It is snowing here now.   The temperature, mid-twenties Fahrenheit, was warm enough that I could just slip on boots and hat and go out without gloves or a coat.  I got a slightly different perspective on the muskeg than any I have ever had before.  There have been times when the ground was dry and I could walk out there, but I’d have needed something to stand on to get this angle.

Most years, the muskeg dries out during summer.  This year at freeze-up, due to the wet summer we had, there were several feet of water standing out there.  Months of cold have frozen it solid, and the snow cover doesn’t come to my boot tops.  I left the road along the usual snowmachine trail you can see on the left in this picture (sparse snow has kept the recreational snowmobiles away so far this winter) and didn’t encounter any problems until I was on the way back out on my old path through the trees at the right.

There along the margin of the muskeg among the trees, a thin layer of ice had formed early, and then the water level subsided before the hard freeze came.  At each step along the path, I broke through the thin ice and fell a few inches before hitting the more solid sheet below.  Another factor that made this little walk more of an adventure than I’d anticipated was the wind.  Here among the trees I hadn’t noticed that the snowfall was almost horizontal.  It’s chillier out there than the thermometer suggested.

On this day in 2004, I took note of the comments I’d received and responded to some of them with a definitive statement of my own religious views.

In 2005, matters involving my grandchildren and some of their Indigo peers had been monopolizing my consciousness and I was getting ready to blog about that when I realized that I was in the middle of my countdown to Xmas.  Fortuitously, the closing paragraphs of the previous year’s post provided an appropriate opening for my entry on The Price of a New Paradigm, one of the most profound, inspired, and deeply-felt pieces I have ever written.

I am fully aware of why I like Christmas music so much.  My
motives are complex.  On the one hand, some of the greatest
composers of all time have created many of my favorites.  On the
other hand, we’re talking devotional music here ( unless we’re talking Frosty the Snowman or Granny Got Run over by a Reindeer )
and it was created to uplift the spirit, by those whose spirits were
focused on the Great Spirit.  On the other hand (I have as many
rhetorical hands as I need, thank you very much) the tunes I like most
were the soundtrack to the happiest days and months of the most trouble-free years of my
life:  the Christmases of  my early childhood.

It should come as no surprise, then, that most of my favorites are oldies.  One notable exception to that is The Little Drummer Boy. 
If you think of that one as an oldie, it just illustrates what an oldie
I am.  I was already married the first time I heard it. 

I know that tastes in music differ just as other sorts of taste
differ.  I have listened to criticism of that song from more than
one person, when what I was trying to listen to was the song. 
Being a penurious percussionist myself, I am predisposed to identify
with the little drummer who has nothing to give but his rhythm. 
That… and it’s a catchy rhythm, too.

I guess my second favorite version of The Little Drummer Boy is Johnny
Cash’s,
though I like the duet of Bing Crosby and David Bowie, too.  I’ll
reveal my true all-time favorite before I’m done here.  See if you
can guess… no peeking!  It’s Christmastime, “no peeking” is the
rule.

From among the true classics of Christmas, I have three
favorites:  O Holy Night, The First Noel, and O Come All Ye
Faithful.  The first two were on my school chorus’s Christmas
program when I was in sixth grade.  I missed the program because I
was ill, and when I came back to school my “friends” told me how
relieved they and the choral director had been.  I have a voice
that carries, but what it carries isn’t a tune. 

The best version I’ve ever heard of O Come All Ye Faithful wasn’t.  It was Adeste Fideles, the Latin version, sung by a
choir, maybe the Vienna Boys’ Choir or the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir.

Music that was popular during my early childhood can really bring back
fond and happy memories.  Those songs include Bing Crosby’s version of White Christmas, Doris Day singing Mel Torme’s The Christmas Song (written the year I was born), and the Glenn Miller Orchestra doing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

The memories conjured by some later tunes are not so sweet but possibly
more poignant.  The first time I heard Elvis sing Blue Christmas,
it didn’t sound quite right to me.  He sang it a lot differently than
Ernest Tubb had done.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 
Once I got used to the Elvis version, it became my favorite, though I cry almost every time I hear it.  I
like every Christmas song Elvis ever recorded.

I like Willie Nelson’s version of Frosty the Snowman
better than the original by Gene Autry, too.  I enjoy it much more
than Jimmy Durante’s better-known version.  Willie and Elvis can
do no wrong, as far as I’m concerned.

I have to say, though, that despite my enjoying the oldies and having so
many fond memories associated with them, the Christmas music I most
enjoy listening to now are by nouveau flamenco guitarist Ottmar Liebert
and New Age musicians such as Mannheim Steamroller.  It is
Mannheim Steamroller’s Little Drummer Boy I like best of all.

What is your favorite Christmas music?

Eight days to Christmas

Nine days to

Christmas –

According to the Kids’ Domain:

Did you notice that it says he became bishop after his death?

  Fordham University’s online Mediaeval Sourcebook translates the story of Nicholas’s death from Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (written ca.1275, pub. 1470):

If the bones revered by the Roman Catholic Church in Bari, Italy are truly those of Bishop Nicholas, he must have looked something like the picture at right here.  According to Inquiring Minds online newsletter:

Surely, the face of this man would be rosy-cheeked, smiling, and
beatifically kind—something between [Clement] Moore’s description and the
Catholic Church’s favorite portraits of recent popes. But old St.
Nick’s face has been carefully reconstructed, using modern forensic
techniques, and the face that resulted wasn’t exactly straight out of
an animated Christmas special.

What are believed to be the bones of St. Nicholas are kept
in a sacred crypt in Bari, Italy. They were exhumed in 1953, during
some work that was being done on the church, and an anatomist from a
local university, Luigi Martino, was given permission to examine and
x-ray the remains. A half-century later, an anthropologist named
Caroline Wilkinson used those data to produce a clay model of St.
Nicholas, employing the same techniques that are used to build an
identity onto the skull of the victim of a suspected crime.

The kindly saint is a powerful figure, far beyond his role as answerer of sailors’ prayers and calmer of stormy seas.  In modern mythology, he has become a hypervigilant bogey man, always spying on children for their parents.  My
parents tried to use the Santa Claus legend to convince me to be a
“good girl,” as many parents do.  I was told that if I was good
I’d get nice presents, and if I was bad there would be coal instead of
fruits and nuts in my stocking, and my prettily wrapped presents would
contain only rocks.

 
I remember the day I got wise to their lies.  I even recall
the moment that it all fell together for me.  I think I was three
years old.  I hadn’t started to school yet.  My mother was
holding my hand as we waited for the light to change to cross a street
in downtown San Jose.  We were Christmas shopping.  I’d been
on the lap of various “Santas” in three or four different department
stores.

 They all smelled different, and certainly looked different from each other. 
Most of the Santas wore bright red in rough fabrics, but one of them
had a suit of deep wine colored velvet.  There were some fairly
incredible elements in the story itself, such as the idea that this old
guy kept track of every girl and boy in the world and judged our
behavior.  It just did not hold up to logic in my young mind.

I kept my thoughts to myself as we crossed the street and entered yet
another store.  Riding up the escalator, I caught sight of another
Santa with a line of kids waiting to sit on his lap.  I gave a tug
on my mother’s hand and said to her, “There really isn’t a real Santa
Claus, is there?”
She paused, seeming a bit flustered, and then insisted that there was,
indeed, a real Santa, and these men impersonating him were only
Santa’s helpers.
As we stood in that line and watched the “Santa’s helper” in an elf
costume handing candy canes to the kids and guiding them off the stage
as they came off Santa’s lap, I questioned her more.  She kept
replying with flimsy lies.  That night when Daddy got home from
work, I asked him.  He wouldn’t lie to me.  I was then free, at least, of one of the bogeymen of childhood.

As a child, I was an insufferable know-it-all.  I wasted not a
moment telling every kid I knew that there was no Santa Claus, that it
was all a trick to make us be good.  Their parents didn’t like
that, oh no!  My parents heard about it from some of my friends’
parents, and they tried to enlist
me in the Santa Claus conspiracy.  My father let me read the, “Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus” story that was reprinted in our newspaper.  Mama and
Daddy explained how much fun kids had waiting for Santa, leaving milk and cookies for him and such.  They appealed to me as a reasoning adult, and I fell into line, the
politically correct line.  Although I personally never enjoyed waiting for goodies and thought the whole thing was unfair and dishonest, I stopped telling kids there was no
Santa Claus.  Instead, I took perverse pleasure and pride in being in on
the secret, part of the adult conspiracy.  But when I had children of my own, I never told any of
my kids the Santa bullshit. 

Doug and I have been discussing his early school days when he
first encountered children who believed in Santa Claus.  He
recalls being in on the conspiracy and keeping the secret, not spoiling
the “fun” for the other kids.  I seriously question whether it is
actually fun to be afraid of any bogey man, even a “right jolly old
elf” who lives at the North Pole and brings toys to all the “good” obedient, line-toeing, deferential, gullible and imperceptive girls
and boys and provides excuses for all the parents who can’t afford gifts for their kids, or who fail to choose an appropriate present or don’t want to give the kids what they’ve asked for.

Preheat oven to 400° F, 205° C.

In a large bowl, whisk together thoroughly (sift together if you’re a purist or the ingredients are particularly lumpy):

In a separate bowl, beat

Have ready:

Combine the liquid ingredients with the flours, then add the rest.  Drop generous globs onto cookie sheet.  These are “drop” style cookies, but will probably need some handling and forming to make them stick together.

Bake at 400°  (205° C) for about ten minutes.

In 2004, on this day, I posted recipes for pecan pie, jelly thumbprint cookies, and edible fruit cake, three of my sweet holiday favorites from the old days when I could handle sweets (or thought I could).

My 2005 entry for this day was about The Spirit of Christmas.

Do you remember the number I have done on Xmas the last couple of years (#12, specifically)?   If so, this may be the proper time to grin or groan, as the spirit moves you.  If not, then allow me to welcome you to my take on what a couple of millennia have done to the legend of the Christ Child.  Some of the entries will be brand new, others will be reposted unchanged, while still others will be edited reposts.  I am especially anticipating adding a lot of new info on the history of Christmas tree ornaments, which I researched last year and was prevented from posting by a hardware crash.

With tongue lodged firmly in cheek, but in all seriousness nonetheless, here goes:

This was the entry that started it all,
on December 14, 2004.
(edited repost)

My plan is to turn Santa up and see what will shake out of the jolly old elf’s capacious pockets.

As a starting point, I’m reversing the twelve days of
Christmas. 
Traditionally, they start at the Mass of Christ (December 25) and last
until Epiphany (January 6).  Since childhood, when like most
American children I was taught that Christmas is all about Santa,
elves, reindeer, conifers hung with sparkly things, White Christmas and
Jingle Bells, I have been irritated
by the anti-climactic quality of leaving up the decorations and playing
Xmas music on the radio after Santa Claus has already been and
gone.  It was absurd then, and it gets more ridiculous with the
passage of time. 

Half a century ago, people generally waited until after Thanksgiving to
put Christmas merchandise out in stores and string up holiday
lights.  Now, they barely wait until after Halloween.  Out go
the pumpkins and witches, in come the holly and mistletoe.  It’s
carrying this Saturnalian bullshit too far in the name of commerce, I say.  So, on my
first day of Christmas (timed to get all twelve of them out of the way
by Christmas Day–including the big day itself, of course), I’ll go to work on that popular old
memory-and-forfeit game in song:

The Twelve Days of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Three French hens, two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Five golden rings.
Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings.
Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings.
Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings.
Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Nine ladies dancing, eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming, six
geese a-laying,
Five golden rings.
Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Ten lords a-leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a-milking, seven swans
a-swimming, six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings.
Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Eleven pipers piping, ten lords a-leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids
a-milking, seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings.
Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves And a partridge in a pear tree.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Twelve drummers drumming,
eleven pipers piping, ten lords a-leaping,
nine ladies dancing, eight maids a-milking,
seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings.
Four colly birds,
three French hens,
two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

With a lot of practice, and with one’s
wits about one, it’s not too hard to remember the gifts and the proper
ordering of them, so there’s not much challenge to the game. 
That’s where the “forfeit” part comes in.  If perchance one does
flub a line, then traditionally one must take a drink, or give a kiss,
or remove an article of clothing, etc. — a forfeit.  That tends
to get one flustered or schnockered, and then the flubs just
snowball.  It’s a fun game, played under certain circumstances, with special people.

There is an urban legend and internet hoax circulating about the song
and game, which says the song was a way for Christians or Catholics
(depending upon which version of the legend one hears) to secretly pass
along their teachings in times and places where their religion was
prohibited.  That myth is thoroughly and exhaustively exploded at snopes.com.

Did you notice that my version of the song above does not say, “four calling birds?”  I reverted to the original wording here.  “Colly” means “black as coal,” and refers to blackbirds.

If the “five golden rings” in the song conjure in your mind an image
similar to this one, think again.  The first seven “gifts” are
birds, and the last five are people engaged in various activities.  None of them is
jewelry.  The “golden rings” in the song are golden ring-necked pheasants.


And if you like that memory game, here’s one that’s even more challenging.  Save it for the New Year’s Eve party.

 One hen.

One hen, two ducks.

One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese.

One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters.

One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises.

One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five
corpulent porpoises, six pairs of Don Alfonso’s tweezers.,

One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five
corpulent porpoises, six pairs of Don Alfonso’s tweezers, seven
thousand Macedonian warriors in full battle array.

One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five
corpulent porpoises, six pairs of Don Alfonso’s tweezers, seven
thousand Macedonian warriors in full battle array, eight brass monkeys
from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt.

One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five
corpulent porpoises, six pairs of Don Alfonso’s tweezers, seven
thousand Macedonian warriors in full battle array, eight brass monkeys
from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt, nine sympathetic, apathetic,
diabetic old men on roller skates with a profound propensity toward
procrastination and sloth.

One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five
corpulent porpoises, six pairs of Don Alfonso’s tweezers, seven
thousand Macedonian warriors in full battle array, eight brass monkeys
from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt, nine sympathetic, apathetic,
diabetic old men on roller skates with a profound propensity toward
procrastination and sloth, ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens
of the deep, who haul stones in and around the quarries of the Queasy
of Key, all at the very same time.

One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five
corpulent porpoises, six pairs of Don Alfonso’s tweezers, seven
thousand Macedonian warriors in full battle array, eight brass monkeys
from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt, nine sympathetic, apathetic,
diabetic old men on roller skates with a profound propensity toward
procrastination and sloth, ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens
of the deep, who haul stones in and around the quarries of the Queasy
of Key, all at the very same time, eleven neutramatic synsthesizing
systems owned by the seriously cybernetic marketing division shipped
via relativistic space flight through the draconian sector seven.

---

[EDIT (2005 & re-edited in 2006)]
pipsqueak, for reasons at which I can only guess, left this comment in 2004:

“‘and save us all from Satan’s power’ – Good King Wenceslas”

to which I felt it only fitting to
reply in the following way, since the whole purpose of this series
of entries was to correct some of the more common misconceptions  –

two song lyrics for you:

Good King Wenceslaus

Good King Wenceslaus looked out on the feast of Stephen.
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.

Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fuel.

Hither page and stand by me if thou knowst it telling
Yonder peasant, who is he, where and what his dwelling?

Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes’ fountain.

Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me pinelogs hither
Thou and I will see him dine when we bear them thither

Page and monarch forth they went, forth they went together
Through the rude winds wild lament, and the bitter weather.

Sire the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger
Fails my heart, I know not how, I can go no longer.

Mark my footsteps my good page, tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage freeze thy blood less coldly.

In his master’s steps he trod where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed

Therefore Christian men be sure, wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen


God rest ye merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Saviour

Was born on Christmas Day;

To save us all from Satan’s power

When we were gone astray.

O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort and joy.

In Bethlehem, in Jewry,
This blessed Babe was born,
And laid within a manger,
Upon this blessed morn;
To which His mother Mary
Did nothing take in scorn.

O tidings of comfort and joy,

Comfort and joy,

O tidings of comfort and joy.

From God our Heavenly Father,
A blessed angel came;
And unto certain Shepherds
Brought tidings of the same:
How that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by Name.

O tidings of comfort and joy,

Comfort and joy,

O tidings of comfort and joy.

“Fear not,” then said the angel,
“Let nothing you afright,
This day is born a Saviour
Of a pure Virgin bright,
To free all those who trust in him
From Satan’s power and might.”

O tidings of comfort and joy,

Comfort and joy,

O tidings of comfort and joy.

The shepherds at those tidings
Rejoiced much in mind,
And left their flocks a-feeding,
In tempest, storm and wind:
And went to Bethlehem straightway
The Son of God to find.

O tidings of comfort and joy,

Comfort and joy,

O tidings of comfort and joy.

And when they came to Bethlehem
Where our dear Saviour lay,
They found him in a manger,
Where oxen feed on hay;
His mother Mary kneeling down,
Unto the Lord did pray:

O tidings of comfort and joy,

Comfort and joy,

O tidings of comfort and joy.

Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy tide of Christmas
All other doth deface:

O tidings of comfort and joy,

Comfort and joy,

O tidings of comfort and joy.


My posting the old memory-and-forfeits song “inspired” Greyfox to create the following:

The Twelve Days of Christmas, redux
 (reductio ad absurdum, actually)

I will spare you all twelve verses–the last one  goes as follows:

 
On the last day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Twelve Hummers rumbling,

Eleven snipers sniping,

Ten voyeurs peeping,

Nine faggots prancing,

Eight ‘tards a’drooling,

Seven snowmen melting,

Six crips a’gimping,

Five yoyo strings!

Four stinky turds,

Three French whores,

Two sur-GI-cal gloves,  and

The latest Partridge Family CD!   

 

(And yes, I wrote it myself.  I take full credit, responsibility, and blame.)

[Greyfox (AKA ArmsMerchant) takes responsibility, that is, in case there is any doubt or confusion.]

…and where did it get us?

A few days ago, Greyfox told me he had this song running through his mind, but couldn’t recall all the words:

The Times They Are A-Changin’
by Bob Dylan

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
 
Copyright © 1963;
renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

I told him I’d look up the lyrics online and print them out for him.  He thanked me and expressed some wonderment that (a) he would have this old sixties song stuck in his head, and (b) he would have such a deep emotional reaction to it.  I reminded him that his emotions have been very sensitive lately, a consequence, I think, of his work to transcend his narcissistic personality disorder, as well as a result of his no longer dulling his emotions by self-medicating for that purpose. 

I went on to say that his song was more pleasant than the ‘sixties tune I’d had stuck in my head for a while:

The eastern world it is explodin’,
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’,
You’re old enough to kill but not for votin’,
You don’t believe in war, what’s that gun you’re totin’,
And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin’,
But you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.

Don’t you understand, what I’m trying to say?
Can’t you feel the fears that I’m feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no running away,
There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
Take a look around you, boy, it’s bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.

Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’,
I’m sittin’ here, just contemplatin’,
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
Handful of Senators don’t pass legislation,
And marches alone can’t bring integration,
When human respect is disintegratin’,
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.

Think of all the hate there is in Red China!
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama!
Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space,
But when your return, it’s the same old place,
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace,
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace,
Hate your next-door-neighbour, but don’t forget to say grace,
And you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,
you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.
you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.

“Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire

After looking up and reading the Dylan lyrics, and listening to Greyfox  on the phone singing the verse that he remembered, I had lost Eve of Destruction and gotten Greyfox’s song stuck in my brain.  But, for some reason, as I was driving home tonight from our last (I hope) trip to the vet with Hilary (getting her sutures out), The Eve of Destruction was back.

I segued from that into some reflections on war, and on anti-war.   Last week I heard someone on the radio reacting to having heard someone else state that the Iraq war has a lot in common with Viet Nam, except for the lack of an anti-war movement at home.  The woman, an organizer of peace demonstrations, cited some numbers of those who had participated in some recent peace marches, and spoke of the volume of letters and email being sent to Congress and the shrub administration expressing a lack of support for this war.

Perhaps the person who had originally failed to take notice of the current anti-war movement in this country was thinking in terms of the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s.  It’s a quiet thing now, compared to the bottle-throwing mobs in the streets, the bombings of National Guard armories and ROTC facilities, and the public outcry that was personally directed against the troops. 

The most benign expression that I recall  from that bottom echelon protest was the slogan, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”  Troops returning from Southeast Asia were often met by booing crowds.  They were spat upon.  That was misguided, I think.  Many of those troops were draftees; others were forced into military service for economic reasons.  Many had been indoctrinated to view their participation as a patriotic act.  Spitting on them didn’t help anything.

Likewise misguided, in my currently evolved opinion, was the violence we resorted to in our protests against Amerikan imperialism.  To me, it doesn’t make sense to bomb a building in one’s hometown to protest the national government’s bombing of Hanoi.  Fighting for peace makes about as much sense as fucking for celibacy.  It’s not all that different from the current government’s resorting to torture and terror tactics to fight terrorism.

On the other hand, what effect does a quiet and peaceful protest movement have?  If anyone in this country now can believe that there is no anti-Iraq-war protest movement, then that movement isn’t having much of an impact.   Just as was done by a few people forty years ago, some people now are refusing to pay taxes to support the war.  Their non-contribution is a drop in (or out of) a bucket, and the government will just borrow more money to keep the war going.  Other Americans are leaving the country in protest.  What impact do those expats have?  It seems to me that withdrawing from the field and leaving the country to the warmongers is going about it backasswards.

Until I come up with a more effective tactic, I’ll just keep running my mouth, and my keyboarding fingers, and reminding everyone that it has all been said before.

Give Peace A Chance
John Lennon & Paul McCartney

    Two, one two three four
    Ev’rybody’s talking about
    Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism
    This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m.

    All we are saying is give peace a chance
    All we are saying is give peace a chance

    C’mon
    Ev’rybody’s talking about Ministers,
    Sinisters, Banisters and canisters
    Bishops and Fishops and Rabbis and Pop eyes,
    And bye bye, bye byes.

    All we are saying is give peace a chance
    All we are saying is give peace a chance

    Let me tell you now
    Ev’rybody’s talking about
    Revolution, evolution, masturbation,
    flagellation, regulation, integrations,
    meditations, United Nations,
    Congratulations.

    All we are saying is give peace a chance
    All we are saying is give peace a chance

    Ev’rybody’s talking about
    John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary,
    Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper,
    Derek Taylor, Norman Mailer,
    Alan Ginsberg, Hare Krishna,
    Hare, Hare Krishna

    All we are saying is give peace a chance
    All we are saying is give peace a chance

    etc.

Hilary was okay for a while, and then things went downhill.  Doug
had taken off her E-collar so she could do some personal grooming under
his supervision.  That much was okay, but when he put the collar
back on, he left off the ribbon that secures it from slipping
around.  Next time he looked in on her, there was blood around her
incision and on the edge of the collar.

I tied the ribbon back on, we cleaned her up, and kept giving her the
combination analgesic and anti-inflammatory drops the doc had sent home
with us.  At some time after that, she bled a little more, and
started oozing a small amount of pus from her incision.  This
became apparent on Saturday, while the vet was closed.

I called, explained the situation, and then drove in on roads slick
enough to make me glad I’d gotten my winter tires on the car and picked
up about a week’s supply of antibiotics that someone had left under a
rock (no kidding) in an alcove by the hospital’s back door.  That
was last night.  Through it all, Hilary hasn’t expressed any
complaints beyond a clearly signalled dislike of the collar and a few
attempts to escape from Doug’s room when one of us is going in or out.

The vet seemed fairly unconcerned after asking if she was lethargic and
being assured that she was anything but.  This morning, it looked
to me as if she had popped a couple of sutures.  I asked Doug,
whose eyes are better than mine, to see what he thought, and he said it
looked that way to him, too.  I guess I’ll call the vet again
tomorrow and see what she says.

All things considered, I think this spaying is the cruelest thing I have ever done to an animal.