Tuesday, July 7, 2009

In Which My Sad, Sorry Life Regains Meaning

My keyboard runneth over! There's so much to be grateful for. Rachel's back, and she's using props and acting dorky. I haven't been this happy since...well... since...ok...since last night's awesome dinner - but you know what I mean.

First, the waders. The awesome waders. Is it wrong of me that I thought she looked hot in them?

And, please to notice: still holding her ubiquitous pen.


Now, some actual news: Al Franken is finally a senator! Senator Klobuchar mentions that Senators Kennedy (D-MA) and Byrd (D-WV) are gravely ill, which could affect the Democrats supermajority. Before you start wringing your hands, I'd like to share this from Politics Daily.
It remains one of the most dramatic scenes in Senate history. California Democrat Clair Engle -- dying from a brain tumor -- was wheeled onto the Senate floor, attended by a nurse, to vote to end a Dixiecrat filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As civil rights historian Nick Kotz tells it in "Judgment Days," Engle valiantly tried to speak but could not form the words. So he slowly lifted his hand and pointed to his eye as the Senate clerk declared, "Senator Engle votes aye."
Teared up a little, didn't you? Kennedy and Byrd are two guys I won't count out until they are truly gone.

If you haven't seen the Oscar winning documentary about Robert McNamara, "Fog of War" that Rachel makes reference to, you can watch it free here. It is not to be missed.

And, apropos of nothing, other than Holly Hunter is awesome as ass-kicking Grace in "Saving Grace," I present the theme song by Everlast. It has been in heavy rotation in the iPod for several months. (best heard cranked, with a subwoofer)



In celebration of Rachel's return from her fishing trip on Cape Cod, I would like to share a poem. Mary Oliver, a lesbian, is known as "The Bard of Provincetown." In the linked NYT article Oliver describes her relationship with Molly Malone Cook as a “40-year conversation."
She moved to Provincetown to be with the woman she loved, and to whom she has dedicated her books of poetry, Molly Malone Cook. As Ms. Oliver explained it in “Our World,” a collection of Ms. Cook’s photographs that she published two years after Ms. Cook’s death in 2005, the two of them had met at Steepletop, the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, when both of them were there in the late 1950s visiting Norma Millay, the late poet’s sister, and her husband. “I took one look and fell, hook and tumble,” Ms. Oliver said in “Our World.”
I am a relationship cynic, but that does melt my heart.

On the Beach

Some herons
were fishing
in the robes
of the night

at a low hour
of the water’s body,
and the fish, I suppose,
were full

of fish happiness
in those transparent inches
even as, over and over,
the beaks jacked down

and the narrow
bodies were lifted
with every
shining sally,

and that was the end of them
as far as we know—
though, what do we know
except that death

is so everywhere and so entire—
pummeling and felling,
or sometimes,
like this, appearing

through such a thin door—
one stab, and you’re through!
And what then?
Why, then it was almost morning,

and one by one
the birds
opened their wings
and flew.

Perhaps more dark than celebratory, but excellent just the same. This little picture is the only one I could find of the two of them:

7 comments:

  1. I was actively looking forward to today hoping it would be on, I have been missing out Sarah Palin.

    I have to disagree with the wader being hot thing... Nice to see them on not old men.

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  2. Waders and the blue collared shirt -- definitely worth waiting for!

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  3. I felt like I was back in touch with the world's events! Somehow, the VeeJay and the network news wasn't cutting it! Hooray - Rachel's back!

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  4. i had forgotten how hot Rachel is... *swoons endlessly*

    Ahem, yes THANK GOD Al Franken is finally a senator..that took long enough.

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  5. After seeing Rachel in waders and then seeing her sitting down where you could only see the shoulder straps, I'm convinced she needs to wear suspenders once in awhile. Hot doesn't even begin to describe how she looked. That, and I had been suffering such withdrawal. She could have come out in pj's and I would have been hyperventilating. She's hot no matter what she wears. It's not the clothes, it's the woman in them.

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  6. I also felt I was in a week and a half news vacuum. That and Michael Jackson's death took up all the news during Rachel's vacation. She picked a good week to go. I can't imagine her continuously reporting on MJ. His death is tragic, but he's just not politics.

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  7. I was searching for something on Mary Oliver & Mary Malone and found your blog...loved seeing this clip of RM commenting on the Twitter Quitter Critter $carah Palin, but I always thought Rachel was smart enough to know that the REAL reason why the half-guv was quitting is to grift HEAVILY before her 15 minutes of fame were up (even the Wasilla moron KNEW it wouldn't last forever!) ...and I was right of course, the Wasilla Hillbilly made over $20 MILLION by fleecing the REAL 'Merkans since leaving her job as Alaska guv which paid only $125 K/ year! thanks for sharing!

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