Journal bits

Battered by wind and rain / by tides and Lunar laughter / choked on unforgivingly / the night is pressed into servitude

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The Most Social Thing

Listening to: Fairy Tales  / Anita Bakers     Mood:  slightly melancholy

This week I've thought a lot about language as a social dynamic. I was writing in my journal the other day and I concluded the days post with a personal observation that language was the most social thing people do. The next day I picked up from that point the night before because it seemed like a heavy way to leave the day's entry. I thought to myself that I needed to defend that pronouncement.

Picking up on this point I continued the conversation with myself yet another day.  I felt that I needed to define social for the sake of this argument and I did, assigning it this definition: actions or things people do in groups (group consisting of at least 2 or more).  My quick list of social activities then looked like this:

• dinning
• talking
• traveling
• work(ing)
• governing
• fighting
• sex
• playing
• reading

In all these activities talking/communicating aka language is or can be a factor. Yes, I suppose you can have silent sex, but it is certainly possible, even likely that language will play a role. While two people don't have to be together for reading, it remains an interaction at minimum between an author and at least one other reader. And so I concluded my second day journal entry feeling I had  justified  my original elevation of the significance of language in society today. It most often can and will be the center point of any other social undertaking.

With the decline of language skill among many American students it is easy to envision trouble ahead in their lives when a core part of their social interactions are hindered by marginalized language capabilities.  I'd like to believe that this trend is not permanent, but then I'd like to believe that poetry would also enjoy a renaissance. As the John Lennon song Imagine says, "you may say that I'm a dreamer."

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Listen to Iran's National Poet Speaking out

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Partly Moody

The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. ~Lionel Trilling

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Beatings continue on streets in Iran

 

Crackdown by Iranian government continues in the streets- Police remain vigilant and brutal. This footage is dated today.

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Sunday afternoon

The latest issue of Poets and Writers is out. I was slightly disappointed as I was expecting this to be the issue in which they feature the breakout poets for the year. I always enjoy seeing it and often am familiar with at least one of them. Instead it's a first fiction annual.

I did enjoy the article FLARF POETS, they can't be serious. Can They? I about to read How the NEA is spending that $50 MILLION.

Just for grins I'm thinking I'll put up a poll on flarf for a couple of weeks.

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Holy Cow -A Pastor Celebrates Handguns

The Saturday Night Special is defined by Wikipedia as pejorative slang used in the United States and Canada for any inexpensive handgun.  Tonight pastor is Ken Pagano of the New Bethel Church in Louisville, Kentucky is having “Saturday night special” service for gun owners.

According to CSMonitor.com article, 'About 200 people took him up on the invitation. It wasn’t mandatory to have a gun to get in. In fact, according to the church website, you didn’t even have to believe in God. The only requirement was to be a supporter of the First and Second Amendments.'

Actually the Saturday Night Specials were the target of most of the early gun control legislation.  They are not hunting sport weapons and really have only one purpose, a cheap weapon to use against another person.

I find the mixture of Church and cheap handguns to be a most interesting marriage. We do love our guns in this country. In fact the gun culture in America has within it a a cult base that harbors a fanatical fixation on guns. Some to almost a level of "gun worship." Perhaps Pastor Pagano is one such worshiper. I don't know him personally but what I do know is his works and I am suspect of any pastor who feels compelled to use church resources to advance and celebrate the cause of "Saturday Night Specials." These cheap handguns have victimized so many families, from accidental shootings (many of which are children) to suicides to passionate arguments that end in one or more shootings and last but not least armed criminal acts.

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