Jasmine Washington - The Manna Tease

Here's another new song for The Manna Tease, and a video of us practicing it on the rooftop this morning. I came up with this song driving back from Tahoe a month ago, with the obligatory references to William Blake.



Here are the lyrics & chords in C (we play it in Bb.)

Jasmine Washington

C amin G F
My mother bore me in the wilds of Maine,
amin emin amin G F C
And I am white, but oh, my soul is chartreuse.
C amin G F
My heart is healthy but my pleasure is pain.
amin emin amin G F C
My blouse is usually tight, but sometimes I let it all loose.

C amin G F C

I’m just a white girl named Jasmine Washington.

amin F

I’m a little white girl, a white girl.

emin amin G F C

These colors don’t run, girls just want to have fun.

amin F

I’m a little white girl, a white girl.

emin amin dmin

Deep ocean pearl, bright clouds unfurl.

F amin  G F C

Daughter of the sun, Jasmine Washington.

My father called me his rose of York,
Fertilized in manure, but lovely as the dawn.
The pig is filthy, but I’m as clean as cured pork,
And I am pure, arise my love, the night is gone.
I’m just a white girl, &c...

My boyfriend calls me his albino possom:
He is diverse, I call him America.
I’ll shield him from the shade so he can blossom,
And bear my curse, but I am naked beneath my burka.

I’m just a white girl, &c...


©2011 The Manna Tease

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Itwaslost GOOGLY SEARCH TERMS 2011

It's been a while since we've rounded up the search terms that led people to this blog. So without further ado, straight from our Statistical Department, is the top ten itwaslost-bound Google search terms:

1. curling jokes
2. firewhiskey recipe
3. michael jackson castration
4. purple flag
5. firewhiskey
6. itwaslost
7. famous non drivers
8. flag of the world
9. michael jackson castrat
10. black ram

In case you missed the significance, HOORAY! Michael Jackson's testicles are NO LONGER the top search idea leading people to this blog! (That and 'purple flag' were 1 & 2 for years.) That means, to give audiences what they want, we need to start producing more content about curling humor and Harry Potter recipes. Now, for fun, I went thru the long list and picked out the funniest search terms that led people here:

a hunks pennis
albino alligator for sale
ample mammaries
castracted the 14 tears old boy cause i love him so much
cloud fat woman shape
dirtiest panties
drinking corn whiskey
girls taking hookah pictures
great white marijuana sewer gator myth
grindelwald release a handkerchief
how to make corn likker
how to make corn liqueur
how to mix corn licquour
james welsch porn
man on manatee
rhymes with smurfs
shocking gelded men pics
song socks with sandals
the dirtiest panties ever
vapid innocuous euphemisms
very preggo
we found it .org
"dugong jokes"
"get a fucking job is all"
"giant tree trunk piece of ass"

Those are all culled from only the last month. This website has written about such a wide range of strange topics over the years, it's always surprising to see what people are out there looking for, and hopefully we helped them find it. M.M.M. suggested that "Man on Manatee" be the name of the next album for The Manna Tease. I love the concept of "corn liqueur." If we figure out how to make it, you'll read it here first. Also, I'm psyched that people are finding this website from searching for words that rhyme with 'smurf.' Good morning!

Election Day Endorsements Part 2: Oh, shit, man, what time is it, did the polls already close?

It's probably too late to make proper endorsements, half-way thru election day, since so many people vote early in California anyway. I'm nervous about the fate of Prop 19, which has been behind in the polls, & could be the last realistic time for awhile to end prohibition. The bloggers for itwaslost are more champagne drinkers & hookah smokers, not cannabis connoisseurs, but there's been a lot of good arguments everywhere why Prop 19 benefits the whole state, not just those who ever plan on smoking some pot legally. Former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara has been campaigning from a law enforcement angle, he's written some good editorials & stars in this tv ad:

I also really liked the sound arguments laid down by the New York Times' Nicholas Krystof:

[...]Our nearly century-long experiment in banning marijuana has failed as abysmally as Prohibition did, and California may now be pioneering a saner approach. Sure, there are risks if California legalizes pot. But our present drug policy has three catastrophic consequences.

First, it squanders billions of dollars that might be better used for education. California now spends more money on prisons than on higher education. It spends about $216,000 per year on each juvenile detainee, and just $8,000 on each child in the troubled Oakland public school system.

Each year, some 750,000 Americans are arrested for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Is that really the optimal use of our police force?

In contrast, legalizing and taxing marijuana would bring in substantial sums that could be used to pay for schools, libraries or early childhood education. A Harvard economist, Jeffrey A. Miron, calculates that marijuana could generate $8.7 billion in tax revenue each year if legalized nationally, while legalization would also save the same sum annually in enforcement costs.

That’s a $17 billion swing in the nation’s finances — enough to send every 3- and 4-year-old in a poor family to a high-quality preschool. And that’s an investment that would improve education outcomes and reduce crime and drug use in the future — with enough left over to pay for an extensive nationwide campaign to discourage drug use.

The second big problem with the drug war is that it has exacerbated poverty and devastated the family structure of African-Americans. Partly that’s because drug laws are enforced inequitably. Black and Latino men are much more likely than whites to be stopped and searched and, when drugs are found, prosecuted.

Here in Los Angeles, blacks are arrested for marijuana possession at seven times the rate whites are, according to a study by the Drug Policy Alliance, which favors legalization. Yet surveys consistently find that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than young blacks.

Partly because of drug laws, a black man now has a one-in-three chance of serving time in prison at some point in his life, according to the Sentencing Project, a group that seeks reform in the criminal justice system. This makes it more difficult for black men to find jobs, more difficult for black women to find suitable husbands, and less common for black children to grow up in stable families with black male role models. So, sure, drugs have devastated black communities — but the remedy of criminal sentencing has made the situation worse.

He continues with more about crime and gangs and pot's risks.

There's also a really compelling environmental reason which not many people are discussing. It goes something along the lines of: Grow houses use a disgusting amount of electricity & water, much of it pirated from the grid. Let's let the sun do the work growing the state's pot! And if you don't believe there's untold thousands of grow houses peppered around California in every neighborhood, then there's some oregano in a baggy I'd like to sell you.

And lastly, a word about the opposition. Take for instance the wording of the Los Angeles Times' "No" endorsement: "The marijuana legalization measure is poorly thought out, badly crafted and replete with loopholes and contradictions." This is just something its opponents have made up, to make it sound like it was written by irresponsible stoners, knowing most of us aren't political enough to read the details of the bill ourselves. Exactly the opposite is true. The San Francisco Chronicle's Debra J Saunders wrote:

The establishment spin goes something like this: Even if marijuana legalization makes sense, Prop. 19 is so poorly written that voters must reject it.

Bunk. The measure is tightly written to give state and local governments unimpeded authority in deciding whether to allow the sale of marijuana, and if so, how to tax and regulate it.

There won't be a better bill. Marijuana prohibition enables and enriches criminal cartels and gangs. Californians have a chance to end the madness, and voters should grab it.

As for the Stoners Against 19 campaign, led by Dragonfly Whatshername, I don't even want to respond to them. It's naive! When you weigh, on one side, decriminalizing something millions of people do safely, versus, on the other side, things are fine as they are & omg what if tobacco companies want to sell pot!? then there's just no contest. Sure, having millions on non-criminals smoking pot illegally is a copacetic status quo. If you're white.

Antique Cigar-Box Girl #29

Lowell Darling for California Governor

Yes, there is someone you should vote for in the California gubernatorial race, my dear Californian readers. His name is Lowell Darling, the profession noted below his name on the ballot in the Democratic primary on June 8, 2010 is "Independent Artist". Darling ran for governor of California once before, in 1977, and he's taking another shot at it. His only campaign promise is to do nothing until the legislative idiocy that prevents California from doing anything about it's perennial fiscal apocalypse is fixed. Read more in this nice little N.Y Times piece about him if you wish:



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/us/14calif.html

and please do have a look at his video art here:

http://www.lowelldarling.com/archive.html

Music and Political Power

I have had many occasions over the past few months to think about Politics and music- or rather, Political power and music. The relations between the two have often been adversarial. One of my housemates is a PHD candidate in musicology, focusing on historical musicology, and has educated me a bit about religious contrafacta in 18th century France and Germany- a time and place when warring Christian factions and their associated nobles, royals, bands of goons, etc. were basically synonymous with the "political situation". The Religious Contrafacta (essentially, contrafacta as I understand it means setting different words to a tune) of the time were spread in alehouses and so forth, where one of the very few literate people in a town would be charged by whoever wished to influence public opinion/religious-political alleigances etc. with the task of learning a new set of lyrics to set to familiar bawdy pub songs, and then to teach the new lyrics to all present at alehouse antics. At the time this was viewed as the most effective way to influence public opinion, and was one of the primary tools to fuel factionalism used by those who wished to do so.
A couple months back I was reading a book called 'Music is the weapon of the future; fifty years of African popular music' by Frank Tenaille (recommended), and there is constant mention therein of the Political power of music and the ways in which it was suppressed by corrupt governments in various African countries and contexts throughout the 20th century- for instance, about popular music in Zimbabwe in the late 1960's he says "Though banned by Ian Smith's racist regime, the songs were broadcast secretly. Thanks to them, Many youths joined the resistance. they also earned their composer(Thomas Mapfumo) several months of imprisonment - although the authorities were unable to charge him with a tangible crime, since the words of the Chimerunga songs were cloaked in the parables and metaphors so treasured by the national languages of Zimbabwe". In Angola, Liceu Vieira Dias was making music with his band Ngola Ritmos (named for Ngola Kiluanje, leader of the Angolan rebellion against Portuguese colonization in the 16th Century), when he was arrested in 1959, along with fellow musician Amadeu Amorim and sent to the Concentration Camp of Arrafel in Cape Verde. Their fellow musician Jose Maria was arrested in 1961 and forced into the Army (for some reason, this one really gets me). Last but not least, Carnival was banned in Angola from 1961 to 1968, because it was viewed as so potentially dangerous to Marcelo Caetano's ruling Portuguese colonial regime to allow Carnival to be held. The music had to be suppressed, at all costs. Problem is, music can never be suppressed. (Unfortunate sidenote: after Independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola became super-fucked. Civil war, Cold War meddling and all kinds of other shit, but that's another story for another day).
Speaking of Cold War meddling, lets talk a little bit about music and cold war meddling. Today I was transcribing an interview, I won't say why or with whom, but this is a person who spent a couple years in the Philippines in the early 1970's. He tells a story about visiting someone he knew back home in Mississippi on top of a mountain in the North of the Phillipines. The guy he was visiting worked for the U.S Information Agency- in other words, our Overseas Propaganda People. My source on this one describes being taken into this armored compound on top of a mountain, armed guards, barbed wire, intense security checks. The buddy from back home says okay now I'll show you what we do up here and proceeds to let him in on the big U.S propaganda protocol. They had set up giant broadcasting towers and they were broadcasting music into North Korea and China. Rock n' Roll. R+B. Classical. Jazz. Blues. Just think about that. This heavily armored compound on top of a mountain in the Philippines full of U.S Government employees in uniform whose sole purpose in being there is to broadcast The Supremes and Charlie Parker and Debussy into the closed Communist territories of North Korea and China.

in conclusion, I hereby nominate Olaf Mary Mohammed to be Minister of Propaganda for Imaginary America.

Cartocacoethes: Squagellan & United Steak

Mrs Eley points us to this website Strange Maps (strangemaps.wordpress.com) which has an ongoing series of Accidental Geography. They dub the phenomenon "Cartocacoethes: (i.e. the uncontrollable urge to see maps in everyday, non-cartography-related objects)". Besides the interesting images of recognizable map-shapes lurking in the mundane, there's some nice puns & portmanteaus in good use: like "squagellan", the gnawed pumpkin South America to the left, a "portmanteau of the culprit [the squirrel who bit the pumpkin], and the explorer Magellan (who sailed around the continent along the Straits that bear his name)." As for the United Steak, they suspect the artist of tampering with the image, but it is a potent icon. More of these here. including a Gingerbread District of Columbia, a doormat Estonia, & a cornflake in the shape of Illinois.

Correspondences: Weekly Letter No. 3 from G.F.M. to J.H.W.

Click on the bottom of the image to see a larger readable version.

Nomination for the Greatest Patriotic Song of All America

To think that I was horrified when I first heard this song, at a live Toby Keith concert in the basketball stadium in Sacramento, California. Now I can't get enough, he really captured the zeitgeist of the Bush Era & made an immortal anthem. "Put a boot up your ass, it's the american way"? Amazing - - -

Map of the USA

CHALLENGE! I bet we did better than most Americans. Last night, we counted 46, & most are in the right place, & soon were able to locate which two we forgot. Sorry the map is bigger than my scanner. NO CHEATING.

News: David Rees entering Mitt Romney's Essay Contest

David Rees (of the "Get Your War On" comic) has been blogging about his plan to win Mitt Romney's "Free & Strong America" essay contest. Here's the developments: On June Tenth, Rees wrote:

...sorry for the light blogging recently. I’ve been busy with top-secret procrastination secrets “they” don’t want you to know about.

Anyway, for all the writers out there, I was scanning a list of grants and fellowships (Yaddo, Guggenheim Fellowship, McArthur Genius Award, etc.) when I found a new prize that raises the bar on prestige and reward:

"Mitt Romney political organization, the Free and Strong America PAC, is offering supporters a new chance to take an expenses-paid trip to Boston and join Mitt himself in his family’s seats at Fenway Park for a Red Sox Game."

[...]All you have to do is write an essay about “What A Free and Strong America Means to Me.”

A half hour later, he blogged:

250 words or less? Please, I can knock this out in 25 words or less.

I reckon that's only the equivalent of ten or twelve twitter-twotes, which is more than I'm used to writing these days. Too bad, tho, it costs $50 to enter! Another half hour after that, he wrote:

DEVELOPING … more information about the Mitt Romney essay contest …

The author of the best essay will get to go to Boston with a guest, while the other top-five essays will be featured on the site, and the authors will receive baseballs personally autographed by Mitt himself.

I’m telling everyone now: DON’T BOTHER ENTERING THIS CONTEST. I AM GOING TO WIN ALL THE BASEBALLS.

“What does a free and strong America mean to me in 250 words or less?”

That is the question I’m going to answer. Anyone who tries to answer it before me, you’re going down.

The next day, "Gathering My 250 Words"

I stayed up all night thinking of what a free and strong America means to me in 250 words or less … and dreaming of baseballs signed by Mitt Romney! (Seriously, if anyone else even thinks of entering this contest, there’s gonna be trouble courtesy of Hi & Lois, aka my FISTS.)

Anyway, I’ve started collecting my 250 words for the essay. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Free (duh!)
Strong (double duh!)
America (figure I’ll need this one)
The (x5) (stockpiling definite articles is smart, according to my writer friend)
Declaration of Independence
Terrorism (x2)
Principles
Bravery
Mitt Romney (x3) (LOL, a little buttering up never hurt anyone, right?)
YOGA (this is my own little twist I’m bringing, this’ll take the judges by surprise and I’ll win the contest!)

Still need a few more words … I’m working on it … I can smell the Romney sky box already …

Yesterday, a competitor reared his head:

I checked out Mitt Romney’s new web site, freeandstrongamerica.com, to see if there was more information about the essay contest I am going to win.

Lo and behold, in a blog post about the essay contest, a commenter named Chris Bentley has posted the following:

To me, free strong America means that when someone steals, there is punishment. Is that yours? No? Then you can’t take it. See? It’s simple. Another thing free strong America means to me is that if I want my family to have a puppy, they can have a puppy, OK? Thank you Milt for all you’re doing.

“Milt?”

This Chris Bentley fellow is going to give me a run for my money. Well, that’s fine– I’ll just run faster, harder, and stronger than him.

Those baseballs are mine.

My best to Mr Rees. Too bad the essay contest isn't democratically voted upon, as it should be in a Free & Strong America, then we could tilt the scales. I also noticed at Romney's website, one of his many studly sons Tagg Romney is still blogging for him. I wonder, when did Gov. Romney start consulting with Gov. Palin for baby names? OR, since Romney's children are older, maybe that's the secret influence of the Republican Guber-spawn names. (Remember, The Onion's suggestions for more Palin baby names were Frag, Moss, Scoot, Skiffer, Minnow, Plow, Snatch, Twiglet, and Drum). I think Tagg & Milt should unite with Track, Trig & Tripp, form a secret monosyllabic male society, & CONTROL THE WORLD.

Department of Beards Special Update: David Traver wins 2009 World Beard & Mustache Championships

A local Alaskan won the 2009 World Beard & Mustache Championships! God Bless America, we can compete on the global beard stage!

From the Anchorage Daily News:

[David] Traver was among 300 competitors from around the globe who converged here over the weekend for the 2009 World Beard and Moustache Championships. His beard, dyed several colors and woven into the shape of a snowshoe, beat out more than 140 others to become the coolest beard in the world. He took home a commemorative gold pan and a salmon fishing trip. [...]

Along with his overall title, Traver took first in the freestyle beard competition, a category that's been dominated by Germany since the contest began in the early '90s.

"They have never lost in full beard freestyle, but not yesterday. Yesterday is the first time they got knocked off," he said. "They were humble, and you have to respect that."

Outdoing the Germans in the category for avant-garde whiskers took ingenuity, he said. Plus, they were getting predictable.

With his beard stylist, Ledjha Carson, Traver months ago started brainstorming a beard shape that was "out of the box," he said. They considered eagle wings, moose antlers and a sled dog team before settling on the snowshoe. It took Carson 90 minutes to weave it the day of the competition.

"She wanted it right. She was very meticulous," he said. "But my neck is still stiff."

Traver, who is 43 and works as a driver for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, got into facial hair competition locally about 10 years ago with the Mr. Fur Face competition during Fur Rendezvous. After that, he got involved with the South Central Alaska Beard and Moustache Club, which bid to bring the international championships to Anchorage this year -- beating out Liechtenstein. He dedicated his win to his father, David Traver, who died in September.

Traver enjoys being immersed in the beard-positive environment of the competition, he said.

Sadly, Travers is now going to shave it off. The next championship will be held in Trondheim, Norway, in 2011.

More from itwaslost's Department of Beards here.

Earf People Day

In the early days of this weblog, I wrote about Nonviolent Nondriving, my tiny personal movement to not drive a car. Since cars kill more than wars, nondriving is inherently nonviolent. (More people die in Israel from car accidents than from violence. In the US, we kill around forty thousand people a year in car accidents, compared to around two thousand firearm deaths.) ANYWAY, not to mention pollution. Happy Earf Day Earf People & Lizard People! New York to California! 

We just noticed that Brains Aha!, our Sports & Leisure correspondent, has been covertly blogging also at a website called carfreeusa.blogspot.com, which is about many things, but principally about a carfree USA. A few days ago he posted this link to my facebooks wall:

People have been pushing to turn Berkeley's pedestrian-busy Telegraph Avenue into something akin to Cornmarket Street in Oxford, England - buses & lorries okay, there's no reason to have a personal car on it. Parts of Berkeley, like most of Oxford, is just too damned complicated to drive around in anyway, not to mention parking. Also not to mention pollution, & societies & communities ripped apart by car roads.

Also for Earth Day, I recommend this Huffington Post post, a list of statistics about livestock's impact on the environment. Remember it takes six pounds of grain to make one pound of meat, & eleven times as much fossil fuel.

So today I inaugurate itwaslost.org's Department of Nonviolent Nondriving, as part of our larger Imaginary American anti-Lizard People initiative spearheading.

Videos: World Beard & Mustache Championships; I love Jesus but I drink a little.

Ms Jessica Beer of Portland (pictured to the left conducting a choir of unbearded angels), today on the facebooks, called our attention to two videos. The first is from the 2003 World Beard & Mustache Championships in Carson City, Nevada.

Look! One of the men on the runway is the very mustache I posted below! In response to my "25 Things" note (which I'll probably post here tomorrow), she writes "There are only 107 days left until the World Beard and Moustache Championships. Do you have your ticket to Anchorage yet? http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/index.html."
The Department of Beards & February Month of the Mustache are bearing so much fruit!

The second video is a fine moment in daytime talkshow history:

Lizard People / Lacertic Humanoids / Dagastani / With a Z & the Pet-Shop Boys

I love this photo of the infamous "Lizard People" ballot, one of the Fifteen Hundred or so contested during the Minnesota recount. The Wikipedia redirects "Lizard People" to "Reptilian Humanoid", where, under politics, besides the Al Franken issue, there was one other lacertic entrance into the campaign: "During a provincial election in Ontario, Canada on September 12, 2003, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario disseminated a press release describing Ontario Liberal Party opposition leader Dalton McGuinty as an 'Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet'" The Wikipedia entry for "Evil Reptilian Kitten-Eater from Another Planet" was kind enough to post that tiny picture of Candidate McGuinty holding a kitten.

Here's two more groovy videos for the "staying in Berkeley drinking forties alone" demographic this Holiday Season: The first one posted by Miss Peng on Facebook, where she notes "Sloane from Ferris Bueller is Dagestani?"



The second is Liza Minelli singing Stephen Sondheim's "Losing My Mind" to some bizarre 80s beat. Sondheim's ambiguous chords sort of translate well into the Eno Era, (better than poor Liza).



There's a sneak peak of my Nutcracker gospel here - as soon as I find a place that doesn't charge $5 a page to scan, I'll post this song's shape note score, as well as my Virgin Mary tune, before Christmas hopefully.

Happy Thanks

The image above is made entirely of vegetables. (There's more here.)
I've read the poem below for several years at the Welsch Family thanksgivings, as a sort of secular blessing, & I will read it today. Happy Thanks!

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are.

-Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road (1892)

Su Diarrea Diaria

Miss Proinseas, this was pointed out by a blogger named E.A. Hanks over at the Huffington Post. Just as, after a major blackout in New York City, the hospitals are packed with babies exactly nine months later, to the day, so too should we expect a lot of babies exactly nine months after the amazing night America experienced after Obama's victory. I admit to a strong desire to impregnate some of the beautiful Obama revelers at San Francisco's street party at Valencia & 19th. I'm not so sure I didn't, as the photos from the evening show my face covered in lipstick kisses (see above), & there is even one video that shows me being kissed by a stranger, who I then let sip from my champagne (see below). I have very few memories from then on.

The amazing part - in sync with a lot of the Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences & the weird curses & repetitions in American Presidential lore - is that 9 months after Obama's victory is August 4th, Barack Hussein Obama II's birthday. If you see where I'm going with this, he was born on August 4th, 1961, exactly nine months after Kennedy's election. I'm sure Sarah Vowell would love this. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And no! if that's what you're thinking, I'm in no way suggesting that Obama is destined to be assassinated! He can't be, he wasn't elected on a year ending in zero! (It is my belief that Reagan broke that curse by escaping an assassination attempt, & then was gradually plagued with the foreshadowings of Alzheimer's; twenty years later, Bush would carry on the tradition of brain-dead presidents, a clever update on Tecumseh's Curse.) But there is a curious Lincoln-Kennedy-Obama Axis of Imagination & Gravity, as also evinced by the similarities in Lincoln & Obama's biographies. (Great article on that from the Fredericksburg Freelance-Star here.) Former California Republican Congressman Tom Campbell, whom I heard speak at U.C. Berkeley's International House last night, also pointed out that Kennedy had close political ties to a Chicago Mayor named Richard Daley, & now Obama has close political ties with a Chicago Mayor named Richard Daley. "Some things never change," said Campbell.

You might also want to peruse next August's Obama Babies for 2052's unlikely President.

Hiakus for Diane Benson's Campaign Advertisements

Diane Benson is running for Alaska's "at-large" congressional ottoman (the street term for a state with two senators but only one congressman.) Her values are your values, the lives written large in Imaginary America.

Freedom:
Soupçon of danger,
Riding helmetless towards love,
Red state turns green.

From the Wikipedia:

Benson began performance work in 1980 and has worked with most major Alaskan theatre companies in such productions as Crimes of the Heart, Wonderland, and Keet Shagoon. She taught stage-craft to inmates in Alaska prisons; led at-risk kids in summer theatre and video programs with Out North Contemporary Art House, created the first contemporary Alaska Native theatre in the state of Alaska in 1985; The Alaska Native Dance & Story Theatre; toured nationally with Naa Kahidi Theatre; directed in Canada for the Nakai Theatre Ensemble, was project coordinator for the Silamiut Greenlandic Theatre Project, several time Artist-in-Residence in rural Alaska, and wrote a number of plays including Sister Warrior and When My Spirit Raised Its Hands.

Integrity:
The Ben Franklins tempt,
Alaska's sylvan lobbyists,
Ignored & forgot.

Diane Benson's son Latseen (pictured in the truck at the top) was severely wounded in Iraq in 2005.

Honor:
Stroke the display case,
A lonesome tundra guitar,
In service of God.

The Anchorage Daily News's top three headlines on the front page on December 12, 2000, read "High Court Ruling Awaited" (regarding the Florida recount in Bush vs. Gore), followed by "Top School Post Goes to Comeau," and, finally, centered lower on the page, in equally large font, "Student Attacks Professor's Poem." The subtitle read, "'Indian Girls' described as racist, insulting." Two primary photos on the front page garnered attention, the larger being that of Elvis impersonators shoveling snow for a hockey game promotion. The other photo was the beleaguered look of a challenged local university professor postured amongst her books. Somehow, what seemed like a rather normal school semester and typical enough poetry class ended with a tidal wave of divisive controversy and inflamed a community already teetering from volatile race relations. I was central to the controversy. I was the student. We Tlingits have a story about the Cannibal Giant who at one time preyed on the people when they were weakened. The Cannibal Giant was once a woman but through evil became a monster. Even when she was seemingly destroyed by fire, the flame transformed her carnivorous essence from cannibal to mosquito, and thus she continues to plague the people to this day. Some say it is a metaphor...

-From Project Muse, about The American Indian Quarterly

Trust:
Man or Mosquito,
We all crave the cur's dinner,
But restrained by trust.

Change may take more time than we would like, but it will come. You are someone who believes in humanity. You are someone who knows that it takes caring about our neighbor next door to improve the state of the world. We know that all those who came before us; that loosened their own shackles of poverty, of prejudice, of injustice, made it possible for someone like me to even run for office. We loosened those chains a little more, and maybe the next time someone like us will win. We can change the world, but first, we must be the change we wish to see in the world. I thank you for being that change.

-Diane Benson, from http://bensonforcongress.com/

Experience:
Wisdom of all types,
Bespectacled Northern girls
Chase tomorrow's dogs.