Only a Song

Up in the aerie. Laundry in drier. Should have hung it outside but it seemed to be threatening rain. Also, sometimes it's hard to get overexcited about keeping personally green when overscale giants such as BP can ruin an entire Gulf and soon, it appears, the coastlines of four states, and perhaps many more once the oil slick reaches the gulf stream conveyor. Add to that the corporatist Supreme Court, with its obvious, brainless (an agenda of Greed thinly disguised as Righteous Ideology requires no thinking whatsoever - only cynical strategizing) rightwing judicial activist agenda, which favors corporate interests over that of the individual. Too Big To Fail? Didn't that used to be known as a monopoly? It really is all very discouraging. So I am using the electric drier, slightly out of protest in a world of scale gone mad. I feel for the fish, and the sea turtles, and the birds, and all other wildlife in the Gulf. And people too, of course. The stench of petroleum is now in the air of the coastal counties, I read. How just awful.

Today on my walk I encountered two garter or garden snakes. One was on the side of the road. I hoped it was just playing dead. I found a long stick to nudge it. It was dead. It must have been run over. I flung it into the brush and said, R.I.P. snake. The other snake was also on my walk, again on the side of the road. I think it was alive - it was frozen in place, but erect - I left it alone. Quiet dead end street. I think it was going to be okay.

I've lost KZE for the last hour or so - during which - but of course - Stella the Artist played. Now and then some corporatist station seems to muscle in on KZE's bandwidth. I have managed not to become upset over this, this time - but it's very annoying. Are the forces actively trying to muscle out R.F. Red Hook? One doesn't have to be paranoid to imagine that that might very well be the case. Oh, and if a lawsuit should form over this and reach the Supreme Court - one guess as to how Roberts, Alito, and Thomas would vote. Evil mediocrities, yes evil. They do not deserve to be on the Court. It's a packed court now.

While I'm on a rant, let me say that I'm sorry to learn of the death of Lynn Redgrave, someone who whenever I saw her on television came across as so herself, warm, intelligent, genuine, a person with a heavy legacy (the Redgrave family) who forged her own identity and left a mark. She is the kind of feminist that I can strongly relate to - no agenda beyond trying to keep her head above water and being true to herself. I disliked the snide Bruce Weber obituary. Gratuitously snide. No - perhaps not gratuitously. Everything about the Times, as ever, smacks of agenda - in this particular case, misogynistic, gossipy, and trivializing.

In my family tree are three brothers who were among the 22,000 Polish officers (that generation's emergent intelligensia) shot dead by the Soviets at Katyn, as well as another, their cousin, whose life took a different turn and who went on to become a founding member of Radio Free E.

It is really hard for me to be coherent on this topic. It's just that I think that people really don't understand the value of democracy. People who I think should know better, such as my aunt, and my cousins, at least several (if not all) of whom are openly suspicious of democracy. Also, Justice Alito, whose own ancestors, to paraphrase a KZE song, came over on boats, flew on planes, climbed over fences, just to feel what it's like to be free. This is what America is about, what it stands for - how can you reject that core value? I know there's a civil war on, I know it. Terrorist threats (such as the recent Times Square thing and now the arrest), as critical as they are, are - politically speaking - sideshow threats.

Look, I'll tell you what I think my other grandfather who was a Polish officer who fought with Allied troops at the Battle of Monte Cassino was fighting for. Freedom, yes, freedom. Freedom to have a garden, make love to his wife, have a glass of wine, live to see his grandchildren, see the sun rise, see the sunset, leave his mark in a positive way, sweep the walk, fix a garden gate & trellis just as he liked, just as it should be.

It wasn't this big ideological thing, which, the lower the intelligence it seems, the more people glom onto silly Big Ideas.

Freedom is about the normal everyday individual ability to actually enjoy freedom, to enjoy the stillness that suddenly has come upon this hour, with birds chirping, and the sun turning golden, taking a walk, pilfering blooms from a roadside lilac (within a week they'll be gone, til next year)...

This is only a song it can't change the world...

I so miss your page hits. Kisses.