Sister Machine Gun of Patience
Sounds just right for someone who was once diagnosed as passive-aggressive.
Myself being, to some extent, a product of the Cold War (I was born while the Korean War was raging), I am bemused at the joint image of Castro, Mandela, and the Dalai Lama. But I think I see Ken's point; there aren't many world figures left for whom that was the major coming-of-age and coming-of-power event.
John Paul II did some very good things. He was excellent at ecumenical relationships with, not only other Christian churches, but also with non-Christians: Jews, Muslims, even Buddhists. (Remember, he met with the Dalai Lama. One wonders if they addressed each other as "Your Holiness.")
His travels around the world brought a lot of attention to positive things, and shared the message of the Gospel with millions, rich and poor, powerful and ordinary. He seemed to genuinely like people, individually and in large crowds, and they liked him, too. This is a quality indicative of a great politician -- for a recent American example, think Bill Clinton. And I think John Paul II certainly had as much or more to do with the fall of Communism as Reagan did, especially in his support of Solidarity, though mostly it collapsed of its own weight.
I didn't agree with all of his policies -- which may be fairly obvious, since I quit going to church altogether on his watch -- but he set an excellent example for forgiveness of those who sin against you when he actually went to meet and pray with the man who had tried to kill him.
And I almost wrote him a letter to thank him when he added the new set of mysteries to the Rosary, concentrating more on Christ's ministry and teaching. I had been doing something similar in private. Now I regret not actually having written the letter.
I hope the next Pope, or maybe the one after him, will go back to the aggiornamento of John XXIII, and fulfill the promise of Vatican II instead of shrinking away from it. Especially that he and his Curia will deal more realistically with matters relating to sex and sexuality in the 21st Century instead of holding onto models of "masculine" and "feminine" that prevailed centuries ago.
But on the whole I think he did a fairly good job. I'd give him a B.
I've mentioned elsewhere that anyone who feels comfortable praying -- not just Catholics, and in these ecumenical times not even just Christians -- should ask the Holy Spirit to guide the Cardinals in choosing the best possible candidate. The example I gave, "Please, God, not Ratzinger!" may do as a minimum.
And in honor of the occasion, a spot of filk:
"...like the thrill that'll get ya
When you get your blog linked
from the Easter Sunday New York Times"
I'd run down to the convenience store where I buy the Sunday Times sometimes -- not every week -- except, being Easter, they're closed. Maybe tomorrow.
The 1950s IPOD reminds me of the first transistor radio I had, in the early 1960s. Similar size, and same purpose: to have my music (or, sometimes, ball games) wherever I went.
Enjoyed the halftime (and some of the commercials) more than the game.
Missed Sir Paul duetting with Terry Bradshaw as he did a couple of years ago, though.
Yes, both are probably at least in part because I'm a Steelers fan.
But I am old enough "to remember the whole Beatles thing first-hand." Or, to put it another way, I've had a crush on Paul for 41 years now. (I was 13 when they first came to the U.S.) It's not as hot as it used to be but it's still there, especially when I get to see him play. At almost 63 (b. June 18, 1942) he can still rock, and note that the songs he picks to sing in person are often rockers. No one does Little Richard as well as Paul does, sometimes, I think, not even Little Richard himself.
Recommended listening: _Run Devil Run_, the oldies LP from which the Vipers' cut Patrick cited comes. There's lots more good stuff there, too.
Yeah, I miss John too. But I think that in the future -- which may even be now -- most of the Beatles songs people remember best will be Paul's rather than John's. Along with several of George's.
{envy} We don't have that option in places like West Virginia. There were two "third-party" candidates for Pres. (Nader and Bednarik) and one for governor, but the main races were D vs. R, and I'm not even sure the Rs found people to run in some of the lesser county offices. (I have to admit I didn't really look at their column much.)
Tara Calishain at Research Buzz recently mentioned a new "Automated Historical Fact-Checker" called H-Bot.
With this thread in mind, I asked H-Bot, "When was George Wallace shot?"
It replied, "George Wallace was shot in 1972."
So H-Bot would appear to be smarter than the LA Times.
However, I then asked another question: "Who started World War I?" and it replied, "Nobody you know." Which is technically true, but not terribly helpful.
Gaaah! 1968!
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Two examples:
I graduated from high school the day Bobby Kennedy was shot.
Freshman orientation at my university was the same week as the Democratic Convention in Chicago -- the TV lounge in the student union was overflowing in the evenings to watch the events there. One day I found the local McCarthy headquarters (Gene, for those young enough to be confused) and picked up a pin, which I still have, though I was still too young to vote, the voting age still being 21 then (and my 18th birthday being two weeks after the election anyway).
The TV lounge on our floor at the dorm was also full election night. Some of us stayed up 'til the bitter end -- I think it was 3 or 4 a.m.-- when they finally declared Nixon the winner.
But Wallace wasn't shot until 1972. And he didn't die, which strictly speaking only made it an assassination *attempt*.
In fact (she notes, somewhat embarrased), my dad voted for Wallace in 1968. Not so much because he agreed with everything the man was for, but just because Dad had grown to dislike both of the major parties, though he remained a registered Democrat -- it was very much a protest vote. In fact, he voted for a third-party candidate in every Presidential election since, I think, until 1992. (Which was his last; Dad died in 1995.) "I couldn't stand the thought of voting for a billionaire," he told me on the phone the night after the election, explaining why he'd voted for Clinton rather than Perot.
Oops. Sorry about "putting": bad edit job there. (First draft was "why are you putting".) And there are probably too many --'s.
I stand by the rest of it, though.
Spam, spam, spam, spam...
"...they will be signing an agreement with the Canada which will no longer permit anyone attempting to dodge the draft to stay within it's borders."? Don't the Canadians get a say in whether or not they will sign this "agreement"?
Also, sprdnword, why did you putting an apostrophe in "it's" there?
And why in f**k, if there's ever a draft again, shouldn't women be drafted too? (Or be draft dodgers too, for that matter.) You don't think women can shoot guns? I said it 35 years ago when I was 19 and Vietnam was raging, and I'll say it now: if you're going to draft men, draft women too!
Oh, and most importantly: if you look at the Bill Status page at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:h.r.00163:
you'll see that there hasn't been any action on this bill since February of 2003 -- 19 months ago. (Twenty months -- since January 2003 -- in the Senate, when it was "referred to Committee", which is where bills go to die.) So unlax, pal. This bill's not going to pass in this Congress, which ends in January 2005 -- and probably not for a long time to come -- so there's not going to be any draft by June 2005.
John Kerry is coming to Steubenville, Ohio, this
weekend.
This is about 4 miles as the proverbial crow flies from my house, maybe six by car. I am thinking about going.
I'm noting this because there is indication in the local newspapers that Kerry is definitely NOT in favor of restricting all access to guns.
One of these articles notes that"Kerry's campaign members have indicated the presidential hopeful would like to be able to trap shoot in the area if his schedule allows.
"I know he's an avid sportsman. I'd heard last time he was looking for shooting opportunities," said Trevas.
Bob Hickle, owner of the Island Creek Sporting Clay trap shooting business on Jefferson County Road 56, said he was contacted two weeks ago by local Democratic representatives to see if Kerry would be able to trap shoot there.
"I told them 'Oh no,'" said Hickle.
Hickle said the representatives indicated Kerry wanted to shoot and use the event as a photo and campaign opportunity.
Hickle said the Democratic representatives thought he would be supportive of Kerry's campaign since he is a pipefitter, union laborer and a Vietnam veteran.
But Hickle said he does not support Kerry.
"I told them he (Kerry) could come and shoot, but he couldn't use it as a campaign vehicle," said Hickle.
Marilee notes:
Nader in the news today:
He won't be on the ballot in Virginia, because they turned their petitions in wrong.
He won't be on the ballot in Maryland, because they didn't get enough signatures.
And his petitions in West Virginia are being investigated because there may be invalid signatures on them. Which doesn't rule them out yet, of course, it just notes that they are iffy.
Our local newspaper, the Weirton Daily Times, is also sometimes notorious for its typos and other errors. They've had the wrong date on their masthead, and the right date but wrong year on inside pages. They frequently refer to one of the local Catholic churches as "Scared Heart." I used to write a weekly column of library-related news, and one week the heading for my column was over an article about a restaurant, which was just to the right of the headline for the restaurant article which, naturally, was over my column.
And in publishing the 1992 sample ballot, which I found a few weeks ago while looking up something else, they notified the voters of our county that:
POLLS OPEN: 6:30 A.M.
POOLS CLOSE: 7:30 P.M.
But I think my favorite WDT error is this headline which I came across in that same search. From page 1, October 24, 1992:
"Backround checks delaying appoval of race track deal"
PNH mused about an America in which someone like Kerry (war hero, pro-business economic centrist, foreign-policy realist) was the conservative candidate would be in pretty good shape. Time was when someone fitting that profile wouldn't have been out of place in the national Republican Party. Right now, we deal with the America we're dealt.
Ah, yes, I remember it well. The 1950s.
One of my first sentences, my mom -- who was one of the few Republicans in our neighborhood -- always told me, was "I yike Ike." (That was 1952, and I was a month or two short of my second birthday.) I considered myself a Republican until 1964, when Goldwater was nominated. I took one listen to his brand of Republicanism -- "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Um, I thought, isn't it still extremism? -- and switched, though since I was still not quite 14 it didn't count for a few years. Only looked back once, briefly, when Ford named Nelson Rockefeller his Veep, but I voted for Carter after Jerry dropped Rocky for Dole. And have not seriously considered a Republican for any major office, State or Federal, since. (Of course, Republicans in West Virginia sometimes help matters there by failing to put candidates up for the U.S. Senate, or in our Congressional district.)
And to think Goldwater would be considered somewhat liberal compared to the GOP's "leaders" today.
And I heard Ralph Nader speak once when he visited our campus when I was in grad school. If anyone had told me then he'd try to run for President, I'd probably have asked, "Of what?" He was far too intense and serious, and seemed to have few "people skills," especially very little sense of humor.
Fandom/political crossover: If you see something large and orange in the Wisconsin delegation next week, that's one of ours. "Orange Mike" Lowrey is a delegate at the DNC. He's pledged to Dean.
BykerSink: There are and never have been any laws in the U.S. about how many newspapers someone can own. I think this is called "freedom of the press."
If you don't like the local paper, you're free to start your own. There are no regulations on how many newspapers a city can have. And if you can't afford a printing press, there's always blogging.
There have been laws, or at least regulations, about how many TV and radio stations one person or company can own, the theory being that the radio and TV bands of the airwaves are finite and need to be regulated so you don't have 20 stations all trying to broadcast on, say, channel 2. Those regs seem to have gone by the wayside thanks to the current FCC leadership, so, for example, we now have at least three or four Clear Channel stations in the Pittsburgh area. (I've lost count since I only listen to two of them myself, though even there I tend to listen to competitor stations more.)
the people who lived out here were at least as smart as you are, probably smarter. Consider the range of all of your knowlege and consider that they knew just as much, but concentrated on surviving in this environment.
And they were used to working hard at it too. I was thinking about this while watching the Colonial House series on PBS. The modern people who had to live as if they were in 1628 were at a disadvantage because they had to learn skills and ways of life (working from dawn to dusk, with only Sabbaths off) that people who really lived in 1628 took for granted.
If there was grumbling in the real 1628 about working twelve-hour days or going to church every Sunday or the women having to do the same boring cooking and washing and cleaning every day, while the men were off planning new and different things, we don't really have records of that because history was mostly written by the wealthy leisured-class (nearly all males) who had time to write.
Back on topic: Likewise we don't hear as much in history from victims of torture or other abuses during wartime because even many of the ones who survived weren't literate -- and much of the history was written by the winners who considered such abuses justified (for one reason or another, though we'd probably consider all their reasons unjustifiable) or by their descendants who didn't know or didn't want to think about the horrible things Grandpa did in the war. But they would mention it if Grandpa, or even worse, Grandma, was one who had the horrible things done to him or her.
Lots of terrible things happen in war. Any job that involves people killing other people, set aside in a different subcategory called "the enemy," is going to lend itself to other abuses of "the enemy". It may be true that there were some wars with less of such, but human nature being what it is, no war that I've ever heard of was atrocity-free.
I just checked the "Days between two dates" section of the World Almanac ("Don't leave home without it"), and it's been 181 days from November 18, 2003, to today, May 17, 2004. I don't know if the Mass. Supreme Court included the extra day because yesterday was Sunday or because of the leap year.
Meanwhile, W doesn't seem to get the resonance between what's happening today and what happened fifty years ago. This is on the Yahoo! Reuters news feed:
TOPEKA, Kan. (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) renewed his call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on Monday as gay and lesbian couples in Massachusetts became the first in the United States to marry legally.
"The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges. All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate," the Republican president said in a written statement.
The White House issued the statement as hundreds of gay and lesbian couples lined up to exchange wedding vows in Massachusetts, and as Bush traveled to Topeka to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
I wonder if it's a coincidence that the official start of legal same-sex marriage in Massachusetts began on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education? I'm betting the MA Supreme Court had it in mind.
Their decision was announced November 18 (I remember because it was my birthday), so this is about six months later. I thought that was the criterion they had in mind.
But it's a nice coincidence.
Cue The Flintstones theme song: "We'll have a gay old time!"
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