The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
Sometimes the metaphors just leap out at you don't they ('Titanic sunk by giant metaphor')? I see one of the actors who played a terrorist in the movie about the hijacking of Flight 93 was refused entry to the film premiere in the US, presumably because he 'looked like a terrorist', the same reason, presumably, he had been given the role in the film. This is the make-believe world of the war on terror in essence.
On the other hand the Australian creationist John McKay has been free to visit the UK to spread his toxic views on 'Intelligent Design' to British schoolchildren, and was I guess, not being on a no-fly list like the banned actor, also welcomed with open arms into the US when he toured.
I was tempted to suggest that these religious fundamentalists who spread the enormously damaging creationist propaganda, inflicting a kind of mental terrorism on schools, should also be on 'no-fly lists'. Most countries (except when prevented by Free Trade Agreements) have quarantine arrangements for dangerous plant and animal diseases, and creationism is a potential disease affecting young minds.
But then something in the story (http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article359111.ece) caught my eye "John Mackay, an Australian geologist who believes he has uncovered fossil evidence which dismisses evolution and proves that Noah's flood really did happen will speak at several state schools and universities during his eight-week visit to the UK." And I was reminded of another story (see http://www.arkvannoach.com) about a Dutchman with similar views who is building a 'replica' of Noah's Ark. And then it hit me (it would be unworthy, dear reader, to suggest that I was inspired in any way by the Titanic story). We do need a 'no-fly' list but we would call it the 'must sail' list. Whenever one of these people wants to travel from Australia to Britain or from the US to Australia they will be allowed to do so as long as they travel not by plane but on a replica (a true replica, gopher wood and wooden pegs and papyrus sails, none of your steel bottoms and auxiliary engines) of 'Noah's Ark'. Noah of course must have crossed the Pacific, and the Atlantic, and all the other oceans to distribute the ancestors of kangaroos and opossums and all the rest.
So, Tony Blair could say 'Come on over John, I'll meet you on the Portsmouth docks and help you shovel elephant dung. See you in a few year's time.' He will of course make it, I mean, the Noah story couldn't just be a metaphor, could it? It was? Oh, too bad.
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)