The emancipation of women

I am currently reading a people's history of the United States by Howard Zinn, It is extremely interesting and well written. It is easy to decry, to poke holes in history, but Zinn does a great job explaining why the history of this country unfolded the way it did.

And though it is 60o+ pages of deep material, I feel that he does it in a concise to the point way. He refrains from presentism while at the same time pointing out what forces shaped policy. I like that certain people at all times seemed to fight against evil and resist things that today seem wrong. For instance, many people resisted the unfair treatment of blacks from the founding of the country. There was marked resistance to the expelling of Indians from their lands. This seems to me evidence that our country has been good, that the people in general are good and though our leaders are largely driven by money and misguided by the religion of consumerism, there has consistently been an independent fair-minded populace to check and question the actions of the elite.

yeats

william butler yeats;

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Why do I just love to read stuff like this aloud? I mean for a person who claims to not like poetry I sure think, memorize, and quote it a lot.
Yesterday I was reciting the 'songs of innocence' and thought 'hey, maybe if I enjoy reciting poetry then that means I like poetry' nah.
Perhaps I like Poetry like I like running races; I like to be done, but in the moment it is hard work.

I am learning this, then its on to the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

When bad people do good things.......

What makes us 'good' or 'bad' people? Is it our intentions or our actions? Membership in organizations, churches, service clubs, even the high holy station of parent, all of this can help us to achieve and learn and act, but we ourselves must be the agents of our own good character.

And what of that character? Is a lifetime of goodness to beundone by a few ill deeds at its end, or conversely can a life of sin be repented of in a few righteous actions?

Surely at the judgement will our eternal fates will not be determined by a preponderance of evidence, or even a 2/3 majority.

So where does this fit in?

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/nazi-scrapbooks-from-hell-3675/scrapbook-photos


National Geographic calls this the 'The Nazi scrapbook from hell' it is the scrapbook of Karl Hocker, a high ranking official at Auschwitz. It shows candid photos of outings with the ladies who worked in the office, and the german soldiers from the camp. The sunbath, eat blueberries, sing songs, and play the accordian. They look very normal, and this is what is disturbing. How can these young people work all day running a death camp, then relax and pick blueberries? They could not all be sociopaths to begin with, how did these seemingly normal people take on this terrible role.

More importantly, how can I be sure that I will never commit a major sin and all the while justify myself as these young people have done?

I imagine that in order to do such evil work a person would have to justify their actions. Perhaps they reasoned that they were following orders, or that the law called for such horrible acts. Some may have tried to convince themselves that God did not disapprove, or that there was a historical precedent for such actions.
I suspect one factor may have been racism taken to an extreme. The Nazis liked to believe that they were a special race of people, and that their crimes were justified by eugenics meant to ultimately benefit the world.


I don't know what the answers are, but I think this is important. People can be bad, commit horrendous crimes, and yet live among us or even become us. Hopefully the solution is a constant examination of ones ones' life ala Socrates.

praise song for the day

Here is the poem read at Obama's inauguration, ans I love it and I think of it every time Something good happens in our government. Poetry can be described as condensed speech, that is the poet as opposed to the novelist must convey meaning and message in as few effective words as possible. It can be quite the art form, as is illustrated here;

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

fire is fun!

Martin has a new hobby, starting fires with a magnifying glass on sunny days. He has discovered that dryer lint is the easiest medium to burn, though he has been quite successful burning holes in white typing paper.

Healthcare

I love spring, and I love the change of seasons, this year it has brought with it a major overhaul of healthcare in this country. I am sure soem newly minted republicans will have a tea party, and talk show hosts will make some money filling the air with their sound and fury but this is step is needed. Political will for such an overhaul has been building for years, and finally the efforts of hundreds of thousands reaching back through decades has come to fruition. I am sure that this is the right direction for our country at this time, furthermore we have been heading this way for a long time.

This bill will go through several revisions and challenges, i am that it will eventually look very different from its current incarnation. I hope that we can ultimately evolve into a single-payer system.

For now it is the right thing and I am glad that our congress has taken this important step.

Book Club dilemma

I have to choose the book for my book club in march, and I am undecided, here are the possible contenders, with their attendant problems;

The Dancing plague- library only has 3 copies
Year of Wonders- historically its pretty good, however it is too much like a romance novel (steamy sex scene begins by the protagonist performing the ultimate medieval foreplay of sucking on the guy's fingers- guess my husband and I have been missing out)
Lies my Teacher Told me
This book is a bit dry and also brings up politics, which isn't necessarily bad except the dryness of the writing means many will not read the entire thing, but may still argue about it, basically a recipe for disaster.
Wuthering Heights everyone has already read it.
black like me- I did diary of a slave girl last year, and people just aren't up for social justice two years in a row.

I have not given up; I know that a salient book exists, so here is what I am (quite literally) checking out -
Women of Africa, the biography of one of the first ladies of Egypt.
Savage Inequalities -yeah social justice!
The hunger games- all my goodreads friends think its the bee's knees
The Irregulars -Roald Dahl was a spy. Enough said.
Autism's False Prophets- I am not sure that I want to tackle such a huge social problem in this venue, Perhaps no one will come to my book club and I will have no stage for my 'leftist agenda'. When we did Exodus, one girl with Jewish family didn't come just because she know she could not stand to hear anything anti-Jewish, the book is blatantly pro-Israel, to such an extent that it warrants a bit of criticism for the lack of balance.
Riding the Bus with my Sister- story of a sibling with down syndrome. A friend rated it very highly. I want to prompt some real discussion, can't wait to read it!