SUNDAY GOOD NEWS

Raging Grannies

Having finished my last Sunday series awhile back (see People Who Knock Me Out in sidebar), I’m going to start a series on my 66th birthday today to honor the good news we never see in that box in our living room. As a grandmother myself, I thought I’d begin with a group of my peers who are out there in all our communities raising hell on behalf of peace, the environment, the poor, and everything else good you can think of.

The Raging Granny “movement” started in Victoria, BC (hats off to Canada once again) in 1988 and has since spread around the world. You can probably Google your local group (they call them gaggles). ‘The Granny Grapevine’ newsletter editorship rotates among the gaggles. It is how they exchange songs expressing social concerns, sharing of ideas and record events. The cartoon logo figure of an umbrella-wielding Granny was created by Art Simons from Salt Spring Island, B.C. The entire world of Raging Grannies gets together periodically at Un-Conventions. Bet you haven’t seen this on your local TV news station – just within the past 24 hours the BBC reported the arrest of five Grannies and four reporters for attempting to enlist at a military recruitment center in Tucson, Arizona to go to the war in Iraq so that their grandchildren could come home. They’re due in court Monday. Well, it isn’t exactly my style of protest – wearing elaborate hats and garish costumes out in public – but I have the deepest respect for what they’re doing and I can picture my mother (the extravert in our family) happily among them. Today as I add a few more grey hairs to my collection, I’ll wear those bright colors in my heart.

Deep Thought: “Instead of a welcome mat, what about just a plain mat and a little loudspeaker that says “welcome” over and over again?”
Today I am grateful for: Finishing the research for Chapter 9 of my story and starting to write.
Guess the Movie: “Why, anybody can have a brain. That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven’t got: a diploma.” Answer: Wizard of Oz, 1939. Winner: thenarrator.
Liberals Gather to ‘Demand Answers’
Venues Include Parties, Town Hall Meeting, Convention
by Kelly St. John
The political left came out in full force across the Bay Area on Saturday.
In Berkeley, they explored the spiritual side of being liberal. In Oakland, they blasted the Bush administration over the war in Iraq at a town hall meeting with Rep. Barbara Lee. And all over the region, Bush bashers heard former Ambassador Joseph Wilson rip into Karl Rove via conference call.
Such a harmonic convergence of activism could almost be dubbed “liberal bliss” day — if everyone weren’t so fighting mad. (Rest of article here.)
End of Day:
You cannot believe how close I came to apoplectic fit last night when my DSL disconnected and after an hour of struggling I had to call tech support, which I discovered has been outsourced to The Phillipines so that not only did the tech have an accent and spoke quickly but I totally could not hear him. In the end, I swore at him and hung up and went to bed. Then this morning I calmly did what worked once before – unhooked absolutely every cord on the back of every machine around and including my computer and plugged it all back in. Voila!

FRIDAY FIVE

Appetizer
What kind of car do you drive? If you could make an even trade for any other car, what would you want to drive?
A 1998 Chevy Prizm – here’s an exact photo. I thought it was a pretty darn good buy and trusted the seller because he’s a local TV sportscaster. I’m learning it’s a little more fragile than I thought – some of the interior is already kind of shredding up, for example, and there’s a strange knock at high speeds with weight in the car. But it could be worse. Here’s what I’d drive if I could, though my car would never trade for it – a 1998 Lamborghini Diablo Roadster with that guy in it and wearing a long neck scarf that would blow out the side.
Soup
Take your phone number and add each number together separately (example: 8+6+7+5+3+0+9=38) – what’s the total?
31 (how esoteric is that)
Salad
When were you last outside, and what were you doing?
We’re having a lovely low-grumbling thunderstorm in the murky Portland Oregon morning so I went outside to push the back porch furniture in from the edge and the lawn mower under shelter and also bring the lounge chair I sun in under the porch roof. It was still just dawn.
Main Course
What is your favorite restaurant, and what do you usually order there?
Oh My God – I just discovered a restaurant to die for in John’s Landing. It’s the Cafe Duberry, 6439 SW Macadam, 503-244-5551. It’s been there for years but I only went for the first time recently with a gaggle of van-riding art show visiting seniors for brunch and had a $14 scallop and shiitake mushroom omelet thing that was worth every penny. Everything is made fresh there and it’s a little, divy, European bistro with an upstairs and downstairs and some tables outdoors. I’m so hoping to go back there soon. Of course, a close second is right in my neighborhood – Fat Albert’s is only breakfast/brunch – tiny, rumpled, great service, scrumptious food, not expensive.
Dessert
Name 3 things in which you occasionally indulge.
Haagan-dazs ice cream bars lately. Blueberries in season. Oh, it doesn’t say food – rings, silver, turquoise.

Deep Thought: I remember I was hammering on a fence in the backyard when Dad approached. He was carrying a letter or something in his hand, and he looked worried. I continued to hammer as he came toward me. “Son,” he said, “why are you hammering on that fence? It already has plenty of nails in it.” “Oh, I’m not using nails,” I replied. “I’m just hammering.” With that, I returned to my hammering. Dad asked me to stop hammering, as he had some news. I did stop hammering, but first I got a couple more hammers in, and this seemed to make Dad mad. “I said, stop hammering!” he yelled. I think he felt bad for yelling at me, especially since it looked like he had bad news. “Look,” he said, “you can hammer later, but first-” Well, I didn’t even wait to hear the rest. As soon as I heard “You can hammer,” that’s what I started doing. Hammering away, happy as an old hammer dog. Dad tried to physically stop me from hammering by inserting a small log of some sort between my hammer and the fence. But I just kept on hammering, ’cause that’s the way I am when I get that hammer going. Then, he just grabbed my arm and made me stop. “I’m afraid I have some news for you,” he said. I swear, what I did next was not hammering. I was just letting the hammer swing lazily at arm’s length, and maybe it tapped the fence once or twice, but that’s all. That apparently didn’t make any difference whatsoever to Dad, because he just grabbed my hammer out of my hand and flung it across the field. And when I saw my hammer flying helplessly through the air like that, I just couldn’t take it. I burst out crying, I admit it. And I ran to the house, as fast as my legs could take me. “Son, come back!” yelled Dad. “What about your hammer?!” But I could not have cared less about hammering at that point. I ran into the house and flung myself onto my bed, pounding the bed with my fists. I pounded and pounded, until finally, behind me, I heard a voice. “As long as you’re pounding, why not use this?” I turned, and it was Dad, holding a brand-new solid-gold hammer. I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes and ran to Dad’s outstretched arms. But suddenly, he jumped out of the way, and I went sailing through the second-story window behind him. Whenever I hear about a kid getting in trouble with drugs, I like to tell him this story.
Today I am grateful for: The ability to slow down
Guess the Movie: “Listen. I work for the CIA. I am not a spy. I just read books! We read everything that’s published in the world. And we… we feed the plots – dirty tricks, codes – into a computer, and the computer checks against actual CIA plans and operations. I look for leaks, I look for new ideas… We read adventures and novels and journals. I… I… Who’d invent a job like that?” Answer: Three Days of the Condor, 1975.
Wife of Nominee Holds Strong Antiabortion Views
by Richard Serrano
WASHINGTON — While Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.’s views on abortion triggered intense debate on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, there is no mistaking where his wife stands: Jane Sullivan Roberts, a lawyer, is ardently against abortion. (Rest of article here.)
End of Day: 9:15 pm
+ = If all goes well and I don’t die in my sleep, I’ll be a year older tomorrow.
- = I’ll be a year older tomorrow.

THURSDAY WHATEVER

London Tube Stations Evacuated

Guess if you’re watching CNN you know about this already. I was checking the cybernews before I set off for work and picked it up as it was happening so turned on the TV to follow. Don’t have time to stay and watch but will be checking from work. Here’s the progressing story. By the way, my mind is more of a sieve in the summer heat, but did anybody hear the motives for the recent bombings in London. I saw them tracking down the four guys and determining their descent, etc. but never really heard much more. I’m telling you, how much longer can it be before this begins to happen here?

Deep Thought:: It’s funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating.
Today I am grateful for: Any sleep I can get
Guess the Movie: “There is a harsh truth to face. No way I’m gonna make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole. Terrible thing, to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won’t have to be afraid all the time. Only one thing stops me. A promise I made to Andy.” Answer: Shawshank Redemption, 1994. Winner: sherab_zangmo.
Nomination Vexes Liberals, Women
Loss of 2nd female voice is seen as cause for concern
by Mike Dorning and Andrew Martin
WASHINGTON — President Bush’s nomination of Judge John Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court left America’s first female justice among the American women who felt at least slightly let down.
“I am disappointed, in a sense, to see the percentage of women on our court drop by 50 percent,” Sandra Day O’Connor told The Associated Press in Spokane, even as she praised the president’s nominee for her replacement as “first-rate.” (Rest of article here.)
End of Day: 9:14 pm
+ = Thunderstorm coming hopefully.
- = Muggy muggy hot.

WEDNESDAY MOVIE

Bus 174

On June 12, 2000, a young Brazilian named Sandro do Nascimento stepped onto Bus 174 in the heart of Rio de Janeiro intent on a simple robbery and all hell broke loose. Over the next two hours he became trapped at the center of a televised drama a nation watched (not unlike the white Bronco chase in our own country), while the cops and swat teams bumbled their attempts to bring what turned into a hostage crisis to an end. In this riveting documentary that came out in 2003, director Jose Padilha intersperses the story of Sandro from the death of his mother before his eyes at age 6 leaving him an orphan, to his life as a street kid barely surviving at times, turning to drugs, and witnessing the massacre of seven of his friends on the steps of Candelaria Church by the police. Now, on the bus, his anguish and reluctance to actually kill emerge, as he holds a gun on his 12 hostages, mostly women, and paces back and forth clutching one or another of them in front of him and screaming curses at the police who have gathered in huge force outside the bus. Though the police have a clear shot at him many times during the siege, they never take a shot because they can’t get clear orders. I won’t tell the details of how it all turns out, but we meet the hostages (as they are interviewed in clips between actual scenes of the drama) and learn about the hell of Brazilian prisons as the life of a doomed child lurches towards its conclusion in a way you realize was 99% likely to happen from the day of his mother’s death. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my favorite film review site, Rotten Tomatoes, give a film a 100% approval before, but they gave it to this one. And I do too.

Deep Thought: “If you ever feel like you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown, just follow these simple rules: First, calm down; second, come over and wash my car; third, shine all my shoes. There, isn’t that better?”
Today I am grateful for: The sky
Guess the Movie: “Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them – we can love completely without complete understanding.” Answer: A River Runs Through It, 1992. Winner: thenarrator.
Was Iraq a Factor in UK Bombs? Lawmakers Wonder
by Mike Peacock
LONDON – British politicians of all shades have united since London’s bomb attacks but some are beginning to break ranks, wondering whether Tony Blair’s backing for war in Iraq may have been a factor. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on London’s transport network, which killed at least 52, only mavericks like firebrand George Galloway dared criticize the prime minister. (Rest of article here.)
End of Day: 9:23 pm
+ = #10 day weatherwise.
- = The dentists says, “So if you keep that crown in instead of having a crown-lengthening surgery and replacing it and it falls out and you inhale it into your lungs it could be Serious and entail surgery, but of course I’ve never seen that happen in my 30 years as a dentist,” which of course puts me right between a rock and a hard place.

MONDAY BOOK

Peace is Every Step
Thich Nhat Hanh

Browsing in the bookstore yesterday, I found myself in front of the Buddhism section looking for something by the little Vietnamese monk who is a peace activist and lives in the Plum Villlage sangha in France, having been banned from his home country because he dared to encourage both sides in the Vietnam War – North and South – to reconcile. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by none other than Martin Luther King, Jr. and has more than 80 books in print . The more I hear about bombs and terrorism, the more I want to learn how to do peace. And this is the teacher who would know if anyone would. The foreward is by the H.H. Dalai Lama who says:

Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way…Peace must first be developed within an individual. And I believe that love, compassion, and altruism are the fundamental basis for peace.

In a speech in Berkeley in 2001, Thich Nhat Hanh said:

Responding to violence with violence is injustice, not only to the other person but also to oneself. Responding to violence with violence resolves nothing; it only escalates violence, anger and hatred. It is only with compassion that we can embrace and disintegrate violence. This is true in relationships between individuals as well as in relationships between nations. Many people in America consider Jesus Christ as their Lord, their spiritual ancestor and their teacher. We should heed His teachings especially during critical times like this. Jesus never encourages us to respond to acts of violence with violence. His teaching is, instead, to use compassion to deal with violence. The teachings of Judaism go very much in the same direction. Spiritual leaders of this country are invited to raise their voices, to bring about the awareness of this teaching to the American nation and people. What needs to be done right now is to recognize the suffering, to embrace it and to understand it. We need calmness and lucidity so that we can listen deeply to and understand our own suffering, the suffering of the nation and the suffering of others. By understanding the nature and the causes of the suffering, we will then know the right path to follow.

The violence and hatred we presently face has been created by misunderstanding, injustice, discrimination and despair. We are all co-responsible for the making of violence and despair in the world by our way of living, of consuming and of handling the problems of the world. Understanding why this violence has been created, we will then know what to do and what not to do in order to decrease the level of violence in ourselves and in the world, to create and foster understanding, reconciliation and forgiveness. I have the conviction that America possesses enough wisdom and courage to perform an act of forgiveness and compassion, and I know that such an act can bring great relief to America and to the world right away.

This little book I am going to be dipping into each evening on my back porch through the summer is just one example of his down-to-the-basics approach to inner peace. Now that I’m on the downhill slope of my life, I truly want to learn how to drop the thoughtless speech and actions that come out of me each day and find more silence and more smiles.

Deep Thought: “Whenever I hear the sparrow chirping, watch the woodpecker chirp, catch a chirping trout, or listen to the sad howl of the chirp rat, I think: Oh boy! I’m going insane again.”
Today I am grateful for: Sinuses
Guess the Movie: “Hello, can I help you?” “I was in here yesterday, you wouldn’t wait on me.” “Oh.” “You people work on commission right?” Yeah.” “Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping.” Answer: Pretty Woman, 1990. Winner: sherab_zangmo.
North Korea Okays talks as rice lands in China
by George Gedda
The Associated Press
9 July 2005
BEIJING (AP) – Ending a yearlong boycott, North Korea agreed on Saturday night to resume international talks this month about its nuclear weapons program, a senior U.S. official said. (Rest of article here.)
End of Day: 8:35 pm
+ = Weather clearing up for sun.
- = However it’s going to the 90′s in a few days.

SATURDAY PHOTO
(See sidebar for others)

Flowers and Fruit (1860)

Roger Fenton (1819-1869)

Albumen print from wet collodion negative, 350x430mm

Roger Fenton only worked as a photographer for 11-12 years, but during that time he became the most famous photographer in Britain. Photography had really only been invented just 10 years before that. He was the first official photographer to the British Museum and one of the founders of the Royal Photographic Society. He was the son of a rich Parliament member, who earned a Master of Arts degree and took up painting first, studying in France. When he was 23, he returned to England to study law but kept painting. He married happily and was really kind of dabbling in various interests in the way wealthy people do, when he discovered his major talent was photography. His first commission was to travel to Russia to photograph architecture, and then he was sent to cover the Crimean War in his early 30’s, becoming the first war photographer to cover a war from beginning to end. When he returned to London he did a series posing men and women in Orientalist costumes. He followed this with a series of still lifes that achieved technical perfection (like the one shown here). Photography had been considered a worthless hobby until then, and he began to attempt to elevate it to an art form. Finally, when he was 43 years old, saddened by the commercial turn photography was then taking, he suddenly retired from photography, auctioned off all his equipment and worked the rest of his life as a lawyer, never taking another photograph. He died at age 50. (Read more about him here.)

Deep Thought: “I wish scientists would come up with an ear of corn that was big and round, because then when you were eating it, it’d be fun to make chew marks in the shape of continents.”
Today I am grateful for: Seashells
Guess the Movie: “The humans have tried everything. Now it’s up to us dogs, and the twilight bark.” Answer: 101 Dalmations, 1961. Winner: SupremeSpleen.
Biodiesel is Willie’s Surprise Drivetime Hit
When country singer Willie Nelson goes on the road, his tour bus is fueled not by petrol but by biodiesel. Now he has launched his own version, BioWillie, at a truck stop near Austin, and customers are queuing up to buy it.
Andrew Gumbel reports from Carl’s Corner, Texas (Rest of article here.)
End of Day: 9:02 pm
+ = Strategic yardwork accomplished.
- = Weird neighbors.

THURSDAY WHATEVER

In the very early hours of today’s morning I awoke and found something pointless to worry about keeping me awake, so I turned on the TV to distract myself and discovered it was happening again – brazen coordinated attacks in the center of a major world city with deadly results. Several blasts in the London underground tube system and one on a doubledecker bus during morning rush hour. This a day after London won the 2012 Olympics location bid and the G8 Summit was starting up in Scotland with plenty of protesting going on there as well. Since then my day has been so crammed with other commitments that I’ve just caught glimpses of the fallout – Tony Blair looking pretty dang shaken up and giving one of those stiff upper lip British speeches, the voice of GWB on the car radio talking about those hideous people who kill innocent civilians (hmmmm….living in a glass house?), the usual shellshocked victims careening around the streets. So far, and maybe I’ve missed it, I’ve not heard any credible talk about any particular group taking responsibility for the attack. MI5 is probably freaking out about now at their failure to head this off. But really, if you go in a cave with a sharp stick and poke the sleeping king kong-size bear (oops, sorry mixed metaphor but you get the idea), what the hell do you expect? Now the bombs have moved just that much closer to our tidy little streets here in the dear old USof A. Time to get that color alert system going again (though apparently Britain had just lowered theirs recently) and start watching every passing face suspiciously. I’ve heard the Sikhs in Britain have already raised an alarm about an expected wave of racism toward themselves and other minority groups in the country. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that Live8 was pushing love for Africa’s poor and sick? Where is the love now? It’s like kids in the sandbox – you knock down my little castle I built and I’ll cream yours. And maybe I’ll just push you right over the edge onto the cold hard dirt outside. Where are the peacemakers now? They better get up to speed fast, because a few more of these and we’ll roll out the draft for sure. Stay tuned.

Deep Thought: “I don’t understand people who say life is a mystery, because what is it they want to know?”
Today I am grateful for: The dentist pasting my crown back in that fell out during my wake-up in the middle of the night hour instead of telling me “well, we’ll just have to pull that baby.”
Guess the Movie: “ Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away.” Answer: Hitch, 2005. Winner: emerging.
Why London, Why Now?
by Patrick Doherty
As I write this, the reports are still coming inon the extent of the casualties from the London subway bombings. The latest AP report says 40 have been killed and 1,000 wounded. There can be no justification for such an attack, which must be condemned and the perpetrators must brought to (British) justice. My condolences go out to the people of London and I can only hope that my friends and former colleagues there are safe. (Rest of article here.)
End of Day: 8:20 pm
+ = No major terrorist attacks today.
- = War of the Worlds a disappointment.