Bah humbug, pretty version

At left: photo from our March 2008 candlelight vigil for the Iraq war, here in Greenville. Each candle represented a fallen soldier.

~*~

For those of you who aren't so thrilled with the holiday hoopla--for whatever reason--the following song is likely the loveliest version of "Bah Humbug" you will ever hear.

The beautiful instrumental refrain is from Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite (1933).


~*~

I believe in Father Christmas - Emerson, Lake and Palmer

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more

At left: Maggie Gallagher spreads her poison at Harvard. (Photo stolen from a right-wing website I will not give hits to!)




Whilst skimming an article last evening, I got pissed off and imagined myself ranting and raving on Bill O'Reilly, wherein he eventually cuts my mike. (This is actually a frequent, favorite fantasy of mine.)

Who got me all stirred up? Maggie Gallagher, former single mother.

Question: Why is Maggie allowed to have a nontraditional family, but nobody else is? OHHH of course, she is heterosexual. That's IT! That's the WHOLE REASON!

I can't remember which conservative essay I once read by Gallagher, some time in the 90s, in which she painted a familiar portrait of harried single motherhood, in predictably exhausted terms. (Biographical note: Your humble narrator was briefly a single mother also, an experience totally worthy of a nervous breakdown, or several.) She described her son crying for his father, a well-written and evocative passage, and I made personal note of it.

And now, she is preaching to other people about what constitutes a "real" family.

Women like Gallagher (and Sarah Palin) make me livid. It was not traditional motherhood, but feminism that made it possible for Gallagher to attend the once all-male Yale and hang with the guys from the once all-male National Review. They did not voluntarily allow her in. Nonetheless, she launched a full-frontal attack on feminism (pausing to write an interesting obit for anti-porn feminist crusader Andrea Dworkin) titled Enemies of Eros: How the Sexual Revolution Is Killing Family, Marriage, and Sex and What We Can Do About It--which defended the basic Schalflyesque, right-wing view of relations between the sexes. Apparently, Maggie forgot that once upon a time, single women who gave birth were regarded as sluts and whores by this very same right wing. She seems to think none of that really applies to her. In fact, Newt Gingrich was ranting and raving as late as 1994, that children in single-parent homes might be better off in orphanages. (Did Maggie agree with that, or would she receive some special motherhood-dispensation as a contributor to the National Review?)

It is pertinent that Maggie wrote a book titled The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially. You should read that as nyah-nyah-nyah, neener-neener, we are allowed to get married and YOU PEOPLE aren't. She wants to zealously, deliberately deny these benefits to gay people, and has all kinds of bullshit reasons for doing so.

But you should not call her a bigot--because that's mean.

I was reading Politico's article about the various conservative and evangelical objections to Newsweek's religion vs gay marriage cover story, when I came across this:

In an e-mail to Politico, Maggie Gallagher, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, took a similar line, calling marriage “the one necessary adult relation in society – the way we bring together male and female to bring the next generation to life in a way that connects those children in love to their own mother and father.”

What?!?

What about her own son?

Why does Maggie Gallagher get a fucking pass? Why is she allowed to be the president of this "pro-marriage" organization*, but clearly started breeding before she had any such need for marriage? How "pro-marriage" is that? Back in the old days, a big scarlet A. These days, they actually listen to her say things like this (from Maggie's Wikipedia entry):

Marriage as a universal social institution is grounded in certain universal features of human nature. When men and women have sex, they make babies. Reproduction may be optional for individuals, but it is not optional for societies. Societies that fail to have “enough” babies fail to survive. And babies are most likely to grow to functioning adulthood when they have the care and attention of both their mother and their father

Apparently, Maggie didn't get the memo that gay people have children too. Some of these children even have visitation with their natural parents (as other children of divorced parents do), and all the rest of it.

Does Maggie's son see his father regularly? (If so, why was he crying about having "no father" in the essay I read?) Does Maggie hold her own family to this same standard? Does she regard a marriage as "traditional" in which a child was first conceived from sex with another man, other than the one she is currently married to? BECAUSE IT ISN'T. THAT IS NOT TRADITIONAL. That used to be ANATHEMA.

And why doesn't she see that?

In short, that old song: decent treatment for ME, but not for THEE.

Maggie also warns:

Gay marriage is not primarily about marriage.... It is about inserting into the law the principle ... that sexual orientation should be treated exactly the same way we treat race in law and culture.... The next step will be to use the law to stigmatize, marginalize, and repress those who disagree with the government’s new views on marriage and sexual orientation.

To those of you who thought gay marriage was about, you know, MARRIAGE, well, just shows what YOU know. It's actually a nefarious plot to force "gay values" on everyone.

But you know, I hope Maggie is right in that last quote...if it means bigots like her get shamed, stigmatized and marginalized, I'm all for it. They deserve it. Maggie sez, in short, I have the right to break the old rules about marriage and child-rearing, and then pretend I have a traditional family, but you people can't.

And what about the CHILDREN?! More from Maggie:

Same-sex marriage advocates are saying there is no difference between two men being intimate and a husband and wife, even when it comes to raising children. They are saying that the opposite idea, that mothers and fathers both matter, is a form of hate, ignorance, animus, bias. That's why they claim that the normal definition of marriage is discrimination.

Again, I ask... what about her own son? Is she exempt from this rule?

Why did she have a child out of wedlock, not instantly given up for adoption to a proper, two-parent family?

I want to emphasize this point, again and again, because it really puzzles me as much as it interests me. I want to highlight the contradiction here. Because you know, Maggie ain't the only one. How many of California's Prop 8 voters were divorced and/or single parents? How many share this same prejudice, excusing their own nontraditional family-oriented behavior, but criticizing gay people? What causes this weird dislocation?

I have long been fascinated by the juxtaposition of what many conservatives SAY, and their actual behavior. William Bennett, author of the moralistic Book of Virtues, for example, later referred to as The Bookie of Virtue, as his gambling habits were made public. The aforementioned Newt Gingrich, preaching about the sanctity of the family, but serving divorce papers on his wife as she recovered from cancer surgery. And of course, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard and the whole Hee Haw gang.

The ongoing hypocrisy stuns, and is unbelievable.

*Gallagher is also the president of The Institute for Marriage and Public Policy.

Keeping the gays from getting married has proven to be a pretty lucrative gig!

I write like a man... and other holiday updates

Mrs Madrigal shares the GenderAnalyzer, which has decided I'm really a man:

We guess http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/ is written by a man (54%), however it's quite gender neutral.

I guess that doesn't sound too bad. But I'd sure like to know how they arrived at that interesting conclusion.

~*~

Ever seen a UFO? Hate to tell you this, but it might have been lenticular clouds! In fact, I am fairly certain the one I thought I saw when I was young, was likely one of these. The shape was exactly the same.

Jojo provides some beautiful, amazing photos of these incredible UFO-shaped clouds in Washington state.

~*~

What Daisy wants for Christmas:

Gift certificate for Mary Jane's Farm! Mary Jane is our own countercultural Martha Stewart; the Style network for hippies. I am obsessed with her dopey magazine, and I particularly crave her overpriced book, MaryJane's Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook, for the farmgirl in all of us.

Yes, I know, I will never make butter or soap myself, but pretending is so much fun.

Putumayo's JAMAICA. (I heartily recommend Putumayo's WORLD REGGAE, one of my very favorite CDs.)

As my regular readers know, I shop at perennial Dead Air favorite Loose Lucy's on a regular basis, and just spent an obscene amount of money on a large patchwork handbag/tote. Yes, I fully realize that if I really was as cool as the aforementioned Mary Jane, I could make one myself... instead, I buy one and people ask me if I made it, and I just have to say, ummmm, well, noooo.

But it really looks fabulous, and if I made one, well, nobody would have to ask. They'd say, "You made that yourself, didn't you?" because it would be disappointingly obvious.

I love Lucy's and all of their clothes. Their newest location has recently opened in Wilmington, NC, and I wish them all the best. They are now up to seven locations! GOOD LUCK, LOOSE LUCY'S! (Sending all my positive holiday retail vibes to you!)

~*~

I recently quoted Harry Truman as saying, "history is just one damn thing after another"--but I've noticed that some searches are attributing the quote to Winston Churchill. Does anyone know which is correct? I am thinking it sounds like an extremely Midwestern thing to say, so I am sticking by Harry until proven otherwise.

What's up with all of you? How is your holiday season shaping up so far?

Father Christmas, give us some money

I've been getting a number of hits for this song, which I featured last year as my official Christmas season kick-off. I am very pleased to say, it now seems more popular than ever--particularly in our current financial recession!

Apologies for the rather slipshod quality of the video, obviously taken right off the TV. (Ray looks GREEN--then again, maybe he is trying to look like the Grinch?)

And don't forget the moral of the story:

Have yourself a merry merry Christmas
Have yourself a good time
But remember the kids who got nothin
While you're drinkin down your wine

~*~

Father Christmas - The Kinks


[via FoxyTunes / The Kinks]

Behold a pale horse

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.-- Revelation 6:8.


~*~

I received a Christmas card telling me that another old friend had died. I wanted to write a proper obituary, but I don't know her year of birth. I found myself almost unable to breathe, and instead of writing about her, I wrote about the fear itself.

Sitting down very late, I wrote:



The news that still another old friend has died, causes me to nearly hyperventilate. I had last seen her in 2006 and she looked fine. That was two years ago, but of course, it seems like last week. (The compression of TIME that seemingly occurs with aging is proof enough that Einstein was right...time literally speeds up as you age.)

My fear of death sometimes overtakes me like a whirlwind...all of my talismans and novenas and amulets and incantations and invocations of saints, the existential wall of safety that I have constructed, turns to mesh, to porous cheesecloth. My fortress wasn't IN PLACE, shields DOWN; my saints have all gone to lunch, I have misplaced my amulets. I am confused and tired, I am not thinking clearly. And I hear of the death of one who is especially strong in my memory, a vivid soul that danced in front of me, made a deep impression. No, not her. She had more energy, more life than all of us.

It's like I left the back door unlocked. FEAR rushes in like some viper, like the Devil himself, whom I suspect he is. He slithers in while my reinforcements are down, gone, misplaced, asleep at the wheel.

It leaves me breathless and dazed, this kind of fear. It sweeps through me like the presence of sudden summer thunder. It's painful, it sears. You can wait, wait, wait for it to subside, but it doesn't, because then it is fully commingled with your grief.

Yes, says the fear, you will die, too.

~*~

Although I devoutly believe in souls, spirits, etc., earthly death, the death of the body, the mortal self, is often very frightening and final to me. I do not know what comes after. As in the movie Jacob's Ladder, I think the crossing over could well be terrifying, as we cling to our human consciousness, as we endure what the Church has called purgatory, what Eastern faiths have named Samsara. Maybe we won't be ready, and we will have to do it all over again. (Perhaps the sharp fear, a Buddhist friend once told me, is due to the fact that we HAVE died before?)

~*~

Do any of you ever experience that kind of fear or sharp (pleasant? unpleasant?) awareness of your own mortality?

I will write more about my friend, but I did not want to infuse her obituary with my fear, and conflate the two here, as I have in my own head. She deserves her own obit, and I will write one. But not quite ready yet.

Comments most especially sought. Thanks everyone.