Sherry Chandler

Somehow I don’t think George W. Bush has the right to get on his high horse because somebody’s name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.

Putting aside Alberto’s conduct, the Bushes are some of the dirtiest campaigners I’ve ever seen.

Added: Juan Cole thinks Gonzalez was “hounded out of office” for the wrong reasons:

The great shame of it all is that Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as Attorney General despite it being widely known that he had played a central role in attempting to authorize the use of torture on prisoners in US custody. He had tossed aside the US Constitution’s own prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” (such a wimpy bleeding-heart liberal document). It is an index of the corruption of the Republican Party, which then controlled Congress, that they made this man attorney general in the first place.

The great shame of it all is that Gonzales was hounded out of office not because he authorized torture and assaulted the basic principles of the US constitution, but because he fired US attorneys who wanted to investigate both Republican and Democratic voter fraud. Torture people all you like, is the message he sent, but if you’re even-handed as between Republicans and Democrats, you are fired.

In the dentist’s waiting room this morning, dentist delayed, I finally got a chance to read some of the July/August Poetry that I’ve been carrying around for two months.

Was it my mood? For some reason, the issue seemed jam packed with aphoristic lines of the type that may someday show up on my sidebar here:

The problem with calling our leader a bugger,
she insisted, was her special fondness
for buggerers…
—Robert Wrigley from “Little Prick”

And so we drift off to an unformed prayer…
—Brad Leithauser, from “Furnishings of the Moon”

Some were jubilant;
others were broken-hearted.
I have always been both.
—Edward Hirsch from “Late March”

and

Nothing means what it says,
and it says it all the time.
—Tony Hoagland from “Big Grab”

And you must read all of Hoagland’s poem “Barton Springs,” especially if you are a human of a particular age, as am I:

When I get my allotted case of cancer,
let me swim ten more times at Barton Springs,
in the outdoor pool at 6 AM, in the cold water
with the geezers and the jocks.

…

It was worth death to see you through these optic nerves,
to feel breeze through the fur on my arms
to be chilled and stirred in your mortal martini.

I don’t think I’ll try to memorize this poem — it’s 28 lines long and my brain is a little hardened up with amyloid plaques — but I will remember it.

The Herald Sparrow is sponsoring a Significant Finds Contest to benefit New Southerner. The winner will receive $500.

A significant find is a natural object or an artifact not originally intended as art, found and considered to have aesthetic value. Some examples: A cool rock; the symbolism of an extension cord plugged into itself; milk jug rings found under the refrigerator; what Lincoln Logs reveal about life. (See www.heraldsparrow.com for more examples.) According to Herald Sparrow editor Fred Miller, “Significant finds are the kinds of discoveries that can change the way we see ourselves and the world we live in. Or, not. But they can still be fun.”

GUIDELINES:

Contest entries should include the following.

1. a headline
–there is a separate prize of $50.00 for the best headline.

2. a find
–images are not required and finds may be entirely conceptual. An image can be included but photographic images of persons will not be considered in support of any contest entry.

3. a brief report about the significance of the find, any theories, speculation, and maybe the usual calls for further study.

4. Entry fee of $10.00.

DEADLINE: October 1. Awards will be announced in November and in the winter issue of New Southerner.

HOW TO ENTER:
Send your entry by mail, with checks made out to Swallowtail Press, to:

Herald Sparrow
Box 4006
Louisville, KY 40204

Send your entry by e-mail (you will be prompted to pay your entry fee electronically via a secure Paypal link) to:
sparrowentries@newsoutherner.com

HOW TO WIN:
There are no rules, but keep it clean. The dumbest thing you can think of has about as good a chance as the most brilliant, so don’t try too hard. Show or tell something you’ve noticed and what you guess it means.

JUDGES:

* Fairleigh Brooks, the first Kentuckian to win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, and author of Notes Of A Would-Be Astronaut
* Chuck Swanson of Swanson Reed Gallery and Swanson Reed Contemporary
* Lynn Winter of Lynn’s Paradise Café

QUESTIONS: editor@heraldsparrow.com.

I’m pretty sure I have some readers who have the humor to do well in this contest. It’s in a good cause. The New Southerner, the mainstream magazine of alternative thinking, is a wonderful undertaking that’s been going for about two years now. They’ve been known to publish work by yours truly.