Jill Rants and Raves

with apologies to ee cummings

I'm feeling morose and ill at ease. I can't tell whether it's all that is happening at the Albany Bulb, whether it is, that over the last two days, Oscar doesn't seem to want to run, or even walk up the few steps to my front door, or whether it is that my best friend has been out of town for more than a week and I miss her, or that my intimate life seems uncomfortably jagged right now or whether the political mood I sense wafting around is more like the anticipation of a Roman Coliseum confrontation than the election process of a civilized land. I have started blog after blog and not completed any. So I thought today - in my disjointed state, I would remind myself of simple truth -

maggy and jilly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

jilly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

ee cummings

and though ee wrote milly and I wrote jilly
the thought is the same just a different name: and

the beach is the place where we see
no people to block the view to me

and clearly i am no poet, but
it is my blog so I'm allowed to do it.

Albany Bulb Photos

http://jillposener.blogs.com/photos/albany_bulb/

This is an album I put together hurriedly today - it gives a small sampling of the thousands of images I have of this place. But it only represents the photos I've taken since I gave in to digital (now of course I realise I might have had a far more glittering career had digital photography been available to me 30 years ago...)

But it'll take me a lot longer to scan and upload some of the earlier photos on negative and slide film.

But I was thinking today how much of my life over the last ten years has been informed by both the mundane and the special experiences this land has brought into my life. The wild dog Willa who raced through the bushes to bite me squarely on the butt when I lifted her pups out of the immaculate den she had made for them in the deepest undergrowth on the Bulb, the hundreds of cats and dogs whom I helped re-home after the eviction on the homeless encampment in 1999 - 2000, some of whom still curl up on my bed every night, the people I met during that time - Granma Linda Dunnigan, Animal and Sarah, Jimbo the poet, Rabbit whose guided tour of the landfill is immortalised in the movie 'Bum's Paradise', ex Albany Police Chief Greg Bone who frankly didn't like the job it was incumbent on him to carry out, Osha Neumann, one of my heroes, an artist and attorney whose gifts could have tempted him towards a thriving law practice but whose philosophy brought him clients who could never pay him except in their gratitude, JP who lived and died on the landfill. Is it the art, which was deemed 'unsuitable' for a 'family park' because of it's irreverence and crude, carnal, and gory depictions in wild imaginative scenes of lust and horror, or the artists themselves who came every Saturday with their own kids and dogs and attracted an ever growing fan club. Is it the sense of discovery which hearkened back to my childhood when I wanted so badly to be an archaeologist, or the intense pleasure I get at seeing 'nature' reclaim what we have taken from her, the plant, bird and animal life overtaking the ugliness of a man made dump.

Was it that it reminded me of squatting Victorian cottages in London in the 70's while 'progressives' including the Labour Party were pushing for high density housing, and high rises over low scale communities. Is it that I was reminded of the occupied army base in Copenhagen, or of the many other moments where the unregulated and the unsanctioned momentarily held sway. Is it that in a world of hypocrisy and cant, of political machinations and ever increasing societal control, I among many others, could pretend, as we ambled along an unkempt trail a mile into the Bay, that we were still living free.

It is all of the above and much more.

the albany bulb RIP

Deb from Minnesota, who reads my blog (thank you Deb!) and often comments, noted that my description of what is happening at the Albany section of the much hyped Eastshore State Park seems so at odds with the official version. Now there's a shock. It's almost impossible to describe what the old Albany Landfill (aka The Bulb) feels like, unless you have been there - but when you have, and especially when you have allowed yourself to go there with one of the many self appointed 'tour-guides', the question you will ask is 'Why don't they just leave it alone?".

It's absolutely true that were it not for the preservationists of the 60,s, 70's and 80's - early visionaries in this area who wanted to slow or stop the rampant commercial and business park development along the Bay shoreline - this expanse of former landfill would already be lost as open space. I'm not arguing that.

The filling and polluting of the Bay is one of the terrible consequences of the rush to build postwar suburbia. And the same profiteering now fuels the development of tract housing and gated communities on what used to be farmland and open space less than a generation ago, so that even a simple task like shopping for bread and milk requires you drive your massive SUV to a store in a developed mall a few miles away.

But the good intentions of those activists have become the proscriptive doctrines of those who build and run parks. The big lie is that the park system will give greater access to more of the 'stakeholders'. These days, a Bay Area politician without a 'endorsed by the Sierra Club' stamp on their election door hanger means virtual banishment from the corridors of power. But the reality is that doctrinaire environmentalists have the politicians by the throat and support in the next election depends upon their buying into the creation of so called 'natural habitats' and 'resource protection areas' where humans are shut out and made into observers of nature instead of participants.

This is the backdrop to what has happened with the Eastshore State Park.

But it is at the Albany piece that an almost epic battle has been waged. And while I could try (and probably fail) to describe the evolution of the battle and as importantly the battleground, I'm just going to say that the place has become a jewel - simply by being ignored by the authorities. For years, it was allowed essentially to self regulate, plants grew without being tended, animals and birds arrived, reptiles and rodents emerged, rose bushes bloomed hidden between concrete slabs dumped 40 years ago, artists came and left a treasure trove of outsider art, the homeless moved in for over 10 years. It was a dump for chrissakes. Everything that grew and breathed there came because it could, because it bubbled organically into a cauldron of life and eruptions of leaves and berries and trees.

The remnants of the dumped concrete and rebar plunges from the earth in sculpture of its' own making. As my friend Osha Neumann (one of the artists and one of the few civil rights attorneys to represent the homeless when they tried to resist eviction) says, "It is a place of wild imagination".

And now, they have started the process of destroying that imagination, to replace it with something that can be controlled, contained and coerced into compliance with a 'park plan'.

It is breaking my heart. As much as any love affair gone wrong. And in a few years all that will left of this imagination will be a few 'interpretive' signs. I will not soon get over this heartache. I once said to a good friend that when the Landfill is taken by the forces of conformity, I would leave this area. Native plants (what exactly is native to a landfill) are meant to replace the palms, the roses, the vines, the fruit trees and the lone eucalypt on the Bulb, the art has long been deemed 'unsuitable for a family park' and the dogs - like the art - will be leashed, forever.

This photo taken today:

All photos by Jill Posener © All Rights Reserved

f'OWL play

Look , I don't hate burrowing owls. I like 'em. I love birds of all kinds, and owls have a special place in my heart because as a small child I found a young owl inside a paper bag stashed into a garbage can in Kuala Lumpur. Does that sound like a far fetched story? Like so many in my strange and wonderful life, it is 100% true. My brother and I carried the owl home and my Mum drove us to a wildlife centre where they were enthralled at our find. I was pretty in love with the owl till I saw them feed live mice to it. When I met, much later, an animal rescuer called Ronnie who had liberated hundreds of mice from a vile research lab in England, I wondered whether he had released them in fields (where presumably they became prey for, among other things, owls) before he was arrested. I didn't ask. Ronnie served 7 years in jail for the act of placing animal life above the corporate greed and scientific stupidity of human beings.

So, don't accuse me of not caring about the wild, of not being sensitive enough to 'habitat preservation', or 'resource protection' or whatever fancy phrase some khaki pants and button down shirt 'park planner' wants to come up with.

The story involves the worst kind of political back room wrangling, park planning decisions, state parks vs local people, soccer mom playing field advocates, corporate boardrooms and environmentalist dealmakers and a population who seems to have come to believe that if the Sierra Club says 'jump' all we do is say 'which cliff shall we go off?'

The end result is that as part of the 'creation' of the Eastshore State Park, which made a homogenised whole of a set of unique and unusual ecological, cultural and functional open spaces, the meadow at the old Albany Landfill was designated as a burrowing owl habitat. Not that there ever was a burrowing owl there; not that the owl which supposedly lived where now the water guzzling, electricity hungry, environmentally wasteful Tom Bates Regional Sports Complex sits was ever actually seen; not that there has ever been (according to a naturalist employed by the parks system) a successful burrowing owl transplant in this area - but never mind reality and truth in political machinations - the fencing and the earth moving machines tell the story.

"You stupid people of this area" (the khaki 'Dockers' might say) "who thought that the vibrant plant and animal life, co-existing as it did with human and canine activity, must have been nuts to think that we could just let this organic urban wildness continue. Where would we put all of our chain link fence if not around your park? What would we do with all of the money we seem to have burning holes in our pockets? Why would we do a better job of maintaining our current parks if we can 'build' a new one, especially if it brings us Sierra Club support next time we want to fleece the voters for new bond money? Why let it just be when we can screw it up?"

The Albany Landfill - it's hard to explain what it's like. I have been walking there with my dogs and on my own for almost ten years and almost every day of those years photographing every nook, every cranny. Every day, I discover something new. Maybe one day I'll discover a burrowing owl. Chances are he'll be outside the fence, and if I ask him 'dude, whatcha doing outside the habitat area? Are you crazy?', he'll probably answer 'hey, all the mice left when we moved in and I'm tired of waiting for some animal liberationist to bring food'.

Or he might respond 'The really tasty gophers moved once there were no dogs to tease'.

Or 'hey Jill, you have to do what the environmentalists tell you to do. We don't'. Whoo hoo.

But he'd probably say 'hey I burrowed, Ok? I burrowed, and all I found was some garbage left here by humans in the 50's. You think I wanna live like that? Do you? Would you? Would you?'

scaife loves hillary

The conservative movement is so unhappy with the Republican presidential nominee they've decided to flirt with Hillary in a big way. But making out with Clinton in the back room is merely the latest deliberate attempt by the Right to subvert the election process with money, with lies and with that familiar locker room style they do so damn well.

Richard Mellon Scaife, best known outside of the billionaire's club as the man who funded each and every scandal and dirty trick against Bill Clinton, is at it again in his endorsement of Hillary. Dubbed the 'Funding Father Of The Right', Scaife openly admitted that his intent was to engineer Gore's ascendancy to the Presidency, thereby galvanising the right wing and creating a backlash against progressive policies.

Rush Limbaugh, arguably the most influentual conservative radio voice in America, is giggling his way through his self aggrandizing comedy show 'Operation Chaos' in which he has been curdling the milk in Pennsylvania and Indiana by encouraging registered Rep's to switch parties in order to vote in Dem primaries and pushing Hillary to an artificial win. At the very least, these boys who act like jocks, hope to extend the Democratic internal battle until neither candidate looks electable in November.

That's how bad John McCain is. And that is how good the Democratic chances are (or were) to win the White House come the fall. Except.

The two candidates on the right, but left side, haven't yet formulated a 'Bash McCain' strategy, but appear to be content throwing barbs (that's putting it kindly) at one another.

Rachel Maddow (d'yall listen to talk radio as much as I do? No? Good for you) who has a steaming butter type of voice and is a dyke, said yesterday that she thought that at this point, McCain looked to be the winner in November. Unless, she added, Barack and Hillary finally make this about winning in November instead of counting super-delegates on an abacus over their oatmeal every morning. Hillary supporters are banking on Puerto Rico coming out strongly for her. Are they all nuts?

Who is to blame for Amerika's electoral shambles? I'll get back to you on that. Meanwhile, I think this will be an election spoken of in 100 years (just as the last troops are getting back from Iraq) as the election which finally brought a glimmer of understanding about the need for campaign and election finance reform.

bob barr, polygamists, bitter and angry urbanites

I've been tweaking about loads of stuff this week: Obama's 'small town bitter and angry' comments, blown out of all proportion by none other than his fellow democrats. I guess those of us who are bitter and angry in the cities are clinging to our soy mocha lattes and pilates classes. And if any of the negative ads are to be believed, neither candidate is good enough to win the nomination. So why would we vote for them in a general election?

I'm tweaking about the fact that it isn't just that we (the people) don't trust our government, it's that our government doesn't trust us (the people). Do you think Texas Child Protective Services is going to do a better job with the four hundred kids they just snatched out of their communal home? How about if the men responsible for the alleged abuses were snatched instead? Huh? How about that for a concept. Taking the abusers out of the log cabins instead of the children who are now being scattered around the Texas foster care system. Oh yeah, that's a good move.

Perhaps the best way to stop the spread of polygamist sects is to print a poster like the ones we use for promoting spay and neuter in cats - just look at the numbers. At the top of of the poster the question 'How many children can one polygamist crazy breed in ten years?' and then list how many generations it takes to reach a million. Anyone wanna come and screen print with me?

And I'm tweaking about the fact that they (whoever they is) have started the cleansing of the Albany Landfill from an organic place of wild imagination to the sign-posted, interpreted, non-native plant cleansed, super-park which we can all look at from manicured trails but which will be protected (from us who have been stewards of this magnificent self regulated urban wildness). There will not be another place like it in this area and we are the worse off because of it. Soon, it will be a place we can look at with our binoculars from a viewing ledge (these always remind me of the platforms built for western diplomats to stand on while staring over at East Berlin beyond the Wall). We'll be able to read off of a sign which birds we are meant to be able to see, instead of being able to sit quietly in swaying grasses at dusk enjoying the swallows and hummingbirds, the finches and hawks and the redwinged blackbirds as they share this place which thrived under official neglect.

And I'm tweaking about liberal talk show host Tom Hartmann describing Bob Barr as 'a great man'. Just a gentle reminder to the rest of you that  though Barr recently adopted the religion of libertarianism and got a little antsy about Bush's asssaults on privacy and civil liberties, he was widely considered among the most hard right conservatives as a three time Georgia congressman. Among Barr's proudest moments -

Barr was a strong supporter of the War On Drugs and adamantly opposed legalization of medical marijuana. He successfully inserted an amendment in a funding bill that blocked the implementation of a medical marijuana initiative saying it "has no place in medicine, no place in pain relief".
He's changed his tune since becoming a libertarian. Mmm.

He voted for The Patriot Act. He now publicly regrets his Patriot Act Vote. No shit.

Barr authored and sponsored the Defense Of Marriage Act. He hasn't had the guts yet to flip flop on that one.

But perhaps, as Tom Hartmann says he has written 7 books on ADD, he can be forgiven for this lapse of attention to the details of Barr's impact on our everyday lives. A man renowned for lifestyle legislation becomes a libertarian...and wonders whether we might be depriving the American  people of their civil liberties...yeah, too little too late Mr Barr.

 

blousy bountiful beautiful candye kane

© photo Jill Posener. All Rights Reserved

The news from Candye Kane Central is that the lady is doing as well as can be expected after 8 hour surgery to remove a pancreatic tumor. If you have never seen Candye perform or haven't listened to her music, go treat yourself. Check out 'Toughest Girl Alive' on her myspace page and you'll get a sense of why she decided, when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer to go out there and show the disease just how tough it would be dealing with the indomitable Candye. Great to know that she is on the road to recovery.

The gracious Candye Kane

Photo: Jill Posener © All Rights Reserved

My friend Candye, who I've had the honour of photographing, and who is one of the gutsiest and warmest women I know, had cancer surgery today and I've been passing a few hours listening to Candye's  thumping rousing funny and sexy woman identified blues, and looking through the pictures I took of her. I went to a club in San Francisco, Bicuits and Blues, a couple of years ago to listen to her band and I'd been struck, again, by just how freaking beautiful she is, but it's when I look at my own pictures of her that I get the biggest smile, because Candye being one of the most gracious women you'd ever meet put up with a sort of date with me - 12 years ago - when to be quite honest, I just flunked. I mean, what would you do, if you're a half way decent butch, given the chance to take the delicious Ms Kane on any date you chose?

We went to dinner, that was a good start. I watched her eat seafood with her hands and spill juices down her chin. She grinned, she laughed. And then I blurted out that I wanted to take her somewhere special. We got in my car, and drove through the foggy evening towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Sounds OK so far, right? But I wasn't taking Candye for a sentimental view of the City from the Marin headlands. I turned off the main road and drove through the silent Presidio until we sat, on a quiet unused roadway underneath the massive pillars of the freeway leading to the Bridge. The moon was bright, the air cool and Candye must have wondered what the fuck I was doing.

I opened the door, and beckoned her to follow me across the street. And there I introduced Candye Kane to the small, old pet cemetery created by servicemen living on the Presidio military base. It's an astonishing place and Candye and I wandered around looking at the makeshift memorials to pets belonging to men and women who had returned from war or might yet die on foreign soil. It's an emotional place. But possibly not the best choice for a 'date'.

Photo: Jill Posener © All Rights Reserved

Soon after, I drove Candye back to her hotel. She's always been very gracious about my awkwardness that evening. So today, as she is  facing  pain and fear and a new beginning, I'm looking back and smiling.

sex lies and tapioca

I can't help it, I'm back on this prostitution thing. I think men who go to prostitutes are doing the right thing. And I think most women whose men do go to hookers know full well it is happening, and would rather their guys have safe sex with a packaged bimbo of their choice than be giving furtive gifts to a woman they are having an affair with and who is hoping the guy is gonna leave his wife as he keeps promising to do. Ok, ok. I know that not all hookers have myspace pages, belong to an exclusive 'escort agency' and have their 'dates' in slick DC area hotels. I also know that millions of girls and women and sold into sexual slavery every year in this fucked up world of ours where females (and many boys also) are traded like chattel, oxen and mutual funds. The two things are very different. Unlike the hypocrisy which permeates the dominant culture about sex.

I think it's a damn shame that Spitzer had to resign over his youthful myspace whore, and it's an even bigger shame when his successor, David Paterson admitted he had cheated on his wife with a number of women, but perhaps as he is considered 'legally blind', he just didn't notice that they weren't the woman he was married to.

Makes you wonder though, doesn't it? What were the real motives behind 'getting' Spitzer, at that particular moment in time, just as Bear Stearns was collapsing and the US taxpayer was gonna have to bail out another corrupt financial institution. Yup, you can always get a guy by the balls. Literally.

My checkered past includes the fact that I once threw a garbage can filled with rotting fruit and meat through the plate glass window of a London porn store, and was one of 16 women arrested during a Reclaim The Night march when the police came bearing down on us, batons and boots raised. My hardline feminist perspective gave no quarter and took no prisoners. But I've learned a lot in the last 30 years, and I've come to appreciate that when actor Hugh Grant was found entertaining a paid for blow job in his car, he was doing the 'responsible' thing. Imagine how many women throw themselves at him, how many would like to boast about their one night with a star. And he, knowing how messy that could become, opts to jerk off in the mouth of someone who does it for a living. Personally, I'm OK with that.

So, just had to get that out of the way. I'm also in a froth about how many lies are told to get the sex people wanna have, and how many lies are told to get out of the sex they don't want no mo'. I'm in a mood actually, all around.

Funny thought for the day. Condoleeza Rice as VP. I'm sorry - this is the woman who is famous for the phrase 'Mission Accomplished' and who is responsible in large part for a bunch of failed policies in the Middle East. We've already worked out that just because Hillary is a woman doesn't make her the right woman for the White House, and that just because he is black doesn't make Obama the right man for the White House, so along come the Republicans and say 'hey, we got it. Black and a woman. Bingo'.

I've found the perfect dessert - butterscotch tapioca. Need some.

free trade is neither

I wanted to buy a pretty simple product - a portable, collapsible water bowl to take out on my dog hikes. You know, they are made of fabric with a waterproof lining, and are made by companies with cute names like Ruff Wear and Outward Hound. They are really useful. Those of you without pets - well, I don't think anyone reading my blog is petless - but even those of you with animal companions may not be as endlessly fixated on how vast a business the 'pet industry' is, as I am.

Americans spend over 30 billion dollars a year on their pets - that includes the big ticket items like vet care, grooming, boarding, training. But there is a rapidly growing market for 'designer' products - including organic and 'raw' foods, personalized leashes, $100 collars, hemp clothing, bejewelled name tags and associated services like dog walking, doggy day care and 'in home' visits for the pets of busy professionals who wanna make sure Max and Sophie don't become raging freaks being left home alone all day.

I watch all of this with a sort of wistful 'what if'. What if I had seen this fad coming a decade ago? What if I really could get my vision of a gallery of amazing - and it goes without saying, high quality - animal art off my imaginary back burner and out onto main street, what if I had thought of designing a collapsible water bowl, you know....

So I go to buy one of these things and they are reasonably cheap so I end up buying two of them. I'm particulary incensed by the one I bought at trendy REI, a store populated by global warming fixated, environment protection obsessed, adoring Berkeleyites who think that when they put on a pair of hiking boots they just saved the planet. Groovy pricey REI. This bowl is made by a company, Bison Designs, whose website homepage features a staff photo with everyone in front of a massive American flag and all are wearing a white T shirt sporting a Stars and Stripes. But the products of course are....errr....well....made in ....China. And I aint talking Chinatown in Atlanta, Georgia. The other bowl from Outward Hound, a company based in Orange County, California is also made in China. I'm not a protectionist. I believe in FAIR TRADE.

Didn't a container ship carrying goods manufactured in China destined for the shelves of environmentally fascistic Berkeley just dump a vast amount of oil in San Francisco Bay, despoiling our coastline and killing thousands of birds and marine mammals? What the freak is wrong with this picture? One helluva lot.

It starts with us. If anyone can point me in the direction of a collapsible water bowl made in America, by a company employing union labor and providing a living for working people right here, I'll buy it. No, I'll buy two of them. Meanwhile, I'm taking at least one of these bowls back to the store for a refund which I'm going to donate to an organisation which is trying to prevent the growing trade in animal parts from China, including bear paws which are becoming a delicacy in soup.

life, near death and the changing of the seasons

Roo Surrounded By Friends, Point Arena, March 23rd, 2008 © Jill Posener

It was easter Sunday two years ago, here in the beautiful woods among the redwoods and madrones, amid the yellow soil and the bluejays, and the house on the ridge that I love so much, that I lost sight of Roo for a moment. And then in an instant her cries pierced a foggy morning, a misty, cold lonely morning, as Mamma, a feral dog I had known and loved for years, grabbed Roo by the throat and carried her into the woods beyond my reach. Roo's small frame hung from the large jaw and her eyes were empty with terror. I felt a searing horror, and a pleading longing 'no' burst out of me with such volume that birds fluttered from trees and my border collie Frank rushed from the house and on a pursuit of Mamma, though he did not know why.

In those few minutes when I thought I had killed Roo with my carelessness, I watched helplessly, racing through underbrush, and over embankments, sliding down the rain slicked trails as the larger dog would stop ahead of me and drop Roo, only to gnaw at her legs or stomach and then pick her up and run some more, Roo's limbs drooping by her sides. She made no more sounds.

Frank kept me on the right track. Suddenly we emerged into a clearing, Mamma looked back at me almost adoringly, as if to say, 'look, look what I did'. I ran harder then and screaming at her to back off kicked her in the side just as she bent over to retrieve her prey once more. I reached for Roo and without thinking tried to pick her up. Her eyes flashed fear and her jaw snapped open and shut on my hands puncturing them over and over. I took off my sweater and wrapped her, lifting her to me, as her head dropped to one side. I flailed then, sobbing and saying her name again and again.

I was alone, it was easter Sunday and the blood from my tiny dog spread over a grey sweatshirt on which I can still see, after dozens of washings, the palest of brown as a reminder of her agony, and mine.

It was the kindness of people whom I didn't know well, that saved Roo's life. The woman who was able to reach the vet during his easter family dinner, the vet who did what he could but who warned me that she might not survive, that she must go to an emergency vet in Santa Rosa, a two hour drive down the fog draped coastal road, and the emergency staff who took her from me when we arrived, leaving me with blood seeping through clothes and empty arms, Roo already in a state of disengagement from the world, and me.

I left Roo there and drove back to the house on the ridge in the woods and to the rest of my pack and looked at Mamma and her mate Yogi, now back in their locked enclosure and decided they had to die. Not out of vengeance, but because I could not ever let them run free again after this attack. Roo survived. The two dogs died.

Today, sitting at the same computer I had sat at starting that dark day, the world could not be a more different place. That day a melancholy settled into my brain and leaked into my soul and it has taken almost two years to exorcise it. I, who am filled with the sheer joy of living, exuberant in the way the days begin with light, enamored of the visions I see dancing around in my head, and excited by the way in which simple things exalt the art of living - I was lost in a tunnel. No air, or light and no sure knowledge of it ever coming to an end.

I'm not sure what brought me to the door through which I was able to burst out of the tunnel - the zone, I describe it to the therapist I have depended on for two years. I remember the night of the day I had the two dogs killed, I called Jody and a dear friend Sarah, and they both called me back hourly until I was able to fall asleep, exhausted by my horror and self loathing. That was a night so black, so dense, I knew it was the beginning of a terrible journey.

Today, the fog sits somewhere across the ridge, Roo is lying on a chair with sun streaming in through a window, glistening in her rich thick coat of fur. She never seems to look at me or this place, even the spot on the trail where her blood mingled with dirt and leaves, with anything but a grin of life affirming pleasure.
Depression is, I'm glad to say, a companion whose claws left scars. The memory of that journey makes me even more alert to life and it's unexpected joys.

spitzer, moralism and mandatory neutering

I keep starting to write blogs about other things, for instance I am eager to let off steam about the proposed  state law in California mandating spay and neuter - Assembly Bill 1634, laughingly called The Healthy Pets Law. This is bad law people and I oppose it. Shitfuckgoddamm, are you sure Jill?????? Yes, I am, and when I have a few minutes not absorbed by stupid heterosexuals getting all riled up about a bit of prostitution, I'll get to it...

I've also started writing a blog about being proud to be a lesbian chauvinist, but the hypocritical, hysterical reaction to Elliot Spitzer just sweeps away cute little topics like that. You'd think all these talking heads have never heard of such a thing. Huh, a powerful white man liked to spill his semen all over the place in a fancy hotel room with a very attractive woman whom he had to pay for. This is what a guy resigns over??? Not going to war, or stealing from the American working class, or taking bribes, or being in bed with lobbyists. If only all politicians relieved their stress that way, we'd have fewer stuffed endangered species in hunting lodges.

Photo: ©Jill Posener, London 1982, All Rights Reserved

Can you believe the response to this thing? I am mad as hell. And you know where this is going to end, dontcha? It's gonna end up being his wife Silda's fault for being an uptight frigid ungiving wife with her twinset, pearls and silk scarf. So Elliot didn't get his rocks off with Silda. So freakin' what?

What exactly is everyone upset about? That he 'cheated' on his wife while being a hardass moralist? That he liked unprotected sex with his prostitutes? That he has three teenage daughters who are going to be 'ruined' by this? That he has 'issues'? That his wife has 'issues'? That sex has brought another political career to it's knees - forgive the sexual pun. What exactly are people surprised at? That a politician used hookers? That they were pretty pricey?

But back to mandatory neutering. You know where I'm going with this, right? So, I won't.

stolen - generations and elections

My Australian buddy Suzy - who shows me up by writing so beautifully and she is a visual artist of enormous talent, and she's a great parent of four-legged and two-legged beings, and she manages to make a longterm relationship work, and she's politically more correct than me, and she has always supported amazing self- empowerment efforts among indigenous and native peoples, and she has a mom who is about the best cook I ever had the pleasure of staying with, her dad and her sister are freakin' cool, and on top of that she introduced me to Bonzo, the first dog I fell in love with as an adult .... oh my god .... I hate her.

Melbourne, 1985 © Jill Posener. All Rights Reserved, 2008

Anyway, that Suzy wrote a comment on my blog about Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister making a long overdue official apology to indigenous people for the laws and policies of past Australian governments which robbed native people of their land and rights as human beings. Rudd refers specifically to the 'stolen generations', the thousands of children who were removed from their families and tribal lands and placed in 'orphanages', one of the most blatant and cruel attempts at eliminating a whole culture and people. Most Americans know of this terror via the movie Rabbit Proof Fence. This moment in history is an important one - will the Australian government be able to fulfil promises of change and create real practical solutions beyond the words?

Americans could look to Australia for guidance about how to run elections. The political parties choose a leader from within the legislative arena and the electorate votes the party's platform in the general election. There is  mandated public funding of elections, no complex caucus and primary system, no open primaries where Republicans are able to swing a vote in favour of one Democrat candidate in order to skew the process. America lives in an Oz dreamland where it is assumed that the primary system empowers we the people to be the decision makers. Splat.....oh dear I just spilt coffee on my new keyboard I laughed so hard...there are so many problems with Amerika's primary system it is hard to know where to start the surgery.

Take just two of the stranger anomalies - Florida and Pennsylvania. Florida is used to being disenfranchised so it doesn't really matter. Even though this state carries a large number of delegates, the vote didn't count. Why? Because of a power struggle between the Democratic National Commitee and the local state party over the timing of the primary. The fact that caucuses and primaries are spread out over 4 months is of itself absolutely nutty. So poor Pennsylvania, which doesn't vote till April doesn't count because Obama already has enough delegates. So how do you feel if you're a voter in the city of the birth of American democracy and hey, your vote don't count dude.

One of the reasons given is that if primaries were held on one day (like a general election), the candidates wouldn't have a chance to campaign in all the states. No shit, Sherlock! But public funding of elections would mean each candidate or party has equal media time and televised debates were shown on every channel including cable channels. You wouldn't need a massive on the ground campaign. You wouldn't need to make political consultants rich. And how about the fact that Kucinich was left out of Democratic candidate debates because MSNBC decided he wasn't a viable candidate? Is this working for you?

How do you feel about the 30 - 50 million dollars being raised every month by candidates in a PRIMARY campaign goddammit? Do you have a better idea of how that money could be spent?

The $100 you sent - how about funding a homeless shelter bed for 2 nights? 3 months of care for an oiled bird after an oil spill? Or paying for a senior citizen to be able to get vet care for her cat? Or organising a clean up of a local park? Maybe help pay for a returning army veteran to go on vacation? Or help with funeral costs for the woman shot to death in my Berkeley neighbourhood.

This blog is getting too long - this is important stuff people. You know what? The Australian Labour Party internally elected a leader (who wasn't everybody's first choice don't get me wrong), but who managed to lead the Party to victory over the Bush lover John Howard, and then within 6 months of taking power, issues a profound statement of regret for the policies of his beloved and dare I say it magnificent country. No primaries, no half a billion dollar campaigns, no lobbyists, no corporate financing of elections....start dreaming Amerika. What passes for public empowerment here is a popularity contest where the winners are the mainstream media, global corporations, consultants and lawyers and the men and women who are already among the richest in the world.

 

shakespeare unplugged

West Oakland,2008 © Jill Posener All Rights Reserved

I've been very quiet, I know. I've been fretting about some things, and getting all riled up about the usual stuff - the nature of love, passion, drama, relationships and the futility of it all - but really it's all just been simmering like an overcooked pot of beef stew - no, make that lamb, in light of the recent beef recall - on the back burner of my trembling busy brain.

It was Super Tuesday Part The Second yesterday - did y'all read Shakespeare when you were at school? This election is looking more Shakespearian than the Bard himself. You've got Ancient McCain who is really having difficulty reading the teleprompter. He does this strange thing with his eyes, where he seems to make a punctuation mark by opening them wide. It's unnerving. He then repeats the words 'my friends' and I keep expecting 'romans, countrymen' to follow. And isn't it a little unsettling that he has a name which could have come straight out of Macbeth? He is prone to evoking '100 year wars' and 'the battle for the soul of Islam'. I'm waiting for the medical report on this guy. Who exactly is going to be his VP choice? Aaaarggghhhh. I see Ancient McCain sitting in an empty castle in the highlands of West Virginia, with only lobbyists entering the inner sanctum while Mac is getting his daily shot of botox and getting the teeth glued so that they don't chatter so much when he speaks. And when he speaks, even at a victory celebration, the guy is barely awake, Never mind Barack not being able to answer the 3am 'emergency red' phone call - McCain's emergency phone is hooked directly to voicemail after 7pm. 'Hi this is Ancient Johnny, please call back during business hours'.

But then you've got an epic battle across the aisle. The former queen decides to revenge herself on her lying cheating king by taking the crown herself and forcing him to do the flower arrangements and work out menus for state dinners with the heads of countries with weird food requests for four (or more) years. But alas, the courtiers who once served her king are flocking to a young upstart prince who brings together the tribes of Kansas and Kenya and challenges Queen Hilaire to a duel in the plains of Texas, where much blood has been shed in the past.

There are accusations of an ugly child fathered by a woman in a man's suit, there are consorts declaring they have never been proud of their country, candidates who when they leave the battle declare that the whole campaign has been about unborn children. One candidate is declaring 'hope', another declaring 'faith', but none so far declaring 'charity'. There are battles being fought on foreign soil with men and women in inadequate armour dying for a cause they know little about. True there are no place names like Elsinore and Cawdor, but Abu Ghraib and Kabul are at least as hauntingly poetic and equally tragic. Kabul's ancient Greek name was Kofin, meaning the place were bees accumulate - the place of honey. It was home to an ancient tribe called Nuristanis. In the late 19th century Islamc rulers in the area attacked. The men were forced to join the army and the women who survived were taken into harems.

If only Will Shakespeare were alive to chronicle this terrible time - a moment in history more dramatic than Hamlet, a scene more sinister than the slaughters in Macbeth, a time more in need of a hero than the epic Henry V. Perhaps only Othello comes close to the dreadful unfolding of this monstrous family and tribal battle. There'll be some eyes poked out before too long.

Next week! Where is Falstaff when we need him most? Is Barack really Puck? Where is the love between Antonio and Sebastian from Twelfth Night when we need it, and who is our modern Jack Cade who leads a proletarian revolution in Henry VI Part 2 (of course)

the prince and the pee

Ooops, I lied. This is not about lesbian sex. I came home from a movie on Saturday night - the turgid There Will be Blood - and found that Oscar, the senior wiener in my home of lurve and devotion, had pee'd on the bed. This is a regrettable first for him. He has, I admit, been driving me nuts this winter, making what seem to me to be arbitrary decisions to pee indoors sometimes. At best the puddles are right by the open back door, as if he had every intention of taking his ten pound self outdoors but was beaten back by the California sprinkling we call rain. At worst, a river of piss runs down one of the gently sloping wood floors in my 100 year old house. I have been ready to throttle his little neck. And he knows it. He looks at me with brown menacing eyes and says 'I freakin' dare you Jill. I'll have Animal Services down here so fast you ....you ....well ....I just will'.
Oscar, as some of you know is somewhere around the 18 year old mark. This gives him enormous leeway. But the indoor pee thing. Wow, that just pisses me off.

But just last weekend, I went on a hike in the hills with Susie and the dogs including Oscar, and he probably walked at least 2 miles of the trail. He bounces, more than walks, on his short, still muscular dachshund legs, and his ears rise and fall as his body elevates. He is definitely at the back of the pack but never really out of sight (except when I lose him and panic), and the small bell I attached to his collar heralds his turn at a corner. Sometimes I start singing 'he'll be coming round the corner.....if he comes'. Most people we meet on the trail insist on stopping Oscar even though it slows his momentum and means he has to start his engine again. A few berate me for not carrying him. My answer 'hey, he asked to come on this walk, if he keels over right now, he's only got himself to blame' elicits looks of shock and tut tutting over my lack of dog parenting skills. Susie giggles.

But look - Oscar is a miracle. You've seen the pictures. He looks like a being from another planet. He is happiest when with me and the other dogs. Whether that's in bed or in my office watching me - as he is now - or out in the sun on the dusty trail finding some long forgotten horse poop to eat, he is first and foremost - a dog. During the night I often wake and check for his little chest heaving gently. I suppose it would be fine for him to go to sleep tucked into my arms and never wake up. But I suspect Oscar would be equally content to stop on the trail one day, look up at the redwoods and the blue sky and fall over.

I'm mad at him. He can't be pissing on the bed. But last night after piling all my bedding into the laundry and re-making the bed, I lifted him from the floor and tucked him up as usual. One of my cats, Blackie (I didn't name her by the way) who lived with a homeless woman next to the railroad tracks for years, before Linda asked me to give Blackie a more certain future,  jumps on the bed at some point every night and finds Oscar. She begins to purr and curls up beside him, licking his threadbare ears till they are damp and crinkly. Oscar just lays there with his eyes shut gently soaking up the attentions of this special feline. In the morning these two are entwined like lovers.

So I put up with my prince and his pee and remind myself that, as Anatole France wrote 'Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened'. I am wide awake.