While A. and I were in Baltimore last weekend, we saw Milk, which was one of the things I hoped for out of the weekend. I wasn't sure I was going to get a chance to see in the theater, and it was an astonishing performance, but the thing about seeing it in the theater wasn't Sean Penn on the big screen, it was the audience. It was going to a mainstream theater, on any old day, and standing in line with a whole bunch of other queer folk. It was watching in a big darkened room filled with rows of those slide-back seats, where A. and I? We were the norm, and the story was our history, and it wasn't a special film festival. It wasn't Pride. It was just another movie, telling another piece of American history, like our lives have as much weight as anyone else's.
I left saying "I don't know my history, I just don't," but I did know Harvey Milk's story. I learned some details, I added more players to what I knew, but really I already had that story well enough to use it. So what I think I meant was that being given my history that way, as part of pop culture, made me understand to what extent it is usually buried.
Showing posts with label Heroes and Holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heroes and Holidays. Show all posts
Friday, February 20, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Let's call it a blogaversary
My actual blogaversary, by the calendar, is this Friday, but I'll be out of town by the end of that day, putting up pre-written stuff over the weekend if I can swing it.
The subject of my first post, though, was our tradition of going to the Four Seasons for tea once a year, around Valentine's Day, and this year we went today. It was neither a particularly good tea or a particularly bad one. It seemed less magical than it has previous years, at least to me, but Z. had looked forward to it for days, and buzzed with excitement every minute of today, and I don't think she was disappointed. That, I guess, is much of the point of making a holiday for your kid.
The subject of my first post, though, was our tradition of going to the Four Seasons for tea once a year, around Valentine's Day, and this year we went today. It was neither a particularly good tea or a particularly bad one. It seemed less magical than it has previous years, at least to me, but Z. had looked forward to it for days, and buzzed with excitement every minute of today, and I don't think she was disappointed. That, I guess, is much of the point of making a holiday for your kid.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
I'm going to try to be there
I'm single-parenting on Saturday, and 1:30 is prime naptime. But this is important, and it's probably time for Z.'s first protest, don'tcha think? Assuming she's not dissolved into a puddle, anyway.
What I was saying about that bluest-part-of-a-blue-state thing
My ward voted 97% for Obama.
Actually, more than 97%.
Here are the numbers:
Obama: 12,604
McCain: 314
Nader: 20
Barr: 14
Write-in: 8
Actually, more than 97%.
Here are the numbers:
Obama: 12,604
McCain: 314
Nader: 20
Barr: 14
Write-in: 8
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Because if it's not about the election it's about my kid
My first! ever! RBOC post! It must be November!
- So, I got Z. an Obama/Phillies baseball shirt, too, only hers is an adult medium (so is yours, Mom!), which was the smallest they had. Until such time--if ever--as she grows into it, or gets bored with it, she's using it as a pillowcase by night, and a cape by day.
- Also, she had her flu shot yesterday, only it was a puff up the nose. She did great. I should probably get one, too.
- Her class is doing an "All About Me" unit, where they look at who has what color eyes and has how many people in their family and which pets and all of that. Thus, I know that she has brown hair and brown eyes, three people in her family, one dog, and is now 43" tall. That makes her too tall to ride for free on SEPTA and big enough for many many rides at Sesame Place that she couldn't go on last summer.
- This makes me feel better about having moved her into a booster seat last week. Once she started wearing her winter coat in the mornings, the carseat straps got uncomfortable for her and there was no more strap to pull, but she looks so, I dunno, untethered in the booster.
- She learned "God Bless America" to sing at the Phillies parade at her preschool last week. Two weeks ago? Whenever that was, with the World Series and all. She thinks it's a swell song to sing for Obama. She's singing it all the time. I wish she knew more verses, if it even has more verses. It's getting old.
- Barack Hussein Obama is gonna be our next president. How about that?
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Does this brain still work?
I have coped with the past several anxious weeks by never slowing down long enough to really let my emotions catch up with me.
Pennsylvania was, until last night, the reddest of the blue states, and I live in the bluest part of it. Really, even in my strongly Democratic city, my neighborhood votes way to the left in primaries. I am used to electoral disappointment. I expect it.
When there was talk in the last week or two that Pennsylvania might still be in play after all, that without it McCain really had no shot at the electoral college, this election felt like Philadelphia against John McCain. My northeastern, largely African-American, heavily Democratic, underfunded, insurance-assaulted, university-dominated city, standing against the cynicism, vote manipulation, lies and disdain of a party that had no idea what kind of groundswell they were facing. Community organizers, my ass.
But I was worried. I was still really crazy worried that I hadn't done enough.
I know I have a lot of magical thinking about my participation in politics. I canvassed for nuclear disarmament the summers of 1988 and 1989, and you know that was why the Soviet bloc crumbled and the Berlin wall fell. In 1994 I failed to switch my registration to Pennsylvania in time and didn't bother with the absentee ballot in DC, and the Republicans swept both houses.
But what else can you expect from a lesbian born and raised in a disenfranchised city, within a mile of the Capitol? I expect to be left out and powerless, and I expect that my feet moving on the treadmill of the political process is the only thing that keeps this country from moving backwards faster. I think a lot of lefties in this country feel that way, though, and there are a lot of lefties in my neighborhood.
When they called Pennsylvania last night, I shrieked loud enough to make A. think I was hurt. When they called Pennsylvania, I finally believed Obama would win. Not just could, but would. This morning, Z. and I were ready to go more than an hour before we had to be anywhere, and I wanted to celebrate, so we did something we've never done before and went to the cafe for breakfast. Everyone there was saying "We did it!" No one said "He won." I started asking, and my neighbors had all been out knocking on doors and making calls.
We did it. We did. Philadelphia beat John McCain. Our side won.
But not in California, except, well, I haven't been as upset about Prop 8 as other queer folk I've talked to today. I guess the polls were running against it so strongly that I hadn't pinned a whole lot of hope to it, and I live in a state where what happens in California isn't going to affect us much. I also am not at all sure how I feel about civil marriage itself--as a shorthand for equality, hell yes; as a church-state catastrophe, definitely; as a wedge issue, I am pissed off beyond measure. But having spent my entire life outside of legally-sanctioned marriage and having a lot of, um, issues with heteronormativity, I'm not feeling it personally. My marriage doesn't have its basis in civil law. I feel pretty damn married without a slip of paper from the state. I grant you that I absolutely would not feel that detached from the fight if it were happening here, because then I would have done a lot of considering about whether A. and I should and would make it legal, and it would infuriate me to have those considerations rendered moot, but that's sort of where my limitations lie.
I'm actually much more upset about the Arizona measure that restricted state-approved parenthood to married couples. Z. would have one legal parent if she were born in Arizona. My straight friend who adopted as a single mom wouldn't have her daughter. If Pennsylvania hadn't allowed second-parent adoption at the time Z. was born, we would have made sure she was born somewhere that did.
Now I think I'm just rambling, folks. It's late, it's been a long month or two, or four, or twenty-two.
What I want to say before I tumble into sleep is that Prop 8 passed by less than four points. Eight years ago, California defined marriage, by referendum, as being between a man and a woman--that measure passed by 22 points.
From where I stand, The Bad Guys losing 18 points of their 22-point margin in eight years? That's us winning. That's all.
Pennsylvania was, until last night, the reddest of the blue states, and I live in the bluest part of it. Really, even in my strongly Democratic city, my neighborhood votes way to the left in primaries. I am used to electoral disappointment. I expect it.
When there was talk in the last week or two that Pennsylvania might still be in play after all, that without it McCain really had no shot at the electoral college, this election felt like Philadelphia against John McCain. My northeastern, largely African-American, heavily Democratic, underfunded, insurance-assaulted, university-dominated city, standing against the cynicism, vote manipulation, lies and disdain of a party that had no idea what kind of groundswell they were facing. Community organizers, my ass.
But I was worried. I was still really crazy worried that I hadn't done enough.
I know I have a lot of magical thinking about my participation in politics. I canvassed for nuclear disarmament the summers of 1988 and 1989, and you know that was why the Soviet bloc crumbled and the Berlin wall fell. In 1994 I failed to switch my registration to Pennsylvania in time and didn't bother with the absentee ballot in DC, and the Republicans swept both houses.
But what else can you expect from a lesbian born and raised in a disenfranchised city, within a mile of the Capitol? I expect to be left out and powerless, and I expect that my feet moving on the treadmill of the political process is the only thing that keeps this country from moving backwards faster. I think a lot of lefties in this country feel that way, though, and there are a lot of lefties in my neighborhood.
When they called Pennsylvania last night, I shrieked loud enough to make A. think I was hurt. When they called Pennsylvania, I finally believed Obama would win. Not just could, but would. This morning, Z. and I were ready to go more than an hour before we had to be anywhere, and I wanted to celebrate, so we did something we've never done before and went to the cafe for breakfast. Everyone there was saying "We did it!" No one said "He won." I started asking, and my neighbors had all been out knocking on doors and making calls.
We did it. We did. Philadelphia beat John McCain. Our side won.
But not in California, except, well, I haven't been as upset about Prop 8 as other queer folk I've talked to today. I guess the polls were running against it so strongly that I hadn't pinned a whole lot of hope to it, and I live in a state where what happens in California isn't going to affect us much. I also am not at all sure how I feel about civil marriage itself--as a shorthand for equality, hell yes; as a church-state catastrophe, definitely; as a wedge issue, I am pissed off beyond measure. But having spent my entire life outside of legally-sanctioned marriage and having a lot of, um, issues with heteronormativity, I'm not feeling it personally. My marriage doesn't have its basis in civil law. I feel pretty damn married without a slip of paper from the state. I grant you that I absolutely would not feel that detached from the fight if it were happening here, because then I would have done a lot of considering about whether A. and I should and would make it legal, and it would infuriate me to have those considerations rendered moot, but that's sort of where my limitations lie.
I'm actually much more upset about the Arizona measure that restricted state-approved parenthood to married couples. Z. would have one legal parent if she were born in Arizona. My straight friend who adopted as a single mom wouldn't have her daughter. If Pennsylvania hadn't allowed second-parent adoption at the time Z. was born, we would have made sure she was born somewhere that did.
Now I think I'm just rambling, folks. It's late, it's been a long month or two, or four, or twenty-two.
What I want to say before I tumble into sleep is that Prop 8 passed by less than four points. Eight years ago, California defined marriage, by referendum, as being between a man and a woman--that measure passed by 22 points.
From where I stand, The Bad Guys losing 18 points of their 22-point margin in eight years? That's us winning. That's all.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Election day/Election night
We lined up this morning at the Presbyterian church a block down the hill from us. Two divisions vote in the social hall there, and it was reminiscent of the co-op line fifteen minutes before closing on the night before a big holiday. Lots of crowding, but people patient and chatting with neighbors, everyone in it together and anticipating a celebration.
Z. dressed in a blue-striped dress top and (finally, after more shouting than I want to recall), red cords, with my yellow Obama "volunteer" button on her dress. An Obama poll worker gave her another, which I pinned on her coat--parents, you'll understand what a godsend that was while we were still lined up outside in the (somewhat) cold.
The whole wait was maybe 45 minutes. Luck of the draw, A. had Z. when we got to the front, so I went into the booth on my own. Standing inside the privacy of those curtains, I had a hard time pressing the green button to record my vote. For long, long moments, I felt caught in something that I couldn't move out of before I'd let it move through me.
It felt like prayer.
Please, god, please, god. A new world.
Edited at 11:02 pm: NBC just called it. For Z., President Obama will be who she knows, how she grows up.
Fly, my baby girl. Fly.
Z. dressed in a blue-striped dress top and (finally, after more shouting than I want to recall), red cords, with my yellow Obama "volunteer" button on her dress. An Obama poll worker gave her another, which I pinned on her coat--parents, you'll understand what a godsend that was while we were still lined up outside in the (somewhat) cold.
The whole wait was maybe 45 minutes. Luck of the draw, A. had Z. when we got to the front, so I went into the booth on my own. Standing inside the privacy of those curtains, I had a hard time pressing the green button to record my vote. For long, long moments, I felt caught in something that I couldn't move out of before I'd let it move through me.
It felt like prayer.
Please, god, please, god. A new world.
Edited at 11:02 pm: NBC just called it. For Z., President Obama will be who she knows, how she grows up.
Fly, my baby girl. Fly.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Obama is running so our children can fly.
This afternoon, I drove down Dr. King Drive, turned and took Powelton and Walnut out to West Philly, and knocked on doors for the third and last time this campaign.
I initially signed up to canvass because I was so infuriated by the McCain campaign's choice of Sarah Palin that I could not stand to sit by once she was in the race. I am excited about Obama and I voted for him in the primary, but I have always felt fairly cynical about elections because I'm pretty far to the left and it's always a fight between the center and the right. I'd much rather have the center in power than the right, but it's just hard to move out of my comfort zone and walk my feet tired to help people who, election after election, don't come out in support of my civil rights.
When the McCain camp shifted into buffoonery, though, it felt personal. I felt insulted, and I wanted to get even. So. I signed up. I joined the campaign.
Here's the thing: I clicked the wrong email, the one that said to come to Pennsylvania and volunteer for Obama. That meant I signed up as though I were an out-of-stater, and that turned out to be a great stroke of luck, because I didn't wind up at the campaign office on the main drag of my integrated, hippie-populated neighborhood, but instead was assigned to knock on doors in a part of the city ten miles away, in a neighborhood where seeing a white face on the street makes you wonder what brings them there.
Knocking on those doors changed my sense of what I was doing. Seeing the Obama signs up in house after house in a Black neighborhood, well. I'm a white girl, but I grew up in Southeast DC, on stories of Dr. King and Rosa Parks.
This was on the wall in the canvass office today:
May they fly, may they all find the wings to fly.
I initially signed up to canvass because I was so infuriated by the McCain campaign's choice of Sarah Palin that I could not stand to sit by once she was in the race. I am excited about Obama and I voted for him in the primary, but I have always felt fairly cynical about elections because I'm pretty far to the left and it's always a fight between the center and the right. I'd much rather have the center in power than the right, but it's just hard to move out of my comfort zone and walk my feet tired to help people who, election after election, don't come out in support of my civil rights.
When the McCain camp shifted into buffoonery, though, it felt personal. I felt insulted, and I wanted to get even. So. I signed up. I joined the campaign.
Here's the thing: I clicked the wrong email, the one that said to come to Pennsylvania and volunteer for Obama. That meant I signed up as though I were an out-of-stater, and that turned out to be a great stroke of luck, because I didn't wind up at the campaign office on the main drag of my integrated, hippie-populated neighborhood, but instead was assigned to knock on doors in a part of the city ten miles away, in a neighborhood where seeing a white face on the street makes you wonder what brings them there.
Knocking on those doors changed my sense of what I was doing. Seeing the Obama signs up in house after house in a Black neighborhood, well. I'm a white girl, but I grew up in Southeast DC, on stories of Dr. King and Rosa Parks.
This was on the wall in the canvass office today:
Rosa sat so Martin would walk.
Martin walked so Obama could run.
Obama is running so our children can fly.
May they fly, may they all find the wings to fly.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
What the cool kids are wearing
The new, hot shirt in my neighborhood...
...and I got me one. Score. I'm all set to canvass again tomorrow.
(Nicholas, I got you one, too, with slate-blue sleeves. I'll touch base about getting it to you.)
...and I got me one. Score. I'm all set to canvass again tomorrow.
(Nicholas, I got you one, too, with slate-blue sleeves. I'll touch base about getting it to you.)
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Patio camping
At kids' services on Saturday, I'm told the kids' service leader read the under-5's this Sukkot story and Z. has been in an ecstasy of living out the details of the book since then.
Last night, we slept in the sukkah. It was Z.'s suggestion but I was the one who made it happen--there aren't many years when it comes together: a warm enough, dry enough night, no guests, and no school for anyone the next day.
Sleeping isn't one of my strengths, and last night reproduced the conditions of both of the two longest consistently bad stretches of sleep I've ever had: the nights I spent in shelters on the Appalachian Trail, and the months in Z.'s second year when I slept close enough to her to touch her and her every twitch had an analog in my dreams.
So it was more of an aesthetic experience than a night of rest. Crickets, airplanes, traffic, a kind of nighttime hum from all the houses around us. The full moon, corona'd with a slight haze. The shadows of the garden on the green walls of the sukkah. The rough surface of the sleeping pad beneath me, the contrast between the warm covers and the cold, moist air. Sleeping with a hat on.
The sukkah is where I use up my tree-trimming energy, so we have a couple of boxes of harvest-y ornaments I've searched out in the after-Christmas sales, and they ringed us in two tiers. Usually I hang them all on the strings of lights that light the sukkah at night, but this year I contented myself with putting up the glass ones and strung up a line of purple cotton yarn at Z.'s level for the wood and metal and dried-gourd ornaments.
She was so serious and careful, making sure there was a green wire on each ornament's loop, hanging them equidistant from each other in each section of the wall. There's so much more her fingers can do now, and so many more things she's considering at the same time.
She needed me to soothe her through her buzzing excitement when we first lay down, and she woke a couple of times in the night. Once she saw I was putting my hat on, and wanted to put hers on. Once she thought she wanted to put the extra t-shirt on I'd brought out just in case she needed another layer, but she changed her mind and decided she just needed to rearrange her covers. Both times she went right back to sleep with no coaxing from me.
Me, I drifted into dreams and back out of them. Our street is eerily quiet at 4:15. A car starting up at that hour echoes strangely. Our three-storey house looms, when seen from the ground twelve feet away.
We woke and pulled on fleeces and sweaters to eat our breakfast in the sukkah: oatmeal, cocoa. A. davenned outside, with lulav and etrog (alas, once again, the etrog smells like wax to me). And then slowly our indoor lives took over again--showers, DVD's. Dishes.
We're sleeping inside tonight, but there is something comforting to me about having touched base again with that kind of halfway-sleeplessness, where my sleep weaves in and out of the night itself.
Last night, we slept in the sukkah. It was Z.'s suggestion but I was the one who made it happen--there aren't many years when it comes together: a warm enough, dry enough night, no guests, and no school for anyone the next day.
Sleeping isn't one of my strengths, and last night reproduced the conditions of both of the two longest consistently bad stretches of sleep I've ever had: the nights I spent in shelters on the Appalachian Trail, and the months in Z.'s second year when I slept close enough to her to touch her and her every twitch had an analog in my dreams.
So it was more of an aesthetic experience than a night of rest. Crickets, airplanes, traffic, a kind of nighttime hum from all the houses around us. The full moon, corona'd with a slight haze. The shadows of the garden on the green walls of the sukkah. The rough surface of the sleeping pad beneath me, the contrast between the warm covers and the cold, moist air. Sleeping with a hat on.
The sukkah is where I use up my tree-trimming energy, so we have a couple of boxes of harvest-y ornaments I've searched out in the after-Christmas sales, and they ringed us in two tiers. Usually I hang them all on the strings of lights that light the sukkah at night, but this year I contented myself with putting up the glass ones and strung up a line of purple cotton yarn at Z.'s level for the wood and metal and dried-gourd ornaments.
She was so serious and careful, making sure there was a green wire on each ornament's loop, hanging them equidistant from each other in each section of the wall. There's so much more her fingers can do now, and so many more things she's considering at the same time.
She needed me to soothe her through her buzzing excitement when we first lay down, and she woke a couple of times in the night. Once she saw I was putting my hat on, and wanted to put hers on. Once she thought she wanted to put the extra t-shirt on I'd brought out just in case she needed another layer, but she changed her mind and decided she just needed to rearrange her covers. Both times she went right back to sleep with no coaxing from me.
Me, I drifted into dreams and back out of them. Our street is eerily quiet at 4:15. A car starting up at that hour echoes strangely. Our three-storey house looms, when seen from the ground twelve feet away.
We woke and pulled on fleeces and sweaters to eat our breakfast in the sukkah: oatmeal, cocoa. A. davenned outside, with lulav and etrog (alas, once again, the etrog smells like wax to me). And then slowly our indoor lives took over again--showers, DVD's. Dishes.
We're sleeping inside tonight, but there is something comforting to me about having touched base again with that kind of halfway-sleeplessness, where my sleep weaves in and out of the night itself.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The benefits of a religious education: an occasional series
Last night, A. and I listened from the living room as Z.'s voice drifted down to us in the energetic tones of a storyteller. She was telling Puppy Pie stories. For three hours.
Z. still shares our bedroom so, even if we're tired, we usually wait for her to fall asleep before we go up so that our going-to-bed business won't keep her going, but last night we gave up. We were never going to wait her out, not if we stayed up a million years.
I finished my toothbrushing at midnight and when I turned out the bathroom light and crossed the darkened hall to the darker bedroom, Z. cheerfully informed me that Mommy had fallen asleep. Z. was still zooping along, chattering the way she does at 1pm when it's clear there's not one shred of nap in her that day.
I sat down on her bed and rubbed her back. The tone in her muscles was like a gymnast's about to start a routine.
"Little boo, sometimes when we have a lot of thoughts we're thinking, it's hard to fall asleep, and the thing to do is to fold those thoughts up and put them away."
"I don't want to put dem away!"
"Well, you maybe you could think them one last time, and then say 'Thoughts, I will think you again in the morning,' and then just fold them up and put them away."
"I want to keep thzinking dem! I don't want to fold dem up!"
"Hmmm. Are you having a good time thinking your thoughts?"
"Yeah!"
"Well, you could dream about your thoughts when you go to sleep, and that would be like your thoughts coming to life while you're sleeping."
"Yeah, yeah! Dat's wright, Mama! Dat's a good idea! I could have a dwream about some pirwates who build a sukkah! I could have a dwream about some BEES who build a sukkah!"
It's like the night before Christmas, when my brother and sister and I couldn't sleep for the excitement of thinking about Santa. Only, it's Sukkot, and wiss bees.
Our sukkah is up now, and lovely. If I can find our camera, I'll take pictures.
Z. still shares our bedroom so, even if we're tired, we usually wait for her to fall asleep before we go up so that our going-to-bed business won't keep her going, but last night we gave up. We were never going to wait her out, not if we stayed up a million years.
I finished my toothbrushing at midnight and when I turned out the bathroom light and crossed the darkened hall to the darker bedroom, Z. cheerfully informed me that Mommy had fallen asleep. Z. was still zooping along, chattering the way she does at 1pm when it's clear there's not one shred of nap in her that day.
I sat down on her bed and rubbed her back. The tone in her muscles was like a gymnast's about to start a routine.
"Little boo, sometimes when we have a lot of thoughts we're thinking, it's hard to fall asleep, and the thing to do is to fold those thoughts up and put them away."
"I don't want to put dem away!"
"Well, you maybe you could think them one last time, and then say 'Thoughts, I will think you again in the morning,' and then just fold them up and put them away."
"I want to keep thzinking dem! I don't want to fold dem up!"
"Hmmm. Are you having a good time thinking your thoughts?"
"Yeah!"
"Well, you could dream about your thoughts when you go to sleep, and that would be like your thoughts coming to life while you're sleeping."
"Yeah, yeah! Dat's wright, Mama! Dat's a good idea! I could have a dwream about some pirwates who build a sukkah! I could have a dwream about some BEES who build a sukkah!"
It's like the night before Christmas, when my brother and sister and I couldn't sleep for the excitement of thinking about Santa. Only, it's Sukkot, and wiss bees.
Our sukkah is up now, and lovely. If I can find our camera, I'll take pictures.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
What was up in NJ yesterday?
Driving home on the turnpike last night, a little more tired than was wise, with the music up loud to keep my senses going. At about exit 10 fireworks appeared above the tree strip off to the right, sparks tumbling in every sloppy direction, untidy but festive. Hunh, I thought. Somebody's having a fair, maybe.
Four or five songs later--let's say 20 miles--another rocket lifted into the sky far ahead of me, fizzling, a dud, but by the time I reached that spot on the highway, another went off, proud, high, a red sphere inside a yellow circle, and then I was past, aiming for exit 6 and the bridge across the Delaware, sleepy and puzzled, no one to ask.
Just passing through.
Four or five songs later--let's say 20 miles--another rocket lifted into the sky far ahead of me, fizzling, a dud, but by the time I reached that spot on the highway, another went off, proud, high, a red sphere inside a yellow circle, and then I was past, aiming for exit 6 and the bridge across the Delaware, sleepy and puzzled, no one to ask.
Just passing through.
Monday, July 7, 2008
This blog ain't dead yet
...though I admit it's in a lingering state of suspended animation.
We went on vacation to a rural place a good deal farther south than we live, and far, far more tied to the military in its culture.
Best fireworks I've ever seen in my life, and I grew up in Washington, DC, a mile from the Capitol.
We went on vacation to a rural place a good deal farther south than we live, and far, far more tied to the military in its culture.
Best fireworks I've ever seen in my life, and I grew up in Washington, DC, a mile from the Capitol.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
New Year's Day
Now that it's 2008, I figure I'm off the hook for the year-in-review post. 2007 just had me spinning at every turn. I need a whole lot of distance from the past twelve months before I can figure out how to talk about it as a year. Come to think of it, I've had a lot of years like that lately. (Hmmm. Maybe I should have been reviewing 2005 or 2006? Oh, wait, that's pretty much what I've been doing in this space since I started this blog.)
Instead of looking back, or at least instead of looking back beyond this week's anniversary effect that I can't avoid, I've been thinking about the year coming up: the things that I need to make happen, the things I've committed to doing as leaps of faith, the things that I can't control but I am hoping will happen through some combination of will, generosity, and serendipity.
There are things that I am currently letting slide, too, and I need to sort through them, figure out what I have to delegate and what I have to do and what I have to accept won't happen and what I have to simply take off my list, even knowing that sooner or later it will be back there again, in order to have a little less weight pulling at me.
In lieu of resolutions for the year, I'm going to try to set some monthly goals. I'm thinking about concrete things that I can measure, rather than large abstractions I want to embrace. I'm hoping that taking care of the details will add up to changes in the larger picture, but I'm not real confident about predicting in advance what direction those changes are going to take. That, at least, is one thing I learned from 2007. Life will surprise me.
But goals that can be reviewed and renewed or changed from month to month, that I can let go of and move on from regularly, that seems like about what I can handle. It could be its own discipline
Okay, thinking about my list, here's the one I'm putting up for public accountability in January:
The Living Room Project: address the piles of cd's in the living room, get rid of redundant electronics, clear off the built-in bench, find more storage for toys, and figure out a routine for keeping it a functional space in our house.
Anyone want to join me in the Resolution of the Month Club? Just put it up on your blog. We'll all see how we do.
Instead of looking back, or at least instead of looking back beyond this week's anniversary effect that I can't avoid, I've been thinking about the year coming up: the things that I need to make happen, the things I've committed to doing as leaps of faith, the things that I can't control but I am hoping will happen through some combination of will, generosity, and serendipity.
There are things that I am currently letting slide, too, and I need to sort through them, figure out what I have to delegate and what I have to do and what I have to accept won't happen and what I have to simply take off my list, even knowing that sooner or later it will be back there again, in order to have a little less weight pulling at me.
In lieu of resolutions for the year, I'm going to try to set some monthly goals. I'm thinking about concrete things that I can measure, rather than large abstractions I want to embrace. I'm hoping that taking care of the details will add up to changes in the larger picture, but I'm not real confident about predicting in advance what direction those changes are going to take. That, at least, is one thing I learned from 2007. Life will surprise me.
But goals that can be reviewed and renewed or changed from month to month, that I can let go of and move on from regularly, that seems like about what I can handle. It could be its own discipline
Okay, thinking about my list, here's the one I'm putting up for public accountability in January:
The Living Room Project: address the piles of cd's in the living room, get rid of redundant electronics, clear off the built-in bench, find more storage for toys, and figure out a routine for keeping it a functional space in our house.
Anyone want to join me in the Resolution of the Month Club? Just put it up on your blog. We'll all see how we do.
Friday, December 21, 2007
The Shortest Day
This is a poem that was part of the Christmas Revels my family went to for years while I was growing up. It's by Susan Cooper, and I offer it on the solstice in the spirit of a pagan fellow-traveler.
So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!
So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The original Mother's Day poem
Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
I have been confused by my association of Mother's Day with WWI. I've always wondered how old Howe must have been by then--she wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, after all. It turns out that the "honor your mother" version of the holiday is what was enshrined in 1914. The Virginia-Woolf-in-Three-Guineas version was in reaction to the eruption of Franco-Prussian War.
by Julia Ward Howe
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
I have been confused by my association of Mother's Day with WWI. I've always wondered how old Howe must have been by then--she wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, after all. It turns out that the "honor your mother" version of the holiday is what was enshrined in 1914. The Virginia-Woolf-in-Three-Guineas version was in reaction to the eruption of Franco-Prussian War.
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