track record of Condoleezza Rice as she prepares to become America’s top diplomat.”

Rice is lucky she didn’t work for me in Washington. She would have been back in California, looking for work, long ago. Of course, America is lucky I’m not president. I’m not qualified. But then neither is George W. Bush, so I don’t feel bad.

Bad Nooz. In the first place, the concept of “purge” has not hitherto played much part in our history, and now is no time to start. Considerable pains have been taken to protect the civil service from partisan pressure for extremely good reasons.

“Disloyalty to Bush,” or any president, is not the same as disloyalty to the country. In fact, in the intelligence biz, opposing the White House is sometimes the highest form of loyalty to country, since when we fight without good intelligence, we fight blind.

He wasn’t very old. Only about 6 years think. I remember I got him around my birthday, at CompUseless in Oxnard, one day after Dad and I went fishing at Lake Casitas. He didn’t really have a name, though among his nicknames was “little piece of shit.” That didn’t effect his stuttering personality. He wasn’t fancy either, just a basic Logitech Cordless Wheel Mouse. Not optical; in fact, for a mouse he was blind as a bat. And I don’t know the cause of death. Tomorrow, I’ll probably try a AAA batteryectomy, but I’m skeptical. In the past, he’s always given me a warning when he was feeling weak.

I don’t think I’ll replace him right away. For the time being, I had a backup in the drawer. It’s his brother, a Logitech wheel mouse with a cord. At least this one doesn’t stutter.

So it goes.

This post is in answer to these comments to my November Prize post on Tuesday:

Fred, you didn’t say what word you are defining there – could be another definition of pluralism. But the fact is that Bush and the people who voted for him don’t stand for pluralism. They stand for people who think like they do; there’s no encouragement in their hearts and minds of any divergent ideas at all. And what’s worse, they think that dissenting viewpoints are inherently immoral. They think – and this is really stupid and offensive – that Liberalism is immoral. The populist ethic of social welfare has been made immoral by men and women who command and aspire to no greater rhetoric that to sneer when they say Liberal. Bush is king of this: calling Kerry the most liberal senator from the most liberal state, as though it were an insult. Shame.

And what I’m saying is that by getting us to give up our pluralism – our willingness to let everyone believe as s/he wishes – the extremists like bin Laden get exactly what they want. It’s not our belief in something better that separates us from them; it’s our unconditional belief in each other.

I watched Mystic River tonight. (I’m a little behind on my renting and watching; about a year.) It was a good movie, I thought. Lots of intense, dramatic acting. You just can’t beat a cast like that, and a good script based on a good book. But …

It tried really hard to lose me in the last two minutes. That whole thing with the parade was completely absurd. And the bedroom scene with Sean Penn’s character & his wife was just overwritten to the point of being abjectly yucky. The movie ended when Kevin Bacon got in his car and drove off. They should’ve panned down to the names etched in the sidewalked, and faded to black. What was Eastwood thinking?

Yahoo! News – Study Links Sleep Deprivation, Obesity

Well shoot, now they tell us. One of these days, I’m gonna line up all these guys that are constantly doing “studies,” and sit on them until they stop breathing. Then they can do a fraging study on that.

I’m going to watch a movie tonight, so Tasha is picking up the slack with a post on her blog.

OK, I think that’s enough of politics for a while. It’s not my forte. It’s time for me to step back and regroup, do a little woolgathering and concentrate on my broccoli. You understand. I don’t think there’s anything more I can say about Bush winning or the war going on, or the demise of whatever died.

This piece of writing is simply dragged from my folder of old unfinished sketches and posted here for you.

Tucking In The Dog

It’s alright, little dog, the day

has ended and we are safe

at home in our house again.

The world won’t find us here,

with it’s anthrax and missiles.

I shut the windows and turn the lights

down low and we can find a kind of peace.

Each night this week, I leave

my office in the evening and the trees

are full of crows, loud and desperate,

hungry, full of joy. They don’t know

what we’re going through. I love them

for their disdain of color, their ugly call.

Crows mean business and they play

in the face of death.

Let’s go to sleep, listen to the dull

clock and the appliances. The war

will be there tomorrow; we won’t

miss a thing. We have the Internet

and CNN and God knows the crows

love eucalyptus in the fall. Sleep.

I’ll watch a little Letterman

and say your prayers for you.

The dictionary defines pluralism like this:

Main Entry: plu•ral•ism

Pronunciation: ‘plur-&-“li-z&m

Function: noun

1 : the holding of two or more offices or positions (as benefices) at the same time

2 : the quality or state of being plural

3 a : a theory

that there are more than one or more than two kinds of ultimate reality b : a

theory that reality is composed of a plurality of entities

4 a : a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain an autonomous participation in and development of their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization b : a concept, doctrine, or policy advocating this state.

I like to think of it as the willingness to accept different ideas; to tolerate, accept and respect different people. When we – meaning the effective electoral votes of Americans – elected Mr. Bush to stay in the White House, we dealt a blow to pluralism. When we voted like a pack of reactionary homophobes in eleven states, we dealt a blow to pluralism. In every splotch of red on the map, we voted against pluralism and for autocracy.

Why is this a problem? Because a vote against pluralism is a vote for fundamentalism. You get it, don’t you? Our pluralism is what pisses them (Islamic Extremists) off about us. A vote against pluralism is a vote against what we all said we stood for after 9/11 – what we flew flags off our porches for, vowing that they would never see us change. A vote for Bush & Cheney was a vote to give Osama bin Laden exactly what he wanted all along – the capitulation of our American ideals, our American identity.

Osama’s video was the quintessential October Surprise. It drove the sheep to the wolf, and Osama didn’t have to expend a single “martyr” to get his November prize. A house divided against itself cannot stand; we are weaker now. And our leaders’ arrogance continues to stoke the fires of war.

a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi

http://www.petitiononline.com/uselect/petition.html

A petition to congress to investigate the election.