Sherry Chandler

from the LATimes:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices, with the exception of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sounded Monday as if they were likely to bar prosecutors from using in court the words of alleged crime victims who speak to authorities but later refuse to testify.

Such a ruling would greatly strengthen the right of defendants to “be confronted with the witnesses against” them, in the Constitution’s words. However, it would be a major setback for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, who often are afraid to testify against their abusers.

…

“The practical reality is many women are scared to death” to testify against a spouse or partner who abuses them, said Ginsburg, now the only woman on the high court. In other instances, “they are so desperate financially” that they decide against testifying, she said.

She questioned whether the Constitution should be interpreted to bar prosecutors from using their calls to a 911 line. “This is not just a call. It is a cry for help,” Ginsburg said.

[Update: I don't mean to argue here that it should be legal to use 911 tapes as evidence. I'm not a legal scholar by any definition. However, I do think some one should be making these points, and now we have only Ginsberg to do it apparently.

I picked up this link from The Washington Monthly.]

Poppysmatus is fond of saying if the Nazi Storm Troopers hadn’t existed, pop culture would have had to invent them. How else would we have had Star Wars and Indiana Jones and much of Star Trek, too.

I feel a little bit the same about Charles Bukowski. If we hadn’t had Bukowski, many of the young men poets I have run into would have no role model. The problem is that most young men really haven’t led the kind of life Bukowski led and therefore they tend to find it romantic.

If you want to fill in the gaps in your knowledge about Bukowski, the film “Bukowski: Born Into This” has just been released on DVD – appropriately, I suppose, on World Poetry Day. Here’s part of the Washington Post review:

Odds are that you probably missed “Bukowski: Born Into This” when it briefly played in arthouse theaters two years ago. You might not even know that this independently-made documentary exists. That’s the beauty of DVD: It gives a home to worthy little movies that might otherwise end up homeless.

As its title suggests, “Born Into This” explores the life and legacy of the hard-drinking yet enormously prolific novelist and poet Charles Bukowski, whose blunt way with words inspired artists from David Lynch to U2’s Bono. First-time director John Dullaghan does an admirable job of weaving together the contradictory characteristics — gentle soul one minute, abusive husband the next — that made the man who he was. It’s an intimate portrait, almost uncomfortably so, and that allows the film to translate perfectly to the small screen.

….

Most Poetic Bonus Point: During one extra, Bono and singer Tom Waits each read one of Bukowski’s poems, imbuing his words with their own iconic voices. The only shame is that we don’t get to hear other similar interpretations of the writer’s work.

I have put this movie in my Netflix queue, if only because I like Bono and Tom Waits. More later.

and the second day of our fourth year of war in Iraq:

Rally

Above snowbanks of flowering pear,
maple shards glare white
as the faces on the courthouse steps,
where ranks in flag-striped t-shirts sing.
An inch of ice six weeks ago
and half a state in dark
silence couldn’t stop
the endless streaming war chant.

Now river birch bleeds from broken limbs,
brush piles of redbud stacked beside the curb
put out thick bloom. A robin’s built her nest
in there, set her clutch of sky-blue eggs
low and open, waiting for the chipper.

I wrote this poem in April after the war began in March. It resides at The Pedestal Magazine.

from Wikipedia:

World Poetry Day, March 21, was declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. The purpose of the day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the UNESCO session declaring the day says, to “give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements.”

Here is the UNESCO’s World Poetry Directory.