Telegrammaparcel

This morning I received a telegram:

Well done my doppelganger STOP By the time you recieve this telegrammaparcel I'll be long dead STOP Therefore I've enclosed half of my moustache herein STOP I bid you good tidings and may you continue to flummox those more misfortunate than you

Obviously, I'm thrilled, althought the promised moustache was not, in fact, included.

November 7

1917: Russia's Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

Neat.

Nothing Burns Like an Effigy

Yesterday was Guy Fawkes Day: quite possibly the weirdest holiday ever.

I hope you all celebrated appropriately.

Stealing Shamelessly

This was posted to the local Burning Man list, and I think it bears repeating here. Since I was the one who posted it, I hereby give myself permission to quote myself.

Well, this is a first.

I don't think I've ever agreed with a thing [Very Conservative Fellow] has posted to this list, but he's just put, very bluntly, what I've been trying to tell people all week.

We've all made the joke. We've all laughed at the Jesusland map. We've all been only sort of kidding about packing up and getting the hell out. It's a way to relieve stress.

Do I think that there will be the mass exodus [he] predicts? No. But I know some people will leave. A fellow I work with has already filled out his application for Canadian citizenship. And I was very close to being one of those people on Tuesday.

Then I started thinking it through: this is my home. I've never felt more certain of that than I am right now. I don't agree with many of the things that this country has done, and I expect to disagree with a lot more in the future. But I'll be damned if I let a pack of lunatic thugs chase me out of my home, merely because a slim majority fell for their lines.

Look at it this way: if we go, maybe we'll improve our own quality of life. Maybe not, I can't really say. But what about your parents, your friends, the lives you've built here? What about the people who aren't as privileged as we are, for whom picking up and starting fresh halfway across the globe isn't an option?

Stay and fight for them, and you can improve everyone's quality of life. Suddenly, that feels worth it to me.

So go ahead and forward the emails, make the jokes, look at the immigration laws, smile, and feel better. But don't get lured into believing it's the only, or even the best solution.

Humor helps us right now. And tomorrow, action helps us even more.

Today

Today is a day for mourning. And then there's hope.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

--W.B. Yeats


Edited 5:52 pm to say: I copied this in this morning, when I felt like there was nothing to be done, and everything was doom and gloom. Blogger was slammed, and I didn't think it had posted, which means that people everywhere are talking. Looks like it made it up here anyway, so I'd like to say that I'm not feeling this way anymore (although I still love the poem). For more poetry and post-mortem, head over to Making Light. Then come back tomorrow for a discussion of what happens now.