Category: Flotsam

Hey, Les.

Do you know about Scott Roeder? Kind of a distant cousin of ours whose will got absorbed into the campaign against abortion. His trial is going on now. I heard that he was a “little bit more” on the fringe than most of the Bible-thumping right-to-lifers, and when I heard that LBM clue I had to look into his qualifications a little bit more. Did you know that he made his own license plates, because he considered himself a sovereign state unto himself? And when he got pulled over because of them, police found materials for a bomb in his car.

This was a decade before he assassinated Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, May 31, 2009. Point blank execution, in the back of his head. In the lobby of Tiller’s church.

Which one was the savior? (Devin Friedman attempts an answer in the new GQ, of all places.)

As Alan “Silky Slim” Reed says, people respect violence.

Yrs,

p.s. The jury didn’t have much trouble separating act from implication. It only took them 37 minutes to arrive at the guilty verdict. Now, I’m just a bit worried about the notion that his defense was crafted to set a precedent for judging other comparable acts of violence. Read this excerpt from the Iowa Independent:

The ruling does not come as a surprise, since Roeder openly admitted he shot and killed Tiller in the hopes of arguing the necessity defense, which would claim that he did so to prevent the doctor from performing abortions. Roeder’s defense was crafted for him by Des Moines anti-abortion activist Dave Leach.

Leach’s hope was that the Roeder trial could set a precedent, whether victorious or not, that could then be applied to other acts of civil disobedience against abortion.

“The very existence of legal abortion, and even the existence of this discussion [of the necessity defense], as well as any hope the prosecutor has of convicting Scott, relies upon their success in keeping the slaughter of millions of human beings ‘irrelevant,’” Leach said before the trial’s conclusion. “Political correctness requires that we not care about their shed blood.”

Scary.

Full story by Jason Hancock, 1/29/10.

After posting my daughter’s book, The Mountain Trip, my Aunt Beth sent me pictures of a book I made for my cousin when I was around 11 years old.

See the whole book here.

Hey, Les.

Someone just sent me this link, about a discussion out west between a photographer and a woman who lost both her legs when she was one, but managed to grow up to be gorgeous and athletic and totally awesome anyway. I was moved, and inspired–almost wish I could have heard them talk. Even the pictures of the photographer seem appealing.

Am I just going soft around the edges, or what?

Yrs,

When I got home from Las Vegas, my daughter Carmen, 7, gave me the best birthday book ever. I think she was inspired by Lost Boy Mountain. To see the whole book, go here.

I won’t sell it for $4,000.

Want to see which plaid shirt the LBM team is wearing today? Visit Little Brown Miscellanea on Tumblr.

And befriend us on FaceBook. I know we aren’t the creative directors of Polaroid, but c’mon.

Hey, Les. Check this out.

While his companions (the apostles Peter, James, and John) sleep in a garden, a troubled man (Christ, contemplating his imminent crucifixion) is consoled by an angel. Aert, who was a devoted student of Rembrandt, rendered the central figures with sympathy and focus, yet his view from within the woods, behind the insensible, indistinct mound of sleeping men, maintains distance. Was that skepticism? Modesty? Reverence? A man’s trials are his own, yet they need not be borne alone, and they are often witnessed and remarked on from afar. And yes, many of us late-night seekers long for an angel of deliverance.

There’s a feeling of a cave here, too, or at least a cove. So many of our LBMs suffer in silence. Did Aert depict their utopia?

I like the fact that he did Jesus in such a non-fussy way. Just another burdened fella trying to sort it all out.

Yrs,

Find out more about the city of maples.

No, that’s not me, lying still, though the stone is ominous and the link to Neruda in my last post self-evident.

Hey, Les.

I’m feeling old and feeble. The choices and decisions I actually make are ineffective; the things I fail to do, or do unconsciously, piss people off. I found a quote tonight that sums it up, and gives at least some consolation that these feelings have been linked to our Y-cursed gender by a great poet (Pablo Neruda, from his piece “Walking Around”):

It so happens I am sick of being a man./And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses/dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt/steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs./The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool./The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,/no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens I am sick of my feet and my nails/and my hair and my shadow./It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Yes, it so happens, tonight I’m really sick of this fate. But what to be done about it? On with the march…

Yrs,

Hey, Les.

Nice of you to share some fire with Dru, Stooph, the Roller and the Bengals last night. Wasn’t it great to have Team LBM together for once and have Lina join us? She’s kind of broken up, I know, and her hair reminds me of straw; say howdy and give her a hug if you see her today.

I came across an old friend over the weekend. Do you remember Gilbert Subrosa? An old teacher sent him a poem, which he passed along to me, and I dug it out of the mess downstairs. What a character.

Anyway, stay warm. Thanks for the tiramisu.

Yrs,

seriously