Dog lost

The hotel entrance

"Baccarat?"

"Baccarat! Viens!"

Silence. Rapide looked up at me, expecting me to be able to produce Baccarat with my next call. "Où est ta fille, Rapide? Dis-moi. Va la chercher." She looked at me. This is not the dog to help out in an emergency. I have to do everything, including sniff out her daughter. "Bon. Suis moi alors. Baccarat? Allez, Baccarat, viens là. Baccarat!"

Nothing. Just the towering trees at the base of l'Aiguille Verte that is home to les Grands Montets and the Argentière glacier. We stood a little below a branch in the hiking and cross country ski trails. Which did she take? Not the one we did, that much was for certain. Did she head, then, toward the sledding hill past the gondola? Did she head up toward the restaurant nestled in the forest, the one we finally found on our walk the previous evening? Did she slip into the stone and show filled creek that runs down from the glacier into the Arve? Or, did she try to head back along one of the other trails we have walked on our several evenings and mornings?

I have noticed that she knows the forest a little too well now, trotting along several meters ahead, ready to take the first trail that crosses the one we are on. "Baccarat," I must call, "par ici. Viens," before she turns to look at me and trots back to walk on with Rapide and I. She must have lost sight of me and chosen her own path. But which one?

Rapide and I stood there and looked at one another. The decision was only coming from one of us. "D'ac, Rapide. On va aller à la voiture." Baccarat knows that after our walks, it's time for her meals at the car. We headed up past the path to the restaurant, up the highest of the cross country trails, the one that has the steepest rises. Rapide looked worried; I continued to call to Baccarat in the silence of the forest, embarrassed about breaking its serenity for my over-eager dog.

We stopped and talked to everyone with a dog; they were all British. That's par for the course around here. "Have you seen a dog that looks like this one, only more lively? No? Well, if you do, she responds to 'Baccarat', or 'Bacs'. We are staying at the Couronne, if you could bring her back to us. They know her there and will know what to do. Thank you. Thank you so much."

We exited the forest, and I fed Rapide her solitary meal at the car. No sign of Baccarat. The peaks I could finally see all around us could see Baccarat, but they could not tell us where she was, by where she was passing, but this is Baccarat about whom we are talking. I wasn't that worried. Not panicked like the woman in the forest said she was when her dog got lost and showed up on the front stoop just as her husband was heading out to look for her. "That's probably what she will do," I had told her, as much for myself and Rapide. Still, it felt lonely at the car.

We walked over the bridge, past the police car (the village policeman is past retirement age; not much is expected to happen around here), the town hall, post office, tourist office, real estate agency, bank kiosk (our bank, of all things), and crossed the street to the hotel.

"Bonjour, Madame," I said, trying to find the right tone, bright enough to be polite, but not too bright given the circumstances, "J'ai perdu l'une de mes chiennes; vous ne l'aurez pas vu?"

"Mais, j'ai trouvé une chienne devant la porte. Elle attendait là," she indicated the sliding glass door and the stoop on the sidewalk beyond, "pour que quelqu'un ouvre la porte. Je me demandais qu'est-ce qui c'est passé qu'elles se séparent comme ça! Je l'ai fait rentrer, et elle est montée."

Sacrée Baccarat. My telephone rang just at that moment. Sam.

"Mom -- "

"Baccarat is with you."

"Yeah. How did you know?" He sounded puzzled.

"I'll explain."

"I heard a noise, and I opened the door and she was lying there in front of the door to the room."

Sacrée Baccarat.

The question that was left was what would happen the next walk? Would she stick to me like glue, or would she run back home the second she lost sight of me? We didn't have to wait long to find out. Both dogs ran toward the village on the very next walk, having lost sight of me around a bend. I had to tromp back the way I had come, calling to them like a moron in the middle of la Moraine, before they came bounding back up the path from the village, over the little bridge over the creek that runs along the train tracks up to the entrance to the forest by the chalet.

And the next walk? They stayed very close.

Only four more walks, and it will be time to drive back to Mousseaux. Our hearts break, all four of us, Sam, Baccarat, Rapide and I.

This has been the best snow we have ever had, if it hasn't been the sunniest weather. We come happily and gratefully to our home at the Couronne in the mountains, where we share no more than 20 square meters, happy as four clams, for a week and a half, and then the time comes when we have to leave it again, until the next year.

Leave the night walks through the dark forest, the stars just over our heads, when I have to fight the urge to lie down on the snow-covered path and let the earth hold me, watched over by the great pines and larches, the highest peaks and those impossibly bright and close stars, safe because what harm can come to me in this place where all has resisted far more since the begining of time than I have ever been confronted with in my life?

"Sh," they tell me, "you are safe and all is well. Be at peace."

Safe in the valley of Chamonix-Mont Blanc.
....

Life found

Our walks in the forest of la Moraine

This year marks our tenth year coming to the valley of Chamonix-Mont Blanc in the Haute Savoie. I had to make a decision when Sam was little: he would ski or he would not ski. This might not sound like the sort of decision that is particularly weighty, but for a single mother of a 7-year-old boy living on slim means of support, it was a very, very significant decision. I grew up skiing. It's what I did with my father, when he was still there, in my life.

He started me early. I'd only been walking a year when he'd attached my first pair of little unpainted wood skis to my winter boots and took me out to the side yard, the show coming up over my head were it not frozen solid enough from a cold Central New York winter to let him walk backwards on it, pulling me along by my poles, dowels with rounds of wood at the sharp ends. By the next year, or later that same winter, I had graduated to being hauled up the bunny slope between his legs on the J-bar. To say that he was eager to grow a ski partner would be an understatement.

We'd go every weekend, from those first ski school classes to teach me the snowplow down the bunny slope until I mastered Stem-Christie turns and parallel turns and he was gone, and I looked forward to the afternoons when there would be tuna noodle casserole for an early pre-ski dinner, and I'd bundle up and hop in my dad's car the minute he got home from work to go ski for the evening. Mom called me her little Jean-Claude Killy, and never was I prouder.

If you have to lose your father early, then those are the kind of memories to have.

Nothing was ever more beautiful to my eyes than newly fallen snow on forests of pine and fir trees. Snow on anything. On a rare day when it snows in Mousseaux, and I am in a rapture looking at the snow that covers the tips of the gently bent and swaying reeds in the fish basin, I gasp and tell my husband, "Oh, c'est si beau, n'est-ce pas?"

And, he says to me, "Tu trouves ça beau? Je le trouve triste."

Walking along in the dark of nightfall the other evening, at the foot of les Grands Montets and les Choselets, our feet crunching in the cold, pure white snow, I saw a nearly perfectly round tree, its limbs holding the day's snow like an offering to the starry sky. The sky is so black and the stars so bright that you can count the individual stars of the Pleiades right there, just above your head.

"Oh, Sam, isn't it beautiful?" I cringed at myself. He's 17. Maybe he isn't any more moved by trees covered in lacy snow than his stepfather.

"Yeah." You need to imagine that sounding like the person saying it found the sight truly beautiful. I felt such gratitude.

"Really? Audouin finds it a sad sight, he says. I guess you have to grow up seeing it to find it beautiful. But, you didn't. Not really." It didn't snow much in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and it certainly doesn't snow much in Mousseaux sur Seine. It snowed nearly every night of the winter's of my childhood and adolescence, and I would get up in the middle of the night, when everyone else was sleeping, just to sit at the dining room window and watch the snow fall on the front lawn, the street and the front lawns of the houses across the street and listen to the silence.

"You always told me that it was beautiful." I felt another surge of gratitude rise up and fill me.

"Because I told you it is beautiful, that was enough?"

"It's like why people watch TV and enjoy it," he said, "it becomes their reality, watching night after night, and they learn to like it." His, he was saying, was formed, in part, by my own.

If you have to never have a father, then these are the kinds of memories I could help him make.

It's past time to walk the dogs with Sam, who is probably fast asleep. The skiing and the mountain air do it every time.
....

A morning walk with the dogs

In the forest of la Moraine,
at the foot of the Argentière Glacier

Next time, I'll try to be entertaining. I just missed the dogs having one of their jousting mock fights.

The sun is finally out, and I can see the glacier and the peaks from the window of the hotel lounge here in the village. Sam has dug out the car from yesterday's snowfall and must be getting impatient, so I must get ready to head up to the slopes. There was heavy fog and no visibility all morning, and I did the stuff I always do: get up, walk the dogs in their element (snow!), make breakfast and lunch, and get us out the door. This morning, I am the one making him wait, and he just came down mighty grumpy, threatening to keep me waiting every morning until we leave.

I lost my Citibank Visa card yesterday, somewhere on the cross-country ski trails, I am guessing. It must have fallen into the snow when I took my cell phone out to check the time.

Got to call them and have the card cancelled. Joy.
....

CHX

la vallée de Chamonix

We're off to ski (check out the webcams), and there is snow. Lots of snow.

I spent the day yesterday doing everything I hate doing and put off, and off, and off. I:

1) Defrosted the fridge (which in our case is the larger size dorm room fridge... the bigger one is out in the unattached "garage", dirty still),
2) Vacuumed,
3) Washed the (destroyed) slip covers (and put them back on instead of putting that off, too, while the armchair frames get covered with animal fur),
4) Washed the covers from the dogs' cushions for the trip, so they won't smell so much or get as much dog hair in the car, and then smell up the hotel room Sam, the dogs and I share for 9 nights,
5) Washed, folded and -- here's the remarkable part -- put away all the dirty clothes,
6) Repotted the poor uprooted Camelia from the entry court (I don't hate doing that, I just put it off),
7) Grocery shopped and stocked up for our trip (I have learned to make our dinner on a -- what do you call them? Hot plate? -- hot plate (shall we say) in our room... and we save a ton, which helps me feel less guilty for the expense of the 10-day trip skiing in the mountains),

and stuff...

Sam's taking everything out to the car. I have to go put the dog gate back together and put it in place, then the clean cushions, and then the dogs, who have grown considerably (Baccarat, anyway) since their earliest trips in the rear end of the BMW. They have gotten used to the luxury of the old Chrysler Voyager, in which Baccarat claims the middle bench all for herself to snooze or look out the window.

A bientôt de la montagne!
....

The age of aquarius: he remembered

I awoke at 7:30 this morning, the littler cat in my arms, Audouin's hand on my chest where it had come to rest in his sleep, and the sun shining beyond the sheet hung in the window to keep the eyes of the workers from penetrating the privacy of our room, and when I came down after Audouin had gone to the hospital, I found the note above and the following in my email in-box:

At dawn on 14th February the day dedicated to St. Valentine, the patron saint of Love, the Moon in Libra enters the seventh house of relationships. And Jupiter and Mars are aligned in Aquarius in the twelfth house of spiritual transformation.

Forty years ago, the intuitive words of a song called Aquarius brought the dawning of the new age into our collective awareness:

When the Moon is in the seventh house
and Jupiter aligns with Mars.
Then love will rule the planets
and peace will steer the stars

At dawn on 14th February the Cosmos actually embodies this perfect alignment to support our collective manifestation of love and peace and dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

The Aquarian chart of 14th February reveals an incredible concentration of cosmic influences blending with the energies of Aquarius in the twelfth house. Expansive Jupiter and energetic Mars are aligned with the higher purpose of the North Node. The presence of Chiron the wounded healer offers us the opportunity to heal the schisms that have separated us for so long. Neptune emphasizes collective humanitarian movements and the co-creation of social justice. And the presence of the radiant Sun enlightens the entire alignment.

Mercury also in the twelfth house but just beyond the cusp in Capricorn, allies with transformational Pluto to communicate and anchor the Shift throughout our global structures and institutions.

The Moon in Libra in the seventh house emphasizes harmonious relationships.

Venus in Aries in the first house energizes and empowers dynamic co-creativity.

And whilst Saturn the great task master in opposition to Uranus the unexpected awakener is suggesting an ongoing confrontation as the dregs of the unsustainable old paradigm reluctantly give way to the untested hope of the new, their placements in Virgo and Pisces brings practical altruism and visionary inspiration to the transition.

At 7.25am on 14th February - and f or the 18 minutes of the alignment, I invite you, in the universal heart, to add your own intention f or love and peace and to co-create the dawning of the Age of Aquarius to that of the Cosmos.

Hair, the film -- 1979

Maybe the Age of Aquarius was really dawning when we sang along in Susan Lowitz's split-level ranch playroom in 1968, second-graders liberated by song. We graduated high school in 1979, and the musical will be revived in March in this Age of Aquarius, in the year a man with a black father and a white mother took the oath of office as president of the United States, 2009.

I am a Libra. My husband is Aries, ruled by the planet Mars. Maybe we are entering, despite the conflicting signs in the pyrotechnics of our relationship, a time of harmony and understanding,
sympathy and trust abounding.

Then, there is the reconnection to our half-sister, our father's third daughter, bringing a brother-in-law and three nephews (I chatted with 4-year-old Colin, my little twin, on Facebook, "efskjdah fsifsoeh ehsoien"). Elizabeth will see her Monday, after 43 years. I will see her in May, when the peonies are in bloom in the beds at the edge of the top terrace. This was never considered possible, but she says she has been smiling this past week, and that "it has made [her] very happy". I don't use words like "happy", although I do smile. Maybe I will.

How can one doubt now that we are in the Age of Aquarius? Call the astronomers.

I'd like to take the other thing I found when I came downstairs as a sign. There it is, at the top of the post. It only looks like general conditions of repair and payment for the BMW garage. It is actually a Valentine's Day card.

You can tell by the heart and the words, "Valentine's Day".

It is a love note.

You can tell from the words, "I love you".

A very subtle Valentine's Day love note. So subtle that if Wisp hadn't been sitting on it when I stopped to give her a good morning pet, I might have missed it, although I do doubt that I would have put it away without seeing the heart drawn with my O.3 drawing pen on the back of the repair bill for the repairs after the attempted theft of the poor old BMW.

Pst? Have you signed the Courage Campaign petition to invalidate Prop 8, Ken Starr's appalling attack on the gay couples who married in California between May and November 2008, divorcing them? The deadline has been extended; you have until March 2 now, but why not sign today, Valentine's Day?


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.


I resume my story.

I didn't remind him when he left for his day and night on duty at the hospital. I only reminded him that it is his godson Hugues' birthday. 19.

"Oui, j'essayerai de l'appeler de l'hôpital, et ce fut l'anniversaire d'Aude avant hier."

"J'espère que tu as pensé de l'appeler," dis-je, a tiny bit mockingly, thinking to match very considerately his feelings for his first wife.

(Je suis désolée, Aude, mais c'est vrai. Il y a des choses que vous n'auriez pas du faire, et dire. Vous le savez, je le sais.)

"Non, je n'y ai pas pensé." He sounded too normal. There was no mocking. He'd have called his first wife to wish her a happy birthday? The story of the years following their marriage explain why that wouldn't come immediately to mind. I was confused. Aude. Hugues. Godson. Aude... Goddaughter.

"Ah, ça serait gentil de l'appeler, quand-même." I didn't miss a beat. Morning sluggishness of thought covers many things. The world made sense again.

"On ne fêtes pas son anniversaire à jamais quand on devient grand." I thought of those who love to celebrate their birthdays at 50 and gone.

"Ce n'est pas vrai. Les Floris ne fêtent pas les leurs, et ne l'ont jamais fait. Ce n'est pas la même chose." Audouin and his sister put their feet down. No birthday parties. Not even the 50th. I lost on Audouin's 50th. The friends carried the day. I hadn't been around long enough, even though I knew many of them as far back as when he was still married to Aude (the other one). The proof was when my brother-in-law put his foot down in the case of his wife's 40th last year, and the email frenzy that ressembled the French massing in the streets to demonstrate another projet de loi -- Non à pas de fête! Non à pas de fête! -- very suddenly ceased. He'd been around long enough, fathered their four children, tended the seasonal pruning needs of his parent's-in-law's two properties' gardens (and I'm stretching the word for the one in the southwest) to put his foot down and not receive collective punishment of our many friends and large family.

But, that's not really true from the one family photo album I finally saw at my in-law's house at New Year's. My mother-in-law has rarely had a camera, battery and film in the same place at the same time for the important occasions, so this album seemed something like a miracle. A series of baby photos and first birthdays, with a growing number of older siblings surrounding the baby in front of the cake. I had looked for give-away traits in the one-yea- old faces to see if I could tell which baby it was from the adult I know, without reading the caption, or identifying the siblings present, either. I couldn't.

And, my husband does not celebrate Valentine's Day. I am not sure he has ever left a "mot" [note] to mark the occasion. That's so American. So Hallmark. So commercial.

Written on the back of the BMW garage receipt of payment for the car I recovered and drove yesterday for the first time in 3 months today, that is so Audouin.

I still wonder why he loves me and now he can, when you hear our arguments about child-raising and the concept of growth in the economy. My heart rages in my chest for Paul Krugman when he castigates all the economists in the world for being in bed with the forces of corporate and financial evil. I just can't feel romantic when my husband is more than suggesting that he would call his congressman to vote no on the ARRP and let the economic system that he considers to be riddled by the cancer of credit die. Not even as the clock approaches midnight, the eve of Valentine's Day.

"Et tous ces gens qui perdraient leur emplois, les millions de personnes et de familles sans les moyens de payer la maison, la voiture, le fioul pour chauffer leur maison, la nourriture pour manger, les frangs pour s'habiller. Tu laisserais le système économique s'arrêter? Ce n'est plus possible. On ne peut pas l'arrêter pour le recréer. On ne peut le redémarrer et le corriger avec les réglementations mises en place au juste apèrs la dernière grosse crise en enlevées par Phil Gramm et compagnie dans le sénat en 1999 avec l'abrogation de l'act Glass-Steagall, chose que les Republicans ont cherché à faire depuis les 1980's. Le système a toujours, toujours fonctionné avec le crédit, depuis que l'échange de commerce entre les pays et les peuples a commencé. Ce qu'il faut c'est de l'honnêteté dans la valuation et l'offre et la demande de crédit." He wasn't buying that, other than the honesty aspect, which he more than agrees is missing, replaced by a glut of avidité.

It was barter, he said. Barter in the village markets. Yes, but the barons seized what they needed, or sometimes paid against time or other services, whose value had to be determined. Not quite like a barrel of grain for a chicken. And once the boats started to arrive in the ports, loaded with silk from the East, slips of money changed hands in the port city to pay for the cargo and the risk to the boat and the contents of its hold assumed by the financier of the voyage.

"Mais ce n'était pas jusqu'au 18ème siécle!"

"Tu n'as jamais lu le Marchand de Vénise?" And on and on, until he declared that the discussion was over. I continued.

"C'est fini. On n'en discute plus."

"Mais..."

"Fini. On fait la vaiselle." I got a few more words in, and dumped the boiled water from the cheap saucepan onto the pile of dishes in the sink. I heard the glass in which I had noticed a horizontal crack crack farther. I'll use it until the milk or water served at table leaks out, or the top half of the glass falls off. I hate waste, almost as much as I hate credit interest myself.

But, you can't run a world economy on direct payment for all services. I had brought up Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel for his program of microloans in Bangladesh. How could you argue against credit when presented in those terms?

"Le Nobel ne veut rien dire pour moi."

Ce n'est pas possible. I hadn't mentioned Paul Krugman, nor his shiny new Nobel. I couldn't bear to hear it shot down.

He was asleep before I turned off my laptop and came up the stairs, the light extinguished in the larger crack under the door, where the floor boards plunge towards the end wall of the house. I brushed my teeth, examined the signs of another day on my face, and turned out the bathroom light. Wisp got caught beneath my feet and took off for the the stairs. I opened the door for her, and she turned on a dime, trotted into the room and waited to install herself in my arms, like a baby, her head on my shoulder, her body curled in the crook of my elbow for the night.

My funny Valentine.

And my funnier, nearly incomprehensible, far too prickly Valentine, off at the hospital.

Peace and love.
....

after the money's gone

Can we hear from the disappointed, bitter decent Republicans who feel like, "This is not my Republican party! My God!... what have I done?" Now that all the money's gone.

Same as it ever was.

Same as it ever was.

During the campaign, I wondered if the GOP would rise up, rise up and toss the lunatic fringe overboard, reclaim their party for the fiscally conservative, socially tolerant among you -- there must be some there, no? -- and make the other ones go form their own party, like Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National in France. A radical, racist, socially conservative, anti-immigration nationalist party merely capable of splintering an election result, not taking over a country as the neocons did for 8 years.

Same as it ever was.

Trust me, George IV did more to make sure that won't happen in France any time soon than Le Pen could dreamed have accomplishing, although he did manage to do a number on those who flirted with fire, showing their frustration with criminality and unemployment by voting for him in round one against Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who should have been in the second round against Chirac.

Perhaps you could take an idea from this country of the Enlightenment philosophy that spawned The United States of America (if you believe it wasn't purely economically motivated; when Enlightenment sheep lie down with the lions of commerce, a great democracy is born) with more than a smidgen of hubris. Ahem.

Believe your principles of social justice, honor your rule of law that protects every citizen from another, maintain a separation of church and state and keep your main political parties aligned with the axis of your constitution and towards the center of the bell-curve of society, rather than out at its screaming extremes.

What's that? The gays are the extreme? When they are asking to marry and raise a family, not have a quickie in the men's room at Minneapolis St.Paul International Airport?

Nah, think again.

Hey, let's look at this together again... then, pst! Do something... sign the petition and send it along before Valentine's Day...


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Stick rather, Barack (sorry, we were classmates, so it's hard to get used to calling you "Mr. President" and "President Obama"), to your sense of what is right and wrong and, as Jericho said, talk not to the politicians, but to those who vote for them. Talk straight from your principles, using your considerable oratorical power to reach them. Tell them why what is uncomfortable is yet right, why what is cause of fear is yet worth finding a little courage for. Be a leader and continue to lead us to a better society, a better country, a finer hour in history like you did throughout the campaign. This is no time for compromise when we are on the threshold of a transformation in our society, and you could be the one to lead it, not to betray it in compromise. You don't need to be afraid. We are your lieutenants (unless you betray too many of us, my gay friends and family members on the top of that list).

We've got your back.

I've got to say, while I am on the subject again, Barack, that I don't agree with Frank Schaeffer when he says that you were right to invite to have Rick Warren to pray at your inauguration. I could start with saying that there is no place for public prayer in government, but tokenism is always wrong. That's like saying, "You were right, Mr. President, for nominating Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the bench. A little tokenism can't hurt. Might mollify the colored people." You fell there. You never promised equality to gays, but you didn't have to put a man up in front of the nation at the moment of your investiture, and have him pray for their damned, craven souls.

You might have been right in a highly qualified sense to indulge in a little tokenism praying, but led by a person who publicly condemns none.

I want to know, from those who are its members but do not consider themselves at ease with either of these factions of the Republican party, who are cast adrift whether you care, how you identify yourselves right now, what it means to you and what you want. I'd be furious if it were my party, and I don't know if it would be enough for me to content myself with voting with the Democrats and calling myself an Independent.

Are we heading to a real three party system, with the Independents picking up the phlogiston of the Republican conflagration?

Are we going to see the extremes in the Republican party lose their hold in the subsequent congressional and senate election cycles with a host of Independents who feel themselves to be Republicans of a pre-Nixon era taking back their party?

Or, are we going to see a continued rise in the Democratic party as it expresses it principles and aims for the nation in this time?

I think there are a couple tiny mistakes in the first couple paragraphs, but you get the idea...

Frank Schaeffer

Posted February 11, 2009 | 05:17 PM (EST)

An Open Letter to President Obama About the Republicans (From a Former Republican)

Dear President Obama: I know that from time to time you read Huffington Post because you've written for it. As a Huffington Post reader you'll know that no one on this web site has more faithfully supported your candidacy and now your presidency than me. As a former lifelong Republican, son of a co-founder of the Religious Right; my late evangelical leader father, Francis Schaeffer, I'm in a unique position to tell you a few things about the Republicans from inside perspective. (As you know I left that movement in the mid 1980s.)

*The lack of cooperation you're getting from the Republican Party will continue. You were right to indulge in a little bit of tokenism when you had to Pastor Rick Warren pray at your inauguration. But if you think that the Republicans in Congress and the Senate are going to do more than their utmost to obstruct everything you are and what you stand for you're dreaming.

As someone who appeared numerous times on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, as someone for whom Jerry Falwell used to send his private jet to bring me to speak at his college, as an author who had James Dobson giveaway 150,000 copies of my one of my fundamentalist "books" allow me to explain something: the Republican Party is controlled by two ideological groups. First, is the Religious Right. Second, are the neoconservatives. Both groups share one thing in common: they are driven by fear and paranoia. Between them there is no Republican "center" for you to appeal to, just two versions of hate-filled extremes.

The Religious Right supply the kind of people who at McCain and Palin rallies were yelling things such as "kill him" about you. That's the constituency to which your hand was extended when looking for compromise on your financial bailout bill.

There's only one thing that makes sense for you now. Mr. President, you need to forget a bipartisan approach and get on with the business of governing by winning each battle. You will never be able to work with the Republicans because they hate you. Believe me, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are the norm not the exception. James Dobson and the rest are praying for you to fail. The neoconservatives are gnashing their teeth and waiting for you to "sell out Israel" or "show weakness" in Afghanistan, whatever, so they can declare you a traitor.

The problem is that when you deal with the Republican Party you're talking to the polished characters in Washington. I wish you could see the hate e-mail's that I have received over the last two years because I supported you, letters calling for God to kill me, telling me that I hate God because I supported you and that I am "an abortionist" and worse a "fag lover" because I've written that I believe that you will be a great president.

What those senators and congressmen are telling you is not what their rabid core constituents are telling them. Their loyalty is to a fundamentalist Christian ideology on the one hand and American exceptionalism of perpetual warfare and hatred and fear of the "other" on the other hand. Between the neoconservatives and evangelical Religious Right Republicans you have no friends.

The good news is that most Americans support you. And if you will just get in the face of the Republican Party and call their bluff you'll be surprised how many individual ordinary Republicans will support you, not to mention the rest of us. America is sick of the Republicans.

The Democratic Party won for a reason: the Republicans failed and have taken us all down with them! You're doing your presidency and America no favor by extending an open hand to the perpetually knotted fist of what has become the embittered lunatic fringe of our country. They would rather go down in flames than "compromise" their ideology.

As you showed us again at your press conference of Feb 9, you are a brilliant, articulate and decent man. Your Republican opponents are not decent people but ideologues bent on destroying you. To quote the biblical adage sir, don't cast your pearls before swine.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back. Now in paperback.

*Ed. Note: Not to put too fine a point on Mr. Schaeffer's propos -- http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30623

....

And I really like this notion. I really, really do --

Taking Stock in America, or the American Stockholder

America’s horror of “nationalization” could be defused by handing out shares to all American households. President Bush used to talk about building an “ownership society.” Well, giving shares in big banks to all American households would be a terrific way to do that.

I just have to include this from Kristof today, too. Thank you, Sir:

Yes, troubled banks might lose good people to hedge funds that can pay more because they’re not bound by these curbs. But that upsets me less than the idea of single mothers working multiple jobs so that their tax dollars can underwrite million-dollar bonuses at companies getting taxpayer assistance.

But, keep those single mothers out of those hedge funds, for everyone's sake.

So, why not look to Sweden for their bank bail-out model, and to France for national health care?

Why not, America? We weren't exactly screaming, "But that's not American, it's French!" when we were borrowing their philosophical principles for our constitution and relying on their military and financial support to get the job done.

Why not, indeed.

....

once in a lifetime

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
Wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

....

Stubborn phlogiston

Burning lavender

I achieved fire fleetingly, trying in vain -- or valiantly -- to release phlogiston from damp biomass in the burning pile in the bottom of the garden.

It's a way to waste time, while no energy is wasted, because none is spent.

Meanwhile, the guy with the little grass-green fourgonette who has been cutting brush and dead branches out along the bras-mort of the Seine on the far side of the field below the house has been setting little fires all week. Three burned this evening as I hauled myself back up into the house from the failure of my fire to sustain itself in the humid pile, and burned still in the dark when I took the laundry out to the dryer a little later, like the Beltane fires in February.

Yes, here, the washing machine is in the kitchen, while the dryer is in the garage, which is really the furnace and junk room out in the petite maison, which is really just a series of spaces used for that use, two guest rooms and a bath in a crappy little building that I'd tear down and rebuild, were it up to me, which it isn't.

Who'd build it, anyway? We haven't seen the workers more than a day or two since New Years.

Meanwhile, my fingers are blistering from the pruning shears with which I hacked, not sheared, to prune the lavender plants, long overdue for shaping. I just can't do it with gloves on. And here's the thing: I asked how far to prune them, and I was told to cut at the bottom of the flower stem. Of course, this meant that the plants get bigger and bigger, so it went without saying that you have to prune them further down, or be overrun. What they didn't say, and what I read today, is that you must always cut in new wood, never woody, which you can avoid if you shear the plants 2 to 3 times a season, rather than waiting until the end of flowering in September.

Hunh.

So, they didn't tell me that so that my plants would get woody and leggy and hollow at the center and I'd have to buy new ones, or they are too sad to cut the plants during their flowering season, too?

It's still a raggedy mess out there in the lavender beds. I had to give my blisters a rest.
....