RIP or WAS

In the poem Confederate Graves in Little Rock, poet Richard Hugo wrote,

“The right words never find themselves cut into stone.”

From the same poem, he writes

“Maybe the best graves stay unmarked,”

I don't resonate to the acronym RIP. If one is a theist using RIP makes sense because it's an antiquated artifact of religious doctrine (e.g., may his soul rest in peace). R.I.P. comes from the Latin Requiescat In Pace.

Speaking or writing RIP has become our cultural norm. It is mindlessly deployed. RIP is spoken or written without considering its meaning. If one's atheist or agnostic (which I falsely assume many are), it makes little sense to use RIP.

What is a suitable acronym to deploy instead of RIP?  I propose WAS.

WAS

WAS means We Are Stardust. But it could also mean the past-tense was as in he was a person.

“Believe you and I sing tiny and wise
and could if we had to eat stone and go on.”

from Richard Hugo's poem Glen Uig in Making Certain It Goes On

REFERENCES

• At the Grave of Richard Hugo, Alice Bolin, Paris Review, May 14, 2012.

GOP Shutdown Postmortem

Standard & Poor’s estimates the Federal Government Shutdown of 2013 cost the economy $24 billion.

By comparison, NASA’s budget is $16.6 billion. We're no longer a nation reaching for the stars.

Politics in the US is busted. It's a sad state of affairs when a small but well-funded band of delusional opportunists and hate-filled nincompoops can orchestrate a bogus crisis for political theater of the absurd. Worse yet, both political parties use this theater to stuff their war chests.

It was shameful how many emails sullied my in-box from the DNC or PACs attempting to convert the daily fear & loathing fomented by the GOP into donations.

January 2015

The 113th United States Congress will prove to be one of the most ineffectual in history, particularly the ridiculously gerrymandered US House of Representatives. The Republican Party, and its self-serving leadership, are to blame.

Today's GOP is a small tent political party bereft of rational thinking, and burdened by vitriolic hatred and an irrational fear of the common good. The US will be shackled to the 113th Congress until January 3, 2015.

Let us count the days until November 2014.

November 2014

Come November 2014 many of us will have the privilege and responsibility to vote out all of the delusional opportunists and hate-filled nincompoops who held our country hostage during the Shutdown of 2013.

REFERENCES

• Here’s How Much The Government Shutdown Cost The Economy, by Eliana Dockterman, Time, October 17, 2013.