Blogger Pot Luck

The first dish: OUTRAGE- at the perception of popular approval of Bush, with a side dish of what did I expect. My office is hosting a Quebecois human rights researcher who has lived for many years in Western and Eastern Europe. She is astonished (pleasantly) to find out that there is actually an anti-war movement, and that the US is not 100% behind our Oily Shrub and his campaign to piss off the whole world. I was privately outraged that a researcher, someone who is smart enough to read non-mainstream news and know that network TV doesn't illustrate the average US American's life, would somehow believe that we didn't have an anti-war movement. What I'm saying to my non-US readers (if there happened to be one, ever) is that OF COURSE THERE IS AN ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT you idiots. We didn't elect this guy and I don't know where they are getting his approval statistics except out of a range of questions like "answer a or b: A) I want to kill the president and be executed in turn for treason, or B) The president is performing adequately at this time." Read your Indymedia and this wonderful pamphlet "5 Things You Can Do to Make America More Secure" -a parody of Homeland Security literature- if you need reassurance that we're pissed at our president, too.



The second dish: WONDROUS RESISTANCE- did you ever think about the verb "to maroon"? Does it refer to the color of your skin when you are left out on an island to die? The Smithosonian published this short article describing the Maroon tribal society, formed by escaped slaves in the mountains of the West Indies and South America, spreading among the lands of Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Mexico and Suriname. One source (a modern annotation to a 1790 sermon criticizing the French Revolution as a bunch of Maroons) connects the name with the tribes via the French marron, from Spanish cimarron meaning "wild," from cima- "a mountain summit." Another article on the Maroons from the Smithsonian says that the name became equated first with runaway cattle in Spain before it was applied to the runaway African slaves. They waged war for their independence and in 1739 signed a treaty in their own favor. "To maroon" someone at one point in history meant leaving a sailor behind on an island where the fierce Maroons might find them. Their culture, retaining African music, weaving, and matrilineal descendency, remains today in small rural villages. Read the side-bar articles on Encyclopedia.com or "Slave Resistance: A Caribbean Study" for more scholarship on these breathtaking rebels.



The third dish: A POINT WITH A VIEW- a tasty castle on the Croatian peninsula. At the moment I'm actually stalking Slovenia to the point of planning an overnight in a hotel built in this 18th century castle 30 minutes' drive south of the border before taking on the land-of-my-dreams. I'm starting Croatian lessons with a tutor in preparation. I'm saving Slovenian lessons for when I find a Slovenian to teach me. It's such a great country that there isn't a much of a Slovene immigrant community here in the US to provide language tutors.



The last dish- dessert!- SPONTANEOUS HEROS: the Automatic Crime Fighting Duo Generator The answer to the dry inkwell of the aspiring mainstream screenplay writer: "He's a suave Jewish librarian with a secret. She's a violent out-of-work former first lady with a knack for trouble." They Fight Crime!