How Do You Remember

We’ve been remembering and revering fallen, endangered or ill people for quite some time now—so long that most of us have lost track of who started it all.

We have felt the need to mark graves—a kind of Kilroy was here—for ages. Heck, I’ve even seen R. I. P. (dearly departed relative or pet) car memorials, often on the most pimped out of vehicles.

Songs have been written. Two come to mind: Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Ole Oak Tree and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

Speaking of yellow, the yellow ribbon magnets slapped on cars that were all the rage at the start of the Iraqi war are noticeably fewer in number these days. While we still support the troops, we just aren’t so sure we need to show it anymore now that it’s safe to disagree with the Bush administration. Even the republican senators are joining the opposition.

I have a pink ribbon or two and have sold products featuring the ribbon so ubiquitously identified with the disease I’d sooner forget. Lance Armstrong’s plastic Live Strong bracelets are a favorite presidential candidate accessory.

But, the other day my daughter-in-law forwarded a story from NPR about a couple from Kansas City who had simply planted American flags on their lawn—one for each of the U. S. soldiers killed since we got into Bush’s War. The couple didn’t appear to be loud or obnoxious like some war protestors cut of the Cindy Sheehan cloth. They were just sad. It was a stark and powerful statement.

Sadly, it’s taken many months and many lives, for many Americans to come to the conclusion that this war and what the administration says it is striving to do, just isn’t wanted by many Iraqis. American-style freedom isn’t the panacea it’s cracked up to be. I love my freedoms. I love my country. I don’t expect the world to discard ancient and traditional ways just because a U. S. president thinks his way is the way to go. I do expect other countries and their citizens to leave me and my family the hell alone when I’m minding my own business.

Maybe, just maybe, we should leave the Iraqis alone. That is if we can wind the clock back to the time before all hell broke loose.

Live Free or Die Hard

I so rarely go to the movies these days but trudged along yesterday with the guys for the new Bruce Willis action movie, Live Free or Die Hard. Short on plot; long on action just like a summer movie should be. Salon.com has a review if you want more details, but I wanted to write about a scene in the movie that I’m still thinking about this morning.

You know the Mac guy from the Apple Computer ads? Justin Long’s his name and he plays a geeky computer hacker-type Bruce is charged with delivering to the FBI to avert an attack on all U.S. technological systems: transportation, Wall Street, etc. by cyber-terrorists. In between fending off the bad guys and trying to save the day, Bruce listens as Apple Guy gets all philosophical on him and says, “It’s all controlled and manipulated,” or something like that. I wasn’t taking notes. They were watching the news as the terrorists hacked into broadcast feeds to deliver their evil message.What Apple Guy was referring to was what we are fed as news by the corporate media.

And I thought, maybe he’s right. Maybe if we watch enough of stories covering Anna Nichol Smith and Paris Hilton or Ann Coulter’s screeching, we won’t notice what’s happening that really matters. Could TV be the “opiate of the people?” And are we getting what we deserve?

Why Ann Coulter is Successful

Ann Coulter is provocative. That’s who she is. Yesterday’s Hardball with Chris Matthews exchange between Elizabeth Edwards and Coulter was predictable after the always quotable Coulter said on ABC’s Good Morning America, “if I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.” And while I don’t blame Elizabeth Edwards for calling on Ann Coulter to take a vow to be more civil, no one really expects it from her. Her schick is this dare to offend, insult and provoke the democratic moderates and liberals as well as those republicans who possess an iota of dignity and civility. She’s very good at it. Don’t count on her to suddenly say, “You know Elizabeth, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Which brings me to my point. On one hand we all talk about the negative and impolite name-calling that Coulter, Bill Maher and others engage in and how awful it may be. Yet, Chris Matthews and other media honchos know TV is all about ratings. Have a controversial guest on, and well, everyone’s talking about it the next day.

Elizabeth Edwards is right, of course, that these media personalities who have been elevated to a cult-like status because of their exposure aren’t doing diddly-squat to help the political dialogue this country so desperately needs.

Ann Coulter is also right that she can say pretty much what she damn well pleases, but I don’t have to give her no never-mind. And neither do you.

Steppin Out in Vegan Shoes

Boy, am I really falling behind the times! I tuned in to a few minutes of NBC's Today Show on Monday and caught a segment on vegan shoes or leather-free shoes. Remember the days when you wanted leather, and shoes made out of non-leather materials were considered cheap and inferior? Again, we have a repackaging or renaming that spins a product into vogue or eco-chic if you will.

From the New York City “fashion house,” Moo Shoes, comes the GI Jane shoe which actually sounds pretty natural but I don't know what all goes into car tires:

“The GI Jane is a great choice for the environmentally conscience fashionista. It has all the follwing great qualities: Woven Jute rand Nubby Cotton upper Bamboo linings Wooden button Removable natural laytex pedbed with a cotton canvas cover Natural crepe rubber midsole outsole is made of car tires Uses water based cements 100% post consumer paper pulp foot forms”

(Hey Moo Shoes folks, I'm available for copyediting)

At $85 retail, I’m not going to be buying these shoes. Shoes constructed of car tires, jute and paper pulp just don’t appeal to me for that matter, although I am a big flip-flops fan and consider those the ultimate vegan shoe; plus the price is
right. Remember the stink raised when some of Northwestern's women's lacrosse team wore flip-flops to the White House? They were ahead of their time.

However, one shoe featured on the Today Show did look pretty nice--a red patent faux leather shoe.


And while I’m not a vegan, I can appreciate those who choose to use products and foods for which no animal has given it’s life. But, me, I’m still going to buy leather (and rubber flip-flops)--the real stuff not the faux kind and please don’t picket my house, PETA.

Dissing Rap Music, Dissing Wordsworth

I love to read fellow blogger Naomi and her Diary from England. She posted recently about Cumbria Tourism’s attempt to appeal to the YouTube generation. Now, as much as I love YouTube, I love the poetry of Brit poet William Wordsworth a whole lot more.

The YouTube production by Cumbria Tourism has bastardized a favorite poem of mine, Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, you know the daffodils poem, with a rap "music" version of the famous poem. I endured the whole rap treatment of the poem delivered by a be-bopping squirrel mascot known as Sam, a.k.a, MC Nuts.

Lovely Lake Ullswater serves as a backdrop to this large annoying rapping rodent.

“The modern re-working manages to stay true to the original sentiment but with some slight variation of the lyrics. As well as making the works of Wordsworth relevant to a new, younger audience, it also shows how modern-day rap and its clever use of wordplay is a distant relative of poetic rhyming verse.”

So says the Web site for the Lake District.

Crap, or as some call it “rap,” has it’s following, and I have actually found a couple of “songs” that worked for this old, white Baby Boomer. I’ll have to show it to Scotty and see what he thinks. I predict this 18 year-old will agree with his mum.

And no, I'm not intentionally becoming a poetry blog. Check in tomorrow for a crazy photo.


I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: -
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -and gazed -but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

Hey You Guys

I never thought we Southerners were ahead of the curve, but I think our use of “y’all” definitely fits the bill. Over at In These Times I noticed an article entitled “A Politically Correct Lexicon, Your ‘how-to’ guide to avoid offending anyone.” In the piece, Joel Bleifuss gives readers an up-to-date lowdown on the ever-changing world of what you can safely call various groups and categories of folks. Don’t you like how generic “folks” is?

I latched onto “guys” because if folks would adopt the non-sexist Southern “y’all,” we wouldn’t have to think much about it. Bleifuss says,

Guys: Very controversial. Used, especially in the Midwest, when referring to a group of people. “In Chicago that word gets used a lot,” says Hill. And Baim says, “I use it all of the time.” Some feminists, like Andi Zeisler, the editor of Bitch, find “guys” problematic. “We assume the descriptor ‘guys’ denotes a quality of universality,” she says. “It would be hard to imagine a group of men being addressed by their server as ‘hey you gals’ and not taking offense, but the reverse happens all the time.”

And while I had already noticed, it’s now okay to call Indians “Indians” instead of Native Americans. Bleifuss has this to say about the use of Native American:

Native American: Some Indians object to the term, seeing it as a way to linguistically eradicate “Indian” and thus the history of their oppression by whites. “I almost always hear Native American, and in the more enlightened conversations there is usually ‘indigenous’ thrown in there somewhere,” says Lott. Sen says, “Native American seems to be a more distant construction, developed by academics.”