Occupy the Microphone on hiatus

As some of you may have figured out by now, our radio show is currently on extended hiatus.

This has been a depressing development, but necessary.






The Occupy the Microphone crew is currently regrouping and trying to figure out what to do next. We are thinking about a group-oriented show (modeled on some of our very successful shows with Traci Fant) ... or maybe just concentrate on delivering a regular podcast? Over the past two and a half years, our show has been broadcast at three different time-slots on three different local radio stations. We need to step back and figure out what we want to do and the most economical way to get it done.

It's great to broadcast the news that no one else here in South Carolina will cover. We pride ourselves on having done that, but we also know that talk-radio tends to be a right-wing medium. We knew that our nationally-oriented shows were downloaded most often on the internet (as podcasts), and were far more popular than our local broadcasts. By contrast, our regionally-oriented shows got us a lot of local attention but didn't get the internet downloads that the big national-stories did. After awhile, we didn't know if we were (basically) a national or local show? Should we lead with one or the other type of story first? We dithered, argued, worried ... and unlike rich Republicans, we don't have marketing analysts and suchlike, to definitively tell us what to do. (sigh)

If we go back on local radio, it is likely we will need a flurry of advertising to keep us afloat this time.

Our hiatus is also due to a variety of other factors, in addition to our ongoing collective dithering over radio-show goals. These factors include my untimely and unnerving car accident, as well as the loss of a major advertiser ... but most important: Our producer, Gregg Jocoy, is dealing with his mother-in-law's extended illness. She is near death and is dying at home, not in a hospital. Gregg's family has the help of professional caregivers and hospice care, but caring for a terminally-ill person is still an enormous, overwhelming task. (Our last show talked about how most people die in hospitals now and not at home, and asked: Has this been good or bad for our culture as a whole?) Such work is emotionally draining as well as physically trying. Our best wishes are with Gregg and his family.

Meetings are scheduled, things are being cussed and discussed (as my grandmother used to say), and I will surely keep you updated.

Stay tuned, sports fans.

Three Feet

... and I wouldn't be here.

I can't stop thinking about that fact. It seems so... arbitrary.

Suddenly, life seems quite tenuous and so very precious.

On Friday, a 15-year-old driving an enormous Dodge Ram pickup and sporting a Ferris Bueller t-shirt (you can't make this stuff up), ran a red light and totally sheared the front end off my car. KABOOM - it sounded like a fucking locomotive. And there I was, turned at an angle in the intersection during perilous rush-hour traffic (I did manage to hit my brakes) and all these people loooooooking at me like, is she alive? I managed to chug my smashed-up little car into a nearby parking lot. Somebody dragged my flimsy Saturn-bumper out of the road and brought it over to me. Automobile-detritus and various pieces of metal and glass were all over Haywood Road, and people kept running over them, crunchcrunch... eventually both Mr Daisy and my radio producer/Carolina consigliere came to my aid, so that was good. (Needless to say, I missed Friday's radio show.)

After local police pronounced him the officially-guilty party, Ferris drove away, his bad-ass redneck vehicle unharmed and ready to shear off more bumpers. Mine is a total shambles, one of those words you hardly ever hear anymore, but was popular in 60s comic books. Let's bring back the word: SHAMBLES. (One of those great words that sounds like exactly what it is.) However, the engine sounds okay, and I think it could well be salvaged, so we shall see. The car has already been totaled once. (In fact, that was the subject of my second-ever blog post.)

If I had not hit my brakes. If I had accelerated a few seconds faster into the intersection. Just a few seconds. He sheared the front end of my car clean off... and if *I* had been sitting in the exact spot where he sheared off my car?

Three feet. Just three.

As I said, I can't stop thinking about it.

THREE FEET has become a very intense thing for me, the subject of major meditations throughout the weekend. Our life can end at any time. We know this intellectually, but somehow, coming so close, brings the fact home in a very real way.

And you know, some things just don't seem as important as they did a few days ago. They just aren't. And other things are somehow, suddenly, far more important.

My vision has been sharpened, and I hope to keep this new, acute vision as long as I can. I want to see clearly. And I don't want to waste time. I don't want to spend the time I have on nonsense, on arguing, on unhappiness.

I am reminded of a quote by Thomas Carlyle that Harlan Ellison once taped onto a mirror in his home:

Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day, for the Night cometh wherein no man can work.

(The last part of that quote is from the Gospel of John.)

Yes. That is exactly how I feel.

Confederate Memorial

We went down to Springwood Cemetery, because Mr Daisy discovered that one of his favorite mystery authors was buried there, John Dickson Carr.



And so, while we were there, we had a look around. It was cloudy and overcast, giving off a perfect Halloween vibe. We saw some interesting tombstones, many very old.

This statue was on a toddler-aged child's tombstone, very poignant:




This being the South, lots of references to heaven:




Springwood Cemetery is well-known as a famous Confederate resting place. There are countless tombstones accompanied by the historic CSA (Confederate States of America) marker. Many are unmarked stones. It is a popular site for genealogical researchers, as well as history buffs.

Memorial to General Robert E Lee:



Interestingly, it is now known as Main Street, and hasn't been called "Dixie Highway" since I have lived here.


And there is a Confederate Memorial with some sobering words on the side. I knew as soon as I read it, I had to share it here.




The monument reads:

All lost, but by the graves
Where martyred heroes rest
He wins the most who honor saves
Success is not the test
The world shall yet decide
In Truth's clear far-off light
that the soldiers
who wore the Gray and died
with Lee, were in the right.


Obviously, speaking from 2013, Truth's clear far-off light has decided the opposite. But see, how utterly certain they were? As certain as today's war-partisans are.

And I often wonder, how will history judge us?

And When the Sky was Opened

A very old woman ran into me at the market today, slammed me in the butt with her cart. She started to cry, and her daughter (about my age) swooped in to rescue her... and I realized that she was what we used to call 'senile'. I guess the acceptable term is now Alzheimer's, that catch-all diagnosis for when the mind goes. I patted her, assured her it was okay. But I was alarmed, because in her distress, I could see myself and what awaits us all.

Buddha told us to meditate on death, and I have.

I once realized the abject terror in the old Twilight Zone episode, "And When the Sky Was Opened" -- was based on the fact that it mirrored our own experience and terror of death. In the show (written by Rod Serling and adapted from a short story by fantasy-genius Richard Matheson), three men come back from a flight into space, and begin to disappear, one by one. The title of Matheson's original story was, fittingly, Disappearing Act.

On the day of their return, the newspaper headline reads "Three Spacemen Return from Crash: All Alive" and then, after a strange chain of events, there are only two. But... there have always been two. The newspaper headline has changed, and now announces: Two Spacemen have returned. It is as if the third astronaut never existed. The two astronauts remaining start to panic, as everyone around them insists, no, there were only two of them, not three. Never three.

At the end, it is James Hutton (father of Timothy) who is the last astronaut left, looking for his suddenly-missing friend, the second astronaut. He then sees the newspaper headline, which now says only ONE astronaut has returned. The expression on his face has remained with me all of my life, ever since seeing this particular Twilight Zone episode as a child. And when I Googled the image, there it was (see above). Obviously, I wasn't the only one.

He knows he is next.

And the show ends with an empty room. None of them have returned from the flight. The camera pans to where their aircraft was. It is gone, too.

My grandmother died in 2004 and my mother died in 2006; it was when my mother died that I realized, I was up next. Maybe not for awhile, one hopes, but up nonetheless. It was no longer a far-away thing that happened to the old people... I was now the old people.

And so it was today, when I saw the old woman in the store, crying and confused. I saw that it was not simply her confusion that made her cry, although it was that, too... it was that she was afraid. I saw James Hutton all over her face. And then, I saw myself.

As I comforted her, I hoped someone would do the same for me.

~*~

Speaking of which, a sweet voice of my childhood is gone. Let us take a moment to remember Scott McKenzie, who recorded John Phillips' folkie-pop hippie anthem, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)".

I remember being in San Francisco, hearing the song and feeling oddly displaced, because of course the San Francisco I had moved to was not the one in the song, although it had always inspired me. I had moved to Kool and The Gang era San Francisco, the end of the disco era. I remember falling asleep under an open window and starry sky in Oakland and hearing it there too, thinking how odd it was that the song had helped make San Francisco too expensive for people like me to live in. For this reason, it made me sad to hear it, one of the first feelings of aging that I ever remember experiencing.

I came home from the market, and my experience of the woman running into me and weeping, to hear that McKenzie had passed.

It was the perfect ending to a day I had started with an extended meditation on death.

~*~

San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair) - Scott McKenzie



In this video of McKenzie performing the song at the Monterey Pop Festival, you see Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass... again, the perfect ending to my daily meditation...

Peter Bergman 1939-2012

I really wanted to title this obituary, "Waiting for Peter Bergman, or someone like him," which I think he would have appreciated.




Instead, decided to be properly respectful and just reprint the New York Times obit:

Peter Bergman, Satirist With the Firesign Theater, Dies at 72
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: March 9, 2012

Peter Bergman, a founding member of the surrealist comedy troupe Firesign Theater, whose albums became cult favorites among college students in the late 1960s and ’70s for a brand of sly, multilayered satire so dense it seemed riddled with non sequiturs until the second, third or 30th listening, died on Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 72.

The cause was complications of leukemia, said Jeff Abraham, a spokesman for the group.

Mr. Bergman hosted an all-night radio call-in show on KPFK in Los Angeles beginning in 1966, “Radio Free Oz,” which served as the testing ground for the high-spirited Firesign sensibility. Phil Austin and David Ossman, two other founders of the four-man group, were the producer and director of the show; the fourth founder, Phil Proctor, was a frequent guest.

“We started out as four friends, up all night, taking calls from people on bad acid trips and having the time of our lives,” Mr. Austin said in a phone interview Friday. “And that’s what we always were: four friends talking.”

Mr. Bergman and his friends recorded their first album, “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him,” in 1968, followed the next year by “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All?”

By 1970, their mordant humor and their mastery of stereophonic recording techniques had made them to their generation of 20-somethings what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are to today’s (if Mr. Colbert and Mr. Stewart had a weakness for literary wordplay, psychedelic references and jokes about the Counter-Reformation).

Their records employed sound effects in ways considered pioneering in audio comedy at the time. More generally, they were considered important forerunners of comedy shows like “Saturday Night Live.”

Ed Ward, writing in The New York Times in 1972, described the third Firesign album, “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” as “a mind-boggling sound drama” and a “work of almost Joycean complexity.”

“It’s almost impossible to summarize any Firesign album,” Mr. Ward wrote, because most of their albums were so filled with “intricate wordplay, stunning engineering and use of sound effects, breakneck pacing and, of course, a terribly complex story line.”

When the Library of Congress placed “Don’t Crush That Dwarf” in its National Recording Registry in 2005, The Los Angeles Times described Firesign Theater as “the Beatles of comedy.”

Mr. Bergman told people the ensemble’s albums, unlike most comedy records, were never made to be listened to just once or twice. “He said our records were made to be heard about 80 times,” Mr. Austin said.

While the ensemble continued making albums for three decades, Mr. Bergman also wrote and produced several one-man shows, including “Help Me Out of This Head,” a 1986 monologue-memoir that drew on his childhood in Cleveland. He also wrote interactive games, including a CD-ROM parody of the popular adventure video game Myst.

Mr. Bergman was born on Nov. 29, 1939, in Cleveland, one of two children of Oscar and Rita Bergman. His parents hosted a radio show in Cleveland when he was growing up, “Breakfast With the Bergmans.” His father also worked as a reporter for The Plain Dealer.

Mr. Bergman graduated from Yale and taught economics there as a Carnegie Fellow. He later attended the Yale School of Drama as a Eugene O’Neill playwriting fellow. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to pursue a writing career.

He is survived by a daughter, Lily Oscar Bergman, and his sister, Wendy Kleckner.

Mr. Bergman got a taste of radio work when he was in high school, according to a biography on Firesign Theater’s official Web site. But he lost his job as an announcer on the school radio system, it said, “after his unauthorized announcement that the Chinese Communists had taken over the school and that a ‘mandatory voluntary assembly was to take place immediately.’ Russell Rupp, the school principal, promptly relieved Peter of his announcing gig. Rupp was the inspiration for the Principal Poop character on ‘Don’t Crush That Dwarf.’ ”

For good or ill, I hold Bergman and Company responsible for much of my rather bizarre sense of humor.

My consigliere posted the following quote from Bergman on Facebook (originally posted on the Firesign website), and I certainly can't improve on it... could any of us improve on Peter Bergman?:

Take heart, dear friends. We are passing through the darkening of the light. We're gonna make it and we're going to make it together. Don't get ground down by cynicism. Don't let depression darken the glass through which you look. This is a garden we live in. A garden seeded with unconditional love. And the tears of the oppressed, and the tears of the frustrated, and the tears of the good will spring those seeds. The flag has been waived. It says occupy. Occupy Wall Street. Occupy the banks. Occupy the nursing homes. Occupy Congress. Occupy the big law offices. Occupy the lobbyists. Occupy...yourself. Because that's where it all comes together. I pledge to you, from this moment on, whatever it means, I'm going to occupy myself.

I love you. See ya tomorrow.

Ah, he's no fun. He fell right over!

Goodbye old friend. We shall not see your like again.

Terri Leigh McKee 1958-2012

The Queen of Cups, from the Art Nouveau Tarot by Matt Myers.




Advice: When people ask you to stay in touch, stay in touch. Don't tell yourself "one of these days"--because you might Google them one day and find their obituary.

She came to my grandmother's funeral, whom she had loved. I promised her I would mail her copies of photos I had recently discovered, of our childhood... one of us standing next to an old Packard, another of us trying to make Kool-Aid, and still another, in front of a gaudy, awful, silver Christmas tree.

I never remembered to send them.

We grew apart... I became a crazy radical, and she remained devout and conservative. We had little in common as adults, and it was somewhat uncomfortable. You know how that is.

I still remember us singing together, "In the Year 2525" and laughing about the lyrics. We also sang it into the telephone for crank calls, which of course, you can't make any more. (The kids have no idea what they're missing.)

I had been thinking about her all week, possibly due to the death of Davy Jones. But it suddenly became pressing and important, as if I should see if I could try to find her. (She wasn't on Facebook or any of the other social media sites.) So, I did, and found this:

McKEE Terri L. McKee, age 53, passed away Monday, March 5, 2012. She was a member of St. Cecilia Catholic Church and a graduate of Westland High School, Class of '77'. Preceded in death by great-grandparents Charles and Sarah Bentz, grandparents Frank and Thelma Bragg and Adryenne and Arnold McKee, aunt Marilyn Isaac, and cousin Robert Riley. Survived by parents, John and Julia McKee; fiancee, Michael Woolfe; sister, Vicki (Mike) Davis; nephews, Nicholas Davis and Benjamin (Sara) Davis; great-nephew, Thomas Davis; along with aunts, uncles, cousins, loving relatives, and friends. Family will receive friends Sunday from 2-5 p.m. at THE TIDD FUNERAL HOME, 5265 Norwich St., Hilliard, OH 43026. A funeral service will be held 11 a.m. Monday at CONCORDIA LUTHERAN CHURCH, 225 Schoolhouse Lane, Columbus, OH 43228. Interment Sunset Cemetery.

All attempts at taking photos of photos have failed, so you will have to settle for my physical description: light light parakeet-blonde hair (100% natural) and extremely disarming pale blue eyes. Very feminine, small, thin, petite.

Aspasia offers the consoling thought that I thought of Terri because her soul was reaching out to me, to say goodbye. It is a comfort to think so.

And you folks reading: please don't forget my advice. Contact those old friends now. Don't put it off.

~*~

In the year 2525 - Zager and Evans



We got on a roller coaster once, at the Ohio State Fair, while this song was playing, full-blast. We screamed and sang along, all at once. One of those wonderful, great moments of childhood... perhaps she thought of it in her last moments, as I surely will.

Pleasant Valley Sunday - The Monkees



Mr Green, he's so serene, he's got a TV in every room... we decided we liked Mr Green and wanted TVs in every room when we grew up, too.

Goodbye, old friend.

Davy Jones 1945-2012

Daisy's very first imaginary boyfriend has passed on:

No doubt you're humming Daydream Believer or Last Train to Clarksville as you read this.

The lead singer of The Monkees, Davy Jones, has died.

His rep tells TMZ that he died after suffering a heart attack this morning in Florida. Jones was 66.

TMZ confirmed Jones' death with an official from the medical examiner's office for Martin County, Fla.

Jones is survived by his wife Jessica and four daughters from previous marriages.

Jones joined The Monkees in 1965, with Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork.

I wrote about the Monkees here.

Goodbye old friend. (((sobs)))

Kate Schulte 1951-2011

Some people simply radiate goodness... you can even get drunk and barf on their nice rug and they say ohhh, that is nothing. When you reconnect with them years later, they never mention the rug, and instead tell you how wonderful you are. They impart their special magic to all of those around them. These are very rare, beautiful souls on this earth.

We have lost one.

Goodbye, dearest Kate.

~*~

SCHULTE, Kate "Kathaleen Beth" Schulte, beloved wife, mother, sister, aunt, and friend, left our company on September 15 from an apparent heart attack at the age of 60. Kate was born in Wichita, KS, and settled in Columbus, OH, in 1975. Her earliest work for justice was with farmworker organizers and the Columbus Tenants Union. In 1984, she met her swoon-unit, Michael Vander Does, on a memorable trip to the Kentucky Derby. Allen Ginsberg was a guest at their engagement party in July 1985 and they married a few months later. She loved and cared for her stepdaughters, Nicole and Naima Vander Does, as if they were her own. She loved to travel. The Yucatan, Italy, and New Orleans were favorite destinations. She attended 17 Jazzfests, seven Kentucky Derbies, and too many ComFests to count. She was a graduate of The Ohio State University College of Law, after which she became a well-known civil rights attorney. Perhaps her proudest legal work was on the Brunet firefighter sex discrimination case. A remembrance will be held at Ray's Living Room, 17 Brickel St., Columbus, OH, on Saturday, October 8, 2011 at 6 p.m., for her family and friends to celebrate her beautiful life.

From: Columbus Dispatch

~*~

I got on a bus once, drug-addled, and Kate was there. I meandered on back to sit next to her... I didn't even ASK if I could sit there. I told her I was all messed up on drugs.

"Well, you don't look like it!" she whispered, conspiratorially. And then she started telling me about her law book. I remember that it sounded very cool and interesting.

She reminded me, "Isn't this your stop?" She was right! Without Kate, would have ended up in Worthington or somewhere.

What I remembered, when I heard the news of her passing, was her warm, bright smile that day, when I sat next to her. She made even some silly druggie feel like the most important human being in the world.

So many people recall the warm, inclusive smile, and how it made them feel.

~*~

Yippies regularly crashed parties given by various important liberals and lawyers, which we loved to do. Go ahead, try to throw your poor lefty relations out of the party! (Sometimes they did.) We will talk trash about you and call you rich!

It was a game: "Do you think they'll let us in?"

But not at Kate's party: "Oh, that's fine, I love the Yippies. Somebody has to bring some controversy, don't they?!" (Was that a dig at the boring liberals?) She warmly invited us in, plied us with cheese and wine and introduced us to the well-heeled Democrats. She seemed to enjoy knowing scruffy anarchists, and also seemed to quietly enjoy ruffling those rich liberals a bit.

Official Yippie verdict on Kate: What a great person!

~*~

On Facebook, I told her, you know you are old when you are friending the people you used to babysit. She loved that. And it was via Facebook that I reconnected with a beautiful soul, and then lost her, in a year's time. And ohhhh my, it does hurt.

I've written about the modern phenomenon of experiencing death so up-close and personal via Facebook, and how it is now turning into a common occurrence. I hope this grief will not also become commonplace, but then again, perhaps it will serve to make us treasure every minute that much more.

As Kate would have done.

Let's swim to the moon

At left: Ben Hall, at Bohemian Cafe on Saturday.



One of those things about age that makes me profoundly uncomfortable: I get sentimental very quickly.

Like, really sentimental.

It overtakes me suddenly, and there I am, shedding tears over seemingly peculiar, unrelated or odd events. Such as Ben Hall and his guitar playing. Which was just like my late stepfather's. (Note: although the outdated link claims Ben is 18, he has now reached the ripe old age of 22.)

Until I was sitting there listening to Ben, whom I hadn't heard before, I didn't realize I had unconsciously avoided the music of Chet Atkins for a reason... I was suddenly aware that the "thumb-picking" guitar-style of Ben's, was the same as my stepfather's. I have avoided it for many years, flipped radio channels and such, because it made me so emotional. And as Ben described his style of playing, I thought, oh no... because I probably would have avoided his fabulous guitar playing if I had known.

I listened, and promptly got all teary-eyed and emotional. It is so embarrassing, reminding me of a line from Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now: "I cried like some grandmother." Yeah, I guess he means me. I have arrived!

Does any music do that to you?

Here is Ben's playing, the signature thumb-pickin style.

Cannonball Rag - Ben Hall



~*~

This song is as old as I am, seriously... careful, its about death, and way before the Doors made drowning at night sound sexy and existential.

I can hardly believe its taken me this long to post it!

Endless Sleep - Jody Reynolds



~*~

And speaking of the Doors, here is the 60s version of drowning for fun:

Moonlight Drive - The Doors



Let's swim to the moon
Let's climb through the tide
Penetrate the evening that the
City sleeps to hide
Let's swim out tonight, love
It's our turn to try
Parked beside the ocean
On our moonlight drive

Let's swim to the moon
Let's climb through the tide
Surrender to the waiting worlds
That lap against our side

Nothing left open
And no time to decide
We've stepped into a river
On our moonlight drive

~*~

Sorry so morbid, but its been a rather morbid week in America, yes? ;)

Stone

This has been a week for the record books. Been down so long, looks like up to me. Born under a bad sign. Hellhound on my trail. Etc. When blues songs define your life, well, that pretty much says it all.

I saw some movies yesterday, and that helped. Yay, escapism!

~*~

Even if it is rather slow and ponderous, I highly recommend STONE, if you want a deeply spiritual character study, highlighting the immediate problems with Christianity. If you already know what the problems are, you'll get it. If you don't, this will put it in stark relief for you, but in a non-confrontational manner. I identified heavily with the protagonist, a convict played by Edward Norton.

Norton is a marvel, possibly the greatest actor of our era. He is psychoanalyzed, sorta kinda, by Robert DeNiro, the greatest actor of HIS era. Watching these two play off each other is the great strength of the movie. It becomes real, right before your eyes, and you totally forget you are watching two well-known movie stars.

I loved it, but certainly, the film is not for everybody. A rather tepid ending, when the dramatic tension between the two leads causes you to expect fireworks. Then you realize, there WERE fireworks, but they were all interior.

Check it out, for something different.

~*~

I also saw BLACK SWAN at last. Natalie Portman says she was inspired by Repulsion, and you can tell. Great inspiration, and the scene in which the nail-clippers jab her is right out of the original.

I was astounded by her thinness (realistic for ballerinas; I'm not criticizing) and hope she's gained some weight for her pregnancy.

Mr Daisy was disappointed by the ending. He wanted her to turn into a giant black swan and fly out into the audience and eat people.

You shouldn't let fan-boys watch this stuff.

~*~

If you pray, pray for me. Whatever you do, please do it. It is not pleasant to lose a parent and a job in one week. The first loss, however, has eclipsed the second one easily. I am pretty numb; I simply didn't know how to write about it until now.

But it's soooo quiet here. I can smell the honeysuckle outside, as the southern spring air drifts in from the woods. And I like not having to dash out the door for a change. (Translation: I think this might be one of those blessings in disguise, but right now, sure doesn't feel that way.)

I love you, my blogger buddies. If you have never commented here (or rarely comment anywhere), how about you leave one and let me know you're out there? It really would help.

More to come. Always.

Plain(s) Feminist R.I.P.

I have tried several times over the past couple of days, to write a decent obit for my friend, Plain(s) Feminist. Her blog is listed below, not updated since February. I had not known that her breast cancer returned, or I would have called, written, anything. Our modern life rushes on, and it stuns us when someone is here today, gone tomorrow, in a scant six or seven weeks. Say what? But, but... she was so vital, so funny, so real, so aware, so present.

And now, she is not.

When I heard, cried my heart out. Got to work, sobbed there too. Good lord, Daisy, get a grip.

I have realized that my various existential crises are all bound up with death, my fear of death and my anger at death for taking the wrong people. I just wrote about awful individuals like Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich... they are still in this world and beautiful, kind, selfless Plain(s) Feminist (herein referred to as PF) is gone. This is not justice; this just makes me so upset. I ask God, as I often do: Excuse me, but WHAT IS THAT SHIT?!? I never get an answer, just the reminder that sooner or later, you, me, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and everyone else in the world, will hear from the Grim Reaper as well. But why so soon... why interrupt her work, her social activism, her writing, her teaching, her motherhood, her PLANS?

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

~*~

Once upon a time, I was devastated and confused beyond telling, and there are times I unwillingly return to this state when I cruise around Feminist Blogdonia. I once had many friends there, and happily, proudly populated my blog-roll with them. Most are still there, even as they have exiled me. A major fallout on a fairly-large email list, left me persona non grata among many of these people... all (but one) much younger than me. Most had college degrees (even advanced degrees) and there was no question that I was waaaay out of my league. Blundering in with my uncouth redneck sensibility and using the wrong language was bound to happen. When it did, and I was tarred and feathered in short order (leaving me dazed and confused, even now), PF was one of the people who comforted me and explained things (see link above). This is part of being a woman, this is also a struggle of feminism... that women should learn to work together. It is not surprising that we don't know how; that instead, we savage each other. We have been raised to do that, after all. She wrote to me, "When a friend of mine tells me I've misunderstood her, I listen to that." And she did.

How precious to find the person who listens. Her students were so lucky.

I can't add much to what others have written... please read Kittywampus, since she knew PF better than I did and has also collected obituary-links. Some have used her given name and some have not, and I am confused about whether that is acceptable, so when in doubt, I don't. But other people have, and if you are in the Women's Studies field, you may have known her. Please go check out the links and pay your respects.

I once told PF that I believed the advent of Women's Studies was the death of activist feminism, an (honest) opinion I lob every now and then, to see what the professors will say. (It's a dead horse, so I no longer beat it, but I did for years.) Most of them have just sneered back, huh UH! and shook their heads forcefully, nary missing a beat. But none took the charge seriously. When I said it rather offhandedly to PF, she emailed me specifically and asked me to elaborate, and kindly asked for evidence. Wow, really?! Nobody ever did that before, so I chronicled some of my decades-long observations. She emailed me and said yes, those are great points (!) and we need to CONNECT women's studies to activism, always, or it is just an academic thing, no different or any more enlightening or important than other academic pursuits. And in her life, she did this... she belonged to all kinds of activist groups and also supported many activist women. She walked the walk and talked the talk. And how RARE is that? (Unfortunately, this brings me back to my anger that the rare jewels are taken from us, while the baddies are here in full force--gahhh!!!) PF asked me to have patience with the Women's Studies grads and see them as having been "prepped" by her and others, for the activism that I might teach them... a hand-off, if you will. The idea that we were working together was such a radical one, such a great concept. We would all, gladly, work for PF, and make sure her newly-radicalized students fulfilled her dreams.

PF leaves a life-partner and son.

Goodbye, my friend. We should all have your zeal, your energy, your drive, your love, your essential decency and morality as applied to women... well, your feminism. Just plain feminism.

Some more good news

So much is going on in the world, I hardly know where to begin. Alternative medicine suppliers have had an unexpected nationwide-run on all types of iodine, in anticipation of radiation poisoning. The failure of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuke took us totally by surprise and has freaked everyone out. This has been the unexpected catalyst of the sudden requests; we never expected it and didn't plan for it. For my part, I've been reminding everyone of how right I was in opposing nuclear power back in the wayward 70s, and loading up on nori. I figure it can't hurt.

And I've been talking to my customers, as always.

I guess you all know that the Left Behinders are out in force, what with wars and revolutions and rebellions all over the Mideast, as well as probable-meltdowns and the infamous year 2012 approaching. It's the end of the world as we know it.

Along these lines, I thought yall might like to see the First of the Four Horsemen, spotted in Egypt (on European television), whilst bored newsreaders jabbered on. I guess they didn't see it? (One wonders how anyone could miss video of the imminent apocalypse.)

Go to 1:25; they helpfully rerun it in slow-mo a few times, for your edification.



Now, see, if it hadn't been a WHITE horse, nobody would have noticed.

There are many explanations of this video, with copious details about glare and lens-reflection, etc... but of course, many people have their own explanations. And I get to hear all about it. But you know what?

I feel fine. :)

The Borders by Sharon Olds

My mother died in July of 2006, but I could not get back up to Ohio until the second week of August, near the Feast of the Assumption (which is tomorrow, the 15th).

And on that day, I scattered her ashes into the Tuscarawas River, in Massillon, Ohio, a few scant feet from where my stepfather (her beloved) had been employed during our 3-year residence there. It was in this location, she said, that she had been the happiest in her lifetime. It was in this location that she was markedly different; she was finally in a country-and-western band that respected her and valued her input. She lived with the man she loved and during the days, briefly attempted the fantasy-sitcom stay-at-home mom role, so valued by the middle-class. She made curtains, she drew sketches in pencil, she put bouquets of flowers on the table. She practiced endlessly, leaving the identifiable bass-lines of various 60s pop-songs in my head forever. She smiled at me.

She was herself there, more than she was anywhere else... before or after.

In the tumultuous years that followed, I often thought of my "Massillon mama"--and wanted her back.

So, I returned her there.

~*~

The Borders

To say that she came into me,
from another world, is not true.
Nothing comes into the universe
and nothing leaves it.
My mother—I mean my daughter did not
enter me. She began to exist
inside me—she appeared within me.
And my mother did not enter me.
When she lay down, to pray, on me,
she was always ferociously courteous,
fastidious with Puritan fastidiousness,
but the barrier of my skin failed, the barrier of my
body fell, the barrier of my spirit.
She aroused and magnetized my skin, I wanted
ardently to please her, I would say to her
what she wanted to hear, as if I were hers.
I served her willingly, and then
became very much like her, fiercely
out for myself.
When my daughter was in me, I felt I had
a soul in me. But it was born with her.
But when she cried, one night, such pure crying,
I said I will take care of you, I will
put you first. I will not ever
have a daughter the way she had me,
I will not ever swim in you
the way my mother swam in me and I
felt myself swum in. I will never know anyone
again the way I knew my mother,
the gates of the human fallen.

--Sharon Olds

Please don't be long, or I may be asleep

Now if you ask of psychology just how and why aims that were peripheral become at a certain moment central, psychology has to reply that she is unable to account accurately for all the single forces at work.

--William James, Varieties of Religious Experience


I have always tried to be honest when it comes to spiritually-based matters. Even when it makes me look crazed or stupid. This time, however, has been especially difficult.

It seems I don't have the right words, the proper references, the easy approach. On some level, I find Westerners who claim Eastern religions to be pretentious and silly; tourists of the soul. And yet... I wrote about my beloved George Harrison for a reason. I made the case for him and people like him.

Of course, I realized I was also talking about myself. I knew this could all apply to me at some later date.

The date and time arrived, without any preparation, rather like an old rusty sundial that nobody pays much attention to. Time's up. The clock struck the hour, and as the book of Matthew tells us, no man knows the day or the hour, not even the angels in heaven.

I hesitate to call it a conversion. But I am stuck with Western words--words with their roots in Christianity. As I said in the George Harrison post: they don't do it like that, we do it like that. But then, I am talking about ME, right?

I do it like that.

~*~

My study of Buddhism has grown extensive. And just like those numerous TV detectives (or Greg House), I was in the middle of something else entirely when it happened. In a series of realizations, everything coalesced, made sense, lined up. I tried to fight it, because I knew what it meant. (I briefly wrote about that here.) I am frankly terrified at the idea of "leaving" the Church, even psychologically. (Physically, I have no trouble staying away for months at a time.) A creator God is an idea I can't overcome and can't shake; an idea that seems etched somewhere on my cerebellum. In addition, my deep love for the saints and the Blessed Mother is a palpable and real phenomena in my life. I don't want to change, I protested inwardly, I don't want to.

Then why are you reading all of this stuff? Why have you steadily prayed for compassion?

It was the graveyard. I asked the spirits of the dead to speak to me, and tell me what they know.

~*~

I decided to take photos of the German graveyard in Fredericksburg, Texas. These immigrants are the people my grandchildren descend from, my son-in-law's family. They came thousands and thousands of miles, to these hills that must have seemed so hot, so inhospitable, so strange. They left the "old country" and arrived in the land of coyotes and cactus. I thought of what it was like, never hugging one's parents again, crossing a huge ocean and knowing that you will never again see the place you came from, the land that nurtured you and formed your imagination.

I saw the gravestones, some of them the graves of babies. The whooping cough, polio and other diseases these babies likely died from, have been largely eradicated in the West. And yet, our pain, our suffering, does not diminish. We have all kinds of modern conveniences that these Germans would have found incredible, the answer to any number of daily problems; even a telephone would have been an amazing innovation in their very primitive, pioneer way of life. But what does the modern proliferation of phones bring us? I thought of the woman seated behind me on the plane, arguing on her cell phone in controlled tones... arguing with who? I tried to figure it out and could not: Husband? Boyfriend? Best friend?

I thought of the juxtaposition of the arguing passenger, and the German immigrant (lying here in this cemetery?) of the last century, who would have been so overjoyed to hear that her husband was merely late, not hurt or harmed on his long, muddy trek home by horse-drawn wagon. Telephones were once used only in similar emergencies, to notify Atticus Finch there was a rabid dog outside, and other scary stuff like that. But now we all carry one, like talismans to ward off the problems of modern life that materialize seemingly out of nowhere. And as a result, omnipresent telephones have also helped to multiply our distress.

I thought about my newborn grandson, my nearly-five-year-old granddaughter, and the pain I have experienced, not being able to see them as often as I want to. I know they will not die of these old diseases, causing me great pain, but I do feel the intense pain of separation, the same crushing pain these German immigrants felt. In that sense, nothing has changed. Our common humanity is the same, and we feel the same, even after the passing of a hundred years.

We have improved our lot, we are living longer, I thought, but we are still sad.

And tellingly, graveyards have not changed. We have not changed the fact of death, the end of our earthly existence.

~*~

I entered that area of the cemetery in which the names have worn off the stones. Who are these people?--I thought. Please talk to me. There were gothic-appearing cages surrounding the oldest stones, some very rusty. To keep the grave-robbers out? Frightening. (One might also say, to keep the dead people from escaping, if one were sufficiently spookable.)

I could always get through the first two Noble Truths pretty easily. I mean, come on, who can argue?

The Nature of Suffering (or Dukkha):
"This is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering."

Suffering's Origin (Dukkha Samudaya):
"This is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for extermination."

I would even agree with the third one, but I just wasn't sure it was for an amateur like me:

Suffering's Cessation (Dukkha Nirodha):
"This is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, nonreliance on it."

And finally, the fourth, the stumbling block. Aye, this is the rub.

The Path (Dukkha Nirodha Gamini Patipada Magga) Leading to the Cessation of Suffering:
"This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: it is the Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."

Yes, it folded in on me, very simply and honestly.

This is The Truth, and I have found it, after much seeking. I am now ready to accept it.

And there it was, one of the most intense moments of my life, strikingly similar to my two other conversion experiences, which have brought me to this point. (I love trinities; these kindsa things should happen in threes.) I then saw the gravestone that said "Our darling" (photo at left)--and that was it. I started to cry, right there in the old German graveyard, for the suffering of all beings. And I wanted so much, with every fiber of my being, to end it.

I reached out and touched the words: Our darling. I felt the keening, the tears, of the mother who asked for those words on the gravestone. I am so sorry, I sobbed, I am so sorry.

~*~

I promise not to turn this into a Buddhist blog. I wouldn't know how to begin, in any case. I am merely reporting the incident and the shift in my sensibility. My sense of peace and new sense of mission, has not abated in the slightest, and has only increased. I know this means I have to go further. It will be my task to correlate my old beliefs with the new ones, and to figure out what I need to do to fulfill these new convictions in my everyday life. This is called dharma, a word I don't use easily. As I said, the feeling that I am some kind of religious tourist, or worse, a cultural imperialist, is overwhelming, probably fallout from too much leftism. Still, I hope this feeling will keep me honest. And as I seek out a path for myself, I hope my spiritual reticence will prevent me from bloviating nonsense!

In the short run, the change in my life has been enormous. The truth shall set you free!

As always: Stay tuned, sports fans. :)

~*~

Notes:

:: I loved Kloncke's recent posts as Feministe, and highly recommend her blog.

:: And as we speak so honestly of suffering: While I was gone, a sometime blog-reader and good friend passed away. He was one of those very generous, sweet-tempered Christians who embody the Word, and would gladly give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. Rest in Peace, generous and loving soul, Gregg James Farrier 1947-2010. The fierce and beautiful kindnesses you left on the earth, stay behind to remind of us of what we are capable of becoming, if we try.

:: Non-Beatles fans might wonder: blog post title is from George Harrison's Blue Jay Way.

After all of these years, I finally understood the phrase.

Amanda Knox found guilty

I decided some time ago, not to write about the Amanda Knox case again until there was a verdict. (I first covered the murder of Meredith Kercher when it originally happened, here and here.) I still get plenty of hits on her old MySpace photo (left), virtually every time she is mentioned on TV. Yesterday, while awaiting the verdict, lots of hits on the photo.



Guilty:

Perugia, Italy (CNN) -- An Italian jury has found American student Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty in the stabbing death of British exchange student Meredith Kercher.

Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison and Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.

Both were convicted on all charges except theft and together must pay 5 million euros ($7.4 million) to the victim's family. In addition, Knox must pay 40,000 euros ($60,000) to a man whom she falsely accused of the killing.

Knox, wearing a lime jacket, her hair in a single braid, began to sob -- her sniffles and sobs punctuating the otherwise silent courtroom -- as the judge read the verdict quietly, without expression.

Few of the eight jurors looked at her. Six of the jurors were wearing red, white and green sashes -- the colors of Italy's flag.

Sollecito's stepmother cried out her stepson's name twice as he and Knox were led from the court.

Curt Knox, Amanda Knox's father, walked the four blocks from the courtroom to his hotel staring stonily ahead, holding his two tearful daughters by the hand.

He said nothing as they strode through the streets of the medieval town except "Move," when journalists got in his way.

"We are extremely disappointed in the verdict rendered today against our daughter," Knox's family said in a statement.

"While we always knew this was a possibility, we find it difficult to accept this verdict when we know that she is innocent, and that the prosecution has failed to explain why there is no evidence of Amanda in the room where Meredith was so horribly and tragically murdered.

"It appears clear to us that the attacks on Amanda's character in much of the media and by the prosecution had a significant impact on the judges and jurors and apparently overshadowed the lack of evidence in the prosecution's case against her."

Knox and Sollecito will appeal the verdicts, attorneys said.

After the verdict, Knox's lawyer, Carlo Della Vedova said his client was upset, but strong.

He would not speculate on the reason for the verdict.

"We have to see the motivation," he said, referring to legal paperwork the judge must file within 90 days to explain the jury's reasoning.

Her family was disappointed, but not surprised, by the verdict, Knox's aunt Janet Huff told CNN.com

"It was terrible, it was gut-wrenching just to hear them say it," said Huff, speaking from her Seattle, Washington, home.

"And to see the people outside the courtroom applauding -- that just made me sick that people can be that callous and cold."

Knox and Sollecito were charged with murder and sexual violence in the November 2007 stabbing death of Meredith Kercher. Knox and Kercher, both studying abroad, were roommates. A third suspect was found guilty in a separate trial.

Prosecutors argued Seattle, Washington, native Amanda Knox was a resentful American so angry with her British roommate that she exacted revenge during a twisted sex misadventure at their home two years ago.

They said Knox directed Sollecito and another man infatuated with her, Rudy Guede, to hold Kercher down as Knox played with a knife before slashing Kercher's throat.

Defense lawyers argued that Guede, who was convicted in a separate fast-track trial and is currently appealing his conviction, was the sole killer. On Thursday, Knox took the stand for a third time in the Perugia courtroom, telling jurors that she is not a "killer" who stabbed her former roommate.

"They say that I am calm. I am not calm," Knox said in Italian. "I fear to lose myself, to have the mask of the killer forced upon me. I fear to be defined as someone I am not."

Prosecutors touted an airtight case.

They argued DNA on Kercher's bra clasp belonged to Sollecito. And the alleged murder weapon, a 6 ½-inch kitchen knife taken from Sollecito's home, had the DNA of Knox on the handle and Kercher on the blade, prosecutors said.

During the trial, the defense sought to cast doubt on the knife evidence, arguing it doesn't match the wounds on Kercher's body.

And they said the bra clasp with Sollecito's DNA on it was left at the crime scene for weeks and is so contaminated that the evidence can't be considered credible.

Knox's family has argued she has been the victim of character assassination.

Members of Kercher's family have declined repeated CNN requests for comment.

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini accused the defense of "lynching" the Italian police who worked on the case.

Knox and Sollecito have been jailed for more than two years. The trial began in January in Perugia, a university town about 115 miles (185 kilometers) north of Rome.

I am really quite surprised. You could NEVER get that verdict here in the USA with the flimsy physical evidence and overall compromise of the crime scene. Not to mention, the tainting of the jury pool.

And of course, there is also the simple, very unjust fact that she has been jailed since she was charged. She has not been able to fully participate in her own defense. English, not Italian, is her first language. No Miranda reading and no Bill of Rights in Italy. I am reminded, again, why it is so crucial.

Mr Daisy and I started talking about the fact that Amanda, who is likely guilty (I have to admit, I don't know, but the initial facts looked pretty bad), could never get a guilty verdict here in the USA, but got one in Italy. What does that mean? Is our justice system TOO one-sided in favor of defendants, as many right-wing politicians and victim-advocates have claimed? I have always been proud of our "innocent until proven guilty" concept--but of course, this obviously means that lots of guilty people have gone free, who should not have.

And the reverse is true, without the presumption of innocence: Innocent people are accused and no substantial evidence is required.

There is no perfect judicial system, but I used to believe the American system was superior. After encountering the entire True Crime/Ann Rule oeuvre, I changed my mind: money talks and bullshit walks. T. Cullen Davis, evil bloodthirsty killer of a 12-year-old child at point-blank range, is a free man... not coincidentally, he is also the richest man ever tried for murder. (No millionaire has ever received the death penalty in this country, and none ever will.) I no longer subscribe to the idea that our judicial system is automatically superior; but is it the best we can expect?

The Knox verdict has me wondering about fairness. Do we bend over backwards to protect defendants?

And what if she is innocent? Her inability to get a fair trial in a sensationalistic media-circus atmosphere is certainly a factor against her.

What do you think?

Can I ask for my vote back, Mr President?

Tonight, as President Barack Obama makes a mockery of his Nobel Peace Prize and decides to escalate the Afghanistan War, I take formal leave of the Democratic Party.

I am now, officially, out the door.

I am also reminded of Lyndon Johnson's famous speech defending our similar cranked-up intervention in that Southeast Asian debacle so very long ago... Deja Vu all over again.

I regret my vote already. I should never have trusted.

And I can't do any better than Keith Olbermann on MSNBC last night, addressing the president personally:

So, much of the change for which you were elected, Sir, has thus far been understandably, if begrudgingly, tabled, delayed, made more open-ended. But patience ebbs, Mr. President. And while the first one thousand key decisions of your presidency were already made about the economy, the first public, easy-to-discern, mouse-or-elephant kind of decision comes tomorrow night at West Point at eight o'clock.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our economy than the cost of supply for 35,000 new troops. Nothing will do more to slow economic recovery. You might as well shoot the revivified auto industry or embrace John Boehner Health Care Reform and Spray-Tan Reimbursement.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our status in the world than for us to re-up as occupiers of Afghanistan and for you to look like you were unable to extricate yourself from a Military Chinese Finger Puzzle left for you by Bush and Cheney and the rest of Halliburton's hench-men.

And most of all, and those of us who have watched these first nine months trust both your judgment and the fact you know this, Mr. President: unless you are exactly right, we cannot afford this war. For if all else is even, and everything from the opinion of the generals to the opinion of the public is even, we cannot afford to send these troops back into that quagmire for second tours, or thirds, or fourths, or fifths.

We cannot afford this ethically, Sir. The country has, for eight shameful years, forgotten its moral compass and its world purpose. And here is your chance to reassert that there is, in fact, American Exceptionalism. We are better. We know when to stop making our troops suffer, in order to make our generals happy.

You, Sir, called for change, for the better way, for the safety of our citizens including the citizens being wasted in war-for-the-sake-of-war, for a reasserting of our moral force. And we listened. And now you must listen. You must listen to yourself.

Text of Olbermann's entire commentary (with video) here.

More:

Where's that Endgame he promised us? (Huffington Post)

President Obama 'accelerates' 30,000 troops to Afghanistan (Politico)

Democrats Campaign Against Obama's Afghan Plan (The Nation)

Obama Approves More Troops for Afghanistan (CBS News)

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) compares Afghanistan troop increase to Vietnam (Politico)

I am sick over this, and very, very disappointed.

Your thoughts?

Woman halts Fort Hood bloodbath

At left: Police Officer Kimberly Munley (Twitter photo)


Perfect feminist post title, wouldn't you say?


Although the news out of Fort Hood is generally horrific, feminists everywhere can rejoice that A WOMAN stopped the killing.

From CNN:

Fort Hood, Texas (CNN) -- The police officer who ended the Fort Hood massacre by shooting the suspect was known as the enforcer on her street, a "tough woman" who patrolled her neighborhood and once stopped burglars at her house.

"If you come in, I'm going to shoot," Kimberly Munley told the would-be intruders last year.

It was Munley who arrived quickly Thursday at the scene of the worst massacre at an Army base in U.S. history, where 13 people were killed. She confronted the alleged gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, and shot him four times. Munley was wounded in the exchange.

That's just like her, friends and family say.

"I just felt more protected knowing she was on my street," neighbor Erin Houston said.

Munley, the mother of a 3-year-old girl, lives on a street where a lot of homes are vacant because so many residents are deployed at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We sleep a lot safer knowing she's on the block," said Sgt. William Barbrow, another neighbor.

When Bryan Munley heard that his sister-in-law thwarted the alleged gunman in a shootout, he wasn't surprised.

"There's nothing that stands in her way. It completely makes sense that she did what she did," he said from Downingtown, Pennsylvania. "It was amazing. Without her, there would have been a lot more people killed."

He added, "She is definitely a tough woman."

Munley, 34, is being treated for her wounds. Her father, former Carolina Beach, North Carolina, Mayor Dennis Barbour, said his daughter is doing well.

"Her efforts were superb," said Col. Steven Braverman, the base hospital commander.

Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, Fort Hood's commanding general, described Munley as a "trained, active first responder" who acted quickly after she "just happened to encounter the gunman."

"Really a pretty amazing and aggressive performance by this police officer," he said.

Cone said Munley and her partner responded "very quickly" to the scene -- reportedly in about three minutes.

On social networking sites, she was lauded for her actions. One Facebook fan page was called "Sgt. Kimberly Munley: A Real American Hero" and had more than 1,400 members.

"My prayers for a fast recovery as well as my sincere thanks of an outstanding job," one person wrote. One woman added, "U got some brass balls, girl ... u r my hero!!!!"

Authorities say Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, opened fire at a military processing center at Fort Hood on Thursday, killing 13 and wounding 30 others.

Cone was asked on CNN's "American Morning" whether Munley's shots brought down the assailant and stopped him from shooting.

"That's correct," Cone said. "The critical factor here was her quick response to the situation."

Bryan Munley said Munley is married to his brother, Staff Sgt. Matthew Munley. He said Matthew was in Downingtown, outside Philadelphia, visiting his family when the shootings happened. The couple, married since 2006, have a 3-year-old daughter named Jayden.

Bryan Munley said Matthew had recently been transferred to Fort Bragg in North Carolina and has done two tours in Iraq. Kimberly was trying to find a job in North Carolina and was hoping to move there soon, Matthew said.

Matthew was at Fort Bragg on Friday, trying to get a flight to Texas to see his wife.

A page on Twitter lists the name "Kim Munley" of Killeen, Texas, near Ford Hood. It has a photo of a female police officer with the name "Kim Munley" on her uniform.

Its bio blurb has particular resonance in the aftermath of the incident.

"I live a good life....a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone's life."

Ohhh, you sure have. May God Bless you for your self-sacrificing work.

~*~

More on Fort Hood:

Neighbors: Alleged Fort Hood gunman emptied apartment (CNN)

Letter from Fort Hood (Mother Jones)

Fort Hood shooting: police woman hailed for bravery (UK Telegraph)

Pregnant Chicago woman, Francheska Velez, among Fort Hood shooting victims (Huffington Post)

Mosques Up Security in Wake of Ft. Hood (CBS News)

What is known about Nidal Malik Hasan and Fort Hood shooting (Christian Science Monitor)

Jerome Corsi at it again, and so soon, too. (Huffington Post)

More on Ted Kennedy

Okay yall, I am hereby signing off for the day. Trolls, stay back, or at the very least, try not to wreck the joint too badly.

I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS.

If I see one more liberal and/or feminist (!) blog talking about the late Senator Edward Kennedy as some kinda righteous man, I'm gonna spew.

Here at DEAD AIR, we calls em like we sees em, and rich drunks who let women die agonizingly-slow deaths rather than tarnish their reputations or make daddy mad, are not mourned, regardless of their politics. REGARDLESS.

I guess it's because she was, you know, just a girl. It's not considered cool to talk about her now. If he weren't a Kennedy, he would have been locked up, yall KNOW that, right? (Is upper-class privilege suddenly okay when exercised by liberals?)

I am now lighting vigil candles (yes, those are my St Nicholas and Our Lady of Guadalupe candles) and saying novenas for the souls of Mary Jo Kopechne and Ted Kennedy. And saying prayers for the woman Ted shit all over: Joan Bennett Kennedy. I am almost as sick over all the "Ohhhh! He was much happier after he married Vicki!" horseshit that I've been hearing on TV. So, he fucked up Joan, wiped his ass with her like toilet paper, moves on to woman 22 years younger, and yes! He's much happier now!

(((fights back urge to vomit)))

I can't believe even feminists are falling for this. Bros before hos, even on feminist blogs!

ANY Senator from Massachusetts would have been a liberal, you realize?

Okay, I'm outta here. I will try not to discuss this again, since it sure don't make me popular. But I have to wonder where my feminist sisters are in this one--certainly, they've harshly criticized men who have done FAR LESS. (?)

(((Daisy departs in cloud of indignation and fury)))

Mary Jo Kopechne 1940-1969

Sorry my dear liberal brothers and sisters, I respectfully sit this one out. Women first.

Further, as an alcoholic, I will not mourn a rich drunk allowed to make a deadly mistake and carry on as if nothing had happened.

I will mourn the working woman who was forgotten, as the actual circumstances of her death were covered up by a powerful family, who then arbitrarily assigned her slut status.

Imagine slowly, slowly drowning, water enveloping you inch by inch as you drown, waiting for the person to rescue you that never arrives.

Sorry, folks. Some things, I do not excuse.

Mary Jo represents all the nobody-women killed (or allowed to die, if you want to quibble over my terms) by all the powerful, rich men, because they were "evidence"--because they got in the way.

During this orgy of remembrance and sentimentality, of course, we won't be hearing about her...once again, it will be considered somehow "rude" to mention Mary Jo Kopechne's suspicious and untimely death. Well, let me be RUDE, then, and remind everyone that she existed. That she was a beautiful and lively woman, cherished by family and friends; she was a human being that was considered expendable by the Kennedy clan.

FUCK Ted Kennedy. Purgatory is hot, and he'll be there awhile.

~*~

EDIT (for the person who thinks I "exaggerate")-- Please see above Wikipedia entry, specifically THIS QUOTE (italics mine):

Earlier that morning, two amateur fishermen had seen the overturned car in the water and notified the inhabitants of the nearest cottage to the pond, who called the authorities at around 8:20 am.[14] A diver was sent down and discovered Kopechne's body at around 8:45 am.[15] The diver, John Farrar, later testified at the inquest that Kopechne's body was pressed up in the car in the spot where an air bubble would have formed. He interpreted this to mean that Kopechne had survived for a while after the initial accident in the air bubble, and concluded that

“Had I received a call within five to ten minutes of the accident occurring, and was able, as I was the following morning, to be at the victim's side within twenty-five minutes of receiving the call, in such event there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car."[8]

INCH BY INCH she died. And imagine how horrible, the terror. It probably took several hours, according to all I have read, since the accident happened sometime after MIDNIGHT. Think about it, MIDNIGHT. No phone call to any cops or EMTs, since he was DRUNK and had to SOBER HIS ASS UP FIRST.

I repeat, with considerable emphasis: FUCK TED KENNEDY.

Squeaky's out! Official Manson Family open thread

Wacky Squeaky is out of prison today!

Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme, Manson Follower and Would-Be Assassin Released from Prison

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, the would-be assasin who took aim at President Gerald Ford 34 years ago and the chief disciple of serial killer Charles Manson, was released from a federal prison in Texas this morning, said a prison spokeswoman.

Fromme, 60, had previously completed her sentence for the assassination attempt in July 2008, but was ordered to serve additional time for a 1987 prison escape.

"Lynette Fromme was released about 8 a.m. today," prison spokeswoman Maria Douglas told ABCNews.com. She had finished her term at from the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.

Fromme took aim at Ford with a semi-automatic .45-caliber pistol Sept. 5, 1975. There were four bullets in the gun's magazine, but none in the chamber and an alert Secret Service agent grabbed the gun from Fromme.

At the time of the assassination attempt, Manson and several of his followers were serving life terms for killing nine people in his grisly Helter Skelter plot to start a race war.

Fromme told her defense attorney that she targeted Ford because she wanted to garner attention for a new trial for Manson.

Since I know everything (really) about the Manson murders, ask me anything. For a lifelong scandalmonger like myself, the loooong, far-reaching tentacles of the Manson Family (The Beach Boys! Angela Lansbury's daughter!) were like freaking Fort Knox. I've read all the major books, and not a few of the minor ones.

I am also familiar with all of the attendant conspiracy theories, such as Roman Polanski being a possible satanist, etc.

Consider this an open Charlie thread! No outright gore, please. Article/post linkage welcome!

EDIT: Wikipedia does not include GARY HINMAN in their list of Manson Family victims. WHY NOT? No way to edit, or I'd include him. :(