Bill Maher comes closer to my main disagreement with such acts as Romney perpetrated on the dead guy in this “unbaptism” video clip.

I can imagine the outrage from the various religious pundits should a reddit crowd call a flashmob to ritually unbaptize the whole populace of city after city in the US.

Personally, I’d think it was hilarious but that’s because the dead don’t give a shit, and neither baptisms nor unbaptism have any effect on something that doesn’t exist. Their true effect is on the living.

And this is the root of my disgust with Romney and the kinds of religious people who are so deeply uncivil as to frack with other people’s choices.

Romney wants to be the leader of a democratic nation. It is a nation built on the idea that we as individuals have the right to make choices, and the obligation to live by those choices in a manner in accordance with civil law. This means Romney and his wife had a choice about becoming Mormons. They still have a choice to stay Mormon, or to desist.  Edward Davies, Romney’s father-in-law, also had a choice. And he made it. He was an atheist.

What Romney did by having the man baptized was declare that Davies’ choice did not matter and should not be considered sacrosanct. This is not a man I would like to see ruling a government that says it holds choice sacrosanct. I mean if he can so disrespect his own father-in-law, imagine what he might do to people he “rules”?

Of course since Davies’ is dead it doesn’t matter at all to him, but were he alive, I suspect he would be deeply ashamed of his daughter. I know I would be.  Shame on you Ann. You had the right to choose and expect that choice to be honoured. You should do the same.

So perhaps we should all just follow Bill Maher’s example, organize a flash mob and unbaptize all those people who were added (against their wishes) to the Mormon rolls in what is a very uncivil act against democracy. The dead don’t care, but the living do. And I expect it might stir up some interesting “conversation.” What such an unbaptism flash mob would declare is that choices do matter and that even if we do not agree with a specific choice, as long as it accords with the civil law by which we all must be guided, we will respect the right to choose and that we will act against those that do not respect the legal choices made by others.

I woke with a headache and progressed to some slight nausea but once I was on the ferry, and then walking, gone. Pain gone.

Now I’m just a little hungry and pleasantly tired.

The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation issued a statement on Friday apologizing for pulling funding from Planned Parenthood…

Guess we’ll find out, but I’m done with them. Don’t trust them now, so I’ll just donate to PP directly once a year.

Who do you think should get the Green Party Nomination for President in 2012?

• Jill Stein (MA) (68%, 1,223 Votes)
• Roseanne Barr (CA) (29%, 526 Votes)
• Kent Mesplay (CA) (2%, 35 Votes)
• Harley Mikkelson (MI) (1%, 8 Votes)

This day just keeps getting better.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which recently announced that it is ending grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening because of a controversial investigation launched by an anti-abortion Republican congressman, currently funds cancer research at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center to the tune of $7.5 million. Like Planned Parenthood, Penn State is currently the subject of a federal government investigation, and like the Planned Parenthood grant, the Penn State grant appears to violate a new internal rule at Komen that bans grants to organizations that are under investigation by federal, state, or local governments. But so far, only the Planned Parenthood grants appear to have been cancelled.

Hmmm. This gets funnier by the hour.

Since the Susan G Komen Foundation stopped funding Planned Parenthood because of extremist pressure, they have taken a real beating.

The comments of Facebook!And the comments on their own forum…oh my they have made some women pretty mad.

I donate to various charities and normally I choose ones in particularly disadvantaged regions. In this case I’ve just made a donation to Planned Parenthood in the US. The US is turning into a 3rd world country the way political and religious extremism is being allowed to harass and harm citizens that don’t agree with them. I mean really, make a woman get an unnecessary ultrasound before she can qualify for an abortion, and now just refuse to fund breast cancer screenings because they don’t like the fact that abortions are legal and that women want the right to decide for themselves. What next? Defund women’s health entirely if we refuse to cover our hair in public?

I understand that the Komen foundation is back pedaling like crazy, and at least one person has resigned from the foundation in protest.

The ostensible reason for Komen’s decision is a new policy prohibiting it from funding organizations under government investigation. Planned Parenthood is the subject of an inquiry by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who is searching for evidence that government money has been used to fund abortions. But Stearns’s investigation is a highly partisan affair based solely on evidence from anti-abortion groups.

Uhuh. In other words, facts need not apply for this rationale.

I will be very careful in the future to not support organizations that fund Kormen.

taken by peardg

He introduced the poems because he is a champion of her work, and rightly so. She’s brilliant, if I don’t always agree with how she sees the world.

He says of her, “in a singular way she envisioned herself as another aspect of her environment, the one gifted with the language to speak for all the individual creations that made up her world.” Oh yes, I do think she must have understood herself as one of Earth’s moments. This is where her poetry undermines my perceptual limitations and is also the reason I am very glad I picked this book up when I was at Powell’s recently. She has much she can teach me.

So Levine is perceptive about her work and her sensibility as a poet, but he also says this: “Thus she was back in the Central Valley where she’d grown up in the town of Hanford, some thirty miles south of Fresno. Now she was not only a poet but also the mother of a son and soon a daughter. For as long as she lived she gave herself totally to the roles of wife, mother, poet, and friend to the cluster of poets settled in and around Fresno.”

I’m not sure why that bugs me so much but it does. If you look at the website dedicated to her memory, you’ll see her defined like this as well.

1948-2003

Mother,Wife, Poet, Dancer, Friend

I have no idea how she thought of herself, but to be defined in this way seems in direct opposition to the spirit that comes through the poems.

1928-20??

Father, ex-Husband, Poet, Teacher, Friend

Is that how Levine would have his posthumous website read?

Meh.

Does it matter? Except in the fact that it irritates me. Does it irritate you?

Anyway, to something more inspiring…

here is “Adrift”

Like one of da Vinci's
clam shells, this church came
to a rest on a lip of granite
overlooking the lake.
After the glaciers had
vanished into themselves,
the shifting of continents
slowed to a halt, it settled
here a thousand meters up,
its rosy windows still
perfectly hinged, each
hand-cut Romaneque stone
perched so precipitously
that this morning no one can
leave Mass and wander
aimlessly into the sunlight
without dread of plummeting
to their death. And yet,
this is not about the fear
or the intimate prayers
of the people trapped inside.
If St. Catherine, carved
in oak and painted blue,
could speak, she would point
to the power of speaking
one's mind, to the holiness
stiffening the legs of
an old woman making her way
up the path now, a cane
on one hand, a basket of
greens in the other.
She would praise the steady
spirit of the wind that blows
open the door to the church,
filling the sleeves of each
man, woman, and child so
that they can float slowly
down to their cottages
in the village below.
All in all, words she knows
by heart just as she knows
the taste of bread or
the chill of these stones.
Just as she knows that
other girl Caterina,
the wool dyer's daughter
who, after the last person
is gone, climbs up to
the roof of the church where
the tile layer is dozing
in the afternoon heat. There
she passes the time with
those who never believed that
the world was flat--the swallows,
the unwavering branches of
the chestnut, a tongue
of smoke rising from the valley.
Still young enough to count
her years, she has no idea
where she'll go next.
But at least beyond those
clouds which, like ashes
or feathers, have been
drifting on the lake since
the beginning of the millennium.

I mean really, does the woman who wrote that seem like someone who would be explained with the catalogue: Mother,Wife, Poet, Dancer, Friend?

Anyway, pffffffft to Levine. I’m going to try and push that away and just concentrate on how Spear achieves what she does in that poem. The thing that first jumps at me is the way time is both of incredibly long duration and also continually in the present. I so deeply admire that.

Oh yea for wonderful things to think about, and wonderful writers to learn from!