The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

-- Wallace Stevens

Main Entry:	despondent
Definition:	depressed
Synonyms:	blue*, blue funk, bummed out, cast down, dejected, despairing, disconsolate, discouraged, disheartened, dispirited, doleful, down, downcast, downhearted, forlorn, gloomy, glum, grieving, hopeless, in despair, low, low-spirited, melancholy, miserable, morose, mourning, sad, shot down*, sorrowful, woebegone, wretched

• What are the Election 2006 priorities of the Senate Republicans? Well, according to their ethically-suspect leader, flag-burning and prevention of gay marriage. Because those are the most pressing issues facing American citizens today -- not crazy-high gas prices, a lack of renewable resources, a quamire of a war in Iraq, a lack of health-care insurance for many Americans, a minimum wage that hasn't been raised in over a decade, a world that currently hates our guts . . .

• Rhythm method criticized as a killer of embryos -- If you don't believe in using contraceptives, chances are you've gone by the old standby of the rhythm method. But:
  

  As many as 50% of conceptions may not survive long enough even to disrupt menstruation, [Luc] Bovens says. It is reasonable to assume then, he adds, that embryos created from sperm that has been sitting for days within the female's reproductive tract before ovulation may be disadvantaged.
  
  The situation is similar, he suggests, for eggs that have been waiting around for sperm to arrive. These are the only two likely scenarios where fertilisation might occur using the rhythm method, he points out.
  
  These embryos may then face a less-than-ideal uterine lining, he points out, since the uterus is not as receptive outside of the most fertile period.
  
  Bovens calculates that, if the rhythm method is 90% effective, and if conceptions outside the fertile period are about twice as likely to fail as to survive, then "millions of rhythm method cycles per year globally depend for their success on massive embryonic death." link
  

  Which is one reason why the Pill *should* be embraced by people concerned about embryonic deaths -- the Pill's MAIN function is to prevent ovulation from occurring, and hence, stop any fertilizing from occurring in the first place.
  
  Then again, opposition to the contraceptives usually isn't as nuanced as the argument above -- and really springs from a desire to only view sex as a procreation method.
  

• and finally, a few of you sent me this story -- with hopes of giving me some "perspective." Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master's Thesis.
  

  A courageous young notebook computer committed a fatal, self-inflicted execution error late Sunday night, selflessly giving its own life so that professors, academic advisors, classmates, and even future generations of college students would never have to read Jill Samoskevich's 227-page master's thesis, sources close to the Brandeis University English graduate student reported Monday.

OSWIECIM, Poland - Pope Benedict XVI visited the Auschwitz concentration camp as "a son of the German people" Sunday and asked God why he remained silent during the "unprecedented mass crimes" of the Holocaust.

Benedict walked along the row of plaques at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex's memorial, one in the language of each nationality whose members died there. As he stopped to pray, a light rain stopped and a brilliant rainbow appeared over the camp.

"To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany," he said later.

"In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

link

Brownies in the City, originally uploaded by becky b..

Yesterday we took the grrrls out for an all-day field trip into Saskatoon (who recently turned 100 years old!).

I'm still recovering, rest wise, from all that we did!

More pictures here.

My little sis graduated a couple weekends ago with a Masters in Library Science. Look ma, at least one of us has finished her schooling! (I'll wear those black robes one day, dammit)

Congrats, little sis!

Bush says he regrets saying “bring ‘em on” as a taunt to Iraqi insurgents in July 2003. Since that time more than 2200 U.S. troops have died. [not to mention thousands of Iraqis]

high suicide rates after premarital sex,
condom use is linked to rise of STDs,
exaggerated failure rate of condoms.

emphasize[s] the benefits of abstinence. These programs also include information about sexual behavior other than intercourse, as well as contraception and disease-prevention methods. These programs are also referred to as abstinence-plus or abstinence-centered. [link]

• The study/discussion guide for the documentary (includes background information, stats, and experts answering questions)
• and SIECUS: Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States

In 2004, the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center released its National Annenberg Election Survey, which found Daily Show viewers to be better informed on campaign issues than consumers of other late-night television programs, newspapers, network news, or cable news. In a press release, Annenberg senior analyst Dannagal Goldthwaite Young said: "Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers -- even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration."

The survey asked respondents to answer a six-question quiz designed to measure "political knowledge." Daily Show viewers ages 18 to 29 scored higher than those who consumed any amount of network news, any amount of newspapers, or one to three days of cable news; young Daily Show viewers scored the same as young viewers who watched four or more days of cable news. The survey did not say what percentage of Daily Show viewers regularly consumed news from other media outlets. Overall, Daily Show viewers scored the highest out of any group surveyed, with Daily Show viewers answering, on average, 60 percent of the questions correctly.

Also, according to CNN, Nielsen Media Research statistics show that when directly compared with O'Reilly Factor viewers, "Stewart's viewers are not only smart, but more educated than O'Reilly's.":

"Daily Show" viewers are 78 percent more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of college education, while O'Reilly's audience is only 24 percent more likely to have that much schooling.

If, for instance, the church spire actually has been an image of aspirations "towards heaven," and if churchmen pay verbal tribute to the power of the supernatural, and if then on church property they erect business structures soaring far above their church, does not this combination of behavioristic and imaginal tests require us to conclude that their true expression is not in their words, but in the conditions of steel and stone which are weightily there, to dwarf you as the church spire never dwarfed you, and to put you at the bottom of a deep, windswept gulch?

Regardless of what they may say in their statements telegraphed worldwide by the news agencies, without gesture, without tonality, have they not, in their mixture of behavior and image, really proclaimed that they live by a "post-Christian" order of motives?

If church spires mean anything, they must overtop the building that surround them. However, the opposition might point out: There are the catacombs of religion, too. True, there is the underground.

Kenneth Burke
A Rhetoric of Motives (1969)

One of the blogs I regularly read on my Bloglines reader is abortionclinicdays -- a weblog of several health care providers and what they face on a day-to-day basis, helping women. It's not a site that is overtly-political -- if anything, it puts a (much needed) human face on a heated debate.

But what really amazes me in reading the comments on our blog is how much of a disconnect there is between people talking about abortion in venues like this, and the people actually involved in an abortion experience. Some of our commentators think that what we are saying is illogical and therefore means that we are immoral. Ex: That a woman could get comfort from our baptizing a fetus even though that makes no sense in any religion. Or, that we can turn people away, and not make money off them. That makes no sense to you, but that is exactly it. Until you sit with a woman and hear her complex story, you really can't understand. As Dr. George Tiller has said, "Until you understand the heart of a woman, abortion makes no sense at all."

I encourage anyone reading this to engage in a REAL, honest conversation with someone close to you about an abortion experience that you or they know about. If it was a horrible experience, what motivated them to go to an abortion clinic and sign the consent form and go through the whole process and get an abortion. What was in the woman's heart? what was her support system like? What material and financial challenges did she have? If it was a good experience or choice, how did she feel? who helped comfort her and what made her feel better? What did she get to do by not being pregnant? In other words, let's move beyond the right/wrong good/bad rhetoric and get at what's happening to women and men who seek abortion. Why do anti-choice women seek abortion and pro-choice women have trouble with it? (which happens quite a lot) What gets in the way of our preventing unintended pregnancy?

And unlike other health care, the problems will come back on our door, not just individually but collectively. Has anyone ever stopped to wonder why 1.3 million women every year since 1973 have had abortions and yet we are on the verge of losing legal abortion? I believe that this is one of the issues that have clouded people's commitment to legal abortion. If they feel ambivalent or cannot sort out the situation that caused them to have an abortion, or feel emotionally troubled, it is not only a poor emotional outcome for many women, it is also a political nightmare.

I have experienced some incredible transformations with women who took more time after talking with us. I have learned, like lou, to trust my gut, and to share what I know with the women I talk to. The other piece is that we care about what we do too. It is our signature on the consent form that assures the doctor that she has resolved her ambivalence and is ready for the abortion. If we abdicate this thorny question and don't offer our best information and advice then we really are working at a mill. [latest entry]

They met at the funeral of a perfect stranger.
From then on, things got perfectly stranger and stranger.

Harold: Maude.
Maude: Hmm?
Harold: Do you pray?
Maude: Pray? No. I communicate.
Harold: With God?
Maude: With *life*.

and

Language, which is thus predicative, is for the same cause sermonic. We are all of us preachers in private or public capacities. We have no sooner uttered words than we have given impulse to other people to look at the world, or some small part of it, in our way. Thus caught up in a great web of inter-communication and inter-influence, we speak as rhetoricians affecting one another for good or ill.

Richard M. Weaver
from "Language is Sermonic"

"For people who insist that the movie is never as good as the book, your case just got stronger." -- Matt Pais, METROMIX.COM

"You know a movie's a dud when even its self-flagellating albino killer monk isn't any fun. " -- John Beifuss, COMMERCIAL APPEAL (MEMPHIS, TN)

"As for the film's entertainment virtues, forget it. This is one of the most talky and pretentious major films in memory." -- Steve Crum, VIDEO-REVIEWMASTER.COM

"Who knew controversy could be so dull?" -- Michael Elliott, MOVIE PARABLES

"The most controversial thriller of the year turns out to be about as exciting as watching your parents play Sudoku." -- Ann Hornaday, WASHINGTON POST

"The Da Vinci Code the movie suffers the sin of being afraid to make the same kind of mischief with its sacred text -- Brown's book -- that the author did with a certain other blockbusting bestseller." -- Geoff Pevere, TORONTO STAR

"I'm very happy to believe that Jesus was married," he said. "I know the Catholic Church has problems with gay people and I thought this would be absolute proof that Jesus was not gay."

link

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

[Miss ya tons.]

• Finding out the SSO booksale made over $87,000 this year (yep, we went twice, so I think we did our part)
• Watching the conductor's hair flail around when he got excited at the podium
• Having Jerry lean over and do the Darth Vader breath during a particularly ominous section of Franz Liszt's "Piano Concerto no.1. E-flat major"
• Watching the violinists' heads bob about when really playing fast
• When I asked Jerry which instrument he'd want to play -- he replied (with a serious voice) the triangle.
  

I think we'll make going to the Symphony a more regular event, for the two of us.

Five (presumably) fake personality tests (and what I think my result would be)

1. Which piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken are you? (thigh)
2. Which abusive celebrity parent are you? (Joan Crawford)
3. Which unreleased Jerry Lewis vehicle are you? (The Day the Clown Cried)
4. Which difficult calisthenic are you? (sit ups)
5. Which odd euphemism for sexual intercourse are you? (genital congress)