RIP old friend...

A Grave In Salem

This January, with some online digging, I found out that my friend David had died that September before. He had been my closest friend, and was still my oldest friend, living in Iowa City thirty years after I'd left. At first, we kept up with phone calls and by sending bits of art back and forth, then our calls became less frequent, and I just wrote long letters, which I knew he'd never answer. He hated writing letters, but he always sent me a card at Christmas.

Year before last, I had a feeling, a constriction of the heart, you might say. Sometimes I'd wake up in the dead of night, cramped with anxiety. Sometimes, too, I'd think, David could die! and then, with horror, brush the thought away like an insect. Finally, not knowing why, I wrote him, asking him never, never to drop me from his Christmas card list. He immediately wrote me back, one of two or three letters he'd ever sent me. Then I wrote him. It was a nice exchange.

This year, he didn't send a card.

It wasn't until this January that I searched the Iowa Press Citizen obituaries, and discovered he'd died. Later, I'd find out that he died in his sleep, of heart failure. By reading a Facebook discussion page, I learned how widely he'd been loved and admired as a friend and a teacher. His great kindness and brilliance were cited. Everyone mentioned how important he'd been in their lives. Some quoted funny little scraps of conversation. I nodded to myself. He sounded exactly like the David I remembered. Then I looked at some photographs that were posted, and smiled, seeing him. He didn't look much like David, my David, but why would he?

After I left, he took a teaching job at Coe, was made professor of an endowed chair, and taught art history and studio. He never left, never taught anywhere else. Since he didn't seek out the world, the world came to him, probably much the way I had: over cups of coffee, just walking down the street, eating one of his spaghetti dinners, drinking at The Mill. And there were conversations, no doubt, about books, about art, about ideas. These were conversations that could go until dawn, interspersed with David's stories, which were hilarious, bittersweet, or both, depending.

As he aged, he enlarged himself to fit the world. He became more David-ish, more kind, more learned, more brilliant, more joyful, more sharp-eyed about beauty, whether he spotted it during the Iowa spring, or spied it in chunk of raku. I visualize him in my mind now, filling up like a helium balloon, growing lighter and lighter, until he sails away, into the wide Iowa sky.

Recently, another Iowa friend wrote me. She's an artist and a teacher, and was on Sabbatical when she first heard he'd died. By the time his memorial was held, she was already in NYC, unable to get back in time. I'm still in denial, she wrote. And then she wrote, thinking of the three of us, her, David, and me, hanging out together in Iowa City. It seems like only a few years ago, she wrote, but it all seems clearer now, than it did then. I knew what she meant. Memory is another country.

That's where I keep David, and where I've kept him for a while, in that pocket of the heart where the sky is blue and empty, the day is bright, our laughter is louder, our voices are hard and sure, and we are always young.

When art comes in and takes you for a spin...

A Section of the Rincon Center Post Office

Plenty more where that came from: 27 monster panels as a matter of fact, all preserved at the Rincon Center Post Office in San Francisco. The artist is Anton Refrigier, my drawing teacher at Bard College. Besides our studio class, one night a week, Ref made us attend his lecture on the government support of art. He had just completed a thin little pamphlet on the subject, which he'd read at the podium. His Russian accent plus his grim Marxist prose used to hypnotise all of us into snoring boredom. He was a WPA artist during The Great Depression, and still thought of that period as one of the happiest in his life. He was a social realist, Ben Shahn-style, and a political radical. I privately classified him as an unrepentant commie, old school, and was a little wary.

He bragged that he'd completed more post office murals during the 30's than any other artist, and I believed him. And while I wasn't sympathetic towards the government stomping into studios on its big flat feet, I grew to like Ref a lot. He was a an old-time boho sweetie who said things like, "You young kids want everything to be so cool. You should wish to be hot with desire!" Yeah, a romantic.

Ref working on a mural during the '30's

By the 1960's, American demand for politically radical muralists was at an all-time low, so Ref would pop down to Mexico during the summers to design monster weavings, using a big workshop of Mexican women. He asked me to go with him as his model and was quite insistent. By that time he'd been married to Ilsa for over 30 years, so I don't think there was any guile intended. Probably, because I was very thin, pale, and nearly 2-dimensional, I looked exactly like the pancake people he painted: a slam-dunk subject. Still, it's one of those life events I sometimes wonder about. What if I'd gone to Mexico with Ref?

As it turns out, Ref established some valuable precedents with his murals that are nearly forgotten today. In 1953, at the height of the red scare, he found himself before the House Committee of Public Works, accused of undermining American values, promoting communism, and just painting ugly stuff. The Rincon murals aren't an exercise in cheer, since they portray a lynching, police brutality, men begging for jobs, and the oppression of Native Americans and the Chinese. But Ref wasn't the only artist around who used social injustice as a subject matter. Diego Riviera comes to mind, Ben Shahn did his share, Dorothea Lange did too, and there were more. Times were hard and, unsurprisingly, artists used art to bitch about it.

At the end of the hearings, Ref was completely exonerated. I'm glad Congress hung in there and refused to trash our first amendment rights. Still, I've got a hard time with art of the 30's. It's preachy, and I like to think art, like life, is bigger than that. More ambiguous, and accommodating lots of different interpretations.

I admire those artists, though. We may need that kind of brave passion again.

Not to mention the government funding.

Tiresome advertising will abound...

Virtuous Americans 1930's Style

On January 23, in Slate magazine, Jack Shafer wrote a great article called "Selling Virtue". Check it out at http://www.slate.com/id/2209615/pagenum/all. Reading it, I thought, Aha! It's not just me. Lately, in my nightly TV watching, I'd begun to pick up a preachy tone in commercials of all stripes: green energy, cars, insurance, detergents etc. I noticed that cosmetic companies were touting their "natural" make-up lines and pizzas were all about whole grain. Underneath the brave smiles of TV people, I sensed a certain anxiety: Here we are, about to have another Great Depression, and who's gonna art direct it?

Cotton wash dresses will be needed by the metric ton. For the guys, hats will be required: Brad Pitt newsboy jobs, stained trucker caps, and of course, the classic gray felt fedora. We'll ride bikes with big balloon tires. Cars will be streamlined and dark, but battered pick-ups will be ubiquitous, and all of them will run off old Chinese restaurant cooking oil.

You get the drift.

We have to be good now. Obama said so and Oprah's been yammering about it for years. We're going to give up childish things, like gaming, fast food, and snorting Ritalin, and start gathering around a battered Monopoly board instead. We'll have dinner as a family and gnaw on vegetables from our garden patch.

Personally, I find this late-in-the-game high-mindedness pretty irritating, especially when it comes from greed-head behemoth companies. I remain deeply offended when a large guy with a deep voice tells me I need to check out library books and carry bag lunches, especially since his ultimate aim is selling auto insurance. We're back to the basics, he rumbles, standing in what purports to be a public library. And the basics are good.

He should check out the libraries in my neck of the woods. Homeless people snore in chairs, and there's someone who shits on the copy machine. Don't even think about looking at the art books. Half the pictures have been razored out. Thanks to years of lousy funding, some of the basics are not good. In fact, some basics are barely tolerable.

I shouldn't be surprised that ad agencies feel we need direction and encouragement, especially of the hectoring variety. Ad agencies all believe that campaigns really do something, and I guess, with companies going ::pop:: every half hour or so, they're imagining the end of skin care, tampons, fast food, Viagra, and chat lines. And what will they do then? No wonder they're glomming onto responsibility, respect, and community to sell coffee and oil, then boring us stiff with baritone spokespeople, shots of church steeples, happy families wolfing down sandwiches, and old folks planting tomatoes. Cue music and logo. Show website address. End.

Yesterday I saw a couple of Mormon missionaries wheeling around the neighborhood. I thought it was a good time for them to be out and about, banging on doors. Goodness is all the rage.

In fact, it's a seller's market.

Bravery will be desired...

We may have a spanking new president, but he's stuck inside the DC sludge factory now. He and his minions have good intentions no doubt, but it's going to take some time to get them going. Maybe a lot of time. How fast did FDR move? At New Deal warp speed? I don't know, and there's no one around for me to ask. If those in my family who could remember were still alive, there's no guarantee they'd tell me anything. My family made money during The Great Depression, hated Roosevelt and called him "that man".

Meanwhile, there's the Zen non-sound of no-business. People are scared. Crime is up.

Last night, in my neighborhood there was a drive-by shooting. My husband and I were just drifting off, when we heard the quick, fast bangs of an automatic handgun: ::pop:: ::pop:: ::pop:: ::pop:: like that. My husband called the police and then, the next day, trooped around the neighborhood to see what others had heard, and came home, his pockets jingling with new stories.

Two of our neighbors had been robbed fairly recently, one of them at gunpoint. The other had his door bashed in and the marauders just came in and grabbed stuff. it's easy to feel unsafe, except it's a terrible feeling to have, so my thoughts are turning to bravery. Outside my iffy neighborhood, I think it's a quality we'll all need.

I know that fear is usually about not getting something we want or losing something we have. Actually, given that definition, I was more scared during the years of the Former Occupant. The ripping noise of our basic rights being torn away got fairly loud. The frightening thing was that life went on, looking about like it always had. I suspect dictatorships look much the same way. Movies often show truckloads of soldiers, but I think it takes a while before they show up. I imagine, for a while at least, the populace is quiet, hoping better times will return.

And now they have.

Justice will be sought...

That blindfolded lady

Dear President Obama,

Congratulations on the gig. I always thought you'd get it, even when Hillary people were on my neck, biting hard. Frankly, I was skewing that way myself for a while, because I didn't think you had the experience. Still, I knew you had the attitude and here in America, we like our presidents to have some street smarts. Or some kind of smarts, which makes the past eight years a little puzzling.

I know you're very busy now, undoing all that godawful stuff the Former Occupant and his Merry Band of Thugs engineered, but I need to make a confession. You see, I'm responsible for the whole laundry list. Guantanamo, torture, secret trials, wiretapping, unprovoked acts of war, cherry-picked intelligence, lying to the American people, Abu Graib.

Yeah. That was me, Writer to the Stars.

For quite a while, I didn't think I was on the wrong side. I voted against the Former Occupant, I marched, I wrote letters, I signed petitions, and basically checked out of the whole culture and became a stealth-writer, unwilling to support a rogue regime. I thought I was doing enough, but I knew better. I'm a DC kid, daughter of a government work-a-daddy, a work-a-daddy who did his Ph.D work on the Geneva Conventions. So I can't say I couldn't spot a putsch from the get-go. I knew there had been a coup d'etat, even though there wasn't much about it in The Dallas Morning News.

I'm also a survivor of Watergate, so I remember those hearings. I still recall Barbara Jordon saying, “Why don’t we just take this 17^th century document and put it into a 20^th century shredder?” I'm a little surprised the Former Occupant didn't do that when he had the chance. Maybe someone ought to see if the Constitution's still around. (Could you check on that? Maybe send Rahm or someone? Thanksabunch.)

Even with all that history and me sticking my oar in now and again, the Former Occupant & Co. kept on keeping on, while our country crumbled like a huge stale cookie. Then too, we voted for him once, then turned around and voted for him again. Sure the elections were sketchy, and lots of people were mad about all the shenanigans, but if our country had been in good shape, these bozos wouldn't have lasted five hot minutes. But I didn't do enough, the newspapers didn't do enough, and congress didn't do enough. There were a lot of people writing, screaming, demonstrating, and hollering, but not enough of them.

And then, we got our act together. The voters, that is.

Last time I looked, America was a country of the people, by the people, and for the people. Without us, creeps like the Former Occupant can't get a toe-hold. And this is the real point of my letter, Mr. President. We need to investigate what happened, we need to have trials, and we need to send some bad guys to jail.

Otherwise, we'll always be scared because we'll know it could happen again. I know I'll be scared. This time we pulled it out but we might not be able to again. While my thoughts are often dark ones, that's a thought too black to bear. Then there's my guilt. I'm walking around, still feeling slightly terrible because evil things were done in the name of America. And there's no getting around it, America is me. It says so on a bunch of very old documents: We the people. And I'm the people.

Give it some thought and get back to me.

Thanks a lot,

Writer to the Stars

Cuteness will not be mandatory...

Courtesy of cuteoverload.com

I don't know how you sweated out the last term of our Former Occupant, but me, I spent uncounted zombie hours in a tranquil muttering haze over at cuteoverload.com, where everyone speaks a mutant brand of English, and where there is an endless stream of animal pix, showing all species of critters who are tiny, adorable, and often occupied with eating something bigger than their heads.

Today, in the cool pure light of a new day, I did not once feel the need to scurry over to my website haven, and stare at a hamster trying to cram a large carrot chunk down its gullet. I count that as A Good Thing, since only God knows how many brain cells I was losing through sheer disuse. I'm not proud of it, but I was also known to hang out at icanhazcheeseburger.com, glomming digital photos of cats doing the darndest things.

And, when I woke this morning, I didn't race in for my required 2.5 hours worth of reading political and news blogs, posts, and newsfeeds to see if the Current Occupant had decided to just fucking go for it, and set off the big one. As I bumbled through my day, I didn't have to monitor those same news blogs, posts, and newsfeeds, checking on what fresh hell was happening, and deciding whether or not to run for the border.

The last eight years have been hard on us, maybe harder than we know. We're all fatter, dumber, and meaner now, but why wouldn't we be? It's hard to take a lively interest in working out when you can't afford the gym fees and when a looming global apocolypse trumps toning up those jiggly thighs. Don't know about you, but I sure clocked a lot of TV time too, mostly watching true crime shows, like there wasn't enough real crime around.

Maybe we're turning a new page. I don't know if we are or not, but I think we're turning a better page.

And good for us.

Dumb-asses will be pondered...

They're baaaack

The New York Times today has devoted a whole article to the ill-starred Campbell family, whom I myself accused of being pussy Nazis. I stand corrected. Thanks to the Gray Lady's sterling reportage, it seems that Heath Campbell, the daddy of the brood, is not so much a Nazi as he is terminally stupid. And the bad thing about real dumb-butts is that they make smart people stupid. People like me, for instance.

When I discovered one of the kiddos was named Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie, I thought this was the name of a famous Nazi, or infamous Nazi, I didn't know about. Turns out, Heath claims that this is the correct way to spell Heinrich Himmler, and he is not only wrong, but flat-out wrong, and I feel like a dumb-ass, which is what dumb-asses like: the propagation of more dumb-asses.

Their landlord, a Mr. Lippincott, who shares the two family home where the Campbells live, says that awhile back Heath was into Confederate stuff and then switched over to the Nazi thing purely for stylistic reasons. According to the Times, Mr. Campbell is now into swastikas, which decorate the apartment and are etched in skull decals on his car. Mr. Campbell, a collector of German combat knives, also wears Nazi-era boots and likes to click his heels together.

Since Mr. Campbell sought out a local paper to complain that ShopRite wouldn't decorate a birthday cake for his son, now Adolph Hitler, but formerly Antonio Adolph Hitler, blogs and newspaper websites have reported incendiary information. There's Mr. Campbell’s previous marriage, which produced a few comments from his former mother-in-law, who wrote that her daughter wouldn't let him name one of their children Satan. A wise move on her part. Others wrote in saying that the act of naming kiddos after Hitler and Himmler constituted abuse.

Daddy Heath wouldn't be the first. My mother, observing that my male cousins named Ashley had to slug their way through grade school, said naming a boy Ashley was like naming him Percy or Vivien. Having known a Marine named Percy, I concur. Nonetheless, people keep on saddling their offspring with godawful names. Look at the Morning Star Redwings, Dawnlight Dancers, and American Star Wanderings and other goofy names my generation inflicted on their kids...commune kids who probably grew up to be cost accountants, as an act of bitter protest. However, one of my checkout ladies at Albertsons was named Quivoria, and another was Rotunda, and they seemed fine. Some things can be can be transcended and we ought to remember that.

Mr. Campbell broke down when his kids were removed from his home. The local chief of police remarked, “He loves his kids...his kids to him are his future. As he told me, his kids are forever; wives aren’t.” A remark that has a plain, if benighted, eloquence all its own.

Face it. The guy's simply pig-ignorant, although with befuddled aspirations. However, as far as I'm concerned, there are still unanswered questions, like: how come we only have this one photo, so far? And who are these two women? Today, a friend of mine asked me, "Who are these two lesbians with little Hitler?" And yeah, there's that overtone. I put it down to bad reporting.

When questioned, Heath Campbell is clear enough.

And I guess that's the problem.

Joy will be needed...

That was really something wasn't it? The speech, the pomp, Aretha's hat, the hip benediction, it was all good. As an ex-DC person, what I remember is that DC is a very large small town and not the epicenter of sophistication, but every so often it'll blow your doors off. The Marine marching band, the bell-ringers, the cannons: I guess they're kept in a big warehouse like Mardi Gras floats, waiting for the Next Big Thing. Well, honey, this was it.

Personally, I loved the crowds, all colors, all ages, old guys who marched with King, the 'Nam vets, the young un's wearing all their Obama flash, old ladies with joyful tears. Everyone happy, shouting, singing, stamping, dancing, and chanting. You guys should stop by more often. Without you DC can turn into a hushed unfun tourist destination, with sightseers tippytoeing reverentially through marble halls, breathing on moldy documents, looking at the Capitol with gaga expressions.

For a while there, like the last eight years, it looked like an armed graveyard. Lots of heavy-necked military bulldogs around and a scattering of depressed sightseers trying to find a buddy/son/husband/dad on The Wall. I had to hold very tight to my own memories of stopping in on the Senate, watching a filibuster, eating at the cafeteria, and checking out the White House. Back then it was my Capitol, my government.

Maybe it will be again. And yours too.

Fingers crossed.

The great big day...

How terrific would it be if everyone in DC was wearing one of these tomorrow? Pretty terrific, in my opinion, but then I'm always wanting life to be performance art. (And by the way, there's a new post dated Sunday, the 18th, called Basic skills will be demanded... I kept trying to move it and couldn't. It's kind of presidential too. Check it out.)

I love the way things are stacking up for the inauguration. As I've mentioned, I grew up in DC, but the only inauguration I ever attended was LBJ's. This was because DC has a perfectly vile climate that seemed to reach a nadir of vileness with every new president. But one year I was working in DC, and had become friends with a very nice girl about my age, who lived in Maryland, introduced me to Pimm's Cup, and about whom the FBI would later question me closely.

I don't know how she talked me into going, but I went. Of course, this was an earlier, more inhibited age, so she and I wore the full-girl drag, girdles and all, in sub-freezing temperatures, while slush poured into our high heels, and we were spattered with dirty snow and road dirt as the president et. al. zoomed past. I saw LBJ sitting in his bullet-proof car, and his face looked like a boiled ham.

Later, my friend and I retired to the Blue Mirror Bar and tossed a bunch of Pimm's Cup cocktails.

The End.

Yeah. They're mostly like that.

This one isn't.

The obsessed are never bored...

Wode: The First Pigmented Fragrance

Odious? Perhaps only to us old school types. Maybe if the ads didn't look so much like a CSI photo... Also, the designers, Brian Kirkby and Zoe Broach, might give some thought to the notion that we no longer paint ourselves blue and live in trees.

Boudicca's Wode, perhaps the most truly groundbreaking recent fragrance launch, has traversed to the illicit and taboo, including notes of opium and poisonous hemlock. Moreover, Wode lives up to its name and is the first pigmented perfume spray: the cobalt vapour colours the skin blue then disappears without a trace. "The paint dissolves through some chemical combinations – it's the magic of science," say the Boudicca designers Brian Kirkby and Zoe Broach. "Queen Boudicca's tribe would mark themselves as warriors. The markings, the coloration, would have been associated with bravery, courage, status, virility, fertility and heroism." If it is possible for a perfume to transmit avant-garde principles, then Wode comes very close to it, with innovations of colour and intimations of illegality.

From: The Independent 1-19-09

Another reason to live dept...4" Obama to be sworn in as president of Legoland

Overhead View of Legoland Capitol and Crowds


Aretha Franklin Sings With The SF Boys and Girls Choir


Inaugural Porto Potties

Basic skills will be demanded...

Just like you, I bet, I watched the HBO Obama Inauguration event, wondering if the Inauguration communications team had just upended Hollywood and grabbed every star who rolled out. And just like you, I clouded up a bit with emotion, especially when I saw sweet old Pete Seeger hollering out the lyrics to that Woodie Guthrie fave, This Land Is your Land. If you listened very closely, you could hear that Pete Seeger snuck in some of the original lyrics, which aren't of the mom/country/apple-pie variety:

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;

By the relief office, I'd seen my people.

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,

Is this land made for you and me?

But the whole star-coated, fireworky, music-laden business was something, I admit, battered and cynical as I am.

And then Obama gave his pre-inaugural speech, and like the rational, stern yet loving daddy he probably is, he explained that it's gonna be tough. Back to reality: no TV/Internet cruising until the homework is done, no scarfing up Gummy Bears until you gag down the brussel sprouts, no trips to the mall until your shoes have big gaping holes like his. And perhaps I was not alone that day in thinking, At last! I can use all that shit I learned in Home Ec! Because I can do it! Cost per serving? A snap. Nutritious yet cheapie meals? All day long, baby. Menus for a small planet? Got it. Stacked on top of that, I can darn socks, stitch buttons, hook rugs, make a hospital fold, and staunch the flow of blood. I can cook up a pot of starch, iron linens, and wash silk. I'm your Household Goddess: a wet-dream Betty Crocker.

Of course, all those hard-earned skills went by the wayside during the whole feminist thing. Back then, juggling a teaching job, grad school, and community theatre, I got intimately acquainted with every quickie horror-show Tuna/Beef Helper casserole mix on the market. I also became proficient in snarling, Just what I'd expect from a brain-washed tool of the patriarchy. And then, during the counter-culture years, when I made my own candles and sandals, I realized I was falling badly short of the hippie-chick ideal. There was a book by Alicia Bay Laurel, Living On the Earth, that spelled it out. She had instructions on how to bury a dead body, how to tan leather, how to dry fruits and veggies, how to have a baby and share the placenta, and I couldn't do any of it, any more than I could grow my hair down to my ass. And sometime before old Alicia cranked out her tome and sometime after the feminist thing, I learned classical French cooking.

I hope Obama understands my problem. I know old-timey, hard-timey skills will be required, but which ones? I have so many. And then there are those others where I was a total dud. I can do touch typing, cut a stencil or a rubylith, even give up hair products and roll-on mascara. Don't ask me to deliver a baby, though. What's going to be required here? And how de-automated are we gonna be?

Spell it out, brother.

Tolerance will be required...

Adolph Hitler Campbell, age 3

Little Adolph, arguably one of the world's cute kids, was removed from his parents without explanation, by New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services, along with his sisters, Joyce Lynn Aryan Nation Campbell, 1, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will turn 1 in April. They have subsequently been returned to their parents without any reason offered.

For their part, the parents have said that they chose their children's names simply because they liked them, that they are not Neo-Nazi's, and everyone just needs to get over it. The couple said they're neither members of the Aryan Nation nor fans of Hitler’s atrocities, although the father, Heath, has Nazi tattoos and Nazi memorabilia.

"He did this stuff, yeah, but that was in the past. America had slavery and everything else,” said Deborah Campbell, referring to Adolph Hitler.

"I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," Heath Campbell said. "There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change," he continued. "They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did."

Okay, even my cats know that adopting Nazi names was not what Obama meant by change. Overlooking that, however, it's a little disingenuous to slap names like Adolph Hitler, Joyce Lynn Aryan Nation, and Honszlynn Hinler on your kids and not expect blowback. And blowback is what they got from ShopRite, when they went to order a birthday cake for little Adolph. The ShopRite bakery refused to spell out Adolph's full name in frosting and a mighty argybargy ensued. The Campbells demanded an apology from ShopRite and ShopRite refused. Shortly afterwards the state of New Jersey grabbed the Campbell's kids.

I for one am sorry that this Neo-Nazi couple have turned out to be such pussies. Time was when a proud Neo-Nazi bunch would show up for a rally with giant swastika banners, their "Kill the Mud People" signs, loudspeakers, and no apologies required.They knew that 90% of most people would loathe them and that the ACLU would defend them if things got ugly. Seems to me that when you've got Nazi tattoos up to your armpits, give your kiddies Nazi-esque names, and have Nazi objects scattered around the house, your position is pretty clear. To whine that nothing was meant by it, that all this Nazi kerfuffle is in the dim past and we should all, like, chill is taking advantage of everyone's patience.

Me, I think the kid should have gotten his birthday cake and I don't think the children should have been removed from their home: legally, the Campbells can raise a whole Aryan Nation if they so choose. Anyway, didn't we already grab kids from the LDS-cult, only to wind up sending them back? And where are we planning to send them after we snatch them? We ought to be well past any pretense that there's some kind of family norm out there.

I suppose I'm reporting on all this just because Nazi-stuff tends to catch my eye. Being a Nazi seems like such a goofy thing to want to do. Why not re-enact the battle of Gettysburg instead? Or go bang on a horseshoe in Williamsburg, and kick it 18th century style? It makes about as much sense.

Of course, those activities don't get people nearly as pissed off.

And that's the whole point, isn't it?

Isn't it?