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Charlie Pellerin Politiku
Three died in the fire/ The rest bravely walked into the thunder/ Because they loved their country.

Bob Fish Politiku
The President’s ship/ Hornet crew well trained/ Splashdown Columbia!
Hornet Plus Three!/ The world is watching/ Journey’s end, Apollo 11.

Fraser Thomson Politiku
“Eagle has landed!”/ The moon was never more full/ Than it was that night
Neil and Mike and Buzz/ I remember where I was/ And who I became
A quarter million;/ Long miles from earth to the moon/ Don’t forget the flag…

Tara Burkholder Politiku
A man on the moon./ Just who would have believed it?/ A leader’s goal met.
On von Braun’s rocket/ Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins/ Soar towards mythos.
Tranquility Base/ Here, the Eagle has landed./ And the whole world watched.

James Oberg Politiku
Before, dream only. / After, touch pieces of sky. / Eternity splits.

Rod Pyle Politiku
Eagle descending/ 1202 alarm- trouble/ But we continue
Reentry over/ Bobbing in the warm ocean/ The air smells so sweet
Fifty pounds of rocks/ Proof we went, proof we conquered/ A bit of the moon

Richard Speier Politiku
1st Moon landing–marked/ history.  Sixth landing–muh./ So let’s send robots.
Astronauts jiggle,/ contaminate, cost zillions./ So let’s send robots.
The Universe — lots/ to see.  Astronauts — big bucks./ So let’s send robots.

Sam Saltoun Politiku
We leave Africa,/ So we must also leave Earth…/ It is what we do…
Climb, dive, reach the Moon,/ Our greatest strength and weakness,/ It is what we are…
Not the safe choice, but/ We land in the Apennines,/ It is how we dream…

Ellen Briggs Stansell Politiku
Ed, old man, bright eyes/ You studied the first moon rocks/ You are not a fake
Echoes of tantrums/ The floor’s wet by the fountain/ “The lunar module!”
One small step, indeed./ Two men got a real fancy/ vacation. Where’s mine?

Karen Goldner Politiku
Forty years ago/ Got to stay up late to watch/ Black and white moon walk
At five I thought the/ moonwalk was cool since it meant/ a later bedtime

Randi Cecchine Politiku
Before I was born/ Someone landed on the moon/ At least, so I’m told.

Ralph Dannheisser Politiku
To the moon, Alice/ became real in ‘69: / The Eagle landed!

Michael O’Brien Politiku
Alan Shepard turns/ In his grave each time someone/ Says: Moon Colony

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And so here I am with a brand spankin new Politiku Posse shout-out:

WTF is the deal w/ Sarah Palin’s Bolt-from-the-Blue resignation announcement?

If, like me, you have no clue as to what is going on feel free to speculate.  Or if you’d prefer to just, well, not speculate on anything but just talk about having no idea what’s going on then feel free to jump in and do that also.  The original Sarah Palin haiku series I assembled, back in October, transformed her from The Democratic Party’s “gift that keeps on giving” to laurel crowned muse and I can’t wait to ‘hear’ the Swan Song version.

Thanks again for everyone who helped me create the Iranelection# Where is My/Their Vote politiku, now running on Huffington.

Also, got two more Politiku media mentions last week:
Troutswirl:  The Haiku Foundation Blog
Provocative Haiku
The former was, obviously, more enthused about my syllaba-structural choices than the later.

Finally, Pat Myers emailed me about the upcoming Washington Post Politiku competition. Deadline coming up soon.  Here’s the link for it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR2009062601730.html

Speaking of deadline, Palin Politiku submissions for Huffpo must be submitted by Tuesday, July 7th at midnight PST .  Submissions are being posted on Twitter @Politiku.  Please post submissions for Twitter as well as for The Huffington Post in the comment section of this page or send to my email address

Stream of Submissions

Peter Orvetti Politiku
I would make a joke/ But Sarah sues bloggers now/ So I guess I won’t

The hidden scandal:/An Argentina love nest/ With Dave Letterman

Oh gosh gee ya know/ I’m gonna write a book, or/ Maybe I’ll read one

Karen Goldner Politiku
Sarah, Sarah…wow/ What will Palin think of next?/ Why not go away?

Thomas Huynh Politiku
She was Governor/ She was McCain’s running mate/ None of those now why

Stream of Submissions:

Gerhard Holtzendorf Politiku Have you seen my child/ The guard wore green and a smile/ Do not use real names/ A flame in the heart /Put a face to each of those/ The cries of angels /Basiji have guns /Tehran is Tiananmen /Courageous protest (These were all paraphrased from Twitter traffic) Michael O’Brien Politiku Tracheotomy! /Unearth the nascent voicebox /Farsi Republic Karen Goldner Politiku The rockets red glare /Inspiring for our people /For dogs not so much

It’s the challenge of getting at the inexplicably that really engages me.  The always reaching for something slightly beyond my grasp and the need to pass that sense of wonder on.  Something like Stonehenge.  People kinda get that this remaining remnant of the ancient world had something to do w/ identifying the seasonal shift vis a vis location of the sun but that’s about it.  Trying to figure out how much the people who built Stonehenge knew about the Earth’s rotation would be kind of like trying to figure out why Tess of the D’urberville’s flight ends at Stonehenge…

…assuming, that is, that Thomas Hardy himself even knew why he ended her flight there. Did he want to parallel the height of summer ritual with Tess’ young life about to end or was the ancient solstice pilgrimage to this great calendarical mystery something that had always captured his imagination and something he had therefore always been waiting for the opportunity to use at some point, in some way.

Wondered for a moment what it could have been like, had Shakespeare set Midsummer Night’s Dream been at Stonehenge rather than the forest near Athens and then realized that even though Stonehenge might have a closer historical connection to solstice, it would have been too solid, cumbersome, traditional and, well, heavy to fit the spirit of the world of the night that Lysander (act i) characterizes as a
“Dream Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say, — Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.”

Tess of the D’urbervilles is inescapable destiny with its center of gravity being her inevitably untimely end, starting with her arrest in the circle of Stonehenge rocks, Midsummer night riles up preconceptions and escapes destiny. Stonehenge, the icon of mid-summer, would have been way too heavy and cumbersome an icon to use for that. Am glad, therefore, the guy stuck w/ branches, sprites and trees. There’s a good reason that Shakespeare revisionism is generally avoided, I guess. Oh, and if you enjoy old-skool paintings of this play as much as I do (That Victorian Fairy Painting exhibit at The Frick round 1999 remains on of my all time favs — saw it on a snowy day between hot cocoa and a blizzard trek through Central Park).  Were the exhibit to ever return, it would make a perfect Winter Solstice activity.

I recalled how much I used to love pressing those buttons on the back of the old Sony TV that turned the screen to snow when I was a kid.  Even Brooklyn, in the early 00s, I was still using a tinfoil antennae to tune in Charlie Rose.  Something so wonderful about being able to reduce the snow on the screen by crumpling the tin foil on the end of an antenna made me feel so, involved w/ the process.

Photo by, Arnold Chao

So, back to the evening of June 13th.  My birthday and the first day of post-analog TV. Dan and my friends Jill, Ryan and me acknowledged the passing of the analog television era over dinner and red wine which then dissolved into a game of Balderdash.  We drank more red wine and ate Jill’s amazingly, amazing carrot cake—she’d made it from scratch just fer m’ birthday.

Before the game began, Jill’s husband, Ryan –who repairs high-end watches for a living– looked over an old pocket watch my mom had given me a couple weeks ago.  Mom had insisted the watch was a ‘piece of junk’ when she offered it to me cause I liked it.  Ryan opened the back.  The gears were decoratively engraved and, according to Ryan,  number of “jewels” that pinned the gears indicated revealed it was of more value than my mom (who’d purchased it at a thrift store in Massachusetts because the brand, Waltham, beared the same name as the school she first taught at.  Ryan speculated the watch was made around 1910; then offered to try and fix it up for me, get it working again.  “If you’d said it was a precious family heirloom” he told me, “I’d have had no interest.  It was fact that mom had inaccurately deemed it a piece of junk,” he went on to exaplin that made him want to get it ticking again, bring it back to life.

So in Anecdotal Ode to Digital-ness, I created a series of lyrics, designed to be set to a minimalist score of some sort. Which means, I’ve gotta write another series of lyrics now.  Something that would go w/ a minimalist score, presumably.  Only I’m on deadline now for a couple of other things. So I’ll make this ode an exceptionally minimal ode:

When I was a kid
I was always the one up
on Saturday mornings

And starting 6:30 or 7:00a.m.
I would watch the nature shows
on Saturday Morning
and then after that
I would watch the Superfriends, at 8:00.

And in between
I would walk over to
the back of the television set
so I could press that little red button
the little red button
on the lower left corner
on the back of the television set.

Watching the colors on the screen
While the rest of the world was asleep,
Watching the colors on the screen,
and the pixels keep moving and changing.

Then, I would finally let go of the button
and go back to watching
the nature shows
and the Superfriends

And then back to the little red button
and I would try and figure out
what was the color of the screen
I never knew the color of the screen
I simply never knew the color of the screen.

(Hmm, okay, that was –first of all– longer than I expected it to be. Also, kinda reads more like a poem than a minimalist ode, but, oh well.)

Epilogue:

So I just checked it out and I guess the Charlie Rose-sque snow (described previously) is still there on the digital screen.  Just that an antane would no absoultely nothing for it.  Making the song about discovering the TV screen w/ utterly nil and void, I guess.  Although you could interpret the song as an interpolation of post-digital nostalgia…maybe?

.

Empathy Politiku now on Huffpo. Thanks to the stellar line of contributors it was, well, stellar.  Even got syndicated at the top of the NYTimes.com Headlines around the web section last Thursday!!  The editors have, since then, archived it on their Blogrunner Souter retrospective page.

Started Tweeting, finally.  Since Politikus are so all-consuming when I work on them I started two Twitter accounts:  @SusannaSpeier (to Tweet and get Tweeted by re everything under the eventually-to-be-exploding Sun) and @Politiku (so individual Politikus can be syndicated as autonomous entities).  Tweets, with their 160 character limit, kinda lend themselves to that, anyway.  Plus, it enables the stuff submitted too late to include on Huffpo to circulate.

Boyfriend and I went to the Apple Store yesterday.  Generous, classy and supportive guy that he is, he wanted to get me an iPhone 3G and help me cover the cost of switching from Verizon to AT&T for my birthday.  Found the applications kinda cumbersome, tho.  Plus, it’s kinda slow.  Decided to wait for the new one to come out —it’ll be over twice as fast— and so he shopping spreed me with a flurry of breezy Gatsby-esque summer attire.

Facebook’s new staking a claim in ones own name land rush thing will be the end of Facebook, according to Douglas Rushkoff (who I met over a post-root canal reading at the Corneila Cafe St. circa 2000). Doug is pyrotechnic-ally brilliant (according to my own observations and also according to Joshua Goldberg) and so consequently I’m gonna hang back, like Doug is, and let whoever want to claim my name, claim my name.  Given the fact

I’m the only Susanna Speier out there, whoever else might try to claim would do so for the loathsome purpose of selling it back to me at a premium and so, as a result, I wont ever try and steak a claim on a Facebook Vanity plate.

The beginning of the end of my Facebook relationship and I don’t even care.  Well, I sort of don’t.  See, I’m one of those people that thrives on interactions with others.  It energizes me.  Facebook birthday wall wishes were posting in throughout the day…spanning what, I think, was every single era of my life from elementary school on and I found this extraordinary.  Okay, I promised an ode so here goes:
(try and imagine this as though scored by a minimalist composer)

Huffpo, Twitter and the iPhone’s nixed
now, according to Doug Rushkoff,
Facebook self-deep-sixed
due to the failure of their gold rush land grab.

And if this occurs
if Facebook simply poofs and vanishes
due to the failure of their gold rush land grab
or dissipates into ether through the sublimation process
then, oh how I will miss those birthday wall posts.
The utterly unequivocal birthday wall posts.
Those Birthday wall posts.  When someone from each and every era of your life emerges from the digital woodwork in order to wish you happiness.

Birthdays can be scary,
Birthdays can be strange,
Birthday can even be lonely,
Wrought with fear and loss and longing and dissatisfaction,
due to everything you have thus far failed to achieve of obtain.

But when your friends
from each and every era of your life
and time zones all around the globe
and zones south of the equator
where the leaves are turning red and gold,

When your family your former classmates, your colleagues and even your acquaintances all take the time to post a Happy Birthday
then that is a truly Happy Birthday
it is, in fact, the kind of Happy Birthday
that makes me hope that Doug Rushkoff
is wrong about the end of Facebook
or at least, makes me wish that Facebook would
dispense with the vanity domain concept
and go back to the old ways
of random numerically coded domains.

In what ways has your Dad influenced your political perspectives?  If you are a Dad, then how has everything your dad inspired you to either emulate, avoid or rebel against get passed on to your kids?

You can submit via the commentary field at the bottom of this page or email them to me: susanna (at) susannaspeier (dot) com

Also, please forgive the obnoxious bold font here but I need your Politikus no later than 12:00p.m. Pacific Time on June 19th. If you submit them after that date I can still post them on my blog and tweet them but I wont be able to consider them for inclusion in Huffpo.

Of course, whether it makes it to Huffpo or not, I’ll post stuff that’s topical and adheres to the traditional 5-7-5 format on my blog and tweet them out all over the place.  Please subscribe to @politiku if you’d like to receive Politikus as tweets.

Finally, if u wanna Politiku but hesitate because you’re feeling uncertain and, well, not sure what you’re doing exactly, then you should  link to my first Huffpo post outta serve as a quickie refresher, and that will help, I think.

Father’s Day Politiku
Stream of Thus Far Submissions

Constance Congdon Politiku
My Dad, machinist,
Said never force anything,
Motors know the truth.

Andrew Solomon Politiku
Child in my arms, you
Can be anything. Except
A Republican.

Michael O’Brien Politiku

Daddy flew airplanes
Brought the admiral’s mail
And mom’s little wing

Peter J. Orvetti Politiku
It’s been five years now
And yet I still forget that
This day’s now for me

Irene Cullen Gravina Politiku
At graduation
He asked what I plan to do
Besides get married

Phil Rose Politiku
Labels ill fit him -
Old school libertarian.
He taught me to care.

Aaron Landsman Politiku
Your folks didn’t know
You were downtown protesting?
Why be shocked at me?

Will my son grow up
To wax nostalgic about
What he couldn’t change?

David Amram Politiku
My father always said
Some day you’ll be a father
your world becomes theirs!

Susanna Speier Politiku
Smoke rings, Magritte and
non-proliferation…
Dad taught me a lot.