Thoughts For A Saturday Morning

Well, things are going well enough with Molly the Temp Dog (especially now that Mr. Ether has been taking her to the barky park to run) that she will be with us until February. I went to pick up her stuff from the house at which she was staying before, and the person I talked to there was wearing a "Not My President" t-shirt.

This set me thinking about the little man who is not my president. My first thought was, "He's never been my president." One thing that really bothers me is, how after 9/11™, the airwaves and print media were filled with people who should have known better saying things like, "We have to support him. He's our President."

There are a couple of prominent examples: The cartoonist/humorist Ted Rall wrote an essay after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, saying something to the effect of, "They attacked us. We can't just turn the other cheek." To which I said, "Why not?" It's easy to be anti-war when there isn't a war on. It is extremely hard to be anti-war at the outset of a war, yet that is exactly what Jesus was preaching. Ted Rall took the coward's road, and I have not been able to enjoy his writing since then.

The other example is the NPR talking head (or is it a talking voice when it's on the radio?) Scott Simon, who identified himself as a Quaker and then spoke eloquently in favor of the bombing of Afghanistan. The effect this had was to give the general notion that the majority of Quakers (and for those of you who may not know, the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers is one of the historic peace churches) supported the invasion, which was absolutely not the case. I had a colleague say to me, "But the Quakers think the invasion is a good thing!" It was appalling. I have heard that Scott Simon made peace with his Monthly Meeting, but I have had a hard time making peace with Scott Simon! (Which probably isn't very Quakerly.)

So now it is seven years later, and opposition to the war and to the policies of BushCheneyInc. has grown exponentially, a trend for which I am truly grateful. But sometimes I am angry, furious, enraged, thinking "How could you NOT have known then?" There were many people who know how bad it all was and tried to speak out, but there were so many more -- thinking, progressive people -- who practiced self-censorship (the worst kind) and wished that the rest of us would do the same. People for whom, literally overnight, the president who stole the election became "my President."

Just look at the mess we're in now. My younger daughter talks all the time about how she is going to move to Europe when she's old enough. And though it breaks my heart to contemplate it, I hope she does! It feels as if, in the last seven years, my children's future has evaporated. Poof! Gone.

My mood matches the November weather outside. Cold. Grey. Half-hearted drizzle.

Moving right along with Saturday morning thoughts -- although now it is eleven minutes past noon -- I finished reading Terry Pratchett's Making Money. As I said before, I love his books. When I say that, people often respond, "I tried reading one of them once, but I couldn't get into it." And to all you TP nay-sayers, I say "Try again!" But don't begin at the beginning. His earlier Discworld books, such as The Color of Magic, are not nearly as good as his more recent offerings. So here are a few suggestions:

Going Postal followed by Making Money. (They go together, sort of.)
The Monstrous Regiment
The Wee Free Men, followed by A Hat Full of Sky.
Small Gods

Pratchett nerds go to L-Space and read the books following characters they like, instead of necessarily reading the series chronologically. The characters I most like to follow are Sam Vimes (a cop) and Granny Weatherwax (a witch.) For you librarians out there, Pratchett has created one of the most memorable librarians ever. Ook! If you like zombies, werewolves, trolls, vampires, and dwarves and believe in affirmative action, you may like these books.

I'll leave you with a passage I enjoyed in Making Money. The background is, an ancient army of golems has descended on the city of Ankh-Morpork. Lord Vetinari is the city Patrician, who may or may not be a tyrant. The city is in an uproar over what to do.

"Any of the other cities would attack us if they had these golems," said Lord Downey, "... Surely a bit of conquest would be in order?"

"An empirette, perhaps?" said Vetinari, sourly. "We use our slaves to create more slaves? But do we want to face the whole world in arms? For that is what we would do, at the finish. The best we could hope for is that some of us survive. The worst is that we would triumph. Triumph and rot. That is the lesson of history, Lord Downey. Are we not rich enough?"

Off to get my hair cut. I pray that I do not come home with "car crash bangs." But that is another post.