Interfaith Nunnery

2005-08-09T11:20:00.000-04:00

Moving On

I've decided that I need a new blog entirely to really focus on what I've been blabbing about for many posts.. library issues. The nunnery will probably be empty for a while, as I move to new digs, Paperback Girl.

The title is a work in progress. ;)

2005-08-09T10:17:00.000-04:00

Librarian action rises to a new level.

Just as a tide of ignorance swells up and threatens to engulf the world, out of the ashes of the Great Library of Alexandria arises a hero, an educated fellow with fists of steel and a mind as sharp as a tack: public librarian Rex Libris.

2005-07-22T23:24:00.000-04:00

Best. Band. EVAH.

Update: I just bought Harry and the Potters two major albums, one self titled, the other titled, "Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock." I am currently swooning over the song, Save Ginny Weasley. Favorite lines: "Are you Petrified of being Petrified" and of course, "We've Got to Save Ginny Weasley from the Basilisk/ we've got to save the school from that unseen horror."

2005-07-19T21:45:00.000-04:00

My Heart is Broken

I finished Potter.. hate to say it, but I'm more broken up about finishing Potter than anything else at the moment.

Give me time.. this will pass.

2005-06-27T16:35:00.000-04:00

Parents Gone Wild--and the kids pay for it

Laurie Taylor took it upon herself to excorcise the Fayetteville School District of books that might lead to fornication or bad thoughts. After what she termed a personal "audit," she filed 70 complaints against books like Rainbow Boys and Doing It. Oh yeah, and Forever, because puritanical witch-hunts aren't complete without the traditional attack on Judy Blume.

Usually censorship nuts go for well known books that have a lot written about them and are easy to attack without having to read them. To my mind a truly dangerous breed of book burner has emerged, one with a singly minded obsession with parental control. By making "naughty" books unavailable in school libaries, kids would no longer have access to books without parental assistance, either in taking them to the public library, or buying the books.

What is particularly problematic about this book restriction is that while Taylor believes that these books promote sexual promiscuity, they in fact are cautionary tales which may help curious students understand the risks of sexual associations, and give them better a undestanding of their feelings. If there was ever a book to warn girls away from flinging themselves at adolescent boys, "Doing It," would be a good choice.

Taylor seems to have been bolstered in her efforts by a timid school board who decided to move three books she had complained about earlier in the year to a parent shelf, where students wouldn't be able to get at them. I think she really wanted them publicly shredded, but that placing them in a restricted area was an "acceptable compromise."

2005-06-27T16:17:00.000-04:00

Letter From Andrea

I recieved this missive from Sister Andrea only a few days ago, and I thought it might be of interest. I will soon be joining her in England, where she is studying ancient (and important) texts with the help of a lovely grant.

Who just got to spend a day transcribing a Latin song about a prior and an abbot getting completely drunk and puking all over the flowers? I did!

Man, I love my job.

Libraries like the one I visited today do give me a chance to practice some of my more unusual hobbies, like staring at other people's books. A woman behind me was looking at a lovely one with huge full-page full-color fifteenth-century heraldic signs. I didn't have a chance to gawk at that one very long, though, because then I noticed a man about my age who was looking back and forth between the manuscript on foam pads on his desk and two modern printed copies of The Book of Margery Kempe. (Margery Kempe is a famous fifteenth-century woman mystic, and there's only one copy of her manuscript in existence. I think I was three feet from it this afternoon.) Fortunately I managed to contain my enthusiasm. A scholarly reading room was just not the place for it.

London's lovely, even if much warmer than advertised. It's good to be back.

All's well,
Andrea

2005-06-10T16:18:00.000-04:00

Jon Scieszka on Boy Fic.. Sorry, Guy Fic

Scieszka, famous for such amazing reads as The True Story of the Three Little Pigs has a new title out called Guys Write for Guys Read. Its an anthology of guy authors writing about and for guys.. boys really, but we won't say that too loud.

Along with the book, Scieszka is unveiling an awesome new website, Guys Read which features book recommendations for boys. Hooray! Boys are by far the toughest to pitch books to, as a lady librarian. Some guys don't believe I would know a good book if it poked me in the eye, because after all, I'm a girl.

One problem with the site is that its sectioning of age groups (Young Guys, Middle Guys, Older Guys) lumps books like The Beast by Walter Dean Myers, with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in one age group (Middle). That is really no help to anyone not already familiar with titles and authors.

Bookslut has the interview.

2005-06-10T15:21:00.000-04:00

Library Board decides against labeling "mature" materials in Teen section

From Albany, N.Y. :

GUILDERLAND -- Town library trustees soundly rejected a controversial proposal Thursday night that would have flagged sexually explicit books in the library's teen section, ending several weeks of ethical discomfort for some library workers over the implications of labeling books.

"Since we put the books there ... we have an obligation to help the parents," said trustee John Daly, the proposal's sponsor and the only trustee to vote for it.

He added later, "I'm a strong believer in intellectual freedom, in the democratic process, in the give-and-take of ideas. I'm hopeful that at least raising this discussion is going to be helpful."

I hope its helpful at getting John Daly kicked off the board.

2005-06-10T14:43:00.000-04:00

Imagine Going to Jail over a Book
In Italy, a librarian is being prosecuted for having lent a book with an offensive title to a minor. The book was recommended by the Ministry of Social Affairs. The librarian was found guilty, and is facing social condemnation and persecution from her neighbors.

2005-06-10T14:15:00.000-04:00

California is SCARY

Bill AB 756 Prohibits schools from buying any "instructional materials" i.e. books that exceed 200 pages in length.

This bizarre and frighteningly short sighted regulation Encourages the use of technology and multimedia materials to create higher interest and more up-to-date information from varied sources.

The Orange County Register published this commentary by Hugh Glenn, Anaheim resident and online editor:

Efforts to dumb down California public schools continue unabated. The most recent action is the Assembly passing AB 756, a bill by Assemblywoman Jackie Gold- berg that would prevent school districts from using any instructional material that exceeds 200 pages. Assemblyman Keith Richman calls it "ridiculous" and "the epitome of micromanagement." Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction, surprisingly, has remained silent. Astoundingly, 42 legislators (including Orange County's Tom Umberg) approved AB 756 - a vote so dumb that Gov. Schwarzenegger now looks like Socrates and Solomon rolled into one.

According to Goldberg, today's students have no need to read classic works of American history and literature, the majority of which exceed 200 pages; e.g., "The Federalist Papers," "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "The Grapes of Wrath," "Treasure Island," "Farewell to Arms" or "Moby-Dick." No more classroom dictionaries or encyclopedias could be purchased. Forget books by Lemony Snicket and J. K. Rowling, authors of books children actually want to read.

Do legislators really believe that in order to promote technology, you have to take away books?

Some news sources hint at environmentalists being involved who want to save trees. Sadly, this conspiracy theory is not half as crazy as the actual bill.

2005-06-08T08:56:00.000-04:00

What if Amazon, Google, Blogger, and TiVo created a media hegemony?

2005-06-07T13:34:00.000-04:00

More about the bill

I can't help myself.. Reading the drivel about H.R. 2295 on the website of the congressman who introduced the legislation makes me feel soft and sick inside.

Congressman Jones has introduced H.R. 2295 to empower parents at a local level and shine a light on controversial books before they are purchased. This legislation ensures parents that these books are not available to their children without their knowledge and consent.

The congressman, Walter Jones, is in fact the same guy who wanted the French fries in Capital Hill cafeterias renamed "freedom fries."

From the SIECUS website, I have a clearer picture of the reason this legislation was created:

Children's Book About Two Gay Princes Causes Parents' Uproar
Wilmington, NC

The parents of a first-grader at Freeman Elementary School in Wilmington, NC, filed a complaint with the school after they read a book their 7-year-old daughter had brought home from the school library. The book entitled King and King tells the story of a character named Prince Bertie who falls in love with a character named Prince Lee. The book is written by two Dutch authors and the publisher says it is for ages 6 and up. It ends with the two princes falling in love and kissing, their lips obscured by a picture of a heart.

The father said his daughter is "not old enough to understand something like that, especially when it is not in our beliefs." The father also said he felt that, "If this book is going to be allowed, I believe it ought to be allowed on more of a high school level."5 The school principal countered by saying "We have a lot of diversity in our schools… What might be inappropriate for one family, in another family is a totally acceptable thing."

Due to the families' complaint and an additional compliant filed by another family, a school committee, made up of parents, teachers, and community members, held a meeting in late March about the book. The school committee voted 8-3 to put the book under lock and key so that only adults, including parents and teachers, are allowed to check it out.

The parents said they were happy with the decision, but not everyone agreed with the ruling. One committee member said, "I feel like it's my responsibility to make it clear that these things exist. It doesn't mean we have to agree with it. It's not about right or wrong…It's just different."

Due to the widespread media about the controversy, people from around the country donated additional copies of the book to the school. If fact, the attention has prompted a second printing of the book and a sequel is expected later this spring.

2005-06-07T09:43:00.000-04:00

Parental Controls, Or Parental Patrols?

More about that misbegotten proposal to 'create local review boards of five to 15 parents who would have the authority to review and make recommendations on elementary school library and classroom materials before they could be purchased. Under the law, introduced May 11, states that failed to put the parental panels in place would lose all federal education funding.'
See ALA's statement on the legislation.

Christopher Harris, on his Infomancy blog explains that "This bill presumes that the "highly qualified" teachers and librarians mandated under NCLB are, in fact, incompetent. It assumes, as with filtering software discussed before, that students are incapable of making decisions on their own. This creates an environment where information is driven underground. Information literacy cannot be learned in a controlled environment. Students learn to evaluate the crush of information sources they will face in the world only by encountering examples of good and bad."

Thanks to Alice in Infoland (More voices of reason are showing up my my listservs!) for this excellent information.

2005-06-04T16:45:00.000-04:00

Oh my lord, an erection!

A school board banned and then unbanned Buffalo Tree in Muhlenberg, PA. A book that was being used in a junior year English classroom. A book that is recommended to for children ages 12 and older. Because of an erection.

The article paints a sad picture of the bible thumping good girl Brittany Hunsicker calling the book "junk," while overweight, spectacled Mary Isamoyer asks the board not to "insult our intelligence."

Bookslut's Michael Schuab writes: "Poor Mary, cursed with perspective, intelligence and logic. She'll have to settle for going to college and having a fulfilling career while lucky Brittany gets to tote her seven bitter children to Bible study class. Teenagers, it's not too late to learn a lesson: Don't question authority. That's the key to happiness. Trust me."

Personally, I'm worried about Brittany's next year as a student at the school. She's probably going to be remembered for her phallophobia.

Should juniors in high school be forced to have discussions about erections? Should there be a limit on discussions of any kind that make girls like the daughter of Tammy Hahn(another voice for banning) uncomfortable? TBogg, another blogger concerned for the children of the school, writes: "Congratulations Tammy, you've just opened the door to making your daughter the Erection Queen of Muhlenberg High School. When she slams her door on you while screaming "I hate you! I hate you! You fat drunken cow!" you can look back on this moment and be proud. "

I wonder if the shower scene is a really important part of the book, if its something that needs a lot of discussion. If I get around to reading the book, I'll let you know.

2005-05-22T09:12:00.000-04:00

The Congressional Auxilliary of the Ladies' Sewing Circle and Book Burning Society

On May 11, 2005, Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) introduced the Parental Empowerment Act of 2005 in the House. This legislation would create parent-based advisory boards to review at the local level material eyed for school libraries and classrooms. It would let parents, in blocks of five to 15, decide whether the country's youngest children are ready for controversial themes.

Jones' proposal would restrict federal education funds for states that fail to adopt guidelines for elementary-school book purchases.

This is the result of a constituent's complaint about the controversial book King&King, about two princes who meet and fall in love.

Go here for the story.

The actual bill from the THOMAS website

2005-04-24T17:51:00.000-04:00

More from the Ladies' Sewing Circle and Book Burning Society

Eric Carle's Draw Me A Star Seems to freak some parents and librarians out because there are flesh colored outlines of the human form in it. If anyone knows Eric Carle's work, it is obvious that the pieces are artistically rendered, and not offensive at all. Again, a librarian seeking help with the book goes to the LSCBBS, only to be told,

"I think the poetry is really more mature than elementary. IMHO."

What is wrong with these people?!!

2005-04-24T17:30:00.000-04:00

Our Own Worst Enemy

Now that I have a little free time on my hands, I've been going back over the listserv emails that I haven't had a chance to get to in the past could weeks. What I have seem on a particular listserv for School Library Media Specialists both surprised and disgusted me.

In almost every conversation where a popular book is brought up, some women who call themselves librarians swat it down as unacceptable for whatever age group is suggested. For example, a librarian/teacher sought help with discussion for a sixth grade class for Lois Lowry's The Giver, another woman wrote a long-winded diatribe about using such a dark, dangerous novel with such "young" children. She said the book was better for High School Students!

Now there is another poor naive librarian asking for help with A Series of Unfortunate events, and the vultures have resurfaced, screaming foul play at having fourth graders.. fourth graders! Read the series.

Some of the more lamentable comments can be found below:

"I know that these books are extremely popular, but I personally took
exception to parts of The Bad Beginning. My position has been that it's
a great series for individual kids, but not a whole class project or
read-aloud due to the controversial issues. I know this isn't what you
asked but I wanted to add my two cents..."

"I have a real problem with this 'one size fits all' approach to
books that has been mentioned in a few other posts. First, not everyone
will have the ability to read these books (they are at 1-2 levels above
4th grade level), nor be even interested in reading them. "

"Don't get me wrong, I would love to have this kind
of program available for students, but unless you are fortunate enough
to have a very elite group of 4th graders this will probably do more
harm than good!"

"Although I don't push the series until 5th grade, I have to say I am surprised that anyone thought "the objectionable" parts were handled well in the movie. Am I the only one who found the movie more objectionable?"

Heaven help us, only children who have been thoroughly tested for to make sure they are mature should be let near Lemony Snicket!

2005-04-24T10:25:00.000-04:00

Classes ended last week, hurrah! I also finished a truly wretched take-home exam. I hope I didn't fail.

Due to the three inches of snow outside my window, I am not going to comment on the lovely spring weather, but I will say that working Saturday morning at the library, even after a late night of "school's out" celebration, was very satisfying. I found ghost stories for a girl that wasn't expecting me to understand her interests, helps several little boys find new chapter book series' to read, and working on my new Storytime poster, which hangs on the story room door and advertises the times and dates. This year its a Spring wildlife theme, with three types of wildflowers: hepatica, snake-head fritillary, and spring beauties. I added ants and a ladybug, as well as several butterflies for insect life, and for animals I placed a fat bull frog on a rock, a mouse sniffing around the flowers and a deer drinking from the stream. In the corner by the cattails, I put a nest with a couple of colorful eggs that blend into the their surroundings so you don't see them immediately. I will try to post a picture at some point, or at least a link to one..

2005-04-15T09:45:00.000-04:00

Storytime Finale

The final storytime for spring was last night, and I finally had the chance to tell a story for older children. The evening's audience was made up entirely of girls, ranging from a very adept kindergartner to a fourth grader. Storylady and I had of course planned for three year olds, that being our median age group for evening storytimes. Thankfully, she and I are good at doing things "on the fly."

Storylady started off with a story titled "Big Man Drum," about a poor sharecropper who tricks monkeys into taking him back to their cave by holding very still when they surround him as he is taking a nap. They poke and prod, even jam their digits up his nose, but he only makes a sound when one of the monkeys slaps him on the belly. "Ugh!"

Anyway, the monkey take him home across a narrow vine bridge over a waterfall, and decorate him with flowers and jewels. After the monkeys go to sleep, the man sneaks off quietly with his newfound riches and buys himself a farm. His former employer finds out what he did, and decides to try it himself. Sadly, he gets frighened on the bridge and yells, "don't drop me!" Of course, they drop him.

After some silly rhyme dances, I told the story of The Singing Chick using stuffed animal puppets for a chick, a fox, a wolf, and a bear. Instead of telling the story straight, as I would for young kids, I made it more elaborate, and it went something like this:

Do you remember when you first arrived at your new school in first grade, how exciting it was, how you had NO IDEA what you were in for? Well that's just how little chick felt when he cracked open his shell. He was all alone in the big forest, but he was so happy he danced about and sang, "The sky is so blue! The sun is so yellow! The trees are so green! And I'm a happy fellow." (I used my best warbly voice for this) He danced and sang (as I did, coming from behind the felt board to dance in front of the kids, and then back around, circling the easle) and danced... and woke up fox in his den.

Fox took one look at the happy chick and said. "Hellooooo lunch!" Chick sang his little song, "The sky is so blue, the sun is so--!" (Gobbling noises made and the fox puppet leaps on the chick and devours him behind the felt board). Fox was pleased with his meal, he gave a great big burp (braaap) and suddenly began to sing the same silly song. And dance. "What is going on here? I look ridiculous!" Fox thought, but nevertheless he danced and sang (circling around the board again) and danced-- (Wolf appears and grabs fox by the neck) "Hey, fox I've got a migraine like a ten ton truck roaring through my head. Keep it down!" Fox started singing again. (wolf grabs him by the tail, shakes him over the felt board. Now I have a free hand!) "One more peep out of you and I'll eat you!"

"Peep!"

Wolf gobbles him up, and complains that now he has to go find an antacid (food and migraines don't mix). But of course he sings and dances (the puppet is just a head, but it has a long felt tongue and wiggle when wolf sings, so the kids are laughing by this point at my silly song) and wakes up hibernating bear, who is very grumpy and with a great gruff voice makes the eating threat again, and of course, wolf just peeps at him, like a pea-goose. Bear eats wolf, and decides to go take a nap on a nice sunny hill.. but he is rudely inturrupted by the urge to sing and dance. Bear is still bleary eye-ed from his long sleep and his dancing (the bear puppet dances and jiggles) runs him right into a tree! (Story lady bangs a drum at this point). Bear bounces down the hill (bear puppet flies over the easle to lay in front of the kids) and out pops wolf (kids love it when you throw stuffed animals during storytime, so more flying puppets) then fox, and then little chick. And the singing and dancing stops!

Well little chick looks around and says, "Wow, first I'm singing and dancing, and then I'm in a dark place like my egg, and now I'm back! Isn't this the best of all possible worlds?!"

Fox says, "I lost my lunch, but somehow, I feel full."

Wolf says, "My migraine is gone!"

And Bear says, "I would appreciate it if we all forgot this ever happened."

And fox carried chick back through the forest to the hen house on a nearby farm, and chick saw a hen singing, "The sky is so blue! The sun is so yellow-- Hey! is that my chick?" The End

After storytime, I took the kids out to the garden and we decorated pots with self adhesive foam cutouts and planted marigold seeds. It was an enjoyable evening.

2005-04-09T18:44:00.000-04:00

The Labyrinth

If you find that you are bored, or nostalgic for a simpler, more David Bowie-filled time, you can read the novel based on the movie, "The Labyrinth" courtesy of Walter D. Pullen.

2005-04-08T18:36:00.000-04:00

I'm busy patching in new links that I think are worthy and useful, but bear with the terrible disorder.. I know some of them don't make sense where I put them.

I really just wanted to tell you about a fantastic new read by M.T. Anderson called The Game of Sunken Places. Its a mix of fantasy, science fiction, mystery and nearly terrifying adventure that's good for kids from fourth or fifth grade on up. Anderson introduces lovely plot twists and gives readers a heart pumping, creepy ending, even though everything is okay.

In Storytime news, this week I read a story that is sadly out of print about a little wooly bear that meets other insects on its way along to becoming a tiger moth. It was pretty cute, and I encouraged the kids to make the insect noises with me. The Storylady acted out the story of The Very Lazy Ladybug using plush puppets, and that was a great hit, because she is so adept at making the puppets move in lively funny ways.

2005-03-30T18:18:00.000-05:00

New Look
Do you like it? I don't know yet how to put comments in.. we'll see.

(Sorry Andrea, lost all the old comments)

2005-03-29T21:38:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry its been such a long time since I last wrote. I have been recovering from surgery, and have as a result become one of those boring people who thinks about aches and pains and talks about side affects of medicines all the time. I listen to myself, and I think, "how did I get this way?"

I would like to note that during last Thursday's storytime I read a delightful children's book entitled Alvie Eats Soup and while I am not sure I recommend it for picky eaters (it doesn't have a reassuring ending like Gregory, the Terrible Eater) it is very funny. Sadly, due to Easter weekend, our usual crowd was not there, I and found myself telling the story to four children, which quickly dwindled to three because one child would not listen to her mother. Even with tiny crowds, though, the show must go on.

For Terri, Who Knows Not What She Has Begun
I want to say a very short rant about Terri Schaivo. I feel terrible for the family, but at the same time, I am enraged by their self-indulgent behavior as they get photo ops with Jeb and Delay and inspire congress to get involved in personal issues and other branches of government. Terri's parents are creating precedents that may make other people's lives miserable, and they are not doing anything that would help their daughter.

Furthermore, what kind of life are they attempting to save? Twelve years of lying in bed, being rolled around regularly to prevent the body from developing bed sores, and seeing a loved one for an hour or so every few days, tops? Not talking, not eating, not communicating. Even when the flat brain activity is taken out of the equation, and you actually believe that her movements on the video were a sign of mental awareness, her life SUCKS.

In my opinion, Terri S. has been treated like a beloved pet, not a family member. Terri's family can make believe what they want about her thoughts, and she always seems happy for them to be there. When they leave, she is fed and cared for by others, with other people's money, namely her husband's. They must be honestly confused why Terri's husband would want to take the feeding tube away from their daughter, but that gives them no right do destroy the legal system for their personal benefit.

2005-02-20T13:49:00.000-05:00

Storytime

Well, you asked for storytime stories, so I will try to give you a few. Last Thursday night's storytime theme was the rainbow, a fitting ending to a series of storytimes we (the librarian and I) had put together usings stories about colors. In our little act, I first bring out a finger puppet fairy named Tinkerteller, and she whispers things into my ear, and generally acts shy while we sing the opening nonsense song. At the beginning out this story session six weeks ago I introduced Tinkerteller as a very sad little flower fairy I met while shopping at Krogers. She was sitting in one of the flower refridgerators next to some bedraggled roses feeling sorry for herself, so I invited her to come tell stories with me at the library. Every week now I come in and parents ask their kids, " where did Tinkerteller come from, do you remember?" I didn't realize the families would like my creation story so much.

After silly songs the story lady, as our librarian is referred to, opens the box with some object that represents the theme. In this case it was a bunch of colorful plush rings of various colors, which were piled on my head it a tottering crown ( the kids loved it, especially when they fell off). Then I read Alice the Fairy by David Shannon. Very cute story about a little girl who believes herself to be a Temporary Fairy, and gets into lots of mischief as a result. Then the storylady told a story (Don't let the tiger eat you) and then I presented The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater using a fantastic felt board put together by another librarian. I started the story, "A long long time ago, like, in the 1970s" and that parents thought that was pretty funny. If you don't know this story, it involves a seagull carrying a bucket of paint. If I say anymore I'll ruin it.

2005-02-09T11:48:00.000-05:00

Gosh, where did February come from? I didn't think this semester could possibly be crazier than last semester, but of course I was proven wrong. Medical problems have made it difficult for me to find time to post, but I should at least up date once in a while.

In the happy news front, I have been having a wonderful time working at the library, and I should really post more about my experiences there. Minor successes like organizing the implementation of the art table and finding the perfect soft cloth tea set keep me happy, and my storytimes are something I just love to do. Its so rewarding to watch children and adults having a good time with something you put together yourself.

In the serious news front, I am becoming more involved in my class work. I have become more passionate about youth library issues and research, and I think I may do a PhD when I finish my masters.

I have go again, but I will try to post more in the future.

2005-01-12T13:50:00.000-05:00

In one of my stranger flights of culinary fancy, I substituted half the milk in my tapioca recipe for eggnog, because we had some extra and no one wanted to drink it. While I was cooking it I thought, "this is a terrible, terrible mistake I am making," but it didn't turn out so bad if one likes both eggnog and tapioca..

2005-01-11T22:53:00.000-05:00

Is there, like, a war going on?

Yeah, cause, like, I'm going to this great party... I'm sure the big crowds will give Senator Frist a chance to show off his vacation photos.

2005-01-11T22:03:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year

I hope everyone had as much fun over break as I did, which in my case meant I read dozens of Regency romance novels of middling quality and vegged out. My older brother and his wife came up from NYC for x-mas with their pet parrot, and we ate fresh organic locally grown our-turkey-is-holier-than-your-turkey turkey. We also had venison steaks, courtesy of the bucks in the back yard, now fewer in number. We promised my sister-in-law we wouldn't talk about Bambi at the table, but little brother brought it up every five minutes until he was threatened with bodily harm.

I admit, I am little late with the season's greetings, but its been a pretty depressing time with the tsunami and that evil bastard back in office appointing advocates of torture to the highest moral and legal positions in the land. I try not to dwell on it, but it's just so gross, watching him talk about how cutting social security benefits is going to be so wonderful.. and did you notice he's still talking about the link between Iraq and Al Queda? Apparently if you win an election, that means that all the lies from your campaign are actually true.

On to more exciting subjects.. my new classes. I'm pretty sure its going to be another crazy, busy semester, but I am taking one less class, so that should help. Also, my position as co-story teller on Thursday nights is practically official, and next week I'm doing another storytime all on my own.. I'm going to lighten my load a bit my doing a craft for a portion of story time, but I still need to pull together some books and memorize something interesting. We'll see.

Finally I would like to say that the Nunnery, at least for the moment, is going be to a mostly solo project because Niki and Andrea are trying to get their PhDs done, and they have no time to spare.

2004-12-19T11:29:00.000-05:00

The semester is over!! Hurrah! I have been getting plenty of sleep lately, and eating lots of delicious holiday treats. Busy at the moment with holiday presents and library programming.. later!

2004-12-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

Rumsfeld Recommends Faith-Based Armor

What a bastard.

2004-12-08T15:13:00.000-05:00

2004-11-27T09:21:00.000-05:00

This item will self destruct..

So I am at work this morning, and a little more reflective than usual. In the staff catalogue, there are many options that we don't tend to use, and I have never read through all of them. This morning, I realized that item 16 is, and I quote, "Blow System Up."

I guess this is just in case the Feds stop by..

2004-11-19T20:10:00.000-05:00

Puppies

Lavender Brown, one of my family's english springer spaniels, gave birth yesterday to seven beautiful puppies. I helped for five of the seven, but sadly, I am now WAY behind on papers, and I am very, very tired.

2004-11-14T22:57:00.000-05:00

Of all the stupid...

Harry (I would be a Republican but I get more press this way) Reid is the new Senate leader. What are they smoking up there on capital hill?! We tried "getting along" for four years and it didn't work. When is our leadership going to stop making the same mistakes over and over again and start reading Deming?

2004-11-14T22:36:00.000-05:00

The New Citystates?

This is an intersting, if angry essay on the How our country breaks down in terms of blue and red. I am going to hold off judgement on the article because I haven't read it all the way through, but while I think it has some good points, I'm too much of a bleeding heart to commit to such a radical urban agenda.

2004-11-11T13:11:00.000-05:00

Harry Potter: Gateway to Satanism?

"No - kids who read Harry Potter won't automatically become devil worshippers. But EVERY kid who reads it will open up the door of their mind - some a little, some a lot - to the whispers, influences and lies of demonic spirits."

Gregory R. Reid has been reading way too much fantasy literature.. I think he actually believes it!

2004-11-11T10:29:00.000-05:00

Women's Reproductive Health In Danger?

I just recieved a forward that begins with these words:

"President Bush has announced his plan to select Dr. W. David Hager to head up the Food and drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. The committee has not met for more than two years, during which time its charter lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration is tasked with filling all eleven positions with new members. This position does not require Congressional approval...Dr. Hager, the author of "As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Thenand Now." The book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing Women withcase studies from Hager's practice. His views of reproductive health care are far outside the mainstream for reproductive technology."

Upon further inquiry, (and another email) I learned that this is an old email that began recirculating after Bush won the election. Hager is not the head of the committee, but his position on the board was extended another year. Further information can be found at Snopes.com: W. David Hager

2004-11-07T23:13:00.000-05:00

Fascinating Maps.

2004-11-07T11:34:00.000-05:00

The Democratic Epiphany

So I was in class the other day, watching people make the same tired arguments that we just need to get into the "ignorant" communities that vote Bush and provide them with a broader world view. AS IF! I hate being condescended to, and I think most people agree with me on this. Suddenly I thought, gosh, you shouldn't "go in," you should "go to." I'm sorry I didn't say it out loud in class, but I guess I was in such an academic setting, talking about going to chuch might have made me look even crazier than I usually do.

Civic minded liberals need to get out of their computer chairs and go back to Church, or Temple, or whatever. They need to reintegrate themselves into communities that still meet face to face on a daily and weekly basis, communities that are not specifically tailored to meet their needs. I know, its a terrible thing to have to move amongst people who don't share your love of feng shui and The New Republic, but if we reenergize moderate churches that are struggling to survive, or even get involved with churches that may not be so moderate, we can physically cross the divide that was so apparent in the polling booths. Perhaps we will find religious associations help to make our voices heard in a more meaningful way then simply donating to MoveOn and trying to get good advertising spots on TV.

After thinking about this, I did a search and found this article from The Christian Science Monitor.

"The political right and political left have agreed that religion equals the religious right. The right has done this because they want to own the issue, and some on the left have done this because they almost want to dismiss the issue," says Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners, a magazine covering faith and politics.

To make change, we must change ourselves.

2004-11-06T21:29:00.000-05:00

I have a six page paper to write, but..

At least I have the resources to do the job.

Plus I don't have to worry about dying before Monday.

2004-11-03T20:22:00.001-05:00

The Bile in My Throat Rises

Here is a good reason why we have to continue the fight:

Found on Andrew Sullivan's site:

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "So, George W. Bush won. And he's done so by a solid margin. The Democrats' attempted coup managed to last all of eight hours. Not only is the President the first candidate to win a majority of the vote in a Presidential Election since 1988, but he also won more popular votes than any other candidate in history. The Democrats spent months telling us that high voter turnout would equal a win for them but, as it turns out, when 60% of the electorate showed up at the polls it translated into a Bush lead of nearly four million votes. In short: take that, you sons of bitches.
The Democrats are now talking about how this is a signal that Bush should 'bring the country together'. Translated into American, this means 'now that you've won, you should surrender to us.' The hell with that. We've won. Winning means not having to say you're sorry... Those who didn't support Bush can go and perform a certain anatomically impossible act. They lost, now they can sit in the back of the bus. Thank God Almighty." - Adam Yoshida, calling it as he sees it, on his popular blog.

Yes, this is the view of the smug Republicans gloating around campus. We win, you lose. What they don't understand is that we all still live in the same country. How will we win the war on terrorism when we are waging a culture war?

2004-11-03T19:13:00.000-05:00

A Renewal of Values

Well that was sad, but for some reason, I am hopeful for the future. I am hopeful because now people are awake-- awake to see that what they thought was a hundred percent was not even close. It is not enough to dislike, or even hate the opposition. You have to support something, and by support, I mean more than just money or time. You have to fight for it, and believe in it, and take it to a level beyond issues and personality: the level of Values.

As Democrats, "values" has been a bad word. But let's face it, phrases like "fresh start" and "a new plan" are empty compared with the word "faith." People whose social networks are dominated by churches have wrapped themselves in a religious fervor akin to a powerful anti-depressant, or perhaps a tranquilizer. It allows them to see the world in a way which denies all wrongdoing on the part of America because we are doing Good in the world.

There will come a time when a Democrat can tell the world that we liberals work for the Good of the world, and not have to splice up the message. Because in my heart, I beleive that is what Democrats stand for: Goodness, Honesty, Empathy, and Responsibility. To renew the party, we must make it clear that we will not stand for anything less in our word and deed. We must show people in our cities, counties, towns and churches that we are the better choice because our choices are better for people.

Hugs to everybody,

2004-11-01T23:15:00.000-05:00

I just attended the Kerry Rally in Detroit. Kerry looked relaxed, confident, and dang, some of his secret service agents were hot!

Stevie Wonder did his darndest to please the crowd, even though he had a terrible cold. Al Sharpton was there.. it was a super fun time. Maybe someone will see me if photos ever get posted.. :)

I'll update you if I discover myself out there..

2004-10-29T14:19:00.000-04:00

The Horror of Fighting Bush's War

"According to [a soldier from the 82nd Airborne], 75% of all soldiers want Bush defeated in the election and don't care who defeats him; anger and resentment are high. He says that 90% of the officers remain far out of harm's way. From lietenants all the way up, there is general understanding that the officers are hiding in holes, or holding back in well-defended buildings and quite cavalier about sending troops out for assignments and errands that are frequently stupid, poorly planned, and dangerous."

Many in the military appear to be sick of Bush's war(s). Read the rest if you want to be truly disgusted by Bush's mishandling of Afghanistan and Iraq.

2004-10-29T13:48:00.000-04:00

Salon.com has the latest on the Bush Jacket Bulge. According to a NASA Scientist, its real.

"Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He's a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he's engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn's moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons."

No word on what the bulge is exactly, only that its shape is closely associated with some sort of electrical device.

2004-10-27T20:59:00.000-04:00

Generate your Anime Style by Jena-su
Name:
Hair:	Rediculously long, always flowing.
Clothes:	As revealing as you can legally get away with.
Powers:	Wind magic
Special Features:	Random tattoo(s)
Sidekick:	A wise-ass little demon.
Attitude:	Overprotective of those you care about.
Weapon:	A gun of rediculous proportion

Quiz created with MemeGen!

2004-10-27T20:44:00.000-04:00

Is there no shame left in these people?!

The Secret Service's new job is frightening families who dare to put down the President.

2004-10-27T20:06:00.000-04:00

Say Goodbye to my Money, Sweet Alma Mater

Just got off the phone with a hapless sophomore trying to fundraise for good old Smith College. We ended up chatting for a good 15 minutes about what's been happening since I graduated. Basically, its a disaster. Dining halls are being slashed left and right in favor of condensed dining, "takeout" baggies, and generally dismal food. When I was at school, we had grand lunch buffets, eggs done to your taste in the morning, and desserts that were out of this world. Half the reason I went to Smith was the great food and the great social atmosphere in the houses. Now that people aren't eating in or near their house, upper classmen don't know first years, and social groups are becoming increasingly isolated.

Not only does the food suck, the college has become a dead zone on weekends due to massive restrictions on kegs, party sizes etc. Public safety apparently roves around seeking out inebriated girls to drag off the the campus clinic. My beautiful, open, social campus has become like an academic prison camp.

In short, Carol Christ, the "new" President of the school, sucks. She doesn't have the fundraising capabiity of Ruth Simmons, and she doesn't have the good sense to take the student's feelings into account before she decides to make changes. People in my time went to Smith because it was a fun place to go to school. Not because it was a women's college, or because there are fancy, useless new buildings around campus. If I were looking at colleges today, I would not choose Smith.

Loosen the noose on student social affairs, Smith, or you are never seeing another dime from me again.

2004-10-26T23:09:00.000-04:00

Eminem Speaks Out
You have to see the video to believe it.

2004-10-26T08:11:00.000-04:00

A thyroid cancer expert close to me has said, off the record, that Rehnquist will be dead in three months, six months tops.. The fact that he had to get a tracheostomy means that its basically a killer form of the illness. Lets hope he survives six months.

2004-10-23T16:33:00.001-04:00

Streaming Videos for a rainy afternoon

Lone Wolf

Viral Videos from IFilm

Slam Bush

2004-10-23T15:45:00.000-04:00

Wolfpacks for Truth!

Sisters, you probably haven't seen the Bush wolf ad, but you might enjoy this website: http://www.wolfpacksfortruth.org/.

Midterms, ew!

Ugh, I hate take home tests! But I hate in class tests more, but I wish I had more fun things to look forward to on the weekend.

2004-10-22T20:40:00.000-04:00

What did he die for?

I think everyone should see Brooke's story, and know what it is to lose a loved one and have your president laugh about it.

2004-10-19T07:25:00.000-04:00

My Night with Dave from Road Rules

I have reached week Seven of Graduate School, and I am almost ready to say Uncle. I think this is because I am attempting to be an overachiever (I wasn't that concerned about it in college), and as a result, I don't get a lot of time to put down my thoughts. I'm just busy treading water.

When I do get out of school for other activities they are usually linked with work. My most recent non-school activity last night was having dinner with Dave from Road Rules 12 or whatever, and then making sure the crowd didn't eat him at the Public Library. Dave is cute as a button, but his hair was growing out from his last hair cut, so he wore this brown basball cap with the logo ripped off the front. I suppose this was because he didn't want to use his celebrity to sell anything from companies that weren't paying him. He chatted with our group of eight librarians (all women, you should have see our male server's reaction) while dining at Chili's, and was basically a perfect gentleman.

*sigh* Too bad he had a girlfriend. Well.. to tell you the truth, I didn't think he was intellectual enough for my taste, but he was a lot nicer to look at than some of my fellow library students.

At the library, Dave was wondering if he was going to give some kind of talk, but the screaming high school girls in the front row took care of that issue. For the next hour-plus, Dave took questions about his experiences on the show, mostly whether or not he hooked up with so-and-so, and whether Abe and the Darnell(? I should look this up like a good blogger, but I'm lazy) really fought. "They're really good friends now!" Dave kept saying, but people were more interested in the cast members who hated one another.

The other bulk of the questions came from adults who basically came for some kind of Reality Show Confessional. They wanted to know the extraneous circumstances surrounding the show, and how Dave's family reacted. Basically they wanted him to say his life was ruined and that he felt ashamed for damaging young minds by portraying a hook-up culture that didn't respect women blah blah blah. Sooooo like my home town to have TWO documentarians show up and ask technical questions, as well as things akin to, "Are you still serving the many headed monster of fame, or are you slowly realizing what a loser you really are?"

Thankfully Dave has a dual degree in business and finance, plus plenty of experience with crowds, so he was able to manage both groups wonderfully, and really really was such a charmer with the little high school and middle school girls who crowded around him afterwords. They wanted autographs on their clothes and on bookmarks supplied by the library. They also wanted photos with the "hot guy" and for those brave enough to ask, hugs. Dave complied with an unaffected geniality that made me think, "hmm, this guy is really cut out for some kind of work with children," but I'm sure he wants a job that actually makes money, so we'll see.

The academic types stuck around to try to get Dave's # from him and talk. I ended up talking to a reporter from the local news. All in all it was a good night, and I hope the library gets some great PR.

For any road rules fans out there, I'd be happy to fill you in on the details of the talk, but do it soon, because I am not wasting precious brain cells on a show that I don't watch.

2004-09-05T22:09:00.000-04:00

Boobies
In which I wonder how marketing strategies and moralism have created the articial need to "perk up" America.

I found a wonderful site through Bust.com all about breastfeeding taboos, and it really spoke to an issue that I myself have needed to deal with. While at the desk I heard a women talk about how a baby needed to be fed and I instinctively told her she could use the special study rooms if she wanted to. When I turned around she had simply sat down at the child internet area and unlatched a little section of her shirt. What a smart way to deal with breastfeeding was my thought, but if she had had to lift her shirt of show more of her breast, I might have been uncomfortable.

A few days ago, I caught myself mentally chiding a college student for not wearing a bra under her t-shirt (shock, you can her areolas through there!). What a prude I have become! I sometimes worry about the shape of my breasts, and whether or not they appear attractive. I have several shaping bras in my lingerie drawer, but they aren't very easy to sweat in, so I rarely wear them. I don't know how women wear most of th bras on the shelves-- they seem so uncomfortable and strangely shaped. I have tried on bras that flattened the bottoms of my breasts so they assumed an odd, unnatural upward tilt. No pushed up, just sort of unnaturally "up".

As a teen and a college student at a women's college, I have known girls with implants, girls who wanted implants, and girls who just really disliked their breasts. I think in some ways certain feminist practices of dissociation with motherhood have left women feeling like amazons (hack em' off!) or nymphets (these boobs will never be enslaved by babies!) . I wonder if any of my friends in womens' studies courses talked about how a downward pointed breast (i.e. sagging) enables babies to feed properly and comfortably. If it was brought up, it was never discussed with the larger school populous, many of whom were actively discussing breast enhancement or restructuring.

The way your breast looks has become very important as fashionable clothing and and fashionable body type have blurred. Even in school sex ed books, pictures of women's breasts look very "traditional," round and perky, while naturally saggy breasts are relegated to African women in National Geographic. For young women, this pretty much teaches them very early on that women who get saggy breasts do so because they don't wear bras and/or they are not white-- not because many women's breasts are just naturally shaped in a way that causes them to point downwards.

Hey, I'm still going to wear bras, and on fancy occassions I will wear my fancy bras--its a cultural norm and it makes me feel attractive. But, I will be much for conciencious of how cultural taboos can sometimes make even an Anthropology major forget what's really important.

2004-09-05T11:08:00.000-04:00

I'll be short: My new email acccount from the University SUCKS. I had to delete twenty male enhancement product emails this morning, new from yesterday, and there is no way to block the deluge.

This is a school that prides itself on being at the cutting edge of information technology.. get a friggin' blocker people!

*mutter mutter*

2004-09-04T16:35:00.000-04:00

First Assignment: Procrastinate!

I have a paper to read, so I thought I would check in with the Nunnery first.

For the first time since.. well, early high school, I have a usable workspace in my room. This is partially due to the fact I cleaned a bit, but mostly because I have transformed some of the architecture. Take the storage space for example. I have a new cd tower, so no more cds lying everywhere, and no more giant black ugly turntable filling up precious surface area. I also bought a cd binder to house my countless anime cds for easy access in times of stress (yay!). The big book case that rested on top of my desk has been removed, and my lovely G4 with flat monitor is resting on it. So much open space! I took the liberty of picking up new gel rest pads for the keyboard and the mouse, so I will be able to deal with long hours of typing and fussing. In a few days I will buy DreamWeaver (at a Uni student discount!) so that I can work on web design in the comfort of my own home, instead of being stuck in the school lab 'till all hours.

I love living at home. All I need is a mini-fridge in here and I am SET.

2004-09-03T10:10:00.000-04:00

Orientation Over

On the last day of Orientation (yesterday), about seventy out of the hundred or so new students showed up for the morning Scavenger Hunt. Billed as an excercise in team building, we were split into groups of four or five and sent out to various parts to campus to gather tedius information like, "how much does printing posters cost in the basement of the architecture library?". At 10:30 am sharp we were to convene at any computer lab available, get online and take a survey. While searching for the answers to our questions, we were to keep in mind what our place was in our team, and how we dealt with "tension" in the group.

Tension? On a scavenger hunt?! I thought that part was pretty ludicrous. Incidentally, the team I was in got sent to North Campus, so we had to drive up there with the help of a student guide, and spent a good chunk of time in traffic. Despite this fact, we finished our "work" in good time, asking for the answers at various info desks and picking up flyers from the places that were closed, and after taking our survey, (which we discussed while we put in our answers because we were feeling pretty team-like by the end of it) we went and got coffee.

Returning to the central campus auditorium, we were surprised to find ourselves subject to a long and convoluted powerpoint presentation on team building skills, which really seemed silly. When asked what we had learned from the our hunting trips, people talked about discovering interesting study areas, new computer labs, or good rates at banks. I decided to act before the place became a real bore, and told the new students about the wonders of the sliding sip hole openings on the north campus coffee cups. I mean, please. Class is next week, lets keep it light.

The best part was when the speaker whipped out the results of the survey, complete with discussions of "tension" and how it was dealt with. In fact, some groups were to bent on the task of hunting they never bothered to get to know each other. I wondered how people could take this kind of activity seriously. Thankfully, many of the comments listed under tension sounded like students who were equally confused by the question. #17, was classic, discussing how tension occurred when it turned out "some of the people we had to deal with were real dicks, so we ran out of time". Classic.

In the afternoon I found out I had to pay fees, even though I have free tuition this year, so I have to pay careful attention to my online bill info. And I found out that everyone wants a Caution: Rowdy Librarian t-shirt like mine.

Yay.

2004-09-01T19:39:00.000-04:00

Orientation continues.. Today I registered for classes, and skipped (boring) lectures in the morning and got straight to the info sessions and registration advising. In the morning I began putting together my first felt board story, which I have decided to make from scratch. I am basing the story on "Five Minutes' Peace," by Jill Murphy. It is a very cute picture book about a momma elephant that really needs some peace and quiet away from her kids. Her three little 'phants have other ideas however. So far I have made Momma in her bathrobe and yellow nightgown. I think I will make her shower cap next, and of course the bath tub. I just love this stuff!

Tomorrow I will engage in more orientation activities, enjoying my time on campus before the actual work begins.

This evening I listened to the Wife of Bath's introduction, enjoying her stories of sex and marriage. The woman doing the voice work is just perfect, and after listening to it, I have a better understanding of the lady's views. Of course, I use the term 'lady' very loosely in the this context. ;)

2004-08-30T18:47:00.000-04:00

Orientation Begins!

I had a great day. First I went to a boring computer sessions where I figured out exactly how ignorant I was: I've had school email all summer, but I didn't know; I could have gotten my ID card earlier, but I didn't know; I had the right passwords to access everything, but I didn't know. Oops. After feeling slightly embarrassed, I regained my bearings and soon discovered other women who hadn't gotten their IDs, and were trying to figure out where the Student Activities Building was. I told them where it was and we all ended up having lunch together at a little Sushi place called Totoro.

I love Totoro, because its a long and narrow restaurant with very simple detailing and nothing flashy to draw your mind away from your food. The menu is streamlined , and there's a lunch special that changes, depending on the day of the week. I had a huge bowl of Soba, a set of California rolls, shrimp tempura rolls and a salad to start off. The soup had both noodles and delicious breaded and fried vegetables sticking out. Soooo yummy, but I couldn't finish everything so I took a bit to work with me and stuck it in the fridge.

In the afternoon, after a dramatically shortened work day, I went back to the computer lab and learned how to use DreamWeaver, which is very simple and easy to use, but rather expensive, so I thiink I will be stuck doing my website construction on campus (its a school of information, we all have to make websites).

2004-08-23T19:17:00.000-04:00

The cherry tree in the front yard has lost most of its leaves, so I guess I'm back in business.

Have you ever noticed how annoying it is when people are not the least bit greatful when they receive a prize? A girl came in today with her mother to pick up a prize she won from our weekly summer teen prize drawing. I thought she was just angry with her mother at first, but by then end of having to wait on her hand and foot while she called someone on a cell phone to discuss how lame the prizes were, demanded to find out what a certain store was that we were offering a gift certificate for. I had to find a phone book to look it up, and there was not so much as a thank you when I finally found it.

While the words, "Die, bitch" were hovering in my mind, all I could do was watch her finger through our prizes, swinging her Luis Vuitton bag back and forth while her mother tried ineffectually to convince her to get the dictionary. She finally chose the year subscription to teen people, then asked how it worked. "I'm sure it explains the procedure inside the envelope." I said, trying to get her to leave the back of the room to I could get back to the desk. The girl proceeded to rip open the envelope (for an arduously long time) and said "Oh. Well, what if it doesn't work?"

"Come back and complain?" I offered. I was really tired of this girl, and I felt bad for her mother who was not a native english speaker. Her daughter obviously got whatever she wanted, and walked all over her mother. I wish I could have called her rudeness to her attention, but iit wouldn't have helped if I had become as obnoxious as this girl. I wish I could pull off the snobby librarian better..

2004-08-23T19:10:00.000-04:00

Free School!

...we are happy to offer you a Gates Scholarship for instate tuition for two terms! I will prepare the scholarship letter and conditions form and mail it to you within the next couple of days. Congratulations!

Only a week to go before Orientation..

2004-07-27T22:52:00.000-04:00

OMG.. why didn't anyone tell me that Theresa's sons were so... yummy!

2004-07-27T15:48:00.000-04:00

Um, just want to gush about how cute Clinton looked last night. And he had a nice speech.

*gush*

2004-07-17T11:18:00.000-04:00

Summer Daze are here again

Sorry if it seems we've disappeared from the earth, its just that summer is a bad time for blogging. For one thing none of us has any need to procrastinate. For another, its so nice out, why sit on the computer? The third and final reason is that the news is so stinky, I'm beginning to sound like some some Democrank on a bender.

So enjoy your summer, go check out the great reading programs at your public library, and come back to the Nunnery when the leaves begin to turn. By then, I will be waist deep in boring books like "The Social Life of Information" and eager to blab about things other than how annoying Bush is, or how many illnesses I can rack up in one month.

2004-06-13T14:33:00.000-04:00

Finding Memo

For those of us who don't have cable, thank the Lord for the internet.

And John Stewart too, for that matter.

2004-06-07T19:15:00.000-04:00

Ugh.

So my cold became an upper respiratory infection, which I got over thanks to Antibiotics. I am now recovering from the 'biotics, and wondering if I am getting a new cold, or if this lethargy is a combination of allergies and delayed recovery.

So Ronald Reagan died. I was sad, but what really made me sad was the boring, repetitive coverage. Couldn't turn on the TV without seeing some boring tribute of one sort or another. The guy got more coverage than the D-day Anniversary, which I watched on Canadian TV. Thank goodness for channel 9, or I really would think the world revolved around "El Gipper".

Got a haircut today, and a Flat Tire.. not in that order, but found out about the flat tire in that order. Someone honked and yelled at me until I opened my door in traffic (hey, it was a roll down window) and heard "flat tire". Turned into a driveway, and waited for Mom to come with the pump, which broke halfway through the pumping.. good thing it held the air. Had a big nail in the wheel bed, close to the edge. Might be from construction, but I can't really make a fuss. Dead tire.. no driving to the gym in the morning. Poop.

So back to the important thing-- my hair cut. Paid a fortune for it at a place called "Tribe" above my favorite art gallery in town, but I think it was worth it. The woman knew how to layer. My hair looks bouncier than it has in a year and a half, since my last hair cut with the Judy Garland-warbling hair god in NoHo. Yay. We'll see if i go into hair shock when I wash it the for the first time.

2004-05-30T22:43:00.000-04:00

Sorry for my absentia from the blog, I've been busy with campaign stuff and house renovations, not to mention the major storm that knocked out the DSL for a week. And did I mention my cold?

Ugh.

So, onward. Wanted to say I just read Lirael, second book in the Sabriel trilogy, and I want to thank Garth Nix for making his main character a librarian. In a very dangerous library I might add.. Lirael had a dagger as a standard issue part of her uniform!

I'm so tired.. to bed with me..

2004-05-17T21:12:00.000-04:00

Hooray for the couples of Mass.. Hooray! I love how Mitt Romney is using a law once put in place to prohibit interracial marriage as a way to deter couples from other states getting married. I guess it really shows just how backward Mitt is.

Once again.. how the heck is gay marriage an attack on the "institution" of marriage? What a gigantic load of horse manure. I hope Mass. proves to people that gay marriage is nothing more or less than allowing individuals to unite in a way that will guarantee them rights in the eyes of the state, not just for them but for their children and surrounding families. Marriage is about family, and I don't get why the people afraid of gay-marriage don't see that.

2004-05-17T21:07:00.000-04:00

*sigh*

Bad Behavior Exposed

Turns out Bush policies have led to more than just a break down at certain prisons.. bad attitudes in the military abound:

About the Army - Man, it hurts my heart to write this about an institution I dearly love but this army is completely dysfunctional, angry and is near losing its honor. We are back to the Army of 1968. I knew we were finished when I had a soldier point his Squad Automatic Weapons at me and my bodyguard detail for driving down the street when he decided he would cross the street in the middle of rush hour traffic (which was moving at about 70 MPH) ... He made it clear to any and all that he was preparing to shoot drivers who did not stop for his jaunt because speeding cars are "threats."

Josh's friend in Iraq has much more to say about the situation there. I suggest you read it.

2004-05-14T22:52:00.000-04:00

Just watched Christie Todd Whitman shut out Tim Russert and some other journalist on Jeopardy. The woman is very intelligent.. which of course we knew by how fast she got out of the Administration.

2004-05-11T12:28:00.000-04:00

Bush's feelings about torture, killing 'criminals'

Straight from the top, my friends. The man could care less about what happened over there, he's just upset it got out.

This was cut from my favorite political insider's blog, talkingpointsmemo.com.

This from George Will's columnof August 12th, 1999 ...

[Tucker] Carlson reports asking Bush whether he met with any persons who came to Texas to protest the execution of the murderer Karla Faye Tucker. Bush said no, adding: "I watched (Larry King's) interview with (Tucker), though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' " Carlson asked, "What was her answer?" and writes:

" 'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.' "

Hughes, who says Bush's decision not to commute Tucker's sentence was "very difficult and very emotional," says Carlson's report is "a total misread" of Bush. Carlson, who describes Bush as "smirking," says: "I took it down as he said it."

2004-05-11T11:50:00.000-04:00

The adventures of a girl and her moth

I have begun reading The Golden Compass. At that end of chapter one, I began to feel that familiar sucking sensation.

Down the rabbit-hole, and into the book!

2004-05-11T11:46:00.001-04:00

General TAGUBA.. TAGUBA Dammit!

Holy dictionary, what the heck is wrong with Senatorial pronunciation skills?

I've heard so far three different versions of Taguba's name, and four different pronunciations of Abu Ghraib.

My favorites so far.. Tagabu and Abu Gabi..

Abia abia abia.. that's all, folks!

2004-05-07T10:15:00.000-04:00

Torture, and the Human Psyche
One Man told he has control over another.. and the results of such a circumstance.

This was not just a few bad apples.. this was a bunch of normal good apples thrown in a bad, nasty barrel. I am paraphrasing from a recent Times article by John Schwartz, but I can't find it online, or I would link to it.

Okay, back to the point: Six hundred guards for seven THOUSAND prisoners, and this kind of behavior is almost inevitable.

There was a study done in 1971 showing that when a group of people are given a "prison" full of prisoners and not given any guidance, they do exactly the kind of torture you heard about. Humiliating people, forcing them to strip naked and simulate sex acts, even putting bags over their heads.

Of course there is the issue of lack of responsibility. If you are told to be a prison guard, and told to give people a hard time, well then if you do something terrible and stupid, its not your fault. Look at the Milgram study that was done over forty years ago. People thinking they were giving others electric shocks because they were told to do so by men in white coats. While they heard the tortured cries of the actors in the next room, they continued to push the buttons, and surprising number pushing the "lethal dose" button-- because none of the men "in charge" stopped them.

A woman led by a leash, and rode upon like a donkey.. Male guards having sex with female prisoners.. the digusting behavior will continue to be exposed to the US people, and it will not be limited to a dozen people, and one prison. There are too few people over there, poorly supported by a system that only functions because of the men and women of the armed forces who are trying very hard in a bad situation.

Is this a reason to pull out entirely? I say no. I say that we can't pull out yet. I'm not going to go into my views on that, but basically, now is the WORST time to leave, on such a bad, bad note.

On another note: Bush appologizes to a King, but not to his own people, nor to Iraqis? The man's poll points are going down again...*silent smile*

2004-05-06T03:40:00.000-04:00

On Looking Elsewhere

For the last several months, I decided that the domestic policy news and the foreign policy news were too depressing to read, so I stopped reading them. I could do nothing about the news, I rationalized, except wait until November and vote. I closed my eyes, closed my ears, and wandered back to the Middle Ages.

I stayed there until the day (and we know from Beowulf that "until the day" is a deeply ominous phrase) when the Abu Ghraib stories slipped into my consciousness. First, there were the headlines on which I didn't bother to click; then a few capsule summaries, grimmer and grimmer. Finally I found myself skimming the New Yorker report. Even a cursory reading was too much. I was shocked, horrified, nauseated -- everyone else in the blogosphere has described this reaction already.

What good does knowledge do? I still have no more power over the fate of the world than I did two weeks ago. I used to think that once the USA had attacked Iraq, we might as well stay there until we fixed things; we seem rather to have created a royal disaster. Now I can say that I believe America should get out of Iraq posthaste (do not pass go and certainly don't collect the two hundred dollars!) but no protest in my famously left-wing college town will change the politics of the current administration. I can donate money to the Kerry campaign, but there's no guarantee he'd withdraw the troops either. I certainly can't provide any useful help to the traumatized prisoners on the other side of the planet.

Here I am, a sheltered academic, well-fed, decently dressed, living a life completely of my choosing. Trading spaces with the victims of the U.S. military would be both impossible and useless. Survivor's guilt is an old, old story. What can I do with my rage? Nothing at all. It might almost be better to have remained oblivious. Then again, perhaps not.

2004-05-04T18:58:00.000-04:00

Back to political ranting.. Rumsfeld said today that the news of the prison abuse had been released on January 16th, and it's not his fault no one saw it.. well if we look at our calendars, we can see that the 16th is a Friday.. the day no one reads the newspaper, and the day all the news to be shoved under the rug gets released.

Oh yeah, they really put an effort into getting the word out.

2004-05-04T18:56:00.000-04:00

My future is finally a little more certain. Yesterday I found out that I did indeed get into my school of choice. I start my masters program in the fall. I will become a librarian. :)

2004-04-29T02:22:00.000-04:00

Philip Pullman, Rowan Williams and the Fall of Man

Ayelle has found the interview between Philip Pullman and Archbishop Rowan Williams at the National Theatre in London -- you remember, the event for which I wanted to drop my classes and buy a plane ticket. The conversation looks fascinating enough to have been worth the trip.

PP: One of the most interesting things for me about this notion of the Fall, is that the first thing that happened to Adam and Eve is that they were embarrassed, with consciousness. For me it's all bound up with consciousness, and the coming of understanding of things - and making the beginning of intellectual inquiry. Which happens typically in one's adolescence, when one begins to be interested in poetry and art and science and all these other things. With consciousness comes self-consciousness, comes shame, comes embarrassment, comes all these things, which are very difficult to deal with.

RW: That's right. I think that as a religious person, I would say that's a neutral phenomenon. That's just what happens, and one of the fallacies of religion that's not working is to suppose that somehow you can spin the wheel backwards, and go back to pure unselfconsciousness.

PP: Which is a mis-reading because after all, it says in Genesis, there's an angel with a fiery sword standing in the way. You can't go back.

RW: Can't go back. The only way is forward. Yes, and sorry to quote Anglo-Welsh poets again, but one of R S Thomas's pieces is about there being no way back to the Garden.

I find this conversation deeply interesting as an exploration of modern myth. Of the two kinds of theology in my head -- modern Jewish theology and medieval Catholic theology (and I know neither set as completely as I should) -- neither has anything like a modern liberal Anglican treatment of the Fall of Man. The Catholics did not problematize the Fall at this depth (in texts with which I am familiar; some readers of this blog may know much better than I, so please correct me). Modern Jews completely lack the concept of a fall associated with Eve. Therefore, I read this discussion as a bemused outsider, and am very interested

What Pullman and Williams seem to be doing here -- despite their varying theological positions -- is rewriting the Fall as a non-negative (and, for Pullman, at least, positive) construct in order to match religion to the world as they understand it. Anglicanism / Episcopalianism is in the process of change -- and this dialogue between Rowan Williams and Philip Pullman is an artifact deeply connected to that change. I must say, from the outside, it's fun to watch.

I only wish Archbishop Williams had named the poem he cited by the twentieth-century Anglo-Welsh priest and poet R S Thomas. I pulled out my copy of Thomas' Collected Poems to hunt for it, but I couldn't read all 531 pages in order to find one poem about the Garden.

Iris and I used to sit in my dormitory room in London and read R S Thomas to each other for hours on end. Thomas' voice, spare and cold, in love with Wales and bitterly regretting its people's failures, unblinkingly facing disillusionment with God and human, held us still and quiet. Look at "A Welshman to Any Tourist", "Reservoirs" and the other poems available here to see why we were fascinated.

2004-04-26T22:37:00.000-04:00

Dear Nuns,

Sorry for the long silence.. life's been hectic now that I'm working for Pam Byrnes's campaign, and attempting to *gasp* have a more.. shall we say.. variable social life? That and constantly having to call the Federal Court in Detroit to see if I have to come in for Jury Duty.. which apparently is a full two week affair.. I may have to go in at ANY TIME this week, and next.. Gads, I thought it was just two Mondays, but it's for two whole bloody weeks!!

Most people only have to go down to the local court house to serve jury duty, but some idiot decided I needed to go to a court house an hour or more away, in a city I've barely traveled in (and hate driving in, that's for sure)... if I do get called in, I am either going to request a friend to drive me, or I'll call a cab, because I'm not going to Detroit at six o'clock in the morning so I can sit around waiting for some lawyers to call me in.

In other news, I'm reading C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series, and loving it, and I just picked up A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.. so you can quit nagging me about it, Sister Andrea.

2004-04-09T04:58:00.000-04:00

The campaign just needs a good slogan. How about "Inflexible as a Stone Tablet"?

Timothy Noah of Slate reports on the movement to draft Roy Moore, the judge of Ten Commandments fame, as a right-wing candidate for president. He has provided a link to the Draft Moore website petition. As of Noah's writing, only 27 signatures were on the petition; by now it's up to 352, and some extraordinary people appear to be in favor of a Moore candidacy. One listing for Jesus Christ and two for Jesus H. Christ appear among the most recent signatures. Signature #351 belongs to Lyra Belacqua, who is best known as the heroine of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials; without giving away too much of the plot for people who haven't *coughIRIScough* read it yet, it is safe to say that Lyra is not exactly the poster child for the Christian right. Unless, of course, the poster should happen to be captioned "Wanted by the Consistorial Court for Darkest Heresy." In any case, one feels moderately sure that not everyone on this list is signing the petition because he or she feels that Roy Moore would make an excellent president.

Signature #352 belongs to one Sister Andrea St. Olga, and I must say Sister Andrea thinks it's fascinating that when filling out the data following the petition, she had the option to request emails from the following organizations: NARAL Choice Action Network (a pro-choice group), Care2 Action Alerts (an environmentalist group), SaveOurEnvironment.org Action Alerts (another one), and the Democratic Party! I think the point here is pretty clear. Moore is valuable to the left - as a bulwark against Bush. Getting anyone but Bush into power is a good idea as far as I'm concerned, so let me raise the rallying cry: Roy Moore for President!

2004-04-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

"But Dr. Clark didn't tell me what to do with the information.."
--Condi.. multiple times during the hearing

HELLOO Condi, isn't it YOUR job to figure out what to do with the information? To send it up to the President?

2004-04-08T11:18:00.000-04:00

I was going to start my blog entry this morning with a discussion of the Tenebrae I attended last night at my friend's Episcopalian church.. but then I got caught up in watching Condi get ripped a new one by the commitee.

It's just amazing how much she *didn't* know...

2004-04-04T21:37:00.000-04:00

It is said that the ancestors of the Jewish people, when escaping from the tyranny of the Pharaoh of Egypt, were in such a tearing hurry to get out that the only food they had time to bring was flatbread.

In commemoration of this hasty exodus, Jews today spend weeks cleaning, scrubbing, polishing, dragging dishes back and forth, and cooking vast feasts that take days to produce!

Nevertheless, we still eat flatbread, often made by machines of a type that the Israelites certainly could not have dragged behind their camels on the way out of Egypt. It would almost certainly be much faster to buy bread. It would taste better, too.

I ask you all, is this fair?

2004-04-02T21:29:00.000-05:00

The first anniversary of this blog passed silently on March the 23rd. If we'd remembered that then, we could have written an anniversary post together.

Meanwhile, in the absence of anything truly compelling to post, I will share with you a few sentences from a book I should not have been reading this afternoon:

"Brummel," Sunny said, which meant, "In my opinion, you desperately need a bath, and your clothing is a shambles."

"Be quiet this instant," Olaf ordered.

"Busheney," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, "You're an evil man with no concern whatsoever for other people."

~Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope, p. 107

2004-04-01T16:21:00.000-05:00

HP5 Trailer.. the annotated version

Tired of trying to figure out what's going on in the newest HP trailer?

The Leaky Cauldron solves the problem.

2004-04-01T15:57:00.000-05:00

Diet for America!

Tired of the same old crap you're forced to swallow every day?

Then go on the No-CARB diet, and feel healthier as early as November 3rd!

No Cheney
No Ashcroft
No Rumsfeld
No Bush

Its that easy. You'll feel the sudden weight of despair lift off your shoulders immediately.

2004-03-31T23:02:00.000-05:00

Conversation with the Bard

Good Sir William has answered us!

Alas, no sporting broom closet encounters.. Though we both wish it otherwise!

2004-03-31T16:24:00.000-05:00

My dear friend and honorary nun Leila sent this interesting link to me in an email message, with the following lament:

"So for a few brief weeks earlier this month, the Bush/Cheney 04 website had a great little feature that allowed you to input your own slogan, and the site would mock up a Bush/Cheney sign with your words on it. Gotta love the Bush/Cheney campaign's step into the digital age.

Well of course, a few people had to go and ruin it for EVERYONE (myself included), but at least there are memories. . ."

I think you need Flash to play this.

2004-03-30T10:19:00.000-05:00

Clivia!

Carry on..

2004-03-29T19:49:00.000-05:00

"She's been everywhere but starbucks, why not go before the Commission and say it under oath?"

Let us count the days until Condi gives in and testifies..

UPDATE
Wow.. a whole day!

(Via the Washington Post)
Breaking News!
Rice To Testify Under Oath

The White House offered to have national security adviser Condoleezza Rice testify publicly under oath about the Sept. 11 attacks before the 9-11 commission, Tuesday.

The White House released a letter to the independent commission from legal counsel Alberto Gonzalez outlining the offer. It also said it would make President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney available to speak before a joint private session of the full panel.

Both offers were on condition that they would not set a precedent under the constitutional separation of executive and legislative powers, an administration official said.

The offers follow bombshell allegations from former White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke that Bush and his top aides ignored an urgent threat from al Qaeda in the months before the attacks on New York and Washington.

The 10-member bipartisan commission investigating the hijacked airliner attacks had unanimously requested that Rice testify publicly and under oath. Bush had previously insisted on meeting privately with only the chairman and vice chairman of the panel.

Up to now, White House lawyers have claimed executive privilege and refused to let Rice testify publicly based on a long-standing position that presidential advisers who have not been confirmed by the Senate cannot give public testimony.

2004-03-29T17:02:00.000-05:00

Having spent a wonderful week visiting Andrea in a far off land, I am now back home and back at work. I library is still luverly as usual, and I am counting the days until I get a nice note from the school I applied to saying that they would love to have me.

In other news.. I would like to recommend a music group I met and listened to at the library,
The Troubadours of Divine Bliss. You can listen to bits of their music on the website!

Isn't it Rich

Because the Bush Tax Cut helped my family buy a new Acura Luxury Sedan, I've decided to join Billionaires For Bush. Its important to support the man who will help me with my dream of getting a Mercedes Benz for my 25th birthday.

Join with me, fellow trust fund brats, and secure our privilege for future generations!

Sincerely,
Iris K. Bundle

2004-03-27T20:22:00.000-05:00

While everyone in the blogosphere seems to be taking up sides on the gay marriage issue, I invite you to read the most entertaining essay I've yet found on the subject. Will Shakespeare considers "the marriage of man with man, and maid with maid," and provides this personal testimonial:

And to those who say that the act itself be damnable: here I stand to give them the lie. Even poor Kit Marlowe, who spent his life believing himself damn'd and labouring to make himself more so, was quite put out of countenance at his hour of reckoning, when ugly Hell failed to gape nor Lucifer came not.

We're glad you're not in hell, Master Shakespeare.

2004-03-23T01:15:00.000-05:00

Iris and I are currently discussing the sex appeal of Paul Krugman. Iris says he has "that Unabomber beard. He's a wild man." I have no comment.

Iris has also expressed a desire to find David Brooks in a broom closet. She says, "I want to see how a conservative intellectual kisses. As opposed to a liberal economist."

We both agree that no one should ever hook up with Maureen Dowd.

ETA: We have determined that Kermit the Frog is possibly the only being in the universe with whom both of us would be willing to make out.

2004-03-21T23:31:00.000-05:00

Greetings, Nuns and all!
I am visiting Andrea this week in a sunnier part of the world than I usually inhabit, and boy am I jetlagged! Today we visited a belly dancing conference, which was pretty interesting.. a cross between a hippy commune and Strictly Ballroom. I got a jingly coin covered waist decoration, and Andrea got some earrings.

In other news:

1. I finished my masters program application and dropped it off.

2. I have jury duty in the beginning of May: I will therefore not be able to go to a wedding reception in NYC or a reunion at the old alma mater.

2004-03-14T20:46:00.000-05:00

Look ye, gentles all, and see who hath entered the blogosphere!

Quoth Master Shakespeare,

For though this same Prince Shrublet is himself excellent matter for a comedy, yet 'twould be a marvellous dark one, and some years must pass before the tragedies he hath wrought be not felt so near.

I avow that the great earth needeth more bloggers of such an ilk.

2004-03-11T01:28:00.000-05:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury writes about His Dark Materials. In fact, it's the best piece of Pullman criticism I've seen in a long time.

Link from Bookslut, of course.

ETA: There are major spoilers in the article, so read His Dark Materials already.

Edited again to add,

Rowan Williams and Phillip Pullman will discuss His Dark Materials at the National Theatre, London SE1, on Monday. His Dark Materials is at the National Theatre until March 27. Box office: 020-7452 3000.

What I would give to drop all my classes and buy a plane ticket..!

2004-03-09T10:38:00.000-05:00

Unsubtle Birthday Hints

Because I am frazzled and tired and need some Mountain Dewey

2004-03-03T14:24:00.000-05:00

At last... The Passion

The Passion of the Christ revives, directly or by implication, almost every topos of anti-Judaism of the European Middle Ages. Before discussing the movie’s appearances and treatments of these topoi, however, I want to explain the film’s genre and historical background in order to explain where Gibson gets these images, how and why he reuses them, and what his other options could be.

The Passion of the Christ makes no attempt to depict a historical Jesus, or even a Jesus based on one or more of the Gospels. Rather, it enacts a passion play, in which a myth of suffering is dramatized, not in order to convey facts about Jesus’s life, but instead to permit viewers to suffer alongside Christ (1) and receive spiritual credit for his martyrdom. The genre is closely related not only to passion plays but to meditationes vitae Christi, or meditations on the life of Christ, medieval texts aimed at strengthening the piety of lay (often female) audiences who were thought to lack the theological sophistication necessary to ponder the Church Fathers.

Several women are known to have written their own treatments of Christ’s passion (i.e. his suffering and death). In the thirteenth century, Elizabeth of Spalbeck actually inscribed a passion narrative on her body, wearing the stigmata, or Christ’s wounds, on her own hands, feet and side, and modeled Christ’s death every day in a sort of ritual dance. The fourteenth-century anchoress Julian of Norwich wrote that she wished to “have beene that time with Mary Magdalen and with other that were Crists lovers, and therefore I desired a bodily sight wherein I might have more knowledge of the bodily peynes of our Saviour, and of the compassion our Lady and of all His trew lovers that seene that time His peynes, for I would be one of them and suffer with Him.” (2) As the blogger Naomi Chana and others have pointed out, Gibson based The Passion on the accounts of the early modern female mystics Maria de Agreda (1602-1665) and Anne Katherine Emmerich (1774-1824), both of whose visionary narratives fall within the meditatio vitae Christi tradition.

I focus on the gendered readings and writings of meditationes vitae Christi here because they play up an important point in which the meditationes and passion plays differ from Mel Gibson’s Passion. Medieval dramatic treatments of the death of Jesus were written and performed in the vernacular, in order to facilitate comprehension by the less-educated. Gibson’s choice to make his characters speak in Aramaic and Latin distances viewers from the verbal elements of the story, forcing them to focus on the visual and nonverbal cues the film provides. It also creates a spurious impression of the film’s canonicity; foreign, sacred languages can seem somehow more authentic than English.

Another aspect of the medieval and early modern narratives written for and perhaps by women is the way in which they often make women the most sympathetic point-of-view characters. The women in the story become the points of entry for the female readers and writers. Maria de Agreda viewed the life and death of Jesus through the figure of his mother Mary, who told Maria about Jesus’s life in a series of visions. In Sor Maria’s Mystical City of God, Mary claimed to witness scenes for which she was not present in any of the Gospels, sometimes through physical presence and sometimes through visionary experience; Sor Maria learned about all these moments through Mary. While Anne Katherine Emmerich claimed to have seen the life and death of Christ herself, she paid special attention to the women in her visions. Not only Mary and Mary Magdalene, but Claudia, wife of Pilate, and Seraphia (or Veronica), a woman who wipes Christ’s face, held crucial roles in Emmerich’s description of Jesus’s last hours.

Gibson follows Emmerich and Sor Maria in their treatment of female figures. (3) His Mary (Maia Morgenstern), accompanied by Magdalene (Monica Bellucci) and by the disciple John, is present with Jesus in every scene except the opening Garden of Gethsemane. (4) Viewers of The Passion are thus encouraged to perceive Jesus’s torment and death through Mary’s somber eyes and Magdalene’s more violent grief. From the perspective of medieval and post-medieval anti-Jewish diatribe, the most interesting female character Gibson retains is Claudia. Emmerich made this woman, only a nameless (albeit sympathetic) dreamer in the Gospels, into a vocal advocate to Pilate on Jesus’s behalf. Pilate, encouraged by Claudia, tries to avert Jesus’s death by any means possible. With Claudia’s elevation, and through hers, Pilate’s, blame for the death of Christ must fall on the Jews. Gibson keeps Emmerich’s Claudia and Pilate, and, like Emmerich, locates the guilt for deicide on the Pharisees and on Jews in general.

While Matthew 27:25 (“His blood be upon us and upon our children”) was cut from the subtitles (but not, mind you, from the Aramaic!) in the final cut of The Passion of the Christ, the movie retains almost all of the other traditional anti-Jewish topoi. The Pharisees look sternly down their long noses, under jeweled headdresses adorned with tallit-esque stripes. They are fantastically wealthy. Their loathing of Jesus seems to be personally malicious rather than based on any logical consideration.

The only moment in which The Passion departs from standard passion-play anti-Judaism is in its treatment of Judas. Gibson’s Judas (played by Luca Lionello) is neither red-haired or long-nosed; he looks, if anything, so much like Jesus’s other disciples that in many scenes I could not tell whether I was looking at Judas, John or Peter. He is not coded specifically as a Jewish traitor, but merely as a traitor among the disciples.

The presence of Matthew 27:25 in the Aramaic permits more subtle anti-Judaism than the depiction of the Pharisees to appear in Gibson’s film. It has been noted that The Passion is extremely gory; Jesus, already looking half-dead by the moment he first appears in the Garden of Gethsemane, before a whip ever touches his body, is completely drenched in blood by the time he hangs on the Cross. Simply speaking, there is quite a lot of blood with which to stain the hands of infinite generations of Jews.

I noticed two instances elsewhere in the film in which the original differed from the subtitles; in both cases, the Latin and Aramaic used words for “Jew” while the subtitles did not. The subtitles have Jesus telling Caiaphas that he spoke at “the Temple, where we all gather,” while the Aramaic uses a phrase closely resembling kol ha-yehudim, Hebrew for “all the Jews.” Later, Pilate uses the word Judeos to Jesus where the translation reads “your own people.” Without full fluency in either language, I cannot say whether the original text would have been offensive, but given the signs in the film that I am able to parse, I must say I’m not hopeful.

The Passion narrative, while often known for carrying anti-Judaism, does not have to. Julian, for instance, specifically notes that she has not seen cursed Jews in her visions (5); her Christ, while dying dramatically with much pale skin, sweat and dried blood, is a god of love, best known for proclaiming, “Synne is behovabil [necessary] but al shal be wel, and al shal be wel, and al manner of thyng shal be wele.” (6) While the passion narrative requires suffering, guilt of Jews is not implicit in the form. A post-Nostra Aetate reading of the death of Jesus could easily keep the bloody torments that the form requires for the expiation of sin, while locating guilt either on Pilate or on the whole world, for whose sins Jesus Christ is purported to have died.

Mel Gibson’s choice to revive the accusation that Jews are guilty of Jesus’s death matters to the world. The libel inspired a multitude of murders, riots and expulsions in the Middle Ages. Thomas of Monmouth, author of the twelfth-century ritual murder narrative The Life of William of Norwich, claimed that Jews needed to kill Christian children in order that their blood might wash out the blood of Christ; later ritual murder charges against the Jews (including the 1255 case in Lincoln) set off massacres. Gibson’s choices to return sources of anti-Judaism that once led to pogroms into the common culture are neither necessary nor neutral. (7)

(1) A Hebrew school teacher once told me never to call Jesus “Christ”, because it would refer to him as Messiah. As the narrative genre of the passion requires Jesus specifically as messiah, the name Christ is appropriate here.
(2) Julian of Norwich, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, ed. Georgia Ronan Crampton, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994, 39, lines 48-50. Available online here.

(3) With the exception of a brief glimpse of a prostitute in Herod’s court, and a bizarrely androgynous Satan, actually played by a woman, who wears clothes mirroring Mary’s, once carries a hairless demon baby in a pose parodying a madonna-and-child, and is associated with a serpent, and, through the serpent, Eve. Also worth considering is the extremely foppish, horrid-wigged and effeminate Herod.
(4) While Sor Maria’s Mary sees the vigil at Gethsemane in a vision, Gibson’s Mary does not; Gibson severely limits the supernatural’s impact upon his film. The presence and occasional absence of the supernatural in The Passion of the Christ is worthy of an entirely different paper.
(5) Julian writes regarding the Jews, “But I saw not so propirly specyfyed the Jewes that deden Hym [i.e. Christ] to ded, notwithstondyn I knew in my feith that thei wer accursid and dampnyd without end, savyng those that converten be grace.” Shewings, lines 1133-1135. She does not exculpate the Jews from deicide, but she does not perceive them in her visions either.
(6) Julian, Shewings, lines 438-439.
(7) I may post on a specific instance of non-riot, non-massacre use of deicide imagery in medieval England... later.

2004-03-03T04:47:00.000-05:00

I voted... much good did it do us.

I am quite pleased that at the moment I voted, there were still two viable options for Democratic contender against Bush. John Edwards would have made a great candidate, I feel; if nothing else, at least he doesn't support constitutional amendments against gay marriage in Massachusetts.

Frankly, I don't think Kerry really supports constitutional amendments against gay marriage in Massachusetts, though. He's unlucky enough to be from MA in an election year when MA appears at its most liberal, and he needs to center himself as much as he can. Nevertheless, I dislike his intellectual dishonesty.

John Kerry is, however, a better candidate than Bush.

JESUS WOULD TURN HIS PHONE OFF

read the words trailing across the theater screen, after a series of artsy-multicultural-tolerant previews that suggested the target audience for The Passion in Berkeley, CA does not actually consist of lost refugees from the Bible Belt. I wonder how many pure intellectuals just at the movie for the critical discourse involved boosted Gibson's weekend financial take? I feel a bit guilty having paid him, actually.

My academic take on the movie has been written; however, for various reasons, I am not going to post it today. You will see it, I promise.