Love

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We've been so busy all morning we have not been able to even write a quick note about these fantastic news :

Dick Cheney's next grandchild will have two mommies, to the horror of his conservative fans.
The White House says Cheney's openly gay daughter and top political adviser, Mary, is expecting a baby this spring with her lover of 15 years, Heather Poe.

"The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival," the veep's office said in a statement.

The father's identity was not revealed.

The veep's daughter will have to remain an unwed mom: Cheney, 37, an AOL executive, and Poe, a 45-year-old former park ranger, live in Virginia, which just passed the kind of constitutional ban on same-sex marriages that the Bush administration has been pushing nationally.

"The irony is that the grandfather of this child is part of a party and an administration that has relentlessly attacked gay and lesbian families," said Jennifer Chrisler, head of Family Pride, an advocacy group for gay parents.

"So his own grandchild will not have the same legal protections other children enjoy. And Heather will have no legal relationship with the child. She can't make a hospital visit or even sign a school field trip form," Chrisler said.

So the Vice-President's daughter's partner, Heather Poe, can't legally take care of their child. She can't even adopt her daughter because, as long as there is one mom alive, that's what the Bible Beltway political muckrakers were able to pass as law in the state of Virginia.

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Lorraine needs your blessings. Her boyfriend, who was just 43, died suddenly of a brain hemorrage. He had no know medical condition. The actually had had a wonderful night out, only marred by the splitting headache that was to cost him his life.

To say she is devastated is to put it mildly.

Pondering about the gift of love and the sorrow of death, I looked to the Tao Te Ching for widsom. I found this:

Verse 16, Tao Te Ching
Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.

Running along the creek by my house, I spotted a small blackness jutting out of the water, stiff and stinking in the sun. I turned my head away from it, moving quickly through the greeness of sun-drenched leaves, my breath expelled through young lungs, alive.

Days passed. One afternoon, a neighborhood boy dragged a garbage bag across our front yard as I sang and looked out the bedroom window. Today could be the day that I caught a butterfly or made my parents another mud turtle sculpture. But that bag...what was in that bag? It made me feel bad. Soon I had to take my medicine. It had never really bothered me, though I bruised easily. I hated the boy dragging that bag. I tiptoed down the hall and stood at the top of the stairs as Dad peered into it. He signed. I twirled back to my room to finish my song, complete with high kicks. I had a butterfly to catch and a mud turtle to sculpt, so I needed to finish that song.

A few years earlier, I had been playing in the back yard when Mama started her car and I heard the screech of a cat. She pushed me inside, trying to calm me down by rubbing my face and explaining that when fans spin, they become sharp enough to cut. So I tested that theory by raking my fingers across different fans covers throughout the house. Nothing happened. And my needles didn't hurt me, they kept me alive. But the fan killed my cat. I understood very little about how the world worked. I still don't.

Most mornings, because of custody schedules and the way things work out, my drive into work is 40 miles, 25 of which are after I've dropped off the kids and I'm alone in the car. The drive is by rote now. I often have that sensation of actually not knowing how I got to the point in the drive when I will suddenly become aware that I'm at X or Y. I'm alert, though; other drivers are not in any danger. I just zone out. Usually, I listen to the local college station that plays alternative music. That's my preferred genre. I like to think that constantly listening to new music will prevent me from being one of those ossified folks who insist that there hasn't been any great music made in ______ years. Whatever, dude. Some rolling stones do gather moss as it turns out.

The other day, however, I was flipping through the radio dial catching bits and pieces of things. In the morning, I can hear everything from "Democracy Now!" to the blathering of bubble-headed bleach blondes doing morning schtick with their drive-time companions.

  I live out in the country, so "Christian stations" are as frequently encountered as roadkill woodchucks, and usually, I pay them about as much notice. But some woman was talking about her sexual purity, and I couldn't help it. I needed to hear what all the self-flagellating was all about. It just about made me cry. I did not hear the preceding discussion, so I wasn't sure about what exactly the nature of this woman's sexual "sin" had been, but I listened in rapt fascination and a sick feeling in my stomach as she recounted how she carried around her "brokenness" for ten years, until the night, in darkness because she didn't want him to see her face, she confessed her long-ago sin to her husband. Her husband, she said, responded in a Christ-like manner, by holding her and offering her forgiveness, allowing her to put the past behind her and move onto her new state of purity. The male interrogator was delighted at how her husband had been able to witness Christ to her. The cynic in me also could have sworn that there was a sexual charge to his voice: he had, after all, just been privy to a woman's confession of sexual sin, and I imagined that he had a woody imagining himself in a similar situation. Perhaps, he thought, her husband's forgiveness had been followed by a laying on of hands, or perhaps the sprinkling of holy semen upon her body? But I digress.

  

Not exactly a face that would make most women swoon.

When Eva Braun was a teenager, she worked as a salesgirl in the shop of the official Nazi Party Photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. Eventually, she began working as his photography assistant and it was in his darkroom that she first glimpsed the man whose paranoia, gastrointestinal agonies (do the research), and "Vitamin B" shots caused the death of millions.

She fell in love with a face that only a (blind) mother could love. Yeah, yeah, I know...I have slept with men who are unconventially sexy, but I doubt anyone in their right mind would classify Hitler as such. He suffered from constant bouts of noxious gas, had terrible taste in clothes, and quite frankly, that whole trying to take over the world thing just doesn't work for me.

I imagine Eva standing in a darkroom as she watches the glow of his face form into an image that captures her heart. Now, I have no idea if it happened this way or not, although it is documented that she met Hitler in this shop and because Hoffman was the official Nazi Party Photographer, she did see photos of Hitler before she met him. As a woman, I can almost guarantee she was already drawn to him through the photos.

And now for some personal stuff. I've been lucky enough to be in love for five years, as improbable as that seems. And today, we're celebrating my better half's fiftieth. By custom, we also celebrate the anniversary of our meeting that same day, so it's a big deal in our little world.

Happy Birthday, honey. I love you.

This is a total navel-gazing moment but eff it, it's my blog!

I'm in a lot of physical and emotional pain. Forty has hit me like a frying pan on a toon's nogging and it has taken me almost a month to write about my passage into official middleagehood because ... well ... it's painful.

I don't like it.

It sucks.

I hate being old.

Not because I look old but because I feel old. Every bone and muscle in my body has started to sink into decrepitude. I don't feel emotionally older than 30 yet here I am seeing my body crash and burn further and further away from my self.

What is worse than the pain is the horrible, terrible fear that keeps me awake at night : Four years ago I woke in a pool of sweat, smacked with the horrible realization that I would be cursed with ... the gift of longevity.

Time is the most used noun in the English language, says the new Oxford Dictionary.
Most abused too?

Have you noticed Big Government and Big Business have effectively taken over all our time, one way or another? -- colluding to micromanage jobs and markets, most of which become ossified and inescapable School requirements 'round the clock and calendar:

Back to School: A Time to Rethink Time
By Milton Chen

Another year has passed, and schools are still captives of an outdated calendar. . .

The news (why do we call it that? Because we're controlled by TIME!) often makes me want to stage a clock-and calendar burning on the steps of some capitol building -- anywhere in the western world will do.

Time that used to belong between doctors and patients belongs to the UK government now. Busy bureaucrats do random appointment book checks, to guarantee every individual an appointment on either short or long notice, 48-hours being the magic time of demarcation, yada yada (another Oxford term in the news.)

Waking up to those two smiles makes every day Mother's Day.

Women ought not be damned to reproductive servitude through forced pregnancies and human harvesting. Make sure you contribute to to Planned Parenthood or NARAL Pro-Choice America; who are fighting each day for women's reproductive freedom.

And while you're at it, make sure you contribute to our blog and ensure we continue fighting the good fight one daily posting of dissent at a time.

Happy Mother's Day y'all!