Mary Grabar, Unlimited

Illogic from Cynthia Tucker on 1965 Voting Rights Act

2009-05-03T21:14:00.004-04:00

During one of my interviews for the conservative columnist position at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (I was one of the top three finalists), I was asked whether I'd be willing to debate Cynthia Tucker. Well, since I didn't get the job and since she's headed to Washington, I'll take issue with her column yesterday. (Oh, it would have been so much FUN to debate her.)

According to Cynthia Tucker, even though we now have a black president (and black control of Southern urban areas), racism exists still--especially in the South, and that's why we need an extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act:

"the growing political power of black Southerners is not the only evidence of change in the Deep South. So are the racially charged strategies of the Republican Party, which has abandoned its roots as the party of the unfettered franchise. . . . now the GOP is the party of voter suppression."

Ever heard of ACORN, Ms. Tucker? They weren't engaged in voter fraud on behalf of Republican candidates.

Ms. Tucker gives no evidence of GOP voter suppression...other than the fact that state legislatures have passed "harsh voter ID laws."

It's hard to imagine conducting everyday affairs without a photo ID--unless you happen to be here illegally. Then you operate in the shadows.

Claiming that fraud at the polling booth is "virtually nonexistent," Tucker says that those who do not have drivers licenses would be presented with a "hardship" in getting a state-sponsored voter ID. Okay, I will give her that--the possibility that a miniscule number of citizens do not have drivers licenses. Maybe there are some very elderly black women who used to work as maids and nannies (I used to ride the bus with them in the 1980s as they came home from their shifts in Buckhead). But unless one is completely housebound, he or she must get out, even if just to do grocery shopping or visit the doctor. If they can make those visits, why can't they get to a government office?

And what about taxpayer-supported ACORN that is so eager to see that the disenfranchised are registered and then get to the voting booth on election day? Why can't they offer rides to the ID office? Or maybe the do-gooders at the League of Women Voters.

I also would like to see such apologists for Democrat voter rigging (which is what the 1965 law is used for), produce a few such citizens who do have a "hardship" such as Ms. Tucker describes.

long time no post

2007-06-18T15:28:00.000-04:00

Greetings, everyone who may have found his or her way here. Did you google me? :)

I have not posted, but have relied on sending information out via my email list through my web page www.marygrabar.com

If you go there, you can see a list of my publications (just about every week) and you can sign up for updates by clicking on the link in the upper right hand corner of main web page. I do not share the list.

I've been getting acceptances on my short stories and poems, as well as my nonfiction writing. I am very happy about that.

So visit my web page and I hope to hear from all you friendly readers out there.

Townhall today: MLK's 'God Delusion'?

2006-11-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/Column.aspx?ContentGuid=6f4b1d47-27d3-4b54-8352-c04e778a7059

This is the link for my column in today's Townhall. Feel free to comment.

I had two interviews this month on my "Playboy Feminists" column, on CJOB in Winnipeg and WBAL in Baltimore.

2 more letters in response to burqas column

2006-10-31T07:20:00.000-05:00

What follows are two more letters to the editor in response to my column on burqas.

But first, I've pasted here an earlier letter and then Jim Grattan's letter to the editor, which was not published. With three out of three published letters that are negative and insulting it appears that someone at the AJC does not want to give the impression that any readers found I had a point. Jim's letter wasn't published and I'm sure I'll never find out the positive letters that were simply thrown away. Jim's letter is well-reasoned. Well, thank goodness for the Internet! So tell your friends to visit my web page www.marygrabar.com Sign up. I'm getting the subscriber list going--I've been working on it, trying to get the technical things worked out.

This is Jim Grattan's comment to my last posting:
The following letter was published by the AJC on 10-27 in response to Mary's column:

"Anti-burqa column a real knee-slapper"Finally, a really funny column on the @issue pages! Mary Grabar is funnier than Dave Barry. The AJC should certainly consider running a regular column by this gifted humorist. In true Mark Twain fashion, Grabar had me going with her clever satire on Muslim dress for women ("Burqas give Muslims too much cover," @issue, Oct. 25). I had to read her column twice to figure out that she was just pulling our collective leg. I'll bet the English classes she teaches at Clayton State are tremendously popular.If Grabar were a regular columnist, she could try out all her hilarious ideas on the impressionable young people in her classes before submitting them to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Let's hear it for Grabar. Keep us laughing.TOM DEARDORFF, Atlanta-----------------------------------

The follwing is a letter sent but not published on 10-25:

Dear Letters Editor:Mary Grabar's article exposes the difference between assimilation and diversity. It is not intolerant to expect those who wish to come to a nation to adopt within reason the mores and customs of the host nation. Why come to the United States if one is not sensitive to our culture?Hiding one's identity by covering from head to toe is in fact a security issue in today's world. But it is more than that. We are an open society. We believe in the possibility of free and open exchange with all, including complete strangers. Concealing one's identity, even if unintentional, is harmful to social harmony. This is no call for erasure of anyone's past. Diversity is okay in an overriding context of assimilation. However, being open about one's identity is fundamental to our society. That practice cannot be rejected.

Thanks,Jim Grattan

To me, both the first comment [copied on my previous posting] and the one included here are both knee-jerk reactions. Immigration is a serious issue. To label anyone discussing the issue as ignorant and provincial is just stupid. Maybe it is liberal orthodoxy to accept all aspects of diversity unquestionably. I don't concede liberal credentials to anyone, and I think that Grabar has a point. I know that both letter writers must be patting themselves on the back for their sophistication and tolerance - guess again.Jim Grattanj_and_sg@msn.com
9:25 AM

These are the two latest letters, published in yesterday's paper...nothing in today's paper, just some pap from a college student as guest editorial.

Religious dress: Responses to ''Burqas give Muslims too much cover,'' @issue, Oct. 25
Constitutionally protected garb

Mary Grabar's recent sighting of a woman wearing a burqa in a checkout line led her to muse on how many dangerous items —- short of weapons of mass destruction apparently —- could be concealed under all that cloth. "Yet, nothing is done to stop wearing of such attire in public," Grabar writes.
She ignores the constitutional protections that give a Muslim woman in a burqa the same freedoms as a Christian man wearing camouflage and a hunting vest (as, after all, domestic terrorists of the Oklahoma City variety have been known to do).
It's not always comfortable protecting the freedoms the Framers of the Constitution insisted upon. But nothing is more worth doing.
LYNNA WILLIAMS, Decatur

Culture's fears unreasonable
Upon reading guest columnist Mary Grabar's op-ed, I thought surely this must be satire —- a situation writ large in order to show us how we, as a society, have allowed ourselves to be ruled by prejudice and fear. What better way to show the silliness of this fear than to take a benign experience, such as grocery shopping, and place a pregnant woman in a burqa as the unwitting villain. We could all have a knowing chuckle when we realize that we are guilty of making similar assumptions and would perhaps think twice before we pass such judgments in the future.
Sadly, Grabar offers no commentary about our culture's unreasonable fears of the American Islamic community or even a thoughtful analysis of her own irrational response to the Muslim woman. Rather than being embarrassed by her prejudices, she defiantly attempts to justify her reactions by making the victim of her bigotry the villain.
American Muslims have proved themselves to be peaceful people. They have not rioted in the streets over Pope Benedict's speech, nor have they reacted violently to the caustic rhetoric that spews from the government, the media and even people in grocery stores. The demand for the removal of the Muslim women's niqab is based on unfounded fears.
MAUREEN HILL, Stone Mountain

cute letter

2006-10-27T16:51:00.000-04:00

This is a letter in response to my latest column on wearing burqas. I don't thi-i-nk it's satire. But this guy found my Clayton State email address and sent it there. I always have a fun time visualizing these letter writers...the smoke just coming out of their ears and keyboards....

Mary, Your column in the AJC, if genuine, demonstrates astonishing ignorance and xenophobia. My wife, a professor at a state university, laughed out loud as she read it. She said, "this was written by an 11th grader with bigots for parents, NOT a university instructor. It must be a hoax. How could anyone with the education needed to be a university instructor possibly hold such a parochial and unsophisticated viewpoint?" I disagreed. I believe it is genuine. I'd also be willing to bet that you were born and raised right here in the deep South, from a deep-rooted Southern family, that you may have ventured beyond the borders of Georgia, but not far, and certainly not outside the U.S.; that your "daddy" and your grand-daddy hold very special opinions about the "blacks" and the Jews. Even if you deny evolution, Mary, genetics is a very real and very powerful force of nature. It determines much more about who we are than simply the color of our eyes or lengths of our earlobes. When my wife left her post at U. Colorado in Boulder last year to accept a position here in Atlanta, she was warned about the bigotry, intolerance, and ignorance we would encounter here in the deep South. We find the bigotry and intolerance here to be no different than anywhere else in the country. But the ignorance we encounter, the pure, blunt, dull-witted provincialism that we have seen, and that your article displays with such unabashed exuberance, leaves us shaking our heads. Andrew Mitchle, MD, FACSAtlanta

my article on burqua wearing

2006-10-25T17:29:00.000-04:00

Here's a link for my op-ed in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/2006/10/24/1025edgrabar.html

back in Townhall

2006-10-17T08:42:00.000-04:00

Hot Moms! I'm back in Townhall. Also, watch for my website, which will be up soon (thanks to Jude's help) www.marygrabar.com

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MaryGrabar/2006/10/16/hot_mom--not!

update: I stand corrected from several readers on Madonna's birthplace and her name. At least I didn't get Flaubert wrong.

Reminds me of Clinton and Wallace

2006-09-27T09:51:00.000-04:00

This letter is one of many in response to my column last week. People sought me out! They found my Clayton State email address. Most letters were positive. But the following, I suspect, is from an English professor--and not to contradict the point that I made in my article--sadly, most English professors these days, schooled as they are in Marxism and deconstruction, are hardly qualified to point out errors in logic. Just as being a Rhodes scholar does not make one fit to be president of the United States.

Readers who can point out the errors of the following letter get extra credit.

Ms. Grabar: In your opinion column in today's AJC ("Celebs' opinions don't deserve added clout"), you relied on misinformation to charge popular entertainers with making distasteful political statements. Bill Maher did not say the 9/11 hijackers showed "courage" (your quotation marks). Maher said, "Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly," which is far short of calling it "courageous." Your erroneous example implies that Maher expressed admiration for that horrible act; it's your claim that is "sophistic," not Maher's. This is only one example of sloppiness in your writing, by the way. Other examples include hyperbole in claiming that "every actor's and musician's" opinion on foreign policy is given a forum, and the illogical implication that Rosie O'Donnell, who is given a forum because of celebrity and not because of her opinion of foreign policy, should be censored because she doesn't have an advanced degree or job experience in theology, foreign policy, or philosophy (why, by the way, would that last one matter?). Interestingly, all of your examples are of speech critical to Bush, meaning that you have a problem with the politics of celebrities only when they disagree with you, which is a distasteful theme, indeed. You admit once earning a "well-deserved C-" on a political science theme for "not providing enough support." If you can learn to begin providing factual support, and put more effort into constructing logical arguments with precise language, perhaps you can push yourself up toward the B- level. Until then, there's no need to knock O'Donnell for not having an "advanced degree," as yours appears not to be serving you as well as one would expect. Bob Pritchard

A picture is worth a thousand words

2006-09-23T20:00:00.000-04:00

The reading lists for graduate students in English departments and for Chavez are the same. How many syllabi have I seen with Noam Chomsky as required reading!

So, there, Rosie O'Donnell! (my article)

2006-09-19T07:29:00.000-04:00

I've got my Ph.D. and Rosie O'Donnell has ... ? Oh, yeah, she's got a television talk show! What are her qualifications? And why does her audience (same women who watch "What Not to Wear" and a very light-skinned black supermodel's talk show) applaud her remark that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam"?

Read my article in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2006/09/19/edgrabar0919.html

what feminists have wrought

2006-09-18T09:06:00.000-04:00

It’s not the polygamy, it’s the Bibles
By Mary Grabar

In one piece of footage shown on prime time television an eighteen-year-old woman jumps out of a birthday cake with nothing on but pasties and a g-string. Applauding her are two sister girlfriends of the 80-year-old birthday boy for whom this cake act is being performed. Both of the other girlfriends are attired in skimpy lingerie that pushes up their surgically altered breasts. The birthday boy is attired in his customary silk bathrobe.
In another piece of footage Bible-clutching people head for church. They could be on the set of “Little House on the Prairie.” Men are dressed in black pants and white shirts. Women and girls are covered in yards of cotton fabric from neck to wrists to ankles. There is no make-up, dyed hair, or exposed cleavage.
Footage of both groups was shown on CNBC and on other stations. The reason for showing the footage was the sexual practices of a man with multiple women.
Which man was deemed offensive by the talk show host? No, it was not the silk-pajama-clad octogenarian, Hugh Hefner, who has built a fortune by pimping young women and selling their naked images.
It was Warren Jeffs, the leader of a splinter cult of the Mormon Church.
And although I firmly believe Jeffs should be prosecuted (in Nevada he faces two counts of rape by accomplice for arranging marriages for underage girls), I find it interesting that talk show hosts of “smart, sexy, hip, irreverent television” (as Donny Deutsch’s “The Big Idea” promotes itself), become apoplectic about a man who goes back to the Old Testament to justify his polygamous practices. Words like “abuse” and “exploitation” are spat out in such a manner that you’d think these men are at the verge of defending the honor and chastity of women with fists and firearms. Not for the lisping eighteen-year-old sister who has jumped out of the cake in the dirty old man’s mansion.
The indignation is for the fully clothed women on the way to church.
It’s the Bibles.
That’s what makes them angry.
But whenever Hefner makes the talk show circuit with his three girlfriends, he is treated with awe and envy. The three giggling young women, who admittedly are paid “allowances” to live with and bed the old man, are presented as liberated women. The host Donny Deutsch gushes, “It could not get any better than being you”; a caller gets advice from Hefner about introducing another woman to his girlfriend for a ménage a trois. Much congratulatory talk goes around for this liberator and businessman on what ends up being free promotion for his new reality series “The Girls Next Door,” where viewers can be entertained with such sights as the three thong-bikini-clad women going down a water slide.
The difference in reaction to the two polygamists, Hugh Hefner (I’ll apply the second, zoological definition of mating with more than one individual of the opposite sex) and Warren Jeffs, encapsulates the difference in attitude at large. What is considered women’s subjugation these days?
If an eighteen-year-old high school student receives plastic surgery, poses naked, performs sex acts before an audience, and has sex with a man older than her grandfather for money, she is seen as liberated. In fact, one segment of “The Girls Next Door” showed the mother of Hefner’s eighteen-year-old “girlfriend” joining the festivities in the Playboy Mansion.
If a young woman gets married (as the only wife for life), belongs to a church, stays home and raises children, she is viewed as subjugated. Feminists have been quick to jump on Saint Paul’s injunction in Colossians 3:18: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.” But they have ignored the second part: “Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.”
The public reaction and attitude by the media towards these two polygamists reflects the attitude that reigns in academe. While feminists argued against pornography in the 1980s, in the twenty-first century, professors write papers for journals and conferences on pornography and teach classes on the “rhetoric of pornography.” It began with the touting of Madonna as a symbol of female empowerment. The “performative acts” (performance as more in line with feminist thinking than the “linear” male writing) became more extreme until we got to the point where we currently are: Pornography is deemed a legitimate subject of academic inquiry.
While I feel that Warren Jeffs should be prosecuted, I would argue that Hugh Hefner’s brand of polygamy has had a far greater reach. Warren Jeffs, while he may have harmed hundreds of girls and women, is viewed as a fundamentalist kook. School boys are not likely to look at him as someone to emulate.
But Hugh Hefner made smut respectable. He brought glamour to pimping. Through the decades, since he launched Playboy, his impact has been far and wide. Every woman of the Western world has been affected by it.
As a result of the respectability granted those like Hefner, we have nine-year-old girls dressed like hookers, teenagers getting “breast augmentations,” and mothers frolicking with near-naked daughters in a playboy’s mansion on prime time television. In 2006, according to the wisdom of the sophisticates, polygamy is just fine--as long you’re the bunny playmate of a dirty old man, the “ho” of a gold-studded thug, or the breast-baring groupie of an aging rock star. But whatever you are, young woman, don’t be a Bible-reading wife.

paper call of the day: queer grad students only

2006-09-05T14:46:00.000-04:00

MORE CRIMES AGAINST LITERATURE

It used to be that people in my profession focused on the writing. Who cared if Willa Cather was gay? Who cared if the professor was gay? Who cared if you, the student, were gay?

But not any more.

Now the focus is on oneself, to add support to Tammy Bruce's contention, noted in my previous post.

And if you can get through the drivel of this "call for papers" posting to the end, note the "peers busy studying Chaucer and Milton." You've got to be kidding! The calls for papers is replete with such curriculum-boosting pseudo-scholarship by which one can get the next fluff job where he/she throws all the nuances of his/her sex life into the faces of innocent students while masquerading as a lit professor. Ple-e-e-ase! How many departments still even offer seminars on the dead straight white male Christian, John Milton? The feminists have just about succeeded in demolishing his reputation and eliminating him from the curriculum.

From: http://us.f602.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=owner-cfp@lists.sas.upenn.edu&YY=55030&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b on behalf of M.J. WalkerSent: Fri 8/25/2006 2:41 AMTo: http://us.f602.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=cfp@english.upenn.edu&YY=55030&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=bSubject: CFP: Graduating Gender: Queer Grad Students Reading Culture (2/30/07; collection)"Graduating Gender: Queer Grad Students Reading Culture."I am seeking submissions for an edited collection of graduate student essayson queer/trans theory, gender issues, and cultural studies. This collectionwill focus particularly on the unique role that LGBT grad students play inthe analysis of culture, the various roles and spaces (including spaces ofexile) that they inhabit within the academy, and the anxiety of studyingqueer texts within 'straight' English and Comparative Lit departments. Whatis it like to be 'the only gay in the village,' the sole queer grad studentwho must 'represent' politically within a department? What types of queergraduate communities exist, either in metropolitan or rural universities,and what happens when a gay, bi, or trans student simply wants to write oncanonical texts (or only wants to write on queer theory when his/her peersare busy studying Chaucer and Milton?)All submissions should keep these questions in mind, and autobiographicaland personal-inflected essays are strongly encouraged. The collection aimsto present evocative, precise, and sharp readings of contemporary culturaltexts (novels, poetry, film, tv) from LGBT grad students, especially thoseworking within English, CompLit, and Women's Studies departments, althoughsubmissions from other disciplines will be considered. Each article shouldhave a solid theoretical basis, and should interrogate specific literary orcinematic works, but should also be written as much as possible from apersonal perspective. How is your work different because of your in-betweenstatus as a grad student, because of your various experiences withindepartments that may be either magnanimous, neutral, or outright hostile toyour sexuality or gender? What would you say if there were no rules, nocommittees, no supervisors, and no boundaries--what would you say, and why?I would like to receive abstracts by Feb 30, 2007 at the latest, although ifthere is considerable interest I will extend the deadline. Please enclose acurrent CV as well as a brief bio. If you feel that your work isparticularly controversial, and fear that it might even jeopardize futurejob prospects or relations with your department (as all great work probablywill), you are welcome to publish under a first name, pseudonym, or simplyto include no specific information about your institution.Email submissions to: http://us.f602.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=graduating_gender@hotmail.com&YY=55030&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b(graduating_gender_at_hotmail.com). Please use .rtf files for yourattachments, as they are much smaller and easier to view on both mac and pc.You will be notified that your submission has been received, and I should beable to let everyone know a month after the deadline (Mar 30/07) whichabstracts have been accepted. I have a publisher in mind, and will contactthem with a proposal once all of the abstracts have been received. Sinceuniversity publishers are often back-logged, the collection will probably goto press in late-2008, possibly even early-2009. Keep this in mind,especially if you are looking to publish right away, since these projectstake time to develop. I will keep everyone posted as things develop.Best wishesM.J. WalkerDoctoral Candidate and Instructor, Comparative Literature

Independent Women's Forum

2006-09-04T11:23:00.000-04:00

My recent AJC article has been discussed in Inkwell, the blog of the Independent Women's Forum

http://www.iwf.org/inkwell/default.asp?archiveID=2404

Go to the home page and read the good stuff they have here.

Oh, and did you see Tammy Bruce interviewed on Book TV (c-span 2) this weekend? Very impressive. Listen to this lesbian talk show host who broke ranks with NOW. The left would like you to think that conservatives hate gays. That's not the truth. We just don't want to hear about your sex life, okay? It's not important. And Tammy nails it: the focus on sexuality is a symptom of the narcissism of the "gay rights" movement...and the left.

pseudo-academics

2006-08-31T09:41:00.000-04:00

Read about this mandatory reading for all freshmen at Baruch Colleg. This is the kind of stuff that passes for "reading" these days at colleges. But Plato's Republic? Naw. Paradise Lost? Students haven't heard of these works.

http://www.nysun.com/article/37616?page_no=1

Read this link from Baruch College

http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/firstyear/freshman_text_form.html

Click on the links for "suggestions for faculty" and "study guides for students." Soldiers, particularly, will be outraged.

I found this on the Phi Beta Cons blog of National Review Online, where such outrages are reported.

http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/

This is criminal. A certain Russian novelist wrote about this kind of indoctrination under the Soviets. But nobody reads him any more because he is a Christian.

And even here in Decatur, Georgia, there is a literary event for the masses, the over-taxed illiterate literati who frequent poetry slams or who think that Michael Moore produces documentaries. This tres chic part of the Atlanta metro area will host the first ever Decatur Book Festival. As a DeKalb County taxpayer I am forced to help pay for the speaking fees of such literary luminaries as Arianna Huffington. Take a look at the line-up.

www.decaturbookfestival.com

and they don't mean that Slovenian will be the other language

2006-08-28T14:20:00.000-04:00

Thanks to my brother-in-law, Eric, for notifying me about this.

Give this the widest distribution possible. > > 38 SENATORS VOTED TODAY AGAINST MAKING ENGLISH THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE> > OF AMERICA.> HERE THEY ARE. > > > > > > Akaka (D-HI)> > Bayh (D-IN)> > Biden (D-DE)> > Bingaman (D-NM)> > Boxer (D-CA)> > Cantwell (D-WA)> > Clinton (D-NY)> > Dayton (D-MN)> > Dodd (D-CT)> > Domenici (R-NM)> > Durbin (D-IL)> > Feingold (D-WI)> > Feinstein (D-CA)> > Harkin (D-IA)> > Inouye (D-HI)> > Jeffords (I-VT)> > Kennedy (D-MA)> > Kerry (D-MA)> > Kohl (D-WI)> > Lautenberg (D-NJ)> > Leahy (D-VT)> > Levin (D-MI)> > Lieberman (D-CT)> > Menendez (D-NJ)> > Mikulski (D-MD)> > Murray (D-WA)> > Obama (D-IL)> > Reed (D-RI)> > Reid (D-NV)> > Salazar (D-CO)> > Sarbanes (D-MD)> > Schumer (D-NY)> > Stabenow (D-MI)> > Wyden (D-OR)> > > > REMEMBER THIS THE DAY YOU VOTE. > > PLEASE PASS THIS ON

a poem for you

2006-08-25T12:48:00.000-04:00

Today's poem is brought to you by the prompting of one of my dance partners, Verley.

But first, here is my poem to him:

To Verley:

There is a time to be silly,
and that's while dancing.

There is a time to discuss poetry
and that's between dances.

Groan...that is so-o-o bad! But Verley, who was at Mentone last weekend, will know what I'm talking about. He may even be able to make it rhyme.

Well, Verley, between dances, has been mentioning "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish, and so I looked it up and liked it so much, I've decided to copy it for your reading pleasure here. I think also that this should be a poem read before all the shouting, radical poets at open mics get up there. Enjoy!

'Ars Poetica'

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be

-- Archibald MacLeish

"Sex with God" call for papers!

2006-08-22T22:36:00.000-04:00

It used to be that medievalists, by virtue of the religious nature of the literature they dealt with, were immune from this kind of pseudo-scholarship. But the feminists have pushed their big "bodies" into this sacred ground as well.

From: Marla Segol
Sent: Mon 8/7/2006 2:05 PMTo: CFP@english.upenn.edu

Subject: CFP: Sex with God: Monotheism and the Eroticized Framing of the Human-Divine relation (9/15/06; Kalamazoo, SMFS, 5/10/07-5/13/07)

Call for Paper Abstracts, proposal deadline: September 15

Session:Sex with God: monotheism and the eroticized framing of the human-divine relation

Sponsored by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship42nd International Congress on Medieval StudiesWestern Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MIMay 10-13, 2007

This panel will explore the ways in which the human-divine relationship is imagined through the gendered, transgendered, and sexualized human body, and the cultural currents and contradictions informing this relation.Specifically, we will work to conceptualize the ways in which an eroticized framing of the human-divine relation calls attention to problems of embodiment within the Western religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) in the medieval period. These problems are based in the shared conception that human beings are created in the divine image. Earlier medieval traditions in some of these faiths attest to literal interpretations of this doctrine, so that there is clear documentary evidence of some belief that God had a body, and that this body was imagined to resemble the human body. By the high middle ages, these beliefs were strained as developing monotheistic notions of God actively disputed these earlier traditions to assert that the divine is unified, incorporeal, and radically different from and incomprehensible to human beings. This kind of philosophical monotheism worked in part to devalue the human body, and to limit its use for relation to divine. As the intellectual climate changed throughout Europe, religious devotees accepted the limitations placed on the body, but at the same time they also developed a sexualized terminology for framing the human relation to God. For this panel we are looking specifically for papers that theorize the cultural currents and contradictions embedded in the eroticized framing of human-divine relations.Papers should be 15-20 minutes in length, and might address issues such as :

The impact of rationalist philosophy in the conceptualization of embodied, eroticized religious experience

The gendered divine body and its relation to the gendered human body

Medieval monotheisms and their treatment of divine gender

The function of imaginative transgendering in eroticized conceptualization of the human-divine relation

Or others focusing on the cultural work done by eroticized human-divine relation in religious thoughtProposal abstracts should be no more than 300 words, and must bereceived by September 15th.

Please email to:Marla Segol
Or by post to:Marla SegolDepartment of Philosophy and ReligionSkidmore College815 North BroadwaySaratoga Springs, NY 12866-1632

letter from a former professor

2006-08-21T08:47:00.000-04:00

I've pasted the letter from a former professor, Randy Malamud, at Georgia State University in response to my column on August 4 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (You should be able to access my column in my August 4 posting.) Following it is the letter I sent to him in reply. I have not heard back from him. Of the letters of application I've sent to Georgia State University, most have gone unacknowledged. Most of the time I've received form rejections, even though I've sent my application to former professors and followed up with telephone calls. Oh, BTW, I received a private letter of praise from a reader who said he sent such a letter to the AJC. It was not included in those published. Two out of the three published were negative.

From: Randy Malamud
Sent: Fri 8/4/2006 1:58 PM
To: Mary GrabarSubject: Your article

Dear Mary Grabar:I read your column in the AJC today, and thought about writing a letter to the editor, but decided it didn't warrant a public response. But I wanted to share with you, privately, my thoughts: I found it self-righteous (without any foundation, as far as I can tell, in any record of scholarly accomplishment on your part, which accentuates a resonance of 'sour grapes'), gratuitous, and, as a salvo in the culture wars, um, about ten years out of date . . . . Your writing is formulaic, utterly predictable, uninspired. As a member of the profession, I found it embarassing. You will probably 'interpret' my response as a self-defensive riposte from a tenured radical, but it's really not -- if I thought your 'point' was important enough to attack, I would have done so publicly. I really just found it trite and banal. -Randy Malamud

Mon, 7 Aug 2006 09:55:10 -0700 (PDT)
From:
"Mary Grabar"
Subject:
your letter
To:
engrm@langate.gsu.edu

Dear Professor Malamud:

Thank you for your letter regarding my editorial “Colleges’ open minds close door on sense” (AJC 8/04/06) sent to my Clayton State University e-mail account.

I would welcome a dialogue with you about the issue at hand. I would be happy to forward the calls for papers that I listed. But I am sure that you subscribe to the same list. If you believe that these are suitable topics for scholarship then you should support your points. I think the public would benefit greatly from an open and honest debate, such as in a letter to the editor from you, and a defense of specific types of scholarship. After all, we both work at public universities. Georgia taxpayers have a right to know what goes on in the institutions they support.

I was quite surprised to see your assessment of my writing as “trite and banal” because I earned an A in your seminar on T.S. Eliot as a master’s level student in the early 1990s; I recall your comments on how well-argued my papers were. I was encouraged enough by the comments from you and other professors to go on to earn my Ph.D. at The University of Georgia. I have had papers published in major journals and collections and have presented papers here and abroad. I trust that you felt that I earned the A. Why now after I have obtained my Ph.D. and published and taught for several years do you not respect my scholarship?

I would like to keep the discourse at a level in which we address pertinent points rather than make ad hominem attacks (attributing ‘sour grapes’ to me, for example). I think that all of us in the profession agree that personal attacks are unprofessional. That is what I teach in my writing classes.

I do disagree with your approach to scholarship, particularly in reference to T.S. Eliot. I felt very frustrated in your class because it was a 10-week-long attack on Eliot’s character, namely with your charges that he was anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and elitist. I recall a good part of the class period taken up with you reading from your manuscript-in-progress. I was frustrated because when a student asked, “was T.S. Eliot a good poet?” you simply brushed the question aside.

I also learned from the late Hugh Kenner, who was on my doctoral committee, that not all in the profession agree with your opinion of T.S. Eliot. As you know, Hugh Kenner was an internationally recognized authority on the modernists, and--pardon my impertinence-- more esteemed as a scholar than you are. Hugh Kenner highly disagreed with your assessment of Eliot; in fact, Dr. Kenner knew Eliot personally.

I found that I had to search long and hard to find a professor who was not extremely liberal and took the same political approach to literature as you did. The few remaining were near retirement age.

I don’t think you know much about me personally. I am an immigrant from Slovenia and became a U.S. citizen at the age of 18. My father had a fourth-grade education. I was not able to enter graduate school until I was in my mid-thirties. I come from a blue-collar background and to survive have in my time worked in agriculture (the vineyards of Upstate New York), cleaned houses, tended bar, waited on tables, and worked in fast food and retail establishments. I eagerly awaited a study of T.S. Eliot but was sorely disappointed when I took your class.

I sense that you would prefer to keep me out of the profession; you have probably seen my letters of application to Georgia State University. (I guess that is where you have determined that I do not have “any record of scholarly accomplishment” as you have ascertained.) But I fulfilled the requirements for a Ph.D., and at a disadvantage, for I had to counter the positions of professors like you with rock-solid papers. Since most of the academic journals and panels at major conferences at the MLA are comprised by those with your political views, my work is not welcomed there.

Hiring committees do not welcome candidates with political views that differ from their own. And “conservative activists” ask only that we enjoy fair representation. Show me your recent hires at Georgia State University that would demonstrate this intellectual diversity. I have observed only the hiring of those with similar views to those doing the hiring and running of English and Comparative Literature departments today.

I find it ironic that a professor who complimented me on my work and felt along with many others that I did work good enough to be awarded a Ph.D. now disparages an editorial in the newspaper and does not address the specific points I have raised. As a teacher, I am glad to see students who are not afraid to venture from the standard interpretation and forcefully argue and support their own positions. I wish that you would write a letter to the editor and openly defend your position, addressing the specific points I make on the panels I cite. Above all, let’s keep the dialogue at a level befitting our profession.

Respectfully,

Mary Grabar

protected speech in textbooks

2006-08-18T08:31:00.000-04:00

The AJC has published editorials on the Georgia Tech issue: one by the two students bringing suit and one by the school's chair of the School of Modern Languages ("Shameful victory for the intolerant stings").

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0818edspeech.html

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0818edtech.html

But protected speech of favored groups is so insidious that only newcomers and outsiders can recognize it in academia. Consider these two treatments of the literature of two different religious groups in a college textbook I am required to use.

To introduce students to Zuni ritual "poetry," one of which is the Scalp Dance, the editors of the Norton Anthology of World Literature write, "Bastions of spiritual and social autonomy, the pueblo communities, make a profound impression on the nonnative world by the strength of their traditions in an era of change; and of this there can be no more convincing proof than the ceremonial system of the Zuni pueblo with its annual cycle of drama, sacrifice, and oratory."
The "Scalp Dance," an example of this "ceremonial system," ends, “In a shower of arrows, / In a shower of war clubs, / With bloody head, / The enemy, / Reaching the end of his life, / Added to the flesh of our earth mother.” But the editors in the introductory pages instruct students that the purpose of this Scalp Dance was to “purify the warrior who had taken a scalp and to induct the trophy itself into the company of previously won scalps, regarded as rain makers.” The "Scalp Dance," presented as having profoundly religious meaning (it "purifies") has replaced the poetry of Christian writers in such anthologies.

Compare this introduction to the "Scalp Dance" to the introduction to Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
"Since Solzhenitsyn is such a dedicated anti-Communist and anti-Marxist, many Westerners have jumped to the conclusion that he is in favor of the Western democratic system. Such is not the case. He looks back to an earlier, more nationalist and spiritual authoritarianism represented for him by the image of Holy Russia." In a typical classroom where "authoritarianism" (Christian authoritarianism especially) is presented as the greatest evil, the discussion is predictable. But a writer like Solzhenitsyn who is explicitly moral is treated with suspicion and his views oversimplified. Chants of an illiterate group that describe their pantheistic beliefs as they celebrate with the scalps of their enemies are presented as profoundly religious poetry.

Oh, and do not be fooled by Professor McKnight's presentation of Goethe in his editorial in the link above; he implies that Goethe would be in favor of abortion rights and gay marriage. To the contrary! Today's Faust is the post 60s revolutionary, romantic out to "find himself." But this is a pact with the devil. Today's Gretchen is the young woman deceived by the Fausts around her. But instead of murdering her baby after its birth, she has an abortion.

Now back to preparing my own syllabi for the semester.

local news flash: insults allowed at Georgia Tech!

2006-08-17T09:47:00.000-04:00

Insults are now allowed at Georgia Tech! This as a result of a lawsuit brought on by two conservative students, one Christian and one Jewish. The headline in yesterday's paper says it all.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/0816mettech.html

The story in today's AJC tells about the threats that one of these students who brought the suit against speech codes, Ruth Malhotra, gets; among them are death, choking, and having acid thrown on her. Malhotra is Indian and her campus mailbox has been stuffed with Twinkies, the message being that she is yellow on the outside and white on the inside.

Is there any connection between the way the story is presented and the way students who resist speech codes are treated? Is there any connection between the indoctrination of students from kindergarten on up and their attitude towards such codes that give them a false sense of their own virtue? What about the fact that most teachers are hardly objective when it comes to discussing "diverse" religious perspectives?

The answer is that Christianity and Judaism are so maligned is classrooms that no one even notices it any more. The answer is that if you challenge the status quo on campus you will be attacked. In the late 90s I wrote an editorial in support of teaching classic authors, like Plato and Shakespeare. I received anonymous typed letters in my university mailbox.

But this is not a new story, really. Insults have been allowed for decades. They have been allowed against Christians, Jews, and conservatives. But no one saw them as "insults." They have been the curriculum.

new link

2006-08-16T11:46:00.000-04:00

I have been linked to Arts & Letters Daily http://www.aldaily.com/ Scroll down the left to "weblogs," and there I am!

Denis Dutton, who teaches at the University of Cambridge in New Zealand, is editor of this web page. He is also editor of the journal, Philosophy and Literature, which published physicist Alan Sokal's article explaining the reason behind his hoax. For those of you not familiar with this incident, in 1996, Sokal wrote a nonsensical piece on physics titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." He used academic jargon and all the right buzzwords needed to get one tenure; it was published in the "cutting edge" journal Social Text. In other words, the emperor is wearing no clothes, folks!

More information here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sokal

Arts & Letters also sponsors the bad [academic] writing contest and publishes three new interesting articles each day.

I am very proud to be listed here. Please visit Arts & Letters frequently!

my article in today's paper

2006-08-04T09:26:00.000-04:00

Here is my latest publication

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0804edgrabar.html

Jim Wooten allowed to publish (thank God)

2006-08-01T11:16:00.000-04:00

Jim Wooten's column on the current "conflict" between Israel and Hezbollah is the most trenchant analysis I've seen. Read it here http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/shared-blogs/ajc/thinkingright/entries/2006/08/01/complacency_wont_subdue_ruthle.html

While most of the media screams that Israel attacks innocent civilians, Wooten reveals the tactics of Hezbollah and similar terroristic groups, and how the Left aids and abets them.

I am so grateful that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution prints an occasional column by a conservative. But it's a little like academia: the few conservatives who have tenure (but are close to retirement) are permitted to voice their opinions. The liberals who are in power point to the token conservatives to show that they are not 'biased.'

But keep telling it like it is, Mr. Wooten!

Great Article by Matthew Scully

2006-07-30T19:57:00.000-04:00

I am still looking for a home for my essay, "I want to be a Playboy Bunny," but unbeknownst to me until I read the back pages of my latest issue of First Things, Matthew Scully had written a wonderful piece--in a serious vein--for the Wall Street Journal in March. Read "The Playboy Legacy" here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110008169

Hugh Hefner is nothing more than a pimp and it truly is a sad commentary on our culture that we treat him with respectability.

entertainment in Atlanta

2006-07-06T11:14:00.000-04:00

Let’s see: how should I spend my money? Tomorrow night for $35 to $55 I can listen to Bill Maher for one hour at the Fox Theatre (sic) as he continues his comedy routine of logical fallacies, a big hit among those balding, ponytail-ed intellectuals who skipped philosophy class for teach-ins.

Mr. Maher does not put me into the category of “free thinkers” who would come and see him, according to an interview in today’s Journal-Constitution. Those who are not free thinkers, who make this state politically red, according to Mr. Maher, are “uneducated farmers swilling beer, scratching themselves while watching NASCAR.”

Hmm. I do like a good beer now and then and grow figs in my backyard. I’ve never seen the appeal of NASCAR, though. I get enough driving excitement going through Spaghetti Junction.

Well, the professor in me feels like rapping Mr. Maher’s knuckles again for his error in logic, as I did when he claimed that terrorists were courageous
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=081804G
(not that this celebrity ever noticed).

But for my money, I’d rather dance! And tonight, at Mulligan’s for $14 I can get three hours of Keith Frank!!!

Take a listen.

http://www.myspace.com/keithfrankandtheszband

And tomorrow, while Mr. Maher bilks the self-satisfied denizens of all the trendy intown neighborhoods who can plunk down all this money for tickets, parking, and dinner, I plan on being at contra dance.

Advance notice for all you out-of-towners: make plans to attend our November dance weekend. We had a preview of one of the bands, House Red, a couple weeks ago and they are hot!

Malpractice Mexican Style

2006-05-12T18:53:00.000-04:00

I'm up from my 36-hour nap; that was some nasty bug. I'm still not up to dancing tonight.

Here is one of my essays looking for a home:

Malpractice Mexican Style

By Mary Grabar

I am so glad that President Bush will not make us sing the National Anthem in Spanish.

Lord knows I have been having my troubles with everything else being in Spanish. I once got lost in the Chamblee-Doraville area of Atlanta and I felt as if I had crossed the border. I was trying to find my way to a party, stopped, asked a nice man in a cowboy hat for directions, and we ended up dancing the salsa.

But though I did learn some new steps, the next experience I had with not knowing Spanish could have cost me my job as a temporary visiting-for-four-years adjunct assistant professor. It all began as a result of a sliver in my foot.

My foot injury occurred in Florida at a contra dance weekend that took place at a camp beside a lake.

I had been swinging, dosy-doe-ing, and allemanding my partners down the line until I had worked myself up to an ecstatic state. During a waltz, that takes place in part to cool down this largely aging hippie crowd, a gentleman suggested we take a walk.

So the following afternoon, he led me down to the beach. To put himself into the romantic mood, he stayed in the flowered skirt he wore for the dance. He had let loose all 54 hairs from the ponytail band so his hair could blow in the breeze like Fabio’s.

I took my shoes off and felt the sun-kissed sand between my toes. But as I was listening to his wooing, I took my eyes off what was under my feet.

I gave out a little cry and we stopped. I investigated the bottom of my foot to find six burrs embedded in it. I pulled them out cleanly, except for one. It broke off. Though I was able to dance the rest of the weekend, I could feel that little thing still lodged there.

After I came home I would still feel it. Apparently, my paramour’s homeopathic technique of applying his energy fields and then sucking it out did not work. So I decided to take advantage of my HMO and called my doctor.

I thought my general practitioner would surely know how to get the sliver out of my foot. I called the number to set up an appointment.

But something was wrong with the phone system. After I had gone through eight different keys and entered my date of birth, Social Security number, and policy number, I got only a voice in Spanish. Apparently that part of the recording that says “press one” for English was broken.

After an extensive search I found a translator and learned that my policy required a referral to a podiatrist (she was able to translate the medical language from Spanish: “the general practitioner is not allowed to do feet”). I made an appointment for the following week at 8:30 a.m.

On the appointed morning, I filled out the stack of papers, and let the receptionist make a copy of my insurance card, driver’s license, life insurance policy, and utility bills for the last six months. The receptionist in a Spanish accent then said, “Hmmm, looks like your policy has an exclusion for slivers.”

I said, “That can’t be. I have a referral.”

She tried to call the insurance company’s 800 number but could not get through.

“I’m afraid, Ms. Grabar,” she said, “that if you want to see the doctor today you will have to pay for the bill in full upfront.”

I asked her how much it would be.

She looked through a thick three-ring binder. “Well, a surgical extraction carries a minimum fee of $200.”

I took out my checkbook.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We no longer accept checks. We prefer cash.”

“But I don’t have $200 in cash,” I said.

“Okay, then. A major credit card, but you’ll have to let me take your fingerprints.”

I consented, then made myself comfortable in the Naugehyde chair and began attacking my 96 papers. I spent the next hour cheerfully circling comma splices and apostrophe errors, when I heard the sound of a large vehicle screeching to a stop.

I looked out the window to see a bright red, green, and white bus painted with Spanish words still rocking. Out jumped about twenty Hispanic people, and a Caucasian woman dressed in a power business suit. Another Hispanic woman was dressed in a similar manner. Among this group were three extremely pregnant women.

The two professional women clicked assertively on their heels to the door of the doctor’s office, with the men and other women helping the three pregnant women.

The door opened quickly and the two professional women began speaking sharply in Spanish. They appeared to be giving orders. The receptionist replied and soon three nurses appeared with wheelchairs.

The pregnant women were helped into the wheelchairs and whisked to the back examining rooms. The waiting room was full of commotion and patients held on to their crutches and walkers with looks of amazement and fear. Speaking pleasantly in Spanish, the receptionist brought out a silver tray with ice-cold Dos Equis beers and passed those around to all the new guests.

As they settled in the few remaining chairs and on the floor, we could hear the rushing and bustle from the examining rooms. A barefoot old man, looking startled, made his way from the back to the waiting room with his walker. I offered him my seat.

It was a little more difficult to grade papers standing up, what with all the noise and excitement, but I was able to do it for another hour. But then nature called and all available help seemed to be in the back room. By the time the receptionist came back to check and see if the guests needed anything else I was crossing my legs.

I minced my way up to the window.

She turned around: “Yes?”

“Um, if you need a urine sample, I could fill the jar to the top.”

“We don’t need one,” she said, pulling the window closed.

My attempts at humor fall flat in the classroom too. I rapped on the window. “I re-e-ally have to go,” I said.

“Okay, down the hall on the right.”

I was able to wait until the last Mexican came out, fortunately, and then resumed my spot at the wall.

By now it was late morning. Soon we heard a baby’s cry and a universal “ooh” and clapping from the crowd. One of the Mexican men pulled a flask from his back pocket and passed it around among the other men.

And then in quick succession we heard another baby’s cry and then another’s. The room broke into applause. The podiatrist appeared in scrubs in the doorway. He was flanked by the two smartly dressed women.

“All boys,” he announced, pulling down his surgical mask. The Hispanic woman translated.

The Mexicans applauded and shouted “Viva la Mexico!”

With all the birthing finally over, I thought that if the doctor could see me right then I would be able to make the three classes I had to teach that afternoon, if I skipped lunch.

I went over to make my case to the receptionist. Some of the non-Mexican patients looked at their watches and started gathering up their purses and walking aids.

The smartly dressed Hispanic woman held up her hand.

“Not so fast, Gringos,” she said. “I am from the Latino Legal Defense Fund and my partner,” gesturing to the suited woman next to her, “is from the A.C.L.U. I need you all to sign these forms saying you witnessed the birth of these three new American citizens.”

It took some time to get all the forms filled out. She had to give instructions in both English and Spanish. She had to repeat the instructions because three of the men had gone to the back rooms to admire their new American progeny.

As a result, I missed my first class. I just hope I don’t get fired and lose my health insurance as a result of it.

--end--

contra dancing

2006-05-10T14:15:00.000-04:00

Interested in contra dancing? Every Friday in Atlanta. Check out the link under my links, which also has my recent columns.

My Latest

2006-05-08T08:56:00.000-04:00

This is my latest publication on Tech Central Station. Put this web magazine into your favorites file. Great writing, especially by Lee Harris.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=050806A

Great Music

2006-05-04T10:15:00.000-04:00

I bought Claire Holley's cd, Sanctuary, last Friday www.claireholley.com when she performed at A Capella Books

http://www.acappellabooks.com/index.htm

with Caroline Herring,

http://www.carolineherring.com/twilight.php

a songwriter I first heard at the Decatur Arts Festival. These two heavenly singers were on their way to Merlefest, and did a concert at the bookstore. Thank you, Frank! Claire Holley's cd, Sanctuary, filled with traditional gospel music and hymns, I think, might be a good conversion aid, and I find it just right to listen to when I want something uplifting and gently beautiful. I have been enjoying Caroline Herring's cd for some time. What a poet. Click on the above link and just listen to "Devil's Made a Mess." I think that she and I dated the same guy.

Folk Slovenia

2006-05-04T07:42:00.000-04:00

Thank you to Katarina, and the great people at Folk Slovenia, for sending me the folk music of the Prekmurje region of Slovenia. What a nice gift! Check out their web page http://quickmouse.net/folkslo/e_odrustvu01.htm

2006-05-04T07:26:00.000-04:00

Crunchy cons. Here is an article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/02/AR2006050201873.html?nav=hcmodule

Well, I guess I'd fit that group if I were to fit any group. I am ready to rip off my "W 04" bumper sticker after hearing Bush's proposals about amnesty for illegal invaders. Is there any doubt in anyone's mind after the photos of the demonstrations showing signs with Che Guevera? My friend Lee Harris has a very good article about this issue http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=050106G

I have been told my article will be appearing in the same journal. You can see the other two articles I've have published there by typing my name in the search. www.techcentralstation.com

mass graves in Slovenia from 1945

2006-04-27T16:17:00.000-04:00

I had about 4 essays ready to go for Townhall, but was informed that some changes were taking place there and to wait two weeks. I'm counting the days.

And so glad to see the Townhall web page being broadcast on CNN with Tony Snow's column. Hey! I've been published there too!

Following is an article from a reader and fellow American Slovenian, Yul Yost. He asked me to post this article about this too often overlooked part of history.

Here is Mr. Yost's article.

Lest we forget mass graves in Slovenia from 1945
by Yul Yost
3015 Fairview N
St. Paul, MN 55113-1244

As World War II ended in Europe in May 1945, Slovenia was a bottleneck for the masses fleeing from the Eastern Front. Soviet forces that drove the Nazis westward stopped at eastern Yugoslavia.. This allowed Tito's forces to sweep westward mostly unopposed through Yugoslavia and to reach Trieste on The Adriatic.Tito was the leader of the resistance on the Yugoslav territory and Stalin's ideological protégé for a long time. In the wake of “liberation” from Nazi terror a new one was imposed, communism. Thousands of soldiers and civilians of various nationalities from the Baltics to the Balkan fearing Stalin and/or Tito's forces tried to reach the British and American armies that pushed north thru Italy towards Nazi Germany. Among these refugees were members of Slovenian Home Guards (Domobranci) who escaped to Austria in early May 1945. On May 26, 1945 in Ljubljana, Tito, declared, "...only a minority of traitors has managed to escape....This minority will never see our beautiful mountains and flowering fields, and if this did happen, it would only last for a very short time." Would Tito respect the Geneva Convention of prisoners of war? Not applicable, these were men and whole families that were never taken prisoner; moreover, the war was over by then. It was time to go home. But, Tito's threat was an ominous prediction of what was to come. A recent book in English, by John Corsellis and Marcus Ferrar, Slovenia 1945, 276 pages. I.B. Tauris, 2005 (available via Amazon.com) deals very comprehensively with those events. The book mostly deals with the plight of Slovenians who managed to reach Austria. Then in a shady deal between the British and Tito, instead of promised free passage to Italy, they were in the week starting Sunday, May 27 to June 4 returned to Slovenia. A passage on page 71 mentions the agony of two teenaged Slovenian girls and their anticipated family reunion with their parents who had already escaped to Italy: "...the two sisters found themselves crammed into a filthy, suffocating cattle wagon heading back to Slovenia." These returnees were a threat to Tito's totalitarian regime. So, some seven to eleven thousand of them were executed at various sites in Slovenia, mostly at Teharje near Celje and at Kocevski Rog. Complicity of the British is dealt with on p.188 of Slovenia 1945, and in books, Victims of Yalta, 1976,. as well as in The Minister and the Massacres, London, 1986, both books by N. Tolstoy.The Englishman, Corsellis is credible, for he was in charge of the refugees in Austria for many years. The views here on the book are mine; mine too are the recollections of the events. Our home was within eyesight and earshot of the Teharje site. We called it Teharski Lager. During the war it was a German training camp. I recall that in June and July of 1945, shooting started by late afternoon and continued into the night. I had seen starved young men who had escaped from the Lager. Often evenings, as we were returning home from making hay, shooting started at the Lager. My father would then say: "The communists are shooting people again."
Forced return of the refugees was stopped by an order of the British Field Marshall, Harold Alexander, at noon, June 4, 1945. Alexander was then Allied commander for the Mediterranean war zone. By his order, the lives of escapees, Andrej Percic, Franc Medved and their families were spared by some six hours. By 1950, Percic and Medved and their families had emigrated to Minnesota, where their grateful descendents, among them Frank Medved Jr. and Andrew Percic Jr., who shared their memories with me, now make their homes.
In March 2006. Frank Medved went to Rome to see his camp mate from 57 years ago in Austria, Franc Rode. Rode had emigrated to Argentina and was on March 24, 2006 consecrated a cardinal, the first cardinal from Slovenia,.
Another recent book that contains chapters on the massacre at Teharje. is: Iz Zgodovine Celja, 1941-1945 (From History of Celje) by Tone Ferenc, 256 pgs., 2004. It is written in Slovenian, but sections are synopsized in German and in English. It cites that 10,100 Slovenians were returned from Austria. According to member of the Mass Grave Commission for Slovenia, Joe Bernik, there are in Slovenia some 400 mass graves from that period; these are graves of tens of thousand of refugees of various nationalities. Inexplicably, by 2005, nobody was held accountable for post-war atrocities in Slovenia, where monuments to Tito and street names to his cohorts still exist. Tito died in 1980,
. By 1989 communist regimes in Europe had crumbled. Slovenians too have rejected the social order which, in order to get established in 1945, liquidated thousands of freedom loving citizens. Then, fifteen years ago, in October, 1991, the Yugoslav People’s Army left Slovenia for Serbia, never to return. That year Slovenia became for the first time in history a free and democratic nation. Free at last!!
Slovenian government now does much to reconcile with the past and memorialize the lives that ended so mercilessly. Monuments to the victims were established at Teharje in 2004 and at Kocevski Rog . I highly recommend the book, Slovenia 1945. It is a tragic, dramatic and spellbinding historic record about memories of death and survival of freedom yearning Slovenians, Slovenia's greatest generation.

Cynthia and Catholics

2006-04-24T07:54:00.000-04:00

I had two essays published last week. Here is the one on Cynthia McKinney from Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/marygrabar/2006/04/19/194160.html

Thank you again, everyone, for your letters and telephone calls. Some readers told me they would be distributing my column to friends and to e-mail lists. They got me through a week of student conferences (why do 95% of students not take advantage of the fact that I review their final paper drafts and hand in unfinished and unreadable garbage?). I am sorry that I was able to respond to only a few of your letters. Please keep writing. I love all that encouragement. I really, really do.

On a personal note, I'm gearing up for the end of the semester. But my respite won't be long because I'm scheduled to teach two World Lit classes in June (the super intensive four-week session). Also have to get cracking on the Flannery O'Connor paper for the ALA conference in San Francisco.

Meanwhile down at the fig farm (someday I'll post a picture of my humungous fig tree), the birds are chirping in from the treetops into which I look as I type this. My house is built into the side of a hill, so we look right into the treetops from the screened-in deck. A lovely place to write. I have been writing a lot, faster than I can get them published, can't stop myself. The housework has been pushed aside, but I hope to get some help next week from someone from the dance community who needs work. What I really need is a Mommy! Someone to clean, do the grocery shopping. I invited my friend Jude for dinner on Saturday and she brought the fixings for burritos and prepared them for me and my housemate. (I love to invite her over for dinner!) I made the margarittas and desserts. I finally got to my yoga class on Saturday afternoon, skipping the dance in Sautee to do it. (If I didn't get some real exercise soon--last weekend lost to doing taxes--I was going to punch someone.) Hot yoga (Bikram) is great exercise and the instructor we had on Saturday spared us the little chants and "thoughts for the day" that some of them indulge us with. (There's a column there.) What I need is someone to tell me to move, use my muscles, and stretch my body for 90 minutes. I can't do it by myself. It clears my head too.

Here is my latest from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the Catholic Church's support of illegals. http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/0418edcatholic.html My original manuscript was cut for space.

Four letters to the editor were published, two over each of the next two days.

Watch for a posting from one of my fellow Slovenian readers on the Domobranci.

Your help requested

2006-04-04T09:17:00.000-04:00

Here is the direct link http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/marygrabar/2006/04/02/191979.html

This is the most recent column on Townhall. It's a great web site; my columns are posted among those by Ann Coulter and George Will.

You can send me an e-mail by clicking on the "bio" link for Townhall column and then looking for the link for my e-mail. I am looking for stories from Slovenians who are immigrants or children of immigrants for my forthcoming book, Listening to Voices. I am especially interested in the domobranci, those who fought against the Partisans (Communists) in World War II. If you send an e-mail through that link it will get to me.

My novel, Dancing with Derrida, is out there hoping to seduce an agent. I also write poetry and am looking for a critique group of serious poets in Atlanta. I had the pleasure of taking a workshop with Steve Kowit recently and he thinks I'm ready for publication. Oh, yay! If you think I am a compulsive writer, you are right. I try to balance that out with dancing (pun intended for my fellow contra dancers) and gardening.

Thank you, letter writers

2006-04-03T20:51:00.000-04:00

Thank you, letter writers to my column in www.townhall.com ("Slovenians take to the streets of Cleveland"). I was able to reply to almost all of the letter writers to my previous columns, but the number for this one may preclude personal replies to all. But I DO read all letters and get immense satisfaction from them. I save them. Some have good ideas for future articles and some give some very valuable information from all walks of life. And so full of support. So please keep sending the letters through the e-mail link or post comments. I may not reply right away, but I'll save the letters and maybe reply later.

Also, glad to know there are Slovenian readers out there. And conservative professors and high school teachers. I am inspired by all those working in the trenches and who have stuck to their principles.

Today, I taught "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor. I always seem to get something more from her stories each time I read them or teach them. It was good because I am preparing my paper for the American Literature Association conference in San Francisco in May. Then, on the way home, I heard Alan Cheuse on NPR review Joyce Carol Oates's recent collection of short stories. Oates, to him, is "taking up the legacy of Flannery O'Connor." How dare he! Oates was also compared to D.H. Lawrence; she is "Lawrentian." Eww! And one of Oates's stories takes up the "problem of redemptive violence." (Is he thinking of O'Connor here? Well, it's not the violence that's "redemptive," buddy.) What!!!!

How did this guy get a monopoly on doing book reviews on a station that is supported with tax money?

No wonder English professors have such a bad reputation. And whoever reads Cheuse's books?

Things are a-blooming here in Georgia. The car and deck are covered with a fine chartreuse powder. I saw a fox in my backyard yesterday. I will do my part to keep my .6 acres as close to natural as God made it.

2006-02-25T09:19:00.000-05:00

From what I know it seems that Bush has been backed into a diplomatic corner as a result of the original ports contract signed in 1999 during the Clinton administration. I do not think the ports contract should have gone through, but I could understand the quandry the administration would be in: alienate an imperfect ally by summarily denying the contract (and invite charges of xenophobia, probably from the Left) or go ahead with it. My suggestion: change the policy to allow only American companies to operate ports. This will then not seem to be a slap at one particular country. And do even more rigorous screening of employees for loyalty to their own country. This will probably invite charges of McCarthyism, but as we have seen by exposes of "intellectuals'" responses to 9/11, patriotism, even among Americans, cannot be assumed. Neoconservativism holds the danger that it attracts those who are motivated more by greed than traditional conservative values. The free market works, but not when you're dealing with those who have radically different values.

A scarey sight yesterday in the parking lot of Big Lots in Decatur: "Hillary 2008."

Ports Contract: Dividing Conservatives, Uniting Liberals

2006-02-23T08:13:00.000-05:00

The recent controversy over the ports contracts has divided conservatives and united liberals. Liberals seem to forget that the contract was awarded in 1999, during the Clinton administration. Or they just don't mention it.

The current administration is put into an awkward position when the original company is bought out by a company from the United Arab Emirates. To automatically cancel the contract on this basis alone would alienate an important, though imperfect, ally. And had the administration done this, the charge from many in the same camp would have been "xenophobia!" But I suspect that what motivates much of the criticism is the opportunity to appear stronger on terrorism than the Bush administration, while uniting against a common enemy: the Bush administration. Their alternative to warfare has been to secure our borders (with the exclusion of "undocumented workers" from Mexico and Central America, but that's another posting).

The division is demonstrated on the pages of techcentralstation. Lee Harris there http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=022206H expresses an understandable response of outrage to the administration's decision. James Glassman, publisher of that online journal, however, takes a free market approach. He points out that even a British or German company could be excluded on the same basis: both unintentionally harbored the 9/11 terrorists. http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=022206H And wasn't Florida where they took flight lessons? Glassman's point about security remaining in American hands adds support to his argument. But I am still uncomfortable. Ann Coulter in her delightfully acerbic way comes down hard on the administration in her column: http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21414

My question is: why isn't an American company given these contracts? I would suggest that the "American" company, though, be screened for those who demonstrate loyalty to the United State.

I remember back to the Clinton administration when the free market met political correctness. Even the readers I used for teaching freshman composition at the University of Georgia touted multiculturalism as a way to prepare students for the "global economy." I can't tell you how many times I saw that sentiment repeated banally on freshman essays. Parents and administrators at my son's elementary and middle schools encouraged parents to push their children to take Spanish-- to prepare for the job market. The bilingual signs at Wal-Mart demonstrate their prescience.

I suspect that the liberals would like to see a government agency take over the ports function, just as they want to keep the government in charge of education, health care, and just about everything else. Now imagine civil servants in a Hillary Clinton administration running this show. As exposes like Whittaker Chambers' Witness demonstrate, subversives often like to work for government agencies. Would the Ward Churchill intellectuals see this as an opportunity to further their goals of undermining the United States, and the entire West, which they have succeeded in brainwashing the youth into thinking of as oppressive, murderous, imperialist, etc.?

What if we did let an American company do the job? Might we not run into the same problem? Would extensive background checks--on either government employees or employees of an American company--invite charges of "McCarthyism" from the left? (Today's 'McCarthy-ite' charge: are you or have you ever criticized someone for having communist leanings? snicker, snicker, and unspoken: you hopeless, paranoid rube who doesn't even understand the difference between true Marxism as explicated in places of higher learning and vulgar Marxism.) Even American citizens, as we have seen, have been involved in terrorist operations.
Loyalty needs to be a determinant. Criticism and debate occur among patriots. But first we must have loyalty to the values of the West. We need to start at the beginning, at the those who educate children. I applaud David Horowitz for his book on the professors. But as he has stated, these are the most egregious examples. The campaign to undermine Western civilization must be halted. The intelligentsia in the most influential positions have devoted careers to questioning and undermining the values that most of middle America holds dear. We need those who are dedicated to upholding the values of the West in education and industry. But I suspect that that is not what the left really wants in terms of the ports contracts.

2006-01-17T07:19:00.000-05:00

Surfing my 80 channels Sunday night and I came upon a the Discovery channel or Nature network: a show about bare-chested indigenous people in New Guinea. A new widow. Her husband, a chief, had been killed in an attack. Now due to her widow status she must serve her mother-in-law like a slave and suffer all kinds of indignities due to her loss of status. She is worried about having enough to eat. Old and New Testaments instruct us to take care of widows. Even secularists accept such precepts without thinking. What about those who since the 1960s have worshiped the naturalness of indigenous primitive cultures? Do they see this? But by going back to Rousseau's romantic notions, the ideas about the "Noble Savage" they essentially have worshipped primitive cultures as "authentic." Christianity, conversely, has been presented as patriarchal, oppressive, evil. And at a Twelth Night party, a woman who vaguely subscribes to New Age beliefs was telling about her trip to Vietnam, the friendliness of the people, etc. One sight that struck her particularly was a place of shrines, statues of Buddha. Around it a little free market economy had popped up ( you'll hear no socialist rants against the 'profit motive' for these ventures, though): peasants were buying food and gifts for these idols.

Back from LEAF

2005-05-18T09:55:00.000-04:00

It's been a few years since I've gone to the Lake Eden Arts Festival, but this year I went and joined friends from Charlotte and Atlanta. So nice to camp with you guys and thanks for taking care of the cooking. LEAF (www.theleaf.com) can be quite pricey if you have to buy all your meals, so I was thankful for the good food and company. I go primarily for the dancing, but this year the dancing was a bit disappointing. The sound was not that great on Friday (but it became increasingly better). I enjoyed the zydeco even more than the contra, but the late night show was delayed by the Poetry Slam (sigh). I waited on the porch of Eden Hall for Dexter Adroin for fifty minutes while a slammer (I think it was Queen Sheba) screamed her lungs out and ended her gasping denouncement of just about everything in this country with a breathless string of profanity. I don't know if she won or was just a finalist, but her rendition which got the Bush-hating crowd going would have brought the men in white jackets in years past. Now it's called "slam poetry." I sat under the poetry tent earlier in the day, grateful to be out of the rain (somewhat) for the first round of theatrics, judged in part by teenagers who seem to have been schooled to confuse expressions (often feigned) of outrage with poetry. So we had a bunch of people shouting, singing, reciting about how terrible this country is. Of course, the blame was laid squarely on George W. Bush. Ironic thing is they either were able to pay the entry fee or pay the admission fee ($92.00/weekend for early bird special). One young woman in a fashionable tank top and jeans went on and on about materialism. Everyone performing, black and white, straight and gay, young and old, was angry about this culture. No one on the dance floor seemed to be angry. Maybe we could propose dance as therapy. Get all the slammers on the dance floor, then later let real poets get up there and read. And as Dana Gioia http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ecpm.htm suggests, also have them read others' published poetry, some even by white men who have died.

The literary mood was so different from the Art and Soul Festival at Baylor University in April where I read a chapter from Dancing with Derrida, the working title of my novel. Kaye Gibbons and Leif Enger were delightful speakers. A truly inspiring festival with warm, funny, and intelligent speakers and helpful workshops. I didn't understand the selection of Christopher Ricks as a keynote speaker, though. He talked about Bob Dylan and his conversion (I could never see the appeal of Dylan's music), beautifully explicated the lyrics after they were played over the speakers in the auditorium but then at the end revealed he is an agnostic. I guess he appreciates Christianity aesthetically and intellectually--one of those.