Gender-impairment

Not Gender-impaired

Before the late 1960s, most mainstream American men did not have m/any 'female' domestic skills due to their being raised 'masculinely'.

I was an exception, raised as an only child until 10 (1952) when my sister Nancy was born, so I was taught how to cook, sew, wash dishes, & wash clothes, hang them out to dry, take them in & fold them, etc. (qua girl), as well as chop & saw wood, repair a bicycle (qua boy.) My range of domestic skills isn't gender-impaired, nor is my sister's, who reminds me that she can use various hand-tools.

My being unable to drive a car is quite another matter.

How long...?

The day after the (it appears) non-violent neoTeaparty event in Boston, I'm still thinking over a demographic probe of the phenom. I think the most relevant, unasked & unanswered Q is:

"How long...?"

"How long have you lived where you are now?"

"How long (years/generations) have your family lived there?
Is your family-heritage rural/urban? Southern/Northern?
Do you have a gun? How many?"

"How long (weeks/months/years) have you been out of work?"

The higher your aggregate numbers, the more rabidly 'conservative' you're likely to be. Or is it really that simple?

A recent CBS/NYT survey yielded: the average TeaPartier is 45+, makes $50K+, & is male. For more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html?ref=politics
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shaw
/tea-party-demographics_b_540082.html

Tax Day 2010

Tax Day 2010

Conned by today’s neoConfederates,
today’s Tea-partiers are saying:
Pay No Taxes. Pick up the gun.

If they do, they’ll have to face
the Army National Guard (ANGUS)
who they must believe will stand down.

This is The Day. They’ve been waiting for

(14 APR 2010, Santa Clara CA)v4

Note: Due to early Spring flooding, both state & fed. tax deadline day have been moved to 11 MAY in eastern MA (=MA Bay.)

Maine Cooning

Maine Coon cats
can communicate:
every morning my

darling cat Reggie
taps my chin once
with a closed paw,
waking me up;

I respond by rubbing
his furrry neck, then
his very furrry body
until he's satisfied.

(13 APR 10, Santa Clara CA)v2

On Approval

On Approval

Approval matters, tho it’s ephemeral;
who knows what the future holds?
Being appreciated underlasts being
remembered, & depends on chance:

my former publisher thinks a small book
rediscovered in some obscure rural barn
can restore an author lost in obscurity.
Which author’s that? (I honestly forget.)

(12 APR 10, Santa Clara CA)v5

Earthly worship

Earthly worship

(around Easter 2010)

As authoritarian religion destructs, here & abroad, & the constructive mainstream consolidates*, the return of a kinder, gentler piety is growing. Some are adopting varieties of Buddhism, others what they think of as wicca, a later-day druidism.

A natural piety of the Earth as Mother is already widely held, fuelled by conservation and organic movements. Here in Northern California, I fully expect Earth-Family groups to meet on public parks on Sundays, disguised as family picnics.

*Christian denominations are finding each other more tolerable even as they split internally: conservative congregations bond with conservative, liberal with liberal, even sharing pulpits (cf. liberal Lutherans accept an 'exchange of orders' with liberal Episcopalians, cross-ordaining & 'calling' - hiring the graduates of each other's seminaries )

Towards Alviso

Prologue

Riding towards Alviso thru 6 miles of randomly vacant office buildings in Santa Clara I thought aloud “What will they do next with those buildings?” Ginny replied: "Turn them into housing" -- exactly what I'd thought they ought to have done during the last Silicon Valley downturn. I’ve just heard (on KGL-FM) that office occupancy is down 30%. How long can they continue to keep them unoccupied?

A marshly beauty

At Alviso we parked on the approach driveway; during the slow reconstruction of the bayside county park and its soon to be restored marina, you can’t get into the actual parking lot. I unpacked my dark-red double-wheeled walker & we headed up into the park, down the ramp, & sat on the grey composite-plastic bench facing the small baylet of reeds & rushes. “Listen to the reeds..” (I thought), asking Ginny what she thought when she heard the wind sweep thru them. “A smoothing song…” she replied...

Listening to the rushes rustle
in the light wind brings me
back to where I grew up:

reeds rattling, rushes shusshing.
Do Egyptians hear this
by the Nile’s reedy banks?

(08 APR 10, Santa Clara CA)v5