Mary
November 1st, 2009
After the baby came she gave this sweet shrine to Jill, who had no desire for a baby, and thus gave it to me along with the story. She had been disappointed in childlessness for years. She believed that the Virgin Mother would respond to the care and devotion that she put into the shrine’s creation. The Virgin Mother would intervene, not with a virgin birth, but, you know, the usual way. I study such sentimentalities, perhaps a bit cynically. But it is meticulously made and quite lovely to look at.
New York Times, 11/1/09: “Even as drought kills off Yemen’s crops, farmers in villages like this one are turning increasingly to a thirsty plant called qat, the leaves of which are chewed every day by most Yemeni men (and some women) for their mild narcotic effect. The farmers have little choice: qat is the only way to make a profit.
Meanwhile, the water wells are running dry, and deep ominous cracks have begun opening in the parched earth, some of them hundreds of yards long.”
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. Karl Marx, in total sympathetic understanding of the situations
George's selection of 66 Phlogs is available in print from People's Press.
