The Furious Spinner

Hello, Furious Spinners. How has the world been treating you all? Thank you for your kind notes to me wishing me well. I appreciated them. If I haven't written back I was either on a really bad wave when I got your email or my spam filter has eaten your message and I never received it. Today is the first day in ten that I have felt close to normal! I didn't think it would ever happen. This is the sickest I've been with a flu since I was a child. When I get sick, I often think I'm dying—I know some will find this amusing but it's not amusing for me. Or I become convinced I will never be well again. It's very disconcerting. But, knock on wood, I seem to be on the mend now.

I've added pages of Her Frozen Wild to my website for those of you who are reading it.

Thing I noticed on TV whilst ill: CNN played Dean's Iowa speech over and over and over—they played it more often than Faux News. It was disgusting. Yes, that's the only astute observation I came up with. Besides the fact that Wolf Blitzer is a Stepford anchor.

Mario found this interesting piece. In Albania where women are the property of their families or husband, girls or women can be designated men. They vow to be men. They must dress and act like men, plus promise to be celibate. If they do all this, these "sworn virgins" are given freedom other women aren't. (I thought the author made editorial judgments that weren't back up by the material, but it's interesting anyway.)

Mario and I are not football fans, so we don't watch the Superbowl. Once or twice we've tuned in for the ads, but usually we don't even know when it is. We had thought about watching it this year to be part of the American experience, but then we heard CBS was only taking ads they thought would appeal to men, plus they wouldn't take MoveOn.org's ad. So we're boycotting. (Granted, a boycott from people who don't normally watch the Superbowl and who would find most of the advertising offensive probably doesn't mean much, but there you have it.) Here's a piece from Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org about CBS and their refusal to run MoveOn's ad. MoveOn is asking people to boycott a minute of the Superbowl, although they ask people to turn to CNN from 8:10 to 8:35 (EST) to watch their ad. (How is that a minute?) I think MoveOn is a great organization, but why didn't they ask people to boycott the entire Superbowl and/or CBS? Just asking.

During my illness, Mario continued to read me Jack Finney's Body Snatchers. It is enjoyable, but there is a lot of filler material—probably to make it long enough to be published as a book. The way he describes women is funny, too. I read a lot more women authors than men. Do some men still do that? Describe their characters by describing the fullness (or lack of) their breasts, buttocks, thighs, lips? It makes them seem really silly. Although, in a weird way, such descriptions do add to the theme of the book. After all, it is about bodies being taken over, so the protagonist's obvious adoration of the woman's form will probably figure into the plot later when she is the same body but a completely different person, or so Mario suggests.

Which reminds me. I've lost so much weight I look anorexic or worse. I don't have bathroom scales, so I don't know how much I weigh. I measured myself. I remember my measurements from when I was a teenager wanting to be skinny. I am now the smallest I've been since I was a girl—since before puberty! My breasts are tiny. My waist is tiny. My thighs are tiny. I hope I start gaining weight again so that I look like a fully growed up woman.

Also learned about the Watts Towers whilst down and out. You all probably know about them, but I didn't! Simon Rodia, a working-class Italian immigrant, lived in Watts and worked on this amazing piece of art for thirty-three years. The website I linked above describes the Towers of Simon Rodia as "consisting of nine major sculptures constructed of structural steel and covered with mortar... Simon adorned them with a diverse mosaic of broken glass, sea shells, generic pottery and tile....The tallest of the towers stands 99.5 feet high and contains the longest slender reinforced concrete column in the world. Simon's monument to perseverance and dedication features a gazebo with a circular bench, three bird baths, a center column and a spire reaching a height of 38 feet. Rodia's Ship of Marco Polo has a spire of 28 feet." And this all still stands in Watts today, protected by the people of the neighborhood during the various riots.

OK. I think that's about all I can do today. Before I go, here's some good news. Bush may be slipping. According to this article in CommonDreams, the Republicans are starting to question Bush. And a recent Newsweek poll reveals that if the election were held today, Senator Kerry would mostly like beat Bush. Maybe Bush's time is up. Wouldn't that be something wonderful!

The sun just came out. After days and days and days of rain and flooding, this bit of sun is like a big welcome juicy kiss smack on the lips. I'm gonna slip outside and do a little making out.

May you walk in Beauty! And good Health!

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