It's too bad that Mad Magazine's maddest artist, the late (and very much lamented) Don Martin, isn't alive to do portraits of President Obama. Hinged feet and all . . .

Meat. I can supplement with cheese as well as bean-&-rice dishes.

Once upon a time, there was a very neurotic young caterpillar named Alexander, called “Alec” by everyone who knew him. Immature and divorced from the realities of the world, he lived in a fantasy world much of the time. As the lovely, warm days of Summer went by, and June and July were succeeded by August and September, instead of going industriously to work and then relaxing at tennis or golf the way that all his well-adjusted friends and relatives did, Alec began to spend most of his time in bed, dreaming his life away. After a couple of months of this, more and more often he was heard to declare he wished that he had never left the womb.
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Old man at evening,
Rocking slow, crowned in red light;
Beneath him – bodies.

Come to me at evendark,
Wrapped in flame and night;
Cover me in your cloak of fire
And set my soul alight
With blazing rage of culmination,
In revenge and hope and sorrow,
Then stand with me, by my side,
In the dawn of an alien tomorrow.

Life is cradled in a chalice
Of bone and blood and dream;
Death is Hades’ draining pull
At its fiery wine.
Come to me in Samhein dusk
With thy Staff incarnadine;
Then ride with me in midnight joy
Down Tartaros’ sorrowing stream
That dreams in ash and myrrh and musk
Through hells of Neptune and Mars,
Across the blazing desert of Time
And out to an Ocean of Stars.

Drift with me on the Sea of Night
To the crêpe-hung halls of Persephone;
On a bed of skulls and a cushion of wraiths,
Two screams embracing in Fire and Death,
Silver crushed by iron and gold,
Lace draggled through wet clay,
Moonlight shattered by trumpets and bombs,
Perfume over a ghoul’s breath.

(Previously published in Palace Corbie # 5 (vol 3, no 1, 1994); published by Merrimack Books)

Every night, behind my sickly, tireless eyes I see again
Some poor devil crawling over slimy, blood-soaked dirt,
Drooling out his lungs from his nose and shattered mouth
In gurgling whimpers of stringy yellow snot --
Take your bellowing, smugly pious, patriotic preachers home, Jack;
They aren’t welcome here.
Sherman was right: war is Hell;
It’s cruel enough to drag us off to slaughter
And be slaughtered for you aristocratic monsters.
Don’t expect us, as well, to believe your fucking lies
About Honor, Duty, Country, Faith and Glory.
I’ve seen too many faces reconstructed
In green and waxy, reeking, maggoty pus --
Too much of entrails dragging ink-blue on the ground,
Tripping up their crawling owners --
And black-marketeers growing fat and smiling
Over the mewling agony that once was living men --
Laughing, laughing at our folly
Of obeying princes who never gave a damn
About the evil cost in lives and pain and flesh
Of the wars that clothe them in their silks and lace
And fill their fucking coffers with fucking bloody gold.

She had never liked traveling by railroad, anyway; this journey was a nightmare, and to compound her misery, it went via the slowest, most run-down of rail “services” imaginable. As one of her traveling companions – however accidental that companionship may have been – had joked earlier, “It’s a proper road to Hell, it is – but where are all the good intentions it was supposed to be paved with? I can’t believe it ever had any good intentions!”

Ha. And ha. Very funny, Kate. Wish I had your sense of humor . . . can’t see anything funny in it at all, myself, though.
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“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

– John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton,1887


“‘ –the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Amen.’” Quietly the priest closed his Bible. Looking up, he saw that the hands of the old-fashioned institutional clock that hung high on the cinder-block southern wall of the room stood at 25 minutes of 13 o’clock. From the grilled window beside it, nearly as high on the wall, putrescent, curdled early-afternoon light poured into the room, almost bile-colored from the pollutants that made the air over the San Francisco Bay megalopolis a deadly, toxic, mutagenic stew. He looked back at the young girl who trembled like a terrified rabbit in the restraints binding her tightly to the high-backed metal chair, cutting cruelly into her wrists and ankles. Pity clouded his eyes; he turned away, stifling a sob, and looked instead at the Governor, all too aware of the AK-47s carried by the guards in the corridor. He could do nothing whatsoever to help the girl. anything he tried would be utterly wasted effort, simple suicide without even the saving grace of the sacrifice of self for the good of another. “Governor Montrose, please, please – in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the pity of his Holy Mother, can’t you –?”
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A couple of early evenings ago I was out on my porch, six stories up, when a dragonfly came by! She (probably, though you never know) hovered by the blossoms on my tomato plants while I held my breath, not wanting to frighten her away. After maybe five minutes, she turned and went zooming on to the next porch, or wherever it was. She was so lovely, with a beautiful, slim sky-blue/cyan body trimmed in touches of gold.

This afternoon, I was down by the landscaping at the back of my building, looking at the hydrangeas, which are just gorgeous, when another cyan dragonfly came by, checking out the plants. That wasn't as much of a surprise as the one who visited my porch, becauise of the lake nearby. The lake is edged with plenty of dragonfly-friendly habitats, and it's possible both dragonflies came from there, and maybe returned there when the day was done.

They're like iridescent flying jewels in a host of colors, depending on the species.

I just got the following email from my representative in Congress, Jay Inslee (Jay.Inslee@mail.house.gov). Frankly, I have no idea how this will play out. It sounds good, at least at first glance. But you never know. Anybody know more about this?

The email:

Inslee Update: Internet Radio Preservation

July 10, 2009

Dear --

This week, after a long fight, internet radio broadcasters are finally safe from being forced to pay the impossibly high royalty rates that had threatened to destroy this new and promising media platform. This dispute has affected hundreds of thousands of Washington State residents, and millions more across the country who listen to streaming audio broadcasts on internet sites like Pandora.com and home-grown Washington broadcasters Hollow Earth Radio.

In the last few years, 40 million Americans have come to depend on the growing number of internet radio broadcasts of music and independent news programming. But until this week, an unfortunate ruling by a government panel has threatened this potentially revolutionary technology. In 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) raised proposed music royalty rates to an impossibly high level - even higher than the rates that artists and music labels had requested. The CRB arbitrarily set the cost to play songs and other copy-written content so high that even artists and copyright holders feared it would put this potential new revenue stream out of business! Under the ruling, some small webcaster estimated royalties could cost them the equivalent of 300 percent of their revenue.

For several years, I have worked to facilitate an agreement between webcasters, copyright holders, and the CRB. For many months, a coalition of webcasters has been in negotiations with SoundExchange, the clearinghouse that represents artists and labels to collect internet music royalties from webcasters. However, the problematic ruling by the CRB had to stand until an act of Congress could overturn it. That is why, in this Congress and in the last one, I introduced the Webcaster Settlement Act and got it passed into law. The bill gave broadcasters and copyright holders the key to their own destiny, effectively allowing an agreement they reach between themselves to override the two-year-old ruling of the CRB.

Now, the Webcasters Settlement Act is working as it was designed. On Tuesday, the first three webcasting companies announced they have struck a landmark deal with SoundExchange to share a maximum of 25 percent of their total revenue in the form of royalties to artists. The deal also gives favorable rates to small webcasters like Hollow Earth and Seattle's temporarily dormant Oseao.com. Webcasters and copyright holders needed the freedom to negotiate and craft a royalty rate structure that's fair for all impacted parties. I'm happy to see that these parties have taken that opportunity granted by the Webcaster Settlement Act and reached an agreement which will benefit both sides as well as the public, who can now expect reliable webcasts as an important alternative to traditional broadcast radio.

It is a great indication of the flexibility and strength of digital commerce that copyright holders and new media professionals have come together to their mutual benefit and the benefit of internet radio users. This cacophony of unique voices and sounds strengthens our culture and civil discourse, even as independently-run traditional media outlets are on the verge of becoming endangered species. I believe strongly that Congress has a role to protect and promote media diversity, including local radio broadcasting as well as web-based broadcasting.

My two tomato plants are thriving. They need about a gallon and a half of water each every day that is warm and clear -- otherwise their leaves lose turgor and they start to get sick. That's okay -- they're beautiful plants. The older plant is loaded down with green tomatoes, and small green tomatoes have begun to appear on the younger one. Oddly enough, it's the younger plant that has more biomass and greater extension. Maybe it's because my chair on the porch is right next to the younger plant, whereas I couldn't get a chair in among the other plants for anything. So I'm always talking to the younger plant and petting it and telling it how beautiful it is. It now is about twice the size of the older plant, though it doesn't have anything like the amount of fruit on its branches as the older plant.

I've been neglecting my hydrangea, geraniums, polka-dot plant, and avocado plant, in terms of talking to them and stroking their foliage. All my plants are well-watered and -fed, but most don't get the quality time with me that the younger tomato plant does. I'll have to go out of my way to pay attention to the other plants now.