the rix mix

On December 7, 1941, the sunday Japanese planes blew apart the United States Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Mrs. Joseph S. Rixon was in the 9th month of her first pregnancy. A baby boy was born two weeks later, sickly, but he survived & eventually grew healthy. Maizie Amidon Rixon had been married to Joseph Samuel Rixon for under a year. She was a beautiful woman in her early twenties, stubborn & emotionally fragile, with the sophistication & conceits of a middle-class New Jersey girl who lived near New York City & had not suffered at all during the Great Depression. Men adored her.

Nothing so singularly horrific as Pearl Harbor had happened to the United States of America since day three of the Battle of Gettysburg, & would not happen again until September 11, 2001. But Gettysburg occurred in the middle of a terrible war, & it was no longer a living memory in 1941, & it was counted as a victory. Pearl Harbor was a beginning. I try to imagine what my mother felt between the events of Pearl Harbor & the birth of my oldest brother.

It's our sub-tropical season, so undress accordingly.

Marc Cooper quotes Tim Frasca on Pressident George Bush's speech on Tuesday:
“It’s like listening to an autistic child describe his private relationship to the patterns on the windowpane. Nothing can penetrate that mental landscape.”

I was in the cowardly peacenik generation. Meet the chickenhawk generation:
"I'm not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country," he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, "and I wasn't going to pass that up."
I understand, young man. But aren't you casting doubts on the patriotic motives of kids who'd rather take their chances in uniform than drearily work their way through junior college on a full-time job at Walmart? Maybe the Army needs to change its recruitment strategy:
Hey, beer-swilling yellow spawn of Rove,
why not go where your leaders feared to walk, walk, walk?
If you cannot serve your nation for love,
then do it because Democrats are all talk, talk, talk.

Your socialist professors are liars,
& tenure means they aren't going to quit, quit, quit.
So try on our camouflaged attires,
& prove to them that they are full of shit, shit, shit.

There is plenty of brew in Iraq.
We will issue you a laptop & a gun, gun, gun.
If you still love war when you come back,
You can flack a fascist candidate & run, run, run.

As one can plainly see, there is no reason for any but #6, #8, & #9 to be posted anywhere near a courtroom in the United States, & those were not only Hebrew prohibitions. One is legally permitted to break any of the others, or to obey them, it's a personal choice. The first four aren't even concerned with ethical behavior, although I was raised to consider #3 discourteous in public.

1. You shall not worship any other god but God.
2. You shall not make a graven image.
3. You shall not take the name of God in vain.
4. You shall not break the Sabbath.
5. You shall not dishonor your parents.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not commit perjury.
10. You shall not covet.
(Code of Hammurabi)
Although the Christian right is inclined to believe Cecil B. DeMille's famous movie starring Charton Heston is an American historical docudrama, the route from the Sinai code to our present constitutional system is very indirect.

It's infuriating. Even at this crucial point in Iraq President Bush continues to play games with himself & the American people. Rather than speak directly to us, he's delivering a speech tonight at Fort Bragg before an audience of soldiers & letting us eavesdrop. C'mon, we've seen this road show before, the sea of clean uniforms cheering the Commander-in-Chief cheerleader. It's a staged deception, like Bob "swinging a golf club at Camp Pendleton" Hope disguising his terrible jokes with a line of dancing Hollywood starlets. "Supporting the troops" is not a strategy. If you want to recruit more young people for the armed forces, Mr. President, give a speech to your daughters.In fact, the Prez has no intention of speaking to the American People, or he would be broadcasting from the Oval Office with a gravitas sufficient for supplanting NY Yankees baseball on WCBS-AM. Instead, he's chosen to perform for his wavering loyalists in red state media markets.

I haven't met a woman lately
who loves the beach the way
I love the beach. A beach is
not a place you go every day
in July & August & sometimes
in June & Septamber
to fry yourself between
noon & 3 pm. You go
because you want to
& when you want to go,
which is very often.
A beach is best
when the sun is at angle
of 75 degrees or less,
except in the winter.
A beach is best when the tide
is moving quickly out
or quickly in &
something is exposed
that may fascinate,
but always the local landcape
is changing as you watch.
A gray day never changes your plans.
A beach is nearly always romantic
even when you are alone,
although a beach also makes you
feel more alone. You feel
especially virtuous on a day
that is gray & you are alone,
as if you have made a sacrifice,
but you have not.

You're Fired

One doesn't stand on a ladder to make a poem.
The poem is the ladder.

Think back now on what the right wing considered impeachable offenses committed by President Clinton. The United States may well have been better shape now had they succeeded in removing Clinton, but only because it would have either delayed or prevented a Bush presidency. They were hysterical about the Clintons possibly having profited illegally through a real estate deal, not entirely unjustified suspicions, but without merit & completely unconnected to matters of "national security." By contrast, hhe hubris of the Bush adminstration is nearly beyond belief, a disgusting concoction of naked greed, lies, & religious hypocrisy.

I don't want the Bush White House to set a public date for withdrawal from Iraq. I don't even want those people to admit they were mistaken. I want President George W. Bush to get a grip on reality - to do this he would probably need the kind of heart-to-heart, mind-to-mind conversation with his father that he has never had, that his father may be ready to have. Skip the isolated Texas ranch, take a boat away offshore from Kennebunkport, don't even make a pretense of fishing.

The current President of the United States has an opportunity to do what his predecessor was eventually forced to do on a far less serious matter; admit to himself & those closest to him that he was terribly, inexcusably, morally wrong about something. He doesn't have to confess this to the American people. The great wrong wasn't his desire to remove Saddam from power; it was his particular personal application of will to do so, which was - to use his own religious language, not mine - a sinful application. & having begun the war on false premises, on deceit, with "shock & awe" - as if we are agents of the primitive sort of justice dispensed by the Almighty I am of the Sinai, Mr. Bush must now take truthful stock of his & our & the Iraqi people's awful predicament that has resulted in an uncountable number of human deaths & mutilations. By looking at & listening to Mr. Bush, one would never guess that he is truly accepting & carrying the moral responsibility of his decisions. War should never be pursued on the assumption that it is not immoral. It is immoral even when it becomes unavoidable. If great military leaders have understood this, why can't our president? It doesn't require deep theological reflection or crawling on one's stomach to the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe. It is time for George W. Bush to act, decision-by-decision, to correct himself & his policies. The Iraqi War cannot be morally justified. Nor can we believe that the suffering of the Iraqi people is redemptive. Suffering is suffering.

I wish many of the ideals voiced by Mr. Bush over the past few years were spoken by a leader of wiser & more generous spirit. Now the President must design a realistic yet moral strategy for replacing the Saddam regime & getting out of Iraq. Even if this strategy hurts those friends & allies who are profiting from the war, & offends those friends & allies whose foreign policy is inspired by John the Revelator. & if his counselors - his Rices & Rumsfelds - cannot or will not provide this strategy, accept their resignations & replace them. It's hard to imagine anything more difficult for George W. Bush than reaching that deeply inside himself. But it also was hard to imagine William J. Clinton going as far inside himself as he did.

from The Magnificent Seven:

Bandito Calvera (Eli Wallach): Last month we were in San Juan. Rich town. Rich town, much blessed by God. Big church. Not like here - little church, priest comes twice a year. BIG one. You'd think we'd find gold candlesticks. Poor box filled to overflowing. Do you know what we found? Brass candlesticks. Almost nothing in the poor box.
Sidekick: But we took it anyway.
Calvera: I KNOW we took it anyway. I'm trying to show him how little religion some people now have.

The unleashing of Karl Rove on the topic of 9/11 - truly a sign of desperation

Even at Billy Graham's final New York revival, I think an appearance by Bibleman (& his sidekicks Biblegirl & Cipher) would be a tough sell to gotham-area kids, who osmose far more sophisticated juvenile entertainment despite what their parents want.

I've always been rather proud of my brother Jim for following his "call," which was a lengthy & difficult mid-life process. He's never been comfortable with extremes - politicizing religion or expecting effusive displays of religious fervor. He'd never get in your face about being "born again." More likely he'd ask if you'd be interested in joining a choir, or just suggest it'd be swell to see you in church more often. Jim's more "old-fashioned" than conservative. He now looks remarkably like our dad, who also enjoyed an audience. I have never attended a service in any of his own churches.

• I'm doing crucial work in a factory that makes humvee armor.
  
• I'm a snotty fourteen year old neocom boy, leave me alone.
• My parents pay my college tuition, so it would be unfair for me to waste some needy person's enlistment benefits.
• I'm saving myself until I'm married. No, wait, could you repeat that question?
• Rather than join ROTC here at Liberty University, I chose the Baptist Blogger Club as my phys ed elective.
• If you don't ask, I won't tell.
  
• Since I've in favor of the draft, I'll gladly volunteer to be among the first conscripts.
• My fundamentalist religion forbids me to personally take up the sword.
• You liberals would LOVE for me to enlist. If too many Young Republicans are over there fighting the War Against Terror, there won't be enough of us to fight the War Against You Liberals here at home.
• Who me? I'm only a woman.
• Secretary Rumsfeld says we already have enough troops in Iraq.
• I have an unspecified, disqualifying disability.
• Thomas Jefferson was not a soldier. I suppose you hate him too.

Poet Jim Cohn recently said a poem of mine was "the best poem i have seen in many years, let alone the most beautiful poem on poetry written in the last 10 years." Jim's praise I take seriously. He is after all an excellent editor, author of four books of poems, two of prose essays, recorded five cds, & runs the ever-expanding Museum of American Poetics. I, on the other hand, have no books, no music (although I was a capable musician & composer), a few simple webpages.

I've had it proven to me over the past decade that I can hardly function in some ways without a woman in my life. I need the basic love, acceptance, friendship & intimacy; that's what I lean on. A bumpy, quasi-love affair of four months duration in 2003 produced this blog & an excellent template for a modest web magazine. My last substantial love relationship generated an on-going newspaper column, a job change, & enough enthusiasm about poetry to complete a major project & accept an invite to read at the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival, not to mention rejuvenating the weekly radio show iI had at the time. Itisn't about needing a mother or a muse. I'm just better with someone than without.

She's sloppin' the hogs
(in a black velvet gown)

Mommy shot Daddy
(now I gotta milk the cows)

You had the last laugh on me
(but it's the last laugh you'll ever have)

I'd just love the Bush twins in uniform.

Took late afternoon train to Rahway (tempted to stay on it all the way to Long Branch); stopped at Dunkin' Donuts at the Shell station - Filipino woman there who used to work overnights when I lived nearby, so glad to see me she gave me a free donut; went to Rahway River Park, hung out with lethargic ducks, sketched a couple of craggy trees next to the pond. Really lost myself, so it was something of a shock to pedal back out on to busy St. Georges' Ave. & down to CVS to pick up a spindle of sale cd-r's. There were no geese in Rahway Park, less droppings, healthier grass - maybe the "natural habitat" bushes & short wire fences along the pond have really helped ease the problem. Good sign that a red-wing blackbird kept flying out of the bushes by the pond, they prefer thick vegetation & some isolation - the more rugged, inaccessible (unless you enjoy poison ivy) areas of Sandy Hook are loaded with them.

But I only feel really comfortable on a bike in Ocean Grove & beach towns south of there, where a lot of people actually ride bicycles on local errands & over to the ocean instead of taking their cars. The old-fashioned "Beach Cruiser" is still popular, & I'd ride one if I had a place at the shore.
Got that temporarily outta my system. & to think I wanted my niece to get married in her mom's RCA church. I was blinded by sentimentality. One thing my niece ain't is homophobic.

It's impossible. Christianity is no more likely to be convinced that homosexuality is something God makes you than Islam will ever believe Christians are not infidels. Take the "scientific" aspects of the Bible as allegory, metaphor, myth, as most educated Christians do. That's alright. Never mind that the Bible endorses GENOCIDE, POLYGAMY, SLAVERY. These can all be explained away, reinterpreted. Dance around whether or not it's absolutely necessary to accept the Great Flood, the Virgin Birth, the Fish & the Loaves; only the strictest fundies tie you to a chair & beat you with a length of rubber garden hose to make sure you really believe before they let you take a seat inside. Eat BOTTOM FEEDING CRUSTACEANS & hot dogs containing PORK BYPRODUCTS. You can even ordain WOMEN. But do not ever, ever say homosexuality is not SINFUL. If you are Christian, you are to HATE homosexuality. Love the homosexual, of course. But HATE, DESPISE, CONDEMN, PUNISH homosexual behavior & those who approve of it. Of course, homosexuals have secular rights, even guaranteed by the Constitution if you're a shameless liberal supporter of church / state separation. But if you support homosexuals in the church, you deserve to be EXCOMMUNICATED, DEFROCKED, SHUNNED, DESPISED, DRIVEN OUT OF THE COMMUNITY OF GOD-FEARING MEN, to wander the wilderness surviving on GRASSHOPPERS, ROOTS, and honey of WILD BEES, until you DIE slowly and MISERABLY and GOD sends you to ETERNAL DAMNATION, which judgment of course kind & compassionate Christians do not presume to make but nonetheless have FAITH that the ALMIGHTY will BURN HOMOSEXUALS & their SUPPORTERS IN NEVER-ENDING FIRES.

Bishops Vote on Ban for Abusive Priests - Yahoo! News
The tone of these proceedings suggests that these old guys, so remote from the pulse of the parish, are still dealing with the horrendous problem in terms of protecting & preserving their own closed culture.

At the request of Rupert Murdoch, the United States temporarily suspended all government & military operations today because the parents of 11-year-old Asheana Maihepat are so unhappy that her Queens school printed the "horrible picture" in her yearbook instead of one they wanted. They're demanding all copies be recalled. A teary-eyed Asheana said the episode has upset her so much that she has decided to skip graduation next week & join a convent. The family says anything less than a total recall is not good enough, reasoning that the yearbook is Asheana's legacy among all her classmates at PS 121. The family also reasoned that printing the photo on the front page of a major newspaper might solve the problem & placate the girl.

Here's a frightening story, although nobody should be surprised. A self-appointed "committee" of theocrats determined to examine, approve & elect the next Republican presidential candidate. USATODAY.com - Christian right groups set sights on '08
It seems very strange indeed that even the radical Christian right would want the Rev. Don Wildmon on any committee to examine the beliefs of Republican presidential candidates. Aren't Republicans also the party of Big Business? The GOP was better known as "white country club" before they added "white Christians." After an unsuccessful nine year campaign to bring to heel or send to hell the Disney Corporation - which employs about 50,000 at Disneyworld alone (many unionized) - Wildmon is now willing to destroy Ford Motor in order to save America's soul. What can Wildmon possibly ask, say, Jeb Bush? "Governor Bush, do you believe - & I know that you are a convert to the Papist conspiracy - that Earth was created 6000 years ago and that Disneyworld is a sinful stain on the map of Florida?"

Mondo Kim's popular music store in New York was busted last week for "bootlegging." Employees - these are "retail clerks" - were arrested & thrown in the slamma - treated like they were working for a mafia assembly line out of an old warehouse in Queens. The RIAA Enforcers were prepared to build up the bust the way Jersey State Police calculate marijuana raids - retail by the bone. But it turned out only 51 "mix tapes" were seized out of an inventory of 120,000 titles. Wow. Although the music "industry" claimed to be protecting musicians & consumers, you'd be hard-pressed to find any artist represented on a Nu Yawk mix-tape who says it's hurting business. In fact, it's a good, even necessary promotion to be featured on those things - which become obsolete after a week or two anyway in the flighty music club world.

What's with the weather report? Temp was 85 degrees here at 2 am this morning. Forecast for mid-80's today, high 60's overnight. It's still the forecast. Actual current temp is 63 with breeze from SSE; hey weatherpeople, that's called a sea breeze!

Aside to someone who never reads this Blog: How much would you do your work - & enjoy it - if you weren't being paid for it? Only you know the answer.

# posted by Bob : 9:17 PM  3 tips & comments

Share |

A robin runs across the grass,
hops at things. They do not mind
early evening & shadows,
they are attentive, not nervous.
You can watch robins for a long time
if you keep your distance
as they keep their distance
from each other in June.
They will not fly far away
until they are ready.

There's something wrong with people who have to listen to music - or have sound coming out of speakers - every moment of their waking hours. Alot of people have to live with this at work all day & can't even choose the station. But then to stick little speakers in one's ears for the walk to car, the car radio on the ride home, & at home more music or talk radio or TV until bedtime. Add to that now the pointless chatter of people using up their cell phone "anytime minutes." Their talk invades my space, on the train, on the street, in supermarkets, the obnoxioous beeping of walkie talkies, a sound I associate with drug dealers. The guy across the hallway has radio music playing whenever he's home, many types from gospel to oldies. It's always loud & it's constant I'm glad I don't share a wall.

I need periods without noise. Because as composer John Cage pointed out, there's no such thing as silence. Even in a sealed, acoustic room one hears the beating of one's heart & the hum of one's nervous system. & around here there is rarely no sound coming from outside - it's the reason I enjoy staying up until three or four a.m. Most blog entries dated after 11 pm were actually written a few hours later, during a late night period when there's little traffic & no one on the street (although some nervous guy upstairs paces, I plan to break his legs soon). I might listen to a bit of music on the internet or after I get into bed & read. I fully appreciate the best music I hear at home by not playing one thing after another. Yesterday I was listening to a new CD of Charles Ives piano music, hardly background music anyway. Many of the pieces were short. Every so often I paused the player at the end of a cut until I felt ready to go on.

In the midst of a worse heat wave than we had in Jersey all of last summer. But this is more typical spring-becomes-summer June weather. Many people seem to expect a gradual transition between the seasons, & it happens, if one measures by tree time. But there is spring, & then there is summer, as some zen poet noted. We had spring & now it is summer. When the heat breaks later this week, it may briefly feel like spring, but it will still be summer.

Thought about heading down to Point Pleasant today. but sometimes I want to go in the evening & sometimes I don't want to go alone in the evening, & this is one of those times. It has been an eternity since I kissed a woman at the end of the boardwalk overlooking Manasquan Inlet.

Listen to my Wednesday WFMU radio program. Features "Heatwave" performed by Sol K. Bright & His Hollywaiians .

The right wing can't trust its own judges. Are Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas "activist" or "non-activist" when they dissent in the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling that the federal government has the power to prevent sick patients in California from smoking home-grown marijuana that a doctor recommended to relieve their chronic pain? Justice O'Connor writes: "Relying on Congress' abstract assertions, the court has endorsed making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use. This overreaching stifles an express choice by some states ... to regulate medical marijuana differently." Even so, just because a government has the power to do something doesn't mean it must exercise that power.

As Bernard Berenson wrote, "Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." The religious right doesn't want consistent constitutionalists, it wants consistent ultra-conservative Biblical moralists.
A new Associated Press poll demonstrates why I am so skeptical of any claim that there is consistency to religious beliefs in the United States of America. 70% of poll respondants say they "know God really exists" & have "no doubts about it." No doubts ever? All the great Christian theologians acknowledge doubt as a natural human trait & an active component of faith. It's part of what we are. Even Jesus, who was "fully human." wrestled with doubts. This poll question is an example of how we fool ourselves by providing an answer we think we ought to give rather than an honest one. & while 84% of those polled said religion was "very important" in their lives, 31% indicated their religion was something other than Catholic, protestant, Jewish. Muslim or Buddhist. Surely that 31% is not comprised entirely of Hindus, wiccans & animists. & what of the Christians? Including all "protestants" under one heading is tremendously deceptive. Within protestanism, even on the religious right Jerry Falwell & Pat Robertson are preaching competing, incompatible doctrines, & they are just the most obvious examples among dozens.

Catholics, along with many millions of other "religious" Americans, have good reason to be suspicious of politicized evangelical & fundamentalist protestants, whose attitudes about America's spirituality are at the core narrowly sectarian even when they masquerade as ecumenicists. Which is, I suppose, why 64% of those polled answered that religious leaders "should not try to influence government decisions." Most I am certain don't believe this in any doctrinaire way; these people are just reacting against those highly visible "prophets" who claim their divinely-annointed "moral clarity" entitles them to influence government decisions way out of proportion to their actual number of followers.

I have a good deal of experience with "mental illness." Then. with the help of others, I recognized it in myself. The recognization meant that I no longer had something to hide, & I no longer needed to blame my periods of deep sadness on what I knew in my heart wasn't enough to make me so sad & ineffective. People like me are not "cured." We learn to observe, maintain & treat outselves. We must figure out how to self-heal. There's more spiritual reasonableness in this process than science. Being reasonable with oneself & others is much more difficult than arithmetic. After contemplating the mysteries of seratonin uptake chemistry, I concluded it was primarily a "liberal arts" matter. I'm not an activist advocate of mental health awareness, but I'm definitely in the Speak Out category.

For the first time since I sought professional help in 1999, I had to inquire of someone if he was making assessments of my mental & emotional capacities to do something. It was very hard for me to raise my concerns, first with myself & then with him. One of my weaknesses is that I am often not sufficiently suspicious of others, skepticism being my normal mode. Something wasn't adding up, & it warranted my suspicion, or at a least a warning that suspicion was imminent unless we used reasonableness. He doesn't know me well enough to compare my current state of mind with any previous state. He can't use my sense of humor as a barometer, because he doesn't understand it. He also doesn't comprehend my creative point of view; my art is what it seems to be; on the occasions when it deceives, it is clearly about deception. & I often point to music, art & landscapes that delight me. Perhaps I'm unreasonable. He needs to spare a few minutes so i can ask him what he would like to know about me, or tell me what he already knows.

From Associated Press: At 5 p.m. Friday, just as Frank Sinatra's "Summer Wind" faded out, WCBS listeners heard a voice announce, "Why don't we play what we want? There's a whole world of songs out there." The first song played on the new 'CBS-FM: "Fight for Your Right" by the Beastie Boys.

From Infinity Broadcasting Corp.: What is Jack?

Jack in New York is a dramatic change from traditional radio formats. You told us that you are tired of stations that play the same 300 songs over...and over...and over.

101.1 Jack FM is playing what we want…the best songs from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, right up through today no matter where you first heard them. Just listen, it's like your iPod on shuffle.(*)

Join Jack as we blast away the traditional rules of radio with something different...

It’s fun, it’s fresh, it’s what New York has been looking for.

What Jack really is: "We did a lot of market research and found a hole in the market that wasn't being served by any other station," said Chad Brown, CBS' vice president and general manager.

(*)Whose iPod? Mine would include Fugazi, Charles Ives, Funkadelic, & Peggy Lee.

Today I was at the Galloping Hill Inn (some old-timers still know it as Peterson's) at Five Points, 325 Chestnut Street, in Union NJ. There was nothing special about the hot dog or the roll. The hot dog was a pasty, skinless thing - I didn't bother to ask what brand. The bun - always the real selling point in the past - was definitely not the memorable Zimmerman's roll of yore. Adequate. The waffle fries were excellent, crispy brown on the outside & spiced with what I think was paprika. Above average onion rings. Potato salad ordinary (R.I.P. Rahway's The Waiting Room). It's a large menu. My lunch companion enjoyed the inexpensive "crab cakes" which at the price were certainly not loaded with genuine crabmeat but were superior fast food fried fish cakes. My iced tea had hardly any ice & was served unsweetened with lemon slices, comparable to Wendy's. Sit down service - it was drizzling outside - was quick & friendly, the waitress a fiftyish woman, a familiar type who'd probably worked there for years &, as I remarked to my friend, could well have been a high school classmate. Lunch hour parking was an annoyance due to an affair at the adjacent catering hall. A worthwhile destination for local people, & for anyone who wants to have a look at the "legend" - the old whitewashed wooden building. But in a region known for many variations of great hot dogs, including Charlie's just up the road in Kenilworth, Galloping Hill Inn is not a contender.
Galloping Hill Inn is to the right of the orange pin. I grew up about mile south of this location, in Roselle Park.

Sure looks like Chuck Coulson isn't so born again after all. He certainly hasn't truly repented of his sins, despite time in the slammer. Brother Chuck says of Mark "Deep Throat" Felt, "A hero is someone that you want other people to emulate... and to say he was a hero because he broke his trust...he broke the confidence of the president of the United States."

Coulson's Christian committment is so shaky that if he worked for a President he knew to be a Satan worshipper, & that black masses were being performed in the White House, his sense of loyalty would prevent him from ratting the boss out. But Coulson is secure in the knowledge that he is justified by faith, good works be damned.

How to respond to someone who e mails me that her great passion is painting - house painting - & writes this just before she goes to work - on a sunny Memorial Day? I could only quote the wonderful composer Olivier Messiaen, who once wrote that his only ambition in life was "to love & be loved."

Or to mangle William Carlos Williams on poetry: You can't get the news from spackling a wall, but you also won't die for lack of what is found there.