That's Amore (performed by Dean Martin)

SONG: That's Amore performed by Dean Martin

BOOK: A Treasury of Italian Love: Poems, Quotations & Proverbs/in Italian and English by Richard A. Branyon (Editor)

POEM: That's Amore (parody), author unknown

When the moon hits your eye,
Like a big pizza pie,
That's amore.

When an eel bites your hand,
And that's not what you planned,
That's a moray.

When our habits are strange,
And our customs deranged,
That's our mores.

When your horse munches straw,
And the bales total four,
That's some more hay.

When Othello's poor wife,
Becomes stabbed with a knife,
That's a Moor, eh?

When a Japanese knight,
Uses his sword in a fight,
That's Samurai.

When your sheep go to graze,
In a damp marshy place,
That's a moor, eh?

When your boat comes home fine,
And you tie up her line,
That's a moor, eh?

When you ace your last tests,
Like you did all the rest,
That's some more "A"s!

When on Mt. Cook you see,
An aborigine,
That's a Maori.

Alley Oop's homeland has,
A space gun with pizzazz,
That's a Moo ray...

A comedian ham,
With the name Amsterdam,
That's a Morey.

When your chocolate graham,
Is so full and so crammed,
That s'more, eh.

When you've had quite enough,
Of this dumb rhyming stuff,
That's "No more!", eh?

QUOTE: "Candle light, moon light, star light, the brightest glow is from love light." ~ Grey Livingston

Possum Kingdom (The Toadies)

Even vampires need love... or a reasonable facsimile thereof - I've been fascinated with The Undead since first watching Bela Lugosi on the screen decades ago... and I still think Salem's Lot is one of the most novel (no pun intended) depictions ever...

I nominate my title tune as The Best Soundtrack for a Car Wash Drive-Thru - crank the volume up to 11, sit back and prepare to visit Goosebump City... :-)

SONG: Possum Kingdom by The Toadies

BOOK: Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

POEM: Der Vampir by Heinrich August Ossenfelder

My dear young maiden clingeth

Unbending fast and firm

To all the long-held teaching

Of a mother ever true;

As in vampires unmortal

Folk on the Theyse's portal

Heyduck-like do believe.

But my Christine thou dost dally,

And wilt my loving parry

Till I myself avenging

To a vampire's health a-drinking

Him toast in pale tockay.

And as softly thou art sleeping

To thee shall I come creeping

And thy life's blood drain away.

And so shalt thou be trembling

For thus shall I be kissing

And death's threshold thou' it be crossing

With fear, in my cold arms.

And last shall I thee question

Compared to such instruction

What are a mother's charms?

QUOTE: "Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire." ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, letter to wife Josephine, December 1795

I Am a Rock (Simon and Garfunkel)

Hey, I never said this Valentine's Day countdown was going to be all wine and roses - one must honor lost love as well, right?

Homestead is only an hour south of me and I've yet to visit this landmark - soon, I've promised myself...

Coral Rock Castle: The House that Heartbreak Built

2/6/2008

Ever been dumped?

Most of us have. And we've got all sorts of stories about how we've tried to win back the object of our affections.

Did you make a mix-tape full of her favorite songs in hopes of warming her heart, a la John Cusack's music geek character in High Fidelity? Or, for a more romantic gesture, you might have serenaded your sweetheart with a boombox outside her bedroom window (John Cusack again, as Say Anything's prototypical "sensitive guy," Lloyd Dobler). Or you might have just left a bunch of pathetic messages on your ex's answering machine, though we have a feeling your success rate's not so high in that case (unless you're John Cusack).

We know of just one man who could beat Cusack's celluloid record for romantic obsession: Ed Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant who spent his whole life pining away for Agnes Scuffs, the sixteen year old girl who ditched him just days before their wedding. After Agnes left him, Leedskalnin was absolutely heartbroken, and pledged to win her back. His method of choice? Building a rock garden in honor of his sweetheart, which he called Coral Rock Castle.

The "castle," located in Homestead, Florida, is no mere monument – it's a huge, sprawling structure, with a nine-ton gate, a 28-ton sun dial, a water well, a fountain, a heart-shaped table, and a 5,000-pound throne, along with a range of other curiosities. In total, the grounds include more than 1,100 tons of oolic limestone.

Leedskalnin began building the castle in 1923, and never let up until his death in 1951. He worked only at night, and gave ten-cent tours of the unfinished palace throughout his lifetime. Sadly, Leedskalnin's lost love, Agnes Scuffs, never came to see the magnificent stone garden that he had built in her honor. Her throne would remain empty forever.

We know it already sounds pretty strange, but here's the weirdest part: Leedskanin, who was only five feet tall and 100 pounds, and had only a fourth grade education, reputedly assembled the entire massive structure himself, with no help – even though some of the individual stones weigh as much as 30 tons, which is heavier than the blocks in the Egyptian pyramids.

Over the years, plenty of people have come up with their own theories about how the lovesick Leedskalnin constructed the amazing monument. Some believe that he was aided by extraterrestrials, or that Leedskalnin himself had supernatural powers. Even the great Albert Einstein had been unable to deduce Leedskalnin's methods, though some engineers believe that Leedskalnin used a block-and-tackle system, which is a common engineering technique. (Though not so common for a fourth-grade dropout.)

Whether or not he was some sort of superhero, or had a race of alien amigos to help him build his palace, it's certain to say that Ed Leedskalnin was one of a kind. We just don't know how Agnes let him slip away.

SONG: I Am a Rock by Simon and Garfunkel

BOOK: Love Rocks Postcard Book by Gardner Juliane

POEM: Burlap Sack by Jane Hirshfield

A person is full of sorrow

The way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand.

We say, "Hand me the sack,"

But we get the weight.

Heavier if left out in the rain.

To think that the stones or sand are the self is an error.

To think that grief is the self is an error.

Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,

Being careful between the trees to leave extra room.

The self is not the load of ropes and nails and axes.

The self is not the miner nor builder nor driver.

What would it be to take the bride

And leave behind the heavy dowry?

To let the thin-ribbed mule browse in tall grasses,

Its long ears waggling like the tails of two happy dogs?

QUOTE: "Man is harder than rock and more fragile than an egg." ~ Yugoslav Proverb

Rust (Lynn Miles)

I just finished watching The Grammy Awards, most of it fairly mediocre but with a few bright spots - loved the Tina Turner/Beyonce duet on Proud Mary, Vince Gill's acceptance speech (a line of which is quoted below) and Herbie Hancock winning Album of the Year... for River: The Joni Letters (f*ck, yes!).

[updated 2/11/08: Herbie Hancock stunned onlookers with a surprise win for album of the year with the Joni Mitchell tribute, "River: The Joni Letters"... The pre-telecast show delivered three trophies to Canadians, including one to the legendary Mitchell for best pop instrumental performance for her song, "One Week Last Summer"... Mitchell received additional kudos from friend Hancock, who also took best contemporary jazz album" - full story here... ]

SONG: Rust by Lynn Miles

BOOK: You Drive Me Crazy: Love Poems for Real Life by Mary D. Esselman, Elizabeth Ash Velez (editors)

POEM: Nothing by Linda Hogan

Nothing sings in our bodies
like breath in a flute.
It dwells in the drum.
I hear it now
that slow beat
like when a voice said to the dark,
let there be light,
let there be ocean
and blue fish
born of nothing
and they were there.
I turn back to bed.
The man there is breathing.
I touch him
with hands already owned by another world
Look, they are desert,
they are rust. They have washed the dead.
They have washed the just born.
They are open.
They offer nothing.
Take it.
Take nothing from me.
There is still a little life
left inside this body,
a little wildness here
and mercy
and it is the emptiness
we love, touch, enter in one another
and try to fill.

QUOTE: "Music is the real place where democracy lives. Every note is equal." ~ Vince Gill, 2008 Grammy Awards

There (Michael Smith)

I am presenting the extremely talented and very dear Sam Pacetti at my concert series this evening - Sam's personal and musical experiences in the last decade have only served to make his music that much more soulful and heartfelt. In the words of Andrew Calhoun:

"Sam Pacetti's first CD, Solitary Travel, was released nearly ten years ago, when he was 22. It got airplay on NPR, Sam was voted best new artist at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, everything was in place for a grander success, and... Pacetti disappeared. Well, not if you lived in St. Augustine, Florida, where he performs Monday nights at the Mill Top Tavern, and there was an occasional Southern festival gig. He hung some drywall and did some surfing, but the real journey involves the simple truth that no matter how much the world loves you, if you don't love yourself you have no home. His latest recording [Union, with Gabe Valla] reflects that journey, through loss and rapture and loves too fragile to survive, all the more passionately embraced... stating so elegantly that all we need for love and wonder is already in our hands. Yes, indeed. And welcome home."

Sam does a stunning version of my blog-titled song, and I intend to request it this evening - I made a compilation CD for my husband on our 27 (or 28th) wedding anniversary of love songs... not the typical "moon/spoon/June" variety but more like the "it ain't easy, baby, but it's ours" philosophy of Brian Joseph's Cal's Chevy (also on the mix).

Included too is Johnsmith's Iris Blue, which I've always related to since our anniversary is in September as well, and my favorite flowers are daisies (not roses) - on a related note, John wrote an incredible song for/about Dave Carter, not too long after Dave's death, and I requested it last night. He said he'd recently been performing it as a spoken word piece so as to focus on the lyrics - I told him that, although I'd always liked the melody, I truly thought it was more powerful without (who knew?... :-)

John also shared a very cool story with me - last year he played a house concert series in Lawrence, Kansas and the hosts told him that one of the locals asked if she could come by and visit with John alone before the concert. Turned out it was Elise (Dave Carter's sister), who said she wanted to meet and thank him for the loving tribute to her brother - she gifted John with a beautiful Buddhist bell that had belonged to Dave... and they both cried...

So much live music, so little time - love, in all its diverse and delightful incarnations, abounds...

SONG: There by Michael Smith

BOOK: The Truth About Love: The Highs, the Lows, and How You Can Make It Last Forever by Dr. Patricia Love

POEM: Scraps of Moon by Denise Levertov

Scraps of moon

bobbing discarded on broken water

but sky-moon

complete, transcending

all violation

Here she seems to be talking to herself about

the shape of a life:

Only Once

All which, because it was

flame and song and granted us

joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit,

turns out to have been what it was

that once, only; every invitation

did not begin

a series, a build-up: the marvelous

did not happen in our lives, our stories

are not drab with its absence: but don't

expect to return for more. Whatever more

there will be will be

unique as those were unique. Try

to acknowledge the next

song in its body-halo of flames as utterly

present, as now or never.

QUOTE: "Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway." ~ Judith Viorst

Big O (Kristina Olsen)

A poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, The Vagina Monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. In this stunning phenomenon that has swept the nation, Eve Ensler gives us real women's stories of intimacy, vulnerability, and sexual self-discovery.

Celebrated as the bible for a new generation of women, The Vagina Monologues has been performed in cities all across America and at hundreds of college campuses. It has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement--V-Day--to stop violence against women. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning masterpiece gives voice to women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again.

Based on interviews with over 200 women about their memories and experiences of sexuality, The Vagina Monologues gives voice to women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again. It is witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise. "At first women were reluctant to talk," Ensler writes. "They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn't stop them."

Also included in this special edition are testimonials--both joyous and heartbreaking--from young women who have performed The Vagina Monologues at their colleges for V-Day, February 14, to raise money for organizations fighting to protect women.

"I am not sure why I was chosen," Eve Ensler writes in her introduction to The Vagina Monologues. "I didn't for example, have girlhood fantasies about becoming "vagina lady" (which I am often called, sometimes loudly across a crowded shoe store.) I could not have imagined that I would one day be talking about vaginas on talk shows in places like Athens, Greece, chanting the word vagina with four thousand women in Baltimore, or having thirty-two public orgasms a night. These things were not in my plans. In this sense, I don't think I had much to do with The Vagina Monologues. It possessed me."

"As I traveled with the piece to city after city, country after country, hundreds of women waited after the show to talk to me about their lives. The play had somehow freed up their memories, pain, and desire. Night after night I heard the same stories -- women being raped as teenagers, in college, as little girls, as elderly women; women who had finally escaped bring beaten to death by their husbands; women who were terrified to leave; women who were taken sexually, before they were even conscious of sex, by their stepfathers, brothers, cousins, uncles, mothers and fathers.... Slowly it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women."

This realization led in 1997 to the founding of V-Day, a nonprofit grass roots movement dedicated to ending violence against women around the world. In three years, V-Day has spread to over 300 colleges, where students and faculty have performed The Vagina Monologues on V-Day, February 14th, as part of a movement to stop violence against women. V-Day has raised over 3 million dollars which it has given to organizations fighting for the rights of women in Afghanistan, to stop genital mutilation in Kenya, and rape crisis centers in Bosnia, Croatia, and Chechnya, as well as hundreds of domestic programs to combat rape and abuse. Thanks to V-Day, The Vagina Monologues has been taken to 20 countries, including China, South Africa, The Philippines, Brazil and Turkey.

To learn more about V-Day, please visit www.vday.org

More about Eve and the book here...

My first experience with The Vagina Monologues was at The Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale about 8 years ago, with Belkys Nery (a local entertainment TV celebrity) as the featured guest - I've seen a handful of other productions since then, less "professional" but always enjoyable.

I had the pleasure of attending a university performance of The Vagina Monologues earlier this week, comprised of mostly students and a few professors, my friend Roxanne being one - she absolutely shone in her recitation of "I Was There in the Room", written by Eve Ensler after witnessing the birth of her granddaughter (full script here - scroll down to page 59). Rox rocked - the entire presentation was wonderfully acted... and I wept, for so many reasons, at her portrayal of the miracle of an infant's emergence into the world.

It was also very cool that my daughter and her friend accepted my invitation to come along - I know they were enlightened, to say the least, and we had a great discussion afterwards over beers and appetizers!

P.S. I bought a T-shirt (with the quote below screenprinted across the back) from another student performance of The Vagina Monologues many years ago - I have yet to wear it in public... :-)

P.P.S. Dar Williams was the featured guest celebrity in Northampton, MA April 3 - 8, 2001, performing The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy (page 56) - reviews can be found here and here.

SONG: Big O by Kristina Olsen

BOOK: The Missing Piece Meets the Big O by Shel Silverstein

POEM: This Poem is Written in the Shape of a Box by Sarah Wiesner

In the past months, at a handful of poetry
readings I’ve heard a total of nine vagina
poems. Two went for alliteration: the
pussy poems. Three for shock value: the
cunt, slit, and box poems. One was a found
poem from an anatomy text: I call it the
vagina poem with reference to the pubic
synthesis. The other three are a blur, but
I’m sure I’m not missing anything in my
forgetting. Just switch the words around in
the others and-Bamn-new vagina poem. As
a woman I suppose that I am somehow
obligated to author a poem about my vagina.
Don’t worry, this isn’t it.

QUOTE: "The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure. The clitoris is simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers to be precise. That's a higher concentration of nerve fibers than is found anywhere else in the body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is twice the number in the penis. Who needs a handgun when you've got a semi-automatic?" ~ Eve Ensler

Dance Me to the End of Love (Leonard Cohen)

Notting Hill is one of my husband's favorite movies - we watched it on TV for probably the bazillionth time this past weekend, and these lines always seem to tickle my fancy... :-)

Anna Scott: I can't believe you have that picture on your wall.

William: You like Chagall?

Anna Scott: I do. It feels like how being in love should be. Floating through a dark blue sky.

William: With a goat playing the violin.

Anna Scott: Yes - happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat.

SONG: Dance Me to the End of Love by Leonard Cohen

BOOK: Dance Me to the End of Love by Leonard Cohen (Author), Henri Matisse (Illustrator)

POEM: Living Together by David Whyte

We are like children in the master's violin shop
not yet allowed to touch the tiny planes or the rare wood
but given brooms to sweep the farthest corners
of the room, to gather shavings, mop spilled resins
and watch with apprehension the tender curves
emerging from apprenticed hands. The master
rarely shows himself but whenever he does he demonstrates
a concentrated ease so different from the willful accumulation
of experience we have come to expect,
a stripping away, a direct appreciation of all the elements
we are bound, one day, to find beneath our hands.

He stands in our minds so clearly now, his confident back
caught in the light from pale clerestory windows
and we note the way the slight tremor of his palms
disappears the moment they encounter wood.

In this light we hunger for maturity, see it not as stasis
but a form of love. We want the stillness and confidence
of age, the space between self and all the objects of the world
honoured and defined, the possibility that everything
left alone can ripen of its own accord,
all passionate transformations arranged only
through innocent meetings, one to another,
the way we see resin allowed to seep into the wood
in the wood's own secret time. We intuit our natures
becoming resonant with one another according
to the grain of the way we are made. Nothing forced
or wanted until it ripens in our own expectant hands.

But for now, in the busy room, we stand in the child's
first shy witness of one another, and see ourselves again,
gladly and always, falling in love with our future.

QUOTE: "Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin - it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring." ~ S.J. Perelman

Love (Joni Mitchell)

So... Valentine's Day is in a bit more than a week - figured I'd spend the next ten days talking about the most discussed... the most misunderstood... the most necessary topic of all time: LOVE!

I recall when the link to the following article was posted to the Joni-list 4 years ago (and then added to the jonimitchell.com library) - it struck me then and it strikes me now (very Cupid's-arrow). Since I already used Both Sides Now as the title for a previous blog, thought I'd share her version of Corinthians-set-to-music today. Joni - I've loved *all* sides of her since 1968 (my freshman year of high school... :-)

P.S. Thanks, AW, for encouraging me to check out more Joy Harjo - I can see why she's your favorite...

I really don't know love at all
Duffy Robinson
Sun Star Alaska
February 8, 2004

I thought I hated Valentine's Day.

The crass commercialism still makes me retch, and I simply do not understand why stores feel compelled to put up their Valentine's displays in December, but the actual day itself, I've discovered, isn't on "the list."

Did Hallmark get to me? Are they now, at this very moment, holding a pink, beflowered gun to my head? No, the patent holder of pre-packaged love had nothing to do with my change of heart; it is all Joni Mitchell's fault.

Relatively early in her career, Mitchell proclaimed to the world that she didn't really understand love all that much. "It's love's illusions that I recall," she admitted, "I really don't know love at all."

Mitchell was accosted for having the audacity at such an early age to claim that she had "looked at love from both sides."

The criticism was silly, petty. Love is one of the most fundamental and yet complex emotions humans have to deal with. The sooner we find the courage to admit that we really don't understand love, the better.

Complacency is the killer of relationships, especially those involving some form of love. We cannot slip into the rut of assuming we know everything there is to know about the love in our life. Constant evaluation of our relationships is crucial to the health of those relationships. We have to be willing, even at an early age as Mitchell did, to look at love from both sides. We need to understand the people we love, why we love them, and make sure that we don't lose the love.

And love does not get any easier the older you get.

In 2000 Mitchell recorded her song a second time. Now in her 50's, Mitchell reexplored the words of her childhood. The song had a deeper poignancy, perhaps, sung by a woman wearied by the years, but again the theme was the same: even now she doesn't understand love.

As we get older and change, our relationships change. And, again, they require constant evaluation. Love is made up of many facets: sexual passion, deep respect, admiration, trust, affection, devotion, tenderness. Without all these attributes no love is complete. But how much power any one of these holds in a particular relationship can change. If the relationship is truly worth it, we need to be willing to roll with those punches - admit, understand, and adapt to those changes.

That's where Valentine's Day comes in. Any day that makes us stop and think about love is a glorious thing. In a perfect world we wouldn't need Valentine's Day to remind us to evaluate our relationships, but this simply isn't a perfect world. We so often get caught up with the frantic mad-dash of life that we need days put aside to perform preventative maintenance on our many relationships.

So this Valentine's Day, fine, ignore the commercialism if you wish, boycott the candy stores and burn a Hallmark card or two. But take a moment - a long moment - to dissect your relationships with your girlfriend, your mother, your best friend, your husband, your wife, anyone you love. Make sure the love is still strong, that you understand what it means to love and be loved.

If we don't, all we'll have are love's illusions; we really won't know love all at.

SONG: Love by Joni Mitchell

BOOK: Made for Each Other by William Steig

POEM: This is My Heart by Joy Harjo

This is my heart. It is a good heart.

Bones and a membrane of mist and fire

are the woven cover.

When we make love in the flower world

my heart is close enough to sing

to yours in a language that has no use

for clumsy human words.

My head is a good head, but it is a hard head

and it whirs inside with a swarm of worries.

What is the source of this singing, it asks

and if there is a source why can't I see it

right here, right now as real

as these hands hammering

the world together

with nails and sinew?

This is my soul. It is a good soul.

It tells me, "come here forgetful one."

And we sit together with a lilt of small winds

who rattle the scrub oak.

We cook a little something

to eat: a rabbit, some sofkey

then a sip of something sweet

for memory.

This is my song. It is a good song.

It walked forever the border of fire and water

climbed ribs of desire to my lips to sing to you.

Its new wings quiver with

vulnerability.

Come lie next to me, says my heart.

Put your head here.

It is a good thing, says my soul.

QUOTE: "Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Yes We Can (will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas)

The following article has been sitting in my inbox for the past two weeks... and the YouTube video (lyrics on the right-side) arrived only hours ago - seems as if they were MFEO (Made For Each Other in Sleepless in Seattle-speak), eh?... :-)

To think one of these candidates will end up as the Democratic Party nominee is amazing, and the fact one could very well choose the other as a running mate is beyond gratifying - talk about the ultimate win-win (yes we can!).

The woman vs. the black guy
Who's more terrifying to red states, smart Hillary or savvy Barack? The nation trembles
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

It's the question everyone seems to want to address, the imponderable and frightening and slightly insane sociopolitical phenomenon that's happening right now to such a degree that even the left is falling all over itself trying to digest and parse and comprehend it all at once, and simply can't.

It is this: Just how the hell did it come to pass and which planets finally aligned and what sort of Kool-Aid has been gulped by the universe that the two white-hot Dem frontrunners, the two brightest lights on the political spectrum for the 2008 presidential election also just so happen to be members of the two most controversial/least represented groups in modern uber-white ultra-patriarchal American snake-oil politics — which is to say, a smart, savvy woman and a smart, savvy black male?

It's a stunning thing to watch. Right now, the various spurts of venom aimed at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama from conservative pundits and politicos are, at best, scattershot and convulsive, with only MSNBC's Chris Matthews proving himself to be a consistent blowhard jackass in his relentless slamming of Hillary by claiming that she only made it this far due to adultery-survivor sympathy. Hey, Chris? 2001 called. It wants its puerile, sexist analysis back. Thank you.

Yes indeed, the sexism that surrounds Clinton's run like a toxic fog is almost too easy to spot. (Fox News is, naturally, fueling its entire 2008 programming schedule with it.) It is de facto, built-in, implied and inherent in the coverage of just about everything she does, and what's most amazing to me is that people are still surprised that the sexism is there at all, much less so apparent and shameless.

To which I can only reply: I'm sorry, did you somehow miss the last seven years of brutal, testosterone-drunk war-sucking macho neocon hell? Did your noise-canceling headphones somehow block out the sound of those 10,000 tiny, clashing penises, banging like Satan's own baby rattle all the way from Osama's cave to the Oval Office to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's gay fetish dungeon in downtown Tehran?

Because truly, while a record number of women currently serve in Congress, Washington is still very much an inbred old-boy's network, so deeply entrenched in ancient male power structures and so drunk on stagnant machismo and so poisoned by the Christian right's woman-in-her-place mentality, it will require a couple more decades and a few hundred more dead southern congressmen before the innate sexism finally fades to a tolerable scar.

(Actually, at the moment, it's tough to tell which aspect the right hates more about Hillary: the fact that she's a woman or the fact that she's a Clinton. I think it's a lethal mix of both, the unconscionable right-wing double whammy, insult added to injury and all resulting in a liberal vagina monologue the misogynistic right is simply not ready to hear.)

As for Obama, well, he's not so easy. The inherent racism simmering all over Bush Nation right now over his, um, Negro-ness? Blackitude? Really good tan? (they don't know what to call it, safely) is decidedly more subtle, more insidious, less acceptable as public display than flat-out, everyday Chris Matthews-grade sexism, and therefore, not so easy to spot. Not yet, anyway.

So far, no one on the right really seems to know the best way to play the race card against Obama. Not that they won't try. Will they go after the drug thing? Paint him as a friend to scary hip-hop thug rappers? Resort to saying 'Obama' and 'Osama' in the same sentence so as to confuse the same red state knuckle-draggers who still believe Saddam orchestrated 9/11? Hard to tell. But rest assured, they'll find a way.

Or, you know, maybe they won't. After all, the right has its own heaping bucket of problems right now, not the least of which is the weakest and craziest and least palatable field of GOP contenders in 50 years. There's the chipper creationist nutball who loves him some Chuck Norris, the stupefied Mormon mannequin who simply cannot believe the world is so icky and complicated, the doddering Iraq-loving war vet who seems to be getting more unstable by the minute, and the cross-dressing former New York mayor who has "9/11" tattooed on his ego in fake blood. And oh yes, a zany old anti-choice libertarian who somehow keeps raising piles of cash and sending fascinating postcards from the edge of political reason. Cool!

Perhaps this is the best news of all. The right is a fractured, inchoate mess, with the once Karl Rove-unified evangelical core now gloriously splintered and disillusioned and completely unsure where to turn to find a candidate who will hate gays and slam women's rights and mistrust foreigners as much as Bush promised, but never completely delivered. They can't yet attack Obama because they're too busy destroying themselves.

But I'm most amazed/amused at the one big question that keeps hovering over the media and infiltrating the political blogs — does all this excitement over Hillary and Barack mean the nation is finally ready for a female president? A black president? Have we, at long last, come so far that a guy like John Edwards, an excellent, likable, all-around candidate and a classic populist southern Democrat, actually finishes third?

The answer, I'm afraid, is no, we are not ready. Not by a long shot.

This is the big, astounding myth. See, "ready" would imply we've more or less eliminated the sexism and at least come to terms with the racism, and therefore neither is much of a factor in the slightest. It's a bit like asking if America is finally ready to rid itself of its toxic love of guns and strips malls and numb Christian groupthink. In other words, if you have to ask, we ain't.

However, we do seem to be at this weird flash point, a privileged moment in political history where the anti-Bush recoil has become so potent and the right-wing collapse is so profound and the women/youth vote (at least at the moment) seems so invigorated that it all might coalesce just right and catapult a woman or a black male into the presidency, despite the hardcore misogyny and racism built like a cancer into the framework of this nation. Hey, stranger things have happened.

Look at it this way: Much in the same way Bush whored Sept. 11 to drag the nation to its lowest emotional, fiscal and political point in 100 years, so could the new wave of enraged, inspired voters leverage the Bush nightmare itself to bounce us as far as possible in the other direction. Hell, it could be even weirder than that: Hillary or Obama wins the nomination, chooses the other as running mate. Talk about your perfect liberal storm.

Are we ready for it? Doesn't matter. Quit asking what amounts to a dispiriting, futile question, and let's go find out.

SONG: Yes We Can by will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas (will.i.am's comments on the writing of the song)

BOOK: The Politics of Hope: Reviving the Dream of Democracy by Donna Zajonc

POEM: Beginners by Denise Levertov

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

"From too much love of living,

Hope and desire set free,

Even the weariest river

Winds somewhere to the sea-"

But we have only begun

To love the earth.

We have only begun

To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?

- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?

- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,

only begun to envision

how it might be

to live as siblings with beast and flower,

not as oppressors.

Surely our river

cannot already be hastening

into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot

drag, in the silt,

all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet

-there is too much broken

that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other

that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know

the power that is in us if we would join

our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must

complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

QUOTE: A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night and a bright, infinite future." ~ Leonard Bernstein, The New York Times, 30 October 1988

The Laundromat Song (Imagine That) - (Chris Rosser)

Okay... so I'm reading the new Stephen King book and, yesterday afternoon, hit upon a paragraph that caught my attention:

Elizabeth's weather had also cleared. I read her a
number of poems while she arranged her chinas. Wireman was there, caught up for once and in good spirits. The world felt fine that day. It occurred to me only later that George "Candy" Brown might well have been abducting twelve-year-old Tina Garibaldi at the same time I was reading Richard Wilbur's poem about laundry, "Love Calls Us to the Things of the World" to Elizabeth. I chose it because I happened to see an item in that day's paper saying it had become something of a Valentine's Day favorite. The Garibaldi kidnapping happened to be recorded. It occurred at exactly 3:16 PM, according to the time-stamp on the tape, and that would have been just about the time I paused to sip from my glass of Wireman's green tea and unfold the Wilbur poem, which I had printed off the Internet.

I knew the poet's name and the "awash in angels" phrase sounded familiar but just couldn't place it... until I remembered a poem I had posted a few months back - gotta love synchronicity (voi-f*cking-la!).

SONG: The Laundromat Song (Imagine That) by Chris Rosser

BOOK: The Learning Curve: Lessons on Life, Love and Laundry by Cindy Gregg

POEM: Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World by Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded
soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and
simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with
angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are
in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there
they are.
Now they are rising together in calm
swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they
wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal
breathing;

Now they are flying in place,
conveying
The terrible speed of their
omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now
of a sudden
They swoon down in so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every
blessed day,
And cries,
"Oh, let there be nothing on
earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising
steam
And clear dances done in the sight of
heaven."

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks
and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter
love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns
and rises,

"Bring them down from their ruddy
gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs
of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be
undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure
floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult
balance."

QUOTE: "I am thankful for a lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning and gutters that need fixing because it means I have a home... I am thankful for the piles of laundry and ironing because it means my loved ones are nearby.' ~ Nancie J. Carmody

Mister Whisper (Dory Previn)

From The Times
February 2, 2008
Dory Previn was queen of the Seventies confessional songwriters.
Has time eased the pain?
Bob Stanley

An irregular inclusion on Terry Wogan's breakfast show over the years has been a quaint song about a girl's bumbling advances to a date: "Would you like to stay 'til sunrise? It's completely your decision." In spite of the prettiness of the melody, though, it is clear there is more to the song than freshman student embarrassment. Wogan is wont to comment: "Here comes that strange lady again."

Jarvis Cocker, picking The Lady with the Braid as a Desert Island Disc, said: "I remember very vividly first hearing this record. I had moved to London. I was living in this squat and I was trying to put a curtain rail up. I was listening to the radio and it's one of those moments where you have to stop what you're doing and pay full attention."

A clue to the song's subtle power is in the name of the performer, Dory Previn. She was the wife of Andre Previn in the Sixties, and worked with him on music for films such as Inside Daisy Clover, Valley of the Dolls, and The Sterile Cuckoo – which won her an Oscar. When Andre left Dory for Mia Farrow she had a breakdown. One way out of her crisis was songwriting for herself, not for the movies. She was already in her mid-forties by the time her first, deeply confessional LP, On My Way to Where, came out in 1970. "They were all based on true experiences," she tells me. "The music I write for films is not. These songs were for me. I know myself better than anyone else, so it helped me. It was self-revelation."

Songwriting as self-help therapy after a break-up or a breakdown has produced some of pop's more startling works. The splendour of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black can be pinned on her jagged relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil. Thirty years previously, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours documented two disintegrating relationships – within the band, as they were recording – with trillion-selling melodies such as Go Your Own Way and Dreams. Yet the drawn-out demise of Abba's two couplings, laid bare on 1981's The Visitors, produced one of their worst-selling albums; maybe if the reticent Swedes would admit that songs such as One of Us and the eerie Like an Angel Passing Through My Room aren't fictional, they could gain kudos.

Dory would not back away from admitting that The Lady with the Braid et al are autobiographical. "There's nothing I wouldn't say. I don't want to sound like I'm always talking about myself, but I've been there. In life and on stage. I've been in mental hospitals, I've been up and down those stairs." Her New Jersey upbringing is still audible in her voice. She was born in 1925 and, after a strict Roman Catholic upbringing, decided to become a chorus girl.

"When I was a kid I was the star of Woodbridge, New Jersey. I thought I could do the same thing in other towns, so I did. I was a walk-on and each night I'd add things and get laughs. I was getting more laughs than [main act] Rust Hills, the comedian. One day he said `I wanna talk to you, in my office.' I thought he was going to say what a good job I was doing but he said, `Don't do that again, ever.' He got me fired. I've got his picture on the wall. When I get bum raps I like to hang 'em on the wall!"

Chastened, she took a train to Hollywood in the late Fifties where she landed a job at MGM. "Andre was head of the musical department at MGM. We became partners. "It was nice. He was a bit miffed when I showed up because in those days women didn't know very much, apparently. He said, `Show me something.' So I played some material I'd been doing – I was very shy about this – and he said, `These are good.'

"Like I didn't know! Next thing we got married." For a while life was sweet. "I'm not the kind of person where things happen and everything's wonderful. But me and Andre started fooling around, I asked if he would accompany me, and suddenly we were doing a movie. We did songs for Judy Garland and men and women of that ilk. It was wonderful."

At this point, Mia Farrow arrived on the scene. Dory expressed her outrage in Beware of Young Girls a few years later: "She was my friend, my friend/ oh what a rare and happy pair, she inevitably said/ as she glanced at my unmade bed."

"Andre and I were married. But he had a long-term commitment to work, not to marriage. I understand that. She was young and beautiful and blah, blah, blah. "He went to South America or somewhere and got a divorce. It frightened me, being alone, having to write with people I didn't know."

Does she know if Farrow ever heard the song? "With her ego? Of course she did. She's probably got the record framed in the bathroom! It's OK. These experiences do us a lot of good. I got through."

Though she was twice their age, Dory Previn made albums that sat well on sensitive student shelves in the early Seventies alongside the work of Janis Ian and Laura Nyro. "Who else was I listening to? I was listening to myself. If your father says you're not his child, if your mother had terrible experiences, a life like that is so outrageous . . . you begin to reveal in songs what you don't reveal even to your friends."

Stories surfaced from her memory such as Left Hand Lost, a song about being born "sinister" but being forced by the nuns at her school to write with her right hand. "Yes, they hit me, those darling girls. When you write a song, you can get an answer to something that's been bugging you for years. Over time I'd begin to feel I wasn't using my correct hand, like I needed to get a better grasp on a pen, on a word, an idea. It resulted in my nervous breakdown."

Like those of Harry Nilsson or Randy Newman, Dory's songs drew largely on Americana, leavened with black humour. From the same year as On My Way to Where was John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album, which was shorter on laughs. The breakdown in Lennon's case was partly owing to his split with the Beatles, and he tried primal scream therapy to write songs such as God, Mother and My Mummy's Dead.

Maybe it was something in the posthippy 1970s air; Dory Previn's Twenty Mile Zone was about an occasion on which she "was screaming in fury and frustration in the car. This `shout' therapy lead to the unwanted attentions of the law."

Lennon's childhood had been a mess – abandoned by his mother, she was later killed in a car accident within weeks of them reuniting. Previn likewise had an alcoholic father. That relationship is recounted in the extremely unsettling With My Daddy in the Attic.

"He locked my mother and me up in a room for several weeks. He was like a lover but I wasn't old enough then to understand. It was tough stuff. Later I realised it wasn't just me – I was it for him. My mother was ignored. When she had another child it was better because she had someone too."

Even now it seems hard for her to break out of her mental binds. Trying to explain where she lives these days, she says: "That's a question that's hard for me to answer. I'm where I live. I'm in the country, on a farm, with horses. Where I live inside myself, that's quite a different question."

It seems hard to square this person with someone who could have played Carnegie Hall with just a piano. "They had to escort me down the stairs, I was so nervous I couldn't stand up. I was on stage, alone! Strange? I can't begin to tell you... The best part was that I was a strictly raised Catholic singing on stage to a whole row of nuns. They must have planned it, because when I sang Did Jesus Have a Baby Sister? they all got up and walked out! All in their nunny caps. Everyone started laughing."

We're Children of Coincidence and Harpo Marx in 1976 is Previn's most recent album. Her autobiography, Midnight Baby, was published in 1977, and music took a backseat. In 1997 she was working once more with Andre Previn on a piece called The Magic Number, performed by the New York Philharmonic. This could have felt like "closure".

Art therapy for Dory Previn now consists of keeping a small pile of books handy "so that if a thought goes through my head I can look into it to see if I can make sense of it. I've got this Pope encyclopaedia by my bed, though I'm not religious at all. And The Book of Lilith, which I love; one called Mind Prophecies, and one of my own to remind myself that I can do it."

Yet in spite of all the red raw confession in her songwriting, I start to think I may have been prying too much. "Listen," she laughs, a little fiercely. "The world has delved into my life. It knows all my secrets! That's what I'm here for."

The Art of Dory Previn, compiled from her 1970-72 albums, is out on EMI.

[ Lipster article added 2/25/08 ]

I am a long-time fan of the music and writings of Dory Previn, possessing all of her *albums* - I was actually turned on to her songs by one of my college roommates, Mary Grace, who herself experienced emotional tugs-of-war. When we met, MG had already attempted suicide once (with a piece of glass from a deliberately-shattered Noxema jar) and been hospitalized twice - she was bright and witty and talented (could play all of Joni Mitchell's Blue piano pieces), except when life got too hard for her... and then she turned fragile and despondent and weary.

Living with her pendulumed between entertaining and stressful, as I never knew when her good times would downwardly spiral into surrender - one evening I came home from a campus lecture to find MG had taken too many pills, because she'd had a fight with her boyfriend coupled with one of our newborn kittens dying in addition to getting a C on a test she was confident she would ace... events sure to be painful to all of us, but to her the combination was insurmountable. I called the emergency number (I don't even think they had 911 back then) and rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital, where they pumped her stomach and kept her for observation a few days - her parents came down, took her back to Atlanta and checked her into another hospital, where she stayed for months.

I visited a few times and then we lost touch - when I listen to or hear of Dory Previn, I'm also painfully reminded of MG's struggles with reality and over-sensitivities to this world. I'm a firm believer that we all have our own "twenty-mile zone" - it's just that some of us are able to scream it off in more "acceptable", and therefore sanity-preserving, ways.

SONG: Mister Whisper by Dory Previn

BOOK(S): On My Way to Where by Dory Previn

Midnight Baby by Dory Previn

Bog-trotter: an autobiography with lyrics by Dory Previn

POEM: Stone by Charles Simic

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill-
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

QUOTE: "Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?" ~ Calvin and Hobbes

All I Want is You (Barry Louis Polisar)

Date Night - Take Two! The plans my husband and I made last Friday went by the wayside as he ended up having to work late - tonight found us finally following through, to see the movie Juno and then going out for a bite to eat afterwards.

Love love loved the film - Ellen Page in the title role was stupendous, walking that fine line of bravado and vulnerability, delivering the snappy dialogue as if it were self-generated. There was no black-and-white, no morality tale, no perfect characters - everyone was flawed, dichotomous, real. The soundtrack weaving throughout was adorable - the plotline covered hysterical to poignant and everything in between. Two thumbs up - highly recommended... :-)

After the movie, attempting all the regular restaurants in the area (I just wanted an appetizer and a drink), we struck out at Chili's, Friday's, Applebee's and Bahama Breeze, which had people waiting to be seated (at 10 p.m.!) - we happily settled on a local Italian place, where I ordered an extra-dirty martini (my libation of choice) and calamari (yum) and Robert had a meat-lover's pizza. It was grand to chat, uninterrupted, and spend some time together - mission accomplished... <3

SONG: All I Want is You by Barry Louis Polisar

BOOK: Juno: The Shooting Script by Diablo Cody (Author), Jason Reitman (Foreword)

POEM: Why Regret? by Galway Kinnell

Didn't you like the way the ants help

the peony globes open by eating the glue off?

Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers

sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,

in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe

baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?

Wasn't it a revelation to waggle

from the estuary all the way up the river,

the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,

the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?

Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice

clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old

Webster's New International, perhaps having just

eaten of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?

Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren

and how little flesh is needed to make a song.

Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph

split open and the mayfly struggled free

and flew and perched and then its own back

broke open and the imago, the true adult,

somersaulted out and took flight, seeking

the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,

alimentary canal come to a stop,

a day or hour left to find the desired one?

Or when Casanova took up the platter

of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff

out the window, telling his startled companion,

"The perfected lover does not eat."

Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs

what seemed your own inner blazonry

flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?

Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy

hinged beings, and then their offspring,

and then their offspring's offspring, could

navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,

to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,

by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors

who fell in this same migration a year ago?

Doesn't it outdo the pleasure of the brilliant concert

to wake in the night and find ourselves

holding hands in our sleep?

QUOTE: "Love and pregnancy and riding on a camel cannot be hid." ~ Arabic Proverb