From Gene’s Notebook
I’d written a check to Pastors For Peace, a Cuban solidarity group, to be donated to relief for the two hurricanes that hit Cuba within barely a month.
But I’d written a memo to myself on the check, “Cuban relief,” and an Pastors For Peace official said that I might be reported by my [...]

[Read more →]

A note from Jean & Joe Krause

Pax Christi - Brownsville
Sunday, Sept. 21 is the International Day of Peace. To recognize the day, Pax Christi Brownsville is sponsoring the following events to which the public is invited.
1. Join the Rally for PEACE on the 3rd Friday of the month in front of the [...]

[Read more →]

a note from Stan
Full disclosure: Last November I joined the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Cameron and Willacy Counties, a non-governmental agency delivering health care and education to more than eleven thousand women locally. Our motto is “Prevention First,” and we believe that quality, scientifically based education, including contraceptive methods, is the first [...]

[Read more →]

from Gene’s Notebook
…and, the hurricane afar, like the ambulance’s scream in the night, and eveyone you love is within touch; like the bus accident that you’re not part of; like the body counts from wars that are not you and yours ….
Self-preservation, so so important, so so narrow ….
We look at Ike, earlier, see the [...]

[Read more →]

A note from Stan

Here’s the latest shot from NASA. Hurricane Ike is a powerful storm, and reports are that surges from twelve to twenty feet and more above normal tides along with large waves are already sweeping the Houston Shipping Channel and the outer islands.
If you prayed mightily that Hurricane not come to the Rio [...]

[Read more →]

A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Munseetown
This winter sun again is centered
Above Gillespie Towers where
Each dawn discovers lights declaring
Early risers there.
Infirm and ill and some demented,
Why do they rise in winter, staring
When each in her cell might bask instead
In summer dreams beneath the snows
Of memory, secure and somnolent?
The weak light rallies, and I know:
A car [...]

[Read more →]

A comment from Stan
It’s just terrible of me, but I am enjoying this little to-do over pigs and lipstick. It’s time set aside, now, to visit with an old friend, a well-worn cliché, a metaphor that hung around a little long, became self-conscious and realized that there was a sexism at its own root. Of [...]

[Read more →]

From Gene’s Notebook
…water, we crave it, and then we hate it.
Along the Mississippi River flooded bottom-lands in eastern Missouri, I several times ran out of water, down to the last sip in the water bottle - no matter that is was warm, it was water, and then none, values in perspective ….
Just several feet from [...]

[Read more →]

A note from Stan
Here’s Tucker Bounds failing to answer any substantive questions from Cambell Brown on CNN. Would that more journalists would show a little more gumption in interviewing. Bounds is incoherent until Brown decides in apparent disgust. at the end of the exchange to let him run through his talking points, none of which [...]

[Read more →]

From Gene’s Notebook

Shadow Walkers, Hunched and Fast.
Mansions, right out of Gone With the Wind, on Missouri bluffs above the brown Mississippi.
Who the hell is in them?
Pretend slaveowners?
Make-a-killing lawyers?
No one is outside; the porches huge, the lawns green and sloped; the trees spreading.
One car with Florida plates. A new second-home summer location?
Decades ago, I’d be interested [...]

[Read more →]

A comment from a friend
“Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace …”
This is quoting John McCain on Social Security, which the plutocrats have been trying since its inception to drown in the nearest available bathtub (cf. the [...]

[Read more →]

A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

A winter thaw opens the children’s coats
And bursts the locks on schoolyard fences,
Disturbs the sluggish chucks; the stoats
Pursuing the nights on their private fancies
Are vicious with laggards, fond of a chance,
Like our children in their baffle, kiting
In dives, the wind-hovered swallows chirking
Over your crossed churchyard. Sighting
Down the [...]

[Read more →]

From Gene’s Notebook
…went to Austin with wife/friend/companion/pal/partner/guardian of my solititude and guardian of my togetherness because she asked me to; she was an Obama delegate at the State Democratic Convention, and I now share two images ….
…the more than 12,000 people in the Austin Convention Center, EVERY face in Texas, EVERY language in Texas, and [...]

[Read more →]

A comment from Stan
The clerihewvian experiment was quite a blast for us–such an outpouring of creativity and good humor and excitement. We could hardly wait to check email to see what new thing someone had created or to be prompted to a new burst of creativity ourselves. There were forty-two entries, all told, and even [...]

[Read more →]

A poem by Mary Patterson Thornburg
“The saddest poem in the world”
Where I was born has faded from your maps.
Homestake, Montana. Even its name has drifted
Like smoke from a ruined chimney, out
Through the tall sagebrush, through the long, silent years.
When I was eight years old my mother died
In childbed with a child that would not [...]

[Read more →]

An advertisement

Come and support your rights. You only have the rights you exercise.
Your first right is the right to think and then to express your thoughts.

[Read more →]

by John Goggin
Pat Buchanan
thinks that he can
still pontificate.
He should stay home and masturbate.
The Right Reverend Wright, when
he was told to sit tight, then
incurred public pillory;
although he has a life-long friend in our Lady Hillary.
Chris Matthews
discussing issues
always shouts.
I never know what the fuck he’s talking about.
Monsieur Colbert
finds himself quite “cher”.
As a master of smarm
I [...]

[Read more →]

A fragment by Stan
Oh, the widening gyre and slouching beast–
       Who was it called them out?
Never more than twinkling eyes and ribald laugh
       With old Jane’s jokes passing over many a head,
Not heard by many outside that golden circle
       Thought seriously to be in search of a center.
Other days had their bitter tears: the odd [...]

[Read more →]

An opinion by Stan Raines
The politicians seem to have noticed, perhaps three or four years late as usual, that there’s a problem with fuel prices: They are going up and there seems to be no end in sight. People have been grappling with it for a while, though, not only at the gas station, but [...]

[Read more →]

A poem by Patricia A.

a tragedy of four was
trimmed to three
to fit the clichéd geometric mold
of lust, betrayal, and love,
or,
something that pretends to be love,
that takes a form the prey will trust,
or needs;
that has an insatiable hunger; that devours
and discards,
and left you, the extra line, alone,
detached.
but then, he too became a solitary line
after a [...]

[Read more →]

A Poem by Stan Raines
For Don Rumsfeld
One hundred thousands souls or so
Fit the measure quite nicely.
Every mother’s child can count that high
Don’t need a reason why
Every body’s count still adds up
How many grains will fill the cup?
How do you measure the oil
You’ve brought to a boil?

[Read more →]

A poem
Treasure
Search your trash!
You missed the one thing
of true worth.
Where are your shells
And the bones of all
You have consumed.
What odds and ends
you have in there.
Surely they glow and glitter.
And there’s a rhythm
You can keep for life
In your swing and sway.
Why, the ancient ones
Built their Gods
From oysters and broken shanks.
They raised towns
On their dead
And planted lost [...]

[Read more →]

Crumpled up the mountains, he did,
And burst them from the ground.
He broke not a sweat, he did,
From this thought or the next,
Seas rising, boiling and turned
A Greasy Mix in his bowl.
Seasoned words to say again
What can’t be said in words
The ancient story of all that is
Told again to make it new,
To shape it to the [...]

[Read more →]

The New York Times is reporting more and more about the Valley. Here is analysis of the newly empowered Michael Chertoff’s actions towards building the infamous Wall. Do we have NYT agents secretly running amongst us? And where is Pink Floyd when you need them?

[Read more →]

Paul Krugman of the New York Times ruminates today on the growing food shortages in the world. Take a look.

[Read more →]