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Category: Life
It’s The Women, Stupid
And now for a romantic interlude in the otherwise dangerous realm of Afghan social morays vis-a-vis the Taliban. A young couple whose families disapproved of their union ran off to get married. Married, mind. Not live together outside wedlock or anything so dramatic, but married. The result? They were shot outside their mosque after a tribunal of mullahs condemned them. Here is the story.
It is difficult seeing this to remember that this sort of thing is really not consistent with mainstream Islam. But, just as with certain splinter groups of so-called christian sects, the Qu’ran is continually used to justify the persecution of women.…
The Irony of Conservatism
Politics dictated FDA policy? Say it isn’t so!
According to this NY Times piece, the Bush Administration (they get the blame because, after all, he was the Decider) bade the FDA to meddle with contraception when it suited a certain agenda.
What I find so delightful about this, as with the Dover PA decision on Intelligent Design in the classroom, is that a Republican judge, this time a Reagan appointee, made the call.
The thing is, contraception and all that it implies really ought to be a conservative issue. I mean, really—it has all the hallmarks of the last 60 years of conservative philosophy built on the rights of the individual, the freedom from interference being chief among them. …
Serendipity do dah
Through purest serendipity, there will be a conference on Germaine de Stael here in St. Louis in May. About five years ago I started working on an alternate history set in 1923 French America. The conceit is that Napoleon never sold Louisiana to the United States, but managed to keep it. There are several reasons for this, a few of them historically legitimate, but it is a science fiction novel after all. In the course of researching the whole Napoleonic era, I stumbled on this woman, de Stael, and came to regard her as a phenom. She was one of the few people toward whom Napoleon seems to have shown actual fear and the only woman, as far as I can tell, and I became intrigued. …
Catcher In The Rye
I just completed an essay for a newsletter about books we never read, but it is assumed, because we are Readers, we have. Catcher In The Rye is such a book for me. Never read it. Know a lot about it, through some kind of osmosis, rubbing up against people who have read it. You can glean a lot that way.
I made the statement in the essay that I probably don’t even own a copy. I just checked. I do. It’s not actually mine, the name of the person who apparently loaned it to me is stamped inside the front cover. …
My Dog
Okay, this is too cute. I need to do videos, but they might mean something only to me. So what?
My dog…her name is Coffey. About 35 lbs, the color of coffee beans except for the slightly spotted white on her chest, around her neck, her paws, and a streak like spilled milk on her face from forehead down to around her nose. Marvelous ears.
Happy.
I’m not in a great mood these days, for a variety of reasons, and this morning I seemed stuck in a funk. I have to go in to the Day Job earlier than usual and it’s too damn cold outside to either go to the gym (can’t wait for winter to be over) or walk Coffey. …
Getting There
I’ve always been impatient. So much so, it could almost be considered pathological. I’ve had to learn patience like a religious observance, and it chafes, it does. My father is one of those people for whom the act of doing is a pleasure in and of itself. An attitude I’ve been able to emulate consistently in only one thing. He was once a gunsmith and I recall watching him—for short periods of time only, mind you—sanding a rifle stock. He’d work on it for days, running the papers in ever finer grains over the wood until he had achieved such a penetrating perfection as might be possible before moving on to painstakingly applying the varnish…ah, he was rapt. …
Anniversary…of sorts
I dug up an old diary a few months ago. From time to time I’ve tried to keep one of these, sometimes going so far as to try for journal status, but I just can’t seem to sustain it. So there are these relics lying about that occasionally unearth that give me a glimpse into what daily weirdness I was into back in 19—
The 20th Century.  That’s when I did a great deal of this sort of thing. I suppose ultimately that my own life bores me while I’m living it. Or maybe I’m too busy living it to record it. …
New Words
I’ve been working on a novella lately and this past week I found myself fully immersed in it. I found the groove, so to speak, and have been barreling ahead with considerable glee. It’s the thing about writing I most love and the thing that hasn’t been there for several months, not since I finished my historical and mailed it off in May. Even before that it was sporadic.
But I’ve slipped into the stream on this one and I owe it to a couple of perceptive editorial remarks from the people to whom I’d like to sell it. That part I haven’t had for years now. …
No, um, well, You Know What Over 18!!
I have said for years that the convulsions of the Religious Right over abortion has less to do with fetuses than with sex. Now that we have proof over time that Abstinence Only education DOES NOT WORK, these folks have decided that rather than recant they will go on an even wilder offensive by attacking university level programs.
All I can do anymore is shake my head and wonder “Just what is it with these people?”
But what really annoys me are the many politicoes who go along with this nonsense and can’t seem to muster the nerve to tell them to, well, fuck off. …