Coyote Crossing

I actually wrote and sent a response to Garrison Keillor’s anti-Semitic Xmas column, in which he says, among other things,

If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we didn’t.

Unsurprisingly, my email — sent to the address given at the end of the column — bounced. I’m looking for other ways to get it to him. Perhaps he’ll print all the responses out and line them up on him mantel above the garlands.

In the meantime, thought I’d share. Happy Hannukah.

From:  .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Subject: Your appallingly ugly Xmas column
Date: December 18, 2009 7:24:23 PM PST
To:  .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Sir;

Do you no longer pause to think before you unburden yourself of your bigotry by way of your keyboard?

You have done harm here, with no concommitant gain in anything of value: not humor, not understanding, not literary merit.

You are lucky enough to have a platform that affords you some measure of attention, one you have earned through your own hard work and good fortune. You are not obligated as a writer to use that platform other than as you see fit. You do, however, have an obligation as a human being to refrain from doing needless harm to others. This column fails rather stunningly to fulfill that obligation.

You owe your readers — all of them, Jewish and otherwise — an apology.

14 comments on "It all makes perfect sense when you realize that Lake Wobegon is a dystopia"

There was no time. The flow of time had ceased
as chill night air might check rose-petal jam
in flow across a sampled piece of bread,
or idle thought would make a fingernail
to tarry on its way along the curved
and gentle night topography of spine.
Our skin standing on lovely end, the breeze
had raised a thousand downy hairs, and then
there was no time. The honey-sodden air
had ripened into amber, you and me
held fast, skin upon skin, tangles of hair
and leg, whole dark eternities of eyes,
soft fingertips held close, tracing the curve
of warm, slight-parted lips rose-petalled.

1 comment on "Held"

The first edition of House of Herps, the blog carnival devoted to reptiles and amphibians, is up over at its home blog, which is sensibly enough called House of Herps. Started by Amber of Birder’s Lounge and Coyote Crossing regular Jason of xenogere, the HofH promises to be a great series, and there are some wonderful posts included in the inaugural edition. So go get your non-avian-non-mammalian tetrapoddy goodness.

1 comment on "House of Herps #1"

This must-watch video is simply the best introduction to the San Joaquin Valley water politics I’ve seen lately.

Toward the end, there’s mention of California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s intervention in the issue on behalf of a close friend and major political contributor, Stewart Resnick, who owns — among many other things — Paramount Farms in the San Joaquin Valley. Paramount, which farms about 120,000 acres in the San Joaquin Valley, is allotted 480,000 acre-feet of water each year. That’s enough to cover every inch of the land they farm four feet deep. It’s also about 47,000 acre-feet more than the entire city of Los Angeles used last year. Resnick asked Feinstein to help him keep his sea of taxpayer subsidized water, and she’s done so: she has prompted a “reexamination” of the science that says salmon need water to survive.

Those of us in the desert conservation community are waiting as the Senator’s staff draft what’s being hyped as a major desert land preservation bill. Given Feinstein’s Bush-like ability to jettison science when the profits of her benefactors are at stake, I don’t personally hold much hope that her desert bill will protect the desert.

0 comments on "Salmon Water Now"

Tonight I ran, and cursed this aging frame
each mile run cursing harder than the last
each breath more labored, every pace the same
and sorry degradation, milestones passed
chained to my ankles. Streetlit sky a sieve,
the sodden city noise damping my ears,
I ran halting, frustrated, tentative.
Each draught of burning lung betrayed my years.
What point is there to this? This city but
a straitjacket, a hundred yards of gauze
I’ve wrapped me in, like xylocaine for thought
that swells uncomfortably against what was.

2 comments on "Sonnet uncompleted"

Just learned that this afternoon.

11 comments on "Barn Owls Giggle When They’re Happy"

Technorati seems to have munged this blog’s account, and in order to repair things they insist I publish some code in a new blog post.

Why this can’t take place in a sidebar or as a piece of invisible code I have no idea.

Anyway, that explains the following senseless para. Enjoy your evenings.

TEKF2UX973UJ

4 comments on "Pointless annoying detail"