A wise and funny story--a favorite of mine from Molly Ivins (via Mother Jones)––whom I've never stopped missing--a story that I'm posting, below, in part to piggyback on an article OCA posted from historian Timothy Snyder on terrorism, with this insight:
"I won’t claim to know what Hamas expects from Israel, nor what Israel
should do. That would be a matter for people with the languages and
expertise…
My point is
that it is always worth asking, in such situations, whether you are
following the terrorist’s script. If what you want to do is what your
enemy wants you to do, someone is mistaken. It might be your enemy. But
it also might be you."
BELOW—This is the story Molly Ivins told, which she heard from her friend Johnny Faulk. Johnny Faulk, she says . . .
“…used to tell a story about when he was a Texas Ranger, a captain in fact. He was seven at the time. His friend Boots Cooper, who was six, was sheriff, and the two of them used to do a lot of heavy law enforcement out behind the Faulk place in south Austin. One day Johnny's mama, having two such fine officers on the place, asked them to go down to the hen house and rout out the chicken snake that had been doing some damage there.
Johnny and Boots loped down to the hen house on their trusty brooms (which they tethered outside) and commenced to search for the snake. They went all through the nests on the bottom shelf of the hen house and couldn't find it, so the both of them stood on tippy-toes to look on the top shelf.
I myself have never been nose-to-nose with a chicken snake, but I always took Johnny's word for it that it will just scare the living daylights out of you (which this one did.) Scared those boys so bad that they both tried to exit the hen house at the same time, doing considerable damage to both themselves and the door.
Johnny's mama, Miz Faulk, was a kindly lady, but watching all this, it struck her funny. She was still laughin' when the captain and the sheriff trailed back up to the front porch.
"Boys, boys, " said Miz Faulk, "what is wrong with you? You know perfectly well a chicken snake cannot hurt you."
That's when Boots Cooper made his semi-immortal observation. "Yes ma'am," he said, "but there's some things'll scare you so bad, you hurt yourself."
Two magazines come through the mail slot on Saturdays: Time, for my home-owner neighbors, and the Economist for me. Their covers this week were quite a doozy. I don't have anything to add, just thought I'd note this historic moment. 1. The Economist, with a frightened Britannia saying, "OH **UK! Whatever next?" about Brexit:
"WHEN HISTORIANS come to
write the tale of Britain’s attempts to leave the European Union, this
week may be seen as the moment the country finally grasped the mess it
was in."
2. Time asks, "Do They Dare?" (referencing T.S. Eliot's "Do I dare to eat a peach?"--is that odd?) about what Time considers the likely impeachment of Donald Trump:
"Top Democrats don't want to say it, but the House will likely move to oust President Trump."
I'm looking forward to the forthcoming Raise
Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins, a documentary about the Texas reporter. Regularly I wish I could read her wicked take on politics today.
^ Molly Ivins, known for her rapier wit, poses with a fencing sword in front of the Texas state capitol in Austin.
The Guardian writes, it "sends an
urgent message from the Bush years to a nation under Trump with sharp humour. ...After Pat Buchanan delivered an infamous speech
at the 1992 Republican convention, couching the struggle with Democrats
in terms of a “cultural war”, columnist Molly Ivins wrote that it 'probably sounded better in the original German'. She did not live to
cover a Trump rally."
It's a 7-Up year, I like to imagine what I'd do and say if a camera crew showed up to film my life. Oh--wow--total digression: I just googled the 7-Up series [New Yorker review] to see where they are, and I'm sad to see the first one of them has died. Lynn Johnson, the working-class girl who said at seven, "I’m going to work in Woolworth’s" and grew up to be a children's librarian, died at 57 years old in 2013, one year after 56 Up. Her death seems to have gone largely unreported, except a piece when the library was named in her honor---the 7-Up film crew was there. I love the series, though--or even partly because?--it's problematic. Lynn was interesting because she seemed slightly hostile toward director Michael Apted, whom the New Yorker review noted "can be unbearably patronizing toward his subjects, particularly the working-class women." Yes. I'd once thought maybe Lynn was just a sour person, but when you see her with her family, she's relaxed, open, and loving--and her body language is altogether different--leaning in, instead of holding herself at a distance.
R.i.p., Lynn.
Coming Up For Air & Pancakes
Um, so... what I was going to say for my life is that, heh, if a film crew showed up, once again they'd show me looking at open water, not sure which way to row or where the currents will take me next. This seems to be my return-to position. :) I mean that mostly in relation to [paid] work, not self. I feel centered in who I am, like a person sitting in a boat is stable, and that's nice. I mean, I never worry about being unmoored from my self, just sometimes a bit lost in space. :)
Also, it's a nice place to be, in a boat. Still, I can feel soggy with seriousness sometimes. "Especially now," as I keep hearing people say since January 20. This year on my birthday, I was talking about astrology, and I said I sometimes feel awfully saturated, like the water sign I am--like a wet sponge--and would like to remember to come up for air, like a dolphin surfacing, or like bubbles rising in champagne...
(Of course, all the elements are somewhere in my chart--I've got Libra (air) moon and Mercury (air) in Aquarius, for instance, which are good balancers for Pisces.) So my phrase for this year is:
Come up for air. ArtSparker's "Knight of Pancakes" (up top) is a picture of what I mean. Air adds levity and space, it's not tied-down (not literal). This knight is something of a clown, but is still a knight: a heroic seeker and a servant of Ideals who is wise enough to wear armor. My favorite Knight of Pancakes is Molly Ivins (1944–2007) [wikipedia], who did heroic battle in political reporting with humor for a lance and armor. Here she is in 2004 talking about "How We Hurt Ourselves When Scared".
Molly Ivins: "We make the same mistake over and over again. We think we can make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free. I'll tell you something: when you make yourself less free, all that happens afterward is that you are less free. You are not safer." This is an excerpt from an hour-long speech on youtube, "The State of The Union". In it she says that liberals and leftists have a real problem in this country: we're not having fun. Some people, she said, tell her they'll have fun "when we win." She pauses before she replies that this is not a good strategy. You gotta come up for air.
I am hereby enrolling in the Order of the Pancake.
Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life, a biography by Bill Minutaglio & W. Michael Smith (2009)
I've often missed Molly Ivins's barbecued political writings, after she died in 2007, though there was such a long stretch there of nothing but bad news––wars, more wars, lies, and more lies––I wondered if even she could find humor in it. Probably she could have--that's what she did.
Much of what she said still applies, anyway. Like,
"Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention."
(Unlike his brother, Jeb! was even born in Texas.) And unfortunately she was as correct as I'd feared she be at predicting the future of the wars--here, in 2003:
"I opposed the war in Iraq because I thought it would lead to the peace from hell...."
"Yes, he should run. He's the only Democrat with any Elvis to him."
I always saw Spock, not Elvis. (Kirk is Elvis.)
Much of my reading is serendipitous, and when I saw this bio of Ivins where I was house sitting, I was interested, since I knew nothing about her life. I hadn't even realized she suffered with alcoholism, badly, or that she had written for the Minneapolis Tribune newspaper when she was young and lived on Pillsbury Ave!
Overall, reading Ivins is better than reading about her, but she's an inspiring outspoken woman, either way.
I am inspired this morning to Wash and Paint My Kitchen Walls, which I have not done in a dozen years.
Normally July has the worst weather for painting, the year's highest heat and humidity, but we're having a very weird cold front: this morning it is only 61ºF (16ºC) and due to rise only to 72º.
