Civil rights come attached to civil responsibilities; one will be lost without the other.

While this is a political/environmental message, it is really well done. The narrator’s voice, for example, is perfect.

via Wimp

I’ve been reading a compilation called The Dragonfly (named after her most famous poem). There are bits that rocket straight out of the known universe

Then it swelled up
the sack of tears
but it wasn't punctured
I'll keep it in a little
Greco-Roman vase
he'll bring it to my house
triumphant elephant of pain!

and there are brilliant moments of clarity, breath-catching in their honesty

The objective and determining mind is a neat trick.
Cosmopolitan wisdom may be the best of our
canastras. The self-determining mind may be
a cheap trick. Convinced of the contrary I pondered
the country's internal crises and observed adrift on
the town's principal river a sardine can.

She is a political poet who writes about the fractured world of Europe in the build up to the second world war. She was born in 1930 to into an Italian Jewish educated and politically active family.

She committed suicide in 1996.

I had a bad evening and night – nasty, nasty dreams about killing and animals and then woke about 04:30 feeling disgruntled and fragile. A cool shower and a walk later, I still can’t shake the miseries so I went online seeking comfort and found that U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker has said

Plaintiffs challenge Proposition 8 under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Each challenge is independently meritorious, as Proposition 8 both unconstitutionally burdens the exercise of the fundamental right to marry and creates an irrational classification on the basis of sexual orientation. (page 109, lines 12-17)

I am not giddy, but I definitely feel quite a bit more cheerful about the day. That was especially true when I read page 10, lines 5-22. This is a summary of the (Prop 8 ) proponents’ argument:

Proponents’ procreation argument, distilled to its essence, is as follows: the state has an interest in encouraging sexual activity between people of the opposite sex to occur in stable marriages because such sexual activity may lead to pregnancy and children, and the state has an interest in encouraging parents to raise children in stable households. Tr 3050:17-3051:10. The state therefore, the argument goes, has an interest in encouraging all opposite-sex sexual activity, whether responsible or irresponsible, procreative or otherwise, to occur within a stable marriage, as this encourages the development of a social norm that opposite-sex sexual activity should occur within marriage. Tr 3053:10-24. Entrenchment of this norm increases the probability that procreation will occur within a marital union. Because same sex couples’ sexual activity does not lead to procreation, according to proponents the state has no interest in encouraging their sexual activity to occur within a stable marriage. Thus, according to proponents, the state’s only interest is in opposite sex sexual activity.

Jeez. If the “state” is really interested in stable households for the purposes of (presumably) mentally and socially stable future citizens and taxpayers, then marriage between the opposite sex probably isn’t the way to go since marriages between persons of the opposite sex are somewhat unstable. In fact the CDC has a faststat that says that in 2009 the marriage rate was 7.1 per 1000 total population and the divorce rate was 3.5 based on the same population number. Proponents of Prop 8 might want to turn their energies to finding a better alternative than marriage if their interest is actually in life stability for future citizens. While they’re at it they might want to look into alternatives to religiously based bigotry.

The ruling is here.

Over my life I have spent several years (over several different instances) living out – that is, homeless. I was never a druggie or off my meds – there are a lot of North American people who live out for reasons other than those two. A lot of them are women – and more and more – they are older women just like me. I’ve written before about the pull to hop in my car and return to that life. The reasons are multiple for running from the 9-5 life but the one huge reason to stay – medical care for an ageing body. And I am sick. That and the proximity of a clean (more or less) bathroom.

To forestall the urge to flee I have created an outdoor space where I can read/write/think and, in a pinch, also sleep. It was warm today and I sat outside and do love it, especially now that I have more plants. (I got an Oregon grape – I love that plant). Here’s hoping the outdoor living room plan works and I can live outside without having to live out.

There is a really good article in Wired about stress and its relationship to power by Jonah Lehrer in . The basic conclusion:

The moral is that the most dangerous kinds of stress don’t feel that stressful. It’s not the late night at the office that’s going to kill us; it’s the feeling that nothing can be done. The person most at risk for heart disease isn’t the high-powered executive anxious about their endless to-do list — it’s the frustrated janitor stuck with existential despair.

and

feelings of enjoyment — the ability to find meaning in our work, even if it’s stressful work — may counteract the toxic effects of glucocorticoids. These molecules might also explain why not every janitor dies of heart disease at a young age and why enjoyable forms of exercise are good for us.

and this particularly nice sentence

Chronic stress is like a slow-motion stroke.

Damn.

I am really a North American and not British, despite what my kids say about me occasionally slipping and calling the storage space at the back of the car a boot,  or calling french fries “chips” and soccer “football.” But really, on the occasions I have lived in Britain, I am just as odd there. Just as happens here, I’d slip and call a courgette a “zuchini,” or instead of saying “Feel like takeaway?” I’d say “Takeout anyone?” and there I’d be outed again.

I have a confused heritage in a number of ways but something happened today to make me think again about the things that stick with you, that are so far inside that, even if they rarely see the light, they are there, creating the psychological platform from which many, mostly subliminal, decisions get launched.

I was sitting at my local coffee shop with tea and book in hand I noticed a Victorian bicycle go by with what looked like a Victorian man riding it. The sight was a lot like this, but the guy had on patterned socks and he wore a top hat.

But this is Vancouver and one sees odd things, so I just picked up the book again.

Then there was another big-assed bike and, putting my book down, I noticed another man on a bicycle with an old fashioned woven food cart on the front. There was a stilt-walker and a soldier, both in period clothes. But as I looked more critically, things began to look a little off.  Especially the soldier. I’m no expert on uniforms but there was something about the guy that just wasn’t right. He reminded me of a cross between the home guard and East India Company.

As I watched more people came to light. I was doing fine, assuming a carnival, or circus of some sort, at least until the two women came by. One of them just set me off.

A group of the “Victorians” crossed the road to the corner near where I was sitting. One of the women was gesturing rather broadly and spoke with the worst upper class accent I have ever heard. I don’t think she intended a parody but that is what my subconscious heard.

I was instantly enraged and several flashing thoughts went through my head. The first was “whore.” The subtext running along with it was that “no decently educated woman would act so in public, talk loudly and be so arrogant and condescending. She’s a lower class tart aping her betters.” And in the same instant, coming though my head like a braided stream in full spring run-off, there was the raging hatred that comes with having a great aunt sold as a young girl to one the actual upper class families so the rest of the girl’s kin (my ancestors) had more food. The hatred of the lowers for the uppers is apparently a long lasting deal. And yet there I was, a “lower” feeling deeply offended by this parody of the “uppers.”

Now I have worked as a servant and been treated rather shabbily at that, but even then at 17 I knew I could just walk away and rejoin the 20th century. And I did. Also, I have a decent, if not stellar, education and I even have a chequing account of my own, so why I should react so fast and hard? I can only attribute it to ingrained classism. I guess I learnt more at boarding school than I realized.

Actors and actresses be damned. The creator of this is someone worth meeting.

via Wimp.com

In a book by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, two UK researchers present an impressive amount of data to show that, essentially, social responsibility and a sense of obligation to the welfare of other human beings is a requirement of good society.

Not a new idea you say?  Of course not. Necessary to speak it nonetheless.

For a good review/interview, go here. And don’t miss the comments. Some of them are delightfully Heilbrunnian.

peardg, photographer

This is what our “winter” Olympic weather is like. Cherry blossoms. In February. Gads, the implications.