Tagged!

I was touched to be mentioned among Quaker Dave's current favorite blogs on Thursday. It was sweet. All I do is sit for way too many hours and pour out my heart onto the computer keys (when I should be practicing my guitar, feeding my children, brushing the dog ... you know, life.) But I love to write, and it pleases me to know that a few people like to read it.

So, I guess I am supposed to list 5 favorite blogs of my own ... which of course is not easy to do, because I read a lot more than 5 on a regular basis. And I read them because I like them. But here goes:

Potato Prints: written by a dear friend of mine who exists outside of the luminiferous ether of Blogland. I even know what she looks like! She posts her lovely artwork along with wry commentary. She will be on hiatus for a while, but you can go back and look at the archives. She was one of my inspirations to begin a blog.

Poodle Doc: another dear (F)friend, who I also have face to face communication with. He doesn't post really often ( eg. not 4 in one day like some people I know) but I really enjoy reading the things he composes, as well as his gleanings from elsewhere. Besides, he used to be my vet and even made a house call when my daughter's pet rat was dying.

Thailand Gal: this one's new to me, but Chani almost always seems to nail something that's been a part of my recent musing.

Well, with Quaker Agitator, it's definitely a mutual admiration society and check out Daily Darfur too. (I wrote that all in one sentence, so it only counts as one. That's creative accounting. It's left over from the brief period last fall when I decided to try being a Republican and effect change from the inside.)

OK, 2 blogs that I don't just like because the authors share my name. They're both done by really creative women, illustrated with beautiful photographs of locales that look exotic to my Wisconsin eyes, and they resonate in me in a different way than the lefty political blogs where I spend so much of my time. Suzie's Sacred Space (from BC, Canada) and Arty Fartying Around (from South Africa.)

What am I up to now? 4? Great ... I can include this one more: Goldendaze. Ginnie is a really good writer and she has led/leads a most interesting life.

And so many more. I love that in the blogging world there is myriad somethings for everyone, and because I have this split personality between Emma Goldman and a Norwegian housewife, my cyber travels take me to blogs about knitting, progressive politics, education, Quakerism, and making the most adorable Japanese stuffed animals ("stuffies") you've ever seen.

Tag, you're all "it". This time it's bad sixties TV sitcom theme song tag, so if you don't want to do it, you have to sit down really fast and say, "Greenacresistheplacetobe!"

Everything. Is. Fine.

It's been a busy week around here for gadflies and troublemakers. On Wednesday evening I took my eleven year old daughter to see Vermont's legendary Bread and Puppet Theater performing the Everything Is Fine Circus. I saw them once before a few years ago -- back in the halcyon days when Bill Clinton was president. Remember those? As I was leaving this show, I was trying to remember what was so important in 1998 that needed to be protested and satirized. Everything is so much worse now ... I mean, Everything is fine! Really. Really. Fine.

If I was a top-drawer gadfly and troublemaker, I'd be going out tonight to hear Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill. But I'm a top-notch mom, and I'm going to see my luminiferous daughter performing in The Red Shoes instead.

Emma's Revolution

I had the pleasure of hearing one of my favorite musical acts, Emma's Revolution, at a house concert last night. In addition to being great songwriters and musicians, this duo -- Pat Humphries and Sandy O. -- are unflinching champions of peace and social justice. Plus, they are just genuinely nice people. (They won my heart forever when, the morning after I first saw them in concert we saw them shopping in our local food co-op, and they recognized my young daughter from the night before and made a point of coming over to say hi to her. That kind of caring makes a big impression on me.)

On what must be a grueling schedule, they criss-cross the country doing concerts coast to coast. They are at every big peace demonstration in D.C. as well as going to the School of the Americas demonstration each year. I highly recommend them if they come to a venue near you.

They have a new album called Roots, Rock and Revolution. I'm partial to one from a few years back called One x 1,000,000 = Change. Check them out here.

Phil Ochs - Genuine Patriot

There are few songs that I find more moving than this one.

(Interesting look back to an era of when mod orange and pink hearts were cool, and sullen looking young women who look like they wandered in off of a Star Trek set were a must.)

Petroglyph

Pardon me for posting yet another picture of my children. March is a very nostalgic month for me, I guess. This photograph makes me laugh. The look on the face of my younger daughter, as well as her body language, is priceless.

And then there's the petroglyph. (You can click on it to -- er, um -- enlarge it.) Look closely. Look again. Yup, your eyes aren't deceiving you. This was at Dinosaur National Monument in western Colorado, an amazingly cool place. Besides a great wall of dinosaur bones there were ancient rock paintings of things that looked an awful lot like spaceships. And aliens. And then our friend here. (My kids would say that pictures like this are the reason they are warped.)[I disagree. I think it's the ones with underwear on their heads.]

It also reminds me of a very sweet period of time when my girls were little: before the bickering started in earnest [I think this is the trip where it actually started, when the younger one snapped the older one's Walkman headphone as if it was a wishbone ...], the serious diaper-butt, when they wanted to wear the shorts I made for them, when they liked having those short haircuts, when my youngest was in her [extended] red shoe phase ... (ironically, she is now acting in a musical production of the Hans Christian Anderson story The Red Shoes.) I loved having small children, as hard as it sometimes was.

Soul of a Citizen

I had a proud and poignant moment yesterday when I took my newly-minted-adult daughter to our city hall to vote for the first time. (She's going to be out of town over election day next week, so she had to register and then vote absentee.)

She's gone with us to vote since she was a tiny baby, so her interest in voting wasn't a surprise, but it still gave me a thrill that it was one of the main things she talked about when she was turning 18.

The employee in the City Clerk's office was very sweet about it, wishing her a happy birthday and congratulating her on her first vote. It was so cool!

Two Hundred 9/11s

I was having a hard time taming my monkey mind in Meeting today. At one point I was thinking, "William Penn ... Sean Penn. I wonder if he's a descendent? Haven't heard from Sean Penn recently ... I wish he'd speak out again." And so on.

And then I find on Huffington Post: An Open Letter to the President ... Four and a Half Years Later from Sean Penn.

You Misters Bush and Cheney; you Ms. Rice are villainously and criminally obscene people, obscene human beings, incompetent even to fulfill your own self-serving agenda, while tragically neglectful and destructive of ours and our country's. And I've got a question for your daughters Mr. Bush. They're not children anymore. Do they support your policy in Iraq? If they do, how dare they not be in uniform, while the children of the poor; black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and all the other American working men and women are slaughtered, maimed and flown back into this country under cover of darkness.

Now, because I've been on the streets of Baghdad during this occupational war, outside the Green Zone, without security, and you haven't; I've met children there. In that country of 25 million, these children have now suffered minimally, a rainstorm of civilian death around and among them totaling the equivalent of two hundred September 11ths in just four years of war. Two hundred 9/11s. Two hundred 9/11s. (Read the letter in its entirety here.)

Sean Penn speaks for me!

Barbara Lee STILL Speaks For Me -- Along With 13 Of Her Colleagues

On Friday most of the House Democrats betrayed their constituents and treacherously voted to continue funding Bush's war on Iraq. (And Iran, you know it's already happening.

Here are the true representatives of U.S. voters. If you feel so inclined, a thank you to each one would probably be welcome. And if your representative is not among them, contact them and voice your displeasure.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich voted NO. Standing firm with him on this NO vote were 13 Democrats: John Barrow [GA], Dan Boren [OK], Lincoln Davis [TN], Barbara Lee [CA], John Lewis [GA], Jim Marshall [GA], Jim Matheson [UT], Michael McNulty [NY], Michael Michaud [ME], Gene Taylor [MS], Maxine Waters [CA], Diane Watson [CA], and Lynn Woolsey [CA]. (from the Kucinich 2008 website)

War is over if you want it. Clearly, most of the members of the House value something else over the lives of the troops and the countless Iraqis who will continue to be killed in droves because of their vote on Friday.

Sophie Olivia, March 21-31, 1994

Today is our middle daughter Sophie's birthday. She would be 13 years old.

Sophie was born with a heart condition called aortic stenosis, i.e. a malformed aortic valve. It was detected when she was one week old. When she was 10 days old, she underwent valvuloplasty, a procedure much like angioplasty where a balloon is inflated in the heart valve to enlarge the opening. Two different pediatric cardiologists told us that Sophie was a good candidate for this procedure and that the chance of mortality was less than 1%. In fact, no child had ever died during the procedure at our hospital. In a scenario akin to jumping out of the way of an oncoming car and getting hit by a bus, in the process of repairing her aortic valve Sophie's heart was accidentally punctured in a different place and she died. It was nobody's fault, there was no negligence involved. It simply happened.

Sophie was born at home on the first day of spring. It was a perfect spring day, so warm that we had the windows open. The crocuses were in riotous bloom in our yard. I went into labor that morning, but felt compelled to do a number of errands before the birth. Therefore I was out and about through most of my labor. I'd say to Ed, "Pull the car over! I have to walk!!" and get out and walk up and down the street until the contraction had passed. (Just last year, an acquaintance of mine whom I seldom see, reminded me that she had seen me in a store that day looking like I was about to give birth, which in fact, I was.)

Our last stop was to pick up the midwife, who happens to be my sister Meg. We made it home, barely. Sophie was born a scant hour later.

I am extremely grateful that we chose to birth Sophie at home. Had she been born in the hospital, her heart condition would probably have been detected earlier and she may never have been at home. As it was, she got to be a normal newborn baby for an entire week. We spent that week saying hello, before all the medical stuff kicked in and we ultimately had to say goodbye.

After she died, driving home that evening, my husband and I realized that both of us had been having thoughts of Sophie's death all through those 10 days, even before we knew she had a heart defect. They were thoughts that would just pop into our heads, seemingly from out of the blue. I believe those thoughts were coming from Sophie; she knew she wasn't staying very long and was preparing us for her departure.

There were other signs. Sophie didn't have that new baby smell; I noticed it right away. I would bury my nose in her hair, and ... nothing. She lost her umbilical cord stump really soon, within a couple of days of birth, making it possible for her big sister to take a bath with her -- something she had looked forward to. There was one evening when Ed was holding her out in his hands, looking at her face, and she lifted her head from his hand and puckered up her lips to him. He kissed her, then looked at me in amazement saying, "Did you just see that?" The night before she went to the hospital, I had her on my lap and she opened her eyes and stared at my face with the most peaceful and loving look. For the longest time she just held my eyes with hers.

And my 15 year old nephew had his mom bring him to see Sophie in the hospital the night before she died, because he had had a dream about her death.

While the doctors were trying to save her life, I briefly fell asleep and had a dream/vision of a large circle of people -- who I understood to be "old ones" who were embracing Sophie. I woke up and Ed said, "If she's dying, I want to be with her!" and we ran to the catheterization lab. That's when they let us come in to say goodbye.

In retrospect, we were better prepared for Sophie's death than the medical staff was. When they allowed us into the cath lab after they had tried emergency open heart surgery, a nurse friend that was with us commented that everyone looked shell-shocked. Much later we heard that the lead cardiologist had cried, and nobody had ever seen him cry before. Somebody took her hand and footprints for us, and much later I noticed that there were tear stains on them.
Both cardiologists came to her memorial service.

Conventional wisdom says that losing a child is the worst thing a parent can experience, and conventional wisdom is right. For that first year I felt like my heart had been torn out, thrown on the ground, and stomped on. That's raw grief.

I have sweet memories too, mostly of the love with which friends and family enveloped us. My brother who flew in right away from somewhere out west and stayed to take care of us for a few days. A friend who came to our house that evening, as soon as she heard. The 200+ people who came to her service. My brother-in-law, whose band had their first ever gig the day after Sophie died, and he broke down on stage singing "You Are My Sunshine" for Sophie. (He just told me that story last night.) Neighbors who brought us meals, and one in particular, Fay, who became my very good friend. And the few who still remember and call us every year on this anniversary.

For me, it was also a profoundly spiritual experience. I think of Sophie many times in a day, every day. Sometimes I feel very bereft. Sometimes I wonder who she is, who she would be. Most of the time, her death feels like part of the fabric of my life, and I wouldn't change it.

I have a sense that she checks up on us. Sometimes I find little gifts. Our older daughter used to say that Sophie came and played with her. Two years after Sophie's death we had another little girl, making the circle feel complete again.

Life is a mystery and a blessing.

I can't refrain from political commentary ...

Ohio Representative and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich says he is "prepared to start" impeachment proceedings, but he wants to know what WE think. Huh?

Anyway, here's the letter my spousal unit posted on Dennis' blog. Well said!

Dear Mr, Kucinich,

You are asking what I think about impeachment. I must insist that opinion has no place in this discussion. The fact is, if you believe , as I do, that an impeachable offense has been committed by this administration, you are obligated to introduce the articles of impeachment.(my bold italics) If a police officer believes a crime has been committed, it is his or her duty to arrest that person. That officer does not have a choice and the opinions of others regarding the arrest are not relevant. Please do your duty. This administration has already committed enough crimes and it is high time they are stopped.

Sincerely,
Mr. Luminiferous Ether (name has been changed to protect the innocent)

My representative, Tammy Baldwin, as well as Senators Kohl and Feingold say they are still "formulating an opinion." Pardon me? An opinion? See letter above.

What planet are they on?

Who do they represent?

What are they all so frightened of?

Passages

First, a birthday ...
EIGHTEEN!
I am the mother of an adult child as of today. I'm VERY proud of this daughter of mine, the one who first taught me how to be a mom. She is a smart, beautiful, immensely talented, and compassionate young woman. She has been a loving big sister/big cousin to 2 younger sibs and 4 younger cousins.

And I'm just a little bit choked up about it all. It has gone by too fast. I remember driving somewhere with her when she was an infant, and singing the Malvina Reynolds song "Turn Around" and crying because I knew she would grow up and leave me someday. And now, here we are.

And just to prove that the Universe works in very mysterious ways, the great grandmother for whom my daughter was named (my husband's grandmother) is at the end of her life, right now as I write this. She is just shy of 94 years old, and lived to see her namesake become an adult. She is expected to pass within the next 24 hours.

Here, she meets her (first) great grandchild for the first time, eighteen years ago today:

Life is a great big blessing.

"Straight Talk"

No comment. It speaks for itself.

March 16, 2007, 4:14 pm

McCain Stumbles on H.I.V. Prevention

By Adam Nagourney

Senator John McCain at a town hall meeting today. (Photo: Greg Brown/Associated Press)

SOMEWHERE in NORTHERN IOWA — The unthinkable has happened. Senator John McCain met a question, while sitting with reporters on his bus as it rumbled through Iowa today, that he couldn’t – or perhaps wouldn’t – answer.

Did he support the distribution of taxpayer-subsidized condoms in Africa to fight the transmission of H.I.V.?

What followed was a long series of awkward pauses, glances up to the ceiling and the image of one of Mr. McCain’s aides, standing off to the back, urgently motioning his press secretary to come to Mr. McCain’s side.

The upshot was that Mr. McCain said he did not know this subject well, did not know his position on it, and relied on the advice of Senator Tom Coburn, a physician and Republican from Oklahoma.

His press secretary, Brian Jones, later reported that Mr. McCain had a record of voting against using government money to finance the distribution of condoms.

All this took place on the second day of the reprise of the “Straight Talk Express” bus trips that Mr. McCain made a central part of his campaign in 2000. It also comes as Mr. McCain has eagerly been trying to ease strains with social conservatives in the party who, for the most part, do not support using government money to pay for condoms.

A transcript of the encounter follows. (Weaver is John Weaver, his senior adviser, and Brian is Mr. Jones, his press secretary):

Reporter: “Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?”

Mr. McCain: “Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it.”

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.” (my italics)

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

This went on for a few more moments until a reporter from the Chicago Tribune broke in and asked Mr. McCain about the weight of a pig that he saw at the Iowa State Fair last year.

(By the way this is the same candidate who, in 2000, campaigned on an anti-choice platform, but refused to answer a reporter's question about whether he would help his own daughter get an abortion, should she have an unwanted pregnancy. He sold his soul to the Devil a long time ago. Oops -- I said I wasn't going to comment.)

More Transparency?

Yes! The Dems are not entirely spineless (only mostly so.) This is good news:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brushing aside a veto threat, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to overturn a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep their papers secret indefinitely.
(read more ...)

And while they're at it, what about the Fairness Doctrine?

Articles of Impeachment, anyone?

Creativity, pt. 2

One of the things I have come to realize over time is that while art feeds my soul, my passion is for education. Public education in particular. Hence my critique of the following books:

A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life: Self Expression and Spiritual Practice For Those Who Have Time For Neither by Nina Wise

Despite glowing comments on the back of the book from Isabelle Allende and Natalie Goldberg, it didn't take me long to realize that this was not the kind of book I was looking for. As I said in my previous post, I know what I need to do to tap into my creativity, and at this point I don't need exercises to get there. I just need to do it.

The spirituality was of the very general, nonspecific kind, and I am doing most of my spiritual seeking within Quakerism these days with some forays into the writings of the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. Very specific. Very filling.

But this dedication is what made me close the book, with a measure of disgust. "This book is dedicated to my mother, who was fired from teaching elementary school when she insisted that drumming was as important as learning arithmetic."

Here is one of my pet peeves: People who get fired from teaching jobs after a short time for doing something rebellious. OK, in all fairness, I don't know the full story here, and I'm jumping to a conclusion. As I've gotten older, however, I have started to believe that as a teacher it doesn't necessarily help for me to be outwardly subversive all the time. Sure, I think "No Child Left Behind" is terrible policy and benchmarks for kindergartners are set too high for many of them ... but what good would I be to my students if I simply ignored my district's standards, did whatever I pleased all the time, and got disciplined for insubordination? Would it really be in the best interest of my students or would it be to satisfy my ego?

Which leads me to the 2nd book: Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie.

I almost quit this one too, after reading the first chapter. Gordon McKenzie, sculptor of large metal animals has shown up at an elementary school to do a program about his artwork for the kids. He refers to his visit as a "disruption" and writes, "I was here to show the children that the magic of creativity can happen even in the institution where formal learning is supposed to take place."

As a teacher who gives the best of my creative energy every day to ensure that my students' love of learning is nurtured, and in some cases jump-started, I find the implications of his comment deeply insulting.

A little later he describes the kids filing into the assembly like this: "As I was putting on my welding goggles and scarred leather apron, the teachers would herd the children in, barking orders at them to sit cross-legged on the floor ... Satisfied that order had been attained, the teachers would retire to the back of the room to lose themselves in grading papers, leaving me, for all practical purposes, alone with the children."

I am picturing a scenario where the teachers don't prepare the students for the presentation. The students are rude and obnoxious, constantly interrupting, crawling all over his sculptures and being generally unsafe. Mr. MacKenzie would go home to his significant other and complain, "Those kids were so rude, obnoxious and unsafe. I couldn't give my presentation and those teachers didn't do anything to try to control them!" Right? That's what he'd say!

He notes that, as children go up in grade level, their willingness to describe themselves as artists goes down, and he concludes, "Every school I visited was participating in the suppression of creative genius."

Well, gee. That pisses me off just a little. So I got worked up. "Where does he think the market for his books will be if teachers don't teach kids to read?" I railed. And so on in that vein. I decided I would find his address, write to him and tell him that he'd just dissed a whole group of people who I see give their all for kids, everyday. And it turns out that Gordon MacKenzie is, well, dead.

And that's too bad, because I got through the first chapter and I actually like this book a lot! The giant hairball is his metaphor for all of the traditions, all of the inertia, all of the stupid policies upon stupid policies that are part of any institution. He says you can get sucked into the Hairball, you can choose not to be a part of it at all and fly out into Deep Space (eg. get fired for teaching drumming instead of arithmetic) or find a way to Orbit the Hairball.

Orbiting is responsible creativity: vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mindset, beyond "accepted models, patterns, or standards" -- all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission.

So that's what I'm doing in my job these days -- orbiting the Hairball. And it's working pretty well for me, most of the time.

End of a very l-o-n-g diatribe.

Creativity, pt. 1

I've been thinking about creativity a lot lately. Writing this blog is a creative act for me. In addition to writing, I love to knit, sew, felt, cook, bake, and decorate Ukrainian Easter eggs. Simply making things gives me so much pleasure. I don't feel as adept with drawing or painting, although in high school I was enamored of the work of Arthur Rackham and Beatrix Potter, and wanted nothing more than to illustrate children's books. But ... life took me on different pathways, as life so often does, and I ended up as an elementary school teacher who does all these other things on the side.

A few years ago I had an existential crisis that centered on my creativity. At the time I had young children, and was in a particularly stressful teaching situation. It felt to me as if I was being sucked dry: my well was dry and I had nothing left. I could barely get myself through a working day, then I would come home and sit in the dark with my fingers in my ears to block out ALL stimulation. It was a terrible feeling! (And hard on my family.) I did a lot of beating on myself -- "Why did I become a teacher? I should have become an artist!" -- pretty relentlessly.

I began working through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, and it was a great help to me. Doing the practices she suggested got me more focused on what I wanted my life to look like. I joined a couple of different groups of mostly women, who were also looking to make changes in their lives. And the funny thing was, I kind of did a full circle and ended up right back where I had been all along (kind of like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. No ruby slippers though.) With one difference: I was very clear that I wanted all the parts of my life to intertwine seamlessly with one another as much as possible.

Now about 8 years have gone by, and I'm in a very good place. I LOVE my job. I LOVE my community. I'm making music, which was a part of myself I had buried really deep for a long time. But I'm beginning to feel these stirrings in my soul that tell me I want something more, specifically I want to create more. So I turned once again to the myriad books that are available about awakening/reclaiming your creativity ... and they're just not doing it for me this time. In fact, for the most part they annoy me!

And I think it's because I know exactly what I need to do: If I want to create something, I need to just do it. I have all the materials at hand.

I also find that so much in the books is about the individual -- how to reclaim your creativity -- and so much of what moves me these days is community. The community of my classroom, my school, my Quaker meeting, my neighborhood ...

I want to write specifically about 2 books that I've recently gotten from the library, but I think I'll save them for a separate post.

Harry Belafonte!

He's been making news these days, speaking out against the Bush Administration and the U.S. war on Iraq. He has always been a passionate and eloquent champion of peace (the real kind, not the kind on Christmas cards.)My friend over at Poodle Doc has an excellent post about him today.

I also happen to have a soft spot for celebrities who are not afraid to be upstaged by a bunch of puppets. This one is from The Muppet Show. "Turn the World Around" -- I love it. I teach it to my students every year.

READ. THIS. BOOK.

In case you have forgotten, Rachel Corrie was the 23 year old American woman who was deliberately run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer on March 16, 2003 while trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home.

The book is a compilation of Rachel's writing from over her lifetime, edited and produced as a play by Alan Rickman & Katherine Viner. It is a short read, perhaps 45 minutes at the most. It's powerful, beautiful, and devastating. With my heart in my mouth, I read her correspondence with her parents when she was in Gaza. The combination of absolute pride that her mom and dad have for their spirited, beautiful, and intelligent daughter and fear for her safety in a dangerous place was agonizing for me, as a parent.

I don't have the words for this book. Please read it.

I am hopeful that our local professional theater will produce it next year. I know it is being considered.

Postscript: I am an outspoken person, unflinchingly dragging my soapbox into any arena. Although I personally believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that genocide is being committed by the policies of Israel toward the people of Palestine, I hesitate to speak out about it. Why? In some ways I have credibility; I am Jewish by birth. Some would probably label me a self-hating Jew, though words like that don't generally intimidate me. I am guilty of not paying as much attention to Palestine right now, as I once did ... and I understand that the circumstances in Gaza in particular, and for all Palestinians, have worsened. Rachel Corrie's death in 2003 touched me deeply and reading this book opened my eyes once again. Read this book read this book read this book read this book ...

MATERIAL MAN - YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED!

Eliza Gilkyson gets it right: It's ALL about who profits.

A Favorite Poem for the Coming of Spring

EARLY SPRING

The dog writes on the window with his nose.

If I remember correctly, the poet is Philip Whelan. ????

It rained yesterday, but today the sun is shining. The piles of snow are smaller. The sun feels so warm when it shines in March even when the air is cold. And around here, it doesn't shine very much in March, so I'll be outside today soaking it up. Maybe a slog through the mud at the Barky Park with Georgia, who is sad because her legs are too short for her nose to reach the window and she's not allowed on the new couch. Another artist stifled! She's saving all the suffering for when she gets opposible thumbs and can write her memoirs.

I apologize that this looks like the large print version of Luminiferous Ether. Blogger won’t let me vary the size of the font within the post!

Tired ...

Two evenings spent at "Rec Fairs" talking up the summer camp for which I somehow ended up being on the board of directors. It's a crazy place out there in the world of recreation! Do you want to send your kid to residential camp or day camp, soccer camp, computer camp, science camp, arts camp, Lego camp, invention camp, horseback riding camp, circus camp, "Y" camp ...?
Oh yeah, and my favorite: respite camp. (I want someone to send me to Respite Camp. I can see it now -- nightly bubble baths, someone else does the cooking, time to read and do art, go to the latrine with no interruptions ...)

These 2 evenings were local, sponsored by our rec department, and had a nice, friendly, homegrown feeling. A few weeks ago I went to a camp fair in a suburb of Chicago, and felt like a fish out of water. We were in an enormous tent-like structure with every kind of camp imaginable (even camps for overweight kids -- I can't believe those still exist -- and kids with ADHD) and many, many rich people "shopping". Our camp is a very small camp that emphasizes Quaker-inspired values of simplicity, harmony, service and earth stewardship ... but somehow in that room with the big glitzy displays of tree-rimmed Northwoods lakes, air-conditioned cabins and brand new Olympic-sized swimming pools, our rustic, open-fronted cabins looked run-down and our tiny pond looked like a muddy haven for snapping turtles and leeches. Passersby would turn up their noses and say things like, "My daughter wants sailing lessons."

They certainly didn't want to know about low camper:counselor ratio, building fairy houses in the woods, feeding the goats, or digging your own clay from the stream bed!

No, these two days were much better. People seemed genuinely interested in what we have to offer and I hope we got some campers out of it (because we're about to ink the deal to buy the property!!!)

On Wisconsin!

I'm proud to to publish this little news item today:

Doyle Turns Down $600,000 In Federal Abstinence Money

State Received Money Since 1997

POSTED: 1:35 pm CST March 3, 2007

MADISON, Wis. -- Gov. Jim Doyle has directed the state to turn down about $600,000 in federal abstinence education money because new rules would limit how much recipients could talk about contraception or sexually transmitted diseases this year. Doyle directed the Department of Health and Family Services to notify federal authorities of his decision, according to department spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis. Wisconsin becomes one of a handful of states to reject receipt of the $50 million Title Five Abstinence Program for the current fiscal year. Wisconsin has received the money since 1997.Marquis said although the program's funding recipients had more discretion in making their own programs in the past, new rules this year require the programs to teach that sexual activity outside of marriage could have harmful physical and psychological effects. Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press

"Honey, I think it's our Omaha Steaks!"

This tickled my (rather perverse) funny bone:

Body parts sent to wrong address

Body parts from China intended for a US laboratory have been mistakenly sent to a Michigan home by a delivery firm.

The recipient, in Cascade near Grand Rapids, said her husband opened two packages - one containing a liver, the other a partial human head.

"He started the second one, but stopped as soon as we saw the ear," she told the Grand Rapids Press newspaper.

The delivery company, DHL, said it was not immediately clear what happened but the labels were reportedly in Chinese.

The company says it is co-operating with investigators.

The authorities believe 28 more bubble-wrapped human organs could have been dispersed across the country.

The body parts - which are preserved - were for medical research, police spokesman Roger Parent said.

"There will definitely be a shock to people if they see these things, but there is no hazard to health," he added.

All you bloggers who participate in swaps ... beware!

Robert Fisk, an honest journalist

Some people are very aware of the writing of journalist Robert Fisk, others have not heard of him. If you don't know who he is, but you have an interest particularly in events in the Middle East, he is definitely somebody to read. If you can hear him speak, in person or on the radio, even better. He is a journalist's journalist. He writes for Britain's The Independent, which is indeed independent. Not embedded. In anyone's army. He's smart. He's passionate. He's compassionate. His writing is well-informed, angry and to the point, but when you hear him speak you realize that he has a Puckish sense of humor. He's a guy you'd like to take tea with. In Beirut, Lebanon, the city he loves, where he makes his home.

Here's his latest:

03/03/07 "The Independent" - -- -- Why are we trying to divide up the peoples of the Middle East? Why are we trying to chop them up, make them different, remind them - constantly, insidiously, viciously, cruelly - of their divisions, of their suspicions, of their capacity for mutual hatred? Is this just our casual racism? Or is there something darker in our Western souls?

Take the maps. Am I the only one sickened by our journalistic propensity to publish sectarian maps of the Middle East? You know what I mean. We are now all familiar with the colour-coded map of Iraq. Shias at the bottom (of course), Sunnis in their middle "triangle" - actually, it's more like an octagon (even a pentagon) - and the Kurds in the north.

Or the map of Lebanon, where I live. Shias at the bottom (of course), Druze further north, Sunnis in Sidon and on the coastal strip south of Beirut, Shias in the southern suburbs of the capital, Sunnis and Christians in the city, Christian Maronites further north, Sunnis in Tripoli, more Shias to the east. How we love these maps. Hatred made easy...

Our guilt in this sectarian game is obvious. We want to divide the "other", "them", our potential enemies, from each other, while we - we civilised Westerners with our refined, unified, multicultural values - are unassailable. I could draw you a sectarian map of Birmingham, for example - marked "Muslim" and "non-Muslim" (there not being many Christians left in England) - but no newspaper would print it. I could draw an extremely accurate ethnic map of Washington, complete with front-line streets between "black" and "white" communities but The Washington Post would never publish such a map.

Imagine the coloured fun The New York Times could have with Brooklyn, Harlem, the East River, black, white, brown, Italian, Catholic, Jew, Wasp. Or the Toronto Globe and Mail with French and non-French Canadian Montreal (the front line at one point follows the city Metro) or with Toronto (where "Little Italy" is now Ukrainian or Greek), and colour the suburb of Mississauga green for Muslim, of course. But we don't draw these Hitlerian maps for our societies. It would be unforgivable, bad taste, something "we" don't do in our precious, carefully guarded civilisation.

Passing a book stall in New York this week, I spotted the iniquitous Time magazine and there on the cover - and this might truly have been a 1930s Nazi cover - were two cowled men, one in black, the other largely hidden by a chequered scarf. "Sunnis vs Shi'ites," the headline read. "Why they hate each other." This, naturally, was a "take-out" on Iraq's civil war - a civil war by the way, that America's spokesmen in Baghdad were talking about in August 2003 when not a single Iraqi in his worst nightmares dreamt of what has now come to pass.

Buy Time magazine, dear reader, turn to page 30, and what will you find? "How to Tell Sunnis and Shi'ites Apart." Helpful, uh? And after this, are columns of useful, divisive information. "Names," for example. "Some names carry sectarian markers... Abu Bakr, Omar and Uthman ... men with these names are almost certainly Sunni. Those called Abdel-Hussein and Abdel-Zahra," (I have never in met an "Abdel-Zahra" by the way) "are most likely Shi'ite." Then there are columns headed "Prayer", "Mosques", "Homes", "Accents" and "Dialects", even - heaven spare us - "cars". The last, for those readers not already reeling in disbelief, tells us which car stickers to look out for (spot a picture of Imam Ali and you know the driver is Shia) or which licence plate (Anbar province registrations, for instance) means a probable Sunni driver.

Thanks again. I don't know why the American military doesn't just buy up this week's edition of Time and drop the lot over Baghdad to help any still ignorant local murderers with easy-to-identify targets. But will Time be helping us to identify America's deeply divided society (who has most rubbish in their gardens in Washington, which bumper stickers to look for in Dearborn, Michigan)? Will they hell. (read the entire article here)

I confess, I sometimes don't read his writing because it hurts. He spotlights events, emotions, underlying causes that are painful to contemplate. Especially when it is my tax dollars perpetuating the suffering. But when the U.S. media is dominated by the Ann Coulters, Tucker Carlsons, Sean Hannitys, etc. it is heartening to know that there are some decent people who have the world's ear.

Political Danger for the White House? Yeah, right!

This was the "above the fold" story on Huffington Post this morning:

Army Secretary Ousted

Second Firing Follows Walter Reed Revelations; Bush Vows a Probe

By Michael Abramowitz and Steve Vogel

Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 3, 2007; Page A01

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates fired the secretary of the Army yesterday and President Bush vowed to investigate allegations of substandard treatment of wounded soldiers as the administration scrambled to contain fallout from the scandal over squalid housing and bureaucratic delays in outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. (Read the rest here, if you can stomach false indignation and crocodile tears)

I have some questions: How many smoking guns can go on a pile before the whole damn thing goes up in flames? Or more to the point, what part of "You were elected in November because we the people wanted an end to business as usual" don't the Democrats understand? It is time to phone our representatives in Congress every day and demand that they IMPEACH NOW.