A plea Publick

[3DEM11 at QUCDN.QueensU.CA]

Please allow me to take the floor and ask Vaska not to
leave...without her, this "flame war" would have sunk me.
I didn't think I'd ever take it all so personally.
The whole thing should have been about issues and not about
personalities.  And those of us with quick tongues:  well,
if we can dish it out, we should be able to take it.
I also don't think the gender issue was nonsense; but
I am sorry to those distracted from Pynchon by it.
The whole thing reminded me of that scene in M&D wherein someone yells
to the foreman "your mother's pussy" and the foreman responds
with a couple of limericks on mothers and chamberpots etc.
Well, ick.
But nobody got personal.

I'd like to close with a poem by a Canadian woman poet, Anne Carson.

God's Woman

Are you angry at nature? said God to His woman.
Yes I am angry at nature I do not want nature stuck
up between my legs on your pink baton

or ladled out like geography whenever
your buckle needs a lick.
What do you mean Creation?

God circled her.
Fire. Time. Fire.
Choose, said God.