Deborama...

This blog seems to be more and more about obituaries these days. I don't know if it's a sign of my age, or just the fact that it's so easy to post on Facebook that I only post here when I have something personal to say.

Street party in Atlanta

This was last night, outside Ebenezer Baptist Church. From right to left, my son, his girlfriend and a mutual friend. I don't know if the AJC covered this spontaneous street party, but the title link is about the more official Atlanta Dems celebrations.

And here's the story behind this picture, from my son's message to me on Facebook.

You could even post a pic on your blog of me putting the Obama sign on Martin Luther King's grave and talk about how some woman told me it was wrong of me to do it but then thanked me and took a picture. I was confused, but I didn't care. It's what I felt like doing. Because Martin deserved to share in the celebration.

Ain't Nobody Who Can Sing Like Me - a great podcast

I have only listened to three or four podcasts in my life so far. If I had more time I would listen to a lot more. This one was excellent. And by the way, the CD is great too.

Why I am an internationalist

In his numinous and magical novel Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut introduced the idea of "granfalloons". These are random groupings of people who think, erroneously, that they have some shared destiny as a group, and for whom this delusion is a source of suffering and misguided action. Examples, famously, are given, thus:

Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Association of Oddfellows - and any nation, anytime, anywhere.

I think of this statement, which has become a sort of mantra to me over the nearly 40 years since I read Cat's Cradle, literally every time I pass through an airport, see a reference to immigration or international trade, and about the half the time I am watching, listening to or reading the news. Especially when I read about things like this.

Shambo reprieve overturned

A Court of Appeals has upheld the original slaughter order for Shambo, a bull held sacred by a Hindu community in Wales. I know that a lot of people are happy about this ruling, including my most faithful comment poster, DH. And every farmer in Wales, apparently, who were feeling really hard done by. I just have to say that I don't see how anyone could have lived through the Stygian nightmare that was the foot-and-mouth crisis, and seen those hideous piles of burning cows and sheep, and seen the very real grieving tears of the farmers forced to see "in the flesh" and all at once the slaughter of the animals they cared for, and not understand what this case is really about. Ask yourself why it is raising such curious levels of passion for people who aren't Hindus or vegetarians, on the one hand, nor farmers, nor atheists, nor bloodthirsty animal-haters, on the second, third and fourth hands. (Take my husband for example: he called it "obscene" and said it "made him sick".) (See what I did there with the third and fourth hands? A little subversive Hindu humour.)
I submit to you that a cattle farmer has got to harden his heart to the suffering of animals, to a great degree, to do the job he does. And an eater of meat similarly has to be in denial about what goes on, or brazenly proclaim a lack of feeling, as many do. And yet they remain good men (or women as the case may be). When I saw farmers grief-stricken on TV over the slaughter of their herds, it was not just about the money, or their "way of life", it was an awakened compassion for the animals themselves. I must therefore make my position clear: I do not think that religion is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for unpleasant laws. I think this law is one example of a law that was made without consideration of compassion, of what Shakespeare's Portia called "the quality of mercy that is not strained" and it needs refining. Some day, we will all be refined and there will be no herds of cattle that live only for the slaughter, but in the meantime, we do not have to be monsters, or Terminators with no off-switch.

Sacred Bull in Wales is spared by UK court

Shamba the Bull, who lives in a shrine in a Hindu monastery in Wales, was saved from slaughter by a court ruling. The bull has tested positive for bovine tunerculosis, and was under an order to be destroyed. In addition to appealing the order in the traditional way, the monks also set up a blog of the bull's "daily thoughts", launched an internet petition to save him, and put images of him on the internet through a site called "Moo Tube". It is doubtful whether this contributed to the judge's ruling though, which seems based more on the commonsense conclusion that even if he is incurable infected with tuberculosis, which is far from certain, he poses little threat to other animals due to his protected status. Still, I am happy for the bull. And as a closet Hindu, I feel vindicated. Thank you, Welsh judge, for your compassion.

Blogkeeping - a new blog is born

DH's eloquent challenge to the continued existence of the Trident missile system
Today, DH wrote a long and passionate e-mail to our MP about the forthcoming vote on renewing (or not) the Trident missile programme. He sent me a copy of it, and reader, I was blowed away. I had no idea he could write, or argue, like this. He said (also something of a surprise) that he would not object to my posting it on the blog. But I decided it was too good for the ephemeral glimmer of being a Deborama post. I decided he needed his own blog, even if that was the only post he ever did, and I had to set it up AND post it for him. So that is what I have done. I hereby introduce you to The Ramage Letters, a new blog, and here is a quote from "the letter":

I would deplore Conservative support for renewal of Trident in this coming week for the main reason that the decision does not have to be taken this week, this year or this parliament. At the very least, the decision should wait for the current and discredited Prime Minister to leave office, and ideally it would form part of a manifesto commitment in the next general election, thereby giving the British people the opportunity to have say in matters in which, as I say, parliament has a dreadfully meek and compliant record. A referendum would be the ideal solution, since I imagine the average MP to be at least as clueless about the real substantive issues as the average citizen.

Although my main objection to the vote is that it is needless at this time, before you – and other MPs – take a position I hope you have answered the following questions and are prepared to publish your answers after the vote:

At whom are we likely to launch these weapons? What state/quasi-state or geographic area? a) I assume that Europe (including Russia), the Americas, Japan, China and the antipodes are not and are never likely to be viable targets, either because they are always likely to remain allies or are simply too powerful for us to drop a nuclear weapon inside their borders. So that leaves territory in the wider Middle East, Africa or parts of Asia as viable targets for our nuclear weapons because they are too weak to hit back. Surely the world is sick and tired of having the American Bully strutting the globe: do we want really want to have a weapon we can only deploy against the weak and defenceless (when the Americans let us)? Shame on us if we do.

Howard Zinn on the scourge of Nationalism

I found this link (from The Progressive) at Whole Wide World of Fat Buddha. It echoes my feelings on the subject perfectly. In my heart, I belong to a nation called "None" and our anthem is "Don't Fence Me In."

Stop press! Deborama finally comes down against political correctness!

You all know I am a liberal, except in those areas where I am left of liberal. You may not all know it, but my gay-friendly, practicing bisexual, friend of friends of Judy credentials are pretty well established. Nevertheless, when I readthis, my reaction was "Fer christsake, don't you people have better things to do with your time and energy?" I mean, really!

Blogkeeping - my core values

Who is Deborama? I wrote that tongue-in-cheek introduction almost two years ago. Looking back on it, I feel older now, but I find that that's true of anything "funny" that one writes. It probably seemed wise and clever at the time, and when you read it after any passage of time, it seems a little silly. Still, in the tradition of wise fools, there is probably a nugget of truth in it.
My blog has, in the way of blogs, grown up in the 22 months of its existence. It acquired post titles, several new templates, sister blogs, a blogroll, comments, trackbacks, statistics, blogshares value, a google rating, a google search box, and all the detritus and strange attractors that live in the left-hand margin. Amongst that LHM stuff, a fairly recent addition, are links to some of my starring posts. Ever since adding them, I have been thinking about tackling the question of what my blog "is about" which is somewhat related to the question of what I am about. I have decided today to stop procrastinating and do it.
In my blog description, my main areas of interest are prominently listed as politics, sex and religion. I think the fact that I listed "sex" there, just to be consistent, when it is actually a pretty minor part of my blogging interest, is responsible for about 50% of my page hits, and probably 90% of the "false positives" who come here once and never return. I have steadily moved up the ladder for yahoo searches (by far the most numerous on "sex") from three digits to less than 50. In addition to the big three, there are also history, philosophy, humour, literature, et. al. I occasionally also venture into the more macho areas of sport and hard science. Food and books are relegated to separate blogs.
So, without dithering around anymore, here is a segmented list of my major areas of bloggable interest. In some of these I am listing "my position" as a sort of shorthand to point to what interests me in particular. Although I do not strive for "journalistic objectivity" (and in fact don't believe it exists) I do try to present things fairly, and despite being a Scorpio, I have been known to change my mind, even.

• Politics:


• Democracy, how it works, how it mostly doesn't


• The war on terror, especially in Iraq (sort of why I started blogging, although I have never been a "war blog")


• Human rights, international law, freedom of conscience, anti-slavery, migration issues


• Guantanamo, anti-torture, Abu-Ghraib


• Anti-racism (see also History, infra)


• Anti-death penalty


• Religion in politics - anti-establishmentment, pro-choice, anti-theocracy


• British politics, especially New Labour


• Green Party, environmental issues, anarchism (see also History, infra)


• Economic issues, mainly fair trade, globalisation, poverty, homelessness


• Sex:


• Gender identity, sexual identity, GLBT issues


• Sexual/reproductive health, especially women's


• Erotica, pornography, censorship


• Sex and religion, e.g. gay issues in Christian church, female priesthood, Marian Christianity, Mary Magdalene, goddesses


• Religion:


• Gnostic Christianity


• Christian Socialism


• Islam


• Power of the "religious right" in America, arguing with Fundamentalists


• Religious wars and conflicts


• Eastern spirituality, especially Hindu philosophy, yoga and Taoism


• History:


• Labour history (US, British, international)


• British political history


• Civil rights, history of

There are also some things that I don't really blog about, mainly because they are not the sort of things that either make the news or intrude into my daily life, but I am very interested in these things and spend much of my solitary reading and studying on them. This will probably be reflected somewhat in my book choices. They include:

• Gnostic Judaism, Kabbalah, Sabbatianism, Lost Tribes


• The moon (I did blog about it at least once)


• Philosophy, both ancient and modern (and post-modern)


• India, history of


• American civil war


• Soviet Union, history of


• Spanish Civil War


• Military history and theory, especially of WWII


• History of Celtic peoples


• Genealogy


• Codebreaking, secret writing, artificial languages


• Conspiracy theories, occult organisations


• Crime, law enforcement, detective work

Kristi, D-Day and the Insane Anglo Warlord

Not wishing to speak ill of the dead, but the Insane Anglo Warlord has passed on. Gone to join his beloved Ayn in Atheist Heaven, wherever that is.
As I could barely escape noticing, today was the 60th anniversary of D-Day. But my major association with the 6th of June is that it is the day my room-mate Kristi died. This was a life-altering event for me, and not just an isolated trauma, because Kristi was more than just a room-mate.
I met Kristi at a day care centre in downtown Atlanta. My son Carey, who was just seven months old at the time, was occasionally confused with another little boy named Stephen. Stephen was just twelve days older than Carey, and they looked enough alike, as babies, to be brothers. Kristi was Stephen's mother. She was about eight years older than I, which seemed terribly old to me at the time -- she was 35 and I was 27. Another thing we had in common was a need to find better rental housing on a very tight budget. We decided to set up house together. I had a husband and a four year old daughter in addition to Carey; Kristi had Stephen and an elderly dog named Maggie. I didn't like dogs at that time. I am very ashamed to remember how grouchy I was about living with Maggie. We lived all together in a big Edwardian bungalow with two kitchens and a steep back garden, and a garage with an illegal apartment over it that we sublet to an elderly Marxist named Jack. The kids called him "Jack-in-the-back". We were together for almost two years, through the election of the Insane Anglo Warlord, the death of Ayn Rand (ding-dong, the witch is dead!), the murder of John Lennon and the murder of Oscar Romero.
As the world descended into the leftist's nightmare that was the 1980s, Kristi, who had been expelled from the SWP, ostensibly for keeping her bourgeois job as advertising copy-writer, but possibly also for being a closeted Christian, descended into alcoholism and asthma. She was definitely weird, but so ultimately lovable that I began to love her like a sister. It was easy to think of her as like family, because she was screwed up in a similar way to some of my more distant relatives. She never really weaned or potty-trained her boy, and he was sleeping in the bed with her right up to the day she died. Even at the time, I realized that the sudden wrench of losing his mother at the age of two and a half must have been made even worse by the way she was so "unnaturally" close to him. (I put that in quotes because she would argue, passionately, that her non-traditional parenting style was actually more natural. Maybe for a gorilla, I would answer, heartlessly.)
We had huge fights, like the time when my grandfather died while Eric and I were out, and Kristi, who took the call in the middle of polishing off a bottle of cheap red wine, forgot to tell me until several months later. But we had tearful and sincere reconciliations after every one. And we had good times, too. We took our kids swimming on our rare days off, we attended Quaker meetings together. Eric played the piano, and Kristi played the violin, and sometimes we would have a little family party of playing, singing, dancing and drinking wine, and let the kids stay up until they fell asleep on the sofa, the floor and the dog.
But I sort of lied when I said she was my room-mate. Actually, the strain of living with her was tearing me apart and did ultimately destroy my marriage to Eric (doomed anyway, so I don't blame her), In a last ditch attempt to find sanity, which failed so spectacularly that I will never be able to tell the whole tale, Eric and I bought a condominium and moved out; Kristi got a new room-mate. Just two months later, on Sunday, 6 June, 1982, Kristi had a fatal heart failure brought on by her well-known allergy to peanuts and a potluck dinner at the Atlanta Friends Meeting House. At the time she collapsed, she was pushing her son and her huge dog home from the Quaker House in a wonky old baby buggy in 85 degree heat. (I told you she was weird).
This was only the first of several great losses of close friends that I was to suffer in the next two decades. It does no good to dwell on the unfairness of RWR living on exactly 22 years after poor, innocent Kristi, who never hurt anyone deliberately, who hurt herself so badly trying to live through her own faith in love and hope. I know perfectly well that life is not fair like that.

It all came back to me as I watched the D-Day programming today on TV. The thing that always makes me and the old veterans cry is the memory of the young comrades they lost. I thought about how I seemed to age at least 10 years in the weeks following Kristi's death, as my husband and I and her other best friend, D, struggled to settle the affairs of her life, and clear the way for D to adopt Stephen. (She also adopted Maggie, but fortunately that was easier.) And I always feel afresh my own grief, when survivors of a battle, a war, a disaster, struggle with the reality that those who were so close to them, who were just like them, were snuffed out in an instant, often in front of their eyes, and there they are, 10, 20, 60 years later, wondering what that beloved person would be like today. Survivor guilt, and the unbearable knowledge of our own mortality. Or just missing terribly someone who has gone away and won't be back.

A Crime of Stupefying Proportions and Why I don't publish certain pictures

I have just discovered this great new blog: Dave Pollard's How to Save the World. There is a post there with the title A Crime of Stupefying Proportions, with a really gruesome picture from a slaughterhouse. The post, riffing off of a reading of J. M. Coetzee's book Elizabeth Costello, is a long and thoughtful piece about how to react to the overwhelming evil in the world. Here is a longish quote:
"Our world, past and present and probably future, is full of these horrors, this massive tide of suffering and blood. When we show pictures of malnourished children, when we give them money and food to prolong their lives until the next famine or crippling disease, when I force you to look at the picture at the top of this post and tell you that all of these horrors happen millions of times every day, in every neighbourhood on Earth, is that a wake-up call, probably repulsive and probably ineffective but an important service nevertheless, or is it an obscenity, something no one wants or needs to see or hear or learn about?"
I had to bring this up because when I posted about the California fire I was tempted to post pictures, many of which are awe-inspiring, but a little voice kept whispering "disaster porn" in my ear and I just couldn't use the sufferings of others to give my blog some visual punch.
In a related but different dilemma, there is a widely circulating photo of Miss Afghanistan in a bikini. I would really like to post that picture with the question "Is this what the liberation of women looks like?" I would love to get the debate out there, raise a little consciousness. The problem is, my own answer is a resounding "No" so I would be feeding the very flame I want to put out.
But to get back to Dave's original question, I don't have an answer to that either.

Gaming's crack cocaine

I don't really blog about my personal religious beliefs that much, although I am sure they leak out. One way in which I am an ultra-traditional Methodist is in the way I absolutely abhor gambling. This very sad and heartfelt story from a self-confessed gambling addict, illustrates why.

The best lack all conviction

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."


No, I haven't converted to a millenarian sect. My vision is no more apocalyptic than it ever was. But these words from Yeats's "The Second Coming" keep coming back to me. The two stories I have been tracking the most intensely - the upcoming trials at Guantanamo Bay, and the looming schism in Christianity (it's not just the Anglican church, although that's the one on the boil at the moment) over the Godliness, or maybe even the human-ness of homosexuals, have both appeared in headlines today at crisis point.


There is a thread that connects the stories, and that thread is two men, very alike in their positions in the world, and very, very alike in the fury and disappointment and betrayal that their former supporters are now feeling. Those two men are Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both men have revealed themselves as weak and mistaken and the tools of a joined up force embodied in, at present, the US administration of George W. Bush (aka the Smirking Chimp, aka aWol, aka the Shrub Who Stole the Presidency) and the world-wide dangerous cult of Christian right-wing evangelism.


Here is the story of MPs' (both leftist Labour and opposition parties!) fury at the PM for caving in entirely to Bush & Co. over the two British detainees at Guantanamo facing military "trials". Here is the story of liberal Anglicans' pain about the Archbishop caving in entirely to evangelical pressure, even to the point of forcing the resignation of Canon Jeffrey Johns from his appointment to the post of suffragan bishop. Note the similarity. Note the fact that both Blair and Williams have been eloquent champions of such lofty ideals as democracy, radical Christianity, tolerance, uncompromising defence of human rights, and most tellingly, "speaking truth to power". The best lack all convictions. . .

Diabolical thinking: Genetically modified foods

I have a philosophical theory that has been in development for about three decades. It's nothing new, really, the only added value I can claim is, perhaps, emphasis, and a few original applications or examples. The nugget of the theory is : ignorance causes more suffering than malice. Yeah, that's not very original, it sounds sort of Buddhist, but I came to this belief by a route entirely independent of Eastern systems (in fact, within the context of pious but humanist Christianity.) There is a corollary : the main cause of ignorance is the learned tendency towards binary thought patterns. That sounds a bit more technical. Other names for binary thought patterns : black-and-white, either-or, (false or not) dichotomy or "diabolical reasoning." This last one is courtesy M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Travelled, etc.) and stems from a day-long lecture of his that I attended in the mid-1980s, posing as the wife of my Methodist pastor. (Yes, it is an interesting story but I don't have time to go into it here.)

I was reminded of this line of thought when I read this very good commentary about the GM food controversy by Nick Cohen. Not necessarily conscious of following my philosophy but essentially guided by its spirit, I find myself without a side to be on in the GM controversy, just as I have been in the US abortion-rights controversy for many years before.

I like to think of myself as a believer in reason, of a sort of 17th or 18th century type, to be sure. Because it appears to me that sometime in the 20th century, reason, in the popular sense, became irreversibly polluted by diabolical thinking. Now, I happen to believe that genetic modification, after appropriate testing, might be OK in the case of golden rice. I would even eat it myself, not that I need it, being in no danger of nutritional deficiency. But I believe that no amount of testing (not that there has ever been any) will make Monsanto's Round-up Ready soybean, or a terminator gene in any food crop, ethical. By the same token, as a pro-choice partisan in 1970s and 1980s America, I was not allowed to say that late-term abortions do have harmful psychological effects on many who have them. And in the matter of training doctors to perform abortions, there were only two allowable positions: pro-choice - all doctors should be forced to be trained, regardless of their beliefs (and of course training means performing abortions as a student); or pro-life - student doctors will be discouraged from taking the optional training in abortion by the handy and effective means of death threats (which is just one of the many ironies implicit in these people calling themselves "pro-life").

Electoral abuses in the UK

Here is an interesting article (a bit shocking, really) about the abuses of postal voting in UK local elections.


I mentioned here a while back that I am reconsidering my decision not to apply for British citizenship. I had a look at the forms, thoughtfully provided by my darling hubby (thank you, darling hubby!) and noticed that I will have to swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen. I am not thrilled by this idea. When I mentioned it to DH, he suggested that I protest on the basis that Sinn Fein MPs were exempted from having to do the same thing. (Admittedly, their reasons were more, shall we say personal? than mine; mine are almost pure technicality.) I wonder if Quakerism is a valid exemption reason? My aversion to swearing an oath to a human being is more in the line of the Quaker aversion to all oaths generally. When I was quite young, I worked for the state of Georgia briefly (for the University system, in between bouts of being a student) and had to swear a loyalty oath then (to the state of Georgia and the US and their constitutions, I believe it was). I thought it was very archaic, very offensive, very Georgia. Some 25 years later, my son also dropped out of college for a couple of years and worked for the University, and I believe they were still making employees swear the oath.

Who is Deborama?

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a 50 year old (but pretty hot for 50) American woman who lives in the UK. Why do I live in the UK? It's a long story, a love story. (You'll laugh, you'll cry, it will change your life. No really.) But the short version is that 7 years ago, through an unlikely chain of events, I met this British guy through an e-mail pen pal website and somehow, after a brief torrid affair and a horrible breakup and a reconciliation that you wouldn't believe if you read it in a novel, and a few more tiffs and some more reconciliation and some therapy and a trial shack-up, we got married.

I have two adult children who both live in the US - one in Georgia and one in Minnesota. I am very homesick for Minnesota and I miss my kids and I miss a whole load of friends back in the States, but apart from that, and a few other complaints that will probably come out in this log from time to time, I like it here.

Except I can't vote here. I now have taxation without representation, almost 300 years after one of my illustrious ancestors, a Whig politician from Northern Ireland, departed for America and later fought in a war over just that issue. Ironies of history indeed. I used to be "very political". That will show, I am sure.

Other major features of who I am:
I am quite spiritual, some would say religious
I am a Hindu trapped in the body of a Methodist.
In Chinese astrology, I am a dragon.
In Mayan astrology I am also a dragon. Does that make it a consensus?
In western astrology, I have sun in Scorpio, which is a lot like a dragon.
However, my rising sign is Taurus and my moon is in Cancer, so that means I am a dragon who cries a lot.
I am going to become a grandmother soon.
I used to be the secret disciple of a great teacher, but he died.
I then became the unofficial acolyte of his widow, also a great teacher but then she died.
Politically, I am closest to an anarcho-syndicalist. If you don't know what that is, don't be offended, just look it up.

The above are just random chosen factoids about me. They are probably not in fact the things that most define me, but just what I thought of at the time. More later.