Tuesday, July 31, 2012

PECKSNIFFIAN!

                 CC0 WikiMedia Commons

Are you wondering what the word title means?  A real attention grabber right? Good!  Now listen up!  Today's blog is about the dumbing down of meanings operating in our language that word important ideas to which the words we use in discourse refer.  I'm thinking about the word "government" and the word "politician" and a third term you cannot see operating in between these two ideas, "pecksniffian."

This may just be the right descriptive adjective for this tyranny going on that thinks systematically toward a political dismantling of representative democracy in America!  It is always to be majority rule with respect for minority rights. One elected to serve must honor the will of the people and do so by protecting equally the inalienable rights of every individual citizen.   But Arizona's leadership under Jan Brewer are pecksniffian in their approch to civic responsibilities.

PECKSNIFFIAN / [pronunciation: (p k-sn f - n)] adjective: Hypocritically and smugly affecting benevolence or high moral principles. After Seth Pecksniff, a character in Martin Chuzzlewit, a novel by Charles Dickens. To gather a sense for what I mean, compare today's Arizona Republic headlines (1.) with  AZ REP headlines this past March (2.)

(1.) Brewer Urged To Halt Medical-Marijuana Program; County Attorneys Say Licensing Will Defy Law. -by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez July 30, 2012 @ 10:59pm  The Republic azcentral.com

(2.) Arizona Seeking Pacts With Other States To Defy Federal Government. -by Ginger Rough Mar. 9, 2011 12:00 AM The Republic azcentral.com

The number two headline concerns more than just the  national, attention-getting and controversial immigration defiance as this excerpt shows...

Arizona lawmakers are working to create alliances with other states on controversial issues such as health care, immigration and firearms regulation in a growing effort to challenge the authority of the federal government.

Now my own thought here yields the notion that for these two picturings to operate opening a window framing the margins in seeing between March and the edge of August this election year, there must also be operating in the mind of the Arizona Republican party leadership currently in power in this state something between sense and nonsense swinging the pendulum of the collective governing civic mind of these folks that privately desires to dismantle the authority of We, The People in the process, something that dumbs down what government is to “mean”.

What is the meaning of government?  What is it to adopt a politically "pecksniffian" manner?  Who benefits if excluding participation of  SOME KINDS OF PEOPLES OVER OTHER KINDS OF PEOPLES OF AMERICA in SELF-GOVERNMENT were to be the normative principle of the day?  What if your story when you are old is to tell your great grandchildren how it was to be alive during the days of the Great Suppression? How is it the same group of politicians defy laws they don't want to obey against the mandate of people they are elected to serve? Pecksniffian is the attitude of the current legal campaign taking shape under the guidance of thirteen county attorneys and Jan Brewer's office. 

These same folks want us to believe their political responses are legitimate where they defy  the public mandate in what We, The People of the state which elected them to office mandate in passing this law.  Sadly, folks, they are not!  Politicians and other elected state officials (not to mention officials of high professional stature in private practices working closely with public leadership)  on the one hand build legal briefs to challenge and violate federal law due to the federal government's failure to act. On the other hand, the same, local, elected leadership in concert with county attorneys usurp the will of the people to self-govern in the face of federal law, which they now hide behind in a failure to act. Yes, folks, all that is in deed, acting!  They act like they are acting, which they indeed are, but poorly! Because it is in civic terms that the political actor masks his failure. The tragedy is doubly tragic for state elected officials fail to act on behalf  We, The People! 

Exclusions and divisions, exclusivity and derisions continue in Arizona splitting in two what kind of civic people hold power.  One must now vote with an eye for reclaiming one’s civic right to govern! VOTE with an eye for WE, THE PEOPLE as opposed to the politician 's pecksniffian approach to government.

Friday, July 20, 2012

HERA'S EYES


                                                1963 etching by Salvador Dali
First published in
"Like A Woman Falling" ©2004, the following poem, inspired by a dream, is based upon the myth of IO as told by Ovid in "Metamorphoses".

IN A DREAM SHE LAY STILL


inside what she couldn't see one thousand eyed in two or three
the egg hatched when the eagle maid
in black, remade in gold...

Last night She dreamt an alchemy, She dreamt
neither me nor mine. She dreamt
herself and when that died
She left her eyes behind. He said
This forest burns
burns high in the heavens, see
every tree is blackened
to its tips. He said

Pick that up
and so, someone leaned over the edge and reached
high in the heavens low
and picked from the tallest tips of the blackened pines
someone looking just like me pitched out
and thus drew in two boughs, two boughs, both dead
one black, one gold, one ash and one
whose blossoming did hold. They are dead
someone looking just like me then said.

He said, "Separate them!" And, I did, while he went on
and on and on―an on-to-say, a story. The fires de-story
everything tis true, as this fire, this terrific fire did you
but look what you now hold. Downwardlooking

I lifted two boughs, both were dead
once.
He said

Separation changes things. Now that you know this
you will, too. Now you must get away quickly...
(is this a quickening a-go?) Go!
Get away with this saying-thing! And so

I jumped into a heap between two gents
a father and a son. What a mess!
that leap, this heap, these men
the son was driving
(too close to the edge)
the father's face kept changing―he had three!
(none of which I liked) but, that
didn't stop me from interacting
and all the while we were climbing.

And, we kept climbing, up a slippery slope
conforming to its curl, the dash tilting such
that water kept flowing toward us while curving
to the dash. The son was driving
on the outside where the three of us sat...
and the cab began leaking...from the in-side out.

Everything's a mess, I thought, yet,
is adhering so. The boy
reached out and slurped a sliding slip of a sip
from the dash. It was a mad dash! Such a bad water
a mad-lad, sad-bad water!
Turns out dad hauls manure.
(It was his truck the boy was driving.)
"Are you sure he knows how," I asked
just as we parked.

I got out as quick as I could
parked like we were on that iffy cliff
cleft with crevices and rocks and a high house
built upon stone. Some folks were home
a girlfriend I knew came out
we rushed into each other's arms
and each other's laughter. Oh, the things
you have been saying, she said.

I know. Don't you love it, the things I say?
They want to know how on earth
you do it, get away with that say. They want
to learn those sayings, too. I said

Oh, that is simple
then I showed them all. You let IT
form the picture. You let IT do the work.
Let it as IT, and IT will let you.

It opened then in the work they were
working on them. All the right colors bled, too
in the one I drew, which I used in example

I let the paint do its own painting, I said.
Then we watched and we saw that the paint did.
IT showed up and showed through and showed
quite a show―My! All those eyes!

Which formed into forms that died dry
in a day scene. But, just before they did...
in the center of the seen a black thing formed
and it began to grow

and this black thing formed into a bird
a bird in flight rising from a
red, red sorry sort of spot
surrounded in a circularity of gold
from where it hatched.

Seems eggs hatch when we
return a story.

And so, no body's sorry
about jumping into that
truckload of sh-sh...stuff
nor about exposing people
to all those black things bleeding
through their own red-dead, dead red
sorry messes
nor about
messin' with those guys...even though

(somebody still thinks that driver needs lessons)


Hera's Eyes, stephanie pope from 
 "Like A Woman Falling" ©2004