Letters to a bramble in the city

Father's Day is also Sunday

2008-06-15T19:17:00.008-04:00

Sunday, the day of mimosas and walking across the bridge that does not span water of any substance. A Sunday is an easier thing than a father ... a father who has no idea what a blog is, who writes in block letters, in pencil, who inspires me to write an inscription on the order for flowers that is so saccharin the woman asks, "is this for a child?" and I have to think again.

I stopped writing father poems after high school, but today feels the need for a poem. So I hope Heather Davis will forgive me for filling in my blank space with her poem, just this once:

Latchkey Kids

In the house, after school, in the absence of adults,
in the house made of stone and rented cheap,
in the house with the leaky Rorschach roof,

the face of the defiant child,
smacked,
springs back
with innocent precision.

This is how the older sister shoots
anger like a drug.

With the TV on and the smallest ones gone quiet,
the sting in her teenaged hand sings:

Now we enter together
into the Adrenaline Kingdom.

Overpackaged

2008-05-21T13:52:00.005-04:00

My non-poetic thought of the day (er, month?) as I attempt to open a bag of Terra(r) brand exotic vegetable chips is this:

If the bag containing nitrogen-plus-14-chips is made of material so thick that they've scored one corner to allow me to open it bare-handed, we may be facing an overpackaged-chip situation. Is it freshness we're seeking? Do we simply enjoy the shiny faux-metal sheen? I don't buy it.

The lesson here is the same one I'm always learning, O Bramble. Don't buy it.

The Bell Witch

2008-04-28T12:06:00.004-04:00

I bought a short book of poetry by Ruthellen Quillen yesterday at my favorite used bookstore. The book is titled, apparently, for a Tennessee legend about the Bell Witch. She (the legend, not the poet) has got quite a following. This I learn from Wikipedia.

I flip to page 54, where the Bell Witch becomes a poem.

There must be no more of breathing in this house.

Flip. I turn pages back, and read from the front of the book. This poet has more than legends to tell.

To be a woman, at last,
is to wash the endless underwear in the bathroom sink,
things which will not go white again.
It is to stringe up tights and panties and bras
on the string between your curtain rods.
God, it is to put those items folded neatly,
folded smally away
each into their separate drawers.

In my head, I conflate the Bell Witch poem with this other poem, "This Particular Truth," which is so like the stories my women friends and I tell every day to one another. We are all the Bell Witch, looking for a way to stop the world from becoming oblivious to the dark, quiet things we hold, and separate, the pills we swallow and the boys we hope will grow up knowing how to fold the laundry, and what goes where.

Waking up the dormant poet

2008-04-25T14:58:00.003-04:00

I filled four drawers of a small filing cabinet this weekend, and felt satisfied putting things in categories. I shredded several small stacks of paper that I'd kept for no real reason. It felt good to chop them up and send them back to the earth, assuming our recycling program actually works.

I put a man in a white shoe box and placed him, somewhat gently, in the back of the 2nd drawer from the top. I fed him with paper and dried rose petals and he grew quiet. I cleaned the floors. My heart emptied. I closed the drawer.

The quiet is a welcome sound.

...

This has been a sleepy month... I have about four almost-begun posts for this quiet little blog, which languish in draft space and then become out of date. And what I really need is poetry.

For example, Louise Erdrich, the poem with which I paper all of my gray cubes. The paper and letters are black and white, but she reminds me where the color lives.

Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Oh, and this one too.

In the news of the world ... today is World Malaria Day. In October we'll go for a walk to support the fight against HIV/AIDS ... AIDS Walk Washington. Next week is cookie packaging for the Avon Breast Cancer walkers.

We bake, we pack, we walk, we run, we work, we wear ribbons, we Facebook our lil green patches into next week, we click for the rainforest, we watch Inconvenient Truths and think about driving less. And then we get in our cars and go to Target. Admit it: we do.

I speak for all of us, because it's easier, faster, quicker, and I live in a murky A-Murka. It's in my bones.

Click, click.

Click.

Says the poet to the Bramble ...

2008-04-01T23:12:00.008-04:00

(With apologies to Anne Sexton)

My lovely poet friend reminds me to think harder about what we insist on doing to ourselves.

"I know I’m throwing this at you, when you aren’t one who needs to hear this ..."

There is this NY Times article. Mayhap you saw it, and wondered, or nodded, or sighed.

But ... did you stop to wonder whether we know, in these reports of illness/outbreaks/what-have-you, "anything about what harm was done?" Were you told anything truly scary?

Think.

"... the idea of being harmed is left in the white spaces ..."

In the US, from measles, did children die? Were parents more than inconvenienced?

Measles is generally not a scary illness in healthy children, in the United States. I'm not talking Zambia here, or Haiti. I'm talking the United States. We're scared because the "news" tells us to be scared. The CDC tells us to be scared. The FDA tells us to be scared. Our CIC, above all, expects us to go on being scared.

Think about it: have you ever seen the Measles? Your image, unless you're somewhat older than this sorry blogger, comes from malnourished children in Africa. Am I wrong? Malnourished, underfunded, forgotten children who have no access to basic health care and basic human rights. Am I wrong? Replace Africa with Asia. Am I wrong, dear Bramble?

(If I'm wrong, there IS a comment feature -- have at it.)

Statistically, what are we looking at in the United States, really? The New England Journal of Medicine reports a 2005 outbreak in Indiana imported from Romania. Note, however, that NEJM recommends "a two-dose vaccination strategy with very high coverage" as the only way to sustain immunity. In almost the same breath, the article notes that "the level of vaccination coverage in Indiana was 98 percent."

Sorry: did I miss something? A critical transition statement, perhaps? Too much skimming between paragraphs? I used to know a NEJM editor; she was good.

And: "The longer a community goes without circulating measles virus, the more vigilant public health officials must be to maintain immunity levels..." I refuse to explain why I included that quote. Think, oh city-dweller. Think.

#1: What are we actually doing to help where it really counts? #2: Do the authors of these articles really understand how the immune system works, when they claim that “children who are not vaccinated are unnecessarily susceptible to serious illnesses, they say, but also present a danger to children who have had their shots”?

Give me a break, people. Human beings are not born with these viruses/etc. lurking in their bodies. What risk? Is Measles floating in the air around us, like the smog? Are we drinking it in, like the fluoride we've been forced to ingest because it makes it easier for our government to ensure the "public health" of all?

Okay, Bramble, you're cringing and trying to slink away into the corner of your concrete cage. I'm, yowza, one of those extreme leftist/pinko/anarchist whatevers that drags crystals across my body and swigs green tea while chanting OM and hoping the Universe will save me, when there are perfectly good drugs that will do the trick without any action on my part?

I mean, who among us have ever keeled over from a vaccine? Right?

You, in fact, are entitled to your opinion ... I'm banking on the fact that my poet friend has really done her research. She's an accountant; she likes facts. I trust her. I trust myself to read, and understand. I want to know ... and if I have little ones, I will want to know with a fiery vengeance much like hers.

"For instance, in a 2006 mumps outbreak in Iowa that infected 219 people, the majority of those sickened had been vaccinated. In a 2005 measles outbreak in Indiana, there were 34 cases, including six people who had been vaccinated.” My friend wants to know why the unvaccinated population are being blamed for this (see above, under "is Measles floating in the air around us..."). What danger does an unvaccinated person who hasn't been exposed pose to a vaccinated person?

Doesn't the vaccine, er, vaccinate you?

Or is this "evidence of the failure of the vaccine to protect? Instead of admitting that something doesn’t work, let’s blame those who chose not to participate."

.
.
.

Think. Please think.

.
.
.

Tomorrow ... I promise ... more poetry. Less propaganda. (Unless I'm busy, sending my refrigerator, which has recently begun clicking as though using echo-location, out to sea.)

For today, my poet friend and I pose the question: Folks, do you know what else is in your vaccines? Ask, please. Please. And then make a real decision.

And maybe, don't go to the "news" for trustworthy information about your health ... your child's health... The news is the wind swinging the trees around. It moves fast, and it changes fast. Beware.

Be aware.

"Rock splitting is for prisoners"

2008-03-19T22:48:00.004-04:00

So says my mad poet friend, from his vista in Costa Rica.

Aren't we all prisoners hammering our way out of the four walls in which we're sitting? This is partly our own fault of course... the middle-grounders are populating the city and drinking its mochas free of charge. At least until the bill arrives.

Enter rock-splitting. Enter music, enter ear-splitting resonance. Enter the poets. Enter their friends, who keep them fed, and listened-to. Enter, stage left.

This week we issue a cease and desist order on our nation's conscious betrayal of itself. Read, write. Resist.

We wish to remind you: we miss nothing, we poets, and we tell all. We are frantic with the telling of it.

Don't you hear this hammer ring?

One Week to Split This Rock Poetry Festival!

2008-03-13T00:16:00.003-04:00

A brief history of what I missed (and what I've found)

2008-03-05T22:00:00.010-05:00

As we approach Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation and Witness, I find myself unimaginably busy and also, somehow, finding time to read more. Surprise, surprise: I also find myself attempting to write more. Through this work, I am finding only now the poets whose work speaks to me as if it were my own. As if I might write an answer to their call, and be heard.

Consider the last few years ...

In 2002 Robert Bly was writing "Call and Answer"
How come we’ve listened to the great criers—Neruda, / Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now / We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

We learned today that Robert Bly will not be able to join us for the festival, alas. But we still have more than 20 poets whose voices will break the silence for four days of raging joy and hope, and awakening.

Sarah Browning and I both moved to DC after years in Boston. I was backstopping U.S. government contracts. Sarah was writing “Another March, January 2003.”

We will find the perfect
Hand-made sign:
THE ONLY BUSH
I TRUST
IS MY OWN

Alix Olson graduated from college the year before I did. I left for the Peace Corps. She became a folk poet and progressive queer artist-activist. I learned to sleep wearing every item of clothing I owned.

There is more, of course, dear Bramble in the City, but the hour grows late and my friends will have to pay for the electricity my laptop is using.

The BBFM Cycle

2008-02-29T23:44:00.009-05:00

In A-Murka, we love it bigger. We want it better. We need it faster, and damn sure we’re gonna get more of it. We live that BBFM cycle, even those of us who hate it (and, dearest Bramble, that’s me) and loathe it and long for something other have so internalized it that we can’t keep ourselves away from it. It’s crack. It’s sex.

It’s Starbucks.

I went to Starbucks today, oh yes. Their bathrooms are clean, their work is (kind of) efficient. Things are at least not bad-smelling. In NYC they’re the only spots in mid-town where you can find a decent bathroom, right? And oh, aren’t they just everywhere?

I’m not a Starbucks-basher by habit ... in my Ayn Rand-reading days, I was even a little proud of Starbucks for making itself such a success.

These days, I want to bash them more often than I do, but even so, I’m drinking my grandevanillalatte right now with a little smugness. Smugness, because my drink isn’t doctored: it’s exactly what was on the menu. No “skinny” – no “no-whip” – no “extra shot” – no “decaf”… I resisted those extra "choices" designed to help me feel like I’ve managed to beat the system, to personalize what is mass-produced.

What this means: I choose, so-called, to accept the mass-produced in a downtown jungle that offers only mass-production. My only true choice is this: I buy, or I do not buy.

(Dear Bramble, I admit that I often choose to buy.)

Last summer I spent a day at the beach with a friend. We rode rickety bikes to the ocean, kicked the sand, and floated just past the waves. We watched the dogs playing at the edge of the water. We talked about what it meant to try to save the world, to want to save the world. That struggle: how to hold on to that desire to save something that often seems lost. We were both somewhat broken-hearted; this was a factor.

This friend, this mad poet, this wandering minstrel, this man, spins my philosophical compass. He calls to me as an antidote to this middle-class, grandevanillalatte-drinking, furniture-buying, credit-card-and-student-loan-debt-paying, regular-paycheck-having, scared-to-shout sort of existence. This friend reminds me what to do. But I am afraid to do it.

We talked extremes in lifestyle choices. I told him, “I’ve always thought — and maybe this is my tragic flaw — that there must be a middle ground.”

I have a memory that he snickered at that. But he didn’t disagree. This has two meanings that become one.

1. There is a middle ground.
2. That middle ground is our tragic flaw.

This flash of recent memory, inspired by Starbucks, reminds me to think about our Bigger-Better-Faster-More cycle.

Compare the “coffee” in my grandevanillalatte with the real coffee you’d find in Europe, or Latin America, for example. Compare how fast you'd drink 20 ounces of water dumped over coffee beans and steamed milk with how slowly you'd sip your carefully brewed cup of coffee in a cafe in Sarajevo. Think of what it would mean to taste.

Starbucks gushes down your gullet, passing your tastebuds like so many meaningless words sliding through the readerless sieve of this blog: you gulp, and it's gone. In the cafe in Sarajevo you have nothing but time -- you sip, you roll the liquid on your tongue. You taste a word you've been longing to remember. Its texture sweeps you into the Real, for just a moment, and you remember that moment longer than any mass-market experience you've ever had. You carry it back to A-Murka, the land of murky watery coffee and BBFM.

We love it bigger, don't we? Bigger is better. Faster is better, too, and we'll be damned if anyone else gets there before we do. But better starts to mean only “bigger” and faster starts to mean only “bigger” and more … well, that just does mean “bigger.” So we’re left with … more ... of something we might not even want in the first place, and now it's mostly water anyway.

Our house of cards is built on the BBFM cycle, that illusion that the daily choices we get to make -- skim latte or skinny latte? Pay the minimum or transfer balances? Choose this door, or that one, or that one? Interest-only mortgage, anyone? -- give us the means to never have to close a single door. And now we’re stuck trying to stop the drafts coming in at all sides: convincing ourselves, allowing ourselves to be convinced, that we want it all, all at once, all watered-down.

But we're using up all the water, too. Are you getting thirsty?

Three Weeks To Split This Rock Poetry Festival in D.C.!

2008-02-29T00:42:00.006-05:00

A groundbreaking national event, Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation and Witness features readings, workshops, and activism. Celebrating our great tradition of socially engaged poetry, Split This Rock calls you, the poet, to the center of public life.

Come to DC -- raise your voice with us this spring!

Only $75 for four amazing days -- March 20-23 -- with some 25 of the most wonderful poets you'll ever see gathered in a single place.

K is for Kosovo

2008-02-19T18:24:00.003-05:00

Many things happen while a person is out-of-town. I had planned to write a reaction to Kosovo's declaration of independence, or a response to our (read: the U.S.A.'s) plan to blast a spy satellite out of the sky. Now I read that Fidel Castro has really stepped down, and I'm thinking, this is too much for one little blog.

Then, dear Bramble, I read the following from Kim Roberts, as a guest on Leslie Pietrzyk's blog -- "I have been published in literary journals beginning with every letter of the alphabet." -- and I thought, hey, I can put things in alphabetical order. The alphabet is safe, and orderly.

Ha. My own alphabet soup is murky.

A is for atrophy – what the mind of the dormant poet fights.
B is for birth, for barricades, for bomb blasts – the boundaries that hide us one from the other.
C is for Cuba, for Castro, who makes it official.
D is for direction, duplicitously overrated, and underrated, by the same folks all the time.
E is for the elephant in everyone’s room – the giant that asks, where to next?
F is family, the loaded pistol tucked into my boot.
G is for getting used to solitude, that suckerpunch, that solace.
H is for hell-bent – our president is, but the poets are too.
I is intensity, for seeking the truth in many forms.
J for justice, that long drive home in the snow.
K is for Kosovo, crackling with new hope.
L is for living without excess, for not grabbing at these lithe little gadgets.
M is what’s missing … it’s feeling the absence of something I never had.
N is for not losing sight – N is what needs to be done.
O … oh Bramble, let your roots tear the concrete and wrap this house in the true world.
P is a distant Pisces, that fish-smell in my nostrils, that watery desire.
Q is asking … but what is the Question?
R is revolution, for water into wine, for the words that make sure we never stop.
S is the safety net, a familiar hand on your waist as you dive in.
T is the terror alert system: our reflection in a cracked mirror.
U is for busboys and poets, new condos and old alleys, running water and running on steam.
V is very, very busy, but putting it off anyway.
W is a very, very bad boy. W should give this letter back.
X is the machine that fondles my luggage; its fingers stroke my dirty laundry.
Y is youth: the young earth seeks to rid itself of our stench.
Z is the zygote, the poem swimming in a liquid belly of words, the dry spell before the flood.

Poetry of Provocation and Witness in Washington, DC

2008-02-12T22:33:00.004-05:00

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness
Washington, DC
March 20-23, 2008
www.SplitThisRock.org
info@splitthisrock.org

Split This Rock Poetry Festival calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of activist poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation and witness from our home in the nation’s capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination. Featuring readings, workshops, panels, contests, walking tours, film, parties, and activism! See the website for the incredible line-up of poets, including Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, Martín Espada, Sam Hamill, Galway Kinnell, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sonia Sanchez, and many more. Split This Rock is cosponsored by DC Poets Against the War, Sol & Soul, Busboys and Poets, and the Institute for Policy Studies.

Register today! Registration is only $75 before March 10, $40 for students, and includes entry to all readings, workshops, panels, receptions, walking tours, and other activities. Register online http://splitthisrock.org/registration.html, or download the registration form and mail it in. Scholarships available. Check the website for details.

The World and Me! DC Youth Poetry Contest – Deadline extended to February 15 – this Friday! Calling on DC youth to speak out and share your voices and thoughts on your world and communities. Three winners in each age category will receive prizes and be asked to read their work during the festival. We also have volunteer poets/teachers on staff who would be willing to conduct visits and do creative writing exercises with students in order to generate poems for the event. For full guidelines and required cover form: http://splitthisrock.org/contests.html

Support Split This Rock, the historic gathering of activist poets: Every dollar you give is tax-deductible through our fiscal sponsor, the Institute for Policy Studies. Just click here and be sure to designate "Split This Rock" as the project you'd like to support. Or send a check payable to "IPS/Split This Rock" to: IPS, 1112 16th Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036. Many thanks! Your contribution will make a tremendous difference.

Reminders

2008-02-09T17:59:00.000-05:00

In Busboys and Poets watching a huge screen quietly showing polar bears romping in the cold water. Somehow, it seems to fit. It may be the seeming quiet, or the eclectic multitude of stimuli going on here: the waitress asking for our order, the blond girls at the next table discussing payroll and hand sanitizer, the older couple wondering what they're doing here, the music, the bears, the light from my PowerBook illuminating the table on which the tea light has just burned itself out. The contract of dark and light -- low lights and highlights, dark words and light words, the bright water and the dark eyes of the polar bear. My friend studies accounting and management principles across the table. We are both escaping and seeking. Escaping the responsibilities of home, perhaps; seeking what comes next: a certificate to solidify a business, an hour or two of focus.

On the menu, Langston Hughes reminds me to vote:

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

For me, there is equality ... generally. I am extremely free, or so it seems. I am reminded to vote ... but who will help me decide how to vote? Which choice is the right one? More importantly, my dear Bramble, which choice is the wrong one?

I order a glass of wine and wait to know the answer.

Syndication

2008-02-05T11:09:00.000-05:00

My friend JJJ just posted the following on his blog:

"Written in the 1200s by Rumi, this poem elucidates so clearly what I feel every day."

Who Says Words With My Mouth?

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Spam, Save Ferris, and Chernobyl

2008-02-04T18:09:00.000-05:00

In case you don't remember Chernobyl -- and why would you? No one talks about it -- maybe this will refresh your memory.

Spam
It's pink and it's oval
Spam
I buy it at the Mobil
Spam
It's made in Chernobyl
Spam!

I realize quoting Save Ferris lyrics dates my musical taste to about 1996, but be gentle, my dear Bramble. Perhaps you prefer Wikipedia.

You are asking, why bring up Chernobyl? Why not talk more directly about poetry? Where's the joy?

The simple answer: today I stumbled over the July 2007 GAO report (ahem, GAO is the Government Accountability Office) on delays in completing construction of a protective shelter for the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.

Construction of the Protective Shelter for the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor Faces Schedule Delays, Potential Cost Increases, and Technical Uncertainties

"GAO recommends, among other things, that the Secretary of State consider, in consultation with other donor governments and the EBRD, establishing benchmarks for the project that need to be met before making additional pledges of funds in the future."

Hmm. This seems to make sense. Benchmarks... we like benchmarks. They link things like funding to other things, like, er, progress toward goals. Don't they?

And for my next question: If Chernobyl happened in 1986, and the Shelter Fund was established in 1997 (wow), and it's now 2008 (oh, wow), and they still haven't completed the shelter ... where were the benchmarks in 1997?

"Benchmark: A point of reference for a measurement."

I realize that there were many, many things to do after Chernobyl. But: wow.

p.s. remember the Big Dig?

AWP

2008-02-01T19:33:00.000-05:00

Does it count if I just get one haiku published on Blog This Rock?

If so ... that makes two of my poems published, even if one of them is the terrible poem-that-shall-not-be-named from my college lit journal. Ahh, Bramble, the urgency and simplicity of youth: of course I can submit this to the lit journal! Won't it be fabulous?!

My grown-up answer, of course, is a resounding "yowza".

AWP is a force of nature. Thank the gods for a table to serve as base camp, and haiku postcards to the prez, and an amazing panel discussion on the poetry of witness and provocation, an even amazing-er reading by poets who do the witnessing and provoking, and another panel on the poetry of the post-nuclear age (wow). Alix Olson is my new hero. And an ode to my hotel, 35 floors above Times Square, billboards flashing like lightning in this rainstorm that has no electricity of its own, only water.

More poetry tomorrow, perhaps. Always more poetry.

Bingo.

2008-01-28T23:25:00.000-05:00

Went to a state of the union party tonight -- my first ever, actually. We ate chili and drank wine and chatted about a new international affairs program for high school kids and, of course, Split This Rock. We played State of the Union Bingo.

These weren't on my bingo card, but they're worthy entries into Mad Libs - W edition:

"hunnerds" (translation: hundreds. I think.)
"catch-and-release program" (nope, he's not talking fish. he means ... protecting ... our borders from fishy folks. Right? Maybe he really does mean fish.)
"debaathification law" (this is just such bad poetry)

We also learned:

expect a Palestinian state by the end of the year (maybe in time for Christmas?)
20,000 troops will return to home this year, and we'll certainly make sure those who remain in Iraq have supplies for the war "to come" (read: no end in sight)
in 2008, we are facing the most important challenge of the 21st century (look no further folks: the future is now)

Dear Bramble, we are stunned by the CIC's grasp of English pronunciation. Is that spelled "nucular" or "nukuler"?

Poetry challenge of the day: use these words from the State of the Union in a poem.
Haikuers, your kigo is homeland.

front lines
mortgage
peace
no child left behind
earmark

I have been adding links

2008-01-26T23:41:00.000-05:00

I've been adding links to my little sidebars ... what will you want to see? What will you need to see? What will simply be a window to another way of seeing? What's just me wanting to show you something I like?

Ah, Bramble. Do you remember when you learned about IraqBodyCount.org? Are people still learning about this site? Do new people visit? I know people care. But what are we doing about it?

There is a movie coming out -- I saw a preview in the theater, but I can't find it online. From what I can tell, it's about soldiers who come home from Iraq and try to resist the government sending them back again and again. Who try to tell the story of what is wrong. Is this the movie that should have been made, that doesn't rationalize and idealize what the United States is doing in Iraq? Or is it just another big-budget propaganda piece designed by people who don't really care but want to make a profit on an election year issue? Or did I imagine it and it doesn't really exist?

Something that does exist: Split This Rock Poetry Festival. Click the link. Come to DC in March. Read... write... resist.

(un)Originality

2008-01-26T22:47:00.000-05:00

Blogging reminds me just how many of us there really are; a lesson in humility. How many very original names did I try before I thought up an unclaimed one for this blog?

It did force me to admit that my desire to shout and clamor is more pronounced than my plans are well-established. My purpose? Just like yours: I want to see where this leads.

Ah, Bramble, you grow up healthy and anonymous through cracks in the concrete. We can surely learn something from your quiet stamina.