Clipmarks | debbyski's clips

What If Hope Wins?

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:42:28 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

I don't really want to contemplate the future of our country under another four years of "conservative leadership"

So, What if hope actually wins?

What if on November 5th we wake up to find the nation had the courage to step beyond our fear and prejudice and rejected the fear based for the hope centered?

When I look at the picture above I don't see what the neo-cons like to describe as the Messiah. To me what they mean to say is that we are helpless and weak and looking for someone to solve all of our problems for us. I have lived long enough to know that person does not exist.

What I see is just a guy that represents a new idea to a whole lot of folks. There are people in this country who recognize this moment as an opportunity to reject, to transcend the awful mess we have made of ourselves, our country and our world.

What will you do if Hope wins?

A Date With The Departed

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:32:42 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are time set aside to broker peace between the living and the dead. Whether you are pagan or religious, Celt or Christian, New Age believer or doubter-at-large, these are the days when you traditionally acknowledge that the gone are not forgotten. The seasonal metaphors of reaping and rotting, harvest and darkness, leaf-fall and killing frost supply us with plentiful memento mori. Whatever is or isn’t there when we die, death both frightens and excites us.

We humans are bound to and identified with the earth, the dirt, the humus out of which our histories and architectures rise — our monuments and memorials, cairns and catacombs, our shelters and cityscapes. This “ground sense,” to borrow William Carlos Williams’s idiom, is at the core of our humanity. And each stone on which we carve our names and dates is an effort to make a human statement about death, memory and belief. Our kind was here. They lived; they died; they made their difference.

Savoring Italy

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:30:06 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: One beer at a time

Clip Source: travel.nytimes.com

A cold beer might seem like a strange pairing for traditional Italian cuisine, especially in the heart of wine-loving Piedmont, but the entire meal that night was based on local brews, and the sommelier himself was Teo Musso, a brewmaster with near-rock-star status in the Italian culinary scene.

“I want people to think of my beer as something that belongs on a table in a good restaurant,” Mr. Musso said. “I do not want them to think of it as something from the pub.”

But Baladin is hardly alone: Around Italy, a craft beer scene has sprung up, bringing well-made specialty brews into haute cuisine dining rooms and elevating the fare served in brew pubs, creating an attractive destination for beer lovers who also love great food.

This Ain't Pretty Woman

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:22:06 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

“This is not cute. This is not fanciful,” Mr. Newsom said, standing in front of the pink-on-pink facade of a closed massage parlor in the Tenderloin district. “This is a big mistake.”

Supporters of the measure say it is a long-overdue correction of a criminal approach toward prostitutes, which neither rehabilitates nor helps them, and often ignores their complaints of abuse.

The language in Proposition K is far-reaching. It would forbid the city police from using any resources to investigate or prosecute people who engage in prostitution. It would also bar financing for a “first offender” program for prostitutes and their clients or for mandatory “re-education programs.”

But opponents dismiss the notion of legions of prostitutes happily romping through the city’s neighborhoods. “This isn’t ‘Pretty Woman,’ ” was how one put it.