It’s way too easy and way too tacky to be constantly poking
fun at George W. Bush’s awkward relationship with the English
language. Nonetheless, his saying, this morning:
“But I am the decider. And I decide what is best”
– regarding the future of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense —
did leave me shaking my head. (see VoA.com & WaPo, April 18, 2006)
“Blackboard ABCN”
Of course, being Decider-in-Chief is my role here at f/k/a, including
decidering which tangents to go off on. The President’s line made
me think of a sentence that I have always associated with pundit
“If you can’t say it clearly, you can’t think it clearly.”
Since the only George Will book I have ever read was his small,
I thought I’d try to find the quote and its context in that book. Alas,
and I couldn’t find the quote through Google. [I did, however, locate
an article from Smart Leader Mag-ezine, by Nelson Searcy & Chad
Hall, Aug. 2000, that includes this quote: "Verbalize clearly - if you
can't say it clearly, you don't know it completely." Scary, huh?)
My searching was not totally fruitless. Although I very often find myself
disagreeing with George Will, in his column or Sunday's on ABC, here
pondering:
"Statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education
because learning conditions conduct, much legislation is moral
legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of
the nation in broad and important spheres of life."
"Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady eman-
cipation of the individual through the education of his passions."
"Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints.
It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions,
unmanageable passion, and uncensorable appetites."
"The essence of childishness is an inability to imagine
an incompatibility between one's appetite and the world.
Growing up involves, above all, a conscious effort to
conform one's appetites to a crowded world."
"All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important
four words in politics are 'up to a point'."
Finally, Will is quoted by Richard Reeves in A Ford, Not a Lincoln, ch. 1
(1975) as saying the following apt sentence:
"A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his
subject than what he thinks about his audience."
"tinyredcheck" Our haijin patriot ed markowski is not reluctant to
offer senryu focusing on George W. Bush's words:
president's speech
not once
does god
come to mind
remedial reading class
an empty space
where the W should be
"obscufation"
the american president
defines his agenda
Last Saturday, we had a blurb about a bully in Schenectady who
allegedly has used several internet technologies to stalk his estranged wife.
[scroll to the blurb on David R. Monty, who got his wife fired with his haras-
sing email, and even set up a weblog pretending to be her.] Today, NYT has
Tom Zeller, Jr., April 17, 2006. The article does mention two websites that
offer assistance to persons being stalked or otherwise harassed by persons
“UKG” My British friends surely noticed a long time ago that the UK looks a lot
like the Easter Bunny. For me, it was a new revelation today. I happened upon
that discovery, when I checked the f/k/a archive this afternoon, looking for our
post ukku celebrates the coming of spring with haiku. In that post we trumpeted:
Starting today, February 13, 2006, a new group haiku weblog will be
launched, to celebrate Winter’s turning into Spring.
Formed by our Honored Guest Matt Morden and haijin Alison Williams, the group
grew to twenty-two haiku poets and graphic artists, including dagosan. After two
months writing our short poems chronicling and cajoling the coming of Spring, and
commentng back and forth, and to and fro, ukku spring haiku will stop adding new
poems at midnight Pacific Coast Tme tonight. The poems and images will still be
there, so you are urged to look and linger.
farewell picnic –
wind blows the blossoms
off the dogwoods
ukku spring was my first attempt at participating in a group weblog, and it was an
enjoyable experience — introducing me to new artists, helping to know familiar ones
better, and egging me on to produce more quality one-breath poetry. To celebrate,
I put together an online brochure, today, welcoming Spring: ukku haiku (2006), which
you are invited to print out for any non-commercial purpose. It contains my complete
ukku spring output (19 poems, clunkers and all), and is set up to be a printable, two-
sided, three-fold brochure.
“UKN” Here are two hew haiku by Morden Haiku’s Matt Morden, from
ukku haiku spring:
cold spring
spots of paint
on unopened tulips
“THNLogoG” We told you yesterday about the release of the
2005). It contains around 500 haiku, including this pair from
women’s refuge —
new light finds the blue
in painted glass
January sales
a clown’s car steals
my parking space
You would also be enjoying this trio from our north-country
“snowflakeSN” “snowflakeSN”
dusting of snow
all the lights on
in the daycare
mosquitoes
the slap of a beaver tail
at twilight
dead calf
a mother licks
the wind
