Fathers

A few thoughts on Father's day in the aftermath...

First I was fortunate enough to spent the day with my wife and three of my four children. We went to the ballgame- which was sunny and quite hot. The experience was overall an enjoyable one but the game was really secondary to the family time. I know they would have preferred being in the a/c but it was nice being with them. My oldest daughter is in the God-forsaken state of Arizona, but with the modern marvel of telecommunications (minus the multiple times her phone dropped the call) we talked last night. I think that only made me miss her more though.

I was surprised by the gift 0f a satellite-radio which will allow me to get the San Francisco Giants ball games... among other things. The real gift however, was my family.

I thought I'd take a moment to post a few quotes about fathers I have rounded up from various people. They present an interesting perspective.

"A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma." ~ Marlene Dietrich

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." ~Mark Twain, in "Bringing Up Father," Reader's Digest, September 1937

"If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right." ~ Bill Cosby


"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." ~ Sigmund Freud

"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." ~ Anne Sexton


My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys." ~ Harmon Killebrew

"A father carries pictures where his money used to be." ~ Author Unknown

"Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. " ~Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

and last but not least....

"Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at bat. Then fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher's mound. Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together. Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over again." ~Jimmy Piersal, on how to diaper a baby, 1968

Courier News Online - Poetry fest won't be coming back to Duke Farms

It's big- and has been successful. However,The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation's biannual poetry festival will not be back at Duke Farms next year. Duke Farms could not guarantee permanent facility improvements would be made in time for the next event in fall 2006 and so the largest poetry festival in North America will return to the pre-2004 site in Waterloo Village in Sussex Count, New Jersey.

Awakenings

Poets & Writers came this week. On of the more exciting postal service deliveries I receive. Niece piece on W.S. Merwin written by Christopher Merrill. Merwin explains that a poem results from a sudden awakening of attention and goes on to say, "It probably took your whole life to arrive at that moment when you here it." Ah, I suppose that is what makes it so pleasurable.

Without a doubt I can attest to such awakenings. I've had a number of then, so I can certainly identify with the overall feeling. I would not categorize them as rare, but infrequent. I'd like to say I have them daily... weekly even. While they may well occur perhaps two in a week, there can be lots of open green space between them. Sometimes weeks pass without one at all.

I don't think that one even has to have a great poem for such awakening to occur. But the foundation for a great poem has to be there. I have one for example that I had such a feeling about some time back. I was preparing it to submit recently and decided that it that to change. I have tinkered with it for days now, but I still believe in the concept that was a part of that initial awakening. I just know that something, some tiny portion of it can be fine tuned for betterment of the overall work.

I have another poem that is new and I believe attests to that awakening feeling. It is a short three stanza piece but nearly twenty-four hours later I am looking at one line of the poem and listening to others and- well, I am stalled. I have sent it out to a number of other writers that I often workshop material with and I am awaiting their comments. The best thing that can come out of such action is that I will get a better feel for how the original text is working or not working. Of course the hazard of seeking the advise and council of twenty people is getting twenty different answers.

You can't believe how grateful I am that it is Friday. Being the end if the work week is almost like a salvation of sorts. Like a cell phone or something I really need to be recharged and I am hoping this weekend can be that.

My quote for the day is on Critics....

A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

BWT - Stickpoet passed 14,000 hits! Yeah! Thanks to all the peeps!

House Votes To Restore Reader Privacy

Yesterday, in spite of a threat from President Bush for veto, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment to prohibit funds in an appropriations bill from being used to implement provisions of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act which permits searches of library circulation records, library patron lists, book sales records, or book customer lists under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The vote was 238 [199 Democrats and 38 Republicans] to 187 voted to [1 Democrat and 186 Republicans] Of course this would require Senate action too... and still would face prospects of veto, so the sight is not over.

You can find out more about the implications of this portion of the Patriots act here at the Campaign for Reader Privacy or sign an online petition here.

Want to know how your Representatives voted? This link will give you an opportunity to see the votes.

Freedom

Beginning Poets Workshop in Kansas City

I am posting this from an e-mail I received from Jose Cecil - Director of The Writers Place.

The Writers Place will host a 4-part workshop for beginning poets that will be facilitated by SHIRLEY RICKETT. The group will discuss what they read, favorite poet(s), look at sources of inspiration, and complete writing exercises. The workshop will take a close look at first lines and consider the audience for the poem and the poet. Participants will write poems during the workshop and have their own poetry reading. Shirley is a retired teacher and one of Kansas City's gifted poets.

SCHEDULE:

Session 1 -- Friday, June 10, 6pm to 7:30pm
Session 2 -- Saturday, June 11, 10am to Noon
Session 3 -- Saturday, June 18, 10am to Noon
Session 4 -- Saturday, June 25, 10am to Noon

FEES:

$40 for members and $50 for non-members.

Public Broadcasting Targeted By House

Public Broadcasting Targeted By House

Read This - Full House action anticipated as early as tomorrow.

Sign an electronic petition from Move On dot Org
Can you help us reach 400,000 signers by the end of the day?

Sign petition here


Once you've signed the petition, please pass it along to friends, family and neighbors who count on NPR and PBS.

Even In The Dark... Hope ~ Peace

THERE ARE PROBABILITIES and likelihoods, but there are no guarantees. Rebecca Solnit writes in her commentary: Acts of Hope: Challenging Empire on the World Stage [click here] a sobering representation of the new challenges of activism. [It], says Solnit,"is not a journey to the corner store; it is a plunge into the dark." She points out it is more like weather, not like a game of checkers that at some point will end. The weather goes on... you don't declare a winner and a loser, fold up the board and put it on a shelf.

For Solnit it is easy to see how a lot of the antiwar movement has done that in the wake of our second Iraq war. All the energy that was successfully generated in opposition, yet there was still war. It is only natural to look at it as a contest that ended with a winner and a loser. But that view ignores the larger or global picture. It is like weather... tomorrow the issue is still there... maybe not even in Iraq. Maybe someplace else.

Still, Solnit has looked for and found a silver lining in many of the events of the past couple of years. I found this particular assessment interesting food for thought:

We achieved a global movement without leaders. There were many brilliant
spokespeople, theorists and organizers, but when your fate rests on your leader,
you are only as strong, as incorruptible, and as creative as he -- or,
occasionally, she -- is. What could be more democratic than millions of people
who, via the grapevine, the Internet, and various groups from churches to unions
to direct-action affinity groups, can organize themselves? Of course leaderless
actions and movements have been organized for the past couple of decades, but
never on such a grand scale. The African writer Laurens Van Der Post once said
that no great new leaders were emerging because it was time for us to cease to
be followers. Perhaps we have.

If groping around in the dark is scary for some, Rebecca Solnit thinks it is a bonus for the cause of peace activism. I can see her point. After all, the Bush administration has already pushed the envelope in many areas, including a first-strike military action and questionable mis-statement of intelligence information. Knowing the level to which this administration is willing to operate, and the precedence it has established, give rise to more uncertainty and that should strengthen the resolve of millions to demand more accountability.

In a bit of self-serving pat on the back, I like that she acknowledged the contribution poets have made to the cause:

"American poets became an antiwar movement themselves when Sam Hamill declined an invitation to Laura Bush's "Poetry and the American Voice" symposium shortly after her husband's administration announced their "Shock and Awe" plan, and he circulated his letter of outrage. His e-mail box filled up, he started http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/, to which about 11,000 poets have submitted poems to date. Hamill became a major spokesperson against the war and his website has become an organizing tool for the peace movement."

Even in these dark times... here's to reason, hope and peace.