Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Saturday, December 11, 2004
WHITE
It began yesterday and continues now, the fine sifting-down of weightless multitudes from white skies onto an ever-whiter earth, traced and divided by the charcoal strokes of trunks, branches, twigs.
Inside, another world of white accumulation: weightless tissues floating from white boxes, sheafs of white paper, computer screens filling with black symbols.
Muffled, damp sounds: traffic in the wet street; a voice; a cough.
Patience argues with pity Both are shocked By a red scarf
A few years back, the rectangular hay bales of my youth were gradually replaced with the big round "shredded wheat" variety; now many farmers wrap those bales in white plastic, like these, striking one more blow to the natural aesthetics of an agricultural landscape. Maybe someone can explain to me why this method is preferable.
A field like this speaks to me of geese feeding on the bits of corn left among the stubble, mice running from the hawk overhead, a deer standing stock-still on the edge, ears flared, ready to bolt. If it were closer to the bottom-land along the river, you might walk it in the late afternoon and find an arrowhead turned up by the farmer's plow. But in an upper field like this one you'll find much older artifacts: smooth rocks the size of an egg, rolled and tumbled beneath the plow of the glacier. Early settlers gathered the bigger, softball-sized cobblestones, set them in mortar, and built houses of them, and foundations for their barns; some are still standing within a few miles of here.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
And a majority of Canadians support it...
The Supreme Court of Canada rules that legalizing same-sex marriage would not violate the Canadian constitution. (BBC)
The judges said that the federal government's proposed definition of marriage as "the lawful union of two persons" would not violate the constitution. However, they stopped short of saying that the Canadian constitution actually required the government to allow gay marriage across the country...Gay marriage is already legal in six of the 10 Canadian provinces and one of its three northern territories, but it remains illegal in the rest of the country.
You know what? I'm tired. Words aren't coming easily, I've been working a lot and thinking a lot, I've had a cold, and I need some extra sleep. So I'm not going to push myself to write a lot here for a few days, and instead I'll post some pictures, and maybe a poem or two. The photograph above was taken last week in central New York; this is the sort of landscape that will forever say "home" to me. I can not only see this particular place, turning myself in an imaginary circle to take in the hills, the pond, the field stretching away to the river, but smell it: the dampness of the earth and the cut cornstalks, the pungent barn, the prickling in my nostrils from the cold air. And I can feel the thinly frozen earth: the slight crunch of the ice on top of the mud in the furrows of a field as the hardness gives way under my feet, and in the air overhead, hear the cry of a hawk; in the distance, the lowing of a cow.
Last week, Pica wrote a post about the decline of American fiction that got some very interesting and thoughtful comments. Today, elck wrote about his favorite novels, and the commenters are not only piling up titles that they recommend, but talking about changes in fiction writing - it's all fascinating and I urge other readers to take a look and join the conversation. Which reminds me - I haven't updated my own "book notes" (linked at left, after the list of blogs) for nearly a year. Now there's a memory exercise to tackle...
Sunday, December 05, 2004
A few days ago we received the November “Parliamentary Bulletin” in our mailbox. The MP (Member of Parliament) for our district is Gilles Duceppe, who also happens to be the leader (chef) of the Bloc Quebecois. In his report for November, he talks about how the Prime Minister, Paul Martin, of the Liberal Party, promised to address “inequalities” in the way funds are distributed to the different provinces. There is a surplus of funds, and Quebec is on the short end of what was promised. Duceppe doesn’t mince words: “Decidedly, the new era of cooperation that Paul Martin announced with great pomp is already still-born…he has ample means to address the inequalities, but he doesn’t want to do so voluntarily.”
I’m impressed with the determination of the Bloc Quebecois to tenaciously represent the interests of the province, and also with how much power the party actually has: in the current Canadian House of Commons, there are 134 Liberal MPs, 99 Conservatives, 54 Bloc Quebecois, 19 NDP, and 2 Independents. The four parties represented all are legitimate players in Canadian politics who help frame the ongoing debate about priorities, and who hold the ruling party to accountability. I’m very much a new observer here, but it seems to me that the level of debate in Canada is generally higher, more public, and stoops less to the personal attacks we’re so used to in the US – politicians stay on topic, and seem to see themselves as representatives of their constituencies’ best interests (although I've heard a lot of criticism of the Liberals as waffling moderates who talk a good game but don't necessarily accomplish much.)
One of those interests in Quebec, particularly, is the environment. On the Bloc Quebecois website one of the hot topics is a debate about a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposal to greatly enlarge the St. Lawrence Seaway between Montreal and Lake Ontario to allow the passage of Panama-Canal size boats. The party is very vocal about their opposition to this (“Touche pas a mon fleuve!”). They are also proud of recently obtaining an amendment to a law which will levy fines on marine polluters whose actions could harm migratory birds. And imagine my surprise when I opened the inside of Gilles Duceppe’s report, and found that it was devoted to greater awareness of organizations working in our district to protect and improve the environment: groups such as VeloQuebec, which promotes the use of bicycles; EcoQuartier, which tries to educate and involve citizens in beautifying the urban environment and increasing recycling; EquiTerre, which promotes equitable trading and ecological commerce as a choice available to consumers; and – believe it or not – Greenpeace. There was also a sidebar of facts about OGM, the French acronym for GMO (genetically modified organisms) and how different countries are responding. Can you imagine an American political party, let alone the dominant one (which the BQ certainly is in Quebec) endorsing Greenpeace, or the use of bicycles, or coming out strongly against GMOs? I do sometimes feel like I’ve dropped down Alice’s rabbit hole into a different time and space – but it also shows what can happen when a population insists that the political system support sustainable practices and wise decisions about the future.
I’m still very far from understanding how we might bring some of this awareness and involvement to a greater percentage of the American population, but I certainly hope to learn more about how and why it works here. For one thing, when a country is not feeding a military machine and consumed with fighting terrorism, and when people feel their basic needs are sufficiently met, there tends to be money and time to talk about quality of life. And here people seem to see quality of life not so much as one’s personal lifestyle measured in goods and money with which to impress others, but something that is shared and for which they are jointly responsible. There are a lot of people in the US who would agree with that, but as Rana points out, we are neither heard nor organized – not yet anyway.
