THE LAW AND ORDER POETRY CONTEST

"Justice? -- You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law" -- William Gaddis -- first sentence of A Frolic of His Own.

I propose a new contest to do with law and order with a very fast turn-around time. This one will open Thursday, April 29th, and close on Sunday, May 2nd, at high noon.

If no one votes or comments, then I am the automatic winner, since I set up the contest. Otherwise, voting will be held. All entrants or usual commenters can comment or post own poems (up to 37 lines) by Sunday at noon, and voting will be finished by Sunday, at 6 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Contest boundaries include nomophobia, nomophilia (I coined the words -- minted to indicate hatred of law, or love of law, in the abstract) but then looked them up and it turns out that nomophobia is the fear of being out of cellphone reach, while nomophilia means, love of law, just what I thought it should mean. Poems having anything to do with police, criminals, boundaries, judging, and/or law and order are welcomed. (Please, no poems about cellphone reach.) Nomophobes and nomophiles (did I at least mint THESE?) alike invited to participate. My own first poem:

WALKING IN UNCERTAINTY
I wake up & think about darkness
As it is exorcised in law
I walked down Second St.
Favorite street (Courthouse at the end!)
The police car went by & the cop waved
They are here to protect me from the devils in my mind

The Campbell’s TV still on at 10:30
The news projecting the latest lawlessness:
The air getting more chill

The Christian law under St. Augustine crumbles in
The uproar of the Romans
Tiberius slaughters 50,000 the Coliseum cheers.

Roman Polanski:
Whoopi says it wasn’t “rape-rape.”

UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

In 1948, the United Nations passed a document entitled Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All the nations of the world accepted it, including Mexico. See if you can find where it doesn't say that someone has the right to override another country's immigration policy, and give themselves amnesty in another country. No country allows this. Neither should we.

The document isn't long, although it took several years to hammer together. Eleanor Roosevelt was the biggest player on the American team.

Red China didn't sign it, because back then Taiwan was China. It wasn't until later that the nations of the world began to accept horrible Red China.

There WAS a long discussion of people asking for amnesty in another country. But no country has to accept those who ask. Immigration restrictions apply in every country of the world, and to my mind, should remain in place. Nations, borders, and police are all good things -- like the immune system of a body. Otherwise, everyone would just have to accept anyone else as a lover (comparison).

But they do not, and should not. Nations have the right to be choosey, and don't have to accept anybody that forces itself upon them.

Preamble
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore,

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.


Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.


Article 3
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.

Article 4
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair, and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11
Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14
Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15
Everyone has the right to a nationality.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16
Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17
Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20
Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21
Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26
Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 27
Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Article 28
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29
Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

WEIGHT LOSS STALLED AT 170: CRISIS OF LARGE PRO(PORTIONS)

After much blabbering about how I was going to lose another ten pounds with my miraculous just-don't-eat-anything diet, I think it is fair to say four months later that I have not made any progress.

Where exactly is my mistake? I get up in the morning, and eat an enormous bowl of oatmeal, probably something like ten ounces of the stuff, topped with light yogurt (60 calories, but I have two containers, which ups the ante to 120 calories). (Oatmeal: 600 calories?).

I then have a banana.

Quite full, I then proceed to drink various diet drinks including tea and non-caffeinated coffee, but watch the clock for noon!

At noon, I demolish a small sandwich. Today it was tuna, tomorrow fake balogna. This is reasonable. About 500 calories. But I also generally pop a handful of peanuts (100 calories). Today I added a cup of Campbell's Soup: 220 calories.

In the evening, I eat a small plate of spaghetti or some mashed potatoes, or a box dinner, with two slices of bread with margarine. Maybe 500-700 calories. It is here that I often cheat: adding a cookie. 810 calories.

So in total I'm probably doing about 2400 calories a day. On the good side, I generally walk at least a half hour a day, work out for a half hour a day to Gillian's Thirty Day Shred, and take the stairs (which in my building amounts to seven flights). If I need 2200 to maintain my weight, then anything less than that should lower my weight eventually. The problem is that you need to lose 3300 calories to lose one pound. So if I generally lose, but pig out one day, then I'm right back where I started. I can do two days in a row with very low calorie intake: perhaps 1200 calories. But I then feel faint. And so if I take my mind off what I am doing, I might eat a whole pile of mashed potatoes, or anything to make me feel full.

My weight is quite simply stuck. If I get a bit ahead, I demolish a candy bar, or two. Honestly, I need help. I need to pray about this (I haven't yet), plus I need to get a team of advisors going. Yesterday, I signed one on.

A masked hero (someone I shall not name) has arrived to give me lessons. He himself is 5'9" and has a waistline like you wouldn't believe. I still resemble a bowling pin. He is more like a straw.

He weighs 155.

I weigh fifteen pounds more!

He has suggested that I get a tape measure, measure my girth at navel level, and work on reducing it. Toward this effort, he says that I should drink a glass of water before each meal, carefully notate everything I eat in a pocket notebook, and this should be sufficient.

I'm to check in with him on June 15, 2010, in order to reveal my progress.

While I have occasionally dipped down to 168 pounds, I then bulk right back up to 170, in a yo-yo process. I want to see 159 and stay at it.

He is trying to get to 145 pounds. And he claims that I in turn have inspired him! So I finally have a weight-loss friend (met in cyberspace). Together, we intend to get the lard off, and live to see another day. We are also both Conservatives!

We need to eat more conservatively, too. Enough of these liberal portions!

ARIZONA IMMIGRATION RULES

In Puzo's The Godfather, most of the book is sensationalistic. The only "idea" portion is toward the end, when Michael Corleone is in Sicily, and we learn the history of the Mafia, and the reasons for its existence:

"Justice had never been forthcoming from the authorities and so the people had always gone to the Robin Hood Mafia. And to some extent the Mafia still fulfilled this role. People turned to their local capo-mafioso for help in every emergency. He was their social worker, their district captain ready with a basket of food and a job, their protector... It had become a degenerate capitalist structure, anti-communist, anti-liberal, placing its own taxes on every form of business endeavor no matter how small" (324-325).

The Mafia had begun because the government of Sicily was corrupt, and entirely in the pocket of the rich. The rich faction had a de facto monopoly on justice, on employment, and on rights.

The poor formed a Mafia, and struck back silently.

To be a member of the Mafia, you had to have two Sicilian parents. It was not an equal opportunity employer. Their tactics included blackmail, murder, and extortion. Omerta was the honor code never to snitch.

Merit had no part in the scheme. If you wanted a job as a doctor, the Mafia capo could make you one. Even the medical establishment was considered illegitimate, and so one illegitimate license was as good as any other.

Finally, the only hope for such a corrupt society was emigration. Everyone who could got out, and came to America, but the Mafia came with them. Italian Americans complain that they are discriminated against because people think that they are Mafiosi, or that they may have Mafia connections. Some do, some don't. But that some do, makes every Italian look bad.

One gets the sense that identity politics grows in non-functional populations, populations in which for whatever reason law and order do not function.

Identity politics is dangerous, because it leads people to identify with their own group instead of with the nation and its laws. They decide that law is of no use. The only use is to band together and exact vengeance.

When part of a group goes bad, and if the other members of the group nevertheless do not do everything in their power to dislodge that bad group, what resource is there but for others to think the entire group is corrupt?

If the Mexican-Americans (legal immigrants) do not help to police the situation vis a vis the illegals but actively help them to integrate and receive American resources, and riot in the streets so that America will be overrun, then the police can't be blamed for not being able to distinguish one from the other. We can't be blamed for thinking that all Hispanics are lawless and are here illegally.

If enormous Latino groups cry racism, when this is actually a case of invasion from another country, then the police should have the right to go through each dossier as they now do in Arizona. (Actually, a proviso has been added that says that they can only be searched if another crime is suspected. It can't now be the only reason for a stop.)

Legality is important. I think many do get this. It will hopefully help legal immigrants figure out that it is not in their best interest to support the "right" of illegal immigrants to remain here.

This is a complex matter, but let me draw a further parallel that will please very few, and then draw yet another parallel that will please no one at all, in order to dig as deep a hole for myself as possible, before I miraculously pop back up out of the hole, sound principle intact.

When terrorists dress up as legal Americans, and even infiltrate the military, as did Major Hasan in Texas, it makes all Islamic-Americans look suspect. Therefore, we should attempt to keep all Islamics out of sensitive military and police positions, whether there is a cry of racism or not.

Few people will agree, and yet, it is the only sane principle.

Now here is yet another extrapolation that will please absolutely no one, and probably infuriate everyone who isn't already infuriated, and yet the principle is sound.

When Vietnamese children and women became combatants in the Vietnam War, tossing grenades at American soldiers who they pretended to befriend, they blurred the line between combatant and women and children to the extent that American soldiers, in their retaliatory fury, destroyed everyone in the village of My Lai.

Was this legitimate?

No, but whose fault was it?

Most assume that it was the fault of the American soldiers. I disagree. The fault lies with those who deliberately blurred that line in the first place.

In a similar way, to go back to the original problem, it is in the best interests of legal Mexican and Hispanic immigrants to comply with American law, and to rat out any suspected illegals, unless they want to be confused with them.

It is in everyone's best interest to maintain law and order around them at all times.

When the hippies looked the other way when people in their midst sold drugs, or when the Manson Family formed in their midst, it made all hippies look suspect.

When animal rights protesters fail to vigorously dissent from the actions of eco-terrorists, it makes them all look like eco-terrorists, or that they are at least in league with them. If their leaders, such as Peter Singer, do not denounce eco-terrorism, then it makes it look as if they condone it, which undercuts their entire movement, and denies them any of the moral credibility which they desire to attain.

When someone like Ward Churchill's writings blurs the line between decent and suspect scholarship, when he makes profoundly treacherous comments toward his country, it makes everyone in Ethnic Studies look like a dishonest bigot and traitor. And yet, few if any within those ranks were willing to go against him. Most of the members of his department continue to support him: even when his plagiarism and treachery are well-known to all Americans.

When the Duke 88 slander three innocent lacrosse players, and never say they're sorry, they make Duke University itself look suspect. If all these 88 are not denounced, and fired, but are left to look like upstanding citizens, it then destroys the credibility of not only Duke, but of all professors who do not denounce their actions.

When Affirmative Action hires people who are not of the best quality from within a certain group, it makes all those who were hired with regard only for their ability look like losers who were helped out by a discriminatory policy similar to the way that the Mafia in Italy put bad doctors into place. Even the American president looks like an Affirmative Action hire without the requisite background to do his job when quality is no longer the only criterion.

Distinctions and boundaries if not scrupulously maintained by those on the decent side of the border risk corruption when they do not help to maintain the strict lines that separate right from wrong, good from bad. When Martin Luther King receives a doctorate for a dissertation that he did not write, and everyone knows it, it makes all of us who did write our own dissertation look like plagiarists. Should his doctorate not be rescinded? Should we continue to call him DOCTOR Martin Luther King, when he has no right to that title?

If distinctions and boundaries and laws are not kept, it corrupts everyone and taints all the laws, boundaries and distinctions.

GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS

President Obama dithers again over what to do about illegal immigration from Mexico. While he seemingly grants that someone should do something, he hasn't the guts to suggest what that thing should be.

He leaves it to everyone else. Once there is a vast push in one direction, in his general gutless fashion, he'll get behind it, and start squeaking about the changes that are needed.

Arizona's governor meanwhile signs a law that says the police can stop and arrest those suspected of being illegal. Immigrant groups pipe up, and scream racism.

Meanwhile ranchers along the border are shot dead, their fields crossed by drug smugglers and human smugglers. Obama dithers, and mumbles, "Someone should do something!"

What really is to be done?

It's obvious that the remains of the global Spanish empire are in disarray like no other place on earth with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, and Buddhist-Marxist countries such as Myanmar. Even along the coast of Asia where some countries lately have prospered: Taiwan up and at 'em, Japan quite stellar, and South Korea smoking along, the Philippines are a nation bedraggled by the curse of Catholic hierarchy sitting on its face, with the worst aspects of the Counter-Reformation keeping the population smothered in eternal darkness. Probably the women under Islam are the only women on earth more completely denied power and knowledge. Half the Philippine women kidnapped or sold into sexual slavery, the Philippina's one hope is emigration to a Protestant nation.

But the only place to get to that functions is the Anglophone world, which is itself weakening due to the guilt-inducing "tolerance" of the multiculturals, who believe that America's wealth, and England's wealth, came at the expense of creeps like the Spanish. Finland never had colonies, but prospers. Anyone want to think about Protestantism, and work ethic, combined with clear laws as the leaven of the lumpenproletariat?

Law itself in Mexico is gunned down by drug smugglers at will. Laughed at. Mocked. Spat upon. Our emissaries to the beknighted country are kidnapped and killed.

And yet Obama dithers. So much easier to go after Fox News, so much easier to put Bill O'Reilly on trial, or to scream at the Tea Party, or to say that Pat Buchanan is a Nazi because he has some brains.

The last big territorial accession for the US was the Gadsden Purchase which acquired land in southern Arizona.

This was in June, 1853, signed into law by my 4th cousin, 4 times removed, President Franklin Pierce. There would have been more land, and we could have owned Chihuahua (not the dog, but the state) had Jefferson Davis (Secretary of War under Pierce) not tried to make the place into a slave-state accession, which upset the abolitionists.

Could we just buy the rest of Mexico? If so, then we could get at its minerals. At present, Mexico is not of use to anyone except drug cartels. We could extend law and order. Within a week all their drug cartels would be smashed dead, the way that Raid Kills Bugs Dead. Then there'd be a narrower corridor to fence off against the countries to the south of Mexico. There's nothing wrong with Mexico that a total change in its laws and constitution couldn't fix in about a fortnight.

But unless the Mexicans were willing to join us, we can't do this. International laws prevent us from seizing it. So what we need to do is seal it off. What we need as a minimum is a fifty-foot high fence with guard towers. Preferably two of them a mile apart. The interim should be patrolled by guard dogs, predator drones, and rattlesnakes. Good fences make good neighbors.

It's difficult for the Democrats to function because their key term now is "tolerance." The term is good for opening borders, and erasing boundaries, and saying anything goes. But it's not good for building fences. Fences mean boundaries, limits, lines of demarcation, clear definitions, security of oneself, and self-preservation. But there is that handy phrase: "Good fences make good neighbors."

If the idiots on the left were to think about it, they could probably use it to good effect, and still keep the moral high ground that they are so invested in inhabiting.

There is no law that says you can't build a fence on your own land. People do it all over America. It's a good practice. I don't know who came up with the phrase that suggests that it makes good neighbors, but it could be the building block of neighborliness with the outlaw state to our south.

Relatives of Mine

Through Ancestry.com you can search through your ancestors. It's an enormous Mormon-inspired vehicle that helps you track down people that shared some of your lineage. Most people don't have anyone in their past with any relevance to general history, apparently. However, I am practically the demented dwarf nephew of the giants in my immediate past. All of these people are from my mother's father's side: a man named John Richard Wilson, who lived in Iowa. Many of the intervening people on his side were newspaper editors and teachers at high schools and colleges. Not famous, but most of them can be looked up and there are still lots of articles you can find. A few were more obscure farmers or pastors. The following people are somewhat more momentous.


Mayflower Passenger
John Alden came to America on the Mayflower and signed the Mayflower Compact. He was one of the first settlers of Duxborough which today is called Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Relationship: 7th Great Grandfather



Franklin Pierce (1804-1869)
14th President of the United States of America
A strong background in law, military service and politics brought Franklin Pierce to the presidency of the United States in 1853. During his term the Kansas-Nebraska Act was enacted and the Gadsden Purchase, 45,535 miles of land, bought what now makes up the southernmost area of New Mexico and Arizona.
Relationship: 4th Cousin 4 times removed



Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison (1775-1864)
First Lady
Though her husband only served as president for 1 month, Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison was nominally the First Lady of the United States. The couple never entered the White House.
Relationship: 3rd Cousin 6 times removed



Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
American Author
Physician, Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote the famous poem "Old Ironsides" about a U.S. naval ship. The ship later was made a monument; he also coined the word "anesthesia."
Relationship: 5th Cousin 3 times removed



Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)
American Writer
Edgar Lee Masters is the author of several biographies, books of poetry, plays and novels. His most famous work is "Spoon River Anthology" which was inspired by his experiences growing up in Illinois.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 2 times removed



Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)
English Author
Often called the father of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, and courtier known especially for his "Canterbury Tales".
Relationship: 15th Great Grandfather



Edward Winslow (1595-1655)
Mayflower Passenger
Edward Winslow served as the governor of the Plymouth Colony. He also signed the Mayflower Compact.
Relationship: 7th Great Grand Uncle



Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919)
American Activist and Surgeon
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was a feminist Union surgeon. She was given a Medal of Honor after the Civil War for her bravery as a prisoner of war, making her the only woman to have received this medal.
Relationship: 4th Cousin 2 times removed



Jane Means Appleton Pierce (1806-1863)
First Lady
Jane Means Appleton Pierce was an American First Lady and the wife of President Franklin Pierce. The social obligations of First Lady were a constant struggle for her, but she found solace in her close friends.
Relationship: 4th Cousin 3 times removed


William Whipple (1730-1785)
New Hampshire Representative
A merchant and Brigadier General in the New Hampshire Militia, William Whipple Jr. signed the Declaration of Independence as a representative of New Hampshire.
Relationship: 3rd Cousin 5 times removed



Samuel Adams (1722-1803)
Massachusetts Representative
Samuel Adams helped to organize the Boston Tea Party. From the beginning he was a loud voice for independence.
Relationship: 3rd Cousin 5 times removed



Samuel Morse (1791-1872)
American Inventor
Samuel Morse invented the signaling alphabet known as Morse Code to be used in his electromagnetic telegraph.
Relationship: 4th Cousin 3 times removed



Richard Bedford Bennett (1870-1947)
Former Prime Minister
Richard Bedford Bennett was the first Canadian Prime Minister to be a member of the House of Lords.
Relationship: 6th Cousin



John Locke (1632-1704)
English philosopher
John Locke is considered one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers. His philosophical writings include "An Essay concerning Human Understanding."
Relationship: 2nd Cousin 8 times removed



Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822-1893)
19th President of the United States of America
Rutherford B. Hayes was known for his honesty and military involvement in the American Civil War. After the scandal ridden years of the Grant administration, Hayes restored trust to the presidency and ended Reconstruction during his term.
Relationship: 5th Cousin 2 times removed



Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910)
Religious Leader
Mary Baker Eddy was an influential American author, teacher, and religious leader, noted for her groundbreaking ideas about spirituality and health, which she named "Christian Science." She articulated those ideas in her major work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, first published in 1875. Four years later she founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, which today has branch churches and societies around the world. In 1908 she launched The Christian Science Monitor, a leading international newspaper, the recipient, to date, of seven Pulitzer Prizes.
Relationship: 5th Cousin 2 times removed



William Howard Taft (1857-1930)
27th President of the United States of America
Taft, serving first as President then as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, is the only president to be the head of both the Executive and Judicial branches of government. He was the first president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Relationship: 5th Cousin 2 times removed



John Parker (1729-1775)
Revolutionary War Hero
John Parker commanded the Massachusetts militia at the Battle of Lexington and Concord. He did so while suffering from Tuberculosis; he died shortly after this battle.
Relationship: 3rd Cousin 6 times removed



John Trumbull (1756-1843)
American soldier, diplomat, author, painter
After a military career aiding George Washington, John Trumbull went abroad to paint. His skill as an artist went largely unnoticed until the U.S. Senate commissioned him to paint 4 war paintings which now hang in the U.S. Capitol. He went on to be president of the American Academy of Fine Art.
Relationship: 4th Cousin 4 times removed



Lucille Ball (1911-1989)
American Actress and Comedian
Lucille Desiree Ball was the comedic star of the 1950s TV show I Love Lucy. Often called, "The Queen of Comedy," Ball has acted in Broadway productions, motion pictures, and TV shows.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 1 times removed
Show relationships



E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)
American Poet
Edward Estlin Cummings' use of unconventional punctuation, syntax, and layout distinguish his poetry. His avant-garde style is still popular and influential today.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 1 times removed



George Eastman (1854-1932)
American Inventor
George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Co. and invented roll film. His invention was also a precursor for motion picture film.
Relationship: 5th Cousin 3 times removed



Julia Child (1912-2004)
American Gourmet Chef
American chef Julia Child introduced French cuisine to America through her many cookbooks and television shows.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 1 times removed



Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
American Painter
Famous for painting landscapes and his engravings, Winslow Homer was an American artist during the Civil War Era. Homer's subject matter was often pastoral and depicted the farms and landscapes of the United States.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 2 times removed



Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge (1879-1957)
First Lady
Grace Goodhue Coolidge was a strong support to her husband, Calvin Coolidge, during his rise in politics. Her extroverted friendliness brought balance to his shyness.
Relationship: 7th Cousin



D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
English Author
D.H. Lawrence was a prolific and controversial writer. His novels include "Women in Love" and "Sons and Lovers".
Relationship: 5th Cousin 4 times removed



Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957)
American Actor
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Humphrey DeForest Bogart the "Greatest Male Star of All Time". Bogart played in such movies as "The Maltese Falcon", "The Big Sleep", "Casablanca", and "The Caine Mutiny".
Relationship: 7th Cousin



Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
American Author
Spending 2 years "living simply" in the forest was the premise for Henry David Thoreau's famous book, "Walden". Thoreau also wrote "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", an essay that encouraged people to prohibit governments from having absolute power.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 2 times removed



Desi Arnaz (1917-1986)
Cuban American Performer
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz was a Cuban-American musician, comedian, and actor. He performed with his wife, Lucille Ball, for several years before their divorce.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 3 times removed



T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
American-born British Poet
Nobel prize winning poet T.S. Eliot is considered one of the most significant poets of the twentieth century. His most famous works are "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land".
Relationship: 7th Cousin 1 times removed



Robert Graves (1895-1985)
English Author
English scholar, poet, and novelist; Robert Graves produced over 140 works. His famous works include The Long Week-End.
Relationship: 9th Cousin



Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
Pioneer of Modern Nursing
Florence Nightingale, sometimes called "The Lady with the Lamp", was born in Italy in a wealthy British family. She instigated new ways of caring for soldiers during her work in the Crimean war and throughout her career.
Relationship: 8th Cousin 2 times removed



Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson (1748-1782)
First Lady
Martha Jefferson was married to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson. She died before her husband became president, so she was never formally given the title of First Lady.
Relationship: 8th Cousin 3 times removed



Bob Hope (1903-2003)
American Actor
British-born American actor Leslie Townes Hope, better known as Bob Hope, was best known for his role in "My Favorite Brunette" and other radio and TV appearances.
Relationship: 10th Cousin 1 times removed

YES WE CAN

What did this phrase mean to you?

To me, the subtext was: yes we can elect a semi-qualified windbag simply on the basis of the color of his skin.

I think if anyone on the left looked at Barack Obama and thought of him as white there is no way they would have voted for him.

The same is true for Hillary Clinton. She got where she is in the party simply because of her gender. Had she been a man she would not have gotten close to her party's nomination.

Yes we can, means: yes, we can elect people simply on the basis of their skin and gender.

And they can in turn elect Supreme Court Justices using the same criteria.

Is there another meaning for YES WE CAN that I missed?

GODFATHER

One of the projects I have had recently is to read more novels set in New York City. Last week I picked up a dogeared copy of Mario Puzo's GODFATHER. I had seen all three movies by FF Coppolla, but had never read the tome. I was surprised at how fun it was to read. I am reading through Marianne Moore's letters, and can go through fifteen pages maximum before I have to do something else. But in the Puzo book I can easily do 150 pages. It's hard in fact to stop. On p. 324, Michael has shot the corrupt cop McCluskey, and also Sollozzo, who had tried to off his father.

He's in Sicily waiting for his heels to cool so he can go back to America and replace his father as Don.

"In this antique garden, Michael Corleone learned about the roots from which his father grew. That the word 'Mafia' had originally meant place of refuge. Then it became the name for the secret organization that sprang up to fight against the rulers who had crushed the country and its people for centuries. Sicily was a land that had been more cruelly raped than any other in history. The Inquisition had tortured rich and poor alike. The landowning barons and the princes of the Catholic Church exercised absolute power over the shepherds and farmers. The police were the instruments of their power and so identified with them that to be called a policeman is the foulest insult one Sicilian can hurl at another" (324).

I realized that part of the Lutheran tradition had been to separate church and state, and to allow one to play off against the other, so that absolute power did not create absolute corruption. There were checks and balances, one check being the individual conscience itself, which was to set itself against all other sources of authority. The fear of Papists that was generated by the Puritans and Protestants generally came not so much out of fear of the actual people, or their liturgy, but out of fear of the terrible power that the Catholic hierarchy created, how it dwarfed individual conscience, and turned the people under its thumb into conformist stooges afraid to think for themselves: illiterate baboons who acted with the coordinated savagery of a legion of animals.

"Justice had never been forthcoming from the authorities" (324), so the Mafia became a kind of Robin Hood agency. But in turn the Mafia was secretive, and became just another source of monolithic power. Michael doesn't trust the local doctor to reset his jaw that has been broken by the corrupt police officer McCluskey.

"Taza offered to treat his face but Michael refused. He had been there long enough to learn that Dr. Taza read everything but his medical literature, whch he admitted he could not understand. He had passed his medical exams through the good offices of the most important Mafia chief in Sicily who had made a special trip to Palermo to confer with Taza's professors about what grades they should give him. And this too showed how the Mafia in Sicily was cancerous to the society it inhabited. Merit meant nothing. Talent meant nothing. Work meant nothing. The Mafia Godfather gave you your profession as a gift" (325).

I suppose something similar could be said for communist societies, in which talent, and merit, and work mean nothing. What matters is how well you are regarded by the higher-ups. It is only that which matters. Good party members are preferred to good doctors, or good writers, or anything else.

Whereas God is supposed to be blind with regard to how well-connected someone is, and to prefer instead those who have real merit, the Mafia or the Catholic Church in Italy have historically been otherwise. Communists, too, regard their own corrupt system as above any other consideration, and it is difficult to get anywhere without the benefit of the larger organization.

"Michael thought about his father's organization. If it continued to prosper it would grow into what had happened here on this island, so cancerous that it would destroy the whole country. Sicily was already a land of ghosts, its men emigrating to every other country on earth to be able to earn their bread, or simply to escape being murdered for exercising their political and economic freedoms" (325-326).

Machine politics work. The Democratic machine under Tammany worked. The Language Poetry machine worked. But ultimately a certain crumminess prevails in which membership matters more than merit, and hard work of any kind is not rewarded, it is only affiliations that matter. But in the long run this corrupts poetry itself, as it corrupts society at large.

Bad doctors with good connections rise to the top and are well-paid under such systems. Poets with good connections are the ones that get paid. Creepy politicians who are connected to the big Chicago machine roll over those from smaller organizations, and they are able to pay off journalists, in order to arrange hit pieces against politicians from outlying states like Alaska, or Arizona.

People without brains get Ph.D.s from dissertations in which every word has been stolen from elsewhere.

And ultimately this corrupts & wrecks the very institutions they build.

Matthew 7:24-7:

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

Name the Flowers

The reason I bought a camera a couple of years ago was to identify flowers. I'm supposed to take pictures of them, and then go through Flower Finder: A Guide to Identification of Spring Wild Flowers and Flower Families, by May Theilgaard Watts (Berkeley: Nature Study Guild, 1955). I had the camera for a couple of years, but didn't have the Flower Finder until earlier this week. I got it from Amazon.com for 18 cents (plus 3.99 shipping).

I had an idea already what this one was, but went through the Flower Finder to be certain, and nailed it, I think. Does anybody else know?

These flowers are quite tiny (less than half an inch across), and are growing in the crack of a sidewalk. You can also see them all over town on certain lawns. They're on p. 35 of my Flower Finder.

WHY THE TRUTH DOESN'T TAKE SIDES

The square has four sides as does the rectangle and the former is the figure for secularism -- the latter is but an oblong version of the former. The tendency to take sides is evidence of an unwillingness to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, which is not only a legal priority in testimony, but also should be a priority in all poetry that matters.

The truth is well-rounded and yet infinite.

The triangle is not the most apt symbol for the Trinity as it is a finite object coming as it does to three discrete points (by definition). It has a sense of beginning to take sides. One point taken out of it however and you have a line. So it's better than a square, as it is tending to become round, since it has one less point and is thus beginning to become a circle, as I will explain.

A line has two end-points but not if it extends ultimately (ad infinitum) in either direction. I think the Trinity should be envisaged as an endless straight line with God on one side, Christ on the other, and the Holy Ghost between. A line that extends infinitely will become a circle, as Nicholas of Cusa has shown, and a circle that extends infinitely will become a line:

"...the larger you make the circumference of a circle, the nearer an arc of it is to a straight line; the arc, therefore, of a circle than which there can be no greater will be actually a straight line. If supposed infinite, then, the curve and the straight line coincide" cited in Art & Geometry: A Study in Space Intuitions, by William Ivins (New York: Dover, 1946), p. 80, from T. Whitaker, "Nicholas of Cusa," Mind, n.s., XXXIV, 443.

The truth is infinitely straight, but also well-rounded, even if there is no point at which it stops.

It is infinite, like love, justice, or peace. St. Paul writes, "Love never ends" Corinthians 13: 8.

We should be suspicious of sides as the soul is infinite and therefore is more like an infinite line or a circle. Once we go into battle formation we tend to turn into squares, in order to better hammer home our sharp points, and the well-rounded nature of truth is lost and has already become propaganda.

Truth is difficult to describe without recourse to geometry, but this doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. People can understand geometry, even if it stretches the mind as its figures approach the infinite and begin to circle back around, forming a Moebius strip that has no true origins, and no true end point.

Protagorus said that "Man is the measure of all things," and as we return to secularism we return to this notion. But there is something greater than man.

MARTYRDOM POETRY CONTEST

Martyrdom seems like a juicy topic for a poetry contest. Martyrs for a cause energize it. Tertullian argued that "in the blood of our martyrs lie the seeds of the church." Martyrs are immensely moving. People who are willing to sacrifice their lives to a cause can generate new adherents.

In every great cause, there are martyrs.

When I was a boy I used to read the papers to follow the war in Vietnam. My pastor and Sunday School teacher described the enormous sacrifices taking place. We had several Sundays where we looked over the history of Vietnam, and saw a whole history of carnage that had taken place with regard to the Christians of Vietnam, who had been slaughtered back into the 19th century! I remember the colored pictures, and the people hanging upside down as they were beaten by savage pagans.

I tried to find some information, and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_Martyrs

Whole villages of Christians were slaughtered, often with deliberate savagery.

But the Buddhists and the Marxists of Vietnam, have their stories of martyrdom, too. And some claim that the western powers privileged Christians within the Vietnamese government, creating hatred toward Christians.

I remember General Westmoreland (who was in charge of Vietnam) made many statements at the time about how the war in Vietnam was a struggle over religious freedom. I looked this up, and found a few papers online that linked to this issue. In the Spartanburg, SC issue of December 24, 1966, there is an article with the headline "Our Cause in Vietnam Is Christian," that summarizes Westmoreland's ideas with regard to what we were fighting for,

"Every human has the right to seek his identity without fear of intimidation. That is part of Christ's message. We have committed ourselves to the belief that the people of the Republic of Vietnam will have this privilege."

Westmoreland says as well, "The problems of violence and inhumanity that faced the world at the time of Christ's birth still exist in such areas as Vietnam." (ibid.)

Here's the link:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=19661224&id=XoAsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Is0EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6081,4336817

I watched the war protesters on TV and saw that they had an entirely different message from that of General Westmoreland (who died in 2005). Some of them seemed to side with North Vietnam because they were rabid communists. Others believed that we are an imperialistic nation, and believed, as did Ward Churchill, that we deserved a thousand Mogadishus, (or a thousand Tet Offensives).

I wanted to believe that our cause was just. The story of My Lai, especially when I read about children being deliberately shot, ran for months on the local news, or so it seemed. It made me sick.

The radicals emphasized the lynchings in the south, and the assassination of Dr. Martin L. King as evidence of how rotten America is. King became a martyr for the left. King believed that we ought to get out of Vietnam. The left newspapers focused on a few bad things that Christians had done, and hatred of the middle-class became the order of the day. At Sunday School and in church I heard a different story. About the good things Christians had done, and about how we should be proud of our country, and our religious heritage. This took. I wonder to what extent the left won the propaganda war, and thus eclipsed the carnage of Christians in Vietnam. Even today there are stories of ongoing destruction of Christians in Vietnam and Laos, but since the media there controls all news, even all poetry, word cannot get out very easily.

I remember being particularly moved when I heard about the child martyrs in the Roman era. Here, the word did get out. But is it accurate?

Now some people are involved in revisionism, and claim that Nero was actually a pretty good guy. Maybe he was. If we can't even understand exactly what happened in Vietnam, which was just a few decades back, it's hard to know what happened in Nero's Rome, before they even had TV or newspapers, and the only literate people were nobles, and a few churchmen, and we know that the truth is biased by an agenda. We do know that in 64 AD Rome burned. Nero fiddled (or was it a lyre?), or so I was taught. And he blamed the early Christians. Is this so? At any rate, here's a poem to kick off the martyrs contest:

64 AD

Children brought out for the fun
Guests of Nero
They are paraded before the senators

The children refuse to kneel before the Lord
Lions released
The Word is above

The crowd licks its lips
The hooves of horses can be heard
As snow falls in Arctic spaces

*

The contest will close on April 24, 2010, at midnight. All entrants can choose one poem other than their own on the day of April 25th. There is only one winner. All other poets can think of themselves as a loser and a martyr to their cause. There is no limit to entries, but keep them shorter than 28 lines or I shall have the duty to DQ.

JUSTICE: Toward Clear Definitions

Peace is a flat concept, almost as ridiculous and in need of being banned as love itself. Peace is a misnomer, ultimately, as is love. I haven't rejected "understanding," yet, but have been eyeing it, and eyeing the window, and wondering if I can fit it through.

But justice is a term that has dimension and force instead of being something that has no boundaries, and cannot ever be defined, but it's something that I think we have to try to live with, as shaggy as are its dimensions, and as blind and controversial as it may be.

Justice means ...

Oh, it's very hard to define. Let me resort to the dictionary.

"Justice, n. 1. The quality of conforming to principles of reason, to generally accepted standards of right and wrong, and to the stated terms of laws, rules, agreements, etc., in matters affecting persons who could be wronged or unduly favored."

There are four other subsidiary definitions in my Webster's Collegiate, but they just confuse the issue further. Then, the next entry:

"Justice of the Peace."

It's like the dictionary is mocking me by defining one undefinable with another. "Justice of the Peace: a local public officer, usually having jurisdiction to try and determine minor civil and criminal cases, and having authority to administer oaths, solemnize marriages, etc."

Right! Now I see!

The key term is MINOR. What constitutes minor? Whenever you try to define a term, there's always one term that needs further definition.

If justice is a matter of what's "generally accepted," in terms of "standards," how do you define that? Do you have to know which one is the salad fork at the club?

Does it mean that if a poll of people believe that OJ should be in prison for beheading 'is wife Nicole, that he should be in prison for that, and not trying to get his football memorability with a firearm?

My whole family thinks OJ is innocent, and that he should walk among us, and was framed.

Who's to judge?

"Judge, n., v. One qualified to pass a critical judgment: i.e., He is a good judge of horses."

"A public officer authorized to hear and determine causes in a court of law."

I still think the God with the bad temper in the OT is still the Ultimate Judge. But who's to judge? He is.

Meanwhile, we are to have a new Supreme Court judge, and who will decide on that? Obama will decide. Obama is not a generally accepted standard any longer (his approval rating is hovering at about 43%). So why should a person who is lacking in judgment be able to decide who gets to be the ultimate Secular Judge?

It's because he got the majority of votes (or did he?). This means that Obama IS generally accepted (or was) (or maybe he had help from ACORN), and so we must continue to suffer under his judgment, tapping our fingers, and waiting for justice.

My favorite judge is Clarence Thomas. I liked his autobiography, especially the first chapter where he talks about his grandfather.

But Obama? He never seemed to talk about his actual family. He seemed instead to talk about his MISSING father. And how he sought out Marxist professors in college.

He chose Sotomayor. Who will he choose next? People say we need a Protestant. But there are 900 denominations of Protestant from 7th Day Adventist to Unitarian.

Pope Alexander VI had a good side.

Here's a term from the dictionary that I think is narrowly defined: jugiandaceous: belonging to the walnut family.

Why would you ever need to use it?

Lately, we've been discussing the background of The Protestant Reformation and its impact on American law.

Berman, Harold J. Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition (Boston: Harvard UP 2003) is germane.

In the chapter on "Lutheran Legal Philosophy" Berman argues that for Melancthon and Luther "The first three commandments -- to acknowledge one God and make no graven images, to utter no blasphemy, and to keep the Sabbath holy -- correspond to the human need for union with God. The remaining seven -- to honor authority, to preserve life, to protect the family, to respect property, to maintain truth, to avoid envy, and to avoid greed -- correspond to the human need for community of persons with one another" (79).

Thus for the Lutheran Reformation there is a step out of seeing the Ten Commandments as a personal affair (Catholics saw the ten as a way to keep one's private life decent). Now, the 10 commandments (especially the last seven) are the root of all law in the Lutheran kingdoms. Luther actually excises the commandment against graven images. He says it's ok to make pictures. The Catholics, with all their wonderful colored glass, and marvelous sculptures, must also allow graven images?

Vatican City is the only patch of turf in the western hemisphere that doesn't allow voting rights to women, however. But does the Pope run Vatican City, is he also like the mayor of the place, such that he thinks about garbage routes? Is there a garbage dump within the borders of Vatican City? Is there any farmland within Vatican City, or is all the food imported? How many women live there? When the Pope is sitting at a meeting, does he doodle, and if he does, does he ever doodle pictures of women? Has the Pope ever thought of ditching the costume, getting a job, and getting married?

Here's a passage that addresses a hot-button issue, or at least an issue that seems to get everybody all upset whenever I touch upon it. Within Lutheran boundaries:

"Officials were also to promulgate rules to govern family relations. Civil laws were to proscribe monogamous heterosexual marriages between two fit parties and to proscribe homosexual, polygamous, bigamous, and other 'unnatural' relations. They were to ensure that each marriage was formed by voluntary consent of both parties and to undo relationships based on fraud, mistake, coercion or duress. They were to promote the created marital functions of propagation and child rearing and to prohibit all forms of contraception, abortion, and infanticide. They were to protect the authority of the paterfamilias over his wife and children but to punish severely all forms of adultery, desertion, incest, and wife or child abuse" (84).

An enormous number of books is listed in the bibliography which support Berman's assertions. One of the most interesting is John Witte's From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion and Law in the Western Tradition (Knox, 1997).

I've ordered that, to put on the pile. I've looked through it at Amazon.com. It argues that marriage was once a sacred covenant between a couple. Now it is more and more seen as a legal contract. I have had it now for two years but haven't made much headway, mostly because I've been up to the neck in other issues.

Harold J. Berman claims that Wittenberg in Luther's time has about
2,500 souls (p. 54), which makes it smaller than the village in which I'm thriving.


"The church, he taught, belongs to the heavenly kingdom of grace and faith; it is governed by the Gospel. The earthly kingdom , the kingdom of 'this world,' is the kingdom of sin and death; it is governed by the Law. Luther considered this doctrine to be revolutionary. 'Of this difference between Law and Gospel,' he wrote, 'there is nothing to be found in the books of the ancient fathers. Augustine did somewhat understand this difference and showed it. Jerome and others knew it not...'" (40).

...

"Indeed, humankind, in Luther's view, is wholly incapable of lifting itself out of its fallen state. This part of Lutheran theology, which is perhaps the hardest for post-Enlightenment Western society to accept, was in fact what appealed most to early-sixteenth-century European Christendom, with its daily experience of oppression, corruption, and wretchedness, coupled with a moral doctrine that had come to appear unrealistically optimistic" (41).

But if law is here, and if Luther does allow freedom insofar as we ARE free to choose (he is against the Calvinist notion of the elect, and against predestination, but how much freedom to choose is there, and is it a good thing to be able to do this?). Freedom of the will, sure. Bondage of the will, too.

"We confess that we are in bondage to sin..." is the sentence with which we begin every service.

A FEW TINY QUESTIONS

Should all (American) law derive from the Bible?

If so, should the Ten Commandments be the cornerstone?

If not, what other sources should be considered authoritative?

If you believe that yes, all law should derive from the Bible, is it still possible to be a liberal, or is this THE mark of the "conservative"?

If you believe that anything goes, and that one can derive one's legal notions from any human tradition (along the lines of the Unitarians) can you still be a "conservative," or is this THE mark of the "liberal"?

LEGAL SURREALISM

If a person is watching TV and someone from another political side comes on (Obama, or Sarah Palin) and baits the person watching, and the person watching throws a brick at their own TV, with an intent at hitting the person on the other side of the screen, but only succeeds in breaking their own television, have they committed a crime?

Situation further enhanced: no one else is in the house, and the TV belongs only to the person who threw the brick.

The brick is the last part of a house that once belonged to the man who's watching the television. But the house burnt down, leaving only this one particular brick. The brick is blue. It may have been arson, and it may be that the man in question set the fire in order to collect on insurance, but there is no proof, and no investigation was done. There are only a few rumors, started by people with nothing to do but idly speculate. As far as we know, the man who threw the blue brick has had a spotless life, and has a spotless record.

Is this person nevertheless guilty of a crime? A sin? If it's a sin, and not a crime, how serious is the sin?

Should we pray for this person? He's balding badly, and is a little bit rumpled, and one collar sticking up above his sweater isn't symmetrical with the other side. He is in his stocking feet. He does feel a little stupid about having thrown the brick.

Do you think the person bears watching, even if they have no history of such behavior, and tidily clean up, and never commit such an action ever again, and the TV was rather old and probably needed to be replaced, and he was thinking of getting rid of TV, and reading more poetry?

MY MLA PANEL PROPOSAL

MY MLA panel proposal is in, and should be decided upon in a few weeks. While many panels want to present the avant-garde as a good thing for students, I wonder to what extent SOME conservative texts might provide ballast for students.

This is only part of the panel proposal.

I think I'll post it because I have a massive toothache still from the dental surgery earlier this week. The trees are budding, and I intend to sedate my dental situation and sit mindlessly in the sun most of the afternoon, reading a book on the Greek Orthodox tradition of Just War. Meanwhile, here's this. Part of the proposal process is that you're supposed to post your proposal somewhere online. So, this is the only place I know to do that, so here it is. In addition to the three I chose, there were another twenty or so I didn't choose, but at least half of those looked quite interesting, too. I chose these three partially because I thought the authors seemed sound, and sane, and wanted to meet them. Also, their proposals were concrete, and excellent.

Please note that I don't think any of my three panelists are actual conservatives. I don't think I am a true conservative either, whatever that term may mean. Whatever it is that I am thinking about in the panel it's ways to undermine the cultural Marxism which has proliferated like a weed in the academy. I think I wanted to attempt to plant some other hardier plant, something -- whether native or exotic -- that could hold its own against this ubiquitous monopolizing weed and promote a diversity of ideas.

Should Conservative Literature Still Be Taught?

This panel consists of three twenty-minute papers, followed by a fifteen-minute discussion period.

What is still important in conservative literature? Depathologizing the conservative other, the talks in this panel will investigate the concerns of various writers and artists from within the viewpoint of the dangers of radical politics, and positive features found within conservative politics.

The first talk is by Associate Professor Peter Yoonsuk Paik. Paik's most recent book From Utopia to Apocalypse (U. of Minnesota, 2010) tracks a trend in science fiction cinema such as The Matrix Trilogy and in Japanese and South Korean anime, where one often encounters the fear that utopian thought will result in dystopic torture, abrogation of rights, mass imprisonment, and the destruction of the democratic ideal. This undercurrent (experienced in Maoist China during the Cultural Revolution, in North Korea today, and in Myanmar), forms a very serious undercurrent especially in the fragile Asian democracies such as South Korea, where a few hundred yards separates them from the totalitarian nightmare next door, or in Japan, which has quite recently experienced a totalitarian past. Professor Paik will trace the parallel fear of the totalitarian nightmare in western thought in the work of Edmund Burke, who warned against the dangers of enthusiasm during the French Revolution. He finds this theme as well in more contemporary thinkers such as George Orwell, Christopher Lasch, and in contemporary feminists such as Camille Paglia.

The second speaker is Patricia Burns. Her talk is entitled "Teaching Conservative Concepts in African American Literature." In Raisins in the Sun, far from wanting to overturn white society and burn it to the ground, the characters want to move to the white suburbs, take dance lessons, and pursue careers in medicine. Patricia Burns' talk will feature a discussion of how conservative political realms offer a safety and sanity that can allow for clear rules within which marginalized populations can seek to leave the chaos of might makes right and enter in to The American Dream.

Patricia Burns is working on a dissertation at the University of Texas in Austin entitled "Testing the Seams of the American Dream."

The third speaker is Dana Brand. Professor Brand of Hofstra University has been teaching for more than two decades. He offers a reading of various conservative writers from Virgil to Wordsworth, and Robert Frost, and wants to show how conservative writers have helped him, as a liberal, to develop a more complex understanding of the world.

Professor Brand has recently written two books about major league American baseball fandom. One is entitled Mets Fan, and the other is The Last Days of Shea. Brand analyzes the way in which baseball fandom provides a kind of conservative experience, emphasizing the importance of traditions and a strong sense of communal identity, without necessarily involving us in conservative ideology. In addition to addressing the way in which conservative writers have given him a sense of imaginative balance, his presentation will focus on the way in which baseball, with its simultaneous emphasis on freedom and rules, individuality and community, is a quintessentially American sport the study of which can deepen our understanding of the traditions of American conservatism and liberalism.

This panel might be considered within the President's theme Narrating Lives, as all of the panelists will discuss individual lives and how they hope to negotiate between the dream of success within liberal capitalism, and the nightmare of systemic failure that has too often been the result of radicalism.

SQUIRRELLY, SQUIRRELLIER, SQUIRRELIEST

This declension of an eccentric leaping about as per the squirrel, can describe much of what drives modern and postmodern culture.

Lady Gaga perhaps defines squirrelly.

Marianne Moore is even squirrelier.

Squirreliest?

Much of the front page news qualifies. Much of the second page news qualifies. Anything in the news qualifies. Anything new, perhaps, qualifies.

What of the ancient squirrellies like Edward Lear and King Ludwig? Can they hold a candle to Lady Gaga? Is Larry Eigner squirrelly? Gregory Corso was certainly squirrelly. To be squirrelly is not necessarily a bad thing. Most of us appreciate squirrels, and would feed them nuts, or approve of others who did so. If you are what you eat, then squirrels can say, nuts to you.

I like squirrelly things and people. As I went through Marianne Moore's Complete Prose I noted that she often reviewed squirrelly poets. Max Bodenheim, who lived near Washington Square with a woman thirty years his junior, qualifies. Both he and she took lovers, often right in front of the other. Once she took in a young man who started in on her without her consent, and Bodenheim attempted to stop it, and the young man killed both Bodenheim and his wife. I forget if the young man was exonerated, but he had a compelling defense (which I forget).

Another poet Moore brings up is a rare specimen named W.W.E. Ross. He was a Canadian poet, who worked at an Observatory in Ontario. He published only a few chapbooks in his life, and didn't care to show his poems to anyone. Shortly before his death a neighbor penetrated his attic and got Ross to square up 70 poems for posthumous publication.

I loved the one Moore reprinted in her review, and bought the volume Shapes and Sounds. It said in the intro that Ross was a quiet family man who lived in the attic. He wrote poems, but rarely spoke to anyone, and could walk through the creaky old house without making a sound. Here's the poem that Moore reprinted:

The City Enforces

The city enforces
to its spell --
this vast assemblage
of men and things;
a factory
of all things sold;
a factory
of humans, too.

The tall buildings
fascinate
with beauty of
geometry,
with energy,
made manifest
by these great masses
of steel and stone;

The factories
with rows of lights;
the great square blocks
and the straight streets --
Are these things
designed for men?
Or men for these?
Or are men things?

(1930)

In addition to the scanty verse he published, W.W.E. Ross also wrote letters to the editor taking the guise of a wing-nut screwball rightist, and laughed that the papers would print such things. He was a Presbyterian.