FEMINISM TODAY?

The dictionary describes feminism as: 1895 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests. Maureen Dowd recently did an interview of Fey and to the eye of someone who lived and worked through the early Feminism War from the 60's to today, Fey come out as a Feminist's dream. She is married to a man whom she loves, has a three year old daughter, managed a career of creativity that most women would drool to be able to achieve, and seems to have very clear boundaries for herself.

She has gained and lost weight a few times in the past few years and is now at a low weight, being pictured in glamorous poses in glamor magazines. What a lovely way to sock it to the world that thinks that a career woman loses something if she gives in to the urge to look glamorous in magazines for all men and women to see. Fey is proving that a glamorous woman can love and respect a male as a partner, have children, and does not have to behave in an unfeminine way to work and succeed in what is mostly a man's world.

Tina Fey, a successful wife, mother, actress (actor), comedienne (comedian), writer, and a woman for whom all in her gender can be proud, envious, add recognize that more is doable than latching onto a man for security and dependence. Sometimes a woman can marry for love, companionship, and partner to have and to raise children. She can even add to that, a distinct identity of her own

THE US DID TORTURE

There are many who still argue that torture is worth it all for the results it gets. These must be some of the people who believe there was not a Holocaust and that it was the US Government that planned 9/11. Some people are programmed not to believe what they don't want to see.

Using the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, a former special intelligence operations officer, who led an interrogations team in Iraq two years ago, has written a stunning op-ed in the Washington Post called "I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq." In it, he details his direct experience with torture practices put into effect in Iraq in 2006. He conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised more than a thousand and was awarded a Bronze Star for his achievements in Iraq. This article can be read in full.

Regardless of how much research has been done, the bullies still think they can win with torture. They really don't want to hear anything else or admit that they are sadists.

LAUGH OF THE DAY: BBC quotes G W Bush as saying about himself, "I hope they feel that this is a guy that came, didn't sell his soul for politics, had to make some tough decisions, and did so in a principled way," in a wide-ranging interview with ABC News on Monday.

If the man can truly convince himself that he acted in a 'principled' way, I hope he will then share whose principles he was following, because they certainly were not those shared by most citizens who accept the Constitution of the United States as the major principle setter. Currently, Bush-bashing holds no joy, it only serves as a reminder of what he did to ruin our country though the people who were really behind many of the poor decisions will escape and let him take the blame. I believe he was a puppet whose strings were being pulled and manipulation by his willingness to play the role of the puppet though he deluded himself into thinking he was a 'decider'.

THE WORLD IS CHANGING

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and the world is already changing from the bleak one we faced the last eight years. Today on BBC, the news included Odd Box...the week's weirdest videos. It has been a long time since I have seen such silliness on the front page of the BBC News.

AOL even had offered weird news.
The first story is about a man who attacked a Christmas Tree.
One of the pictures shows men volunteers
making kimchi for disaster victims.










Maybe some of the world is trying,unable to change.



Lastly, Bush, perhaps for fear he will be forgotten as our worst President, is making sure he will be remembered by this last environmental, midnight, stamp on Appalachia. "The Washington Post confirmed today that a ruling was approved to make it easier for coal companies to dump the rock and dirt waste that is blown off the tops of mountains in "mountaintop removal" (or MTR) coal mining into streams and valleys:

The rule is one of the most contentious of all the regulations emerging from the White House in President Bush's last weeks in office ...

A coalition of environmental groups said the rule would accelerate "the destruction of mountains, forests and streams throughout Appalachia."

Edward C. Hopkins, a policy analyst at the Sierra Club, said: "The E.P.A.'s own scientists have concluded that dumping mining waste into streams devastates downstream water quality. By signing off on this rule, the agency has abdicated its responsibility." "

Clearly, there are good and bad changes happening. The majority of the country who voted Obama in are hoping for the pendulum to swing to most of the changes being good ones and sliding us further away from the slope of the same simple-minded behavior the Taliban showed when it blasted the irreplaceable Buddha statues in Afghanistan to bits. Bush will soon be replaced, but the lives he has cost and the environmental chaos he has allowed, cannot. How sad that so many people see green only in currency rather than appreciating what Nature has for us to survive on. Without it, we will all die, wealthy or poor. Bush's legacy will be the toxicity he has fostered in relationship to the rest of the world, divisiveness within our own country, a two class system, destruction to so many of our resources, and many more insults to the world he was given when he took office.

THE NEED FOR SLEEP WON

The post for today will be a few hours late.

OLD NEED NOT BE UNHAPPY

For years I have been piling up reasons that are good about being old. A recent one added is that old people have a far greater store of happy memories to call on than do younger ones. When you are young, there have to be wonderful days of praise, achievement, accolades, raises, etc. When you are old, every day above ground is a good day.

I've written before on annoyances in later life (see this blog: http://ewelts.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html February 10
Graceful Aging, on 6-23-08: http://ewelts.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html

I have heard it said that people mellow with age. I never understood that statement until recently. As you age, the earliest childhood inputs become as clear as though events just happened. We are more mellow, closer to our parents than we have been for many years. During those years of growing up, we had introjected the parents so that they are now a part of us. Remembering their comfort, support and decision making, we remember the safety and peace they provided for us as children. They live in our heads. We feel calmer and more mellow, or we go into complete separation and denial of the new generation (our grandchildren) and its parents (our adult children).

As with all things, there may be alternative reasons, such as, some people are just too tired to make waves any longer. They look quite calm much of the time. Maybe, though it is rarely admitted by parents, they just don't give a damn! Having spent so many years raising their own difficult, acting out and time-consuming children it gives the older family members joy to see their children finally understanding what their parents went through as they agonizingly wade through the same exhausting process with their own children. Usually that is when they finally come to truly appreciate their parents. Since their own children take the usual 2 or 3 decades to grow up and leave, the pleasure the old folks receive matches the years of servitude to the 'kids'.

What to a younger person may represent being alone and lonely, to the senior it represents a time of peaceful space inside and outside one's head to enjoy Nature, life in general, people, or whatever else we old folk like to take in as our due and our own.

We feel we earned the right to make our own choices, live our lives with abandonment of many of the earlier responsibilities, deadlines, and selflessness that precedes the 'Golden Years'. While the value of Gold as a metal has gone up exponentially, the value of the Golden Years as quickly dipped as far as the current Stock Market. Since we have Google to keep us informed, those younger no longer have to ask old people for advice or opinions. They have little understanding that the old people enjoy watching the young ones make all the same mistakes because they are too steeped in their own importance to ask someone who knows. One of these days I will find the three pages that I have noted and learned about, the good things about being old that I have not written here now. Youth just seems to last three or four times longer, accounting for how tired we all get when old!

Two Good Laughs

Today, Sarah Palin was campaigning for Chambliss in the South. As the ice in her veins was thawing out, her brain must also have begun to get a little mushy as she was heard to say something about the country being deeply in debt and going into more debt wasn't going to be a solution. I bow to her precise understanding of economics and that she is not currently in personal debt. Judging how she made out in the campaign on clothes, I have no doubt she manages well in her personal economics. While I missed the opportunity to get a direct quote, the meaning is still there. With profound thoughts like that, all I could do was thank the God I don't believe in just in case there is really one there, that she didn't get elected to anything outside Alaska where, it seems, she can't do too much damage to the lower 48.

On the Daily Show, someone was quoted as saying that the most valuable thing The US exports is their values. Jon Stewart's snappy reply was, "No wonder we're in a recession!" As i have noted before, more profound observstions come from the comics that the ridiculous news media, much of the time.

DECEPTIVE OR MISNAMED?

While roaming around the dictionary as I do sometimes, I looked up Mission. Merriam Webster describes it as: Pronunciation: \ˈmi-shən\
Function: noun Etymology: New Latin, Medieval Latin, & Latin; New Latin mission-, missio religious mission, from Medieval Latin, task assigned, from Latin, act of sending, from mittere to send
Date: 1530
1 obsolete : the act or an instance of sending
2 a: a ministry commissioned by a religious organization to propagate its faith or carry on humanitarian work (b: assignment to or work in a field of missionary enterprise c (1): a mission establishment (2): a local church or parish dependent on a larger religious organization for direction or financial support d plural : organized missionary work Yiayia's note: Since we started a deadly war, these definitions seem unfitting. e: a course of sermons and services given to convert the unchurched or quicken Christian faith. Americans were never told we went to convert Iraqis to Christianity...though we were told we would be bringing a country-gift, like a house-gift, of Democracy...without contemplating whether it would be welcome.
3: a body of persons sent to perform a service or carry on an activity: as a: a group sent to a foreign country to conduct diplomatic or political negotiations b: a permanent embassy or legation c: a team of specialists or cultural leaders sent to a foreign country
4 a: a specific task with which a person or a group is charged b (1): a definite military, naval, or aerospace task (a bombing mission) Yiayia's note: This sounds a bit like an oxymoron, from the definitions above, but.... (a space mission) (2): a flight operation of an aircraft or spacecraft in the performance of a mission (a mission to Mars) c: a preestablished and often self-imposed objective or purpose Yiayia's note: Now it seems the definition is beginning to
fit! (statement of the company's mission)
5: calling , vocation

Another puzzler is Guantanamo
which is called Camp Justice.
Since the courts are still
trying to decide if,
in fact, justice is what is
being served, triggered by the
image of the statue of Justice
with her scales off balance from
her vomiting into them, or was
that pigeon poop?



Fox News: Fair and Balanced is another that fits in the category of 'deceptive or misnamed'. If Coombs is there attempt to make it so, they have failed miserably. Actually, they failed miserably, even if he isn't their token liberal.

THE RELATIVE WEIGHT OF THINGS

How many times have you heard things like, "The air is heavy"; "My mood is heavy"; "That's heavy, man". In fact, Merriam-Webster gives the longest list of definitions than most words I have seen:
1 a: having great weight; also: characterized by mass or weight (how heavy is it?) b: having a high specific gravity: having great weight in proportion to bulk c: (1)of an isotope: having or being atoms of greater than normal mass for that element (2)of a compound: containing heavy isotopes
2: hard to bear; specifically : grievous, afflictive (a heavy sorrow)
3: of weighty import : serious (heavy consequences)
4: deep, profound (a heavy silence)
5 a: borne down by something oppressive: burdened b: pregnant; especially: approaching parturition
6 a: slow or dull from loss of vitality or resiliency: sluggish (a tired heavy step) b: lacking sparkle or vivacity : drab c: lacking mirth or gaiety : doleful d: characterized by declining prices
7: dulled with weariness : drowsy
8: greater in quantity or quality than the average of its kind or class: as a: of unusually large size or amount (a heavy turnout), (heavy traffic) b: of great force (heavy seas) c: threatening to rain or snow, d(1): impeding motion (2): full of clay and inclined to hold water e: coming as if from a depth : loud (heavy breathing) f: thick, coarse (heavy syrup) g: oppressive (a heavy odor), (heavy weather), (rule with a heavy hand) h: steep, acute i: laborious, difficult (heavy going) j: immoderate (a heavy smoker) k: more powerful than usual for its kind (a heavy cavalry), (a heavy cruiser) l: of large capacity or output
9 a: very rich and hard to digest (heavy desserts), b: not properly raised or leavened, (heavy bread)
10: producing goods (as coal, steel, or chemicals) used in the production of other goods (heavy industry)
11 a: having stress, (a heavy rhythm) —used especially of syllables in accentual verse b: being the strongest degree of stress in speech
12: relating to theatrical parts of a grave or somber nature
13: long (heavy on ideas)
14: important, prominent

These are, indeed. weighty times. The world is in trouble with global warming,terrorists, and wars; people are weighted down by the holiday season with its heavy demands of all that must be done and, many hearts will be heavy when it is over. We will then be starting a new year. Obama as President has lifted our hopefulness for America's future which makes most of us feel lighter. For the first time in eight years, the empty glass is beginning to look as though it might soon be half full...though it may be only hope (which has no weight), not money enough to make the world a better place in a hurry.

You may choose to be hopeful and feel light; or you may choose to worry about things beyond your control and get bogged down with weighty hopelessness. I choose to look to the future with faith that there is enough good in the world to go beyond the evil that has been destroying the world for the past eight years. The law of averages will balance the world once again! It is time for the balance to shift.