pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- YOU DON�T SEND ME FLOWERS 318.
i thank heaven somebody's crazy enough to send me a daisy�ee cummings First an announcement for people who have been reading my blog for a while: I would like to report that my car is LEGAL. That�s right. One-hundred-percent pure-T tee-totally drop-dead can-you-believe-it legal at last y�all! Turns out I should have followed my hunch months ago and driven to a tiny South Cackylacky town and found a nice Aunt Bea who would look deep into my crocodile-teary dark brown woe-is-me eyes and agree to take my one hundred dollars to remove my name from the national ain�t-paid-your-ticket registry. I am just back from the gym�which was already stifling hot inside�and am wolfing down some scrumptious tomato basil soup and a nice salad and a big fat juicy plum. It�s a beautiful spring day here and I have no pressing deadlines (except one meeting summary to send out and tons of little things that I should be doing), so I plan to leave my gym clothes on all afternoon and maybe even sneak out again for a walk. I hope my healthy lunch compensates for the fact that, after my walk in the gardens last night, I sat on my sofa watching TV and feeling sorry for myself and managed to drink two-thirds of a bottle of red wine without having any water�and all those empty calories and my head and tummy ain�t doing so well today after that. � Busy weekend. Tonight I�ll attend a screening of Over the Farm: A New Deal Resettlement and Its Legacy. This independent film focuses on landless African American sharecroppers who were offered �forty acres and a mule� in Tillery, NC back in the thirties and their subsequent struggles to hold onto their farms. And, even though I have no Final Four men�s teams left in my office pool (nor do most people), I plan to cheer for George Mason University (employer of the brilliant poet Carolyn Forch�) on Saturday (unless I�m still at a chorus party where the hostess has promised to produce a beautiful femme who just loves tall dark and handsome wimmin such as yours truly). Sunday, I�m attending a Unitarian-Universalist (MOTTO: �There is no Hell. Everyone is saved.�) service with pal Compuergrrl and her new grrrlfriend. Topic: Laughter, Tears, and Goose Bumps. What moves you in the deepest part of your spirit? What stirs a sense of awe? The service will employ the language of poetry, dance, music, and theatre in an uplifting celebration of the arts in worship. Then I�ll watch the women�s Final Four games, probably at the dyke bar�puhleez let there be a UNC/Duke championship game on Tuesday night! � So here are the opening two sentences of Benedict Carey�s New York Times article about intercessory prayer: Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found. And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested. Shocking that this is headline news really. Christianists were, of course, quick to respond. A chaplain at the Mayo Clinic, for example, announced that the study says nothing about the power of personal prayer or about prayers for family members and that �working in a large center like Mayo, �You hear tons of stories about the power of prayer, and I don�t doubt them.� � Uh reverend did they not teach you ANYthing about specious reasoning in the seminary? People recover from all kinds of serious illnesses and injuries every day and sure, people who prayed for them may try to take credit for their recovery or say it�s evidence of some mythical god�s intercession, but that doesn�t mean that prayer had anything to do with it (and let me guess, people also tell you that �it was the will of God� when their prayers are not answered and you don�t doubt them either, right?). Other Christianists said Well, we don�t know how MUCH prayer each person received... or if they inhaled. Slap. Forehead. Soundly. � So I�m thinking of doing a photo series called My Fat Ass. � Strippers, prostitutes, porn stars and escorts are the sacrificial lambs we feed to the Patriarchy.�biting beaver (at bitingbeaver.blogspot.com) Now it�s 9 PM. Airport shows a signal but I can�t log on any more for some reason, so who knows when I�ll actually post this. I�ve been digging through blog communities and a dissertation idea is definitely gelling (should I decide to go that free-course-each-semester route). I found some really cool feminist blog communities and also noticed that Tennessee Guerilla Women are advertising a red burka: �it�s all the rage for spring �06 in the red states!" A big topic on today�s wimmin�s blogs is the alleged gang rape at a Duke Unviersity lacrosse team party. Interesting that the NYT describes the boys as being �from wonderful families.� A few years ago, a Duke sorority girl told me all about the "white trash" bash her sorority house was throwing. They threw old tires in the yard and bought tacky clothes at Rose's and blackened their teeth and were practicing their "hick voices" for the event. (Yes, poor southerners are one of the few groups that it's still culturally acceptable to make fun of). Many members of my family are poor southerners and I grew up one. And lemmetellya I don't find rich people making fun of poor people amusing. For a minute, all I could do was stare at her. Then I said, "I'm curious. What do you find most amusing about poverty�poor people's distended bellies, their rotten teeth, their inability to get health care, their broken-down cars, or what?" I know not all Duke students are like this�I know plenty who aren't, in fact�but I would also not be surprised to learn that those privileged boys just some slutty stripper who was trying to mess with their fun and not a working mother who, more than anything, personifies how racism, classism, and sexism can intersect to leave some of us particularly vulnerable to men wielding power. 13:40 p.m. - 2006-4-6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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