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When, three weeks ago, Rolling Stone published a horrific story about University of Virginia's rampant and systemic rape culture enabled by its own administration's complicity, we may have expected that their editors had braced themselves for the backlash that would inevitably ensue. After all, as anybody familiar with rape advocacy – or, even more likely, is or is close to a survivor of sexual assault – knows, whenever a rape is denounced, forces beyond the victim's imagination surge to bombard her and her advocates with all sorts of accusations, doubts and demonization attempts. The survivor's life is scrutinized; their past, their lifestyle, their sexual history, all are reviewed and questioned, in search of character failings that might undermine her story. That story, her account of the violence she underwent, most of all, is probed and prodded endlessly; any discrepancy, however random, is immediately raised against her as 'proof' that the whole thing never happened.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me

Pastor Martin Niemoller, speaking about Nazi Germany

 

 

First, they’ve come for the people of color.  

 

America’s police forces increasingly serve as a a private corporate army, beyond the reach of the law.  

 

But our nation is distracted by race.  And millions of white Americans are under the illusion that what was done to Michael Brown and Eric Garner can’t happen to them.

These un-prosecuted killings of African-American men go way beyond racial prejudice.

They are the calling card of an Orwellian state:

Here in Virginia, U.S.A., I'm aware that the native people were murdered, driven out, and moved westward. But my personal connection to that crime is weak, and frankly I'm too busy trying to rein in my government's current abuses to focus on the distant past. Pocahontas is a cartoon, the Redskins a football team, and remaining Native Americans almost invisible. Protests of the European occupation of Virginia are virtually unheard of.

All the original "starving hysterical naked" beatniks, cool cats, flower children, hippies and freaks are now advancing into their senior years or dead.

But their innocence and experience -- and complex experiments with words and ideals, and celebration of life -- is still available here across hilly and chilly San Francisco.

Guide books and maps will help, but you don't really need those to discover the remains of "the scene" if you keep your eyes open while wandering the city.

In the sanitized, unaware 1950s when it all began, America lacked what later became known as a mass "youth culture," which quickly branched into a deeper "counterculture."

In January 1967, the social changes engulfed San Francisco's Golden Gate Park at "The Human Be-In, A Gathering of the Tribes."

There, an invisible baton passed from revered beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg to the hippies' ex-Harvard psychedelic psychologist Dr. Timothy Leary.

Today, on nearby Haight Street, you can buy a copy of the luminescent poster of that beatific event which soon spawned a "Summer of Love."

“Some of the key technocrats and scientists of the Cold War say the nation has become overly confident about its nuclear deterrence. The nuclear enterprise, they say, ‘is rusting its way to disarmament.’”

Let’s meditate on this irony — that disarmament, finally, means no more than growing old and weak and pathetic.

What brilliant Cold War Revival propaganda, masquerading, in theLos Angeles Times last week, as objective reporting. Let’s meditate on the dark chuckles of the Cold War technocrats, as they attempt to summon an extra trillion dollars or so from the national coffers to restore America’s nuclear weapons program to the glory of the 1960s and push on vigorously with the design and development of the next generation of nukes: our national strength, the foundation of our security. All that’s missing from the article — “New nuclear weapons needed, many experts say, pointing to aged arsenal” — is Slim Pickens screaming “Ya-hoo!” as he rides the bomb into human oblivion at the end of Dr. Strangelove.

In the wake of the failure of a grand jury proceeding to indict Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson Missouri, President Obama has finally taken a material rather than rhetorical step on the issue. The widespread unrest sparked by public anger at the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, who witnesses testified had his hands up surrendering to Wilson, could not be ignored by the Whitehouse any longer. Purportedly to institute policy changes to prevent more Ferguson situations, and return the nation to a modicum of normalcy in the wake of widespread domestic unrest, the President has appointed a commission to recommend national policing reforms.

That commission, rather than being stacked with civil libertarians, seems to be built around a handful of national policing figures with little regard for human rights. Some figures involved in this new process have a long history of suppressing domestic dissent. Their long history of violent repression, and the solutions they and the White House have already made, may lead to a vast expansion of police presence and domestic surveillance.

Frontier life was tough in the 1850s, particularly if you were a woman. That’s the prime message of The Homesman.

Winters were harsh. Crops were uncertain. Disease was rampant. Foreplay had yet to be invented.

Directed and co-written by Tommy Lee Jones, and based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, The Homesman takes place in pre-statehood Nebraska at the end of a particularly brutal winter. In one community, the hardships have robbed three women of their sanity. Their symptoms include hostility, withdrawal and—as depicted in the film’s most horrific scene—infanticide.

The local minister (John Lithgow) decides the solution is to transport the women to a church in Iowa where they can receive care. That leaves the question of who’s going to undertake this difficult journey across the desolate plains.

When the local men are unable to accept the task because their families need them, an unmarried farmer named Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) volunteers. The others agree she’s as capable as any man, and they provide her with a mule-driven wagon equipped with a padlocked enclosure.

My fiancé died more than twelve years ago and of all the things he left me, it is a box of love letters–and poems, cartoons, and crossword puzzles–I cherish most.   They run the gamut of emotions:  heartfelt, whimsical, poignant, hilarious, romantic, and are a tangible testament to our very special relationship.  Even with a wonderful new man in my life, I will cherish them always.

            Likewise when Jean died, it was the act of hand writing all those thank you cards that set me on the long, long road to healing from my unexpected loss.  The funeral home provided pre-printed thank you notes, but the act of sitting down and putting pen to mourning paper–a difficult find in the age of instant communication!–to individually thank all the people who were so kind to me after his death gave me something on which to focus.  It also allowed me to share with his friends and colleagues the personal connections he had developed with them and to acknowledge that they, too, were grieving his loss.

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