Taking it to the Next Level

A wise philosopher (Cher?) once said that “everyday’s a new audition.”  That’s a lot of pressure!

And no time is that more evident than January 1, when we resolve something or other starting with the new year. 

In the writing and the reading, poetry gives me pause. To others I may appear motionless, but the truth is, I'm just tuning my voice.

Watch out, 2015.

Why Do You Write Sad Poems?

Why do you write sad poems?

Defensive answer: I don't ONLY write sad poems. Did you see the one about how happiness comes hopping? Or the one about saying gross things at the dinner table? Funny stuff.  Seriously funny. Not sad. Not sad at all.

Self-conscious answer: Oh, no. That didn't make YOU sad, did it?  I'm so sorry. It's just that. . . no, seriously, I'm really really sorry.

Have had a lot of years to think about it answer: It makes me feel better. Seriously.

No Way

In a swirl of nothing
Saturday
lay
inhaling hours
of in between.
What mood is this?
Lost? Collapsed?
Left out? Just tired?
Leftover scraps
of expectation
now outgrown.
Of disappointments
overblown.
Speech bubbles
of stifled screams.
Drifting clouds.
Unticketed dreams.

Writing a poem is a way to tuck sad feelings in, kiss them on the forehead, and turn the klieg lights out on them.

Crime and Punishment in Bay Village, OH

http://fox8.com/2014/09/03/mom-ice-bucket-challenge-turned-into-sick-joke-against-son-with-autism/

Following the Michael Brown tragedy, people have been talking a lot about privilege.

Well, folks, this video is what the voice of privilege looks/sounds like when the speaker thinks only the like-minded are in the room.  The voices who see themselves as physically, financially, racially, mentally superior. Those who believe they are only speaking to the "haves and the have mores" to quote George W.  So sure of their own positions and their right to exclude others, they want to make sure everyone else knows their standing, and that that standing has put them in position to pour crap over others.

Look at me! I am above. Let me prove it to the world!

This is what racism sounds like at an all white cocktail party in places like Bay Village, it is what ageism sounds like at the gym, it is what lunch sounds like with a bunch of wealthy lawyers talking about the poor. How do I know? I've been there, and while I work very hard at not being hurtful in my words or actions, too often I have born silent witness to the hurtful actions/words of others.

What happened to this innocent is what metaphorically and actually happens when a collective prejudice trumps people relating to one another as individual human beings. Not on the other side of the planet, but in our own backyard. And when an outsider (maybe a bartender) turns on his cellphone to record what actually goes down behind closed doors, or a cable news network catches a white cop pointing his gun and threatening to shoot black citizens in our streets, everyone is publicly horrified.  But privately? Well, we've got shit to do. Can't be bogged down. Besides maybe someone else in the room might have a job connection in the future. Speaking up would just make the remainder of the time uncomfortable, and you can't change the mind of a jerk like that anyway. Can you?

I better let it go or someone will pour crap on me, and boy howdy, I don't want that.

The perpetrators of this crime were just young, that's all.  They were unsophisticated enough not to be able to foresee that this just might not play well to a general audience. After all, their peeps thought it was hilarious.

When a hate crime happens so close to home, we must all bear some of the shame, because these criminals are young, not fully formed. They are acting out what they have learned from role models, real or virtual. Somewhere they got the idea that this was "just a joke." Anything goes as long it's just a joke, right? Well, no, of course not. But how did they never get that message? Where on earth did they get the warped impression that this was okay?

When something like this happens, we need to look at ourselves as a community and ask, what part did I play in creating an environment in which this happened? When was the last time I stayed silent when I should have spoken? Did I do something purposefully hurtful and laugh about it? And finally, what will I do the next time I hear/see crap being poured on a fellow human being?

I confess, I have not watched this video.  I did read the print description. I hope the perpetrators of this hate crime are apprehended and punished. I hope people talk about this with their kids, the crime and the punishment. I hope we can work together to build better role models.

My Global Moment

#MyGlobalMoment from The Ubuntu Center on Vimeo.

“And you call yourself an educated man.”

I was having a buffet breakfast in 2006 with two Afghan teachers at a conference for Middle Eastern educators (TARA) in Bahrain.  The man was young, maybe thirty, the woman, Hamaira, more seasoned, with a married daughter of her own. She had told me of her marriage at the age of 11, how she was in the garden playing with dolls when her father came to fetch her to meet her new husband.  While they had grown close over the years, she was quick to distinguish her marriage from her daughter’s, which, with a slight straightening of the spine, she described as a “love marriage.” Her daughter lived in Atlanta, far removed from her but also from the fighting in Kabul. “It is good,” she said definitively.

Hamaira, who had endured refugee camps and had very little in the way of material belongings insisted on giving me her headscarf when we parted, an act of generosity that I could not refuse, but which hurt to accept.  Years later, it still smells of her perfume.

The young man had a permanent look of concern.  He thought the ideas being exchanged at the conference were all good ones, but, he tipped his head, unfortunately not much use to him as his students had neither desks nor pencils.  These were only a couple items on a long list of what had gone missing in Kabul as the result of war.  No electricity. No clean water. His grandmother had no legs as a result of an American land mine.

“And you are sitting here having breakfast with me?” I asked.

“You did not plant this bomb,” he said matter-of-factly, evidencing a maturity of reasoning not present at home where educated folks had actually debated the merits of calling French fries “freedom fries,” a few years prior -- a phrase still in use at that time (and still in use in some restaurants even today).  Americans know how to hold a grudge and spread it with ubiquitous contempt from border to border.

The conference had sponsored the attendance of these two teachers.  They were both classroom teachers and trainers of teachers in a school system in which many children go to school in 2 hour increments because of their work schedules.  Not the teachers’ work schedules, the kids’.  With so many of the men absent from families after decades of war, basic provisions were a joint effort. As we sat trading stories, the young man said something that made Hamaira flare. “Ah, you say these things, and yet when you ask your wife to bring you a glass of water, you do not look her in the eye or speak her name. You wave your hand and say, water.  And you call yourself an educated man,” she sniffed.

“What do you expect?” The young man replied with a shrug. “I live in my father’s house.”

Changing the hearts and minds of people with such deep traditions suddenly looked to me to be a foolish, misguided and painfully arrogant notion, dreamy, magical fiction, transient as freedom fries.

To some extent, we all live in our father’s house.  How we find common ground is never along path carved out by one party.

Do you have a Global Moment?  Post it here and read others: http://theubuntucenter.org/moment/

Love and Joy

It happened again. This time a young woman. College aged. She came up to me after our recent poetry reading at Bowling Green University Firelands campus.

"Do you believe?"
"Believe?"
"Religion. You know, Jesus. Are a believer?"
"I believe in poetry."
"That's it?"
"That's it."

It's true. I'm not particularly a prayerful person in the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John sense of the word.

Maybe my attention span is attracted to shortened lines more than chapters and verse numbers. Or maybe I just like the divergence of thought. But in poetry you can find all the best of the spiritual world. The 800 section in the library reads like a Bible in thousands of volumes (only a small fraction of which is available on your Kindle, sorry to say). A good day for me and all too rare are afternoons lost in places like the poetry section in the Oberlin Library or some used bookstore, pawing through poetry looking for . . .

Read Poe and you hear the cynical voice that proclaims from joy are born all sorrows. Adopt a philosophy of life like that and you can see why it was hard for the man to pull on his pants and face the day. And yet, that sentiment is true and it invades us all from time to time. In the reading is the realization that our dark selves are not operating in isolation. Somewhat of a consolation, I suppose.

But I don't find myself reaching for cynics in dark times. Dorothy Parker, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath -- they may all have some insights to share, but not at times when your head is already halfway in the oven. Not much to hang onto there. In dark times we want words that help us through.


I have a friend who is very ill. Within her shines a light that has illuminated classrooms and hearts of teachers, her friends, desk clerks and porters worldwide. She is that kind of person. Bonnie Campbell Hill.

Her family has kindly set up one of those Caring Bridge sites to keep her world of friends updated. I read the postings of her friends, many of whom are prayerful people, and I'm grateful (envious?) for their postings.

Were you ever out in the great alone when the moon was awful clear? And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear? Robert Service

Friendship is a bouquet of memories, some primary bright, standouts and dozens stems of green filler. On one of my darkest days ever, Bonnie threw my things into my suitcase, jammed $60 in my hand and put me in a cab to the airport to fly home to my granddaughter Stephie's bedside. Nothing could take away the pain or aloneness I felt traveling that day, but her loving kindness helped me get through it. Smooth and caring. Poetry without words. Prayer in action?

The end of life is a transition we all make alone, ultimately. It's hard to even think in times like this, let alone say (to others or to self) something/anything wise. We are too close up on it, like children sounding out letters, it's hard for us to find the big idea. Wisdom is retrospective.

I first met Rabindranath Tagore at the Erie Street Bookstore on a rainy Saturday afternoon and was almost disappointed to later find out that not only had he won a Nobel Prize in 1913, but some new agey types had rediscovered him and claimed my new friend as their own. Still, even though I didn't exactly discover him, every time I read his work, I find a new discovery.

In his book Sadhana, The Realisation of Life, Tagore uses the words love and joy interchangeably. He quotes the ancient seer-poet who sings, "From love the world is born, by love it is sustained, towards love it moves, and into love it enters." A few pages before that, he quotes the seer as saying, "From joy are born all creatures, by joy they are sustained, towards joy they progress, and into joy they enter." I once used this poem/song for inspiration for a poem for Kelly and Brian's wedding, a day of great joy.

But the meaning of a poem is in great part what we bring to it. And today, I bring my sadness and am reminded that transitions are part of the natural flow of life, even the great transition that each of us is destined to make. Spending too much energy on the seeming unfairness of it obscures our vision of the love and joy that radiates from such a luminary as Bonnie.

Bonnie has a Big Idea. She wants part of her legacy to be libraries in India built through the Room To Read program, for more information go here. She also wants to fund grants for teachers to attend conferences, so many of which have benefited from her presentations.

From love, by love, towards love and into love. The joy that is Bonnie.

What's Wrong with this Picture?

Is it true that the wisemen brought pumpkins to honor the infant?
Is that the Holy Ghost dressed up as a scarecrow for Halloween?
OR
Does this image beg the question: How was it that the parable of the scarecrow-as-cheerleader was somehow omitted from my Sunday School lessons?
AND
Why do most passion plays eschew the pom poms?

These and other pressing questions occupy my mind as I walk the dogs around the block. Whatever this display represents, it scares the persistent barking out of Lili. In her mind, any scarecrow suspended and presiding over a cradled infant cannot be good.

The Garden's Fall

The Garden's Fall

So this is what
it comes to
after all.
The promise of spring now
stacked sticks,
twisted vines,
faded blossoms,
all cracking up over lost suppleness.
Past the point of usefulness.
Uprooted.
After all those phases of the moon,
the sun and rain,
the hosings and the horse manure.
Most of its fruit
has simply been digested.
Still some of the garden’s flesh
hangs on, wrinkled and scarred.
This is what is left.
One last supper
and the rest stuffed into
a bag for collection.

Orwell in Bed

I read Animal Farm as a kid, maybe third grade or so. It was on the bookshelf by my bed. I remember slipping the slim, green volume in and out surreptitiously to read with a flashlight in bed. Mom didn’t know I was reading this book without pictures in which pigs talked, which definitely made it more attractive. I’m not sure if mom would have censored the book from me if she had known.

Mom would have arranged the shelves in the bookcase to look nice, not as some kind of plot to expand my mind. Besides being fiercely intelligent, she liked things to look nice, not like those ratty looking children’s books with the torn covers that she sent to the Goodwill as soon as I learned to read. In fact, she trashed the book jackets on all books. Messy looking. I’m not sure it even occurred to her that I might be reading those Book-of-the-Month Club selections carefully aligned by height and color. That I didn’t truly understand the meaning of Animal Farm, the story within the story, didn’t matter. I liked the book and the words weren’t too hard.

This narrow bookcase sits in my office today; it holds a disorderly mishmash of my ragged old journals. I’ve kept it around, just like my love of reading in bed after the lights go down. This habit has been greatly enhanced by being able to read from my back lit little ITouch. The words are newspaper column-width and just as exciting or disappointing as they would be on the page. Yes, I still like books with covers, but under the covers, I love my ITouch enabling me to read in the dark.

Surreptitiously? Not so much.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is my latest read. It is a rich book set in Ethiopia in which some of the descriptions are so graphic that the words on the screen seem to bleed (the main characters are surgeons). In fact, I’ve had to self-censor a few passages. Though, like Animal Farm, the book doesn't contain pictures, some of the images are powerful and fully capable of causing nightmares. Humble compliments to the author.

This book was recommended to me by my friends at Amazon who know I like books set in foreign places. You think elephants have a memory? Amazon never forgets. They know every item I have looked at from school bus tents for Thomas to books on stalking/window peepers (eight years ago I ordered a paperback on this topic to help understand the mentality of these people, it’s a long story), to those little ankle high boots I thought I couldn’t get through the winter without and which now follow me onto every single site I visit on the internet, scrolling across the top, flashing at the side. Amazon remembers such things. Forever, it seems. And sometimes they are spot on. I like this book, in fact.

In Cutting for Stone I found this little story within the story that I liked. The story was about a miserly Baghdad merchant who had a battered pair of slippers everyone teased him about. He finally decided to get rid of them, threw them out a window, they landed on the head of a pregnant woman, she miscarried, and he went to jail. The second attempt to get rid of the slippers he dropped them into a canal, they choked up the drain, and again off to jail. A listener to the story observes, “He might as well build a room for his slippers. Why try to lose them? He will never escape.” All kinds of cool inferences can be drawn from this little story, an imbedded mini lesson. Everything in your experience (the slippers) becomes part of who you are. The author sums it up saying, “the key to happiness is to own your slippers.” Love it.

Loved it so much I tapped the passage with my finger and up jumped a little window on my ITouch that said, “1247 people also liked this passage.”

How Orwellian is that?

Deal with it.

‎"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in. Forget about them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." – Emerson

Obviously, Emerson never had fruit flies.

I woke up to yesterday all over the kitchen, stray basil leaves and scraps of chopped pepper from cooking tomato sauce, leftovers that I didn’t sweep up before bed. Did Emerson always sweep the kitchen floor before bed? I don’t think so. Oh and yes, don’t forget the cloud of fruit flies darkening a bowl tomato trimmings that didn’t get taken out to the compost.

Let me ask you, did Emerson compost? If he did he would never make such a statement. This is, I mean, this statement is so smugly 19th century. What did ol' Mr. Leisuretime do to combat global climate change caused by (hello) Yesterday.

Did Emerson ever wake to 37 emails that penetrated the spam filter over the night like fruit flies through window screens, or wherever fruit flies and offers of wealth and health fly in from. Did he never eat out and two weeks later find a styrofoam container growing like a science experiment in the back of the fridge or a preposition dangling at the end of a sentence he had written? Eh?

He probably never filed an extension on his taxes, either, so he could have the water-torture joy of waking to unfinished homework for five months every year. A milk crate full of receipts moaning like caged zombies under the desk. Unopened financial statements that made him regret he never got an advanced degree in accounting. And don’t forget the 187 pieces of correspondence populating his inbox that really should be answered.

Oh. And who do you suppose was the “high spirit” he woke up with every morning? No one who has ever lived with another human being for longer than a week expects to be greeted with sunny smiles every dang day. Sounds a little lascivious, Ralph Waldo. If the Reverend and his “spirit” woke up high, isn’t that just evidence they didn’t sleep long enough? Bet his two wives (the ones who probably swept the kitchen for the "individualist") loved THAT story.

Okay. I’m willing to admit that even though I have some questions about Emerson’s philosophy, I do not have all the answers. I’m going to slap a label on the coffee pot, rename it “serenity,” slug down a couple of cups, make a wide sweep of all the “yeah, buts” off my desk with the back of my arm, and start the day over.

Here’s where I should conclude this philosophical rant with a summary statement about fruit flies, but what more can really be said? They exist. Deal with them.

August Reflections

August light turns in by eight
and night comes early in the forest
lullabied
by crickets' chorus,
shrilly sung crescendos
by a choir that no one sees.

A piece of poem.
Don't know when I wrote it, but when ripened tomatoes start to sag on drying vines and shadows begin to lengthen in late afternoon, it floats through my mind, looking for a place to go.



Last week Danny, Scotty, Sara and Thomas and I went creeking. I've talked to many teacher groups about this creek. How on one frosty Easter morning I used my walking stick to roll one rock on top of another so I could tip toe across and not get my feet wet.

I asked my friend, is that fair? To move the rock like that? Maybe we should just play them as they lay. "I don't know," she answered, "if I were a rock, I wouldn't want to stay in the same place for the rest of my life."



I went home and asked my daughter Kelly what she thought. Was it fair to move the rock? She reminded me that there were organisms living under that rock. Move the rock and you have disturbed the habitat. So I asked her football/golfer boyfriend (soon to be husband) Brian, and he said definitely, no. You move the rock, you take the sport out of it.



So, on this hot August day, no frost to be found, I visit the same creek with two of their sons, Dan and Thomas. We talk about whether to take the high road or the low road beside the creek. We confer with Scotty and Sara. And we all manage to round the bend and follow the creek with (mostly) dry feet, even though the mud DID try to suck the shoe off of Dan's foot during one rock maneuver. Life, like the creek, is constantly moving on.

Back then I also asked my friend Sharon Draper in an email, what did she think about moving the rock and she quick shot back an answer, "Jackie Robinson moved a rock and everyone has been following in his footsteps ever after."

Good answer. I asked other friends. I asked Father Ned, who answered, "We are co-creators in this universe, move the rock." That turned out to be my favorite answer. We are co-creators. And while it is up to each of us to make our own way, It sure helps to have friends and family to talk over the possibilities.


About which rocks can be moved and which we need to climb over.






A few weeks ago a teacher from TN wrote and asked me for the poem about the creek. Like the August poem, it is just a little piece of poem. Never fully developed. Just a little story, a memory to savor like the tongue-burst of backyard, sun-ripened tomatoes.

"We don't have polio any longer."

So my question to the wise women writers I have dinner with now and then was: Do you think that every generation, when people get to a certain age, they just think the world is going to hell, or do you think the world really is going south this time?


And alternately, we each added to the list of the world’s woes. My own list included the oil volcano in the Gulf, the disappearing wet lands, the special that’s coming up on the chemicals in our fresh foods, chemicals with side benefits like cancer and autism, the Texas Board of Education is trying to limit learning, Gaza stripped, too big to fail, nuclear headed weapons, how I just liked a group on facebook about how the introduction of corn syrup into baby formula is giving kids obesity and diabetes and to top it all off, Tipper and Al Gore are calling it quits. I feel about their divorce as I would have had I watched a precious antique piece of furniture fall off the back of a truck and get smashed. 40 years? They don’t make marriages like that anymore.

This is a brilliant group of writing women brought together by Sarah Willis
Kristin Ohlson, Karen Sandstrom, Thrity Umrigar, Loung Ung, and Paula McClain . I love not only our exchanges about writing and publishing but their well-traveled, intelligent take on the world. I always have leftovers after these meals -- something to bring home that won't just go bad in the back of the fridge. We don't get together very often and rarely all at the same time due to travel and other conflicts, so this week was a real treat.

So what did they think? Does every generation grow to think that change is ruining the world? Wasn't this the cry when society industrialized itself? Freeways, factories, fashion (those falling down pants hobbling our young men, are you kidding me?), each new generation flips off the former and chooses new paths -- hence the inevitability of grumpy old men (and women).

Is what is happening today and how discouraging it sometimes feels just the natural march toward the future or have humans really messed things up beyond repair? We bounced the question around -- united in our mourning over the horrors of oil mixing with water, but while nobody particularly relishes seeing boys with their boxers exposed, we all agreed we need to fight any tendency to become more conservative with age.

"I'm happy to be living today," said Thrity. I wanted to say, "really?" Not that kind of Saturday Night Live "reeeeeallly" that has lately (annoyingly) permeated conversation (see what I mean about the grumpiness?), but really? "Yes. Fifty years ago could we have all accomplished what we have? Would Loung and I even be here? Look. We don't have polio any more."

And there it was. My take home idea. Something to hang onto while watching news hour images of dying pelicans and gasping dolphins.

One bad habit I have unfortunately nurtured over the years is stacking up the bad stuff. I'm good at it. I gather outrages and images using resentment as mortar to give bad stuff more substance. And when the stack starts to waver, I search around (under the desk, on the Internet, in the gutters) for more bad stuff to prop up the stack, all of which -- the late night searches, the rearranging, the tumbling and rebuilding -- tends (big surprise) to weigh me down. There's lots of bad stuff out there.

And Thrity reminds me. Once again. Finding inner peace comes back to gratitude. Not losing all sense of empathy or outrage, these can be powerful motivators. But we (I) also need some inner peace since that's what eases us along as we continue to seek solutions to all of the above. Besides, no inner peace means no sleep which makes it hard to deal with the crisis of a broken pencil let alone a broken oil well.

At least we don't have polio any longer.

I should be walking

When life becomes a blur, about the only thing to do is buckle your seatbelt and wait for the ride to stop. That's when you stagger away, slightly dizzy, searching for a focus point.

Since my last post I visited Shanghai, North Dakota, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, Florida, Connecticut and various points in OH.



I met great kids, poet of all ages -- pre-school and up, up, up.



wrote with them,



celebrated their images, words, and performances,



had a new puppy born into the family, (video starring Lili, cameo by Suzi, videography and production by Michael) made new friends, tested the limits of old friends, and finished the page proofs on two new books. The third set of page proofs is arriving by mail next week. I argued strenuously but self-consciously about cover art and what would print to fit in the books. The struggle to balance what I feel is right and remain likable thrashes within me like those submerged plumes of oil in the Gulf, immeasurable, deep, and not easily dispersed.



This past week was my Sunday. I rested. I biked a little. Gardened a little. Walked a little. Started a rag rug out of old T shirts and didn't think much at all.



I did not drive a car (grocery, bank, post office all easily accessed by my bike) and spent too much time listening in horror to news about the oil volcano in the Gulf.



I'm so far behind in this blog, I don't even know where to start with catching it up. My lap top was stolen a couple of weeks ago and there went most of my pictures from Korea and Shanghai along with all of my teacher presentations and one picture book in process. Sigh.

I sit here trying to reconnect with my writing, blog, friends and think, I should be walking since I eat too much when I'm stressed. Which means that this past spring cost me four pounds.

The grandkids are screaming next door, birds are grousing about it, and puppy Lili is growling in her sleep under my desk, Michael is in his biking gear. Enough with the resting. Time for that walk.

It's Love/Hate

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The boy is right -- seems like everyone either loves or hates the president -- no middle ground. But unlike the way people either love or hate coconut, opinions swing wildly. I don't know if that reflects the fact the president is a moving target (unlike the flavor of coconut which remains pretty much the same and as long as you keep it away from my chocolate, I'm not going to pick up a sign and start marching on its hairy head). Or maybe it is more reflective of the fact that not only is the middle class evaporating, so is that wide swath that used to be called the middle ground. And that's not limited to politics.

No one is ever mildly annoyed. They are either jumping for joy or mad enough to rip someone's head off, blustering around like some kind of Tanzanian devil. It's like our whole society has plunged into into a perpetual state of adolescence, wildly mood swinging through events until manic has become the new normal. Too much TV? Too many shoot your way to conflict resolution video games? Have pumped up World Federation of Wrestling Neanderthals winning through prat falls and intimidation become our role models for building community?

Whatever. Drama queens (and kings) are no longer the isolated firecrackers they once were. Attention seeking behavior has become routine and any activity is justified, whether it is eating bugs or scaring the socks off of someone, if it brings you a little fame. Where do you go next when fame and infamous collide?

I would hope people talk about this fourth grader and his question to the president, but they probably won't. He didn't kick him in the shins, throw a tantrum, or threaten Obama in any way. He left that kind of behavior to the grown-ups. He just posed a question, politely asking. He waited for a response. He listened as if he really wanted to know instead of counting the seconds to a zinger comeback.

Good kid. Good question. But not such good T.V.

Travelers

While trying to stay within the lines and not tearing the the pictures of baby Moses in the weeds with my crayon in Sunday school, I remember hearing that if you talk up the fact that you did a good deed, points get deducted from your naughty or nice permanent record. So, I'm going to take a minute to talk up the artwork created by Debbi McCullough,
my artist and activist cousin who (among other good deeds) makes art from trash discarded by immigrants in the desert. The faces mounted in shoes and tuna fish cans which the travelers carry and drop along the way. Behind the faces in the cans are pages from the Spanish Bible. The sculpture on top is mounted on a section of cactus and in memory of the five people last month who received a death sentence for trying for a better life crossing the desert between Tucson and Nogales. Her work is beautiful and puts a human face on the tragedy of desperation.

I come from a family of do-gooders. It's true. That phrase has been tarnished of late by hateful folks who spit do-gooder out with scorn while stockpiling ammunition, but that's what we are. In order to do my small part in the world of inequities, in April 2008, (this is the part that's going to get me the point deduction) I checked a box to make a monthly donation to an organization Women for Women International, a flagrantly do-gooder group that is worth mentioning despite the fact that I'm a small contributor.

This organization provides an allowance for women in desperate situations to help get back on their feet. It connects each do-gooder with one woman, translates letters, and distributes the checks. The first woman I was connected to was and Afghan widow, I wrote to her and sent her a picture of my daughters and me in April 2008, but I never heard back. Monthly when I saw the $27 hit on my credit card, I'd wonder if she and her two children were even alive.


And then out of the blue (or out of the mailbox, as it were), I received a new partner abroad. Her name is Anastasie and she lives in D.R.Congo in a refugee camp where she has been since 1997. She is married and was born in 1969. She and her husband have two children ages 4 and 4 months. Under my cozy desk lamp, in my dry and warm house, compliments of the internet, I was able to search images of Mugunga Camp II. I studied Anastasie's letter and the translation. So, I looked up the phrase "jina lake" in Swahili to find that it means: name is (seems to work for my name is, her name is, his name is).

Somehow these images came together for me this weekend, voices from a wilderness of need and insecurity -- travelers who remind us to be grateful every time we turn on a water faucet or a light switch. Last week I also had to get my auto license tag renewed and had to stand in the inevitable line -- I even took a minute out to be thankful that I had a line to stand in, one that moved and ultimately worked. I didn't have to pay a bribe or a coyote to be legal.

We are all travelers looking for that place called home, that place where Frost reminds us "they have to take you in." But for too many, there is no one to take them in, no one left or never was. And that rather than building walls to keep those travelers out, isn't it safer for everybody if simply, in whatever way we can, we help one another along the way?

A Stitch in Time

"Will this thread work with this fleece?" I asked the 50 something clerk standing confidently behind the counter at the fabric store. Unlike many retail outlets, fabric departments are not tended by teenagers. 99.999999% of teens can't thread a sewing machine, let alone set a sleeve, bind a button hole, or install a zipper. Girls only, home economics (sewing and cooking) were required subjects when I entered junior high. My first project was exactly the same as every other girl's. An apron. I could choose one yard of any color I liked as long as it was gingham. Woven gingham, not that flimsy printed on stuff. By the end of the semester, every mother of a seventh grade girl at Berkley Junior High was trying to figure out what to do with her customized apron. Since steering a jackhammering needle down a perfectly straight line, one foot on a lurching power pedal, WATCH OUT FOR YOUR FINGERS, is not a skill that comes that naturally to a 12-year-old, our final projects weren't exactly runway perfect. While having those gingham lines to follow was supposed to help, mostly we learned an important life lesson in class: Ripping out and starting over is part of the process. I liked having that one class period a day with just the girls.

Sewing was distinctively a girl thing and I liked it. My granny tutored me in the summers and with a few extra lessons in tailoring from the local Singer center, I actually got pretty good at making facings lie flat and crisp edges. And then in college, about the time Virginia Slims tried to convince women that we'd come a long way baby, long enough that we could die of lung cancer at the same rate as men, I bought my own sewing machine for the equivalent of 100 minimum wage hours (a little less than $135). Blackberries and laptops may have been glimmers in someone's eyes, but in mine, I was set. That zig zag machine and my new electric Underwood were the only two machines I'd ever need.

Like riding a bike, sewing skills stay with you for life. I could recreate that apron tomorrow. Over the years I've made drapes, curtains, pants, suits, kids nighties. Some projects to be worn, and others soon found their way to the back of the closet with that first apron. No matter. I just like doing it. But like finger painting and star gazing, I just don't do it that much anymore. But I love the new fabric smell, putting the pins in, taking them out, even ripping and starting over is okay. Part of the process. Sewing is a novelty now. I've outsourced my own craftsmanship.

Unfortunately somewhere between their T Ball games and pre-calculus, I forgot to pass this knowledge along to my daughters who have never learned to sew. So when Kelly wanted Thomas to have a new blanket with weights in it (new idea for making restless little sleepers less, well, restless) I welcomed the task. No gingham, but being a bit rusty, I did choose a fleece with a block pattern.

Along with the wagon full of mother-regrets I and every other mother drag around, I deeply regret this oversight. And it's not because every time they need a hem tacked up or a split re-seamed they come to me -- I like that part. Because somehow, treading water in the tsunami of self-doubt that was seventh grade, using an overworked checkered apron as a sail, I managed to gain some self confidence. Suddenly I not only knew how dresses and skirts worked from the inside out, I began to understand how tables and cabinets are made. How pieces can be notched and attached. How to make a pattern. To know what it means to have a vision and make it. The ability to sew is part of the fabric of me, being a constructionist is part of who I am and how I view the world -- in little pieces that just might work if put together right.

So, tonight while adding the binding to Thomas' blanket spread out on the dining room table, twirling thread between my fingers to make knots, I was listening to the misogynistic debate over Sotomayer. Does she think she's better than white guys? (doubtful, but has she had to work harder than white guys to get where she is?) Is she smart enough? (ivy league, summa cum laude, pahleeze) Limbaugh compared her to David Duke of the KKK despite her lack of hateful actions or rhetoric and G. Gordon Liddy even went so far as to say he hopes he doesn't have a case come before her while she is menstruating. How stupid can an white male convicted criminal be? She's 54 years old. In lawyer speak, we call that twisted point moot. (Maybe he was the white guy she was talking about having better judgment than. Eh?) Who are these people and why does the news media give them a platform? Honestly, this kind of rhetoric really tests a woman's opposition to gratuitous, blood spattering violence, especially one no longer in possession of a gingham apron.

Which is all to say, us fifty something women still need some girls only time with the young ones. Passing along such important wisdom such as "you can't go wrong with dual duty thread," teaching them how things are made from the inside out. How to be constructionists in their own lives. Clearly, we might have come a long way, but not long enough.

We're havin' a heat wave!

Thirty nine and sunny in Cleveland in January after how many days below freezing (?) is beautifully balmy. We were outside soaking up the vitamin D yesterday and I am still on the uplift from all that sunshine. I had just read a reminder in my cousin Debbie's 25 random facts on facebook and made extra effort to "stay in the moment" and it worked! Sometimes staying inside the boundaries is a very good thing.

Scotty is a real trooper on the sledding hill, up and down 30 times and the closest thing he said to a grumble was "here comes the hard part" as he headed up the hill. No whining. No carry me. Just up and down like it was his business and he was on the job.





Sara K. loved it. At the top of the hill, she'd get herself all situated "on tummy" and then after bouncing to the bottom of the hill she'd proclaim, "AGAIN!"



Lucky we had Frank there to pull the tube, which still had sand in the bottom from the beach two summers ago.



After sledding and while Sara K was sleeping the sunshine off during naptime, Frank, with a little help from Scott and his dad built the most amazing coi in the front yard. Not a simple snow man.

Thinking out of the boundaries, the box, out of the pond, out of the season, a giant pink fish appeared in the front yard. The pink cast was conceived and achieved by Michael spritzing a diluted red jello veneer. Meantime, our jovial right wing neighbor was out scraping every little piece of loosened slush off of his driveway, muttering "Artists!"

"Within the next week you will receive an unexpected gift"

Oh, yeah.  The world is exploding, the stock market is sending out depth charges, and I'm going to be HOW old in 2009?  Right. THIS is the year I am going to start believing in fortune cookies.  I lost my voice on the New Jersey turnpike somewhere between Kean University and Kelly's house, I have about 40 assemblies to perform next week -- why would I think?  Who would believe?

And yet.

And still.

The workshop at Kean went great.  See the teachers above perform a questioning poem about a hurricane.  The vendor sold out of my books and the predicted snow storm did not smother or strand me in Hoboken.  And even if I do have a lot of assemblies next week and my voice is on hot tea life support, at least I have work when too many don't.  Life isn't exactly on cruise control, but it could be worse.  

It has been.

I know how bad it can be.

2008 was it.

And (but?) even if this is a new year.  Even if we are getting a leader in the White House to replace a buffoon.  Even if I haven't lost my color enhanced hair and I still have most of my teeth or at least replacement parts that I don't have to put in a glass beside the bed -- a fortune cookie? 

I have checked my credit card statement 15 times.  Heinens, Sunoco, Borders, Target -- all the usual suspects -- and still no $150 change fee from Continental?

Change fees.  A predatory practice.  Skyway robbery.  Outside, $10 in computer time.  No paperwork required.  Meanspirited mischief created by the airline industry in exchange for the joy of leaving travelers stranded without their toothbrushes.

Airlines, which are allowed to hold passengers hostage on tarmacs and scrambling for seats after flights have been cancelled think it is perfectly fair to charge the very same passengers $150 if they decide to leave on Thursday instead of Wednesday.  Airlines do not play fair and paying change fees makes me want to spit poison darts. 

So, when I came home from the Chinese restaurant last Thursday with the fortune in my pocket and cashew chicken on my breath, sat down to the computer, and changed a ticket from NJ to GA and it went through WITHOUT A CHANGE FEE, I thought there had been some kind of mistake.  
A computer glitch.  
Surely . . .

It has been 3 days.  No fee has posted.

Could it be?  
An unexpected gift foretold by a cookie stuffer?  

Maybe not too late to start believing in magic?

2009.  
Here's lookin' at you!

Olympic Obsession

I love the Olympics. Particularly the summer games. I hear that music and it is like a trumpet call to make popcorn, sit down and go "WOW." The training. The years. The hours. The sports I never heard of. A handful of contenders in their forties! One might think it would be a call to go out and get it in gear to soar to great heights at record-breaking speeds on my own.

One might.

Nah.

As the athletes discipline themselves, so do I. My discipline involves not letting myself watch during the daytime hours. So far, I'm reaching for the gold in that category. I've actually been focused on a revision of a novel, maybe not with the intensity of Phelps in the butterfly, but pretty intense.

Marge Piercy says to become a writer, you have to like it more than being loved. I have never had the desire to push it that far, but I suspect the Olympic athletes face similar choices. Such is the intensity of their commitment. I don't think I made anyone not love me this week, but I might have been teetering on the edge. So, Wednesday we took off to take Scottie to the county fair where he was very impressed by the chickens and corn dogs and not so impressed by the smell of manure.

After the fair, we made a bee line to Michael's parent's pool to wash off the ambiance of pigs in pens, where Scottie and his step-cousin Edison practiced synchronized diving. Even without seeing their faces, any spectator can see they are loving it. So, how many more dives before they get this down?

Everything you ever needed to know about relationships you can learn from picking raspberries

Everything you ever needed to know about relationships you can learn from picking raspberries.

Don’t be fooled by all that greenery, there is more there than meets the eye. But, be gentle lifting the branches to see what’s underneath. The good ones may fall or something might get broken, spoiling future growth. While the lifting can reveal amazing clusters of sweet surprise, watch out for the thorns. Be careful, but don't let those little things send you running.

Those showy sprouts? Not productive. Cut them down to size.

If you have to pull too hard, they are not ready. Berries are best savored one at time, right off the vine. Flavor is lost with the addition of refrigeration and other mechanical devices. Without a human touch, some will mold on the vine. Pile them up in a bucket and many will lose their integrity and become mushy.

Always leave some behind. Those are for the birds.

Death of a Loved One: Day 46

"Keep the machine running." This is a quote given to me from Michael and to him from a veteran machinist. When Michael asked the older man (back in his machine shop days) what the secret was to his reputation for high production, he advised, "just keep the machine running."

This has become a joke around the house, the perfect answer to substantial progress against a frightening blob of laundry, clutter, yard work, or phone calls that need to be returned -- one of us has really bent to the task and kept the machine running.

At first, when death doesn't knock politely, but kicks through the door as it did with Stephie, everything stops. Details to be taken care of: necessary arrangements, who needs to be called, who needs shoes for the funeral, what do we do with all these flowers? The machine just runs, by what power, who knows. But it does run.

The sputtering starts weeks later. Brain sputters trying to answer email. Heart hesitations. Knee weakness in the grocery. For my part, I haven't been able to write at all except for a few blog entries. Poetry demands feeling, and I can't risk it (see above re: knee weakness). And I spend a lot of time wrestling with the what-ifs and I worry about what is: About Katie. About Doug. About Kelly. A lot about little Scottie.

Granana, will you turn on the TV for me?

You can do it, sweetie.

No, only Stephie is allowed to turn on the TV.

When he was shown the video about Ben before Granny camp, his response was:

Is Ben dead, too?

Visiting Michael's mom: "I remember when we came here last summer. That was before Stephie got dead."

Scottie is four. He doesn't even know what forever means and developmentally he won't for another two years. He still believes in Santa. He thinks that Spiderman can save the entire city and that being a pirate is just as serious job aspiration as becoming a fireman. His daycare provider pointed out to Kelly last weekend that if someone were to tell him Stephie would be back tomorrow, he would believe it. His entire life revolved around doing what his big sister wanted him to do or negotiating a way NOT to do what his big sister wanted him to do. At night, when he lays down his head to sleep on Stephie's pink princess pillow, what does he dream?

How will this play out in his life? Will he have trust issues? Will he be angry? Will this keep him from caring because caring sometimes hurts? Who knows?

Who knows?

The day after the funeral, the day formerly known as Wednesday, as a family we backed out of the drive and turned separate ways into the unknown. We talk all the time, but ultimately we each need to find our own way and there are no maps, no single directive that is right for all. Little Scottie, like the rest of us, will just have to find a way forward.

A teacher at the Ohio Writing Project at Miami University asked me last week why I blog. Some of is it very personal, she observed. I don't remember what I mumbled in response, not sure it made any sense at all, in fact. My lips were moving, but my brain is still sputtering. As I think about it, I guess I blog because writing prose is like swimming the sidestroke compared to writing poetry. I'm all caught up with the laundry and my garden is doing well (see lettuce and strawberries above). We are all fed, bills are paid. I'm being a bit more reclusive than normal and have a tendency to turn the other way when I see someone I know. It's getting a little better and I'm sure (hope) that the part of me that can focus on book commitments is going to kick in here one of these days. Meantime, every morning and several times each day I just remind myself of the wisdom of that old machinist.