Monthly Archives: July 2010

July 29, 2010

Leak Update

By jenneandrews

I just heard Robert Gates on MSNBC say that Julian Assange will– not might– have blood on his hands for the leak of 90,000+ classified documents to the media and their posting online.

It is my personal opinion that setting aside the issue of whether any war is justified, a war in which we have occupied a country other than our own, are losing that war, our alleged ally in that war not a reliable and committed ally, with a  neighboring ally– Pakistan– supporting actions against us i.e. aiding the enemy, is a war that must be ended sooner rather than later.

If the actions of activist Julian Assange and his coterie at Wikileaks undermine the relationship between the U.S. Military and its sources among the Afghani people– and that is what it takes to bring this war to a halt– then so be it.  No one wants to see anyone killed.  But our children are being killed by a vicious guerrilla enemy hiding out in mountainous terrain when our true enemies, Al Qaeda, including the centipede Osama bin Laden,  are in the mountains of Pakistan and elsewhere.  The argument for fighting the Taliban is negated by the facts, and this month has seen the highest death toll of U.S. troops since the beginning of the war.  Whose hands are bloody?  Those– including the Administration– sending our kids into death traps for no good reason.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Politics and Commentary, Uncategorized

July 27, 2010

What a Mess….

By jenneandrews

It’s not enough that we have, as a nation, been victimized by British Petroleum in the rape of the Gulf Coast.

Now, in the wake of the release of thousands of ‘sensitive’ documents about the war in Afghanistan by Wikileaks, we see that the U.S. government has been keeping many secrets from us.  Surprise.

I wonder, if Barack Obama had known that the Pakistani special forces fought with the Taliban against the U.S., that civilian casualties have been grossly underreported, that drones often miss their targets and that the Taliban carries missile launchers, he would have still ordered the surge.

I doubt that he knew, because I don’t believe the military respects him enough to have given him the whole story and even kept things from George W.  Consider that McChrystal was instrumental in telling the world that former NFL star Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire after everyone thought he had been killed in a firefight with the “enemy”.

(WH yesterday putting out statements that “of course he/they knew…but this blogger still has her doubts.  Remember when the CIA said Iraq had WMD?  Facts alleged, facts withheld, facts released….)

We do not belong in Afghanistan and we did not belong in Iraq.  Karzi has said for some time that he wants to be free to work things out in his own country.  Let him.

Even after the lesson of Viet Nam and over 50,000 American troops lost, we still think we have the right to occupy other countries and drag them into war.

The biggest American delusion is that we are on call to the rest of the world with a mandate to spread our version of democracy, cramming it down the throats of people who rightfully view us as intruders.  Rage against us is appropriate.

Meanwhile, the cultural and political divide in this country grows.  We are on the eve of the passage of Arizona’s profiling bill into law despite pending challenges to that law on the part of the DOJ.

Angry white American men, purported to be middle class but likely variations on the theme of white trash, have formed the Tea Party and carry signs depicting our president as The Joker and an ape.  Sarah Palin either won’t or can’t shut-up and neither can the talking dough-boys Beck and Limbaugh.

The GOP has swelled its ranks with said garbage and become the party of obstruction, refusing to meet the Administration half way in any and all reforms, so that to rescue the economy and pass health care reform, the Democratic majority has had to act unilaterally.

Now, the Republicans cry foul, saying that Obama has railroaded reforms through.  Yes, he did, because he could, and someone needed to.

In 2008 the American people said, in a decisive voice, that we wanted change.  We favored the new visionary over the old war horse and by majorities in the electorate and the popular vote, we put him in the White House.

The obstructionists can’t stand it when they are accused of the racism that dominates their behavior in Congress and in their states.  But it’s all too obvious.

Now, a brave and visionary young man, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder,  has dared to expose the U.S. war machine for what it is, online, making over 90,000 documents available for worldwide consumption.  I watched Anderson Cooper and Larry King interview him last night and I was impressed.  He reminded me of what it was like during Viet Nam when we had brilliant and charismatic people on the Left who mobilized millions.

How deplorable all of it is.  Our country is without a conscience and without any vital movements rallying to bring its sins to light.  Men and women–Americans– overboard.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Politics and Commentary, Uncategorized

July 26, 2010

Hot Spots….

By jenneandrews

For something completely different:  sometimes “discussing” on a certain site turns into a cat-brawl.  Wow.

Anyway– for the past few days I’ve been preoccupied with my Golden Retriever’s annual outbreak of….whatever the hell it is.

She suddenly gets a small spot, licks or scratches it until it turns into a big spot and then it gets very unpleasant and I go on duty.  She had two on her head that made her look like a newly de-horned goat, and now one on her neck– very bad place– and one on her left leg and I just saw one on her rear leg.

I manage this annual unpleasant event as follows:  I dilute betadine and daub it on the spots with paper towel.  Then I sprinkle Gold Bond powder on each lesion.  And, I return to work, patting myself on the back

And then she begins to lick away, pulling the fur off the nearest spot.  My blood pressure goes up and I put her in an “e-collar”– an Elizabethan collar for dogs that can’t stop picking at themselves.  Then, she gets stuck everywhere, rolling her eyes pathetically at me.

This morning, I had to re-rig the e-collar with baling twine, re-soak the sores, re-powder the sores, put the collar back on, get water and the first pill in a course of amoxicillin down her gullet, and stake her out back on a long cord because she hates me over the collar and won’t come when I call her.

And then, I try to get back to writing.

We’re in for another 90 degree day here, my distractibility index is up, and I absolutely dread the sojourn waiting for me this afternoon out to see the other animals I feel responsible for.  What will they need?  Will I have to break out the Ringer’s solution again and hydrate a fading kitten, or open crusted eyes, or otherwise go back on duty?

Back to Tess:  I love her.  She’s in the twilight of her life and has given me ten great years.  I wish I were more patient.

My beautiful Gilded Peak Don't Rush Amor--Tess-- in 2002-- photo Lee Barrett

Stud White Golden

Double B's Cutter, Tess's most beautiful pup, now a career stud dog at the Double B Ranch.

Kaloscsahazi Goldens-- EZ to import one of these gorgeous babies....

BTW Kaloscsahazi–Ka-lo-sha-hazi– Golden Retrievers on the Danube in Hungary has this gorgeous new litter, superb pedigrees going back to the most excellent European/English Goldens.  They are not that expensive and the family is very experienced in importation.  If I had 2K today I would feverishly wait for my little guy– in this litter, seven m, 1 f.   Sire  CH Giorgio the Dream Team ex Galan’s Rapli.  Believe me, 2K is nothing for a pup of this quality.  Just be sure hips on the parents are A or B.

Back to writing and related matters:  .

I just read through the plot lines of people’s novels on She Writes and I think I might actually have a chance of getting mine published….:)

Now that it’s eighty degrees and I’ve taken a pain pill I might have a few good hours in which to work on The Rose of Scylla, the novella/novel, or the query for the memoir, or the clerical task of putting 100 pp of the memoir into one file and fine-tuning that much and doing a blitz of agents–or the poetry mss I’m trying to work up the courage to send out….. just writing this I’m suddenly quite tired.

Not only is it the season of hot spots and moist eczema, but it’s almost August.  Then think of it– it will be September, which is almost Halloween, and then it will be Thanksgiving and Christmas again!!!!  My Christmas wreath in its plastic wrap is still behind a chair in the living room.  My antique roaster is currently in use as two cat-boxes.

In keeping with the hidden theme of being overwhelmed I noticed that one of our neighbors who has an enormous hayfield has not cut his alfalfa. Every time he’s cut it in the past few years the downed hay has been rained on– I wonder if he’s had it.

Country living gets grueling without warning.  We’ve adjusted to being horseless and to not having a litter of Goldens on the horizon.  I’ve said to Doug that he should sell the house, simplify, and start writing again.  I think the idea exhausts him….

If you love Goldens, check out the Double B.  Lee and I go back about twenty years and she does a terrific job with her beautiful imported dogs.  Cutter was a stud fee puppy and my up and coming Gilded Peak Scrumptous Munchkin is his daughter….ergo a granddaughter of Tess.

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in American West, Uncategorized

July 23, 2010

What the Hell Is Memoir: The Debate Is Ongoing….

By jenneandrews

Today I stumbled across a discussion on a thread in the Memoir Group on She Writes about the difference between memoir and autobiography which necessarily addresses the issue of what memoir is and isn’t.  Hope Edelman, author of the best-selling The Possibility of Everything weighed in, ably giving the distinctions and definitions currently– and to me quite unfortunately– in vogue.

Here is my reply; please Fed Ex me some band-aids for the fall-out….:)  J

“Hope’s comment is germaine in my view: “This is what was once meant by “memoirs” with an S, as in “I’m writing the whole story of my life from the point of age and wisdom I’ve finally achieved.” A memoir is a more artfully rendered narrative that’s informed by memory and the author’s interpretation of events. Emotional truth is often as important, and sometimes even more desirable than factual accuracy. (Don’t shoot me, journalists! But this is true.)” –Hope Edelman.

I do take issue with “This is what was once meant…”– some of us still view “Memoir” this way.  With respect to Ms. Edelman’s definition of memoir as an “artfully rendered narrative that’s informed by memory and the author’s interpretation of events”  there is an implied assumption that a given narrative is art as opposed to the unadorned journal of catharsis it often is.  Regarding the labored construct of  ”…artfully rendered narrative informed by memory…”   Ms. Edelman’s own memoir, The Possibility of Everything, was penned in the wake of taking her daughter to a purported healer in Mexico.  She must mean memory across the spectrum– encompassing very recent memory, that which is recalled in the wake of experience.  By that definition everything one writes that is not in the present tense is memoir.  ”Factual accuracy” is another problematic phrase; we wouldn’t read memoir if we didn’t think we were reading a true story and a true story depends on fact.  ”Emotional truth” cannot possibly be truth or fact, as what one lives is experienced subjectively.

In any event,  the “memoir” boom set in motion by Mary Karr’s The Liars Club and Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes– although a number of wonderful contemporary autobiographical, memoir-ish narratives preceded that book such as Patricia Hampl’s A Romantic Education– has seen a shift in how memoir is defined.

In fact, in my view, the word has been hijacked to legitimize a recent– as in the last twenty-five years– sub-genre–if we can even dignify it all by calling it a genre– of personal confession/revelation, much of it by writers younger than those one might traditionally view to possess the sufficient perspective to write “memoir.”  Accordingly, I am going to use the phrase “autobiographical narrative” to discuss what others call “memoir” in the remainder of this essay.

Numerous advocates of  AN  claim, and Ms. Edelman so alludes,  that its objective is to locate one’s “personal truth”.  I advocate for something more exact than the term “personal truth” to characterize what the best of  autobiographical  narrative in current favor offers– something along the lines of  ”realization”, even “epiphany” that on a good day, resonates with with the reader.

It appears to me that if “truth” finding is the mission, the matter of whether one is creating literature or not falls by the wayside.  Further, in permitting ourselves to consume so much pulp nonfiction,   we have created a market for it.  We have become voyeurs, and we love that window into someone else’s private life– even to climb in the window and rummage through the underwear drawer.  If the voyeuristic appetite did not exist, neither would AN.

Another attempt to legitimize autobiographical narrative has come about in the plea for redemptive endings.  Understandably agents, editors and critics are tired of reading grueling personal stories that dead-end or in the words of Erin Hosier (She Writes’ resident agent) keep getting worse.  ”Where’s the hope?” she writes in a recent blog post.   Great memoir across the ages has not depended upon a redemptive ending.  It has depended upon the quality of the telling of the story.

For a time the phrase “creative nonfiction” was applied to personal narrative and still is as a genre for the M.F.A. and in other venues.   But the abandonment of the goal of the creation of a work of art/literature, the sacrifice of the vision for the extraordiness of the ordinary that characterizes art for the temporal reward of a purge,  has meant that creative nonfiction has itself descended to the level of autobiographical narrative.  In turn there is a further descent into “expose’”– the salty opportunistic and exploitative accounts of someone else’s private life, also in favor.

I  just completed the memoir of a trip I took thirty-seven years ago (Nightfall in Verona, sample chapter here). In the epilogue I say that I could not have written it any earlier– I was too close to the story and some of the things standing in the way of/eclipsing my appreciation of the experience had not yet healed and dissipated.   A degree of distance gave me the ability to paint with a full palette, to incarnate the experience in art, I pray. Obtaining distance from the subject frees one to focus on craft– the sharp edges of experience have been worn down and time has given it luminosity— the light cast by a thing’s essence.

To me this supports the argument for waiting, perhaps writing about something to “get it out” or make a record,  and then putting it away. My most recent piece on life with a mentally ill mother, Notes on a Yellow Rose, posted at Loquaciously Yours, is far more compassionate than my decades earlier  numerous published poems about her– most of them bitter, focused on her shortcomings, sent out into the world with the attitude that I had the right to “my truth” and to hell with how she felt mirrored at her worst in the pages of my books.  Another strike against most of the AN books in favor; proponents argue that personal truth is primary no matter the cost to others.

When I was younger I wrote about many things as a victim, unable to see my part in them and certainly numb to anything redemptive in the people close to me whose business I put in the street for the sake of my literary ego. I contend that many people writing expose’ (trash-personal narrative) about their families, significant others, their addictions and other follies, are committing the same sin not only against others, but against art.

Part and parcel of my viewpoint is that if we all love literature, we need to protect it. We need to protect the genres that define it by protecting the traditions that gave rise to and define that genre. Granted that there is blurring of the lines between genres and the emergence of sub-genres, et cetera,  I believe in protecting the genre of memoir by continuing to argue that at its best it is written by someone generally viewed to have much to say, or to have been in public life, from the position of looking back a good distance from events.

Unquestionably, thanks to Oprah Winfrey and other book-loving high profile people , there is a growing market for stories of falling down and getting back up.  In our spiritually impoverished culture there is also a call, as Ms. Hosier states in her post, for the first person nonfiction story to yield redemption and a take-away. The jury is out on whether the plethora of books on the market termed “memoir” – Eat Pray Love, Pillhead, Cherry, Fury, Running with Scissors, The Glass Castle, et al, will endure the test of time to be regarded as literature.

12 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in About Memoir, Uncategorized

July 21, 2010

Impromptu

By jenneandrews

Truly a dreamer’s moon tonight, half-full riding high beneath wrinkled pale taffeta cloud ribbons– Tess and I come home over the dark water, the Poudre River, the back way, no through traffic signs everywhere.

Ninety again today and when the house cooled I was civil and we sat by candlelight dancing in language, one saying something, the other responding, the cream-colored kittens put away, each dog bedded down–

And goodnight now means out into the cooling haze, someone’s hay down so that the air is perfumed with alfalfa, the road stretching away from the eye and the headlights piercing, catching a cyclist’s light, lights tangled and I push on down the back streets, the BBC on the radio murmuring sad conclusions, civility against red fire and screaming, bodies melting on pavement.

Out of the car grabbing the bag with paper towels, the walker, the pack goes on the back, the dog on her leash and the strong leg leading, the bad leg following, one two three four, and up to the front door, the key in the lock, the door swinging open: home and the small pewter lamp with a milk glass chimney  yes, a doll’s  half-elated face in the old wicker rocker.

The night is July and the time is uncertain and Brahms is right, Ma and Ax, in a dance, the bow drawn over the strings and ascending of the sweet deep sound made from wood and the glittering riffs of the piano I would close my eyes but I have just come home.

ii

I am urging the tired horse of being over the last few hills of the moonscape, my last desert run across the plain of the past; my throat is dry, my horse stumbles.  The hands on the keys gathering chords, the cello singing to the hands, the heart:

A mind in the body’s nave,  next door the facility and the wheezing of a respirator, Eva mopping the floor in everlasting patience with the milk and pudding spills.  But don’t think of it don’t go back there yet; instead, think of the white eye of the moon watching the woman riding a horse come home, leaping over the signs that say no through traffic, the comfort of the candle and the talk and the sweet green darkness, the road we have driven for half a century is it true.

Has it been that long since I made love, or went out on the town, to the dance hall and the guitars, a Mexican pulling me from the seat to the floor, Pocito Mas and the blaring saxophone, so long.  He gave me a rose and I put it in my hair and we polka’d together.  He wore a suit and a gentleman’s stetson, a handlebar mustache; he was small and thin and I am voluptuous and tall.

Long are the hours of the July night; the sprinklers hiss at 2 a.m. soaking in the bluegrass seed where I have tried to patch the stains left by my dog when I thought she was too old to make stains.  Long the hours after anger flared and abated today, with the heat, the hot hot men in the helmets along the road, no through traffic.  Gunfire in the barrio, the burrito truck listing at the side of the road, a bust, INS,–an ambulance, and we make way.

From the first chapter to the last: foxes routed by the prairie fire and today someone’s house foreclosed on, owner immolating herself and her children.  My great grandmother’s funeral and the movement from the New World Symphony everyone calls “Going Home”– that thin melody caressing…my hands on the wheel, eyes steady, mind crowded, ribbons of film unwinding, bits of negatives sifting down like black snow on the road

Goodnight moon, the ivory slope of the breast, she/we need attention:  the bread is dry but it is mine own, here, home, I companion myself.

7 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Memoir-- Segments, Prose-poetry, musing, Uncategorized

July 18, 2010

A Call to Arms…

By jenneandrews

I wish I weren’t constrained by my bad leg and other things to my little routine here in Colorado. I would be organizing a movement to shut up and shut down the Tea Party.

If it isn’t obvious to every thinking person in this country that this organization is racist to the core, then read about it all– Mark Williams’ letter to the NAACP, and the fall-out since.

From Day 1 it has been glaringly apparent that this group is made up of paranoid wack-jobs, the dregs, from the figurative sticks, who parrot what they hear Limbaugh and Beck saying and can’t handle a brilliant and black President.

Let’s just hope they all continue to shoot themselves in the foot and erase themselves from the national scene.

America is every American’s country.  The flag does not belong to the Tea Party.  Caricaturing and smearing the President makes the person carrying the sign of Obama as the Joker look like a first-rate asshole.

Challenging Obama: Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and the newly-elected Republican senator Scott Brown

Anyone aligning themselves with this movement suffers from IDS– Intellectual Deficiency Syndrome.  When reasonable people think for themselves, good things happen.  When people fall for rhetoric and bullshit, look forward to bad and terrible things.

Update:  I took a look at Wikipedia on the Tea Party tonight. It’s very biased to the right, which means it is not balanced, which means that it is unreliable.  In any event, in the photo above we have the Joker sign and to the left, Obama as chimpanzee.  In the foreground, Limbaugh, Palin, and Brown.  These three musketeers and others of their ilk ought to disassociate themselves immediately from the lunatic fringe of the TP Movement, or their credibility such as it is, will go into the shitter.

The Tea Party seeks to legitimize itself by constant talk of adherence to the Constitution.  Very unfortunately, few members of the Tea Party appear to have the ability to support their arguments with facts, much less to demonstrate precisely–again with facts– how the Administration has behaved “unconstitutionally”.  The Constitution is a fluid document in the sense that it is to be applied and interpreted.  As far as I know, everyone believes in the importance of The Constitution.   The Republicans in Congress may, however, be said to be violating the mandates of their constituents:  to legislate, make policy, improve the quality of American life.  Obstruction and partisanship have made it nearly impossible for Obama to lead.

While professing patriotism, the TP is anti-democracy in its perpetuation of division.  It wants to be in charge and that we have a Democratic president and majority is the thorn in its side.

7 comments | posted in Uncategorized

July 14, 2010

Synchronicity Rules: Big Fish, Slippery Fish, Amazing Story

By jenneandrews
An unidentified man doffs his hat, as he rides in a Carabinieri (Paramilitary police) car after being arrested in Reggio Calabria, southern Italy, July 13, 2010, following one of the biggest operations ever against the powerful 'ndrangheta crime organization.

Suspect, giving the finger with the Fedora

For several days the top anti-Mafia bloggers in Italy have refrained from posting, in solidarity with a media strike to protest Berlusconi’s “gag”  bill which if enacted, will inhibit media access to information on ongoing criminal investigations. Some 50,000 demonstrators took to the streets in Rome over the weekend.

Yesterday, a huge arrest of Calabrian Mafia took place which included picking up  the Calabrian godfather, Domenico Oppedisano-”il Capo di Capi”– the chief of chiefs, head of all of the southern clans.

The wire services  provided a mainstream account of the arrests, noting that the Italian government has issued reports that the organization– the ‘Ndragheta– is organized hierarchically, with great sophistication like the Cosa Nostra, as opposed to being a loose federation of families as has been thought.  The complexity of mob hierarchy historically has prevented getting the cancer at the root.

There were no posts on the Calabrian anti-Mafia  blogs  yesterday about the bust– evidently because the underground bloggers and journalists  obtained copies of the government’s report, have their own sources, and were feverishly writing up stories.

Accordingly a detailed and fascinating post on the Calabrian anti-Mafia coalition La Rete’s blog today discusses an interesting character referred to as “The Oracle,” a businessman and accountant, who appears to be operating as in insider within the Carbinieri and the special forces, the ROS, as well as being cozy with the Mafia to the extent that he warned them of the sweep five hours in advance.

This guy is an amazing operative.  Quotes from the investigation, in virtually incomprehensible Calabrese dialect, show him playing smoothly to the invesitagors, all the while alluding to the fact that the ‘ndragheta “are the worst pigs in the world” and yet is predictably so vast that the coup of the arrest  is not a coup.

A somewhat rough translation of the La Rete post on The Oracle follows (I really did try….):

“The Oracle of Reggio has a name and a surname. John Zumbo, a businessman and accountant Reggio class 67 was the “oracle” of the Ndrangheta. He innformed members of the “society” of the investigation against them and operations that were to be carried out against them shortly beforehand..

Much emerges from the intercepted conversations that the same Zumbo had with the members of the Ficara and Pelle clans and the head cheese Domenico Oppedisano.

By not being part of the organization, Zumbo reinforced it with the right information and predictions; in particular, shortly before the operation Reale, the accountant had guaranteed boss Giuseppe Pello that he could announce the beginning of the bust five hours in advance.

All of this means, in fact, that Zumbo functioned like a true oracle; a procession of ndranghetisti was  kept from leaving their residences during a search and were  subsequently arrested, according to information about the investigation by the police and judicial officials.

This is disturbing because Zumbo, not being personally involved in the investigation, has to have obtained information in another manner.
:
He called himself, in conversation with Pelle in the apartment of the latter, “lo sbirro.” — the cop.  The same Zumbo, apparently, was aware of the Patriarch operation, a very big branch of the Crimine,  which he personally knew by name– which gangs would be involved and above all that the investigators were rushing to intercept the Polsi summit (convocation of Calabrian mobsters) of 2007.

“We heard this “sotto voce” at the Lady of the Mountain, when we refuted new charges, around 2006; we heard this, (yet)we made films, started a bordello…” said Ficara,  talking with Zumbo.
.
From Ficara’s words, therefore, emerges that the news was immediately diffused to the interior of the organization and and for this reason a series of persons from the area of Milano were already untraceable….

And still Ficara denies:  ”Ah these charges…, what things.  At the end of the previous year I was ignorant of these things.  I did not have, nor did I know… I didn’t know that these existed.  Then one by one the little scams like this.  I have said no…We have dealt with all the microscopic bugs.”

In sum the ndranghetisti knew everything regarding the investigation and were still not worried.  And the same Ficara that spoke with Pelle about the Patriarchy operation and reassured him of the reliability of his sources, or better, of those of Zumbo, asserts that  ”two or three people know that I am ROS and they know that I am Secret Service.”

So John Zumbo was the informant through a system of information to the Ndrangheta, while the source was another.

Zumbo, however, was well aware of the personal qualities of his associates; he himself says: “I’m still part of a system that is much, much more extensive than that … … but I tell you one thing and see that I speak it in all honesty. “

“These are worst pigs in the world.   And I am an honest person and I know to be honest.  Many times what one should do is done and what one shouldn’t isn’t done, because I can’t avoid it, but I feel sure that if I don’t, the “cold” will come!”

-trans jra July 14, 2010

The intercepted conversation demonstrates the Mafia’s “coldness”– liberally “whacking” those in its way– that it laughs in the face of all attempts to shut it down.  The “Oracle” himself is crafty enough to be untouchable, and a braggard.  Hats are off to the bloggers who have the cajones to post the not so subtle realities of what it means to try to put a dent in organized crime in southern Italy.  The chokehold continues.

Those of you who believe in synchronicity might find it interesting that I was working on my novel yesterday, writing about an undercover Calabrian operation netting big fish, with of course, absolutely no idea that something big was going down on the other side of the world even as I was imagining it!   Quel chance.    History is writing itself and falling into my hands even as I explore what it might be like to be dealing with all of this in person living in a fishing town on the toe of the boot as an expat writer drawn into all of it. ???

Meanwhile I’m posting the Guardian’s story on the bust:

“Italian police arrest 300 in raids on Calabrian mafia:  alleged godfather of ‘Ndrangheta, 80-year-old Domenico Oppedisano, held and assets worth millions of euros seized

Tom Kingston in Rome
July 13, 2010

Italian police mounted one of the biggest crackdowns ever on the shadowy ‘Ndrangheta mafia today, seizing assets worth millions of euros and arresting 300 people including the organisation’s alleged boss of bosses.

The raids, in which 3,000 officers took part, were part of an investigation which has allowed a glimpse of the Calabrian mafia’s new pyramid power structure and exposed its creeping control over businesses and politicians in northern Italy, where 160 of the arrests were carried out.

The Italian senate stood to applaud the arrests, which were described by the interior minister, Roberto Maroni, as “absolutely the most important operation against the ‘Ndrangheta in recent years”.

The arrests of leading members of many of the group’s 150 clans, on charges ranging from murder to drugs and arms trafficking to loan sharking, was a blow “to the heart of the ‘Ndrangheta’s organisational and financial structure,” added Maroni.

Once a poor relation of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra and the Neapolitan Camorra, the ‘Ndrangheta started life kidnapping for ransom and hiding its victims in the mountainous wilds of Calabria before it entered the cocaine trade in partnership with Colombian cartels and built its revenue to an estimated €44bn, equal to the combined GDP of Slovenia and Estonia.

With clan affiliation based on blood lines, turncoats have been rare and the ‘Ndrangheta has kept a low profile, with the notable exception of the massacre of six men in Duisberg, Germany, in a clan feud in 2008.

Magistrates believed the group was organised in a loose, federation with no overall leader. But after yesterday’s dawn raids investigators said they now believe that, as it has grown, the ‘Ndrangheta has adopted a pyramid-shaped hierarchy similar to Cosa Nostra, and was led by Domenico Oppedisano, 80, who was taken into custody in Rosarno, Calabria.

Oppedisano was reportedly appointed head of the organisation at the marriage of two children of bosses in August 2009 and assumed power at a banquet held at a shrine to the Madonna last September. In one wiretapped conversation he talked of 1,000 affiliates attending one mob congress.

Oppedisano was “the reference point for the entire organisation”, brokering peace among factions in the south and dividing up public works contracts in northern Italy, police said.

But wiretaps also revealed him to be a consensus seeker.

“For the love of God, when you make a proposal, you listen to the others to see what they think,” he told one mobster.

Oppedisano’s rule extended to Genoa where his local commander, fruit and vegetable trader Domenico Gangemi, was arrested, and to Milan, the new economic hub for the ‘Ndrangheta, where mob-backed businesses have allegedly sought building contracts for the city’s Expo in 2015. In a region that has traditionally ridiculed the south for its fear of the mafia, local businesses were too scared to inform the police of any of hundreds of episodes of intimidation and extortion uncovered by investigators.

Mob justice was equally tough on dissidents within the ranks. In 2008, Milan boss Carmelo Novella was murdered in a bar after he sought to break free from the control of his elders in Calabria.

Investigators said that in addition to the arrest of the mob’s current number one in Lombardy, Pino Neri, a number of local politicians, a health authority chief and four police men were under investigation for collaborating with the ‘Ndrangheta.

Such was the mob’s sense of impunity in the north that a get together last October was held in a hall named after Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, a pair of magistrates murdered by the Sicilian mafia.Despite speaking in thick dialect to thwart police wiretappers, today’s ‘Ndrangheta mobsters are polished gangsters, said Calabria-based magistrate Giuseppe Pignatone. “This is the second and third generation,” he said. “They are graduates and can count on a network of professionals, bureaucrats and politicians and therefore have the ability to infiltrate any part of Italy and abroad.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/13/calabria-mafia-arrests-italy

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in About Italy, Politics and Commentary, Tour d'Force Posts, Trauma Survival, Uncategorized

July 13, 2010

Out of the Park

By jenneandrews

The matriarch trout

Takes bait from his hand

She follows him with her eyes

Wise and deep,

Her tail strong, confusing

The current.

,

Crushed day lilies reappear

Under the mounded dirt left

When the old fence came down

The new posts set in cement

,

The boys of summer

Swing their bats

Y on their caps–

Across the green diamond.

.

When they fade

Others appear, in crisp, white

Uniforms

Knocking it out of the park

.

On Willox Lane

The retired state trooper

Mows his lawn for the third time

In a week, treads heavily

Through his circle of rooms

Wife long dead,

Old dog following him

Permeable shadow.

.

What improvisation

Crests through the heart

On this day—

.

Praise for the extraordinary,

A dove fluttering off into elms,

Psalm with wings.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in American West, Poetry

July 10, 2010

‘Ness Un’ Deve Dormire… No One Should Sleep…

By jenneandrews

I spoke with someone recently about the much contested Children’s Crusade, whether it took place, whether the participants were children, whether they stopped at the Red Sea and got into boats subsequently drowning,  or waded in. Out of the debate, which is an interesting but distressing read, it is clear that at some point in the early 1200′s bands of poor designated as “pueri” (Latin pl for boys)– with the colloquial meaning of wayward youth (an appellation that could have been applied to adults as well as the wandering poor as a class)– did come together in medieval Christian fervor to march to Jerusalem, and in a second wave tried to get over the Alps to see the Pope and then back again, many of them dying in both cases.  For a great take on this confusing bit of history, click here.

My immediate reaction, having not thought about all of this in many years and simplistic though it may be: where the f…. were the parents?

I’m having the same reaction over my discovery of something many other people already know about, the  southern Italian youth movement  Amazzatecci Tutti– Kill Us All.

AT has come into being in reaction to the tyranny of the ‘Ndragheta, the Calabrian Mafia that has overcome the southernmost region of the country in recent years.

Why has it been up to the young people of Italy, first in the region of Calabria where the ‘ndragheta makes its home, to take up this fight?  Where are the parents.

Prior to the inception of  AT, the parents had at the very least, given up on themselves and their country…and their children’s future.

I had been writing a spin-off of my memoir Nightfall in Verona, when I ran across accounts of the region’s turmoil in the years since my romantic weeks in the town of Reggio Calabria. For the past week I’ve been reading and reading, translating polemical passages by the fertile populist/activist coalition La Rete per la Calabria– which Google will also try to translate when you go to the group’s blog– and yesterday, I read the January 2010 speech by Rosanna Scolpitelli,   head of AT, about her father, Judge  Antonio Scolpitelli, who was gunned down by hitmen on the order of Cosa Nostra on the eve of a decision in Italy’s biggest anti-Mafia trial, the Maxi-Trial, in 1996.

Rosanna was seven when her father was shot.  She is unafraid to poetically articulate her grief (in re this speech, Google translate does a passable job) in front of thousands of people.  Her commitment to the Resistance and the commitment she has inspired among Italian young people is mind-blowing.

The original seven teenagers, standing in the Reggio strada.

When I look at photographs of children– teenagers– marching in the streets carrying a banner that reads Adesso, Ammazzateci Tutti– So Go Ahead, Kill Us All– something is stirred deep within me– terrible sorrow and fear over the darkness in the world.

There is no greater darkness than the black hearts and souls of the Mob bosses with their “omorta”– Code of Silence, and the barbaric, byzantine  Code of Honour which has meant the deaths of many Italian women.

In May  populist outrage over the Italian government’s indifference to the chokehold of the regional  Mafias spilled into the streets of Milan 100,000 strong.  Past time.  Thanks to Robert Saviano’s expose of the Camorra, the Naples Mob, in his memoir Gamorrah, worldwide awareness of Italy’s impotence where the Mob is concerned has been elevated to a degree, perhaps motivating the government to a minor extent to date.  Saviano, living under police protection Somewhere, blogs at the Huff Post.

It all makes me feel that I don’t have any real problems despite my confessions and complaints on this blog and that our problems are minor compared to living with such a direct and entrenched threat of violence.  Our children are not taking to the streets because adults won’t step up; we don’t live in the degree of poverty seen among the African migrant workers under Mafia lash in Rosarno or among the people too poor to move or leave left in Calabria.

From the Website :

“La prima apparizione pubblica dell’embrione del Movimento è stata fatta a Locri il 19 ottobre del 2005. in occasione dei funerali dell’On. Francesco Fortugno, quando un primo nucleo di sette ragazzi espone insieme all’ideatore Aldo Pecora l’ormai famoso striscione di sfida alla mafia “E adesso ammazzateci tutti”. Seppur provenienti da tutta la provincia di Reggio Calabria, i ragazzi partecipanti alle manifestazioni di ribellione furono ribattezzati dai media come “i ragazzi di Locri”.

19th October, 2005

The first manifestation of the embryonic Movement came in Locri (Calabria)  on October 19, 2005, on the occasion of the funeral of the Honorable Francesco Fortugno, when the first nucelus of seven boys came together carrying the banner “E adesso ammazzateci tutti”–  And So Then, Kill Us All….

Successivamente già alla grande manifestazione popolare del 4 novembre 2005 a Locri, a cui parteciparono oltre 15.000 persone, il neo-costituiuto Movimento spontaneo “Ammazzateci tutti” svolse un ruolo chiave nell’organizzazione dell’evento mettendo online il sito internet www.ammazzatecitutti.org, che in una sola settimana dalla messa in rete ha registrato più di 200.000 contatti.

Subsequently at the great populist demonstration of November 4 in Locri in which another 15,000 participated, key objectives and events were set forth and put on line on the website that in one month registered more than 200,000 contacts.

Dal marzo 2006 il Movimento sta promuovendo un disegno di legge (giacente in Parlamento dal 1992).  Punto forte di questo disegno di legge, il cui articolato consta di tre semplici disposti, è il divieto di propaganda elettorale a chi sottoposto misure di sorveglianza speciale. Secondo la tesi proposta, infatti, è impensabile che in Italia il mafioso possa perdere elettorato attivo e passivo ma possa comunque condizionare gli esiti elettorali sponsorizzando candidati di sua fiducia. Il DdL impone, qualora accertato il compromesso stretto tra il mafioso ed il candidato eventualmente eletto, il decadimento immediato dalla carica elettiva di quest’ultimo.

Since March 2006, the Movement  has been promoting a bill (lying in the Parliament since 1992) on three key points:
the prohibition of electioneering by someone under surveillance/suspicion.  Secondly that it become  unthinkable that in Italy the mafia might lose the right to vote but can affect elections by backing its candidates.  That the Ddl  (bill) insure,when complicity between the mafia and an elected candidate,  that official’s career is over.

Il 24 marzo 2006 il Movimento convoca un’Assemblea pubblica a Palazzo Nieddu del Rio, a Locri, dove invita tutti i candidati alle Elezioni Politiche a sottoscrivere un patto d’onore per l’appoggio al DdL in caso di elezione al Parlamento. Oltre 50 candidati sottoscrivono questo impegno.
Ad oggi, dopo la pubblica sponsorizzazione dei ragazzi del movimento, hanno sottoscritto questo disegno di legge oltre 150 deputati e 50 senatori di maggioranza e opposizione.

On March 24 2006 The Movement convened a public assembly in Locri where it invited all of the candidates to sign a pact of support for the bill in the event of their election.  Over 50 candidates signed this document.  Subsequently another 150 deptuties and 50 senators have signed.

Il 2 giugno 2006 organizza un “presidio di legalità” con oltre 500 persone presso il ristorante “Al Valantain” in località Santa Trada di Villa San Giovanni, costretto a chiudere dopo innumerevoli attentati, tentativi di estorsione e minacce di morte, ed i cui titolari, la famiglia Mazza, sono costretti ad emigrare all’estero per tentare di rifarsi una vita.

On June 2 2006 AT organized a conference on the rule of law at the Al Valantain Restaurant in San Viovanni– the restaurant was forced to closed after innumerable attacks, threats of extortion and deth and the owners, the Maza family were forced to emigrate abroad to save their lives.

The Group’s fiats continue in English:

Earlier in 2006 AT and other organizations and individuals formed La Rete per la Calabria– a coalition of  anti-Mafia groups and individuals. The blog La Rete provides updates on the war against the ‘NDragheta and other Mafia organizations.

On the 17th February, 2006, “Ammazzateci Tutti” convened a demonstration called “ Mafia: permission denied”; over 5,000 kids from all over the “boot” took to the streets of Reggio Calabria (where they could easily have been gunned down).   Judge Paolo Borsellino: “If the youth refuse their consent, even the almighty and mysterious Mafia will vanish like a nightmare.”

This event saw the participation of family members of victims of the ‘Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra together with mothers of children victims of “Lupara Bianca” ( a missing murder victim, killed without a trace of evidence).

On the 30th  May 2007, “Ammazzateci Tutti”  stepped it up with its own “amicus brief,” submitting a formal request in a civil trial against the alleged instigators and executors of the murder of  Fortugno. The movement is the only “non-institutional” group to have done this, working with the Region of Calabria, the Province of Reggio Calabria and the town of Locri.

The national meeting “Legalitàlia”

On the 9-11 August 2007, at the sixteenth anniversary of the murder of  the Judge Antonino Scopelliti, “Ammazzateci Tutti”  together with  the “Antonino Scopelliti Foundation” promoted and organized in Reggio Calabria “Legalitàlia”, the first national meeting of young anti-Mafia, hosting in Reggio Calabria before an audience of nearly 300 young delegates from associations and youth movements some of the greatest Italian and Italian Mafia experts, including journalists, lawyers and social workers.

The second edition of the meeting was held in Reggio Calabria  on  the 8-10 August 2008.

The third edition of the meeting (Reggio Calabria, 9-10 August 2009) saw the participation of important international guests, such as the Consul General of the United States Patrick Truhn.

Among the many initiatives promoted and organized by “Ammazzateci Tutti” most notable are those in memory of the Judge Giovanni Falcone, organized every year on 23rd of May in various Italian regions and “Regional days of legality “, promoted on a national scale thanks to the coordination of regional and provincial movements.

“Ammazzateci Tutti” today

Currently the Movement promotes a number of legislative actions in the fight against organized crime, such as the acceleration of Mafia trials, constantly risking  the unthinkable.  AT  is a national anti-Mafia movement with peripheral coordination in Calabria, Sicily, Lazio, Lombardy, Veneto and Puglia.”

Is there any possible doubt that these are amazing kids whose actions constitute a worldwide mandate to wake up and fight tyranny on every hand?

Reading about the organization and working with the very rough translation on the site, I am humbled by the commitment of these young people..  You would have to have a heart of stone to gun down children but as we all know, it happens every day, all over the world, in the wars we sustain in Afghanistan and Iraq and in other parts of the world where a nation’s sons and daughters are “collateral damage”.

Out of all of this I have found myself incorporating Amazzatecci Tutti into my novella, with the ROS– the anti-Mafia arm of the Italian Carbinieri although I have many doubts about the integrity and efficacy of the ROS.  My character has been radicalized by what she has witnessed, and through her, I can do something that might bring hope and meaning into a few lives down the line– who knows.

The death of  poet and blogger Alan Sullivan yesterday, leaving his translation of the King David  Psalms from the Hebrew unfinished to his own satisfaction, brings home the fact that those of us who care about the world should do something today rather than leaving it for tomorrow.

6 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in About Italy, Politics and Commentary, Tour d'Force Posts, Uncategorized

July 5, 2010

Waking Horseless….

By jenneandrews

Before continuing with today’s post I want to profusely thank writer/artist Maureen Doallas for the opportunity to be interviewed on her splendid, much admired blog Writing Without Paper.  It is a thrill.  Please add us to your blogrolls!

Yesterday I surrendered to the need to unburden myself and my friend and let go of my last horse.  She was and is a beautiful Arabian mare, Amira Minjad, JL aka Bronte and she’s gone to live with an Arab/Appaloosa stallion named Picasso on a big ranch.  She’s in for a surprise or ten!

I thought I’d repost a vignette from March from a series of four about my time on the Joder Ranch in Boulder, in honor of the dynasty of Arabian mares I’ve been privileged to own and love. A poem in draft follows the flash memoir.

“While she was in foal, Majesty grew fat on the mash I made for her every day. I loved to make this mash, with corn and molasses and oats and bran. I especially loved to break flakes from the carefully selected sun-cured leafy alfalfa off the bales I had set aside for her.

At night I would go down to her stall. I would brush and put my head against her flank and see if I could feel her foal move. She would nuzzle me, and we would stand together for hours, shifting our weight from one foot to the other.

One day I decided to ride her up a draw that had been beckoning me from the north end of the ranch.

By this time she was fat and sleek, due to foal in about three months, gestation being eleven. She loved to be ridden; as we set off she would lift her head and walk in that proud, long Arabian way, her eyes great, dark, and glistening, her ears pricked for all that she could hear. She, like many Arabians, was “neurasthenic,” sensitive to the least sound, the smallest ripple of breeze in the grass. Riding her was always unpredictable, as she would suddenly stop, pretend to bolt, and immediately settle herself down, quickly deciding that a dog rushing a fence, or a plastic bag caught by the wind, taking on its own life out of a trail-head trash can, was nothing to worry about. Meanwhile my heart would be pounding out of my chest, but I would always feel victorious about staying on her and with her in such a moment..

On this particular day, both of us feeling confident, we climbed the gentle draw on the north end of the ranch. We were climbing and climbing; suddenly the trail narrowed and there was just a foot on either side. I consciously relaxed and kept my heels down to stay in balance in the saddle.

Suddenly, she froze in her tracks, one ear cocked back. We were on the incline. She began to breathe quickly. Then her whole body tensed and I could feel that she could care less that she had a rider on her back. She turned her beautiful, chiseled head, seeing something, and her nostrils flared.

When she began to tremble, I knew that I would have to find a way to get off instantly. There would be a wreck if I tried either to rein her in or to stay on. I looked down to the tiny ledge next to me, knotted the reins around her neck, and vaulted off, and crouched, clinging to some tufts of grass.

Majesty reared, pivoted on her back legs, and dashed down the trail. I looked up, and saw, coming up the valley, an enormous translucent hang glider sans its pilot; it looked like a giant prehistoric dragonfly as it drifted up the draw toward us. I caught my breath as it floated up over the spruce-covered hills and disappeared.

My legs were rubbery as I walked back down the trail. I could see that it was several miles back to the ranch and my heart sank. I thought as I walked of another ride on another horse, several years earlier, when we had become stranded on a rock field near Horsetooth Reservoir outside Fort Collins. At that time those with me, also stranded, had said, “You need to learn to trust your horse.” My mare had picked her way down through the rocks like a mountain goat, even though she was shod. Such is the prowess of the Arabian.

I rounded a bend in the path and a large lichen-covered boulder that obscured my view. I saw a horse, head down, grazing, on a level patch of meadow just off the trail. The horse lifted its head and turned toward me, and called. It was Majesty, waiting for me. Her eyes said, “Where have you been?”

“You’re a load of trouble, horse,” I said, walking up to her, putting her reins back over her head and climbing aboard. We headed down the path to the buildings clustered below us, the Joder Ranch  glistening in the afternoon sun, light glancing off the aluminum roof of the hay barn, woman and horse compassed to the familiar.”

A Draft

Patterson’s Foals

This year the foals in the field off Lemay

Come the same week as the lilacs

Mares standing in misting rain, slung

In the belly:

You know that when they stop eating

And put their heads down and lop

Their ears, all bagged up

And streaming colostrum

It will be that night

.

And you fly out in your truck

Along the still highway at midnight

Hoping to catch a hint, a great shape in the grass

Of one of them in labor,

Although this echoes across the dark:

Your mother’s Irish admonition:

“Leave well enough alone.”

.

Who wants to do that, or can?

On a mission, a low mezzo voice

Singing ballads on the radio

I pull off and step over to the fence:

There they are in mare stillness,

Mare privacy, new foals

Tucked against their flanks.

.

There is one beached on her side

In a lea nearby:  I think

I hear her straining,

That she is foaling, but she gets up,

Blowing, turning to look at me.

.

I am down this road again in my fifty seventh year

Come from the kennel I can’t leave behind

Dropping off two pups to give myself a break

Bedding them down, my ex asleep

Out in the open I was surrounded by sky, night sky

Whirling stars, standing beneath

A Van Gogh heaven–

.

Fifteen years ago now,

When my Arabian, Majesty, foaled on the Joder

It hailed on her due date

June 1–she started streaming milk

And I brought her in, took a break and then

I caught her on the sly:

I went out to the barn

Just at nine, and peering through a knothole

I could see she was down, looking at her side

And I heard the sound of the bag of waters breaking

And I could see the small hooves

Out of position, bottom side up

Under her tail.

.

I grabbed coveralls and Doug and I went in,

Got her up; you’re supposed

To walk them, to flip the foal; the foal

Should come nose down against his forelegs.

God forbid you should see back feet

Or have one get hung up by a shoulder.

.

This did the trick;

She wouldn’t do anything then but lie back down;

I sat behind her in the straw and then he came,

Sliding out like a porpoise, in a silver sack

With just a few pushes—and she was nickering,

Smart thing, veteran of all of this.

.

He landed in my lap, black colt

With a white star,

All miracle and legs and ears down.

In a second he sat up, shaking his beautiful head:

Smelling my hands.

.

Tonight I watch, out into the dark, a sentinel

Hoping for an epiphany

As if I could ken a birthing without a flashlight,

Discern the newest porcelain-delicate baby

In the dark:

.

Hoping to know it again, the emergence

Of a new living thing

The new joy of the mare

Even in great pain,

How a horse left alone to foal

Does it quickly,

Clambers up, breaking the cord

And whirls, nose down

Licking away the sac,

Guttural murmurs that mean “Get up, get up!”

.

But the mare I think might go

Has had enough of me and ambles off to graze

Or pretend to graze, until I’m gone:

I walk back to the car

Where my Golden, Tess waits in her crate,

Leaving the private nocturnal pasture

To the common lassitude

Of a herd in darkness

Removing the scent of a human being

That  lingered in the air.

Jenne’ Andrews

2006

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Memoir-- Segments, Poetry, Prose-poetry, musing

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