Magic in the Air. Or Possibly, Indigestion.

The first of a October, time for a new inspiration booklet. You know, the kind that gives you a Bible verse and positive thoughts and affirmations for the day. I've always been slightly embarrassed about reading it. Not precisely intellectual fare. But given how easily I can get mired in gloomy quicksand, I consider ten seconds of this reading to be giving equal time to the opposition. The literary version of 5HTP, the serotonin precursor supplement.

It arrived a few weeks ago. I remembered seeing it behind the couch. (Life here is not organized yet due to massive indifference.) I thought I would tear off the cover and post it by my computer. They always have such a pretty image; this month's was a big basket of raspberries.

I changed my mind. The cat had yakked up on it. I don't know if this action expressed an editorial opinion. As I threw away the cover and sponged off the pages, I tried to make a cheery moral, like "you have to dig through the cat yak for the truth." Or maybe "time to get the cat some Laxatone."

Maybe the cat was expressing an opinion. She's been through a lot lately, and October has a certain don't-take-me-for-granted quality. Begging to differ with Chuck, October is magical, but magic isn't all pumkins-into-coaches. Indian summer, balanced between summer and winter, light and dark, quivering with promise. Autumn and spring see little changes everyday, moving towards something. Summer is flat hot, winter is flat cold. I always think they're going to last forever. But autumn and spring are always in motion, and only October has that balance-beam feeling that things could go either way. I mince through on tiptoe, ankles wobbling, arms flailing, sometimes excited, sometimes terrified.

Time to mourn. I'm especially good at that, made it an art form. So many things lost, all with my clawmarks as they escaped my feverish grasp. Recently I've let my hands open and let the sands run through and blow away in the autumn breeze.

Maybe I've let go of too much. My husband and I keep eying each other. "Are you all right?" That's as far as we usually get. No need to mention job loss, house sale, cross-country move, children grown and carving out mistakes of their own (despite the fact that we could have told them better), betrayals by those near and far, uncertainties about the future for two 50-ish Americans too young to retire and too old for employment in a country that seems to have no use for us. "Do you want to contact your old friends here?" he asks. "No," I say. Why bother? The same reason I don't want to make the house livable. I'm in awe of Christopher, moving and having a party in the same week. I thought about having a block potluck. It was easier not to.

Now that I've started to come out of the sugary fog (my drug of choice) that helped me get this far, I feel better--not to be confused with feeling good. But I feel more, and more deeply. Some days I cry. Some I panic, the way I tend to when I don't have a plan of action and a schedule (which I then complain about). Sometimes I feel the wild joy of autumn, the excitement of breezy days and nights just cool enough, of flowers and trees bursting forth in one last grand display before the winter's sleep. And I remember someone describing balance not as perfect stillness, but swinging back and forth over the still point.

October means change. I've spent a lot of years moaning, "Can't something stay the same?" Maturity, or just getting old, tells me, "Of course not." And that's almost okay with me. Most of the time. It could go either way.

5:48:24 PM    

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Texas, My Texas

Nazi flag angers Dallas school's halftime crowd "...the [Dallas]Paris High School band's halftime performance at a Dallas school included a student running across the field with a Nazi flag and a Franz Joseph Haydn composition that later became Deutschland Uber Alles...on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. " The crowd booed, cursed, and threw things. The band director was surprised.

SMU shuts down race-based bake sale. Seeking to make a point about affirmative action, Young Conservatives of Texas sold cookies priced according to race and gender, ranging from $1 for white males to 25c for blacks.

Fort Worth woman objects to the "pagan" statue of a panther and calls for the 10 Commandments to be put in its place. Officials are scratching their heads because the panther image has been associated with Fort Worth since the late 1800s when a visitor remarked that the town was so quiet that a panther was sleeping on Main Street.

After shoving redistricting down the House and Senate's throats, Republicans still can't agree on a map.

4:16:48 PM    

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Prophet of Economics

Okay, I'm coming out of the closet, one toe at a time. I have an MBA. I used to teach economics at the college level. I understand what "leading indicators" are and who John Maynard Keynes was. Milton Friedman too. I know that giving tax cuts to the rich is not going to create jobs, except maybe for lawnboys and pool attendants, but I've felt like the only one who did have that knowledge. Bush's whole economic policy could be summed up as "I've Got Mine." A poor way to run a country, I felt. Then I discovered Paul Krugman, a Princeton University economics professor who writes for the New York Times. Shrill, they call him. He sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Fortunately he doesn't care if he keeps his journalism job or not, so he says what he knows and what he thinks.

He takes on and why that's a bad idea economically. He compares and contrasts with the Marshall plan, which jumped high to avoid the stench of profiteering. A few quotes:

For example, in July two enterprising Middle Eastern firms started offering cellphone service in Baghdad, setting up jury-rigged systems compatible with those of neighboring countries. Since the collapse of Baghdad's phone system has been a major source of postwar problems, coalition authorities should have been pleased. But no: the authorities promptly shut down the services. Cell service, they said, could be offered only by the winners in a bidding process [~] one whose rules, revealed on July 31, seemed carefully designed to shut out any non-American companies...

Then there's electricity. One reason Iraq still faces blackouts is that local experts and institutions were excluded from the repair business.

Riverbend at Baghdad Burning has commented on the exclusion of Iraqi companies from reconstruction efforts--or their employ for peanuts by the US companies receiving millions. She has a lot to say also about the lack of services. No welcoming flowers here. Fortunately, two senators--a Democratic and a Republican-- are calling for the bidding process to be revamped, in light of the Halliburton and Bechtel contracts awarded so far. It's the Collins-Wyden amendment, if you're inclined to nudge your own senators.

I've got to write an answer to my own rep, who just last week assured me that "the President and his administration made the best possible decisions based on the intelligence at their disposal...Rest assured that should it be determined that some malfeasance did occur, I would support an investigation into the charges to the fullest extent of Congress's power." As a matter of fact, there is something I'd like him to look into. Walk, frog, walk.

3:54:08 PM    

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Limbaugh's Troubles

Commentator Rush Limbaugh, who represents the so-far-to-the-right-they-fell-off-the-edge faction, has had a few headaches lately. For one, there's all those pills he took for those headaches. For another, he's quit his job with ESPN after angry viewers found his comments racist. Rush's spin is, "If I wasn't right, there wouldn't be this cacophony of outrage that has sprung up in the sports writer community." We all have defenses against reality, some more impenetrable than others.

Rush also says he will not retire until all Americans agree with him. Let's not and say we do. And give him all the pills he wants.

2:55:49 PM    

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You Say "Neether." I Say "Niether."

It's interesting to see the difference between UK and US media. The BBC story starts

Saddam 'may have bluffed' on WMDs.
Saddam Hussein may have been pretending to possess weapons of mass destruction, the US Congress is expected to be told by the man in charge of the US-led hunt for Iraqi weapons.

CNN's front page says

No evidence of WMD expected at briefings
The CIA official in charge of looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is on Capitol Hill today briefing lawmakers, but U.S. officials don't expect him to reveal any "smoking gun." David Kay is expected to testify that his team has not found any chemical or biological weapons, but has found so-called dual-use facilities that could be converted to weapons production on short notice, U.S. officials say.

My kitchen could also produce very nasty things on short notice. That ziplock container in the back of the refrigerator may be ready now. "Could" ain't good enough.

But the story's good enough to almost drop Wilsongate off the news radar. I found one story at MSNBC. The frog hasn't walked yet. Let's keep on it, frog-walkers.

10:10:31 AM    

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Microsoft moves beyond patches. Conceding that its strategy of patching Windows holes as they emerge has not worked, the software giant plans a new security effort focused on what it calls "securing the perimeter." [CNET News.com - Front Door] Duh. Sigh. We've been telling them for a long time.

9:52:35 AM    

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CCAGW Misreads Mass. Policy, Open Standards Generally [Slashdot] Not everybody likes open source? timothy's post reads:

from the amateur-clowns-vs.-professional-clowns dept.
mhrivnak writes "The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste made this press release blasting the Massachusetts policy decision to move to Open Source. They explain why Linux is a 'monopoly,' how this policy is 'socialist' and why 'The old Soviet Union could not have done this any better.' The CCAGW has been previously informed about the benefits of open source software in government. Tell them what you think!" The CCAGW is at least not completely one-dimensional; the group is also opposed to mandatory embedded snoopware. Maybe they don't realize that conventional closed-source software has big costs worth avoiding."

He has some good links.
9:49:05 AM    

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