Atomictumor

Have you noticed
the top of each round grape,
where the stem
connects to the green globe,
there is a pentagon
left by the pull
of three fingers
before the grape
is burst
in your mounth?

I thought I’d post a link about religion and teens and the state of the union. It’s a pretty interesting article reviewing a book about how teens reflect our society contrary to popular opinion. The book talks about other things, too.

Smith and Denton’s most significant contribution to our understanding of American teenagers’ religious and spiritual lives begins when the authors attempt to explain why teens believe what they believe — in a sense, why they are so conventional.

The book brings up this idea of “theraputic individualism”, which is what really grabbed my attention.

“Therapeutic individualism’s ethos perfectly serves the needs and interests of U.S. mass-consumer capitalist economy by constituting people as self-fulfillment-oriented consumers subject to advertising’s influence on their subjective feelings.” And to be good, happy capitalists, we should be good, unless if being good prevents us from being happy.

However, I’ve decided what’s more important is this book of poems by Mary Oliver that I’ve been reading. Here is a poem by Oliver from that same book.

The Snowshoe Hare

The fox
is so quiet–
he moves like a red rain–
even when his
shoulders tense and then
snuggle down for an instant
against the ground
and the perfect
gate of his teeth
slams shut
there is nothing
you can hear
but the cold creek moving
over the dark pebbles
and across the field
and into the rest of the world–
and even when you find
in the morning
the feathery
scuffs of fur
of the vanished
snowshoe hare
tangled
on the pale spires
of the broken flowers
of the lost summer–
fluttering a little
but only
like the lapping threads
of the wind itself–
there is still
nothing that you can hear
but the cold creek moving
over the old pebbles
and across the field and into
another year.

I’ve been kinda slacking in my job as part time .Gov hater here in town, I’m afraid.  Last night, Netmom liveblogged a council session that was to determine whether the council was going to man up and fund the school system enough so that they wouldn’t have to cut classes, which is damn near an annual event.  This year, tho, was the first time that the schools had a shot of getting some satisfaction.

In a backwards ass way.

See, the council saw the schools request for a 7 cent property tax increase, and then raised it to a 10 cent one, split 50-50 between the school board and the city budget, which up until now had not been complaining of a lack of funding.

So, the schools still didn’t fully get what they were after, and now shoulder the weight of having a larger property tax in the next year.

The architect for this?

Leonard F—in Abbatiello.

This guy has been bitching and moaning about the school board not answering his questions in the closed door meetings held by the Budget and Finance committee he is on to oversee the financial plans of this city, something thats already backwards, questions that have all been answered multiple times in multiple places (hell, I can answer em), and in the meeting last night he again took the floor to issue a diatribe against the school system and the board of education.

Good thing the jackal is leaving council this term.  If I had to sit and watch more of his obvious bias against the school system, it’d probably drive me crazy.  We get enough of that crap from elsewhere, we sure don’t need to vote it in.

Speaking of which, theres a lot of talk about a certain city council candidate trying to lowball the school board election.  Daco mentioned it, and I took him to task for not citing sources.  Since then, I’ve heard from about 7 or 8 pretty reliable sources, all telling me that there are several elderly folk in town who report being advised to only vote for one candidate in the two-seat school board election, and all needing anonymity for various reasons.

If I had a citation for it, I’d make it a huge deal, as it is, I’m still not sure how accurate it is, but if it is accurate, it totally affects my opinion of this candidate.  Frankly, it puts the candidate into the worse possible light, not only advising on a race she’s not running for, but advising people not to exercise constitutional rights.  Its backwards, its wrong, and if true, is going to have me looking for a rail to run this person out of town on.

See, I’m already all pissed off, and its only 7:30.

1.
The old man with hairy white legs–
legs with hair like a thinned out Einstein–
sits reading a newspaper
in the library,
in the morning.

2.
This guy wears a black tie
with a light plaid shirt
and black pants.
His closet must be
a la carte.

3.
The water from the faucet here
tastes like a swallow
from the swimming pool.

The difficulty I have discussing any form of Oak Ridge politics is that, well, I don’t know much about Oak Ridge politics.  Traditionally, I’ve liked it that way, but in the same way that Days of Our Lives will slowly suck you into its mindless vortex when you’re home with a broken leg and nothing to entertain you but daytime TV, politics works its evil voodoo, and unfolds its secrets to the patient (and attentive) viewer.

Not to say that I’m a politico.  Noooo nohoho.  Nein.  No, I’m what would be called a gadfly.  Being involved in politics would mean I’d have to wear a tie, and as anybody who knows me could testify, wearing a tie deprives me of all my strength.  And, people, I need my strength.

Because I don’t know the Oak Ridge/Anderson County score, I do my best only to jump in when I feel a jolt is needed.  I don’t want to turn my part of this website into incessant whining about who did what and what said huh, because other people do that better (and, if not better, than more endearingly Machiavellian), and because I don’t think thats very entertaining reading.  Unless you’re really into politics.  Personally, I’d rather write about the dumbass things that are within my sphere of influence.

That said, there needs to be some very public, very obvious, very explicit conversations said about the state of the political world in this weird little town.  The county has its own problems, and I’m not even about to get into them, but it seems that Oak Ridge itself needs saving.

Whats the problem, you ask?

The problem appears to be that City Council only listens to (and addresses) the problems that they want to listen to.

We’ve seen two different members of council (including Mayor Bradshaw) write articles to the paper about how, despite objections from citizens in Woodland, a hotel in Woodland would be good for Oak Ridge.  One of the arguments Bradshaw cites is the Spockian “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” line, but while I don’t have a horse in the race here, and actually do see the appeal of that area for commercial interests, I fail to see why it’d benefit anybody but Patel and business interests to put the thing there.  You’d think there’d be some kinda incentive that could be offered to the Woodland denizens.

However, I don’t really care about the Woodland thing per se, as I think I’ve mentioned before.  What I do care about, tho, is that the council seems to be picking and choosing their battles, trying to appease public sensibilities in one corner, while ignoring the public in the other.

Like when the public suggests anything that contradicts the “Strategic Plan“.

Whoo boy, thats an ugly topic.  Word around the campfire (heard from about a dozen differnet sources, but who reads blogs for citations?) is that the City and the School Board had a meeting last month, (only two elected officials were there, Mayor Bradshaw, and SB Head John Smith, Jr, so as not to disrupt the sunshine law’s delicate sensibilities), where the school board was told to cut teacher salaries, or cut raises, depending on who tells the story, because the city “will not have another budget fight”.

This is for the 2007 budget, for those keeping score at home.  The one that starts about 11 months from now.  Its been decided without input from me, you, or anybody outside of their circle, a full year before its due.
The city is so caught up on the Strategic Plan that they will currently not entertain the idea of either cutting money from another spot in the budget for the school system, which is already hurting, or raising taxes.

Thats their prerogative, provided that the citizens of the town have given them a mandate to make these decisions in this manner.  Thing is, there never was a mandate on the Strategic Plan, and the citizens of Oak Ridge can’t verify that the departments of the city are living up to their budgets, because the city won’t show us a line item budget.

They have it, but we’re not good enough to see it.  In fact, the city has told the school board that they need to stop doing line item budgets.

Transparency in politics?  Wheres my necktie?