...so they have decided to regulate pizza. Can I sign up to be the pizza police?

So Cardinal Bernie Law, pedophile apologist and enabler extrordinaire, has been given a promotion to Rome, where he'll be "responsible for the financial management" of St. Mary Major Basilica. WBZ radio this morning reported that his new title is "Archpriest," an essentially honorary role.

This is disturbing on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin. The appointment itself, being a great honor, is a slap in the face not only to the sexual abuse victims who were left unprotected by Law's years of inaction but also to all the Catholic faithful who are once again being ignored by the so-called "shepherds" whose role it is to serve rather than be served. Not only should this man not be honored in any way after the human catastrophe he abetted in Boston, but the recent news of ongoing money woes in his old Archidiocese suggests that he really shouldn't be given another financial management role either, since he did a such a fine job of creating a fiscal catastrophe that has now destroyed dozens of parishes.

It is a fact of life in Roman Catholicism that the hierarchy looks out for their own to the detriment of us lesser minions who actually are the Church. Still, I continue to be amazed by the Curia's cluelessness, which evidently knows no bounds. Yet another reason to put one's faith in God, not men.

When I was in my second year of architecture school, I had an interesting conversation with a classmate in the design studio one evening. I was a new single mother, having taken a leave of absence the previous year to give birth to my son, a fact that evidently fascinated this particular classmate. In the course of the sort of personal conversation in which college students often engage, I mentioned something about going on the pill after my son was born. One thing led to another, he eventually asked me why I hadn't had an abortion. It was against my religion, I told him. I was Catholic. He didn't buy that, he told me, because premarital sex and contraception were against my religion too, but I wasn't refraining from either of those things. Thus began my critical analysis of exactly what I believed and why, and adjustment of those beliefs as I felt appropriate.

That was almost 20 years ago, and though some of my positions have changed over the ensuing years, I am still against abortion and for birth control. The difference now is that I know why.

I grew up in an interesting household, politically speaking. Both my parents were registered Democrats, though my father was the more moderate of the two, supporting candidates like Robert Kennedy while Mom went for Eugene McCarthy and, four years later, George McGovern. Dad also believed that Richard Nixon, though a Republican, had something going for him in the foreign policy area, while Mom detested Nixon long before it was fashionable, having never forgiven him for promising to "eradicate cancer in our lifetime" and then cutting federal research funds at the same time my younger brother was dying of leukemia. Mom also opposed the war in Vietnam, though she didn't believe in protesting and thought Jane Fonda was a traitor. I recall that both Mom and Dad were against abortion and against capital punishment, issues that would go before the U.S. Supreme Court in my early elementary school years. I don't recall any opposition to birth control on the part of either of them, except that they didn't think single people ought to use it mainly because they shouldn't be having sex in the first place.

My parents were both cradle Catholics. Dad was taught his catechism in the 1940s by his Protestant father and attended Catholic elementary school (nuns), high school (brothers), and college (Franciscan friars). Mom was the daughter of a traditional Italian immigrant father, who turned out to be way ahead of his time on issues like race relations, and a first-generation Italian-American mother, who was less open-minded on such matters. Mom went to 12 years of public school before attending a Catholic nursing school and almost becoming a nun.

So it was that I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic elementary and high schools. I heard people talk about how conservative the Catholic church was, but I had some very cool nuns as teachers, the kinds who played folk music on the guitar and circulated petitions against naming nuclear submarines "Corpus Christi" (translation: "body of Christ"). And in spite of this reputed conservatism, I began to realize that I was in favor of women's lib. Later, I embraced issues like women's ordination as well.

I also became more pro-life on abortion. I don't recall birth control ever coming into the picture, except that it seemed intuitively obvious that opposition to abortion should logically be wedded to advocacy of safe contraception, and it didn't particularly bother me that the Pope had said otherwise. When I thought more deeply about it following the conversation with the classmate in design studio, I realized that the clear distinction was between something that prevented the creation of a new life and something that destroyed a living human being.

It wasn't a groundbreaking distinction. As early 20th century birth control advocate Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League aserted in its publication Birth Control Review, "Birth Control is not abortion. Abortion is the taking of life after conception. Birth Control is the prevention of conception." (Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 [January 1927], page 3). Others at the time, such as controversial filmmaker Lois Weber, also saw the issues as distinct. Sanger and Weber were both eugenicists, and Sanger especially had as her ignoble goal the elimination of the "unfit," including the children of immigrants and the poor, from modern society. While the eugenics movement never really took off and was virtually defunct by the end of World War II, the American Birth Control League's recognition of the obvious difference between birth control and abortion, even if politically motivated at the time, remained more or less accepted by the family planning movement until the 1960s.

Then everything changed, with abortion being advocated as the moral equivalent of birth control and a pillar of contemporary feminism, against the long rich history of women who took a very progressive human rights approach to fighting abortion. Even among the fledgling anti-abortion community, conservatives like John and Barbara Willke cited the distinction between abortion and birth control in their groundbreaking book, Handbook on Abortion. There was diversity of opinion, to be sure, but that diversity was not a problem in pro-life circles.

Something happened over the next decade, though, with the pro-life movement becoming coopted by traditionalists who railed against anything socially progressive, including birth control and feminism. The trend has continued to this day, with even issues like gay rights being comingled with advocacy for the unborn. In some organizations, it's hard to tell what the real priority is—opposing the killing of children or opposing the exercise of all but procreative sex.

Today, the biggest anti-abortion groups are, at best, silent on the issue of birth control. The National Right to Life Committee takes no position on non-abortifacient contraception, nor does Feminists for Life of America. The far-right American Life League, Human Life International, and March for Life are explicitly anti-birth control even for methods like condoms and spermicides that cannot possibly cause an early abortion, claiming a "contraceptive mentality" disconnects sex from the result of sex (babies) and therefore leads to abortion. But that's as ludicrous as saying that a "vaccination mentality" or an "antibiotic mentality" leads to euthanasia because failures may result in disabilities which might cause burdened family members to want to euthanize the patient. If you're not already disposed to killing someone, you aren't likely to suddenly change if a pharmaceutical substance fails.

There are signs of sanity out there, though, and they're coming from some pretty unlikely corners. An October 2000 editorial in the Catholic Jesuit magazine America extolled the wisdom of separating opposition to abortion from opposition to birth control, or even relaxing the birth control prohibition itself. And many people like me who believe it's quite logical to separate the two issues have either walked away from the organized pro-life movement to work freelance, if you will, or have become much more selected about the alliances we form.

Even the heirarchy of the Roman Catholic Church seems to understand the distinction: while the USCCB actively urges support of anti-abortion laws, they take no such action in response to contraception and haven't since the Supreme Court's Griswald decision that called contraception a matter of privacy. In fact, in almost 40 years of being a Catholic, I don't think I have ever heard a sermon against contraception. I even know one fairly conservative evangelical Christian pro-lifer, Monnica Williams Terwilliger, who maintains a comprehensive reproductive health web site for women which includes a detailed section on birth control. She makes a point of noting which methods are primarily or secondarily abortifacient and leaves it at that.

It really is possible to rationally examine the issues of birth control and abortion and then come down for one but against the other. So I don't feel the least bit uncomfortable saying that I am unabashedly pro-birth control. And I'm not the only one who is.

This just in: John Kerry will accept the Democratic nomination for President at the July convention in Boston. Whether this is a response to the tidal wave of criticism the idea generated or he would have ultimately decided this without the extra pressure, it's the right decision.

Just nine days after the September 11 attacks, George W. Bush described the new war on terror:

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success.

Two and a half weeks later, in announcing the beginning of military attacks against the Taliban and al Qaeda camps, he expounded:

Given the nature and reach of our enemies, we will win this conflict by the patient accumulation of successes, by meeting a series of challenges with determination and will and purpose. Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader.

Bush warned that this would take a long time. Sadly, it looks like he was right.

I ran across an, um, interesting web site while surfing recently for historical information about the history of the woman suffrage debate in the United States. Based solely on the visual cacophony (ouch, my eyes) I probably should have simply moved on, but like a commuter craning her neck to catch a glimpse of the multi-car wreck on the other side of the highway, I stopped to look, so I have no one to blame but myself.

The site front page starts out with this disclaimer of sorts:

LET  THIS BE CLEAR ,THE PURPOSE OF THIS SITE IS NOT TO BE ANTI FEMALE BUT TO URGE MALES TO UNITE  AS A GENDER ON ISSUES AFFECTING  MEN  AND ERADICATE ANTI MALE ELEMENTS (punctuation and capitalization maintained)

This is followed immediately by a bumper sticker-like graphic that reads:

Feminism is the stupid notion
that women are men

A myriad of links to other sites follow. Among them:

• A DNA testing site ("PROTECT YOURSELF FROM PATERNITY FRAUD.KNOW IF A  BABY IS REALLY YOURS")
• The Chauvinists Corner ("The Best Known Cure For Macho-phobia")
• Married Mens Militia (site no longer active)
• MFNBC ("Masculists Factfinding Network and Broadcast Channel," also inactive)
• Domain of Patriarchy ("The genetic difference between the human male and female is as wide as the gulf between same-sex humans and chimps"
• The Masculist Trinity (self-defined as advocacy for the abolition of political and cultural assumptions of equality between sexes, then advocates things like preference for fathers in custody to discourage divorce and "re-masculinization" of the military)

Also included on this page is a tribute to someone known only as "Angry Harry," whose published articles purport that women do not deserve equal pay for equal work, men are more intelligent than women, and men are going to become extinct. To which I say, if Angry Bill is the prototypical man, one can only hope.

In response to the self-posed question of why anti-feminism is necessary, this site selects seven of the most inflammatory quotes from the most inflammatory of feminists (I just stop reading when I see Andrea Dworkin). So I'm sure the author(s) don't mind that I have picked their inflammatory rantings on an anonymous internet page as the basis of my criticism of anti-feminists.

Really, I couldn't make this up if I tried. I literally didn't read anything rational on this site. It isn't merely anti-feminist; it's unabashedly anti-woman. Sad to say, this is what we are up against, even in the 21st century.

This is what liberalism has become on California's "free speech" campus—a kind of rabid lemming mentality where critical thinking is disparaged and robotic rhetoric is "in." What makes today's left morally and intellectually inferior to the right is that the former exercises virtually no self-censorship of the vitriol of hate in the way today's right commonly censures the insensitive among themselves and hesitates not to ostracize the downright hateful.

The International Olympic Committee has ruled that athletes who have sex-change surgeries can compete in the Olympics. In summary, a transsexual athlete must be at least two years post-hormone therapy and be legally recognized under his or her post-surgical sex in order to qualify.

Frankly, I didn't realize this was a burning issue in athletic circles. I haven't heard of a newsworthy transsexual athlete since tennis player Reneé Richards (formerly Richard Raskin) had surgery in the '70s.

Richards, incidentally, is against the ruling because she fears "unscrupulous" men might undergo sex change to be able to win against women. That sounds a bit ridiculous to me; I can't imagine a man (or woman, for that matter) who would take such drastic measures to win a race or a game. It isn't like taking steroids, which you can stop.

A: When he still has money to spend.

Democratic nominee-presumptive John Kerry is considering deferring his acceptance of his party's nomination for President because he has raised a ton of money and doesn't want to have to stop spending it before Republican incumbant George Bush does. Federal election rules require that campaigns use only federal campaign funds once the candidate becomes the nominee or in early September, whichever comes first. The Democratic convention is the third week of July, but the Republican convention doesn't start until the last week of August. That gives the Bush campaign five more weeks to spend their own money.

Naturally, the Dems are whining that their favorite bogeyman, Karl Rove, timed the GOP convention to take full advantage of the funding rules. But didn't the Democrats have the same option? And weren't both parties' decisions made almost a year and a half ago? It's odd that Kerry would wait until now to complain about it. Maybe he needs a bump in the polls.

Meanwhile on Causeway Street, business owners who will be burned by the virtual shutdown of the area during the DNC convention, are furious that their colossal inconveneince may be in vain. Can't say I blame them.

I published the following on July 24, 1997 on a feminist web site I used to run. I reproduce it here, even though many of the sites I originally linked to are no longer available. Sadly, many of the teams/leagues mentioned are also defunct. But women's collegiate sports are thriving.

The 1990s are turning into a banner decade where women's sports are concerned. A women's professional baseball team was established and then officially recognized by Major League Baseball. A woman tended goal in a National Hockey League game and another has pitched in a minor league baseball game. Women's collegiate basketball playoffs achieved the popularity - and the television coverage - of the men's teams. Not one but two women's professional basketball leagues debuted to great media attention and fan anticipation. And the decade isn't over yet.

But the advances make the problems that still remain even more obvious. In very few sports are women and men given equal respect, equal attention, equal opportunity. Most other sports have either only begun to welcome participation by women or are still hostile.

It is impossible for me to cover all the sports in which women participate, but just a few examples make clear just what is right - and wrong - in women's sports.

Basketball

What's right: Last winter's inauguration of the American Basketball League [league defunct, page no longer available] was an important milestone for women athletes. The league was the first in the United States to provide serious professional competitive opportunity for women in a team sport. Now outstanding women hoopsters don't have to retire when they graduate from college, only to watch their male counterparts sign million dollar pro contracts. What's wrong: Unfortunately, the ABL hasn't received the media attention it should have. While one news radio station in my area regularly covers our local team in its morning sports reports, the city newspaper made barely a mention of the league all season—until a fight broke out at the first ABL all-star game. Much better coverage is being afforded the women's summer league sponsored by the National (men's) Basketball Association. Could the sports media still be so sexist that it will only cover a women's league that is affiliated with a men's league?

Tennis

What's right: This is one sport in which women have long been welcome competitors. Instructional tennis programs for children accept both girls and boys, scholastic and collegiate opportunities for female students coexist with those available to males, and in every major professional tennis tournament the women's competition is as newsworthy as the men's. Few who seriously follow the sport would suggest that women's tennis is not of the same high caliber. What's wrong: Those little tennis skirts are a bit anachronistic, and the electronic scoreboard at Wimbledon still prefaces the women's names with "Miss." And really, don't you think that the gender whose anatomy is designed for childbirth just might have the stamina to play five sets?

Golf

What's right: Another long-available athletic opportunity for women is golf. The Ladies Professional Golf Association consistently provides fine competition among great golfers from all over the world. Major tournaments receive national television coverage and comparable print coverage as well. What's wrong: Though the quantity of media coverage isn't bad (it could be better), the quality is sometimes lacking. Some LPGA commentators are a little more likely to talk about golfers' personal lives and personalities than they do when covering the men, as if women's achievements on the course are not enough to hold the viewer's attention. But more importantly, women's pro golf will never reach a par (no pun intended) with the men's until golf clubs and courses stop their discriminatory practice of giving preference to men in membership benefits and tee times.

Baseball

What's right: Fifty years after the All-American Girls Baseball League [page no longer available] was formed to provide sports entertainment during and after World War II, a few forward-thinking men founded the Colorado Silver Bullets [team defunct, page no longer available] to compete against men's amateur and semi-pro teams. I know of only one other women's pro team - the Orlando Dragons [team defunct, page no longer available]. What's wrong: What isn't wrong? Though girls are welcome in Little League, they are still barred from participating on Babe Ruth, American Legion, and most high school and college baseball teams. Forced to switch to softball as teens, girls have no opportunity to develop their skills at the game of baseball. Until that changes, the pool of qualified adult ballplayers will never be sufficient to support an entire women's league, much less break Major League Baseball's gender barrier.

Skiing

What's right: As amateur sports go, downhill skiing treats female competitors more equitably than most. For every men's event there is a comparable women's event, and in World Cup and Olympic competition women's races are as popular and receive as much media attention as men's. What's wrong: When is the last time someone re-evaluated the need for shorter courses for women? Marathoners of both sexes run the same route, and there's no reason to believe that skiers couldn't too.

Figure Skating

What's right: If there is one sport in which women have the upper hand, this is it. Women get most of the media attention and fan adulation, and I would guess that female champions enjoy better name recognition among the public than the men do. What's wrong: Unfortunately, it is also a sport seen by some more as a form of performance art. The presence of so many gay men in the sport gives the less enlightened among us an excuse to dismiss the athletic ability and physical conditioning needed to excel. The lack of serious organized competition for professional skaters doesn't help the sport's fluff image either. Apparently figure skating suffers from the gender bias against anything associated predominantly with females.

Organizations

WomenSport International [page no longer available] exists to promote sports among women and encourage equity. I think it's important for this to be an international effort as more and more international competitive opportunites open up for women.

The Just Sports for Women [page no longer available] web site covers various women's sports with news, information, and a chat section. It's a wonderful comprehensive overview of women's athletics.

Most musicians I know are poor (as in, it's hard for a talented musician to make a living, but no-talents like Britney Spears and Janet Jackson are rolling in dough, but I digress). For those who write music, manuscript paper can get expensive. Fortunately, several online sources offer free downloadable staff paper for use by anyone with a computer and a printer.

• VirtualSheetMusic.com has a downloadable .pdf file that includes 8, 10, 14, 18, and 22 single-stave sheets, all with a large top margin for title and notes.

• Linkware Graphics provides a .zip file with .gif and .pdf versions of 10 single-stave paper (with large top margin) and 12 single-stave (without top margin).

• Sonic Control has 19 options of more specialized papers, including choral and orchestral versions, all formatted for A4-size paper.

• MusicNotes.com also appears to have many options (scroll down to the bottom), but a special free viewer is required and I can't download it at the moment.

• BlankSheetMusic.net offers a great selection and tremendous custom flexibility if you're looking for something special. They have a whopping 10 single-stave options including 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-string tab, with or without a line in between (for lyrics or notes); 8 double-stave options for different instruments; 2 pre-formatted triple-stave options plus a completely customizable option; and 2 pre-formatted quadruple-stave options plus a customizable option. AND all these options are further customizable with or without a top margin and with a variable number of staves per sheet.

Have fun, and happy writing.

In just over two months, the Democratic National Convention will open in Boston. For reasons that are not evident to me, a large section of the downtown area will be shut down for the week.

The city is going on virtual lockdown for the week of the convention. A 6.5 mile stretch of Interstate 93, the major north-south artery through the heart of the city, will be closed. A number of surface roads, waterways, and public transit facilities in the vicinity of the convention site, the FleetCenter, will be shut down as well.

Everyone knows there are teeming masses of Democrats in Boston. But even they are irate to be put out so severely in order that pampered politicians and delegates can have their asses kissed for a week. An editorial in the Democrat-friendly Boston Globe points out that neither the city nor convention planners have given any justification for such unprecedented disruption.

Many people who work in the city are planning to take vacation just before and during the event, though obviously not everyone can. Others are planning to avoid the city for non-work activities as well. That means the convention won't be the boon to the city's prestige and the local economy that it was sold to be. Quite the contrary. Mayor Tom Menino is living in a dream world if he really believes otherwise.

To add insult to injury, there was a viable alternative to the FleetCenter, but it was rejected by convention planners.

By cowtowing to DNC planners who yearn to act as if they own the city, Mayor Menino has done irreparable damage to Boston's image as a large-event destination. That damage will linger for years to come.

Yesterday I wrote about an issue of great importance to me, capital punishment, and my admiration of the Democratic party for their longstanding opposition thereto. The only problem is that the Democratic party really isn't all that anti-death penalty after all.

On a par with my opposition to the death penalty are my proponence of an equal rights amendment, opposition to abortion, and more recently, support for gay rights. Both parties once endorsed the ERA, thought the Republican platform went silent on the issue shortly before the deadline for ratification. On abortion, famous Democrats like Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, and Jesse Jackson opposed abortion before they perceived public opinion turning. On the gay rights issue, the Republicans have never had a track record of support. With ERA dead for the time being, I will talk about the other two.

Where the Republican party stands on abortion and gay rights depends on whom you talk to. The 2000 platform is explicitly pro-life, though in my home state of Massachusetts, we are in our 14th year of conspicuously pro-abortion Republican governors (all of whom, perhaps not coincidentally, have also been actively pro-death penalty). In the state legislature, there are actually more solidly pro-life Democrats than Republicans. Nationwide, Republican state officials like George Pataki and Pete Wilson have loudly proclaimed their acceptance of all-abortion-all-the-time.

On gay rights, the three previous governors of Massachusetts—Jane Swift, Paul Cellucci, and William Weld—were supportive even though all they really did for the cause was talk about it on occasion. But our current governor, Mitt Romney, not to mention President Bush, are as opposed to gay rights as they could possibly be. Certainly the social and religious conservatives who wield increasing influence in the party come down on the same side as Romney and Bush.

Those very social/religious conservatives, people like James Dobson and Phyllis Schlafly (the latter of whom is an outspoken anti-feminist as well), have knit together the issues of gay rights, abortion, and a host of ancillary issues, as being threats to "the family." There is a substantial sub-movement within the larger Republican party who share that attitude.

The 2000 Republican party platform itself is replete with opposition to abortion in general and funding, partial-birth abortion, and abortion-as-birth-control in particular, all without delving too deeply into the reasons for that opposition. But the social and conservative right seems to see the issue less as a scientific issue (which is the way I look at it) as a moral issue of the same sort as contraception or premarital sex. I tend not to have much sympathy for far-right candidates who approach the issue from that angle.

Many of those same people are leading the party's opposition to gay rights, a position with which I couldn't disagree more. The 2000 platform explicitly opposes military service by homosexuals and gay rights legislation of any kind, including same-sex marriage. If only Gov. Romney spent as much effort trying to promote a pro-life agenda in Massachusetts as he is spending now to fight same-sex marriage, I might have just one reason to like him.

The bottom line is that as frustrated as I often get with Democrats, I find Republicans to be no acceptable alternative. On the issues most important to me, many of which I have written about in this blog, I really have no place to call a political home.

The state of Connecticut's Veterans Home and Hospital in Rocky Hill is changing its name in order to qualify federal funding to add a nursing home. The mission of the rest of the facility won't change—they'll still have a hospital of sorts, just like they do now, and the residential facility—but they'll just call it something different.

Honestly, aren't the decision-makers at the VA capable of figuring out what the place does without the Connecticut legislature passing a bill to tell them?

This facility is of interest to me because my uncle, a Vietnam-era disabled veteran, lives there. The staff is wonderful, but the physical facility sure could use some updating. Talk about dingy and depressing. I hope they slap a coat of fresh paint on the rest of the place while they're building the new nursing home.

One of the political positions I have admired within the Democratic party is opposition to capital punishment. It seems to me counter-intuitive that an enlightened society would largely eliminate eye-for-eye justice for most crimes but preserve it in those instances where the punishment cannot be rescinded if found to be in error. My impression has long been that the Democrats as a group see the issue the same way as I do. A litmus-test issue, if you will, at least for candidates for the highest offices.

Unfortunately, the death penalty continues to be a fact of American life, not only in most states but at the federal level as well. Yet I don't recall much discussion of it during the recent presidential primaries. That must have been because the Democratic candidates were all in agreement against it, right?

Wrong. The Death Penalty Information Center researched and documented the positions of each candidate. Here is what they found, ranked by me from most opposed to most in favor, followed by my comments.

• Dennis Kucinich — Believes the death penalty is morally wrong and racially biased. Favors Life Without Parole as a morally viable alternative.
• Carol Moseley Braun — Opposes the death penalty in all cases.
• Al Sharpton — Opposes capital punishment.

This is what I consider to be an authentic Democratic position. No hedging, no exceptions. Killing is wrong (at least for the born*).

• Wesley Clark — Has expressed concerns regarding the implementation of the penalty.

Evidently Clark has no problem with executing criminals per se, but rather with how it's done. But in my observation, Clark was never very good at taking a position and sticking with it, so who knows?

• Howard Dean — Believes in the use of the death penalty for heinous crimes involving children or police officers, or as a deterrent to terrorism.
• John Kerry — Opposes capital punishment, except for terrorists. Believes that the system is flawed so long as innocents are in danger of being executed.

I would ask Dean why he considers murder victims who are adults or working in other professions besides law enforcement to be less worthy of the "justice" of capital punishment than children and police officers. I would also point out that suicide terrorists, like those wreaking havoc in Israel and those who perpetrated the September 11 aggression against our nation, are obviously not deterred by death. And I would ask Kerry why he feels the criminal justice system is less "flawed" where terrorists are concerned, especially since one could argue that our fear of another massive terrorist attack may actually place suspected terrorists at greater risk of falling victim to miscarriages of justice than they were before.

• Joseph Lieberman — Once opposed, but now supports capital punishment. Co-Sponsor of the Innocence Protection Act.

Troubling. A flip-flopper. His sponsorship of legislation to ostensibly prevent wrongful execution may assuage his pangs of conscience, but it doesn't answer the question of why, if not for political gain, an experienced legislator would suddenly change his mind on a life-and-death issue.

• John Edwards — Supports capital punishment, but advocates reform.
• Dick Gephardt — Supports capital punishment, but advocates reform.
• Bob Graham — Supports capital punishment.

"Reforms" are, in my opinion, a way for Democrats to blunt some of the criticism of the anti-capital punishment constituency while appearing to be tough on crime. Graham actually signed many a death warrant as governor of Florida, but the fact is that neither Edward nor Gephardt differ much from Graham and their common rival:

• George Bush — Strongly favors the death penalty. Was governor of Texas during a record 152 executions, the most of any recent governor.

It should surprise no one that the Republican party is pro-death penalty. Their 2000 party platform says so, once in general terms and another time in specific reference to drug kingpins.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have a position against the death penalty. Don't they? Well, no. Their 2000 platform twice touts the Clinton Administration's promotion of the death penalty, qualifies it with only a suggestion that DNA testing should be used in death penalty cases "in all appropriate circumstances," and then basically says that anything goes because, after all, "members of our party have deeply held and sometimes differing views on issues of personal conscience like ... capital punishment." Since when is state-sponsored killing an issue of "personal conscience?"

It seems that my impression of Democrats as the party of principle on capital punishment is incorrect. Once again, 2004 will bring us a presidential election where both major party candidates are essentially carbon copies of one another, as I don't really expect a President Kerry to do anything of substance to do anything to limit use or expansion of the federal death penalty.

* Sadly, the Democratic party does have a veritable litmus test where abortion is concerned, in spite of the aforementioned "differing views" within the party. Those who take a position in opposition of abortion-on-demand are so ostricized that they seldom if ever enjoy the backing of party leadership at the highest levels.

Coming tomorrow: A few thoughts on the Republican party.

A self-service Mobil station up the street for me sells gas at a 6-cent-per-gallon discount every Sunday. Last weekend, I filled up my compact car for the bargain-basement price of $1.999 per gallon. I suspect this weekend I will pay over $2.00 for the first time in my life.

Presidential candidate John Kerry thinks this means that U.S. gas prices are at an all-time high, and he blames President Bush, as naturally he would as the soon-to-be Democratic nominee. He would be right about the price thing, except that a dollar today isn't worth the same amount as a dollar yesterday. But Kerry, obviously not an economist, doesn't understand that—or does, but is hoping we don't.

In so-called "real dollars" (adjusted for inflation) gasoline prices are currently about two-thirds of the all-time high. The real high occurred at right around the end of the Carter administration.

Nor are prices now in this country anywhere near the world's highest. As of last March, gas prices in the United States were 55% less than the cheapest price found in Europe.

I know of no instance in which Sen. Kerry lambasted President Carter in 1980 or that he has done so to European leaders recently. If anyone out there finds evidence to the contrary, please post it in the comments. I'm waiting with bated breath.

In case you didn't notice the new item in the sidebar, you can now search this blog. Click the link and you'll be taken to a search box. Have fun.

OK, folks, I know I just recently added a comments feature to this blog, but I decided I didn't like the free utility I was using, mainly because it doesn't allow for deletion of objectionable comments. As it happens, Blogger.com's recent enhancements include comment capabilities. So I've ditched the old comments and added the Blogger ones. Eventually I may even (hopefully!) get the comment page to match my template, but I fear I'll have to change the template entirely for that to happen because, frankly, I'm not as web savvy as my friends and relatives think I am.

For those who left comments before (Lara), I'm afraid they're gone now. Feel free to re-post. Especially the Toxi-Fundie remark (giggle).

Update: For reasons I don't understand, only posts since May 12 have the comments link. And I'm too tired right now to figure out why.

Updated update: It's fixed. Comment on any post to your heart's content.

FoxNews.com is reporting that an artillery shell that exploded in Iraq on Saturday contained 3-4 liters of sarin nerve agent. Not only that, but mustard gas was found in another shell about two weeks ago. That's chemical weaponry, folks, as in banned WMD. Fortunately, whatever insurgents found these weapons either didn't know what they had or didn't know how to use them for maximum devastation, because the way they were rigged was ineffective at distributing the agents and doing any real damage.

Personally, I don't know how such a thing is possible. Hans Blix said there were no WMD in Iraq. And the fact that Blix didn't find any clearly means that none existed.

By the way, why is this currently the lead story on FoxNews.com but is mentioned nowhere on the front page of CNN.com? The CNN headlines at this moment include "Gasoline tops $2 a gallon," "TV icon Tony Randall dead at 84," and "Man loses finger, zoo visit privilege." Not a word about deadly chemical weapons components. Ditto on MSNBC.com, which is running the banner "Iraq Exit Uncertain" but has no mention about chemical weapons. The Boston Globe site's lead headline is "Fewer than 25,000 Iraqis work on US-funded reconstruction," but no mention of chemical weapons. The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times web sites, all updated since Fox put up the sarin story, headline with stories about the 9/11 commission and absolutely no mention of chemical weapons. Overseas, the BBC leads with "Sonia Gandhi turns down PM post." That's right—what ISN'T happening in India trumps what IS happening with the discovery of WMD in Iraq.

I am willing to accept the possibility that Fox scooped the world with this story. But in the age of instant information, where we followed O.J. live down the freeway and pictures of the burning towers were available on all major news web sites within 15 minutes of the first collision, I can't believe every other media outlet hasn't gotten their sorry asses on the phone to their DoD contacts and gotten their own story up. Though come to think of it, for a group that didn't start reporting hysterically on the Iraqi prison abuse situation until nearly four months after CentCom told them about it, I shouldn't be surprised.

It will be interesting to see what shows up on the evening news. Hans Blix must be pissed.

Just when you thought the world couldn't get more ridiculous, a self-important restauranteur in New York has come up with a breakfast dish for people with more dollars than sense: a $1000 omelet.

Apparently, Saddam Hussein is terrified of being tortured by his countrymen when he is turned over to them by the United States next month. Interesting (don't you think?) that he isn't afraid of mistreatment by his American captors. He seems to know instinctively what many ignore, that mistreatment by American forces is an aberration, whereas under his regime it was a common practice that may come home to roost when his victims get their crack at revenge.

Same-sex couples can apply for marriage licenses in Massachusetts beginning today. Expect more hysteria like this in the weeks to come.

Under most circumstances, I wouldn't merely echo something already making its way around the internet like wildfire. But in this case, I'm happy to help fan the flames.

Daniel Dow is, according to Citizen Smash, an Army Staff Sergeant who who faxed a letter to his U.S. Representative, Pete Stark (D-CA), expressing displeasure with the congressman's vote against a resolution condemning the actions of those who abused Abu Ghraib detainees. He didn't expect the reply he got on his answering machine.

I wrote to Congressman Stark to express an opinion from the other side of the country:

Dear Sir:

If you are going to be rude to constituents expressing their opinions, you ought to be smart enough not to do so on tape. But in any event, you should resign.

Sincerely,
[The Den Mother]
[Address]

If you'd like to weigh in, here's how.

I published the following on October 10, 1997 on a feminist web site I used to run. The access facility is now known as Shrewsbury Media Connection (SMC) and the cable company is now known as Shrewsbury Electric and Cable Operations (SELCO). I worked at SPAC/SMC until September 2000, by which time I had started up a government access operation that would soon spawn a separate channel. I remain involved with SMC as the chairperson of the Advisory Board.

I got involved with public access television four years ago. A friend who hosted an access series in town was looking for a new producer and, hearing that I was between jobs, talked me into giving it a try.

Having never even operated a camcorder, I signed up for classes at Shrewsbury Public Access Connection (SPAC). Within just a few months, not only had I taken over production of my friend's series, but I was also the paid freelance producer of a weekly municipal meeting telecast. A year later, I became a part-time employee at the access center.

As my involvement increased, so did my commitment to access in principle and in practice. As an activist with a special interest in freedom of speech and concern for the disproportionate control of corporate interests over media, I came to appreciate public access as an empowering medium of expression for all people. But I have also realized what a uniquely woman-friendly and family-friendly environment my local access facility provides.

The Organization

SPAC is a membership organization open to people who live or work in the town of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Membership is free and requires written agreement with the organization's policies and completion of a free introductory training program in basic production.

Women are a welcome and active presence in the SPAC community, comprising a large portion of the producer group and contributing at some level to nearly every production. Facilities are open six days and four evenings a week, to be accessible to people on varying schedules. As a result, it's easy for mothers to come in while the kids are in school, or for employed women to come in after work or on Saturday.

Children of all ages are welcome to accompany their parents to SPAC. It isn't unusual to see a woman working in one of the edit rooms with a toddler on her lap or an infant in a carrier beside her. Older children can do homework in the lobby, play at the adjoining playground and ballfield (remnants of the building's former use as a school), or watch television on one of three sets in the public spaces of the facility. Pre-teens and teens can even become active members of SPAC through a special training program, an arrangement that is unheard of in most other access organizations.

Training

The equipment and production classes available for SPAC members are user-friendly, designed to give producers a hands-on knowledge that doesn't require advanced technical background. Many women at SPAC find this approach refreshing, since they aren't "talked down to" or assumed to be less capable of using the facilities if they have less of a technical interest.

Most classes take place weekday evenings and usually end early enough for parents to get home to children at a reasonable hour. High school students are also welcome to participate in the regular adult classes with a parent's permission. For younger kids, age 10 and up, a special daytime class during summer vacation allows pre-teens to learn fundamental production principles and equipment usage in a fun setting with their peers.

Programming

The SPAC program lineup reflects the diversity of our producers on many levels. Of the 27 original series now running on SPAC's channel, 15 are either produced or hosted by women, and women constitute part of the crew for almost every other show. Women are also frequent contributors of weekly specials.

Kids also contribute to SPAC programming. Teenagers host 3 current SPAC series, produce two series hosted by adults, and frequently serve as crew members on other productions large and small. Some children participate alongside their parents. And the separate educational access channel airs lots more programing produced by students at the middle school and high school.

Staff and Advisors

SPAC employs six people, three men and three women, in full-time and part-time roles. Women currently serve as program coordinator, education channel coordinator, and governmental programming producer. All positions are considered equally vital to the operation of the facility, and tasks not particular to any one position are shared equally among the men and women. Even roles traditionally considered to be "women's work," such as clerical tasks and answering the phones, are divided among all staff members. The men even make the coffee in the morning!

In addition, the volulnteer advisory board is currently chaired by a woman. She was preceded by another woman who is now a member of the town's Board of Selectmen.

Summary

Access people from surrounding towns and across the nation say that the SPAC experience is unique in its accessibility to women, children, and families. The other way we're unique is in our relationship to the cable company and the community.

The cable company which funds SPAC is Shrewsbury Community Cablevision (SCC), a division of the town's municipally-owned and operated non-profit electric power company. As one of only about 60 town-owned cable facilities in the United States, SCC operates with a philosophy very different from commercial for-profit companies. The system is owned by the residents of Shrewsbury, the volunteer commissioners who oversee its operation are townspeople, and as a result the company does not have divided loyalties between its customers and its owners - they are one and the same. So SPAC's funding from SCC does not cut into shareholder profits or decrease the value of the cable system - in a sense, it increases it.

Perhaps that is why SPAC's policy of community accessibility has been so well accepted by the cable department. Many other access facilities have more stringent requirements for participation, shorter hours of operation, and greater restrictions on use of equipment. Inevitably, these limitations disproportionately affect women, who find themselves pulled in so many different directions and need the flexibility that SPAC offers.

If you are active in access, you may be able to suggest some ways to make your center more accessible to women. If you are a woman, consider getting involved in access and paving the way for other women to follow. To learn a little more about access, visit my public access page, which also has links to access center websites nationwide.

To find out how to get in touch with the access center in your community, call your cable company. Or, to learn more about how access empowers, contact the Alliance for Community Media.

(Special credit for this column goes to Lorianne Bergman, whose video production Women In Access brought to my attention how fortunate we SPAC women are. Many of the points made here are from her.)

If ever you women out there have an urge to act like teenage girls again (and that's a good thing), be sure to check out Meg's Boyfriend of the Week. It's been redesigned since I first ran across it a couple years ago, and Meg occasionally takes breaks from her weekly boyfriend-identifying duties, as she did just recently. But there is always someone interesting there. This week it's Ben Kingsley. In the past it's included men like Prince William of Wales (not really my type), Edgar Martinez and Denzel Washington (both most definitely my type), and even the late Gregory Peck. That's right, Meg is an equal opportunity girlfriend, going for men of all ages, races, nationalities, professions, and even states existence.

I've been a little busy and haven't finished my review of the recent revisions to the Roman Catholic rubrics as promised in a recent post. But I'm working on it.

The weather forecast for Central Massachusetts calls for daytime high temperatures in the 70s and 80s through Sunday. The long-range AccuWeather forecast shows the warm temps coming back on Thursday of next week. Now if we can just get rid of that "chance of rain" for the ball game on the 23rd, I'll be a happy woman.

Mothers have been honored in various ways throughout human history, but our contemporary observation of a particular holiday arose from two sources.

Julia Ward Howe authored a Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, just five years after the end of the bloody American Civil War. It was a plea for peace made on behalf of all mothers. (The irony is that Howe is also known as the author of the somewhat more hawkish "Battle Hymn of the Republic.")

But credit for spearheading the movement for a formally recognized celebration is given largely to Anna Jarvis, who apparently had less political aims than Howe.

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers, and happy memories to those whose mothers are deceased.

After going through recent e-mail, I feel compelled to tell the world, just for the record, that I don't need:

• a mortgage,
• the latest work-at-home opportunity that can earn me up to $7,279 per week,
• a cable descrambler,
• to lose 25 pounds in two weeks while eating all the pizza and beer I want,
• Viagra, Cialis, Xanax, Vicodin, Fioricet, or anything guaranteed to regrow hair,
• a share of the vast unclaimed wealth of the exiled king of Outer Ding Dong,
• penis enlargement pills,
• a ticket for the international lottery sweepstakes,
• painless credit repair,
• a diploma from an accredited university, no studying required,
• stock tips,
• the secret to selling on eBay,
• a pre-approved credit card regardless of income or past credit experience,
• hot pics of women having sex with farm animals or household pets, or
• $50 from Microsoft just for forwarding this e-mail to my entire address book.

But thanks anyway.

My criticism last month of a sorority that encouraged its members to lie in order to participate in a campus blood drive struck a chord. Within a few days, I received e-mails from both the sorority's chapter president and the president of the University of Missouri's Interfraternity Council. Both took me to task for ignoring all the good fraternities and sororities do and questioned whether I or my college sorority sisters had never made a mistake. I replied that all the philanthropic efforts in the world won't save a patient who dies because of tainted blood, and that to my knowledge neither I nor my sorority sisters ever jeopardized the lives of others and certainly never did so deliberately. I urged them both to stop circling the wagons, acknowledge the seriousness of the situation, and make sure it doesn't happen again. I haven't heard back from either one of them, which I hope is an indication that they have reconsidered their initial responses. None of us can undo our mistakes, but we all can learn from them.

Thanks to the nice people at Comment This! I now have comment capabilities on this blog. If it's abused (spammed) I will have to take it down, so behave yourselves.

I published the following on November 23, 1997 on a feminist web site I used to run.

In December, I will be the Honor Attendant in my brother's wedding. While my future sister-in-law and I shopped for my dress, I witnessed proof that women's fashions are controlled by men without regard for women's comfort.

I suppose I always knew that. From clothes to shoes to hair and makeup, I have long felt that what is considered "fashionable" for women has less to do with either practicality or good looks than with fulfilling men's fantasies. Indulge me, please, in a few rantings about the experiences, past and present, which have led me and thousands of other women to this conclusion.

Clothing

My quest for a wedding dress would be, I thought, simple. I was looking for something simple in black velvet, suitable for an evening in December. I found lots of black velvet, but to my shock, nearly everything was sleeveless. There were the occasional cap sleeves, but unless you wanted to freeze, you had to spend an extra $50+ for a little jacket to wear over the dress.

Now before men protest that they are required to wear suits in the heat of summer, let me remind them that they need only remove their jackets to be comfortable, and it doesn't cost extra to do so. A man's suit is, essentially, all-season attire. True, women's suits can be worn year-round too, but they are not generally considered appropriate attire outside the work place. Which leads me to...

...multiple wardrobes. Men have three: casual, dress, and formal. Most men don't have a need for formal attire, and if they do they rent tuxes. Dress clothes consist of suits, shirts, and ties which can be worn at the office or any number of social events at virtually any time of day or night. Women, however, are expected to have at least 5 wardrobes: casual, business, daytime dressy, nighttime dressy, casual dressy. It's hard to find a woman's outfit that is considered appropriate for anything from a corporate board meeting to a Sunday morning brunch to an evening cocktail party.

Cosmetics and Hair Care

Drag queens and performers aside, men don't wear makeup and, as far as I have seen, don't feel they need it to be attractive. If a man has a blemish or uneven skin tone or dark circles under his eyes, that's how he goes out in public. Women, on the other hand, aren't considered "dressed" without lipstick at least, and usually alot more. So we spend lots of money on cosmetic products (foundation, powder, blush, eyeliner, shadow, mascara, and lipstick if you do the whole smash), then waste at least 10 minutes in the morning putting it on and another 5 minutes at night taking it off. And that doesn't include whatever "skin care regimen" we've allowed someone to talk us into thinking we need to stay "young looking."

The reality, of course, is that old people aren't supposed to look young—unless those people are female people. An older man looks "distinguished," but an older woman looks "haggard." So not only do we spend millions trying to delay the inevitable wrinkling of the skin, but we subject ourselves to God-knows-how-risky chemicals to hide our gray hair. Women are also more likely than men to spend money on permanents, fancy shampoos and conditioning treatments, and hair adornments. And chances are that even if a hair cut is all you're after, if you are a woman you will pay more for it than a man will.

Footwear

Many years ago, Steve Martin released a comedy album called Let's Get Small. It included a track entitled "The Cruel Shoes" which fairly well describe what is required of women to wear footwear considered stylish. Not to sound melodramatic, but I do believe that women's shoe design is the contemporary equivalent of Chinese foot-binding.

People's exhibit A: Dress pumps. Look at the shape of pumps sometime, then look at the shape of a human foot. Never in my life have I seen a foot that gets narrower toward the toes, coming to a point. I have noticed that men's shoes point somewhat at the toe as well, but those points won't draw blood.

Exhibit B: high heels. There's nothing worse for your balance, your safety while walking on a slippery surface, your back, your legs, achilles tendon, etc. These things are so bad for you that every orthopedic surgeon I've ever talked to practically begs women not to wear them.

Exhibit C: platform shoes. I thought these things were ugly the first time around, and I can't believe there's another generation of suckers foolish enough to actually buy these things. They're heavy, they're ugly, they're conspicuous, and they cost a small fortune. Wasted money, of course, because in a year they'll be out of style again.

My Protest

Not too many years ago, when I was doing the corporate executive thing, I had five wardrobes, a suitcase full of cosmetics, artificially curly hair, and shoes that could double as torture devices. Little by little, I started to see the light.

It began with my personal shoe revolution, which started when I began working trade shows. Three-inch spike heeled pumps quite nearly killed me the first day, and I decided to heed the advice of other women who had learned their lesson. I committed to wear no shoe with a heel higher than an inch and a half. I still own two pairs of those pointy pumps, but I wear them so infrequently that I feel I could almost do without them. And I can most definitely do without the platform shoes.

The hair revolt came afterward, but much more easily. I quit the perm thing when I added up the cost and decided that straight hair wasn't so bad after all. But my rebellion against cosmetics actually started with my young son, who with the innocent wisdom of a child asked me why I wore make-up even though I looked prettier without it. I didn't have an answer for him, besides saying that it was just something expected of women. Then I was laid off and began working from home. Naturally, I didn't feel the need to wear make-up to impress myself, and I noticed a big improvement in my skin as a result. Now I wear a minimal amount of make-up no more than once a week, and I'm working toward the day when I can am enough of a non-conformist to quit for good.

Unfortunately, the clothing war wages on. I am happy to report that I won the most recent battle, having located a suitable black dress with long sleeves that will be perfect for my brother's wedding. But I was stunned to notice that the front has moved into the children's department; the holiday dresses now available for little girls are almost exclusively short-sleeved. Clearly, we have a long way to go.

I have scoured the web for sites dedicated to calling attention to the enslavement of women by fashion. I found none, which I suppose reflects the lack of awareness on the part of women that they are in fact being enslaved.

Though this page was written with keyboard-in-cheek, I really do get annoyed by what is forced upon women by those who decide what makes us look good. After all, blue eyeshadow, beige lipstick, and hot pants should have proven to us once and for all that designers don't know what they're doing. The only thing that will stop the absurdity is if women en masse refuse to buy this junk. And that won't happen until we become secure enough with ourselves to refuse to accept what's handed to us.

Like most of the world, I have been processing the recent news from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Only the proliferation of commentary in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere, and my inability to contribute anything uinique, have prevented me from commenting here.

I still feel that way, but I also want to go on record as saying something. To keep it simple, this is the kind of stuff I used to write Amnesty International letters about. Courts martial galore—not "reprimands"—are warranted. Beyond that, Sgt. Stryker says it better than I can.

An Athens, Greece police station was bombed today, exactly 100 days prior to the opening of the Olympic Games. Government authorities say they see no link between the two events, suggesting that "left-wing domestic groups are to blame and not international terrorism."

Even if their suspicions are correct, the distinction between domestic and international terrorism is meaningless. The second-worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, was the work of homegrown bad-boys. The 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta was perpetrated by a single American.

The other historical reality is that the Olympics have been used as a backdrop all kinds of political statements that had nothing at all to do with the events at hand. Some of those statements have been peaceful, others deadly.

While it may be that Greek and Athenian authorities are simply trying to quell public fears about the safety of the Olympics, they ought to be diligent, behind the scenes at least, about security threats of any sort or from any source. If they aren't, the results could be catastrophic.

MoveOn.org has its own political action committee. One of their primary initiatives (I'm not making this up) is a series of bake sales designed to "demonstrate the broad-based grassroots support supporting MoveOn PAC and John Kerry," as opposed to the mostly "wealthy donors" who finance the Bush campaign. No word on whether multi-hundred-millionaire Teresa Heinz Kerry provided tollhouse cookies for the event.

I've been hearing and reading about the changes to the Roman Catholic Mass currently being advanced by the Red Hats at the Vatican. Frankly, a great deal of what I've heard has my progressive-Catholic blood boiling. Before starting on a rant, I am going to step back and read the entire document, entitled "General Instruction of the Roman Missal," which contain the rubrics (rules) concerning the Mass. It's 131 printed pages long, so give me a couple days to digest it. Then I'll be back to discuss. If in the meantime you'd like to read the document for yourself, you can find it here.

She's 64 years old today.

Not that anyone but me would care about this, but April was my most prolific month since I've had this blog. I made 25 entries in 15 days. Can I top that in May? Maybe, with all the "draft" posts I have waiting in the wings.

My parents gave me a checking account about 25 years ago. A freshman in high school, I was the first of my friends to have one. My mother selected the checks—a Holly Hobby design— and set up the account at Guaranty Bank & Trust Company, the same local bank she and my father had patronized since moving to Massachusetts in 1968.

At some point shortly after college, Guaranty Bank was bought by a larger bank. Thus began a chain reaction with which I'm sure readers are familiar, each successively large entity being gobbled up by an even larger financial institution the way fish are swallowed by others up the food chain. Predictably, with the first acquisition in the chain of events, the new management instituted a new array of fees and charges on customers, raised the fees that already existed, and imposed minimum balance requirements that most young or lower-income customers couldn't possibly meet.

That was when another local bank, Worcester County Institution for Savings, began advertising "Totally Free Checking," which was of course exactly what everybody used to get at their banks but now had to shop for. I jumped ship and became a WCIS customer. A few years later, WCIS was bought by a larger bank which, you guessed it, instituted new fees, raised old ones, and imposed minimum balances.

My mother had recently become a member of the Shrewsbury Municipal Employees Federal Credit Union, which as its name implied was open to employees of the Town of Shrewsbury. My mother was eligible to join because of a loophole in their by-laws; though not an employee of the Town, she was a member of the Finance Committee. She encouraged me to join by taking advantage of another loophole that opened membership to the immediate family members of existing members.

When I joined SMEFCU, their only location was in the old school house on the town common. They didn't have an ATM. Other services were limited too, but you could get a checking and savings account with virtually no fees (unless you bounced a check) and a limited selection of CDs and certain kinds of loans. I got around the ATM problem by paying for almost everything by check and learning to better budget my cash.

Slowly, SMEFCU began to expand their services and eventually moved to new facility, the previous home of another defunct local bank, Peoples. One of the first changes they made to the physical facility was to remove the bullet-proof glass that separated the tellers from the customers. They felt that the symbolism of such a barrier was more detrimental than the unlikely event it was designed to prevent. With the move came more services: an ATM (finally!), debit card, VISA credit card, and finally online banking.

Online banking was introduced with much fanfare as a free service that was not only convenient but would even save you the cost of checks, envelopes, and stamps. All the big banks were also offering online banking, but for a fee. My mother asked one of the tellers one day how long it would be before they started charging for the online banking capability. She was told that they had no intention of ever charging for it, since it was less expensive for the credit union to administer than the old system of processing paper checks. It turned out that the big banks were charging their customers for the privilege of using a service that actually saved the bank money.

It was at that moment that I came to the full and complete realization that big banks are a rip-off. I now have not only my regular bank accounts at the credit union, but also my credit card and my auto loan. And I use online banking frequently and without charge.

SMEFCU recently opened their membership to anyone who lives or works in Shrewsbury and is now known simply as the Shrewsbury Federal Credit Union. It is a member institution of the SUM network which allows customers of member financial organizations to use each other's ATMs with no service fees. In my area, as I would imagine is the case elsewhere, credit unions and small banks are popping up like dandelions in the spring. Meanwhile, the big banks, having almost no one left to gobble up, are now merging with each other.

To find a credit union near you, search the National Credit Union Administration database. Trust me. You won't regret it.

Twelve years of Catholic school turned me into a grammar guru, though I try to avoid being an obnoxious snob and correcting others' mistakes. Nothing bugs me more, though, than the use of non-words, mangled words, and incorrect phrases. I'd like to be a curmudgeon for a few minutes and list a few of my biggest verbal peeves:

• Irregardless - "Irregardless of his flaws, he is a fine man." Merriam-Webster OnLine notes that, though this is an actual word, it is not generally accepted. They advise the use of regardless, which is universally accepted.
• Nother - "That's a whole nother issue." This one also gets a mention in M-W but is noted to be a "misdivision" of another.
• Preventative - "Preventative maintenance keeps a car running well." I have used this myself in the past and just recently learned that the correct word is preventive.
• But what - "There is no question but what she is the best player on the team." I can't even begin to imagine where it came from. That should be used instead.
• Different than - "My opinions are different than yours." My opinion on the legitimacy of this phrase is indeed different from that of others. Although I was taught to follow the more traditional guidelines that consider different than to be incorrect, I understand that it is considered acceptable in many linguistic circles.
• Supposably - "She supposably like him, but she dumped him anyway." This is a word, but it is not synonymous with supposedly, which is what people usually mean when they say it.
• Excetera - "My job duties include typing, filing, answering the phone, excetera." The real word is etcetera, which comes from the Latin phrase, et cetera, "and so on." In English usage, it is more commonly abbreviated "etc.," and since I've never seen someone use the abbreviation "exc.," I presume this is just a mispronunciation that has taken on a life of its own.

In casual conversation, I don't adhere strictly to rules of grammar and usage. Although I wouldn't do so in formal communication, I am quite comfortable using sentence fragments and colloquialisms in conversation and blogging, and I have no qualms about starting a sentence with "and," "but," or "so" for effect. But (see?) I try not to punctuate incorrectly, use words improperly, or otherwise blatantly disrespect the language. I am constantly learning (see "preventative" above). If everyone were just a little more careful, the English language might not be in such shambles.

So James Ridgeway over at The Village Voice is concerned that John Kerry may not be capable of beating the incumbent in this fall's presidential election. As he so eloquently puts it, the Democrats need "someone to run against George Bush," and he doesn't think Kerry is up to the task. More specifically, he doesn't think Kerry can run successfully against Bush. So he is proposing that the Democrats do something—quickly—to find another candidate.

But he is forgetting that the very reason Kerry has rolled to the nomination in the first place was not that the teeming masses love him and everything he stands for; the person they loved was Dean, at least before the famous primal scream. No, the party faithful flocked to Kerry, with whom they were vaguely uncomfortable, because he was deemed to be the candidate who had the best chance to beat Bush. Now they're worrying they may have been wrong.

During the early primaries, all the candidates touted their Bush-beatability as the reason why they should get votes. Sure, they all had their positions and their programs and their plans for what they'd do once they were inaugurated. But it always came down to, "And I'm the one who can beat Bush." Lisa Anderson at the Chicago Tribune wrote about this phenomenon back in January. There's even an "Anybody But Bush" movement online.

That strategy may work in primaries in which the only people voting are those who have never gotten over the 2000 election, but vendetta-as-motivator may not play as well in a general election. Economic matters and the war in Iraq were supposed to convince the silent majority to rise up en masse against the sitting president. But with the economy continuing to improve and the public rallying behind Bush on the war issue despite mounting casualties in Iraq, voters may be finding that as neither do they they have a reason to vote for the challenger. Especially one like Kerry, who has been a walking self-contradiction virtually his entire adult life.

November is a long way off, and anything can happen. But if in fact Kerry ends up losing this election, Democrats would do well to return to the practice of putting forth and making a case for their best candidate rather than merely using their nominee as a club with which to best bash the other guy.

I published the following on April 1, 1998 on a feminist web site I used to run.

For some reason, I have been receiving a magazine called New Woman for the last few months. Since I never subscribed, I haven't bothered to actually sit down and look at it...until today, when I saw down with the April 1998 issue.

What I expected from the title was something '90s, for women old enough to be feminists but too young to know they are. What I got, beginning with the cover, was something that could more accurately be called Same Old Woman. Because I found essentially no difference between it and every other so-called "women's magazine" on the market that presumes women's lives revolve around 1) catching men, and 2) making themselves more attractive to men.

Attention-Getters

The cover was, well, the first disappointment. Which is to say, it was a typical women's magazine cover. "Secrets From A Sex Therapist" ... "Work Clothes That Get You Noticed" ... "Special Issue - Makeovers" ... Nothing about career development, financial management, community involvement. Doesn't the "new woman" care about these things?

The Insides

Of 124 pages in this issue (excluding the front, back, and inside covers) 50 were full pages of advertisements. Of these, 29 pages advertised products designed to enhance a woman's looks, such as cosmetics and skin care products, hair care and hair color products, weight loss programs and products, and fashion clothing. Eight more pages contained smaller ads on varying topics. The only serious ads were for an injectable contraceptive, a prescription allergy medication, a vitamin supplement, milk, and a few cars.

The rest of the content wasn't much better. There was a decent article about what they called "inner peace," as well as six pages covering topics like health and nutrition, and a page and a half of a weak article about work (which for some reason was peppered with celebrity photographs). But virtually every other feature was about physical appearance or men/sex.

What Was Missing

In my perusal of this magazine, I saw no substantive discussion of current events, educational advancement, workplace issues, economic and financial concerns, family or household management, women's safety, or heaven forbid, anything remotely controversial. From this magazine, we are apparently to believe that the "new woman" has no cares—and no life—besides the color of her hair and lipstick, the length of her skirt, and her ability to get/keep a sexy man.

In fairness to the other self-styled women's magazines, I haven't taken the time to review others recently. But I do make a point of scanning the covers when I'm at the market or newstand. And while some may be more upscale and appear to be geared toward a more professional readership, the guts are still the same. What counts most is how you look and what kind of man you can attract with those looks. I have news for the people who publish these magazines. Those are the least of my problems.