Jeremiah Wrong

Bob Herbert in the New York Times:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him.

Smiling, cracking corny jokes, mugging it up for the big-time news media — this reverend is never going away. He’s found himself a national platform, and he’s loving it.

It’s a twofer. Feeling dissed by Senator Obama, Mr. Wright gets revenge on his former follower while bathed in a spotlight brighter than any he could ever have imagined. He’s living a narcissist’s dream. At long last, his 15 minutes have arrived.

continue reading the article ...

Obama Play Hoops

Can't wait to see that court installed on the White House Lawn!

And he's not the only one

In today's NY Times:

In interviews with several associates and aides, Mr. Obama was described as bored with the campaign against Mrs. Clinton and eager to move into the general election against Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Anyone out there not bored by the way Clinton has been forcing herself on us as being at the center of Obama's set of concerns?

Who let the dogs in?

To this day I have in my files a copy of the front page of the New York Times from 1984, with a photo of Presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale and his choice for Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro raising their clasped hands in an upside-down V. Of course their hopes for victory were doomed, as perhaps foreshadowed by the gesture.

Irrespective of their failure to foil Ronald Reagan's re-election, I will never forget, as a girl who came to political consciousness during the late '60s and early '70s, the feeling of joy and hope that literally swelled my chest to almost bursting with pride that a wif was on the ballot. I was so grateful (and still am) to the wifs a half-generation before me, who took put their marriages, careers, and futures on the line in their quest to bust up the lingering 1950s concepts of what it means to be female, and who had such a strong impact on my own road to self-liberation from all those restricting and oppressive preconceptions of wifhood.

One would expect, then, that I might be passionately backing Hillary Clinton in her bid for the Presidency. NOT! Hillary is chalk squeaking across the political board. Hillary is riding around on her husband's coattails and claims 35 years of experience whereas the extent of her service is merely 1.7 terms as a carpetbagging Senator. Hillary can't figure out who she really is and instead strings together an odd assortment of personnae. (The difference between Hillary and Bill, and one department in which she is far superior to her wer, is that generally speaking she has nearly perfect -- actually, scary -- control over which personna to use under what circumstances; whereas Bill's behavior seems fairly out of control lately.)

Apart from my distate for her personality, and some differences I have with the policies she is laying out ... my biggest fear if Hillary is nominated and elected is that she will need to maintain her cool and make rational decisions while sitting, most of the time, in the Oval Office -- the room where Bill used his cigar on Monica. I imagine that always present somewhere in her consciousness will be that lovely image and remembrance of all the pain and shame that ensued. On the other hand, if Hillary can compartmentalize the present from the past so thoroughly that the Memory of Monica is truly not present anywhere in her psyche while she fulfills her duties as President of the United States ... well, then, she scares me more than ever.

You are reading my baby

I dreamt a few nights ago that I had another baby and was lovingly nursing it. The good part of the dream was that my breasts were replenished to the glory of their youthful state. The excellent part of the dream was that the baby had no particular gender, not even a face, really, it was a blank slate and as I nurtured it my train of thought was all about all the things I want to do (now, in the rapidly-depleting-youth stage of my life).

So. Welcome to (one aspect of) my baby.

The actual prophecy?

I found this during a search for "who first spoke the Seventh Generation precept"? (No, the predominant meaning of Seventh Generation is not "a brand of overpriced toilet paper.") I have not uncovered the name of the Iroquois chief yet and will follow up. But meanwhile found this text of a fuller prophecy that I'd not seen before. One generally finds on Favorite Quote sites only the short bit about keeping the seventh generation in mind when making decisions today:

Mohawk Prophecy of the Seventh Generation.
According to the prophecy of the Seventh Generation, seven generations after contact with the Europeans the Onkwehonwe would see the day when the elm trees would die. The prophecy said that strange animals would be born deformed and without the proper limbs. Huge stone monsters would tear open the face of the earth. The rivers would burn. The air would burn the eyes of man. According to the prophecy of the Seventh Generation, the Onkwehonwe would see the time when the birds would fall from the sky. The fish would die in the water. And man would grow ashamed of the way that he had treated his Mother and Provider, the Earth. Finally, according to this prophecy, after seven generations of living in close contact with the Europeans, the Onkwehonwe would rise up and demand that their rights and stewardship over the Earth be respected and restored. According to the wisdom of this prophecy, men and women would one day turn to the Onkwehonwe for both guidance and direction. It is up to the present generation of youth of the Kanienkehaka to provide leadership and example to all who have failed. The children of the Kanienkehaka are the seventh generation.

I found this at http://www.spiritwheel.com/irqprophery.htm but the page is unsourced. Be forewarned: This page is hard on the eyes.

Dumb animals

That's what we like to call other species. Of course I believe in this case "dumb" is meant to mean "non-speaking." Man is also a dumb animal, in the "stupid" sense of the word; we are perhaps the only species that does not know the rule:

Don't shit where you eat.

The state of the planet, and the positioning of environmental issues on the party platforms during this Election of 2008, scare me. Will there even be a Seventh Generation?

Wow, that was quick

So earlier today I wrote up my "Wif, Wer ..." post and then later today I finally created a Facebook account. [Note: I'm feeling awfully old in there. Maybe I'll get younger again as I get more familiar with that new territory.] And I notice the news feed uses my preferred epicene singular possessive pronoun "their" if the account-holder's gender is left unspecified ...

... as in, "Ilyse Kazar mentioned Mickey Mouse in their note Mousing About."

It's Pretty Amazing how quickly my new blog has changed the world. =8-o

Students of English Ought To Reads These Article

Some self-violating rules of grammar.

The Bell Tolls for Jurisprudence

It can't be right. Sean Bell's killers, cops who unloaded 50 rounds at three unarmed young men, were all just declared innocent of all charges by Justice Arthur J. Cooperman of State Supreme Court in Queens. One cop had even stopped to reload his firearm, and resumed shooting after several moments of silence during which no shots were returned.

The New York Times posted a graphic of other notable cases where folks were shot or brutalized by members of the NYPD. If you haven't followed these cases over the years, have a look. If you remember these cases, this is becoming a holocaust that we should "Never Forget," so have a look anyway. What do you notice about these pictures?

Wif, Wer, They, Their

It is only recently that I learned the word "man" in Old English referred to all of "mankind," male and female alike. Nowadays folks use words like "humanity" (which has a deeper connotation) or just "people" (which has a more generic and, in my opinion, shallower connotation) in their attempts to find a neutral way to express "all the individuals on the planet, collectively."

I tend to prefer Old English-derived words over the Latinate cognates that entered our language later on. And I grow weary of executing (and reading!) clumsy syntactical backflips in an attempt to be PC and gender-neutral. So, I have chosen to go back to using "man" and "mankind." Therefore the word "postman," if encountered in an entry you read here, is to be interpreted as "a mail carrier" and not as "a male mail carrier."

The word for a male "man" used to be "wer" (think: werewolf). The word for a female "man" used to be "wif" (think: midwifery). I love these words. You may just find me using them, too.

One of the worst contortions of our language committed by writers conforming to modern PC language protocol is the use of two gender-specific singular pronouns when referring to one individual: "Each student must obtain a doctor's note for any class he or she may miss due to illness; otherwise two points will be deducted from his or her final grade." I cast the same vote as William Safire once did when he wrote a column suggesting that we just legitimize using "them" and "their" and "theirs" as our epicene singular pronouns. Since I am a strong believer in the bottom-up evolution of language and hardly expect some Academy Of Proper English to suddenly canonize this considered-to-be-vernacular use of the singular pronouns them and their, I will do my part in nudging the English language towards this much more graceful option.

I understand that it will look "uneducated" and "wrong" to many of you when you read a sentence here such as, "The valedictorian will deliver their commencement speech at 3:00." We have grown somewhat used to hearing this construction in everyday speech. I understand my reader may, just the same, feel uncomfortable seeing it done in writing. Maybe I can help you get over it.

--i.n.kazar

Postscript: I have already discovered while composing a draft for an upcoming entry, that in order to use wif and wer I run into some trouble when needing adjective forms. "Wifly" and "werly"? And plurals: "Wifs" and "wers"? I have not benefitted from any formal instruction in Old English. Maybe you can help me get over it. Corrections and further information are quite welcome, thanks.

risking a stinging bellyflop

jumping into the blogging pond!