Sherry Chandler

Not Blackwater, off in Afghanistan or Iraq but Infraguard, here in the U.S. From Alternet, via The Sideshow:

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does — and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

…

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. At that time, the group had less than half as many members as it does today. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard,” he said. “From our perspective that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

He urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”

…

On November 1, 2001, the FBI had information about a potential threat to the bridges of California. The alert went out to the InfraGard membership. Enron was notified, and so, too, was Barry Davis, who worked for Morgan Stanley. He notified his brother Gray, the governor of California.

“He said his brother talked to him before the FBI,” recalls Steve Maviglio, who was Davis’s press secretary at the time. “And the governor got a lot of grief for releasing the information. In his defense, he said, ‘I was on the phone with my brother, who is an investment banker. And if he knows, why shouldn’t the public know?’ ”

Maviglio still sounds perturbed about this: “You’d think an elected official would be the first to know, not the last.”

Charles Pierce of Newton, Mass has the impertinence to ask a pertinent question (via):

Jesus Christ in Air Jordans, what in hell was David Bossie, a thug and a hoodlum, doing on Jim Lehrer’s program last night? Tom DeLay is under indictment, for pity’s sake. Why was he on MSNBC, grinning at Chris Matthews and lying about climate change?

Meanwhile over at The Big Idea, Jason McDonald informs us that Fox News has fired Montel Williams shortly after he dared to suggest that the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq might be a more important topic of discussion on Fox and Friends than Heath Ledger’s overdose.

Poesy Galore takes us to the ever-entertaining world of corporate illiteracy (read the comments on this one — and add to them!):

Woolworths has decided to stop offering its “Lolita” girls’ bed model, after complaints from parents about the inappropriateness of the name.

Steph at Crooked House offers some new product ideas for Woolworths: the Medea maternity wear line, the Bovary wedding dress, Lady Macbeth gloves (only available in red). A commenter on the post suggests “The Bartleby motivational poster”; I added the Sylvia Oven and the Circe Pork Rub. Surely you have something to add…

I want that Bartleby motivational poster. Bartleby has been my role model for decades.

Emily Lloyd’s hot orange and white decor remind me of a confection I used to eat as a child. Ice cream on a stick with orange sherbet coating. It was called a Dreamsicle. Delicious.

Speaking of motivation, eek is the third blogger on my blogroll to have experienced AWP in NYC. The other two are Diane Lockward and Meredith Sue Willis. Says Meredith Sue:

I suppose, especially in New York, I shouldn’t be surprised by the numbers. 7,000 participants, and they had to close registration– at once a wonderful feeling, all those people who care about books and writing– that what we do is serious, and at the same time the horror, the horror: they all are or want to be writers? And so many of them training more? Who will read what we all write? Young people from the programs, fragrant with ambition, old people with twisted mouths, self-involved, not having achieved all they wanted, ready to talk about themselves, not others. Double and tripling of exhilaration and dismay.

Rachel Dacus muses on The Great Divide:

I’m not a political blogger, but tomorrow being Super Tuesday and yesterday being the Superbowl, I find myself thinking about the Great Divide — the contests we Americans seem to thrive on, often the nastier-spirited the better.

…

The Great Divide is a divide in thinking. It’s the antidote to poetry and art, which seeks unity and harmonies in unexpected places. It’s something we’re outgrowing, but like all adolescents, the growing pains may be considerable, and last long past Super Tuesday or any other Super event.

I can’t wait for Poetry April, myself. And a nice quiet news cycle.

Good luck on the quiet news cycle. I don’t think we’ve had one of those since the Towers came down.

Todd Swift speculates on the very nature of a “literary blog:”

It is my experience that the Internet is not a cool medium. Or do I have that inverted? What I mean is, it evokes strong, near-instant responses. Blogs are emotive. They employ and discharge feeling - in that sense, they are like elements within poetry. But blogs also use (usually) prose, and are informative, and discursive - hence, the rational patina of much blog writing.

His thought is nicely echoed by Helen Losse’s speculations of why we’re so confusing:

Recently I refused, at least temporarily, to answer some questions on someone else’s blog. The person who asked the questions felt that I should be able to state my own position easily. I tried to explain: Knowing something and writing it as a fool-proof argument are different.

I’ve said this before. No one writes something great the first time. If a much-published author like Crichton knows this it must be true. We rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, trying to get it right. On blogs we just write. No wonder we’re so confusing in what we say.

So perhaps this is a good place for advice from Raven’s Shadow, Learn to Be Still:

“Shhh,”
the dry grasses whisper
as I walk by,
“Make your steps
soft so you can hear the wind
breathe through us
like lips upon a flute.”
“Sit for a while,
over there
under the juniper tree
and remember the smell
of warming February earth.”

One of Nochipa’s lovely drawings accompanies this poem. So go see. Read also Appalachia, a poem accompanied by some lively pics from the family photo album. I love it.

Robert Peake asks his own question, Why Heaney?:

After the death of our infant son, all my worldly ambition evaporated. In poetry, I found solace, and a means to engage the complexity of human experience on its own terms — not as a reductive conclusion or homily, but an expansive and containing act of art. Still, I felt divided — between the new self that embraced the wildness of a contemporary American voice, and the keen, impressionable undergraduate quoting Keats late into the night.

Seamus Heaney appeared before me, blinking under the spotlight.

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¹ There are those who might call this a form of blogwhoring but I’m a little uncomfortable with the term, as I would also be uncomfortable inviting you to pimp your blogs, even though both terms may have become common parlance divorced from the racist/sexist original meanings.

I can’t say that I never use these words but I usually reserve them as expressions of great contempt.

Whatever the term, I invite you to use the comments to let us know what great things you’ve been blogging about lately.