arse poetica

Molly Ivins, Raisin' Hell in Heaven

Talk about a true original. Forget making 'em like Molly anymore; did they ever make another like Molly? It's a sad day for so many of us -- political rubberneckers, good liberals, lovers of a turn of phrase, feminists happy to see one of their own, those who just needed a good laugh. Lordy knows Molly provided enough of those in her long and storied career. How lucky we were to have her POV!

Molly Ivins, Populist Texas Columnist, Dies at 62.

Molly Ivins, the liberal newspaper columnist who delighted in skewering politicians and interpreting, and mocking, her Texas culture, died today at her home in Austin. She was 62.

Her death, after a long fight with breast cancer, was confirmed by her personal assistant, Betsy Moon.

In her syndicated column, which appeared in about 350 newspapers, Ms. Ivins cultivated the voice of a folksy populist who derided those who acted too big for their britches. She was rowdy and profane, but she could filet her ideological opponents with droll precision.

After Patrick J. Buchanan, as a conservative candidate for president, declared at the 1992 Republican National Convention that America was engaged in a cultural war, she said his speech “probably sounded better in the original German.”

Classic.

Thank you, Molly! Thank you for keeping us sane. Rest in peace.

UPDATE: The Observer's tribute here. Is there anyone out there not tearing up at this?

And the Berkeley Daily Planet is accepting tributes to Molly Ivins to be published as they roll in at berkeleydailyplanet.com. Details at the Nation site. [via]

[photo credit]

It Was All Just a Dream

I had the WORST dream this morning -- the kind where you don't even want to say out loud what happened, the kind where you wake up and you're so disoriented and filled with grief that you don't know where you are or when it is and you have a moment of wishing that it could be before that awful thing happened so as to negate it, render it a temporal impossibility. Awful.

You know when you've spent half your dream sobbing and you wake up and the feeling remains with you and your heart feels bruised from the shock and the pain? My chest literally ached when I dragged myself from bed. I felt waterlogged, heavy and drained at the same time.

But look! The Dingo's okay!

db, who is the best daddy in the world, sent me this photo this afternoon to remind me. It's amazing how powerful dreams are and how thoroughly they insinuate themselves into our limbs and muscles and lodge in our hearts and split us from the inside. I feel like I need to rinse off and ring out each cell in my body to rid myself of this feeling. No, thank you.

Edwards 08 Looking Better and Better

Kate Michelman, formerly of NARAL, has signed on to advise the Edwards campaign and Amanda from Pandagon has signed on to head the web-related effort. That's a lot of highly visible feminists in the Edwards camp, and it is making me love Edwards by association, so it's working!

In speaking truthfully about poverty (and not just when spotlights were trained on him) and in hiring these two high-profile women, it seems that Edwards is the real maverick in this race. I know folks are congratulating Amanda, but, really, it's Edwards who should be congratulated. He just got damn lucky. Welcome to NC, Amanda!

UPDATE 02.01.07: Melissa, aka Shakespeare's Sister, has signed on, too. Shakes Sis is one of my favorite bloggers, and I am curious and excited about her participation in the Edwards campaign. The plot thickens, as does the Edwards camp's feminist cred.

The Only Reason to Watch the Grammys

WOOHOO!! db, set the Tivo!

Sting and the Police to reunite.

The Police will reunite to perform at this year's Grammys ceremony, the Recording Academy announced Tuesday.

The award-winning group, which won five Grammys and turned out hits such as "Roxanne" and "Every Breath You Take," will open the event -- 23 years after breaking up.

The band -- singer Sting, guitarist Stewart Copeland and drummer Andy Summers -- fused reggae with pop and rock, and last performed together in 2003 when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Global Television will air the 49th annual Grammy Awards live from Los Angeles on Feb. 11.

This would NEVER happen, but I wish they would play "Born in the 50s" or, better yet, "So Lonely," or, hell, anything from Outlandos (besides "Roxanne").

(AP Photo)

People are Starving.

U.S. home to set world price record at $155 mln

Forbes.com, the online site of Forbes magazine, on Thursday said timber and real estate baron Tim Blixseth has just upped the ante in the price of the world's most expensive home, planning to build and sell a home for $155 million.

To say that I have no respect for this would be to suggest that it might be remotely possible at some point in the future for there to exist the remotest modicum of a scintilla of a suggestion of a fantasy wish of a vestige of respect for this, and I assure you such a possibility does not exist in this universe as we know it.

I suddenly find myself desperately nostalgic for Jello Biafra.

Poor Sweetie!

Poor Finny hurt her dew claw and had to go to the vet today for a little TLC.

Todos el Sitting Bull

I just had a moment reading the end of this article and thought I'd share.

Restoring Dignity to Sitting Bull, Wherever He Is.

In an office in Fort Yates sits Ron His Horse Is Thunder, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a great-great-great grandson of Sitting Bull. A lawyer by training, tall and lean, he expresses support for the Mobridge effort to honor his ancestor in a manner befitting the man. But when asked whether he believes Sitting Bull is buried on that bluff, he slowly shakes his head no.

Then where is Sitting Bull?

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a tribal historian and storyteller who is overseeing improvements to the Fort Yates grave site, tries to explain. “A person like Sitting Bull was never meant to just die and disappear,” she says.

Yes, but where is he?

Smiling patiently, the woman opens her arms and spreads her hands.

Beautiful. And why not?

The post title comes from a rude-seeming reference (which is not meant to be taken as the gist of my point), but I mean it respectfully, because it, too, harkened to such a beautiful moment that it's imprinted on my mind.

When my pals PM and JM and db and I were in Argentina [::siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh::], we were hiking one day on a remote island in the Beagle Channel, an island uninhabited by humans, a beautiful, pristine, perfect place. At the start of our hike our hike leader was explaining a few things about our three-hour jaunt and at the end of his speech one of our group piped up w/ the quintessential tourist question: where are the bathrooms? The guide looked at us with a smile and said with a sweep of his hand, "Todos el bano."

In other news, Sitting Bull's great-great-great grandson's name is poetry.

Japan's "Birth-giving Machines" Miraculously Start Spontaneous Feminist Revolution

Who needs conspiracy theories about patriarchy when the likes of this guy just say these things out loud?

Japan women called child machines.

Japan's health minister has referred to women as "birth-giving machines" in a speech to a local political meeting.

Hakuo Yanagisawa called for women to do their best to bear children in order to counter Japan's plummeting birth rate and rapidly ageing population.

"Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head," he said.

He added: "Although it may not be so appropriate to call them machines."

Them.

I am literally agog. All I can think about is that Pat Robertson quote: "I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period.”

Cretinous megalomaniac fascists.

Rocket* Science

I love this first section so much that I am vowing to make Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma the next next book on my list.

I mean, can you stand it?? Actual plainspoken truth in the Times! Somebody note the date and time, please. This is a momentous occasion.

Unhappy Meals.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I’ll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

What a great closing sentence. A real forehead slapper.

[Pictured: Arugula, also known as rocket*.]

[Photo credit]

If You Build It, They Will Come

 

As usual, I'm in a rush and I don't have much time to think about this, but here's a nice list of sites of human ingenuity and an addition to my ever-growing list of places to visit.

Pictured above: Aya Sofya (aka Hagia Sophia), which tops the list. This I've seen, though I could stand to see it again, and the sooner the better.

Powers of 10: Two leading structural engineers pick their favorite feats of (hu)man-made wonder.

There were structural engineers long before there was even a name for them. Throughout history, whenever human beings have attempted to build on a massive or merely complicated scale, someone handled the engineer’s job: figuring out how a temple or a bridge or a great wall might be constructed and, more important, how it could withstand the primal and unrelenting laws of gravity. For most of recorded time this was done without technical assistance, either by hand or by semi-educated guess. And while much is made today about the merging of architecture and engineering, history’s great master builders were all designer-engineers.

What's missing from the list? For some reason, even though it's not really in line w/ the article, the first thing that came to mind was the Buddhas in Afghanistan that the Taliban tore down. And what about Angkor Wat (currently #1 on my wish-I-could-go list)?

[via]