more personae

Mao Zedong, Fat Elvis (in her white jumpsuit) and The Squeaker Of The House. I keep telling her she shouldn’t squeak until squoken to, but kids today, what can you do?

Nice things keep happening. The guy who makes sculptures out of twist ties dropped by our table at Atlas yesterday to give us a little twist tie guy he’d made especially for Claire. Today I was chatting to a woman in the line at Cala, and she said “Is she always like this? Most babies cry! How did you get to be so blessed?” Beats me.

Claire was her usual pacific self at the march. We caught up with our fellow Concerned Parents, Jonathan, Tina, Paul and Lisa, but we didn’t see Jack, Salome, Dana, Shannon or Spencer, who were also there, along with uncounted tens of thousands of other right-minded folk. Joan Baez sang beautifully, Tom Ammiano was entertaining and a woman from the Arab Defense League annoyed both Jeremy and me by threatening a second Saladin for this new crusade. Also, it was all the white people’s fault, including the white people in Israel. More intifada! And here’s some atrocious poetry for good measure.

How I gnashed my teeth. I think she was unclear on the whole “peace” concept. Over to the man of the day, MLK: “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it… Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate…. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”

And: “If we are to have peace in the world, we must see that peace is not merely the absence of negative force; it is the presence of a positive force. True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”

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