I came to know Ana’s dog, Ashford, over the last year and grew to love him. He was an eternal optimist who loved his mommy, the backyard, and any kindness that even remotely came his way. He’d always greet us with a wag and come running with his ears flopping. It was difficult to be unhappy with him looking up with that happy little face, tail wagging a mile a minute. Even during his last few days when he was uncomfortable, he exuded a solace and joy just from being held and petted in Ana’s arms, sitting in the sunshine. It was an honor to know this little guy, and his little tap dancing paws will surely be missed.
It’s nearly 90 degrees here in North Massapequa today, but we’ve got shade trees and a breeze coming in off the ocean … and lots of poets descending tomorrow for a big Barbecue! It’s time to crack out the wine and beer and fight for your hammock, as Famous Amis does above in his Jersey backyard. Enjoy the new summer, poets and peeps! xo, Amy and Ana
“Like Glenn Close, she should’ve stayed in the bathtub.”
“Iron my shirt!”
“Senator Clinton, when she’s feeling down, launches attacks.” –Obama
“Let’s not forget, and I’ll be brutal: the reason she’s a U.S. Senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she’s a front runner is her husband messed around. That’s how she got to be senator for New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win there on her merit.”
“They fined CBS a million dollars for Janet Jackson’s nipple. Think what they could get for Hillary Clinton’s cunt!”
“Somebody who can take her into a room, and only he comes out.”
I’m privileged to have a copy of Andrew Levy’s “Memories of My Father” in my hand. Apparently, it’s a difficult book to get one’s hands on, and since I am feeling better (and finally diagnosed!), I’m diving in. Being sick for any length of time raises questions those of us who have had health for awhile might never consider. One can label them the usual issues regarding life, death, how to live, time’s limitations, etc., but I’m finding, not-so-coincidentally, Levy’s poems resonate in a way that strikes chords, or even, echoes of thoughts now fading with health’s return. It’s especially good to be reminded of the vitality of poetry and how poetry is life; the rest, such as work and getting to the store, is maintenance. It takes a poem to get at the poetry of living, so to speak. I hope Andrew won’t mind me sharing a couple of his poems with you below.
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A Poem Can Also Die
To be a person without a style
The business plan?
I think everyone’s had about enough
Fill in with something …
The permission to produce our personal lives presents
the performances we love
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California’s Supreme Court declared gay couples in the nation’s biggest state can marry — a monumental but perhaps short-lived victory for the gay rights movement Thursday that was greeted with tears, hugs, kisses and at least one instant proposal of matrimony.
“Essentially, this boils down to love. We love each other. We now have equal rights under the law,” declared a jubilant Robin Tyler, a plaintiff in the case along with her partner. She added: “We’re going to get married. No Tupperware, please.”
A crowd of people raised their fists in triumph inside City Hall, and people wrapped themselves in the rainbow-colored gay-pride flag outside the courthouse. In the Castro, the historic center of the gay community in San Francisco, Tim Oviatt wept as he watched the news on TV.
“I’ve been waiting for this all my life. This is a life-affirming moment,” he said.
By the afternoon, gay and lesbian couples had already started lining up at San Francisco City Hall to make appointments to get marriage licenses. In West Hollywood, supporters were planning to serve “wedding cake” at an evening celebration.
In its 4-3 ruling, the Republican-dominated high court struck down state laws against same-sex marriage and said domestic partnerships that provide many of the rights and benefits of matrimony are not enough.
“In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation,” Chief Justice Ronald George wrote for the majority in ringing language that delighted gay rights activists.
Massachusetts is the only other state to legalize gay marriage, something it did in 2004. The California ruling is considered monumental by virtue of the state’s size — 38 million out of a U.S. population of 302 million — and its historic role in the vanguard of the many social and cultural changes that have swept the country since World War II.
California has an estimated 92,000 same-sex couples.
“It’s about human dignity. It’s about human rights. It’s about time in California,” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, pumping his fist in the air, told a roaring crowd at City Hall. “As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. It’s inevitable. This door’s wide open now. It’s going to happen, whether you like it or not.”
Unlike Massachusetts, California has no residency requirement for obtaining a marriage license, meaning gays from around the country are likely to flock to the state to be wed, said Jennifer Pizer, a gay-rights attorney who worked on the case.
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February 12, 2004
San Francisco made history by granting the first ever same-sex marriage license to a prominent lesbian couple as part of a challenge to a ban on gay marriage. Longtime activists Phyllis Lyon, 79, and Del Martin, 83, who have been a couple for over 51 years, said their vows at city hall after Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered officials to wed gay couples and issue marriage licenses in an act of civil disobedience against a state law that bars same-sex marriages.
Lyon and Martin stood facing each other and beamed when a city official pronounced them not husband and wife but “spouses for life.” After their brief ceremony they were going home to rest and did not plan anything to celebrate. The couple seemed proud of what they had done. “Why shouldn’t we” be able to marry? Phyllis asked. The mayor was not present at the morning ceremony but later presented the newlyweds with a signed copy of the state constitution with the sections related to equal rights highlighted.
The two official witnesses for their nuptials were Kate Kendell, director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and former city official Roberta Achtenberg. Congratulations, gals!
In the new LA Weekly, Patrick Range McDonald profiles Jeremy Bernard and Rufus Gifford, the fund-raising consultants and gay couple who have been raising much of the money in Los Angeles for the Barack Obama campaign.
Among other things, they were instrumental in raising some $850,000 at a recent Obama fund-raiser in Pacific Palisades that drew Mike Medavoy, Bill Paxton and Richard Zanuck — who rarely donates to Democrats.
Just last year, the magic of MySpace brought us news that Lindsay Lohan wanted to marry lesbian wingwoman Sam Ronson and have her children. And what better way to begin that fairy tale than by shacking up together? Sources tell the NY Post that Ronson is so dedicated to making sure Lindsay stays clean, that she’s taken to spending every night at the underpaid flesh-baring actress’ LA abode.
State media say 23,335 people died and 37,019 are missing from Cyclone Nargis, which submerged entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta. International aid organizations say the death toll could climb to more than 100,000 as conditions worsen.
The junta has refused to grant access to foreign experts, saying it will only accept donations from foreign charities and governments, and then will deliver the aid on its own.
Despite such obstacles, the U.N. refugee agency sent its first aid convoy by land into Myanmar on Saturday and began airlifting a 110 tons of shelter supplies from its warehouse in Dubai, it said.
Two trucks carrying more than 20 tons of tents and plastic sheets for some 10,000 cyclone victims crossed into the country from northwestern Thailand, said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
“This convoy marks a positive step in an aid effort so far marked by challenges and constraints,” said Raymond Hall, UNHCR’s Representative in Thailand. “We hope it opens up a possible corridor to allow more international aid to reach the cyclone victims.”
A total of 23 international agencies were providing aid to people in the devastated areas, said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“It’s a race against the clock,” Byrs said. “If the humanitarian aid does not get into the country on a larger scale, there’s the risk of a second catastrophe,” she said, adding that people could die from hunger and diseases.
Health experts have warned there was a great risk of diarrhea and cholera spreading because of the lack of clean drinking water and sanitation.
“We have had a week to convince the regime to behave reasonably, and they are still blocking aid,” he said. “So the international community needs to wake up and take bolder steps.”
Myanmar’s rice-growing heartland has been devastated by Cyclone Nargis, threatening long-term food shortages for survivors, experts said Wednesday.
CNN obtained the video in which the survivor said she walked a trail dotted by dead bodies to get to safety, passing a group of about 1,000 homeless people who slept on the street.
“Yes, there is tide coming along. Trees fall over people,” the survivor said. “There are many dead bodies lying under trees. Yes, all people I saw are crying too much and searching for bodies of loved ones. There is bad smell from dead bodies on the way we came from.”
Myanmar, formally known as Burma, last held multiparty elections in 1990, when Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy handily won. The military junta ignored the results.
Usually the Red Cross complains confidentially to governments about such abuses, leading to criticism of the agency for failing to disclose severe violations. Its silence during the Holocaust was an extreme case, but more recently it was criticized for failing to go public with its knowledge of U.S. abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In denouncing Myanmar, the president of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, said it had repeatedly complained to the government about the abuses, “but the authorities have failed to put a stop to them.”
“The persistent use of detainees as porters for the armed forces is a matter of grave humanitarian concern,” Kellenberger said. “The actions of the authorities have also resulted in immense suffering for thousands of people in conflict-affected areas.”
The armed forces have also committed “numerous acts of violence,” including murder, against civilians in these areas, the Red Cross said. “They have also forced villagers to directly support military operations or to leave their homes.”
The United Nations and Western countries have long accused the junta of human rights abuses, like forcing people to do unpaid manual labor and to serve as army porters, but this was the first time the Red Cross has been so direct.
The Red Cross said it based its complaints on observations made by Red Cross representatives and numerous allegations of abuse it collected during private interviews with thousands of civilians and detainees.
Jim Carrey’s Call To Action for Burma – support the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Aung San Suu Kyi. Jim appeals to viewers to take action and e-mail the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to coordinate a strong response by the United Nations Security Council to the situation in Burma.
Please send Ban Ki-moon an email at inquiries@un.org — The Human Rights Action Center and U.S. Campaign for Burma
Like the South African leader Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi has become an international symbol of heroic and peaceful resistance in the face of oppression.
For the Burmese people, Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, represents their best and perhaps sole hope that one day there will be an end to the country’s military repression.
More information on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at Dassk.com.
And separately, I have been graciously granted, by Annie Finch, the Women’s Poetry Listserv moderator title that she has worn many years now:
The WOM-PO (Discussion of Women’s Poetry) List was started in December 1997 by Annie Finch with an invitation to a small group of poets, critics, and lovers of women’s poetry.These people in turn invited other people to join, and the list has grown gradually by spreading through these networks.In April 2008, Amy King succeeded Annie as List Moderator for WOM-PO.Discussion on the list covers women poets of all periods, aesthetics, and ethnicities.It has been characterized by its high caliber, relatively low volume, and openness to a diversity of aesthetic perspectives.
Thanks, Annie! And friendly interlopers, please feel free to join us!
