I wish you all a very good 2010! May it be brighter than 2009, which was a year of hard lessons for many in this nation. A few years ago, I tentatively entered online life through Vox. I discovered quickly that I was able to post poems and receive instantaneous non-academic feedback, which is of great value to me. I also reacquainted myself with the arts of photography and sculpture. That said, I have decided to spend the majority of my creative energies on a new endeavor in the next year. The book of fairytale poems is still being tortured in layout stage. When it is available, whether it is published or self-published, I will let you all know. The next year.....
I have been busy home-schooling my children and struggling to keep up with creating and keeping my domicile clean. What has been forgotten this past year, is good nutrition. "What about integrating art into cooking and eating?" I thought during a long winter's nap. This makes perfect sense.
I also had the pleasure of seeing Julie and Julia, which not only made me salivate over the gastronomy, but also provided a spark. My Julia Child is definitely Gloria Bley Miller, who did for Chinese cooking, what the former did for French cooking. She brought it, in its authenticity, into American households. As a teenager, I created sumptuous meals for my family. Her book is weathered and loved. Miller was also an artist and an educator. Her husband, Richard Miller, was a famous sculptor. I used to imagine their Greenwhich Village house as a refuge from my suburbia, from the pains of ticky-tacky houses. I laugh at this now, but it was very real to a fourteen-year-old misunderstood artist.
This year, the year I turn forty, I return to the art of Chinese Cooking. I am publishing my blog through Salon, so I won't be as much of a presence on Vox. Please come over to see me! If you want me to read anything, please send Vox mail to me. Thanks for a year of warmth and kindness. I wish you all health and prosperity in 2010!
I really do make this face ALL the time...
I think it's when I am concentrating.
Yeah, the lift tickets are kinda expensive....
What the hey...I'll work like a dog on Monday....
King Ping wishes everyone a peaceful and prosperous New Year.
"From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational, and we begin our campaign to have it repealed. Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine. The new law defines blasphemy as publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted."
And, as a backlash.... Repeal the Irish Blasphemy Law
From the link:
"
This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.
We believe in the golden rule: that we have a right to be treated justly, and that we have a responsibility to treat other people justly. Blasphemy laws are unjust: they silence people in order to protect ideas. In a civilised society, people have a right to to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.
Publication of 25 blasphemous quotes
In this context we now publish a list of 25 blasphemous quotes, which have previously been published by or uttered by or attributed to Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, James Kirkup, Monty Python, Rev Ian Paisley, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Frank Zappa, Salman Rushdie, Bjork, Amanda Donohoe, George Carlin, Paul Woodfull, Jerry Springer the Opera, Tim Minchin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict XVI, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, Ian O’Doherty, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Dermot Ahern.
Despite these quotes being abusive and insulting in relation to matters held sacred by various religions, we unreservedly support the right of these people to have published or uttered them, and we unreservedly support the right of any Irish citizen to make comparable statements about matters held sacred by any religion without fear of being criminalised, and without having to prove to a court that a reasonable person would find any particular value in the statement.
Campaign begins to repeal the Irish blasphemy law
We ask Fianna Fail and the Green Party to repeal their anachronistic blasphemy law, as part of the revision of the Defamation Act that is included within the Act. We ask them to hold a referendum to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Irish Constitution."
I'm ready to join the Irish Atheists myself!
only great challenges which ordinary people
rise to meet.
~William Friedrick Halsey Jr.
Happy New Year! Big hugs and lots of love to you all!
Let's all hope (and pray, if that's your thing) that next year and next decade will be better than the ones we just survived through. Or at least no worse (lowered expectations, much?).
I'll be on my couch at midnight with Mr. LT, having a cheap bottle of bubbly, watching TV. The kitties will either be asleep or having the midnight crazies.
We made it, together. Whoof.
