Aletta looked radiant, Matt was clearly nervous but very happy.

Everything went smoothly, everyone had a great time.

It brought tears to my eyes to look around the room and to see so many people that I love.

I am a bit sentimental, I’ll admit. Seeing the pride and joy on my Uncle Ronnie’s face as he escorted Aletta down the aisle filled me with so much gratitude and love I almost couldn’t stand it.

I felt the same way when I saw my Aunt Ute (in a flowing black suit) running down the meadow to make sure that all the children were included in photos…

Micaela, my other cousin, was really on top of her game. Married life, children, and a fulfilling job agree with her, and have transformed her – she is beautiful, confident, a goddess. Really.

My favorite part of the ceremony was when the married women had a chance to come up and whisper a piece of advice or some other comment into Aletta’s ear. Yes, you know I wasn’t sitting there saying nothing, right? So I whispered, “Remember how much you respect him today. Civility goes a long way. Please and thank you.”

What was even better, in a way, is when the officiant (a very nice woman) said, “We don’t want be discriminatory, so the married men are now welcome to step up to offer a word to Matt.” I somehow think that wasn’t planned. One guy said something very urgently, then stepped back and did that thing where he points to his own eyes and then points to Matt’s eyes. There was good-natured laughter. The room was full of love. The energy of the whole ceremony was terrific.

We were out there on a covered deck, looking out on a meadow worthy of a 19th-century pastoral poet. It was a beautiful day, shining, with a refreshing breeze. Aletta and Matt were beaming, and there were moments of reflection and humor that drew us all in as a community. We really felt that we were there to witness to their bond and to be there to safeguard and help them always.

The reception was fun. I really hit it off with Matt’s aunt Pam, who turns out to be just a couple of years older than me (yikes), a nurse in Durham. We ended up dancing together a bit (how do women in their forties get to dance otherwise, when husbands are not in attendance?). I really like her a lot and we have much in common. Besides, she has those Susan Sarandon eyes that I always love, and a sense of humor that matches mine… Wish I’d gotten a pic of her! We initiated a circle-dance of women around Matt – very tribal and fun.

My brother Roy and Patty danced at almost a professional level, as always, although I couldn’t get the DJ to play the Kinks’ “Come Dancing” – which was always his fave.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and had lots of great conversation, reacquainting myself with several people and also meeting several new people, including a couple of people that I had heard much about but had never had the pleasure to have met before. Everyone was friendly and open. Their company was a balm to my soul.

The only thing I regret was that I didn’t think to try to get a photograph of my extended family there. Roy and I didn’t make it into the group photos, but in my experience those aren’t the ones you look at anyway. I had a camera, and I just didn’t think of trying to get Roy and Patty and me and Aletta and Matt and Micaela and Michael and Katy and Alex and Ron and Ute all into a photo.

Both Aletta’s wedding and Micaela’s wedding were wonderful, but I have to admit that I enjoyed this one more. I was more relaxed (and it probably didn’t hurt that I wasn’t pregnant!).

I am so proud of my dear cousins. I am so proud of you, dear women of my heart.

Thank you, thank you to the whole clan. You rock, and I love you.

(More photos)

In case you don’t have enough money to buy me a Lego Star Wars Darth Vader for Christmas, Daddy can get it for you.
– This one today, July 10

Thank you Mommy! I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And so I love you too.

On Tuesday, you said on Friday we’d go to the store. It’s Friday. When are we leaving?

I think I have a few pebbles on my chin, but I don’t want you to squeeze them.

I’ve decided what I’m going to be when I grow up. A king.

When me and my wife have some children, would you like to visit us?

Not eleven seconds, Mommy. I can hold my breath under the water for a whole twelve seconds.

I wish Superman was real, not pretend.
– After seeing the movie Superman Returns. (Me too, Ben, me too.)

(Ben is six.)

Our goal is to present a happy, positive view of spirituality, and to encourage its practical applications. To do this, each week, we will discuss metaphysics, psychology, philosophy, cults and odd beliefs, dogma, history, kabbalism (generic), gnosticism (generic), sufism (generic), and other fascinating forms of the Way of compassion. Love, or compassion will, of course, be a theme, and we shall look together into the bright mysteries of agapology (the psychology of Love). Take a break from your frenzied week. Have a warm cup of coffee or cold drink, sit back, and listen to the most important, and most captivating, subjects in the universe!

Listen to “High Spirits” Online
at 1530AM WCKY
Cincinnati
Sat 8 PM
Call in from 8-9 PM EST
Local: 749-1530
Out of area: 877-345-3779

You do not have to receive the station over radio to call. You can listen online, and you will be able to hear the show on the telephone as well. You can also help other people by making this call. Don’t worry; you will be on the air for only a few seconds to ask your question. Just have it ready to go and call 877-345-3779, after 8 pm (it’s free). You can ask about the “new age,” fundamentalism, religion, metaphysics, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, parapsychology, God, nature, cults, or anything related to any of these.

Teacher, author, psychospiritual advisor, life-design consultant, and practicing mystic, Richard’s point of view is centered on love mysticism. He is the founder of agapology, the science of love-psychology, spokesperson for the Universal Love Movement (not a religion, but a Way) which challenges society to live by the principles of compassion, acceptance, and tolerance. He is not a “guru.”

I called in about two weeks ago, and the discussion really helped me to refocus in a more positive direction.

His sites:

Love Ministries
Blog

Richard is one of the most lucid, giving, and compassionate people I’ve ever known.

He has written several books, many of which are available for download.

My favorite is Journey to the Center of the Soul: Mysticism Made Simple, but I first stumbled across his work while searching for good books on Jehovah’s Witnesses. The JW books are very helpful for understanding how and why the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses can be so psychologically and spiritually destructive. When I read these two books, everything that I had sensed and felt really clicked into place. His style is quite different from my own, and his way of framing things gave me a new kind of conceptual and emotional “niche” in a heart/mind space that had been empty. I’ve been recommending the JW books on my site for some time:

Jehovah Lives in Brooklyn – Richard S. T. Francis
An extremely helpful book for ex-JWs (and for those who love them) that succeeds in capturing the thought patterns, assumptions, mindset, destructive consequences, spiritual distortions, and psychosocial dynamics of the “organization.” A very readable narrative of such issues as personality dismantling, satanic projection, sense of uniqueness, persecution, conformity and masks, and censorship. “Thus, in cases I have witnessed personally, parents have totally rejected and turned their backs on wayward children, brothers have become the fiercest of enemies, and lovers are separated with a ferocity and mutual hatred. Every form of sentimentality is despised as a weakness when it comes to the question of loyalty to Jehovah’s organization. Every human being is disposable. …This is an underlying flaw in much of fundamentalism, including JWs: ideas and concepts are more sacred even than human life. It is due to this distortion that JWs refuse blood transfusions even to save the lives of their children–a teaching for which they have become monsterously notorious.” (p.73).

Jehovah Good-Bye: The New Theism of Love – Richard S. T. Francis
Ex-JW Francis moves from criticism to a constructive analysis of what he calls the “New Theist,” who is reconnecting to the agapic god of love and forgiveness. “The New Theist has arisen in specific response to the intellectual and spiritual starvation so often promoted by traditional religion. Far too often, religion, whose job it is to feed the masses, wrenches from their hands the tiniest morsels of substantial spiritual food, and tries to replace them with the non-nutritive ’straw’ of organizationalism and dogma, doctrine and administration. Worse, some groups are monomaniacally obsessed with only money, and religion is only a front” (p.11). ” “The God of revealed by Jesus was no primitive anthropomorphism, no historical product of evolution from the proto-Jehovac images of the old god. This God did not dribble out forgiveness in parsimonious, unwilling, reticent microparticles; this God deluged and immersed his children in purest Love, and was eager and delighted to forgive. And according to grace, he did not forgive becuase of his children’s attitudes or behaviors; he forgave because of the quality of his love” (p. xix).

There are so many things going on right now that I feel I need some sort of realignment with my larger priorities. I will try to do my part to support actions to bring compassion and ethics and accountability to our government and public sphere, to reawaken the American people to a realization of their own interests and to the need for a functioning democracy here. But I have to refocus on some other priorities as well, and this is not my top calling.

Among other things, I have decided to change the format of the activism suggestions I post – they need to be more minimalist. There is always a lot of information on the topic at the site, and adults can use their favorite search engines and so on to find out more about any of these topics.

Click on the links to read more and to decide whether you support the views presented. Go right ahead and read up on the issue elsewhere too!

Develop discernment – among other things, it’s a survival skill.

Today’s Actions:

Demand that our government stop dragging its feet and take decisive action to stop Darfur genocide (Color of Change)

Support Real Effort to Address US Oil Dependence – Fuel Choices for American Security Act (S.2025/H.R. 4409) bipartisian legislation would save as much as 10 million barrels of oil per day by 2030 by creating incentives and standards that would increase vehicle efficiency and alternative fuel use. (Union of Concerned Scientists)

Sign petition to repeal tax breaks for oil and gas companies (they admitted they don’t need the money). (Biden, Unite Our States)

Tell your Senators to protect our coasts and stop more offshore drilling. We can’t drill our way to energy independence. (League of Conservation Voters)

Support the troops, but not the unending war. Listen to the new Neil Young album “Living with War”, then take action to bring our troops home in 2006. (True Majority)

Stop 700-ton “bunker buster simultation” bomb detonation on the Western Shoshone Native American reservation June 2nd in Nevada (Winograd)

Take a wide range of actions at: Consumer’s Union (publisher of Consumer Reports)

Catchin’ up with a few friend-blogs for a semi-random roundup…

Richard Shining Thunder has a new radio show in Cincinnati called High Spirits. Listen in at 1530AM WCKY, Cincinnati or online Sat 8-9 PM. I’ll personally vouch for him. He’s one of the good guys. Call in from 8-9 PM EST with spiritual questions and concerns – 877-345-3779.

Grateful Bear posts on a Pentacostal scholar who argues for the idea of the Holy Spirit moving like a wind through all the world’s religions. Great post! Call me to catch up when you’ve got a chance.

Etherealfire has a wonderful blessing for the day.

Just-Rambling thinks a surrender box is good idea. For an astonishing variety of reasons, I think so too.

No no no! It can’t be!!! Virtual Pus is gone! “2002-2006 – Killed by hackers”!?!? Come back!!!

Mr. H.K. skipped church today and instead went to the Museum of Modern Art’s opening of “Without boundaries: seventeen ways of looking,” featuring work by artists who come from the Islamic world. I’d better not link to his naughty naughty Easter graphic (heh -heh).

The philosofairy at Mermaid Tavern tells us why Arizona is the smartest state.

Rosei is planning her wedding as the rain pelts down in Brazil. I have fallen behind on the Photomeme posts, but not to worry, Rosei! John and Ben got me a digital camera for my birthday and it should arrive this week. I’ll catch up.

Raven, embroiled in activities with the boys, wishes everyone a Happy Easter/Ostara.

Lovebevvy is getting ready for a big move and new beginnings. Good luck Bev!

Mystical Grrl really has her hands full, as usual! Deep breaths Sara! Sending thoughts of warmth and calmness, and wishing you the very best of all news on the pregnancy. And I agree with you about the dog-sitting.

Dolphin and Leena have great feline Easter pics.

And keep your eyes out for the latest Progressive Faith Carnival Roundup!

April 15 is the 105th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (106th in leap years). There are 260 days remaining.

Venus, as the ancestress of the Julian house, is made to hasten the sun’s setting on April 15th.
Sir James George Frazer (1854 – 1941), The Golden Bough, 1922

Income Tax Day
Celtic tree month of Saille (Willow) (Apr 15 – May 12) commences. Its symbols are white birds, especially doves, and mist. It is a time of springtime enchantments and Moon-magic, as well as intuition and wisdom. Symbolized by Arianrhod (literally ‘Silver Wheel’) who conceives Lugh, the Sun god, through magic.
Swallow Day – The average day on which the Chimney Swallow, Hirundo rustica, arrives back in England from down south, heralding the return of summer. In most parts of England it was a sacred bird and it was considered a great sin to kill one.
Ancient Latvia — Tipsa Diena commemorates the beginning of the ploughing of the fields.
Arirang Festival is held in North Korea to commemorate Kim Il-sung’s birth.
Father Damien Day — celebrated annually in Hawai’i.
Jibeta Matsuri (Metal Phallus Festival), Japan
Feast day of Saint Paternus.
Ikuta Matsuri, Japan –
Roman Empire — the Fordicia was celebrated in honor of Terra.
Major League Baseball celebrates “Jackie Robinson Day” each April 15 in all MLB ballparks.
Fast Food Day

(Warning: The following is “cherrypicked,” like the intelligence that rationalized our invasion of Iraq. Billions and billions and billions of things have happened, and many many people have been born on April 15. Here are some of the more well-known of them.)

I share a birthday with:

Leonardo da Vinci – Italy, painter/sculptor/scientist/visionary (1452)
Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism (1469)
Thomas Hobbes – English philosopher, author of Leviathan (1588)
Catherine I – Empress of Russia (1684)
Composer Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688)
Charles Willson Peale, artist/painter, colonial and American Revolutionary War figures (1741)
Henry James – New York NY, US/British writer/critic (1843)
Emile Durkheim – French sociologist (1858)
Asa Philip Randolph – U.S. labor leader, Crescent City, Fla (1889)
Bessie Smith – blues singer, “Empress of the Blues” (1894)
Thomas Szasz – Hungarian-born psychiatrist and author (1920)
Adrian Cadbury – candy manufacturer (1929)
Elizabeth Montgomery – Los Angeles CA, actress (1933)
Claudia Cardinale – Tunis, actress (1939)
Jeffrey Archer – English author and politician (1940)
Emma Thompson – Paddington London England, actress (1959)
Samantha Fox – Singer (1966)

Also my friend David K. and my childhood dentist.

I Am

42 years 9 months younger than Nancy Reagan, age 84
39 years 10 months younger than George Herbert Bush, age 81
33 years 10 months younger than Clint Eastwood, age 75
33 years 1 month younger than Leonard Nimoy, age 75
32 years 7 months younger than Barbara Walters, age 74
31 years 2 months younger than Yoko Ono, age 73
30 years 5 months younger than Larry King, age 72
28 years 3 months younger than Alan Alda, age 70
26 years 9 months younger than Bill Cosby, age 68
24 years 2 months younger than Ted Koppel, age 66
22 years 11 months younger than Bob Dylan, age 64
20 years 9 months younger than Mick Jagger, age 62
20 years 9 months younger than Geraldo Rivera, age 62
19 years 1 month younger than Eric Clapton, age 61
17 years 9 months younger than George W. Bush, age 59
15 years 11 months younger than Stevie Nicks, age 57
14 years 5 months younger than Whoopi Goldberg, age 56
14 years 0 months younger than Jay Leno, age 55
12 years 9 months younger than Jesse Ventura, age 54
11 years 9 months younger than Robin Williams, age 53
10 years 3 months younger than Oprah Winfrey, age 52
9 years 2 months younger than Kelsey Grammer, age 51
8 years 6 months younger than Bill Gates, age 50
8 years 6 months younger than David Lee Roth, age 50
7 years 9 months younger than Tom Hanks, age 49
5 years 11 months younger than Drew Carey, age 47
5 years 8 months younger than Madonna, age 47
5 years 5 months younger than Jamie Lee Curtis, age 47
3 years 0 months younger than Eddie Murphy, age 45
2 years 10 months younger than Michael J. Fox, age 44
2 years 1 month younger than Jon Bon Jovi, age 44

—–ME

0 years 7 months older than Calista Flockhart, age 41
2 years 2 months older than Mike Tyson, age 39
4 years 10 months older than Jennifer Aniston, age 37
5 years 11 months older than Mariah Carey, age 36
6 years 3 months older than Jennifer Lopez, age 35
10 years 2 months older than Alanis Morissette, age 31
11 years 8 months older than Tiger Woods, age 30
17 years 8 months older than Britney Spears, age 24
18 years 2 months older than Prince William, age 23

Historical Events on April 15th

69 Death of Otho, Roman Emperor.
1493 Columbus meets with King Ferdinand & Queen Isabella
1532 The Submission of the Clergy was made to Henry VIII, beginning the political Reformation in England.
1632 Battle of Rain; Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeat the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years’ War.
1654 England & Netherlands signs peace treaty
1689 French king Louis XIV declares war on Spain
1715 Uprising of Yamasse-Indians in South Carolina
1716 Russian & Prussian troops occupy Wismar
1729 Johann S Bachs “Matthäus Passion” premieres in Leipzig
1738 Bottle opener invented
1755 English lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson publishes his Dictionary of the English Language.
1776 Duchess of Kingston found guilty of bigamy
1783 Preliminary articles of peace ending Revolutionary War ratified.
1784 1st balloon flight in Ireland
1788 England, Netherlands & Prussia sign peace treaty
1793 Bank of England hands out 1st £5-note
1794 Courrier Francais became the first French daily newspaper to be published in the U.S.
1800 James Ross discovers North Magnetic pole
1817 1st American school for the deaf opens (Hartford CT)
1850 City of San Francisco incorporated
1858 Battle of Azimghur, Mexicans defeat Spanish loyalists
1861 Federal army (75,000 volunteers) mobilized by President Abraham Lincoln
1864 General Steeles’ Union troops occupies Camden AR
1865 Abraham Lincoln dies from John Wilkes Booth’s assassination bullet.
1865 Otto von Bismarck elevated to Earl
1870 Last day US silver coins allowed to circulate in Canada
1871 ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok becomes the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.
1874 New York legislature passes compulsory education law
1877 1st telephone installed Boston-Somerville MA
1878 Harley Procter introduces Ivory Soap
1892 General Electric Company forms & is incorporated in New York
1896 1st Olympic games close at Athens, Greece
1900 An early 50 mile race is won by an electric car in over 2 hours
1900 International Exposition opens in Paris France
1901 1st British motorized burial
1902 Pope Leo XIII encyclical “On the Church in the US”
1910 William Howard Taft is 1st US President to throw out a 1st ball at a baseball game
1912 The British luxury liner Titanic sinks at 2:27 am after colliding with an iceberg; it is among the worst maritime disasters in history, with over 1,500 dead.
1918 Clemenceau publishes secret French/Austrian documents
1920 Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti allegedly murder two security guards while robbing a shoe store.
1920 New Canadian small cent coin is released
1921 Black Friday – Labour Party strike of mine workers fails
1922 Frederick Banting, John MacLeod & Charles Best discover insulin
1923 1st sound on film public performance shown at Rialto Theater (NYC)
1923 Insulin became available for general use.
1924 Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas.
1927 Babe Ruth hits 1st of 60 homeruns of season
1927 Switzerland & USSR agree to diplomatic relations
1931 The 1st walk across America backwards began
1940 British troops land at Narvik Norway
1941 1st helicopter flight of 1 hour duration, Stratford CT
1942 George VI awards the George Cross to the people of Malta
1943 Metropolitan Life Insurance issues a $225 million check to Chase
1945 FDR buried on grounds of Hyde Park home
1945 British & Canadian troops liberate Nazi camp of Bergen-Belsen
1945 Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical Communium interpretes dolorum
1945 US troops occupy concentration camp Colditz
1947 Operations begin at Radio Netherlands World radio
1948 1st Jewish-Arab military battle, Arabs defeated
1948 Indian territory of Himachal Pradesh created
1949 Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical Redemptoris nostri
1952 1st B-52 prototype test flight
1952 Franklin National Bank issues 1st bank credit card
1952 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1954 Orioles 1st game in Baltimore; beat White Sox 3-1
1954 Yankees dedicate a plaque to Edward Barrow
1955 Ray Kroc starts the McDonald’s chain of fast food restaurants (Illinois)
1955 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1957 Saturday mail delivery restored after Congress givs Post Office $41 million
1958 1st baseball game in California, San Francisco Giants beat Los Angeles Dodgers, 8-0
1959 Fidel Castro begins US goodwill tour
1959 US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles resigns
1960 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organizes at Shaw University
1961 “Music Man” closes at Majestic Theater NYC after 1375 performances
1962 US national debt above $300,000,000,000
1964 Chesapeake Bay Bridge opens (Bridge-Tunnel measures 17.6 miles (28.4 km) and is considered the world’s largest bridge-tunnel complex)
1965 James Baldwin’s “Amen Corner”, premieres in NYC
1966 The Rolling Stones release “Aftermath”
1967 Massive antiwar protests held in New York and San Francisco. The first mass burning of draft cards.
1969 North Korea shoots at US airplane above Japanese sea
1970 U.S. 1st Infantry Division withdraws from Vietnam
1970 “Cry for Us All” closes at Broadhurst Theater NYC after 8 performances
1970 Libyan leader Qadhafi launches “Green Revolution”
1972 Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, Carole King & Quincy Jones perform at a benefit for George McGovern for President
1974 Military coup in Niger, President Diori Hamani deposed
1975 1st appearance of the San Diego Chicken
1975 Gabon amends constitution
1976 Yankee Stadium reopens, Yankees beat Twins after trailing 4-0
1977 1st baseball game at Montréal’s Olympic Stadium
1978 43 die as 2 express trains collide head-on south of Bologna Italy
1978 Great Britain performs nuclear test
1981 Janet Cooke says her Pulitzer award 8-year-old heroin addict story is a lie, Washington Post relinquishes Pulitzer Prize on fabricated story
1982 Apollo Computer announces DN400, DN420, & landscape display
1983 Tokyo Disneyland opens
1984 Extremist Sikhs plunder 40 stations in Punjab India
1984 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan/Semipalitinsk USSR
1984 Ten members of a family were found murdered in their home in New York City. An infant was found crawling among the corpses.
1985 Challenger moves to launch pad for 51-B missing
1985 South Africa will repeal sex & marriage laws against whites & non-whites
1986 US air raids Libya, responding to La Belle disco, Berlin bombing. On orders from President Ronald Reagan, American planes bombed Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi’s house in Tripoli as his family slept. The leader escaped harm but his 15-month-old adopted daughter was killed.
1986 Jean Genet, French criminal, political radical, novelist, leading figure in the avant-garde theater dies in Paris. He died in a hotel room of the same working class district where he’d been abandoned as a child 75 years earlier. He is buried in Morocco.
1987 In Northhampton, MA, Amy Carter, Abbie Hoffman and 13 others were acquitted on civil disobedience charges related to a CIA protest.
1988 Meteorite explode above Indonesia
1988 Wendy Wasserstein’s “Heidi Chronicles”, premieres in NYC
1989 95 crushed to death at Sheffield Soccer Stadium in England
1989 Then largest lottery in North America ($69 million) drawn in Illinois
1989 Students in Beijing launched a series of pro-democracy protests upon the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang. The protests led to the Tienanmen Square massacre.
1989 In Sheffield, England, 93 people were killed and 180 were injured at a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium when a crowd surged into an overcrowded standing area.
1990 The enigmatic Swedish film actress Greta Garbo dies in New York.
1991 Maximum New York State unemployment benefits raised to $280 per week
1991 East-Europe Bank forms in London
1991 Europe foreign ministers lift most remaining sanctions against South Africa
1991 Magic Johnson sets NBA record for career assists with 9,898
1992 Billionaire Leona Helmsley is sent to jail for tax evasion
1992 Jay Leno’s final appearance as permanent guest host of Tonight Show
1992 William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy & DeForest Kelley inducted into National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame
1994 Representatives of 124 countries and the European Communities sign the Marrakesh Agreements revising the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and setting up the World Trade Organization (effective January 1, 1995).
1996 The 100th Boston Marathon was won by Moses Tanui of Kenya.
1996 The rest of Jerry Garcia’s ashes were scattered near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, USA. A small portion of the Grateful Dead singer’s remains had been scattered in India’s Ganges River eleven days previously.
1997 America OnLine, begins service in Japan
1997 Fire engulfed a pilgrims’ tent city, killing more than 340 people and injuring 1,290 people on an annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
1997 Baseball honors Jackie Robinson by retiring #42 for all teams
1997 Howard Stern Radio Show premieres in Charlotte NC on WXRC 95.7 FM
1998 Pol Pot died at the age of 73. The leader of the Khmer Rouge regime thereby evaded prosecution for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians.
2000 600 anti-IMF (International Monetary Fund) protesters were arrested in Washington, DC, for demonstrating without a permit.

And more recently…

2001 Joey Ramone, punk rock icon, died of cancer in NYC at age 49.
2001 In China police opened fire on villagers who opposed high local taxes and fees in Yuntang.
2001 In Colombia 32 peasant bodies were pulled from a fresh shallow grave and a right-wing death squad was accused of the killing.
2001 U.N. investigators arrested Bosnian Serb army officer Dragan Obrenovic in connection with the Serbian Army’s slaughter of as many as 7,000 Muslim men and boys.
2002 An Air China Boeing 767-200 crashes into hillside during heavy rain and fog near Pusan, South Korea killing 122
2002 Pope John Paul II summoned all US cardinals to the Vatican to discuss clerical sex abuse scandals in the US.
2003 The Mosul Massacre. American troops opened fire on anti-USA occupation protesters in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq (some 396 km [250 miles] northwest of Baghdad), killing at least ten unarmed civilians. Meanwhile, President George W Bush, speaking in the White House Rose Garden, was declaring that the Iraqi people were “regaining control of their own destiny”, US soldiers were turning their weapons on civilians opposed to American and US-appointed rulers. Hours earlier, 20,000 people marched through the southern city of Nasiriyah to oppose Washington’s plans to install a puppet government. On the same day, in Baghdad, the US military tried to prevent journalists from reporting on the third straight day of anti-US demonstrations.
2003 US troops in Baghdad arrested Abul Abbas, head of the Palestinian terrorist group that attacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985.
2003 US forces cut off oil flow from Iraq to Syria. Oil flow had reached 130,000 barrels a day providing both countries over $10 million a month in profits.
2003 US forces signed a cease-fire agreement with the People’s Mujahedeen (Mujahedeen Khalq), a designated terrorist organization. The Iranian group had an estimated 10,000 members and was led by a woman.
2003 In Chechnya 16 people, mostly female construction workers, were killed last week in a bus explosion. The incident was not reported until Apr 21.
2003 Finnish lawmakers appointed Anneli Jaatteenmaki the country’s first female prime minister, making Finland the only state in Europe with women as president and premier.
2003 Looters and arsonists ransacked and gutted Iraq’s National Library and the principal Islamic library.
2004 An estimated 27.6 million viewers tuned in to watch Donald Trump say, “You’re hired!” to Chicagoan Bill Rancic on NBC’s hit boardroom game, “The Apprentice.”
2004 The Pentagon told 20,000 US soldiers in Iraq that their tours would be extended.
2004 The US EPA warned California and a 30 other states to clean up smog-plagued regions. 474 counties fell short of standards including 36 in California.
2004 A man identifying himself as Osama bin Laden offered a “truce” to European countries that do not attack Muslims, saying it would begin when their soldiers leave Islamic nations, according to a recording broadcast on Arab satellite networks.
2004 In Iraq 3 Japanese hostages who had been threatened with death unless Tokyo withdrew its troops from Iraq were released.
2004 In Hungary government leaders and the Israeli president inaugurated this country’s first Holocaust museum in memory of Hungary’s 600,000 Holocaust victims.
2005 The DJIA dropped 191 to close at 10,087, the worst close since May 19, 2003.
2005 It was reported that paleontologists have identified a new dinosaur species, an early relative of Tyrannosaurus rex that probably roamed what is now the Southeastern US about 77 million years ago. The scientists made the identification from hundreds of fossilized fragments collected mostly in Montgomery County, Ala., and southwestern Georgia. They named the new dinosaur Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis, which means “the Appalachian lizard from Montgomery County.” The 25-foot-long creature roamed the earth 10 million years before T. rex and was smaller and more primitive, with a narrower snout.
2005 Belize Telecommunications Limited (BTL) suffered an apparent act of sabotage which left the entire country without any phone, Internet or fax services. Unfortunately, BTL was unable to restore its services for the entire weekend, leaving Belize completely stranded.
2005 Ecuador’s Pres. Lucio Gutierrez declared a state of emergency in Quito and dissolved the Supreme Court, saying the unpopular judges were the cause of three days of pot-banging street protests.

We were having the rare dinner out, as Ben (5) was otherwise engaged. About midway through our meal, I noticed her walk in with three friends. It turns out that she had been a student of my hubby’s at Emory (!), but he didn’t want me to go over because I had already left to get the cellphone from the car, and the food had arrived. He wanted me to eat with him before the food got cold.

This bugged me because I had been interrupted from acting upon my original impulse – an impulse that only lasts a few seconds – to try to have a word. If I don’t act then – in the moment – then I think about it. If I think about it, I don’t do it (of course, sometimes it’s better for me not to do it). In this case, I had decided not to do it, but then I found myself walking over just to say a quick “thanks” on the way out. It was a strange night in a number of ways – I felt unsettled – and I thought that it would really improve things for me if I rallied the courage to do this. Yeah, it was selfish. Yes, it was rude and inappropriate behavior on my part. I worked one summer on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and so I know that you’re supposed to “be cool” around famous people – all the more so if you are actually an admirer of their work.

However, I also knew that I’d probably never again have the chance to thank her, especially for two songs that made a big difference to me in graduate school – Galileo and Virginia Woolf. I loved many of their songs, but these were my faves.

I haven’t really kept up with their music lately, but I’m thinking about going to a conference here in September that will include Emily Saliers (the other Indigo Girl – she’ll be with her professor Dad) as well as my favorite Christian, Anne LaMotte. I’ll probably pick up a few CDs in the next week – including Amy’s solo albums.

The Woolf song inspired my major interdisciplinary paper of the first year at Emory (a comparative analysis of J. Hillis Miller and Paul Ricoeur on Woolf), but more fundamentally, their music got me through some of the most difficult parts of my graduate school existence – no money, my advisor’s stroke, the dissolution of my program, etc.

I sang. With the help of the Indigo Girls, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Sarah MacLachlan, the occasional Blondie or Pat Benatar, and soundtracks like Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, I was able to keep myself together no matter what went down.

From a distance Amy looked like someone I might have gone to school with – slightly gangly, she looked a bit younger than me. Actually, we are almost exactly the same age. We’ll both be 42 this month (Amy – 12th, Me – 15th).

I wish I would have managed to remember to thank her for her activism as well as for the music, but a strange thing happened and I couldn’t think of that or anything else. It wasn’t really a matter of being starstruck. I’ve had “brushes with greatness” before, and terrific conversations with people I have admired a great deal.

She was actually very gracious to me – especially considering that I had barged into what looked like an interesting conversation.

But here’s the strange thing: When she turned her head to look at me, she looked right at me, dead on, right into my eyes, and an image of her eyes burned through my retina right into my brain, where it remains. So struck was I by her piercing gaze – a kind gaze, but an incredibly direct one – that I felt stunned. Have you ever accidentally walked into a farm’s electric fence? Gotten a shock that knocked you back a few feet? It was like that.

I barely remember anything either of us said. It was a short conversation.

Her charisma depends on a face-to-face encounter, where the space between two people is defined.

I sometimes have a powerful gaze myself – but this was pure lightning.

* * * * *

You Should Be In the Indigo Girls

You’re all about expressing yourself through music. Lyrics are your poetry – Sylvia Plath meets guitar