The Craft of Going the Whole Nine Yards

Why, I have always wondered, would you encourage anybody to go the whole nine yards?  What kind of achievement is that when the goal is, at least in football, if cheerleaders can be trusted, as I believe they can, "First in ten; do it again."

What, I've perenially wondered without ever remembering to look it up or ask, is the point of stopping one yard short of the goal?  What, precisely, is gained by that?  If you're going to fight for nine yards, why not give that extra little push and actually accomplish something?

Today, my decades-long confusion was cleared up.  I'm excited to report that I got the answer while watching a rather silly spy movie with my compadre.  It turns out that my error in understanding is that all along I thought we were talking about football.

I was wrong.

The nine yards doesn't refer to football but to a far more serious endeavor.  At least since World War II, ammo belts -- the kind soldiers carry for military operations because that's how much fits in an average ammo box-- have been nine yards long.

To go the whole nine yards, then, means to give it all you;'ve got; to pour until the jug is empty; to take extraordinary measures to preserve the lives and physical wholeness of your colleagues; to keep using what you've got 'til you use it up. Life and death, in other words.

Now I have a new question about "the whole nine yards"? I want to know why we toss it into conversations about meaningless activities?  Go the whole nine yards to meet a company goal?  Go the whole nine yards to finish an art project?  Go the whole nine yards in getting a proposal written?  Go the whole nine yards in training your dogs, detailing your car, fixing a gourmet meal for friends?

Yeah, no.

I'm not saying those activities are to unimportant in the ordinary scheme of things.  Rather, I'm saying that they have nothing to do with life and death; and that a phrase born out of war, out of the deaths and maiming of military personnel and civilians shouldn't be trivialized in common conversations. With an all-volunteer army, it's easy for Americans to pretend that, while war may still be hell, it's a newer, gentler hell -- the kind of hell you get when the feet on the ground in Afghanistan and other hot spots belong to poor people and to minorities (not mutually exclusive groups) rather than to the profile of soldiers during the days of the military draft, when anybody and everybody's brother or cousin or high school friend or colleague's child could be on the next boat or plane heading into a war zone.

We need to go the whole nine yards to support military families.

We need to go the whole nine yards to provide effective protective clothing and vehicles and equipment for the military on the battle fields.

We need to go the whole nine yards to provide the support -- physical, mental, emotional -- that our veterans and their families need when a military person returns from battle.  And, yes, by that I mean not only hospitals with no rats in the hallways but also qualified therapists, psychiatrists, social workers, medical personnel, chaplains, folk life experts, poets, projects, and seminars to allow as much healing as a given person needs and wants.

Those tasks are more important than a first down in a football game.  They mean the difference between life and death, between a life of paucity and a life of abundance.

Wounded Warrior Project 
Support Our Troops By Supporting Their Children
Joining Forces

If you know of other organizations making a difference in the lives of military personnel and families, please leave a note in the comments section.

The Art of Healing

Healers are gathering in Louisville, Kentucky, today, at four o'clock.  We're gathering together in a healing session for the west end of the city, which has undergone terrible violence in recent weeks, including three deaths.

We're each being asked to play an active role: to read or sing or speak or play an instrument; to offer up whatever gift we may possess to these battered, grieving families and to this battered city.

I'm gathering myself prior to heading out for the gathering. I'm planting my feet firmly so that I can feel my the soles become roots traveling down toward the center of the earth, the way they talk about in yoga class.

I learned after my husband died in 2000 that the true bedrock in life is beauty, because beauty has power even in the midst of futility.  And so this afternoon, then, unless somebody requests otherwise, I'm going to read two of my poems:  "Not Paprika" and "You Walk in Beauty" (which I could and probably should have titled "Ode to Feet").

I'm also going to take along the seven iris paintings I did last week.  I'll put them where ever they may fit to lend some green and some air to the healing and to remind myself that at any moment the wind can blow and everything can be different.

Can beauty prevent violence?

Can healers heal a city?

Here's what I think. I have a friend named Sue.  Eleven years ago, her husband, Tim, was dying of the same cancer that killed my husband in 2000.  Tim underwent an autologous stem cell transplant conducted by doctors inexperienced in treating multiple myeloma.  He had a second transplant, an allogeneic one in which he received stem cells from his sister, overseen by a world-class oncologist.  Tim had chemotherapies before, during, and after both transplants, with some useless radiation thrown in as well.

Tim and Sue had two small children, the younger of whom was a toddler when his father was diagnosed.  Tim was ill, and he was ill, and he was ill; and everything that stood a chance of helping him was attempted. Eventually, he ran out of things that might work.

And then what did he do? He kept on. He kept on taking the thalidomide. He kept on taking the steroids. He kept on allowing chemotherapies that had never been shown to combat his disease. He kept on forcing himself to drink a little, to eat a little, to speak a little  in spite of the intense pain he endured for three years.

How does a person find that kind of determination?

I learned the answer one day while on the phone with Sue.  She was telling me about the latest thing that hadn't worked, and about the equally useless thing the doctors wanted to try next.  And then she said, "What Tim told me yesterday is 'I can't do nothing.'"

I can't do nothing.

At first, I thought Tim had used a double negative. Then I thought he was lamenting the loss of physical ability. Then I understood.

When Tim said "I can't do nothing," he meant "I can't stand here, or sit here, or lie here and allow this to happen while I do nothing."

And that's why the healers are gathering today. Because we, like Tim, can't do nothing. We can't stand  by while the bullets fly and people die in the street, on the sidewalk, in their homes, and do nothing.  We are doing what we can do, trusting that from within the gathering of our bodies, voices, spirits, gifts, and offerings, some green might flourish, some air be stirred, and a fresh wind blow, making everything new and possible.

The Art of Spotting Monsters

I've never claimed to see Bigfoot
And am sure I'll never see him,
But I can guarantee you now
If I should see, I'd flee him.

I saw a video (since lost in the din of interwebs) of an interview of a member of the American Bigfoot Society,* which I'm proud to know exists, given that I thought all of the Bigfoot sightings were in Canada.  If you want to join the Society, you must first fill out an application that requests name, address, phone number, email address, and an answer to the question "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"  Within a day or two, a member of the Board of Directors will be in touch to discuss membership with you.

I don't know.  It all sounds a little bit untoward to me.  I prefer memberships where I can mail a check and never talk to anybody; and the whole felony question opens up all sorts of imaginings.

The Big Foot interviewee lives in South Carolina, which allows me to segue to an article in the October 18, 2010, copy of The New Yorker.  Sean Wilentz wrote the piece, titled "Confounding Fathers." :  "In June [2010], the [Fourth District] Congressman Bob Inglis, of South Carolina, a tough conservative who nonetheless backed Bush's financial bailout, lost a vicious** primary fight with a right-wing insurgent named Trey Gowdy. To his amazement, Inglis was confronted on the campaign trail by voters who were convinced that the numbers on their Social Security cards indicated that a secret bank had bought them at birth."

The moral of the story?  Never shade the truth for political gain, because some day those shadows might grow legs and come after you.

**Vicious has extra-special meaning in South Carolina, the state from which Lee Atwater emerged to pollute the political waters for a multitude of generations.

The Art of Destruction

A map/chart/tune showing every nuclear explosion between 1945 and 1998 by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto.  The footage is both compelling and addictive and leaves me wondering why everyone on the west coast of the United States isn't dead.

Thunder over the Ohio River

Saturday is Thunder over Louisville, the kick-off to Kentucky Derby season.  The thunder is two-fold:  the thunder of World War II warbirds and spanking new F-18s in the afternoon and the thunder accompanying what is said to be the country's largest fireworks display Saturday night.  (The same was said about the fireworks over the Hudson River on July 4, 2002, which I watched from the roof of an 8-story building on the campus of New York University.  Which was more impressive?  Well, the NYC folks had two barges from which they were firing; and that night was the only time I've felt a crowd step backwards en masse because the pyrotechnics seemed about to engulf us.

 The question is neither here nor there today, because I'm thinking instead about the best place to go to take photos of the planes in the afternoon.  I was hoping Riverview Park would work, but it seems to be in the lowlands.  I want to be closer to the sky, and God, and mostly the planes on Saturday.  The downtown waterfront is always an option; but I'd rather be away from the crowds.

 I love seeing the barges pass.  Growing up on an island, the freighters were always at a far distance, so I'm surprised each time I see a vessel this large up close.

 Relics nearby.

Spite and Malice 40216

I accidentally turned down this street last week and came upon this delightful house.  It's like a house in a fairy tale, one you want to live in because you know it's filled with candy and cupcakes.

A day or two later, I went back with Laramie and the camera so I could get photos better than the one on my cell phone. Two guys looking under a car hood in a driveway watched me emerge from the Jeep with camera and dog in tow, and what with there being a No Trespassing sign and all in the front yard of the darling house, I decided to chat them up.

"Do you know the story behind that house?" I asked.

"Yeah," said one of the men, with a slight grin.

So here's the story.  Beside this house is a vacant lot.  Beside the vacant lot is another house about this size.  Behind the colorful house, at some distance, is another house. Several years ago, a woman bought the vacant lot and the two houses for $60,000. The third house, now multicolored, was owned by an elderly man who died at age 93, after which the house idled in an estate for a time and was eventually purchased by the owner of the other properties.

The first two houses she bought have been renovated and are occupied.  The vacant lot and this third house were on the back burner.  Two homeowners on the street got riled up, muttering about weeds and grass and rundown houses, to the point of official papers being served demanding that the space be cleared up. 

"

It happened once.

It happened twice.

It happened a third time, and that was when the woman said to her son, "Paint the house."

 So he did.

The complaining neighbors are not as happy as you might expect, even though their demands were met.

As thee two men told me, not everybody has lots of extra money to throw around, especially not these days in these economic times.  The complainers know the governor and the mayor -- which shouldn't exactly matter, what with the house being in the county -- and that's why they created such a stink over a situation where a person is actively restoring houses and making them available at reasonable rents.

Human nature:  is there anything as satisfying to observe?  And the best part of the story is that it all happened here, on Eureka Avenue:

The President's Address

I've been listening to President Barack Obama.

I'm in my studio adding items to Pinterest; he is in the bedroom on the television. 

He first caught my attention when he mentioned the bridge connecting Kentucky and Indiana.  He's referring to the I-64 bridge over the Ohio River, which was closed in the middle of rush hour a few weeks ago because the steel used was a lower grade than required and is failing.

Louisville is a major part of the east-west corridor; and to lose a bridge is bad.  The only thing that prevents it from being catastrophic is that the steel failure was caught before the bridge collapsed, as I remember one doing in 1967/68 in southern Ohio and more recently in Wisconsin.  Nobody's dead, which is a positive aspect of a dismaying circumstance.

It's also positive that the president has decided to stop placating people how would love to see his presidency go down in flames and would, in fact, rather see our country destroyed than see our first bi-racial president succeed.  The President is calling them to account in this address.  He says they will have to answer to him and also to their voters back home if they refuse the job bill, an instrument that will address some of the massive infrastructure problems in the country as well as the massive unemployment and foreclosure problems.

Talk on, Mr. President.  Be strong, and speak the truth. Get the country working, and then please turn your attention to cleaning up the slime trail being left by the Bank of America.  They're fiddling around, and American families are getting burned.

Industrial photography

 The trip home from North Carolina was long and involved the return of the rental car and pick up of my repaired jeep, so I spent a night at a motel somewhere in West Virginia on the way home.  Walking Laramie the next morning, I noticed this electrical power station.  You couldn't actually miss it; if I'd tripped while walking the dog, I'd have rolled down a cliff directly into the fence surrounding this location.

 I went back into the motel room to retrieve the camera so I could take this photograph.  I adore the lines and curves and intricacy of this construction.

 And here's another view, the towers tall against the sky (I may have been lying on my stomach to take this photo).

The United Methodist Circus

Mary Cartledgehayes and Frederick B. Hayes after ordination service

 The photo above was taken the night I was ordained in the United Methodist Church.  The letter below was mailed during Holy Week 2011 to the bishops and other leaders in the United Methodist Church to explain why I resigned my ordination and my membership in the UMC.

Many United Methodists are unaware that a gay man was forbidden membership in the United Methodist Church because he was gay and due to a church court ruling pastors now judge whether a given person is good enough to join the congregation. This error in doctrine, theology, and historical methodology can't be rectified if people don't know it has occurred. Therefore, I request that you share this post widely.  My one limitation is that it needs to be shared in its entirety, to ensure an accurate reading.  (I'll also post it on the home page of my Web site (http://marycartledgehayes.com) so it can be found easily in the future.)

April 17, 2011

To the Members of Judicial Council and the Bishops of the United Methodist Church:

By letter dated February 2006, I resigned my ordination in the South Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.  I have been on the whole silent about the matter, waiting for my grief to pass, except for a few murmurs about my resignation’s connection to Decision 1032 published by the UMC's supreme court on October 29, 2005.

Decision 1032, as you are well aware, claimed pastors are responsible for determining who will and will not be allowed to join a local congregation.  Pastors are free – or, rather, required, per the Decision -- to distinguish between the deserving and the Other and to refuse membership to persons they consider inadequate, sinful, or in any other way unclean.

Decision 1032 voided everything I was taught in Sunday school, in sermons, and at the Divinity School of Duke University (from which I am an honors graduate) about prevenient grace. The Decision also voided the sermons I preached and classes I taught as a pastor that had to do with grace; God’s inclusive love; and most other matters of salvific import. Furthermore, my memoir, published nationally in 2003 by Crown/Random House, became a historical rendition of the church that once was rather than the contemporary explication of the theology, history, and polity of the United Methodist Church I wrote.

As we all know, Decision 1032 was a fusillade in a media war. If, for instance, the pastor had refused membership to someone who didn’t believe in infant baptism (i. e., one baptism for the remission of sins), I fully believe the Decision would have been different, because our pews and pulpits are well-populated by such people.

In upholding a pastor’s refusal to allow a practicing homosexual to transfer into his congregation, Decision 1032 forced my resignation.  Why?  Because if gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and trans-gendered people are not welcome in the United Methodist Church, then I am not welcome there. The Church is not a country club with self-invented by-laws and membership based on the division between “us” and “those people.”  And who are “those people” when it comes to the United Methodist Church. Those people who live in trailer parks. Those people who live in fine brick houses. Those people who belong to country clubs. Those people who get food stamps.  Those people who buy new cars every year and those whose hiccupping engines pollute my own personal air. Those people who are or were in prison. Those people who think children are snot-nosed little noise machines. Those people with tattoos, or divorcing, or not contributing to the budget. Those people who are persistently, repulsively Samaritans no matter how often their naiveté is mocked. In other words, “those people” who don’t think or look or speak or act or dress in accordance with a given pastor’s standards (or lack thereof).

I resigned my ordination because Decision 1032 is counter to the history, theology, and polity of the United Methodist Church.

I resigned my ordination because I share with Carl Sandburg the belief that the ugliest word in the English language is “exclusivity.”

I resigned my ordination because, as an honorable human being, I refuse to associate with an institution that formalizes its petty dislikes and/or hatreds into church law.

I resigned my ordination because the Decision made by Judicial Council and re-affirmed by General Conference is heretical, being, as it is on its face, antithetical to all we know about the nature of God.

Given my abhorrence of Decision 1032, I could not in good conscience affiliate with any United Methodist congregation. Nor did I choose to affiliate with a different denomination. I knew the UMC’s commitment to inclusivity was a sign of God’s action in the world, and I was invigorated by the difficulties and grace that came from my Annual Conference having the highest percentage of African-American congregations in the United States. United Methodist to my very bones, I am now a ship with no harbor.

Which brings me to my final point. When I preached on the unforgivable sin for the first time, after extensive exegesis and careful thought I concluded, from the text, that there is only one unforgivable sin, as stated clearly in 1 Thessalonians 5:19:  “Quench not the Holy Spirit.”  I regret to inform you that I am quenched; that it was an intention action by the UMC; and that it is unforgivable. I gave my heart, soul, prayers, presence, service, and the last six healthy years of the life of my late husband (Frederick B. Hayes) to preparation for ordination and to pastoring. I was an effective conduit between God and the congregation; a gifted preacher; and a devoted elder.  In other words, I had fruits – and I left them to rot on the ground because, since Fred’s death in 2000, I will not be party to institutional stupidity and hatred.

As for myself, I am well. The Holy Spirit didn’t stop pestering me just because I kept trying to brush it off. My life is devoted to writing and art that reify the gifts of grace, peace, and love.  I’m including a small piece of art for you as a parting gift. You’ll note that it’s made of recycled materials and includes a word or phrase ripped from the pages of my 2003 book. I offer this gift as a life-giving sacrifice and as a plea to the Church to return to its proper tasks:  spreading scriptural holiness and embodying the love of God.

Sincerely,

Mary J. Cartledgehayes

Mary Cartledgehayes, Year 3 of my first pastorate

Fibonacci 99. Disconcerted

Disconcerted

1   Recently
1   I
2   discovered I've
3   spelled two words
5   incorrectly my entire life. Mistakenly,
8   I trusted that "curlicue" had a "q" within
13 and that "ukulele"s second vowel was an "e."
                             "Blind facts" they're called, these
21  facts we know so well we're not easily convinced that we are, actually, wrong.
                              In northern Kentucky a museum depicts humans
34  and dinosaurs living together. The newspaper reports dragons as well.  A friend who visited told me he stepped out of line and was firmly chastized and herded back into place in line.  No wandering on your
55   own.Walk this way -- their way.  Can such a musuem be dubbed a blind fact?  No. Blind faith, perhaps.  Faith that profits from foolish virgins, Sunday school classes and church groups and random families.  And that, my friends, is why we outsource science to India and Pakistan; our blind stupidity has dulled our intellectual edge.

Fibonacci 94. Just War Theory

Just War Theory

1    I
1    once
2    heard a
3    lecture on Just
5    War Theory.  "Just" as in
8    righteous.  "Just" as in the narrow way along
13  which people of faith can walk into war without putrefying their immortal souls.
21   Laughter has no part in it, nor does partying in the streets.  Prayer is a companion.  I don't recall the rest.
                                               by Mary Cartledgehayes

Susan B Anthony across the years

Susan B Anthony
This concise biography of Susan B. Anthony on youtube includes a photo of Anthony with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

We so often see Anthony in her later years that I was pleased to find views of her as a younger woman.  I'm also interested in the cartoons, in which she is caricatured as the anti-woman, all angles and sour faced.  

The Susan B. Anthony "Failure Is Impossible" Award Pin and archival photos

 A lovely DAR photo of Susan B. Anthony

Elizabeth Cady Stanton with a lovely hat and a lovely baby.

 Statue of Susan B. Anthony having tea with Frederick Douglass

The Susan B. Anthony Award Pin - 360 | 365 George Eastman House Film Festival – Formerly the Rochester High Falls International Film Festival

While we're paying  homage to Susan B. Anthony, take a look at this strikingly beautiful pin, designed by sculptor Boo Poulin and presented each year to outstanding women in the film industry.

I've also found a legible photo of a newspaper interview with Anthony in a digital scrapbook, which includes a photograph of the activist herself.

Party Time! Susan B's Birthday! Break out the Champagne!

Happy birthday to Susan B. Anthony, a leader -- along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- in the movement to gain American women the right to vote. Susan never married and traveled extensively to lecture on women's rights; I've read, although I couldn't confirm the information, that Susan's first speech was at a quilting bee in Ohio. Elizabeth stayed at home, constantly pregnant.  When the burdens of travel became too great, Susan would go to Stanton's house, which was always filled with the voices and antics of children, to sleep, to regenerate, and to discuss with Elizabeth the next step in their campaign to bring women into full citizenship.

As a nation, we are deeply indebted to both women for the long hours, grunt work, ridicule, and exhaustion they faced in working toward granting women more money, greater power, and increased dignity.  In honor of them, let's all go make some money, bake a cake, or get pregnant.

As a sidenote, while the Susan B. dollar has been made fun of across the country since it's release, the dollars themselves aren't hard to get; in fact, they're used as change in New York City automatic train ticket dispensers.


Pass it on.  We honor our foremothers by speaking their names and remembering their devotion to us, the generations that would follow.

Fibonacci Poetry365. 29 -- Boycott Whole Foods

                               Boycott Whole Foods

1   Sick

1   to

2   death of

3   winter, I entered

5   Whole Foods. Just inside the

8   door stood pot after pot of huge purple

13   hyacinths, the kind that bloomed at my mother’s house. I thought about the

21   sweet, sweet aroma; approached and breathed deeply, nose to florets, one flower, two, six, each a heady warmth of memory.

34 When I got home and turned on the news, I learned that Whole Foods has advised the US Department of Agriculture that they agree to “conditional deregulation” of genetically engineered seeds, beginning with alfalfa.

55  Monsanto is the bully on the block, demanding change, suing small farmers, shoving its new and better grains down our throats.  Did you know not a single law requires them to tell us what’s been engineered?  They’re afraid we won’t eat it if they do.
                      In reading on this topic, I learned that in 1969

89  Monsanto dumped 45 tons of PCBs into a creek that supplies drinking water to Anniston, Alabama.  For forty-some years, they’d dumped PCBs and also mercury, renowned for its toxicity, into that creek.

        In 1968, I was pregnant in Anniston, Alabama. In 1969, I breast-fed my infant in Anniston, Alabama. All that time, and more, Monsanto was spiking the water I drank. In 2010, I had cancer, and what about my baby?

        Human beings, not the bottom line, are the bottom line. Time to act as though we believe it.

.

Fibonacci Poetry365.21 At the Literary Event

At the Literary Event

1    I
1    told
2    the audience
3    at Day's Espresso
5    last night, for our monthly
8    reading series, that I've chosen the Fibonacci Sequence
13  as the structure for the daily poem I'm writing this year.
21  They look nice on the page, I said, but I don't know how they'll come across out loud.  How to differentiate
34  commas, hyphens, periods, and line breaks in this nonpoetic system?  Then off we went to the Great Pacific Garbage Dump and through the labor and delivery room on our way to Haiti, nodding to

55 Dr. King along the way. They laughed when I said "Waldo Ann." They fell in love with Devin at age six, back before he'd ever had that kind of dream, and they applauded (I think this is true) when I finished reading that poem. I told them I nearly didn't write it, afraid I couldn't

89  do justice to Dr. King and the stony road behind and ahead of us. And together we loathed the wicked Baby Doc Duvalier.  The poems were strong to read and good to hear.
       Afterwards, one humor writer said I'd inspired him when I spoke of posting a poem a day; that my statement changed his life.  Another poet admired my strong final lines; and I said, "Oh, Lord, they're misery.  I revise and revise and revise and count and count and count, because you can ruin a whole poem

144 if the final line is weak," which I knew she knew because I'd heard her gorgeous poetry. Another writer explained to me that the Fibonacci Sequence is simply a subset of fractals, which, in mathematics, are numbers that add back into themselves. Oh, and the writer who signed a contract with St. Martin's handed me a sheet of paper.
        "In my training," she said, "we were taught to write down the phrases that captured us, and I did that for you."  Glancing down the list, I saw she'd caught the bits that caught my attention when I wrote them:  the world itself broken; my girls so quickly women; the little death of graft; and more.
         Not until I got home did I notice that I'd left the final sentence of the Duvalier poem sitting in the printer tray.  Nobody but me was counting words.
                                                                by Mary Cartledgehayes

Fibonacci Poetry 365. 20

 As if Haiti Doesn't Have Enough Problems

1    Baby
1    got
2    back. Baby
3    Doc Duvalier, that
5    is, got back to Haiti,
8    flying in from Paris, where he's lived for
13  twenty-five years.  His goal?  To offer help with Haiti's reconstruction. Or so he
21  says. What has Haiti done to warrant this man's feet on their terrain?  He tortured.  He killed.  He exiled thousands.  He
34  made money off the drug trade.  He sold human body parts for cash. What now can he scrounge from the Haitians?
           A cruel man won't return unless he sees a chance to cause more
55 deaths, beginning with the little deaths of graft, which will breed more corpses. Even the cholera didn't keep him away. What's driving the man? Some say he wants to clear his name of old charges of corruption.  I think he wants to gloat ("See how miserable your lives have become without me?") and perhaps to
89 steal the vote and reign once more as president. There's a rumor the Americans and French would like that ridiculous proposition.Who knows what America wants, but most likely the French just wanted his ass gone.  How dare he show his face? Why dare he show his face? Whatever comes out of his filthy mouth, we know death runs through his veins, and he'll share it with Haitians, again.
         The charges he wants to dispel, Haiti hopes to prove. Somebody tell the devil to open the gates of hell.
                                                                  by Mary Cartledgehayes

Activists call FBI raids massive “fishing expedition” - Chicago Independent | Examiner.com

Activists call FBI raids massive “fishing expedition” - Chicago Independent | Examiner.com

A really fine follow-up article by a writer in Chicago about a public meeting held to discuss the effing-BI's tactics.

It's likely the Martin and Malcolm photos weren't deliberately set apart to be confiscated. The storm troopers also took boxes full of the Chicago couple's children's drawings and homework; as well as ancient postcards from girlfriends and (I'm stretching but it seems likely) the magnets on the refrigerator.

The FBI was in their house for 12 hours. The couple have been peace activists for decades. And you want me to think this wasn't an act of intimidation?

This article, incidentally, says that among the people who spoke out against the home invasion was a United Methodist minister.  I know a few of those in Chicago.  If anybody knows who it was, please let me know; I' foolish enough to continue looking for signs of life in the UMC..  You can comment here or send an email to mary at marycartledgehayes dot    com.  Thanks.

Red-baiting, circa 2002-2006 - The Boston Globe

Red-baiting, circa 2002-2006 - The Boston Globe

Here is a more extendsive report, published in the Boston Globe, about the investigations of Greenpeace, The Thomas Merton Center, et al.

The justification is that the FBI was not intending to interfere with anybody's First Amendment rights.

News flash. Intention is not the point. Not a single person who smashed their infant children's brains out against a wall intended to kill the baby.  It was just incidental to another action.

Does the F-ing BI think the Baby Boomers are dead, or merely senile? We had enough civil rights taken away under the Bushes' presidencies (which was your own damned fault, people; what drugs were you people on when you voted for the man who directed the CIA, epicenter of clandestine activities including killing and selling weapons and making up "law" and bringing to power some of the most egregiously evil people now in charge in smaller countries?).

And now if my haphazard reading is any indication, both the CIA and the FBI are the handmaidens of Homeland Security, which brings images to mind of goose-stepping and black boots as few other terms can do.

FBI improperly investigated activists after Sept. 11, Justice Department review finds - chicagotribune.com

FBI improperly investigated activists after Sept. 11, Justice Department review finds - chicagotribune.com

Oh, you're going to love this article. It turns out that after 9/11 the effing-BI made itself a nice little list of potentially terrorist organizations.  They put Greenpeace on there; yeah, I suppose people who want to preserve the planet are likely to be planning ways to blow it up.

Get this.  Not only did the investigate The Thomas Merton Center but kept them on a terrorist watch list for years. The Thomas Merton Center, for Christ's sake.

Where do they get the imbeciles (no disrespect intended) who make these decisions?  What kind of fool do you have to be to waste my money (given as a happy taxpayer in the land of the free and the home of the brave) to investigate and watch over a Trappist monastery?

The insanity has returned.  If you've noticed a paucity of German shepherds lately, they're probably being trained to rip your arms off; and watch out for fire departments checking those metal structures dogs love to pee on.  Because all it's going to take one crazy mayor or one crazy governor and the police are going to turn the hoses back on.  And this time they're coming for all of us.

I shall now go look for late-breaking news.

Thomas Merton.  Ohhhh, please. What, you think there's a Roman Catholic conspiracy to feed the poor or something?