The sky is a baby blue with a few cirrus clouds drifting through like guests stopping off at a party on their way to a main event. It looks like a day for gardeners, but I’m expecting to be indoors all day except for a few brief excursions. Spring has brought along its finery and everywhere I look color is sizzling from the lemon yellows of the forsythia bushes to the candy pinks of the Japanese cherry trees.
Today is the day the soothsayer warned Julius Caesar about (or at least in Shakespeare’s play). He ignored the warning and called the senate together and on 44 BC a group of senators stabbed him to death. Then they partied. Speaking of criminals and murderers, NPR is covering the scandal about the United States Attorneys being fired and calls for Attorney General Gonzales to resign. (According to Sidney Blumenthal in today’s edition of Salon.com, all roads lead to Rove) Not to mention the FBI’s use of expanded surveillance powers to improperly obtain personal records of citizens.
Now, these federal attorneys have been fired en masse before, most notably by Bill Clinton and Janet Reno. But what bothers me about this latest case is that it seems the administration was using the attorneys for their on-going campaign of voter fraud and vote suppression. Maybe the right to vote has never been properly protected in this country, but isn't it time that it finally is? Recently on CBS “Face the Nation,” Senator Schumer said, “Attorney General Gonzales is a nice man. But he either doesn’t accept or doesn’t understand that he is no longer just the president’s lawyer but has a higher obligation to the rule of law and the Constitution, even when the president should not want it to be so.”
If you need to lose weight, before each meal, you might want to read about Ganzales and George W’s relationship during his rein as governor of Texas. Especially notice how they reviewed death sentence cases. Maybe we could patent this diet, publish a book? It seems to me that there aren’t enough prisons to hold all the criminals associated with the Bush administration, just as there aren’t enough places to hide all the obscene wealth racked up from the cronyism and war profiteering. It reminds me of chiefdoms of old who had special rooms in their castles built for treasures and plunder. I can just see these rooms piled high with plunder, can’t you? Which reminds me—whatever happened to all those treasures from the Iraqi museums? Who ended up with those artifacts and masterpieces from one of our oldest civilizations? And isn’t plunder a terrific word—I’m going to pause here and add it to my Word List. Oops, it’s already on my list.
In case I haven’t written about it in this blog, it’s a Word file in which I collect an alphabetized list of my favorite words, so that I make certain to keep building my writing vocabulary. I add to it almost every day, because it seems that each day I trip over new beauties worthy of savoring. For example under “B” I’ve got listed: banish, bedlam, beveled, besieging, blanch, blundering, bluster, bog, bombast, boondoggle, botch, brandish, brio, and bungle. Try starting your own Word List.
But on to writing. I’m working on two pieces right now besides my bad guys book and if anyone is reading this I’d love to hear from you at jessicapage at spiritone.com. I’m looking for your favorite secondary characters in novels, and especially for secondary characters that were spun-off into their own novel or series similar to how Diana Gabaldon spun off Lord John into his own series. I’m also looking for stories about how to recover from heartbreak—witty ones appreciated. Last night a friend told a great tale from her youth. It involves cows, tears, a boyfriend caught with another woman, and a broken heart. I wish I could tell you more, but that’s it for now, unless you have your own stories to tantalize with.
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