One of my regular readers commented disparagingly of last week's blog: "like Heloise ... with all that's happening, why such a nothing column?" I found the world, national and local news rather discouraging: sometimes mindless is soothing.

Incidentally, to those who do not write blogs or some equivalent, Friends Janet, Chris, and Marie, Spouse and children, are considerably more complex than presented. They say what I said they said but it's always a selected, edited version of an experience. A bit like our view of Iran, actually.

One reason I didn't write about Iran was that I don't know enough and I don't trust what I know. Unlike my more domestic blogs, starring Wenonah the Idiot, discussing Tehran involves complexity and nuance.

The election results in Iran undoubtedly had grave irregularities - both in the conditions for campaigning and in the vote count. That does not mean the opposition won the election. Ahmadinejad might well have won. Moussavi's supporters were urban and an educated elite segment of the urban vote. They were much more able to put their case to foreign journalists. They watch CNN and Al Jazeera, are familiar with European and North American elections and what's available in the West.

Ahmadinejad's older supporters are not comparing life in Iran with life in the US or UK. They're comparing life now with life under the Shah and they're better off.

All we know about Ahmadinejad is that he rattles sabers and is a Holocaust denier. We don't know anything about his domestic policies. His administration is not, apparently, corrupt. Moussavi has been accused of corruption. Elections are almost always about domestic policies, not foreign affairs. We know almost nothing about Ahmadinejad's tax policies, his attitude towards a social security safety net, support for agriculture...

We know that he supports (or at least doesn't stop) paramilitary religious militia enforcing dress codes. We don't know how important that is to rural and working class women. I'd suspect it's a vote neutral stand to large numbers of the electorate. (It's a bit like the gay marriage issue in California. I doubt, in a general election, very many people would base their vote solely on that. Some, yes. In a referendum, where it is the only issue on the ballot, opponents of gay marriage won by a slight majority.)

Street demonstrations have been dealt with harshly - very harshly. That, I think, is something that we should condemn. A commentator on Al Jazeera says the establishment remembers 1979 and, even more importantly, the velvet revolutions of Eastern Europe. They may honestly believe that their young people have been led astray and the street protests are a result of U.S./U.K./CIA destabilization plots. That's an explanation, not an excuse, for the scenes coming from mobile phones in Tehran. Trying to understand why someone does something is not supporting it. (Things like 'evil empire' or 'Great Satan' are not helpful; they are also not accurate.)

I think Obama got it right - he said elections were  a matter for the Iranian people. He said the US would deal with whoever was elected. He also condemned attacks on non-violant demonstrators and said the US and CIA had nothing to do with the protests.

Everyone that knows anything at all about Iran has advised saying as little as possible about the elections. Comments by an American President are very likely to be counterproductive. The exceptions to this are some right wing Republicans. They may be ungodly stupid; more likely, their calls for condemning the election are purely for domestic consumption. Many of American and British political statements are for domestic political advantage rather than any consideration of an actual situation. I suspect a lot of speeches coming from Iran have the same projected audience.

The UK recently had an election for MEP's - members of the European Parliament and local councillors.  Labour did very very very badly. The Tories did not do as well as they should have at this point of Labour's unpopularity and the political cycle. The papers here reported the results as a referendum on Gordon Brown and the expenses scandal - our big topics in the papers.

Well, I voted Green for MEP because I think the Green Party are the least likely to sacrifice environmental protection to increase economic growth.  I voted for the Liberal  Democrats in the Council election because one of their members has worked hard to keep my neighborhood streets from turning into a rat run and  my allotment site from being built over with houses.

Gordon Brown had nothing to do with my votes. Neither did the MP's expense claims.

Sometimes, local issues determine the results of an election, especially local elections, like that for councillors.  That is probably the case in Iran as well as the UK and US.

Michael Jackson died last night. Child star, the private zoo and fun park, the accusations of child molestation, the plastic surgery, the body of impressive work. So much has been written and televised about Michael Jackson that the public feels it knows him. It's another highly edited life. During a period when commentators were focusing on Jackson's changed appearance and plastic surgery, my husband pointed out that they all forgot the fire during the filming of the Pepsi commercial. Jackson went up in flames, almost died, and had extensive plastic surgery. At least some of the changed appearance was a consequence of the fire. That was never mentioned.

My friend Janet was over a few nights ago and an old tv program came up - The Avengers. I said I'd always wanted to be Emma Peel. Janet said, "We all wanted to be Emma Peel."

And we did. Emma Peel is a fine role model for teen age girls. We knew all there was to know about Emma Peel - and we knew nothing about Diana Rigg. Emma Peel is fictional, a tv image, and the television series shows the total Emma Peel; she's a reel person, not a real person. We know Michael Jackson the same way we know Emma Peel, which means we don't know Michael Jackson.

A lot of what we know about Iran and its elections is more Emma Peel than Diana Rigg. Jon Stewart sent a correspondent to Iran to see what Iranians knew about the US before the election. Very funny clips three nights running: Iranians know a great deal more about the US than the Americans know about Iran.

One of the interviews involved a young man asking the correspondent what tv show he was associated with: "The Daily Show".

The young man was very excited and said, "Jon Stewart" and he imitated Jon Stewart imitating George W. Bush, "hee hee hee... I love that show."

He probably feels like he understands the US because he watches CNN and The Daily Show. He speaks English well, so he knows a lot more than someone his age in the US knows about Iran. Understanding? I'm not so sure.

"A picture is worth a thousand words." Sort of true, but only if the picture's content is completely contained within the frame.

My opening computer screen is a picture I took outside Laura, Queensland, Australia. It shows two (or 2.5) wallabies in the bush. I was very pleased with seeing wallabies running around, and when we got back to our room in the pub I told someone I'd actually seen wild wallabies.

He said, "You want to see wallabies? Go down to the deserted air strip. There's hundreds of them there every night."

When I got home, the wallabies were a blur on the computer screen. My son used photoshop and cropped and focussed and changed colors around and now there is one very clear, one moderately clear and one wallaby-shaped pattern on my screen. Is it still the picture I took? Would a picture of hundreds of wallabies on a tarmac give a more accurate picture of wallaby life in Laura? What did I want to capture by the picture? A flaura and fauna uncontaminated by human development? It wasn't - we were in a rented 4 wheel drive on a dirt road surrounded by cattle stations two miles or so from a small town. It's total fakery and not at all fake - there really were three wallabies bounding, thump thump thump, beside a small stream through woods and leaves.

    Between the idea
           And the reality
           Between the motion
           And the act
           Falls the Shadow

        (T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men)

How do you illuminate a shadow?