Sherry Chandler

Possum, who is stubborn (maybe because she only has about two brain cells) was sleeping in the corner of the cabinet top. This position is defensible, you see, from all the big males in the house, but we humans didn’t find it acceptable so we bribed her with a bed and now, for the moment, she sleeps on the dryer. Slight improvement but she doesn’t look any happier.

Another cat poem from Baudelaire:

Le Chat

I

Dans ma cervelle se promène,
Ainsi qu’en son appartement,
Un beau chat, fort, doux et charmant.
Quand il miaule, on l’entend à peine,

Tant son timbre est tendre et discret;
Mais que sa voix s’apaise ou gronde,
Elle est toujours riche et profonde.
C’est là son charme et son secret.

Cette voix, qui perle et qui filtre
Dans mon fonds le plus ténébreux,
Me remplit comme un vers nombreux
Et me réjouit comme un philtre.

Elle endort les plus cruels maux
Et contient toutes les extases;
Pour dire les plus longues phrases,
Elle n’a pas besoin de mots.

Non, il n’est pas d’archet qui morde
Sur mon coeur, parfait instrument,
Et fasse plus royalement
Chanter sa plus vibrante corde,

Que ta voix, chat mystérieux,
Chat séraphique, chat étrange,
En qui tout est, comme en un ange,
Aussi subtil qu’harmonieux!

II

De sa fourrure blonde et brune
Sort un parfum si doux, qu’un soir
J’en fus embaumé, pour l’avoir
Caressée une fois, rien qu’une.

C’est l’esprit familier du lieu;
Il juge, il préside, il inspire
Toutes choses dans son empire;
peut-être est-il fée, est-il dieu?

Quand mes yeux, vers ce chat que j’aime
Tirés comme par un aimant,
Se retournent docilement
Et que je regarde en moi-même,

Je vois avec étonnement
Le feu de ses prunelles pâles,
Clairs fanaux, vivantes opales
Qui me contemplent fixement.

— Charles Baudelaire

A translation:

The Cat

I

A fine strong gentle cat is prowling
As in his bedroom, in my brain;
So soft his voice, so smooth its strain,
That you can scarcely hear him miowling.

But should he venture to complain
Or scold, the voice is rich and deep:
And thus he manages to keep
The charm of his untroubled reign.

This voice, which seems to pearl and filter
Through my soul’s inmost shady nook,
Fills me with poems, like a book,
And fortifies me, like a philtre.

His voice can cure the direst pain
And it contains the rarest raptures.
The deepest meanings, which it captures,
It needs no language to explain.

There is no bow that can so sweep
That perfect instrument, my heart:
Or make more sumptuous music start
From its most vibrant cord and deep,

Than can the voice of this strange elf,
This cat, bewitching and seraphic,
Subtly harmonious in his traffic
With all things else, and with himself.

II

So sweet a perfume seems to swim
Out of his fur both brown and bright,
I nearly was embalmed one night
From (only once) caressing him.

Familiar Lar of where I stay,
He rules, presides, inspires and teaches
All things to which his empire reaches.
Perhaps he is a god, or fay.

When to a cherished cat my gaze
Is magnet-drawn and then returns
Back to itself, it there discerns,
With strange excitement and amaze,

Deep down in my own self, the rays
Of living opals, torch-like gleams
And pallid fire of eyes, it seems,
That fixedly return my gaze.

— translated by Roy Campbell in Flowers of Evil A Selection, ed Marthiel and Jackson Mathews (New Directions, 1955)

The Lar that Campbell refers to here is the singular of Lares, the domestic gods of the ancient Romans. There was a lar familiarie, which was the familiar of the house. Possum, lately, has been entirely too familiar with some places for my comfort. Peanut, on the other hand, has staked out the top of my desk and will not be moved. We tried a bed for him, thinking we could entice him away, but he sleeps beside it.

Hard to get much done around here.

For other translations, see Fleur du Mal

This photo is three or four weeks old but I think it’s pretty neat and I’ve been wanting to share it with you.

We planted this white pine as a live Christmas tree the year we moved to the farm, 1982. Our twin sons were rising 4 years old, and white pine was about as far as our budget would stretch. It was just about my height, 5 feet 6 inches.

We had several drought years after we moved onto the farm and the tree just sort of sat there for a while. When the rains came back, it began to grow and now tops 25 feet, about a foot a year, but it has always had that drought-stunted ugly spot in the low branches. Still, we’ve never considered cutting it. We’re sentimental about trees.

I’m telling you this now, not only because I took this neat photo but also because my son, who has been living with us for the last several years while he went to graduate school, moved out today to live in West Palm Beach. He’s on the road as I write this.

So the nest is empty a second time. And it is sad. But this time we know we can survive.

_____
In other news, my friend Georgia Green Stamper will be talking to Nick Lawrence tonight on Curtains @ Eight, WUKY, 91.3 on your FM dial, or streaming at http://www.wuky.org/index.html.

Georgia also has a segment of WUKY’s tonic in the can. tonic, the arts and music magazine with a twist, is only available online. Georgia’s segment is a conversation with Mike Graves, Leatha Kendrick, and me. More information when I have it.

The subject of both shows is, of course, Georgia’s new book You Can Go Anywhere from the Crossroads of the World (Wind, 2008).

Georgia will also be reading from the book at Joseph-Beth Booksellers on Sunday, June 22 at 2:00 p.m.

Photograph by T. R. Williams.

Mr. Eliot got that right. These guys sound like the dry grass singing, though we have water enough around here. Not quite too much, like in other places. (See Via Negativa for more on actual cicadas.)

Here are the lines from T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland:”

                        If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

— T. S. Eliot, from “The Wasteland V. What the Thunder Said,” The Complete Poems and Plays (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1934)

Though we have rain in excess and our grass is green, there is something dry and droughty in the song of the locust. Here is “The Raincrow” from Kentucky’s own Madison Cawein (Cawein’s poem “Waste Land” is thought by some to have influenced Eliot’s “The Wasteland” so appropriate enough to pair them here, though their tone and their purpose differs mightily):

The Raincrow

CAN freckled August,—drowsing warm and blonde
   Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead,
In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,—
   O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed
   To thee? when no plumed weed, no feather’d seed
Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond,
   That gleams like flint between its rim of grasses,
   Through which the dragonfly forever passes
      Like splintered diamond.

Drouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eaves
   The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,
Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves
   Limp with the heat—a league of rutty way—
   Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay
Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves.
   Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain,
   In thirsty heaven or on burning plain,
      That thy keen eye perceives?

But thou art right. Thou prophesiest true.
   For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting,
When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue,
   Great water-carrier winds their buckets bring
   Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring
And flash and rumble! lavishing dark dew
   On corn and forestland, that, streaming wet,
   Their hilly backs against the downpour set,
      Like giants vague in view.

The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower,
   Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art;
The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour,
   Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart;
   While in the barnyard, under shed and cart,
Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power,
   Barometer of the birds,—like August there,—
   Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair,
       Like some drenched truant, cower.

— Madison Cawein, from Stedman, Edmund Clarence, ed. An American Anthology, 1787–1900. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900; Bartleby.com, 2001.

La Géante

Du temps que la Nature en sa verve puissante
Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux,
J’eusse aimé vivre auprès d’une jeune géante,
Comme aux pieds d’une reine un chat voluptueux.

J’eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme
Et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux;
Deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme
Aux humides brouillards qui nagent dans ses yeux;

Parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes;
Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes,
Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,

Lasse, la font s’étendre à travers la campagne,
Dormir nonchalamment à l’ombre de ses seins,
Comme un hameau paisible au pied d’une montagne.

— Charles Baudelaire

Giantess

When Nature once in lustful hot undress
Conceived gargantuan offspring, then would I
Have loved to live near a young giantess,
Like a voluptuous cat at a queen’s feet.

To see her body flower with her desire
And freely spread out in its dreadful play,
Guess if her heart concealed some heavy fire
Whose humid smokes would swim upon her eye.

To feel at leisure her stupendous shapes,
Crawl on the cliffs of her enormous knees,
And, when in summer the unhealthy suns

Have stretched her out across the plains, fatigued,
Sleep in the shadows of her breasts at ease
Like a small hamlet at a mountain’s base.

— Karl Shapiro, from Flowers of Evil, A Selection, ed. Marthiel and Jackson Mathews (New Directions, 1955)

Other translations here.

This fellow was riding the wind on a dogwood leaf last Sunday morning when I shot this photo through our bedroom window. We have a lot of viceroys around here and I think that’s what this one is, but he wouldn’t open his wings. I don’t blame him. There was a pretty stiff breeze.

You can see artifacts from the window in the top half of the photo.

These national discussions just keep coming at us, don’t they?

Clinton Bloc Becomes the Prize for Election Day (I supply emphasis):

…Even the Democratic National Committee chairman is avidly trying to make up for accusations that he allowed sexism in the race to pass unchallenged.

“The wounds of sexism need to be the subject of a national discussion,” the chairman, Howard Dean, said in an interview. “Many of the most prominent people on TV behaved like middle schoolers” toward Mrs. Clinton.

…

Former Gov. Madeleine M. Kunin of Vermont suggested in an interview that Mr. Obama promise to appoint women to half his cabinet positions.

Ms. Steinem advised that Mr. Obama deliver the same sort of ambitious speech about sex that he did on race. An aide said the campaign was considering such an address.

Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant unaffiliated with either campaign, wondered whether Mr. Obama might give Chelsea Clinton a prominent role in his efforts.

When Mr. Dean reached out to Cynthia Ruccia, who started an organization of female Clinton swing-state voters threatening to vote for Mr. McCain, Ms. Ruccia asked that the Democratic convention include a symbolic first ballot for Mrs. Clinton’s delegates. Mr. Dean discouraged the idea on the grounds of unity.

He has belatedly recognized the cries of sexism, Mr. Dean said, particularly when a friend showed him a video compilation of broadcasters’ comments about Mrs. Clinton.

“We all get over it when our candidates don’t win,” he said. “What you don’t get over is feeling like you’ve been insulted by some of the leading institutions in America and no one said anything about it.”

…

The Obama campaign will fight back, after waiting a respectful beat or two. In conversations with Mr. Obama and his aides, “I’ve tried to make sure that everyone understood that these women have a right to feel frustrated and angry,” said Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an important ally who is one of his leading emissaries to women. “To try to make that less than real is a huge mistake.”

As he declared himself the nominee on Tuesday, Mr. Obama cut a particularly woman-friendly figure on stage, dedicating his speech to his grandmother and affectionately bumping fists with his wife, Michelle.

Indeed, descriptions of those women, along with his mother and daughters, will be regular features of Mr. Obama’s speeches, Ms. Sebelius said. Women will ultimately choose Mr. Obama not because of symbolic overtures, she added, but because of his stances on health care, the economy and education, areas where his positions closely resemble Mrs. Clinton’s.

The key, Ms. McCaskill said, is approaching Mrs. Clinton’s supporters with utmost humility. And, Ms. Backus added, that is not always the strongest suit of the young people who are some of Mr. Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters.

“Not nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh,” Ms. McCaskill said, making a taunting sound. “We need them very, very badly, and we shouldn’t be able to be afraid to say that we need them.”

H/t Big Tent Democrat

But they didn’t need us last week. Weren’t too worried about those adolescent commentators then either.

I wonder how many women are going to see this sort of Damascus Road conversion as conveniently timed? Sort of an “I’m sorry honey. I’ll never do it again.”

They might want to polish up that humble rhetoric too. To quote Paul Lukasiak, “these women have a right to feel frustrated and angry” is not the same as “women have a reason to be angry.”

While I’m not a woman, this “right to be” language is the equivalent of an “I’m sorry that you were offended”, faux-apology — its a failure to acknowledge that the anger is legitimate, and that its not just the media that is at fault, but the candidate and the party itself.

Paul thinks this is all misdirection to distract us from the corruption of the DNC.

And, after all, it is not just women who voted for Senator Clinton over Senator Obama. There’s the question of the “Appalachia problem.”

Speaking of Appalachia, I still want policy specifics. In Bristol, Virginia on Thursday, Senator Obama got an enthusiastic response to promises that he’d provide everybody with health care but he didn’t say how he plans to do that.

Gail Collins is relatively clear-eyed about what Clinton accomplished:

Here’s where the sexism does come in. If Barack had failed in his attempt to make history by becoming the first African-American presidential nominee, you can bet we’d have treated his defeat with the dignity it deserved. Even if he went over the deep end at the finale and found it hard to get around to a graceful concession. [Ed. note: I wish people would get over this meme. The timing of Clinton's concession is well within the tradition and will be perfectly graceful. See Anglachel.]

For a long time, Obama supporters have seen party unity as something that Hillary could provide by capitulating. It also requires the Democrats to acknowledge what she’s achieved. If that makes them feel like wimps, let them take it out on John McCain.

…

Over the past months, Clinton has seemed haunted by the image of the “nice girl” who gives up the fight because she’s afraid the boys will be angry if they don’t get their way. She told people she would never, ever say: “I’m the girl, I give up.” She would never let her daughter, or anybody else’s daughter, think that she quit because things got too tough.

And she never did. Nobody is ever again going to question whether it’s possible for a woman to go toe-to-toe with the toughest male candidate in a race for president of the United States. Or whether a woman could be strong enough to serve as commander in chief.

Her campaign didn’t resolve whether a woman who seems tough enough to run the military can also seem likable enough to get elected. But she helped pave the way. So many battles against prejudice are won when people get used to seeing women and minorities in roles that only white men had held before. By the end of those 54 primaries and caucuses, Hillary had made a woman running for president seem normal.

…

For all her vaunting ambition, she was never a candidate who ran for president just because it’s the presidency. She thought about winning in terms of the things she could accomplish, and she never forgot the women’s issues she had championed all her life — repair of the social safety net, children’s rights, support for working mothers.

It’s not the same as winning the White House. But it’s a lot.

A Letter from the Front

I WAS out early to-day, spying about
From the top of a haystack—such a lovely morning—
And when I mounted again to canter back
I saw across a field in the broad sunlight
A young Gunner Subaltern, stalking along
With a rook-rifle held at the ready, and—would you believe it?—
A domestic cat, soberly marching beside him.  

So I laughed, and felt quite well disposed to the youngster,
And shouted out “the top of the morning” to him,
And wished him “Good sport!”—and then I remembered
My rank, and his, and what I ought to be doing:
And I rode nearer, and added, “I can only suppose
You have not seen the Commander-in-Chief’s order
Forbidding English officers to annoy their Allies
By hunting and shooting.”
        But he stood and saluted
And said earnestly, “I beg your pardon, Sir,
I was only going out to shoot a sparrow
To feed my cat with.”
        So there was the whole picture,
The lovely early morning, the occasional shell
Screeching and scattering past us, the empty landscape,—
Empty, except for the young Gunner saluting,
And the cat, anxiously watching his every movement.  

I may be wrong, and I may have told it badly,
But it struck me as being extremely ludicrous. 

—Henry Newbolt, Clarke, George Herbert, ed. A Treasury of War Poetry,
First Series. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917; New York:
Bartleby.com, 2002. 

The Path to the Woods

ITS friendship and its carelessness
Did lead me many a mile,
Through goat’s-rue, with its dim caress,
And pink and pearl-white smile;
Through crowfoot, with its golden lure,
And promise of far things,
And sorrel with its glance demure
And wide-eyed wonderings.

It led me with its innocence,
As childhood leads the wise,
With elbows here of tattered fence,
And blue of wildflower eyes;
With whispers low of leafy speech,
And brook-sweet utterance;
With bird-like words of oak and beech,
And whisperings clear as Pan’s.

It led me with its childlike charm,
As candor leads desire,
Now with a clasp of blossomy arm,
A butterfly kiss of fire;
Now with a toss of tousled gold,
A barefoot sound of green,
A breath of musk, of mossy mold,
With vague allurements keen.

It led me with remembered things
Into an old-time vale,
Peopled with faëry glimmerings,
And flower-like fancies pale;
Where fungous forms stood, gold and gray,
Each in its mushroom gown,
And, roofed with red, glimpsed far away,
A little toadstool town.

It led me with an idle ease,
A vagabond look and air,
A sense of ragged arms and knees
In weeds grown everywhere;
It led me, as a gypsy leads,
To dingles no one knows,
With beauty burred with thorny seeds,
And tangled wild with rose.

It led me as simplicity
Leads age and its demands,
With bee-beat of its ecstasy,
And berry-stained touch of hands;
With round revealments, puff-ball white,
Through rents of weedy brown,
And petaled movements of delight
In roseleaf limb and gown.

It led me on and on and on,
Beyond the Far Away,
Into a world long dead and gone,—
The world of Yesterday:
A faëry world of memory,
Old with its hills and streams,
Wherein the child I used to be
Still wanders with his dreams.

— Madison Cawein, from Rittenhouse, Jessie B., ed. The Little Book of Modern Verse. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917; New York: Bartleby.com, 2002

Le Chat

Viens, mon beau chat, sur mon coeur amoureux;
Retiens les griffes de ta patte,
Et laisse-moi plonger dans tes beaux yeux,
Mêlés de métal et d’agate.

Lorsque mes doigts caressent à loisir
Ta tête et ton dos élastique,
Et que ma main s’enivre du plaisir
De palper ton corps électrique,

Je vois ma femme en esprit. Son regard,
Comme le tien, aimable bête
Profond et froid, coupe et fend comme un dard,

Et, des pieds jusques à la tête,
Un air subtil, un dangereux parfum
Nagent autour de son corps brun.

— Charles Baudelaire

__________
And the translation:

The Cat

Come, superb cat, to my amorous heart;
Hold back the talons of your paws,
Let me gaze into your beautiful eyes
Of metal and agate.

When my fingers leisurely caress you,
Your head and your elastic back,
And when my hand tingles with the pleasure
Of feeling your electric body,

In spirit I see my woman. Her gaze
Like your own, amiable beast,
Profound and cold, cuts and cleaves like a dart,

And, from her head down to her feet,
A subtle air, a dangerous perfume
Floats about her dusky body.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

I do have a “selected” Fleurs du Mal that I am reading but I found this particular poem at the online edition here.

I know a lot of you all reading here think I’m in the tank for Hillary Clinton, and it’s true that I prefer Hillary on the issues (Obama has apparently made it a policy not to have policies). But —

Oh just read Joan Walsh:

Throughout this long campaign the Clintons have been turned into a vile caricature: amoral, power-mad narcissists who are not beyond using racism and even worries about Obama’s safety to press their political cause. I’ve criticized both Clintons repeatedly in the pages of Salon for over 10 years, but it’s really time to say: Enough.

For several months I’ve found myself bothered by a double standard in both the behavior and the media coverage of the Obama campaign, as supposedly representing a new kind of clean, post-partisan politics, by contrast with the dirty old win-at-any-cost Clintons. Hardball Obama campaign tactics — David Axelrod partly blaming Clinton for Benazir Bhutto’s death; the intimidation of Clinton voters by a pro-Obama union in Nevada (to be fair, some Obama supporters claimed intimidation by Clinton forces, too); the campaign’s infamous South Carolina race memo (prepared before Bill Clinton made his dumb Jesse Jackson remark); the multiple “Harry and Louise” mailers distorting Clinton’s healthcare proposal; not to mention ties between Obama, Axelrod and the Exelon Corp., even as Obama is touting his lobbyist-free campaign. Nothing seems to stick to Obama; he’s Teflon.

This episode was worse than many but not entirely atypical: After his staff helped whip up a frenzy about Clinton’s remarks, Obama himself said he accepted Clinton’s statement that she had been misunderstood, and Axelrod tried to act gracious and insist that it’s time to move on. But the damage had been done. Obama has run a better campaign than Clinton, there’s no doubt about it, but he’s had a lot of help from a fawning media. (Here’s a great piece making a point I made months ago about how such coverage may ultimately hurt Obama.)*

*Hint: backlash.

And then read Redstar. I’m not sure that I agree with everything she says here, but I have come to respect her intellectual integrity and she makes me think we might all need to step back and take a deep breath (emphasis added):

Part of the reason for last night’s insomnia has been my growing frustration from the Clinton RFK remarks skirmish. It began in earnest when I read Kevin’s response at Slant Truth, in which he stated that regardless of her intent, it was his personal associations of the assassinations of black leaders that mattered to him. He added that he was further troubled by the racially segregated - and polarized - link networks he was seeing in response to her comments; i.e., whites were linking to other whites in support of their perspectives, and bloggers of color - including many African-Americans - were linking to one another in opinion solidarity. When I read this, I thought Duh! Obviously. Anyone following this election, especially since early ‘08, has seen this cultural fracturing around the blogosphere, as we all interpret the candidates’ actions, statements and alleged motivations and intent based on our personal and/or collective experiences and identities.

Then I read a compelling analysis from Latoya at Racialicious, which I found to be strongly undermined by her strident vocabulary that “hell no…there is no way Hillary was talking about herself when referencing the RFK campaign.” Latoya’s voice is one I really respect in the ’sphere, yet so is Pocochina’s, who just as convincingly argues that of course Clinton is thinking of herself in referencing RFK, because it’s a) a defining (generational) moment for her in her political development, b) she faces her own threats of assassination, and c) and this is my elaboration of Pocochina’s point - that she has arguably come to represent for millions of moderate- to low-income Americans (mostly white, but not exclusively) the underdog candidate fighting for them. Just because this vision of her is routinely derided in many pundit circles does not mean that it does not ring true for countless Clinton supporters (if those I read on-line are any indication).

So who’s right, here? Who’s interpretation is valid? Hopefully you realize these are trick questions - obviously all of them are, as they are grounded in experience, identity, and each blogger’s situated knowledge. …

I remember last fall at the Congressional Black Caucus Conference wearing a Clinton pin and an Obama button. I remember my cynical detachment about the two of them, centrists not remotely interested in challenging the status quo other than via their own historic candidacies and the legitimately new perspectives they would bring to the Oval Office: the first serious female contender with her gendered and generational whiteness, modern marriage and professional career working with women and children, and the first multi-racial, cosmopolitan, almost-not-a-Baby-Boomer, black-middle-class Presidential candidate. Yet, as the months have passed since Iowa, I’m getting more and more narrow-minded in my support of Clinton, mainly in response to her unparalleled opposition. My emotionalism is seriously challenging my more “rational” preferences for her policy positions, campaign platform and professional experience.

…

What I think has been the real issue in this campaign - in the politics waged from both sides that have employed or capitalized on systemic sexism and racism - is that both campaign[s] have condescended to the other. …

All of this is getting to my long-drawn-out conclusion: that for most of us this primary has ceased to be about the two candidates, and all about ourselves - in all our complicated beauty. Which of our multiple identities is elevated consciously or otherwise in feeling drawn to the candidates, what our biases or privileges really are, what our core personal networks really look like, what we feel we’re owed by society personally or collectively, and what we’re projecting onto these two figureheads who are similar triangulating centrists - one with most of her dirty laundry exposed, and the other with his soon to come out to dry.

I feel like I’ve lost a lot of virtual allies in this primary (hopefully temporarily), but gained a plethora of new ones. At my old blog I wrote I how I tended to identify with middle- and moderate-income white ethnics and women and men of color I meet because our life experiences are often quite similar. Who I have met in numbers on-line via supporting Clinton are many new young outspoken working-class and middle-class Asian-American and white ethnic feminists. I have purged many middle-class and upper-middle-class mostly white male and female bloggers who I felt marginally about to begin with. Good riddance. They don’t speak for me. I’m not sure who does these days…

And from the Online Etymology Dictionary, tribe:

from O.Fr. tribu, from L. tribus “one of the three political/ethnic divisions of the original Roman state” (Tites, Ramnes, and Luceres, corresponding, perhaps, to the Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans), later, one of the 30 political divisions instituted by Servius Tullius (increased to 35 in 241 B.C.E.), perhaps from tri- “three” + *bhu-, root of the verb be.

We are dividing ever more strongly into our tribes in this country. It’s dangerous.