Common Parlance

This morning began with Jean struggling out of the bed to fix her breakfast.   

A creature of habit, my mother always gets up at 5:00, something left over from when my father was alive & she got up to fix coffee & eggs & toast & bacon for his breakfast.  It has never left her, all these years after his death.

My body wants to go to sleep when the sun sets & awakens when the sun rises.  For years, I have fought that response to reality.

But on Sundays, I get up & watch Fox News Sunday, sun or no sun, then what used to be Meet the Press & then what used to be This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Then I read the New York Times online.

So this morning, on FNS, Brit Hume defended Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” by claiming that it meant something different in “common parlance”.

Such a common parlance that most of the intelligent people I know had no idea of its supposed current use or its etymology.

Not to mention those out there, listening to her, who have no clue that words have history & that history affects current meanings.  Words matter.  Words have meaning.

So, Brit Hume, I wonder, how many times in the last ten years has the term “Blood Libel”  been used in political discourse?

You send me those quotes, I will research them & perhaps we will have a dialogue.  

Otherwise, I stand firm.  This term has no current or modern meaning.  Sarah Palin needs to hire a better speech writer.

Common parlance, my ass.

Playing for the Ashes

Today,  I read a post from Emily Jackson, my friend Elizabeth Jackson’s alpha & omega daughter.

Emily, who is attending boarding school in Great Britain wrote:  “ Oh deary me.”

Dyslexic that I am, I read it as :  “ Oh dreary me.”

I asked her about snow & snow melting & how ugly it is and she replied.

“Jaki- no snow! Nothing but rain and wind at the moment! But still hoping (:”

I wrote back that at least Great Britain had won the ashes.

Great Britain, indeed, won the ashes.

As I told Emily, I only know what winning or losing the ashes means from a novel:  from Elizabeth George’s Tommy Lynley series -  Playing for the Ashes.

And thought, as I wrote that to Emily, how much I know & understand & want to know & want to understand from novels, from literature, from text.

I think of all the things I have learned or wanted to learn from all the texts I have read.

Or need to read.  Or will read.

And I know, I will be forever playing for the ashes.

Thank you, Emily.

Blood Libel

When I was a young explorer of deserts & sunrises in El Paso, we lived across the street from a neighborhood park, complete with basketball courts, a recreational center & groovy playground equipment.  And lot’s of space to run & jump & sit quietly with a book or a sketch pad.  A great community park.

In the aftermath of the Six Day War between Israel & Egypt, someone went into the park & defaced that groovy playground equipment with anti-Semitic graffiti.  It offended & pissed off the twelve-year-old Jaki Jean.

Ettinger was predominately a Jewish name in El Paso, except for my family.  But that was not the point in my twelve-year-old mind.  The point was that the graffiti, the message it sent, was unacceptable. So I launched a protest – enlisted friends, made signs & picketed the park.  No news crews came out to cover the event.  We left the signs against the graffiti.

Someone listened & what would be listed as evidence of a hate crime was removed.

Later, when my father’s job moved us to one of the most Republican districts in Texas, I found myself in the lunch line behind a young man I neither liked nor wanted to get to know.  It was near a Jewish holiday & he turned to me & made an anti-Semitic remark.

And I said, because it pissed off the eighteen-year-old Jaki Jean, & the only Ettingers I knew at the time, outside some second or third cousins in Pennsylvania & my own family, were Jewish:

You do, of course, know that my last name is Ettinger?  How do you know I am not Jewish?
                 
 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.

Words have meaning, words have consequences.

Words like Blood Libel. So I am wondering, does Sarah Palin surround herself with idiots?  Or just with people as dangerous as herself?

Blood Libel is a term that dates back hundreds of years – & refers to the accusation, beginning in the middle ages, that Jews used the blood of Christian babies in their rituals in order to justify persecuting them.

Now, I am trying hard, in my analytical mind, to draw a comparison between  Blood Libel & what Sarah Palin has posted in her video. I don’t see the connection.

In fact, I find it repulsive that she would claim the term Blood Libel  in the context of what happened in Tucson – to six dead, so many wounded, & a Congresswoman whose religious affiliation was Jewish.

Words matter.  Words are important. 

They constitute what defines & symbolize us.  Both the ancient Hebrews & many Native American tribes believed that once a word was spoken, it took on a life of its own & could not be taken away.  

Something for Sarah & others to think about.

(Christ)mas

So, over the Christmas & New Year’s, a knock came at the door.   I looked through the peep hole, between our Christmas wreath, & saw a very lovely African American woman & a very beautiful young female child.

I knew, I knew in my heart that this woman is a Jehovah’s Witness.  

Ordinarily, I would ignore the knock, as did my brother Jason.

But it was the holidays & I like the two Jehovah’s Witnesses I know at work.  Beautiful, kind. loving souls.

So I open the door & I smile & I listen as someone asks me “I see by your wreath that you celebrate Christmas.”

I smile & this woman introduces herself & her very beautiful daughter & gives me a copy of “Awake!  December 2010 The Truth About Christmas.”

She asks me to read it, always using my name, which I have given her, & says she will return to see if I have any questions.

So I close the door & in mind, I paraphrase my friend Rod, I think, “Really ?  Fucking Really?”

But because it was the holidays, I read the “Awake!  December 2010 The Truth About Christmas.

”

And I think:  Really?  Really?

The people who came to my door to save my soul knew nothing about me. 

They did not know that I grew up in a fierce church, that I have absorbed a belief system after years of research & study.  

I understand the difference between a cultural celebration & what happened when the veil was torn between the Holy of Holies & the congregation in the Temple.

More than that, I understand why whatever church was in charge, they competed with embedded pagan customs.

Who was this woman who did not know me to come & to teach me about the true meaning of Christmas?

How dare she assume because of the wreath on my front door that I was one of the clueless?

Perhaps, the greater question is:  “Jaki Jean, why does this piss you off?”

Because, I always hate to be underestimated.

Tea Parties

Once, when I was trekking across Scotland, I stayed in a Bed & Breakfast & our hostess asked us to tea.

In my American mind, a tea party.

In reality, a High Tea.  I was expecting tea & little cucumber sandwiches & scones.

What was presented was a meal, including tea & little cucumber sandwiches & scones & breads & meat & cookies & desserts & fruit & more tea & a bit of Scotch Whiskey at the end.

And conversation.  That was the best part of the Tea Party – people from all over the world, converged in a B&B, sipping tea & nibbling scones, talking & exchanging experiences & ideas.

That was a Tea Party movement

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Curious about why people are so willing to follow the banner of the new Tea Party (which does not seem to involve sharing food or goddess forbid, ideas), I researched that moment when people in Boston threw tea leaves overboard rather than submit to the colonial nation’s edict.

At the time, the East India Company had a Parliament mandated monopoly on tea imported to America (why does this sound so familiar?). The colonists could receive tea (a staple in their lives) at a discounted rate if they paid the tax.

Pissed them off, those tea loving Americans.  If they paid the tax, took the cheaper price of tea, they would succumb to being taxed without representation.

So they threw the tea into the harbor & launched the beginnings of a revolution.

Now, I am trying to draw a corollary between the current Tea Party & their rhetoric & those rebels in the bay.

If the current Tea Party does not feel represented – whose responsibility is that?

Those Tea Party voters.

Thinking back on that Tea Party in Scotland,  I marvel at the generosity of our hostess, at the candor of the participants, the wonder the food & conversation ignited.  That I left the afternoon energized.

Think about it Tea Partiers – think about where you are coming from & more importantly, think about where you claim your roots began.  And why a group of rebels threw a staple of their lives into to the harbor.

It was not about disagreeing with a current administration, or disagreeing with a political party.  It was not about staking a claim or an ideology.

It was about taking responsibility.  

Forget the rhetoric – forget the catch phrases.  Forget the news bites. 

If you really want to serve this country, remember how it began. 

Not as a Jerusalem on a hill, not as mankind’s salvation (I do recall that was established when the veil separating us from the holy of holies was rent), not as the moral center of the universe.

Just a place where no one had to pay a tea tax to a monopoly governed by an entity that did not let their constituents vote.

If you truly want to have a Tea Party movement, invite & include your neighbors who disagree & serve some tea & scones.

Keep up the tradition.

“You have got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”

Richard Holbrook’s last words.  Although there seems to be some dispute about that.

I want to believe that these were his last words.  I want to believe that the mission of ending the war in Afghanistan never left him.  I want to believe in men like Richard Holbrook, in their dedication to our country.

I want this war over.  At the same time, I want Afghanistan out of the dark ages.

When this war was just an idea, I found myself at my friend Catherine & her husband Jim’s house, the only Democrat among a plethora of Republicans, including a Marine in the National Guard.

I was also the eldest present.

The only one who experienced or remembered Vietnam.

Fiercely pro-invasion, these young people did not want to hear about watching the war play out in the news, seeing the draped coffins come home, standing graveside with grieving friends who lost their siblings.  

They did not want to hear that during my years in DC, I never was able to walk the entire wall of the Vietnam Memorial.

While I did not feel pressured or defeated by the those against my stance, one of Cat & Jim’s friends, Judd, standing next to me, put his arm around me & said:  “I don’t agree with your position, but I defend & respect your right to voice it.  I won’t let you stand alone.”

He stood with me for a very long time.

He did not let me stand alone.

Like the Army:  No man left behind.

Jean & Memory

Today Jean came to me & said I know this is a strange thing for me to be thinking about. . .\She paused & I waited.

But I cannot remember when Papa John died.  I can’t remember what kind of funeral he had or if I took you.

I told my mother that I remember a moment when my grandfather died – a look on my father’s face.  But I did not remember the funeral, that I thought they had not taken me.

Papa John used to keep peppermint Life Savers in his pocket for me.  He used to take me to Love Field to watch the planes.

Jean & her friend Bill used to take Sam out to Hull Airport to watch the planes.

Sam loved planes, a legacy from his great-grandfather.  Whom he was never to know

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I don’t know what else Jean has forgotten.  

But I will do my best to fill in the blanks.