From the daily archives:

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Ray and Day

by Frank Paynter on November 8, 2006

I saw Ray’s poem at Woods Lot. I was scrolling down, and I ran across a picture of Dorothy Day. She would have been 109 years old today. Happy birthday. It’s a good picture, Dorothy seated, framed by the weapons of police officers, legs crossed, Dororthy serene, hands folded on her knee on the UFW picket line in Lamont, California in 1973, waiting. She was arrested. She was seventy-five years old.

I thought as I so often do that Mark Woods is the best. This picture of Dorothy Day by Bob Fitch really proved it again. What could equal this?

I scrolled down further and found

Monty please, Door Number Three
Ray Sweatman

I am nothing more than the dreams that dream me.
Inventing games under the cover of innocent trees,
cashing a paycheck, working the latest gadget,
walking down the aisle, smiling for the cameras,
comparing the different boxes of instant rice
falling from the ceiling of the supermarket,
getting stung by bees, trying to cover my
naked bumps down an empty corridor
of footsteps and bells banging from
the inside of a locker Let me out.
(more)

Just two of the dozen or so items Mark Woods presented today, November 8, 2006, two that were personally meaningful for me… and not a mention of Bush or Rumsfeld, Pelosi or Webb. How refreshing.

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Bittersweet

by Frank Paynter on November 8, 2006

In Wisconsin, a Democratic Governor, a Democratic Senator, the Democrats picked up one seat in the House, our State Senate shifted from Republican to Democrat, the State Assembly Republican majority was narrowed, and yet I’m dissatisfied. The people of the State of Wisconsin voted for a referendum that adds a ban on domestic partnerships and gay marriage to our constitution. We gave in to homophobia and the bizarre christian cults that have such a terrible influence on our public policy. Further, the people gave in to fear in the matter of capital punishment. Wisconsin let go of the hideous and primitive need to execute criminals in 1853, but yesterday the people voted yes for the death penalty. Talk about fear itself… Bush has really brought the terror home. There was a time when we were prouder of ourselves than this, when we took pride in supporting the rights of people who were in a minority, who were perhaps different from ourselves. There was a time when we knew that killing criminals made us killers. That time is past.

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Walking that dog…

November 8, 2006

AKMA and Beatrice: the promenade, the site selection, the placement, the production, the text and and a discussion of the extraction of meaning therefrom. Bravo!
                 

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