27 Dresses. Not.

Well, it COULD be a thrift shop purchase, although it looks more like a nightgown with mosquito netting. (Wiki Commons)

Could you put in some pew de soy?

What?

During journalism grad school, I got a job copy editing the local morning rag. Glen, one of the typesetters, who had been an English teacher before the unruly kids almost destroyed his gentle soul, was getting married and had handed me the wedding announcement.

"Oh," said I. "Peau de soie? Well, does her gown entail any peau de soie? Probably; most do. Why don't you ask Esther and find out."

He did. It did have pew de soy and some Allan's son's (Alencon) lace as well. Still, I sent him to the Community Editor with the announcement, as it was her job to marshall all the laces and silks and satins into regimented rows, always ending in, "The couple will honeymoon in Myrtle Beach." Everyone who lived in Athens, GA, honeymooned in Myrtle Beach. I suspect they thought a passport would be required if they ventured farther afield.

I missed that wedding. I even missed the one wedding for which I was supposed to be a member of the wedding party. Lord, how I did not want to do that. I managed to get a strep throat a few days before that wedding, which was to be the day before my college graduation, and two days before my husband, who was getting his doctorate, and I moved to Denver from Binghamton, NY. So I bombed out. Whew.


I think I am phobic about weddings. It might have something to do with the wedding in the movie 16 Candles. Or maybe the 1978 movie, A Wedding, directed by Robert Altman and casting funnywoman Carol Burnett in an unaccountably bleak role. A wedding, it always seemed to me, was a prescription for one kind of disaster or another. So I avoided them. Even my own...and I've had three, or four if you count the last one.


Interfaith marriage? Problem solved

The first one was fraught with peril because the groom was Jewish and I was nominally Roman Catholic, although I had, by age 20, long since abandoned that nonsense. We could find no clergyman to marry us. After much dialing, I finally found a New York State Supreme Court Justice who agreed to do the deed as long as it could be on a Wednesday morning in March. OK.

The attitudes toward this happy event ranged from horrified to OK with it. Well, maybe a bit more. For example: 

• My father, the RC patriarch, was not happy. 
• My Episcopalian grandmother, my mother's mother, was happy. She liked Paul, my fiance. 
• My brother was 15. That is, he didn't really care. Sure, it was a day off from school--two because of the trip from Long Island to Binghamton. 
• My husband's favorite aunt--and mine too, as it would turn out--flew from NYC the night before and back the next afternoon. She was a grand lady, and also the able long-time cable desk chief at Time, Inc. She was happy. I think she was as happy a my grandmother. They were much alike.
  

There was also Paul's best friend as his witness and my best friend as mine. I think they were both on the negative side of the midline between ecstatic and horrified, but only just.


But if you value your belief that weddings are a priori happy occasions, do not look at that wedding picture. We all look like we've had the word from the stormtroopers and we're next. All of us.


Next time I got married, it was in Athens, GA. I was in grad school, had just divorced No. 1, and No. 2 seemed like a good bet. He was also a journalist, and, in fact, the marriage lasted 16 years, a lot better than the scant five for marriage number one. The wedding? Neither of us wanted clergy, so we trotted over, with our two best friends, to the offices of an elderly judge. At one point, we had to quietly snake the rings off each other's fingers because the old judge had forgotten we'd done that already. So we did it again. I think he got tired after that, or he might have gone round again.


The reception was a barbecue at a friend's house. We fell out of a hammock together after too many peach daiquiries.


Third time's the charm

Marriage number three (five years and counting) was supposed to be the first actual church wedding I'd ever had. I had become a nominal Episcopalian, mainly for the coffee hour as freelancing is lonely work, and my husband was Church of England, being a Brit. We even had the de rigeur conversation with the Rector who assured us it was very important to involve the church community, who would be there for us as marriage took its inevitable toll on us (he didn't put it that way.) We nodded. Then Simon ran off to fly to Africa or someplace on business, and I went home to wonder how I could ever even get through buying some kind of frou-frou dress, never mind figuring out how to involve Simon's three grown daughters in the ceremony, as the Rector had suggested. A dilemma indeed as at least one of them hated me (and still does.) And this is supposed to be joyous?






"Why don't you just go get the license today and I'll marry you Saturday night. It will be fun. I'll get champagne," she said.


I called Simon at work and he agreed to meet me at the county office where marriage licenses could be procured.

On Saturday, we cleaned out part of the basement, took the stuff to the landfill, and returned the borrowed truck to its owner. It began to snow. Hard. Our return trip, from the mountains around Camp David where his friend lived, among the constant coming and goings of the presidential copter and 24/7 fighter jets on patrol, was really slow. But I really wanted to paint my toenails.

I have no idea why it was so important to me to paint my toenails.  For this wedding, I was wearing a purple two-piece dress I had gotten from my cousin's thrift shop.


Well, it wasn't really a thrift shop. My cousin manages a big apartment building in Washington, DC, and when someone moves out, they often tell him to take what he wants. One woman left a ton of books, a ton of clothing, a ton of kitchen equipment. He took it all. When my friend Noeleen and I visited, while Simon was in Africa, we each chose what fit us from the selection in Dennis's spare room. She got mainly shoes; I got mainly clothing.


Anyway, between trying to fluff up my hair after the snow experience and painting my toenails for the open-toed shoes to go with the thrift shop dress, we were late. Quite late. The cell phone call to Jane, the minister, produced ice almost as bad as what was on the roads. "If you're not here in half an hour, I won't do it," she said. "Noeleen is already here."


We got there. And it was fine. Short and sweet. Then Jane, her husband, Noeleen and we newlyweds had champagne, and then we drove through the blizzard to our favorite Indian restaurant in Baltimore.


Three weeks later, we had the reception on the date of the original, non-starter church wedding, since it was already booked and paid for. I would have gone through with that wedding itself, I guess, but when I called to tell the Rector that we had already gotten married, so it would just have to be a blessing and not a full wedding, he said that was all right. Civil weddings could be blessed.

"What? You were married by a bona fide minister? Then I can't bless it," he said. "It has already been done."


He wasn't too fond of us after that. The community seemed OK with it, though, as those we had invited all came to the reception. I wore some old black silk pants I had, a silk chemise I had bought at Nordstrom Rack, and the thrift shop Asian coat thingie in embroidered yellow silk I had found the week before. No, really. This time it WAS from a thrift shop.


But I did, the morning of the reception, decide maybe I should go have my hair done.

Horrible Bosses, Part Two: Chunky Skippy

Bosses are like peanut butter: Sticky and hard to wash away  (Piccolo Namek, Wiki Commons)

George W. Bush had just been selected by the US Supreme Court in one of the most bald-faced political heists in history. And I had decided, after cobbling together a couple of midlist books (The Unofficial Guide to Surviving Y2K and Beyond, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Natural Disasters), that it was time for a rest from the hunt. Time to rest from constantly thinking up new ideas to sell to the shrinking population of intelligent acquisitions editors. (Intelligent, as regards acquisitions editors, is defined as willing to buy my idea on the basis of an outline and sample chapter, and pay me half a year’s income to write it.)

Anyway, I had decided a change of pace would be nice. I was even willing to give up the part-time teaching of hunter-jumper riders, which I love to do, for the great bonus of health insurance and a sizeable paycheck―from which I might pay up my taxes from previous years (see midlist book mention above) and still have coins left for dinner out.

The first change of pace I sought was a job as a designer at Ethan Allen. Not so weird. I studied art at the Art Students League of New York, where William Merritt Chase had taught in a previous century and Georgia O’Keeffe, Helen Frankenthaler and Maurice Sendak, among other more recent luminaries, had studied. I was even elected to membership. Between that and my scene design courses in college, drawing room designs and elevations would be no problem. I got the job. And that’s where the trouble began.

Locked in a box

Ethan Allen sent all new hires to a doc-in-the-box before their first day of work, I suppose for health/life insurance purposes. Or maybe just to be intrusive. Anyway, by the time my old car had broken down again, I had gotten an Enterprise rental car pronto and hauled my butt an hour to Silver Spring’s panhandler-laden downtown through suburban D.C. traffic, I was in a rare mood, and I had to pee.

When I got to the doc-in-the-box, the receptionist was behind a Plexiglas barrier--
and no, I could not come through to use the ladies room because then they’d have to unlock the door to the inner sanctum before my turn and that would apparently cause upheaval around the globe and hair loss among the local staff.

It got worse from there. By the time I was on my way back home, I had decided no job that made one go through that crap was worth it. I stopped at the barn, petted my horse, went home, picked up the phone, and declined the job I had just accepted. There went my visions of massive commissions as Bush’s cadre of bureaucrats moved into Maryland and redecorated the houses vacated by Democrats.

Oy. Back to teaching, sending out book ideas…

Shortly, I got a call-back for a job at an insurance industry magazine needing an editor. The publisher interviewed me at 7 p.m. one evening. He said he wanted me to do a writing and editing test, surely I had done them before, etc. etc. Actually, I hadn’t. And I shouldn’t have done them that time, either. If one could look at my resume and list of published books and conclude anything except that I was an accomplished writer and editor, one had to be an imbecile.

He was an imbecile.

His publication did nothing but “repurpose” the articles of other publications and run court case synopses concerning insurance agents in legal trouble for various things, such as stealing premiums. And it ran the drivel spouted by Maryland’s insurance commissioner. However, Chunky Skippy*, as I fondly called him, thought he was running the New York Times. The art director, a part-timer, was possibly the most arrogant living human being I have ever met, and that’s saying a lot. At that point, I had worked in publishing and advertising for 25 years in New York and Florida; case closed.

We didn’t get along, the Chunk and I. I didn’t care for the art director, needless to say. The single salesperson seemed OK, except that she didn’t actually sell advertising, but had certainly sold some sort of bill of goods to the Chunk, on which I’ll say no more.

The office manager was OK. I liked her, in fact. We actually stayed in touch for a while after I left.

Go in peace, but go

I’m not sure if I left or was fired. Part of my agreement was that on non-deadline weeks, if I wanted to ride my horse on a nice morning and come in late and stay late, that was fine. Chunk never really accepted it, but could do nothing about it. Anyway, one morning on my way in, I realized there was no way I could emotionally, mentally or ethically support my continued involvement, regardless of the state of my finances.

I had determined to quit that very morning, but I didn’t have to. The Chunk called me into his office and said he was laying me off, that business was slow (true) and he could do the editing job himself (also true.) But he would give me a good severance (yippee!) and support the effort if I filed for unemployment (better still.) With a light heart, I gathered my one photo (my horse) and two houseplants and left.

When I called my good friends Jeffrey and Don, who had been through the horrific previous five months with me, Jeffrey said,  “Let’s celebrate. Come to dinner tonight! But Don has the car at work, so you’ll have to take me to the grocery store.”

While we waited in the checkout line, I said, “Well, at least I won’t have to go into Chunky’s office to watch Jerry Springer every afternoon.”

Jeffrey fell about laughing. “You’re kidding! This calls for champagne,” said he, as we trooped next door to get some.

All’s well that ends well…even when one has had the boss from hell.

___

* Skippy was the name I had given a previous horrible boss, also encountered during one of my “rest cure” trips in from the cold of freelancing. His story next time.

Horrible Bosses, part one

First in a series of true-life horror stories about working in America. Check back often for tales that will entertain you, mainly because they happened to someone other than you!

Horrible Bosses. The movie. Also, the life of Americans, or at least, most Americans I’ve ever known. 

It took me precisely two jobs to figure out that working for someone else was a prescription for insanity. My first job wasn’t so bad. One might think it was horrible, knowing it was waiting table at a divey bar on eastern Long Island. I had replaced a humongously overweight woman who, so the owners told me, used to swing her legs up on the bar from time to time to treat the regulars to a vision of her oozing scabs. What were they from? Shit knows, and shit cares.

Anyway, the owners were so happy I was of normal size and had no scabs on my legs that they paid me fifty bucks a week extra under the table; Scab Lady had told them the tips were horrible. The tips were not horrible. At least, my tips were not  horrible. Pretty good, actually. Plus the wonderful daytime bartender took me under his wing and protected me from the horror shows that sometimes frequented the establishment.

One such used to ask me for a kiss every time I walked by his perch at the end of the horseshoe bar with food for a table. One day, he grabbed my arm and said he wanted a kiss right then. I yelled to the bartender, “Uncle Al, this guy wants a kiss.”

Uncle Al―not a real uncle, but it sounded more serious that way―rose to his full 6’6”, reached across the bar, picked the guy up by the shoulders and planted a big one full on his lips.

The guy never returned. Al wasn’t the boss, just an employee. But the bosses, both named Ray, were great. I would never have believed in horrible bosses until the next summer. When I came home from college that year, I got a job in a very popular restaurant, not a mile from our house, on the way to the posh Hamptons. And that’s when I began to learn about horrible bosses.

Next, a laundry list of horrors, including:

• Knocking a plate out of my hand and stepping on it, food and all.
• Checking the bottom of one’s shoes for dirt
• The window curtain patrol
• Being forced to watch Jerry Springer (No, I’m NOT kidding.)
• And more.

These were not all from one job, needless to say. My longevity record in a job is three years; the boss was one of the few great guys. Of course, some of the other staff…well, anyway, they didn’t control my life and were therefore tolerable for three years. Just.

I can hardly wait to see Horrible Bosses. I just know I’m going to wish I had written it.

Next: Horror stories from the front lines -- New York

Chocolate

Yesterday, in Tavistock, I saw a cute little sign in a “stuff” shop: “Some things are better rich: Men, coffee, chocolate.” It put me in mind of a pillow I used to have with the same sentiment needlepointed on it. A good friend gave it to me when we were both between husbands 20 years ago; we both liked coffee and chocolate, if not men for a while as we were both recovering from the effects of marriage to a couple of substandard models.

That beloved pillow became, ludicrously, a bone of contention with one of my stepdaughters. She carried on about it several times, accusing me of marrying her father for his money. Simon is brilliant and does well, but he doesn’t have MONEY. I did, in fact, date a very nice and decent millionaire as well when I was first dating Simon…but I chose Simon. So no, I didn’t marry for money; I married for love. 

And, indeed, the only person who wanted her father’s money illicitly was that very stepdaughter who proceeded to steal from Simon over the next year before we discovered it and put a screeching halt to her access and her excess. Needless to say, she is not named in his will. 

But…back to a much more pleasing subject than family rancor, chocolate.

Chocolate has been much on my mind since I saw that sign yesterday, the pillow of contention notwithstanding. I awakened thinking about a chocolate cake I made for one of the other stepdaughters, Julia.

Julia seldom ate sweets, but loved the chocolate cake at The Olive Garden and asked if I could make one for her birthday dinner about four years ago. Sure. Well, maybe. It was an almost flourless cake—3 tablespoons of flour, I think, and a ton of chocolate. The thing had to be baked in a spring form pan wrapped in aluminum foil and plunged into a Bain Marie. A water bath. Yipes. However, I did it, and it was delicious. I haven’t done it since.

I might do it when Julia visits with her husband and baby in the fall. They can’t stay long, as her husband’s job is very demanding. So, I’m trying to make sure I fatten them up in every possible way in the scant week we have to work with. Chocolate never goes amiss, ultimately.

Sometimes chocolate gets a bad rep from those who equate pleasure with sin, as did the hard-shell Baptist wannabe townspeople in the movie Chocolat. Chocolate is, I think, a sacramental substance that can do good or evil, depending on how it is used. Like wine. Like any of the transcendent creations of humanity. Coffee. Tea. Rosewater. On that last, I’m admitting here that I adore Turkish Delight. I would say I especially like it coated with chocolate―as manufactured by Fry’s and purveyed in every Spar store in Britain―but I don’t. I prefer the two heavenly substances pure and unsullied by other equally seductive flavours.  Turkish Delight is an acquired taste, I admit. But chocolate...or chocolat, if you prefer.....ah....

Chocolat is a film worth seeing more than once. Although many of the characters are caricatures, such caricatures help us to more clearly see the gifts we have by seeing such gifts simply and clearly drawn. The caricatures also show us the gifts we might ignore if, like a caricature, we should attempt to close off any part of ourselves―especially our desire for flavour (the British spelling seems so much more appropriate to the word used this way). Our desire for beauty, for real spirituality―that is, enjoyment of the wonders that are here for us. For friendship. Delight. Laughter. Wonder. Appreciation. And love.

In Chocolat, Vianne Rocher (played by Juliette Binoche, magically) brings all that to a small French village through her Mayan-influenced chocolate shop. She opens the doors at the beginning of Lent when the townspeople, held under the boot of a loveless nobleman far more than they are coerced by the young priest’s bemused attempts at religious rigor, are desperate for signs that the world is, after all, a delicious place to be. In the town, two elderly people need to fall in love at last, having denied themselves the pleasure for decades. An abused woman needs freedom and peace from her vicious spouse. A sour young widow needs to make peace with her mother, her child, and the man she loves quietly from afar.

I must admit, finally, that I love Chocolat because it presents to me all those things my journalist’s discernment ignores in its apparently endless quest for the unethical, the unconscionable and the distressing. I came by that trait honestly, though. When I was in kindergarten, the teacher asked me why I never smiled. I said, “Because I don’t see any reason to smile.”

Before you conclude that I had a miserable childhood, I didn’t. It was quite fine, in fact, with a doting grandmother whose special project I was, and lots of lovely little friends to play with. The fact was, I just had a sort of “glass half empty” mentality, and still do. So it is with some wonder that I find myself volubly appreciating sappy films such as Chocolat. Or wondering how we can pack more than a year’s worth of love into a scant week with Simon’s daughter Julia and her family. How to tell her how glad I am that she and Kevin and little Austyn have found their life together in a very nice first home near the beach in Maryland. How to tell her I wish her all the chocolate in the world, as I still wish chocolate for her two sisters who went wildly astray into theft and drugs and other very non-chocolate things. If only chocolate could return them to themselves and to those who love them.

Maybe it can. Maybe if I wish chocolate for them hard enough, they will repair their frightened souls. Or maybe not. The only thing chocolate can do, really, is open the pathway to delight, to the recognition that there is a deep richness, a just-right sweetness, a soft silken path through the universe that any soul can use to achieve, if not greatness, love and joy.

And on that note, to salve my inner crying for the two lost sisters and the yearning to see Julia, the stepdaughter whose inner beauty and outer grace make up for so much, I’m going downstairs for some chocolate.

Who do women sleep with?

Wikipedia reports Tristane Banon is the god-daughter of Strauss-Kahn's second wife. Sheesh. Curiouser and curiouser, but then, her mother, Anne Mansouret, is only a minor  contender for the Socialist nod to run for the French presidency, and politics makes strange bedfellows. (Wiki Commons photo of Banon in 2001)

My late stepfather was a wise man. He often told other men, when they were wondering whether to agree with their wives/SOs on household matters, "Give in. You will eventually." I liked that.

What I liked even better was Ed's contention that, "Men sleep with whomever they can; women sleep with whomever they want."

He was not speaking of forcible rape, with bruises and contusions both inside and out. He was speaking of the usual run of male/female relations. And he was right. A man will try it out as often as possible with a desirable woman on the off chance she will say yes. All a woman has to do, in essence, is say yes or no. A man may persist; a woman may persist. Must persist, in fact, if she expects to control her own destiny. Except in the case of forcible rape, the woman wins. Always.

If the woman says no, she has made the decision. No problem.

If the woman says yes, she has made the decision. No problem. Well, almost no problem. What if, later on, the woman is mad at herself for accommodating a particular man? Might she not then blame him for imposing his will upon her, as a coward's way to refuse to recognize her own culpability for failing to be discerning? I have in mind various cases of celebrity men taking advantage of offers by hotel maids and the like and the maids later regretting their loose behavior and falsely accusing the men of rape.

If the woman says maybe--recall, the "tease" has been with us as long as men and women figured out what to do with each other in the privacy of their caves--then there's a problem. The modern knee-jerk feminist will say that the man SHOULD have known she really meant no despite the flirting and provocative clothing.

Knee-jerk feminism
The modern knee-jerk feminist will say that women don't act like teases anymore. (Really? Consider what all the skanky clothing on females from 8 to 80 signifies. It advertises the goods, leaving the price thereof open to male interpretation. Men might well be excused for thinking little clothing means a little price for the goods barely contained therein.)

And now comes the case of Tristane Banon, 22 years old when she claims--eight years later--that Dominique Strauss-Kahn attempted sexual contact with her when she interviewed him, alone, in an apartment. She didn't complain to the police then; her mama, Anne Mansouret, told her not to and she obeyed. Mansouret was a Socialist Party functionary at the time, and Strauss-Kahn was a more important Socialist. As he still is. Only now, apparently, Mansouret would like him out of the way so she can run for the French presidency.

What to do, what to do? Ah. Remember the heavy flirting business the kid raised all those years ago? Trot that out and see if it flies. After all, Strauss-Kahn is on the ropes--right?--because of some sexual exploits in New York.

Except that the New York woman doth protest too much. She protesteth so much--attempting to convince people with brains and five senses that a 60+ man could force a 30-something woman to clean his magic wand--that finally someone got a whiff of something smelly.

Ripe for the plucking
I think the Banon thing is just a bit too ripe, too. Eight years too ripe, if indeed it would ever have borne fruit at all. Let's see: sweet young thing goes to apartment to interview powerful older man. She complains to her mother that he attempted--what?--with her. Eight years later, she doubtless recalls every detail perfectly; anyone would. (OK. Tongue firmly in cheek.)

Eight years after the fact, reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Banon has decided to press forward with bringing a case in French courts contending that, "Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her during a book interview" and so she is filing a complaint "in order to clear her own name of suspicion that she had fabricated the accusation."

If the shoe fits....Tristane, darling, no one had ever heard of Strauss-Kahn putting the moves on you back then. So you really didn't have any name to clear, until YOU brought it up. And why would you need to clear your name, if Strauss-Kahn is supposed to be the culprit?

Indeed, no one had ever heard of Tristane Banon before she decided to recall, in stunning detail after eight years, a pseudo-attack on her by a man more than twice her age at the time. What is it with these young women? Did they spend too much time in front of the TV, so much that doddering old fools can pin them to the carpet and fondle at will because they are too weak to fend them off? I mean, how embarrassing. If I were 22 years old and couldn't find some way to shift a geezer older than my father--if indeed I had stupidly allowed a ludicrous flirtation to get to that point--I think I'd just pack it in.

Serial whiners
Or maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe the ethical basis of all womanhood has descended to the level of the serial whiner or paid shill. Maybe the filing of completely insane charges against Julian Assange by the two CIA hired guns in Sweden has set a new low precedent for trumped-up innuendo. Even MSNBC once referred to Assange as an unlikely babe magnet. No kidding.

On the other hand, fame and fortune seem to be the major draw for women involved in trafficking in sexual innuendo these days. Nothing to do with pecs, abs, great hair or a large salami at all.

Banon said she had waited eight years before filing her complaint because "it's very difficult for any woman in this situation ... and it's even more difficult when you know in advance that it's doomed to failure," according to the Atlanta paper, cited above.


Strauss-Kahn will likely be free sooner than later
Let us pray. Let us pray that all this female-perpetrated sleaze is doomed to failure. The latest word from New York is that all charges against Strauss-Kahn will be dropped no later than July 18. Then he's free to head home to France, and see his name bandied about once again for something sex-related.

With an EU passport, though, he need not actually go back to France, even if the US shows him the door. Any EU country will have to take him. And that, in essence, may be what Mansouret is after. If Strauss-Kahn is parked elsewhere, for reasonable fear of having to go through the New York exercise all over again in France, the way is clear or Mansouret to climb over whatever bodies are in her way, including that of her own daughter, apparently a serial shill for her mother's ambition.

I can't make this stuff up; it's not fiction; just read the news and read between the lines.

Aside from wondering where politicians draw the line regarding stretching the truth for their own purposes, I have also concluded three other things out of all of this. They are that:

• America has exported its insane Puritan viewpoints of sexuality to once-reasonable France, and locals there are now acting as nuts as the entire US population, almost, did when Bill Clinton engaged in a extra-marital adult relationship and was pilloried for it by the paid-in-full efforts of Linda Tripp.
• America has exported its penchant for turnip-minded female politicians to France. That's probably OK; the French like root vegetables. They also like organ meats...but I won't go there.
• Women have forgotten who has the upper hand in ALL sexual matters except forcible rape: Women.

To repeat: Men sleep with whomever they can; women sleep with whomever they want. Teach it to your daughters, and keep it in mind when these anti-feminist greedsters crawl out of their holes and try to pervert men's ordinary conduct into something more. 

Blood lust denied, for once, in Mississippi: Cory Maye to be freed

Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom: An admirable choice for a household god*

Huffington Post has just reported on the story of a man who opened fire on people breaking into his home where he had just put his infant to sleep, only belatedly realizing they were cops. He killed one. The one he killed was the police chief's son. In a small town in Mississippi. The man was black. The cop was white. A death sentence was handed down.

Fortunately, there were so many errors in that particular rush to judgment that a judge first commuted the sentence to life without parole (whew) and now the man in question, Cory Maye, has been re-sentenced to ten years for manslaughter, years already served. He is on his way home. Mayes did not premeditate killing the cop. Indeed, the cops were in the wrong to begin with. They should have been invading the home of a criminal who lived nearby, not Maye's home, but had a rotten tip from a drugged out informant.

What does that have to do with the nominal subject of this blog, the household gods? The ancient Roman gods supposed to protect those who dwell in a particular place?

Everything. Appended to the Huffington Post story was the following comment:

 He shot a cop and now we are supposed to celebrate that he got only 10 years.

The person posting the comment, who goes by the screen name Turukano, has 668 fans on HuffPo, and uses the line "Obama 2012" in his/her profile. If I were Mr. Obama, I'd be embarrassed to acknowledge such bone-deep ignorance in a supporter. Turukano did, moreover, apparently jump onto the story the instant it was published to bandy his aggressive stance around; Turukano's is the first comment. (Maybe that's a good thing; the two that came in next were compassionate comments.)

Turukano's comment bespeaks both the incredible ineffectiveness of American academic education, and the totally absent spiritual education provided in American homes and churches.

How can any human read this story and fail to realize that a man may have lost his life because of a Rube Goldbergian series of errors and ineptitude, not to mention craven duplicity and professional incompetence, on the part of any number of the people involved?

How can any human being read this story and contend that for shooting a cop mistakenly--while defending property from an invasion launched in the night when confusion reigned and alertness was compromised--a person should get more than ten years? How can anyone be so moronic as to divorce the action from the impetus to that action, and issue forth a blanket demand for blood?

How? Because a certain segment of America is all about blood lust. That same segment seems to be all about placing some people above others. Why should it be worse and demand a greater punishment when a cop is killed, than, for example, when a teacher or clergy member is killed?  Or when ANY innocent person is mistakenly killed. 

To quote an old song, there is an answer to this: Teach your children well.

Teach them that blood lust is the province of ignorant people, of people who have barely climbed out of the primordial ooze.

Teach them that the benefit of the doubt is due to those caught in webs of incompetence, bigotry and malevolence, regardless. Eventually, the truth will out, and it is nice when ALL of those involved are alive to see it.

Teach them that there is a higher calling than applying punishment to miscreants based on technical demands; that higher calling is applying punishment tempered with wisdom, justice and impartiality.

I would suggest that an admirable household god to enshrine would be this one: The god or goddess of anti--capital punishment.

In honor of this god, refuse to espouse the ultimate punishment for any man or woman. Because it may be that that man or that woman is innocent, wholly or substantially, and if you impose the ultimate punishment, you can never undo the evil you have done. And that would offend most gods.

* Wiki Commons.Sculpture displayed at Roman Baths, Bath, England.